The Camps One

Auschwitz Complex

The Auschwitz complex evolved into the central hub of Heinrich Himmler’s concentration camp system. Following Poland's defeat by Nazi Germany, SS authorities began systematically arresting individuals deemed threats to German security. To hold those who were not executed immediately, the SS expanded its network of camps deep into occupied territory.

In 1940, SS Captain Rudolf Höss and a small group of officers inspected Oświęcim—a town in southern Poland renamed Auschwitz and annexed into Upper Silesia. They selected a dilapidated former military barracks, which had later served as a tobacco factory, located just outside the town. While initially planned as a temporary transit camp for Polish prisoners, the SS quickly abandoned this restricted scope to create a permanent facility. Situated roughly 160 miles southwest of Warsaw, the primary camp site was surrounded by stagnant, pestilential ponds.

Following Heinrich Himmler’s visit in 1941, the SS ordered the expansion of Auschwitz in anticipation of the upcoming invasion of the Soviet Union. While Himmler initially intended the new sector to hold Soviet prisoners of war, Nazi policy shifted rapidly. The expansion instead became a massive new complex designed to imprison and systematically murder European Jews.

Known as Auschwitz-Birkenau, this site functioned primarily as an extermination centre. The first transport of Jewish prisoners arrived at Birkenau on 26 March 1942 from Slovakia, following an agreement by Slovak President Jozef Tiso to deport them into SS custody.

The SS outfitted the Birkenau site with specialized facilities designed for mass murder. These included Badeanstalten (bathhouses) used as gas chambers, Leichenkeller (corpse cellars) for storing bodies, and large-scale crematoria. Experienced SS personnel managed the camp, utilizing a strict hierarchy of prisoner functionaries to enforce control. This internal oversight network included Lagerälteste (camp seniors), Blockälteste (block seniors), Stubendienst (room orderlies), and Kapos (work detachment foremen). As deportation trains arrived from across occupied Europe, the complex became the site of an estimated 1.1 million deaths.

The vast network consisted of three primary camps and more than 40 sub-camps:

Auschwitz I: The original main camp, which functioned primarily as an administrative hub and concentration camp rather than an immediate extermination site.

Auschwitz II (Birkenau): The designated killing centre housing the specialized gassing and cremation facilities.

Auschwitz III (Monowitz): A slave labour complex located six kilometres away, where prisoners were forced to work for private industries, including the Buna-Werke synthetic rubber and fuel plant.

In the women's sector of Auschwitz II, specifically within Block 30, SS doctors Carl Clauberg and Horst Schumann conducted mass sterilization experiments on prisoners using X-ray radiation. The primary objective of these forced procedures was to develop efficient methods to prevent individuals of mixed Jewish descent (Mischlinge) from reproducing.

Garrison Numbers (source: http://auschwitz.org/en/history/the-ss-garrison/)

It's been estimated that just over one million men, women and children were murdered within the Auschwitz complex as a whole, and that the SS garrison numbers were as follows:

In 1941 the estimate was: 700.

In (June) 1942 the estimate was: 2,000.

In (April) 1944 the estimate was 3,000.

In (August) 1944 the estimate was: 3,300 [SS men and female overseers].

In (January) 1945 the estimate was: 4,480 SS men and a further 71 female SS supervisors.

Between 8,000 - 8,200 men and 200 female guards oversaw the death and destruction of their fellow human beings that their masters in Berlin had decided were no longer worthy of life. Such a small number compared to how many died and suffered.

Life and Death in Auschwitz:

Upon arrival, prisoners underwent a dehumanising registration process. SS staff shaved their heads, tattooed identification numbers onto their left forearms, and forced them to shower. Inmates then received wooden clogs and blue-and-grey striped uniforms. Following a mandatory quarantine period, officials assigned prisoners to bunks within the overcrowded barracks.

