This was Auschwitz, the infamous concentration camp of the Nazi Holocaust

(CNN Spanish) — Auschwitz is the German name for the city of Oświęcimwhich is located in southern Poland and was the birthplace of one of the most disastrous sites in world history.

Here, Nazi Germany built the Auschwitz concentration camp complex, which was the largest of its kind under Adolf Hitler, according to the United States Holocaust Museum (USHMM).

Hitler’s Germany had a system of camps distributed throughout the country and in the territories occupied after the start of World War II. These camps began to be established when the Nazis came to power and served as detention centers where all opponents of the regime arrived. points out the USHMM.

However, the Nazi camp system became much more complex and extensive over the years. Towards the end of World War II, this system was made up of more than 850 camps of various types: from transit and concentration camps to forced labor and extermination camps.

Some camps were dedicated exclusively to one thing, such as forced labor or extermination, and therefore were not as extensive. However, Auschwitz was one of the three great Nazi complexes, since there were several camps in its facilities, both concentration and extermination.

When did the Auschwitz complex arise and how many camps did it have?

According to the USHMM, Auschwitz was made up of three camps (one was an extermination camp), which opened between 1940 and 1942, and functioned until January 1945.

Auschwitz II

The first camp, or Auschwitz I, had three goals, the USHMM says: imprison enemies; supply labor for tasks related to construction and weapons production; and to kill specific groups that the Nazis considered a security danger.

“Like other concentration camps, Auschwitz I had a gas chamber and crematorium,” as well as a hospital where pseudoscientific medical experiments were carried out on humans, the museum adds.

Auschwitz II

The second camp in the complex was known as Auschwitz II, or Auschwitz-Birkenau.

It was the camp that played the most important role in the mass extermination of Jews in Europe by the Nazis (which is a part of the process known as the Holocaust), since it had the highest death rate of all extermination camps. .

“The Auschwitz-Birkenau camp had the largest prisoner population. It was divided into ten sections separated by electrified barbed wire fences”; likewise, it was also an extermination camp and came to have gas chambers, areas for undressing and crematorium ovens.

Auschwitz II

The third camp was Auschwitz III and was also known as Buna or Monowitz.

“It housed prisoners assigned to work at the Buna synthetic rubber factory, located on the outskirts of the small town of Monowice,” explains the USHMM.

This camp was built in order to exploit the prisoners of Auschwitz I for labor and thus manufacture synthetic rubber and fuel.

“With the construction of Auschwitz III in the fall of 1942, prisoners sent to Buna (from Auschwitz I) were assigned to live in Auschwitz III,” the museum says.

Auschwitz subcamps

The USHMM indicates that, in addition, the Auschwitz complex had 44 subcamps, which were opened between 1942 and 1944.

“Some of them were created within the area officially designated as a ‘development’ zone, which included Budy, Rajsko, Tschechowitz, Harmense and Babitz. Others, such as Blechhammer, Gleiwitz, Althammer, Fürstengrube, Laurahuette and Eintrachthuette, were located in Upper Silesia, north and west of the Vistula River. Some subcamps, such as Freudental and Bruenn (Brno), were located in Moravia,” the museum explains.

If the subcamps were dedicated to agricultural products, they were administratively subordinated to the Auschwitz II camp; but, if the subcamps were aimed at industrial production, weapons or extractive industries, they were subordinated to Auschwitz III.

How many people died in Auschwitz?

Although Auschwitz II had a huge responsibility for many deaths, murders were committed in all the camps.

According to the USHMM, the best estimate indicates that approximately 1.1 million people were murdered in the Auschwitz camp complex between 1940 and 1945.

• Of the 1.1 million people murdered, 960,000 were Jews (this is why Auschwitz plays a crucial role in the extermination of the Holocaust)
• 74,000 were non-Jewish Poles
• 21,000 were Roma (Gypsies)
• 15,000 were Soviet prisoners of war
• And from 10,000 to 15,000 were of other nationalities

With information from Richard Greene and Inez Torre.