Birkenau

Birkenau

Birkenau was located in Auschwitz. Construction for Birkenau began in October 1941 so that Auschwitz was not as crowded. Birkenau was one of the many camps attached to Auschwitz. Birkenau was the site of imprisonment of over hundreds of thousands of people. Over one million people were killed. Approximately 1.1 million Jews, 75 thousand Poles, and 19 thousand Gypsies. Most of these people were killed through gassing.
Birkenau had four gas chambers. The chambers were designed to look like showers. The camp also had four crematoria, these were used to incinerate bodies after they had been killed in the gas chambers. About forty satellite camps were established around Auschwitz.   These were forced labour camps and were know collectively as Auschwitz III.
The camp was divided into four groups. The first group was mostly made up of people that were sent to the gas chambers. The second group was people that were sent to become slaves. The third group was made up of twins. They were used for experiments. And the fourth group was composed of women that were selected to work in “Canada”. “Canada” was another location in Birkenau.
Birkenau was staffed mainly by prisoners. Some of these prisoners were selected to be kapos and sonderkommandos. The kapos were responsible for keeping order in the barrack huts; sonderkommandos had to prepare new arrivals for the gassing. This meant ordering the people to remove their clothing and surrender their personal possessions. They also transferred dead bodies from the gas chambers to the furnaces. Before they sent the bodies to the furnaces they would have to remove any gold that they might have had on their teeth. The people of these groups were killed periodically. The kapos and sonderkommandos were supervised by the SS; altogether 6 thousand members worked at Birkenau.
In April of 1944, Rudolf Vrba and Alfréd Wetzler escaped from Auschwitz. They passed information to the allies about all the horrifying acts that were...