Daily life revolved around strict, brutal routines. Morning roll call (Appell) began at 4:30 AM in the summer and 5:30 AM in the winter. A second roll call took place each evening following manual labour. Prisoners stood at attention for hours during these assemblies, regardless of extreme weather conditions. Survival largely depended on work assignments, as specific labor details carried drastically different physical demands and mortality rates.

The camp diet was intentionally inadequate and calorie-deficient. In the morning, prisoners received only a cup of substitute (ersatz) coffee and a piece of stale bread. Lunch consisted of a watery, nutrient-void soup. While prisoners did not work on Sundays, they spent this time bartering for extra food to stave off rampant starvation. This severe malnutrition, combined with unsanitary conditions, caused widespread outbreaks of diarrhoea and dysentery. Due to strict night curfews and rigid roll call rules, many inmates were forced to soil themselves.

Violence and disease were constants within the complex. Prisoners faced frequent, often fatal beatings from both SS guards and Kapos (prisoner overseers). Overcrowding allowed lice to thrive, triggering massive epidemics of typhus and other contagious illnesses. Furthermore, SS doctors conducted periodic "selections" among the inmate population. With a brief visual inspection, doctors sent those deemed too ill, weak, or exhausted to work directly to the gas chambers.

The Gas Chambers:

The gas chambers at Auschwitz could hold up to 1,000 people simultaneously. Once guards escorted the victims inside, they sealed the heavy entrance doors shut. These doors featured a built-in peephole, allowing SS personnel to monitor the room and verify that everyone inside had succumbed to the gas before reopening the chamber.

The Labour Force:

The Auschwitz complex depended entirely on forced inmate labour to function, as the SS lacked the personnel to operate the infrastructure without them. Inmates filled vital administrative roles as secretaries and clerks in the camp offices. They also maintained the facilities as construction workers, electricians, cooks, and firemen, and provided medical care as assistant doctors and nurses. Most notoriously, the SS forced certain prisoners into complicity: some served as Kapos (prisoner supervisors), while others were compelled into the Sonderkommando, the special work units forced to operate the gas chambers and crematoria.

Block 24: The Auschwitz Camp Brothel

Following a directive from Heinrich Himmler authorising brothels within the concentration camp system, Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss established a camp brothel to coerce privileged, non-Jewish inmates—such as Kapos and firemen—into higher productivity. In exchange for exceptional work, these functional prisoners received vouchers granting them precisely fifteen minutes with an enslaved woman. The brothel was located in Block 24 of the main camp (Auschwitz I), positioned directly opposite the camp's primary entrance.

Women selected for this state-sanctioned sexual exploitation faced extreme Nazi brutality if they resisted. In the memoir The Kindness of the Hangman, co-authored by Dexter Ford, survivor Henry Oster recalled how the SS threatened and punished the victims:

According to Henry Oster, as detailed in The Kindness of the Hangman (2014, p. 101), women selected for the brothel were coerced by the SS with promises of better treatment if they complied, or threatened with severe, often fatal punishments if they resisted. Oster recounted that those who protested were subjected to brutal, sexualised violence that was known throughout the camp.

The SS had placed peepholes within all the room doors and would on occasions watch as the privileged inmates enjoyed themselves at the expense of their fellow prisoners, who would be forced by her circumstances to feed the sexual needs of at least six men on a daily basis.

Selections:

Selections, also known as Aktionen (actions), functioned as a systematic culling process within the camp. The SS used these procedures to clear space for incoming transports or to remove inmates deemed unfit for labour due to exhaustion, starvation, sickness, or disease. Typically conducted by SS doctors, these operations involved a brief visual inspection of each prisoner. With a single glance, doctors instantly decided an individual's fate, sorting them either for immediate death in the gas chambers or for continued forced labour.

Zyklon B:

Zyklon B was a highly toxic, German-manufactured pesticide consisting of hydrogen cyanide (also known as prussic acid) absorbed into a porous granular carrier. When exposed to heat, moisture, or air, these granules released a lethal gas. While hydrogen cyanide was first utilised as an industrial pesticide in the United States during the late 19th century, German scientists later modified its formulation. A variant of the gas was deployed by Germany as a chemical weapon during the First World War, a practice subsequently banned by international treaty after the conflict.

