Auschwitz, Oswiecim, Poland

Auschwitz concentration camp, was a complex of over 40 concentration, and extermination camps, operated by Nazi Germany, in occupied Poland, during World War II, and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschwitz 1, the main camp (Stammlager) in Oświęcim; Auschwitz II, Birkenau, a concentration, and extermination camp, with gas chambers; Auschwitz III, Monowitz, a labor camp, for the chemical conglomerate IG Farben; and dozens of subcamps. The camps, became a major site of the Nazis' final solution, to the Jewish question.

After Germany sparked World War II, by invading Poland in September 1939, the Schutzstaffel converted Auschwitz 1, an army barracks, into a prisoner-of-war camp.

The initial transport of political detainees, to Auschwitz consisted almost solely of Poles, for whom the camp was initially established. The bulk of inmates, were Polish for the first two years.

In May 1940, German criminals brought to the camp, as functionaries, established the camp's reputation for sadism. Prisoners were beaten, tortured, and executed, for the most trivial reasons. The first gassings—of Soviet, and Polish prisoners, —took place in block 11 of Auschwitz 1, around August 1941. Construction of Auschwitz II, began the following month, and from 1942 until late 1944, freight trains delivered Jews, from all over German-occupied Europe, to its gas chambers. Of the 1.3 million people sent to Auschwitz, 1.1 million were murdered.

At least 802 prisoners tried to escape, 144 successfully, and on 7 October 1944, two Sonderkommando units, consisting of prisoners, who operated the gas chambers, launched an unsuccessful uprising. Only 789 Schutzstaffel personnel, ever stood trial after the Holocaust ended; several were executed, including camp commandant Rudolf Höss.

As the Soviet Red Army, approached Auschwitz in January 1945, toward the end of the war, the Schutzstaffel, sent most of the camp's population, west on a death march, to camps inside Germany, and Austria. Soviet troops entered the camp, on 27 January 1945, a day commemorated since 2005, as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. In the decades after the war, survivors such as Primo Levi, Viktor Frankl, and Elie Wiesel, wrote memoirs of their experiences, and the camp became, a dominant symbol of the Holocaust. In 1947, Poland founded, the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, on the site of Auschwitz 1 and II, and in 1979, it was named a World Heritage Site, by UNESCO.