Konzentrationslager Auschwitz (help·info)) was the largest of Nazi Germany's
concentration camps. Located in German-occupied southern Poland, it took
its name from the nearby town of Oświęcim (Auschwitz in German), situated
about 50 kilometers west of Kraków and 286 kilometers from Warsaw.
Following the German occupation of Poland in September 1939, Oświęcim was
incorporated into Germany as part of the Katowice District (Regierungsbezirk
Kattowitz), or unofficially East Upper Silesia (Ost-Oberschlesien), and
renamed Auschwitz. The word Birkenau means 'Birch tree' of which there are
many surrounding the Birkenau area of the complex.
The complex consisted of three main camps: Auschwitz I, the administrative
center; Auschwitz II (Birkenau), an extermination camp or Vernichtungslager;
and Auschwitz III (Monowitz), a work camp. There were also around 40
satellite camps, some of them tens of kilometers from the main camps, with
prisoner populations ranging from several dozen to several thousand. [1]
The camp commandant, Rudolf Höss, testifed at the Nuremberg Trials that up
to 2.5 million people had died at Auschwitz. The Auschwitz-Birkenau State
Museum revised this figure in 1990, and new calculations now place the
figure at 1.1--1.6 million, [2][3] about 90 percent of them Jews from almost
every country in Europe. [4] Most of the dead were killed in gas chambers
using Zyklon B; other deaths were caused by systematic starvation, forced
labor, lack of disease control, individual executions, and so-called medical experiments.
The summer of 1944 was a vital period in the allied War effort.
The Normandy invasion and the battle for france, The V bomb attacks on britian
and the americans intense fighting against the japanese in the pacific
All competed for allied rescources and priority.
In the midst of this trumoil both the british and american governments
recieved formal diplomatic requestes to act against the killings in Aushwitz.
On the 6th of july chuchhill was notified of a petition by the Jewish Agency
It had recieved reports that 400,000 hungarian Jews had already been deported to Aushwitz.
Now it was appealing to churchills govrnment in london and to the Us war department in washington
to do something to stop the killing.
They'd requested that the allies bomb the death camp and railway lines leading to it.
Having gathtered enought information on operation of Aushwits to classsify it as an extermination camp.
Would the allys mount a bombing raid to destroy it?
By July 1944, the allys had more detailed inforamtion than ever before
about the atroucities at Aushwitz death camp. The detailed accounts by escapees of the extermination process and intelligence on the ongoing
deportation prompted calls for action from several Jewish organizations,
finally in london and washington the debate over aushwits began
at the same time arial recon interpreters were learning more of the IG farbem factory at monovitz still under construction
It was one of germanys largest synthetic oil refineries. on the 18 of july the plant was officially designated for allied bombing
But again the interpreters failed to realize the monovitz was part of the aushwitz slave labor system
just seven kilometers from the main extermination center of Birkenauw
Tens of thousands of prisoners sent to build the vast IG Farbem plant at monovitz were literaly worked to death.
"The work was carrying cement bags form a trains to a building where they were building more buildings-factory.
but we were not allowed to walk with these bags we had to run day in day out 25 kilos which is tremedously heavy.
The work was supervised by Capos, prisoners put in charge of other prisoners.
"Capos were ex-criminals rapist murders man with bad tempers who were taken out of the prisons by the nazi
taken to the camps to do the dirty workl for the nazi so you can expect anything form these men."
"They were really heavy criminals who had the power of life and death over us.
They walked around with this stick and when we didn't run fast enough with our cement bag we got hit by the capos"
The killing in the summer of 1944 were on such a scale the the crematoria could not cope.
This arial photograph taken on the 25th of august shows a large plum of smoke in the area behind crematoria 5.
To increase the extermination potential of birkenau some of the bodies from the gas chambers were burnt in open pits.
"corpses were staked up in the back of the crematoria, we saw people lined up and shot in the head
and thrown into the pits some burnt alive."
Winston Churchill was appuled by the reports of the killing at aushwitz he called it
"Probably the greatest and most horrible crime ever commited in the whole history of the world."
He was immediately in favor of proposal of the jewish agency to bomb the camp,
"Get anything you can out of the airforce" he wrote "envoke me if nessecary" The air ministry gathered to discuss the fisability of the bombing.
The debate centered whethere the allies could carry out raids with the precision to destroy
the gas chambers and crematoria without killing thousands of inmate
"They didn'tn think they aught to divert resoucres, they had a thousand things to wory about.
Winning the war was the main objective of all endevours."Prof. William Rubenstein Author "The Myth of Rescue"
"We were waiting, we were hoping for bombs, even if they would have hit us, we were hoping for a bomb raid"
"I didn't mind dying from the bombs, for me it was more important that something was happening from outside, a
that someone was doing something."
Auschwitz: The Forgotten Evidence - Features on thehistorychannel.co .uk