During the interwar period, the German chemical corporation Degussa marketed the compound as a commercial pesticide in sealed canisters under the trade name Zyklon. The company later refined the formula into Zyklon B, which was primarily distributed as a delousing agent to fumigate buildings and clothing. However, the SS repurposed the pesticide at Auschwitz to conduct mass human extermination.

While Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss later claimed in his post-war testimony that three million people had died within the camp, modern historians have thoroughly disproven this figure. Today, comprehensive historical research confirms that approximately 1.1 million people were murdered across the entire Auschwitz complex.

The Family camp and Express Work

When the Jewish family camp within Birkenau (BIIb) was earmarked for liquidation in mid-1944, and by the time the order confirming the action had reached the SS officer within the Crematoria there was still some 500 human cadavers to cremate before the new batch of murder victims could be processed. To achieve the aim of disposing these corpses, the Sonderkommando were ordered to cremate three to four bodies at a time. To ensure that there was no breakdown to the operation, the Jewish workforce was also ordered to place a 'Mussulman' (a prisoner who had been reduced to skin and bone) along with a child in the ovens with two adults, maybe even three to help speed up the cremations. The dead were placed into separate heaps. Mussulmen in one heap, women in another, men in another, children and babies in another, this way there would little delay in choosing the bodies to burn together. Other precautions were made to ensure that the ovens didn't fail, for example the ashes would be removed more regularly and oven channels couldn't get blocked. This process of body disposal was dubbed 'express work.' Express work had been devised by experimentation within Crematorium 5 in the autumn of 1943, and its purpose was to save fuel (coke). Agents from *Topf and Sons (of Erfurt) were sometimes present when these experiments were taking place and gave assistance whenever needed. (* This was the company that made the crematoria ovens for the camp).

When word reached the family camp of their immediate demise it was met with suspicion and disbelief, as those within the Family Camp (mostly Czech Jews who had been deported to the ghetto in November 1941) had been brought straight from the ghetto at Theresienstadt and had been allowed to retain their own clothing and were not obligated to have their hair shaved off and as a group, were not split up, they were allowed to remain together as family units. They built the camp they were in and were not used outside their own area as slave labour like all the other inmates of Birkenau. The children even had places to play within the compound and they were all given better rations than the rest of the camp. The leaders of the family camp believed that an uprising was being planned and those outside their group were simply trying to get them involved in a hazardous enterprise which was doomed to failure, so there a strong reluctance not to believe what they were being told. When the day arrived and nothing happened, this may well have convinced the Jews within the Family Camp that they were right not to organise resistance, but little did they know, that the camp was still earmarked for liquidation soon. 

When the day arrived to begin the liquidation, the Jews in the camp were told that a couple of thousand Jews, including their families would be transferred to the Heydebreck labour camp and on the 8 March 1944, this group was violently driven into the gas chambers. Those prisoners left within the Family Camp quickly realised what they had been told was true, but could now do nothing but await their turn. 

However, in early July 1944, a selection was held within the Family Camp and those deemed fit for work was actually sent to another concentration camp but between 10 to 12 July, the rest were dispatched to their deaths, but this time there was no deception as those destined for the gas chambers knew what was coming and after a little commotion, they sang their country's national anthem as well as the Hebrew song "Hatikvah" (The Hope).  The Hatikvah would later be adopted as the national anthem of Israel. By the time it was all over, the Nazis had murdered some 7,000 men, women and children.

The camp only existed as family camp for about six months and it is still unclear why it was created. Maybe its purpose was because the SS required a few thousand healthier Jews in case they were required as a cover if the International Red Cross was awarded another visit to either another camp or ghetto, but somehow the plans to use the Jews within the Family Camp was ditched and then these Jews became surplus to requirement and therefore had to go. 

The Sonderkommando

The SS systematically forced selected inmates to participate in the bureaucratic mass murder of their fellow prisoners. These workers formed the Sonderkommandos (Special Detachments). In exchange for performing these duties, they received better rations and an extended life expectancy, which typically lasted only three to six months before they themselves were liquidated to eliminate witnesses. Kapos—privileged prisoner foremen who frequently utilised whips or cudgels to enforce obedience—maintained strict control over these squads, earning a reputation for brutality that sometimes rivalled that of the SS.

While Sonderkommandos operated across the entire camp complex, their most traumatic duties occurred within the gas chambers and crematoria. They were forced to manage the frantic packing of victims into the execution rooms. A standard operation proceeded through a highly coordinated, devastating routine:

The gas squads forced approximately 2,000 naked victims into a subterranean chamber disguised as a communal shower room, complete with imitation shower heads fixed to the ceiling. Once the heavy doors were bolted, the air was mechanically extracted and SS personnel introduced Zyklon B granules from above. The resulting hydrogen cyanide gas triggered rapid internal suffocation. Outside, the Sonderkommando squads were forced to listen to the screams of the dying, a process that could take up to 20 minutes while SS doctors monitored the agonising scene through reinforced peepholes.

When the doors were finally unsealed, a bluish-grey chemical haze escaped the chamber. The Sonderkommando entered to find the victims collapsed in a tight, tower-like pile, primarily concentrated near the exit doors where people had desperately surged for air. The bodies exhibited severe physical trauma: many skin surfaces were discoloured pink or marked with green spots, some victims foamed at the mouth, others bled from the nose, and many died with their eyes wide open.

Equipped with specialised hooks, the squads tore the interlocking bodies apart, occasionally being forced to break limbs to separate the victims. The corpses were then moved via a lift or chute to the processing area, where another specialised team plundered the dead for valuables prior to cremation.

In his memoir Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers, survivor and Sonderkommando member Filip Müller recalled his harrowing first day on the detail:

"There Fischl went from corpse to corpse, forcing their mouths open with an iron bar. When he found a gold tooth, he pulled it out with a pair of pliers and flung it into a tin."

Every piece of personal property, jewellery, hair, and dental gold was systematically harvested from the victims before their remains were reduced to ash. This calculated industrial exploitation awaited millions of arrivals, entirely regardless of age or gender.

Gold Teeth Workshop

In the summer of 1943, the SS established a specialised workshop inside Crematorium III at Birkenau to process the gold plundered from murder victims. Enslaved Jewish labourers were forced to operate this facility, melting down dental gold, fillings, and jewellery into standardised bullion bars.

To prepare the harvested gold, workers soaked the teeth in hydrochloric acid to strip away any remaining blood, bone, and tissue. Once purified, the metal was smelted in high-heat crucibles and cast into bars. To maintain absolute secrecy, the finished gold bars were smuggled out of Birkenau inside a camp ambulance and transported to the main camp administration at Auschwitz I, where they were catalogued before final shipment to the Reichsbank in Berlin.

Josef Mengele - Angel of Death of Auschwitz:

"They come here as Jews, and leave as smoke up a chimney."— Statement attributed to Josef Mengele

Josef Mengele was born on 16 March 1911 in Günzburg, Germany, where his father founded the successful farm machinery manufacturing firm Karl Mengele & Sons. During the 1920s, Mengele studied philosophy, becoming deeply influenced by the racial and ideological theories of Alfred Rosenberg. Following an early meeting with Adolf Hitler, he became an ardent Nazi supporter. Mengele later pursued a medical degree at the University of Frankfurt am Main, where he merged his philosophical and medical interests into an obsession with eugenics and genetic engineering, operating under the belief that human lineages could be bred and catalogued like animals.

In 1939, Mengele enlisted as a medical officer in the Waffen-SS, initially holding the rank of SS-Untersturmführer (Second Lieutenant). After serving on the Western and Eastern fronts—where he was wounded and awarded the Iron Cross—he was transferred to Auschwitz in May 1943, eventually rising to the rank of SS-Hauptsturmführer (Captain). Mengele viewed the vast camp complex as an unparalleled human laboratory, providing an inexhaustible supply of subjects for his pseudoscientific racial research. He became a notorious fixture on the Birkenau arrival ramps, pacing the platforms during selections and actively searching for twins and individuals with physical abnormalities.

Twins selected for his research were housed under his direct supervision in Barrack 14 of Birkenau's Sector BIIe (frequently referred to as the "Gypsy camp" or nicknamed "The Zoo"). To ensure his subjects remained viable for comparative physiological study, they were initially granted better rations and bedding. Many child victims, unaware of their impending fate, affectionately referred to him as "Uncle Pepi" because he routinely brought them sweets and played games with them. Once prepared for experimentation, the victims were moved to the medical blocks, such as Block 15 in the main camp.

Mengele’s experiments were characterised by extreme sadism. In comparative pain studies, he subjected one twin to systematic torture to observe if the isolated sibling exhibited a psychological or physiological response. Driven by an obsession to artificially alter eye colour to conform to Aryan ideals, he strapped victims down and injected toxic blue dyes directly into their eyeballs without anaesthesia, a practice that invariably caused blindness, severe infection, and death. He also amassed a macabre collection of human eyes pinned to wooden boards, harvested from murdered subjects. Following these executions, victims' bones were frequently bleached and shipped to scientific institutes in Berlin for further anthropological study.

Beyond individual experiments, Mengele actively directed mass slaughter. On 25 May 1943, he ordered more than 1,000 women suspected of carrying typhus to the gas chambers, repeating the measure with an additional 600 women later that year. In late 1944, citing severe food and supply shortages, Mengele ordered the systematic liquidation of entire sections of the women's camp to reduce rations. Over a span of ten nights, trucks transported thousands of women to the gas chambers.

Mengele fled Auschwitz in January 1945, just days before the arrival of the Soviet Red Army. Evading postwar justice, he escaped to South America, where he lived for decades under various aliases, sustained by his family's considerable wealth. He died a free man in Brazil in 1979, having never faced trial for his actions.

Reflecting on his demeanour, Auschwitz survivor Grete Salus described Mengele as a "master at his profession" and "the devil who took pleasure in his work."

RUDOLF FRANZ HOESS. (1900-1947):

Rudolf Höss was born on 25 November 1900 in Baden-Baden. His father, a devoutly Catholic shopkeeper, hoped his son would enter the priesthood. However, following the outbreak of the First World War, Höss falsified his age to enlist in the German army. Deployed to the Ottoman front, he was wounded several times and awarded both the Iron Cross First and Second Class. Following Germany’s defeat, Höss joined the Freikorps, a right-wing nationalist paramilitary group. In 1923, he and future Nazi official Martin Bormann were imprisoned for the vigilante murder of a schoolteacher suspected of betrayal.

Released under a general amnesty in 1928, Höss joined the SS. Shortly after Adolf Hitler's rise to power, Höss was assigned to Dachau concentration camp. In 1940, he was appointed the first commandant of the newly established Auschwitz camp with the rank of SS-Hauptsturmführer (Captain). Under his administration, the complex was transformed into the epicentre of the Nazi genocide. An official 1944 SS report commended him as "a true pioneer" in camp administration. Late in the war, Höss became deputy to SS-Obergruppenführer Richard Glücks at the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps, a position he held until the collapse of the regime. Captured after the war, Höss was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and was hanged within the grounds of Auschwitz on 16 April 1947.During the Nuremberg Trials, while serving as a defence witness for Ernst Kaltenbrunner (Chief of the Reich Main Security Office), Höss provided a chilling affidavit regarding the camp's operations:

"It took from three to fifteen minutes to kill the people in the death chamber, depending upon climatic conditions. We knew when the people were dead because their screaming stopped. We usually waited about one-half hour before we opened the doors and removed the bodies. After the bodies were removed our special Kommandos took off the rings and extracted the gold from the teeth of the corpses…"

Below: Leichenkeller (corpse cellars) and Crematorium.