1. By: Collin, Becky, Elise, Alex, Kelly
Auschwitz
By: Collin, Becky, Elise, Alex, Kelly

2. Establishment of Auschwitz
Auschwitz was established by the Germans of the Third Reich in 1940, in the suburbs of the town Oswiecim.
The camp was established initially to house political prisoners.
Auschwitz-Birkenau operated as a death camp between March 1942 and January 1945.
The other two camps in Auschwitz operate as concentration camps

3. Auschwitz I Auschwitz I operated during May 1940 -- January 27, 1945
Auschwitz I was the largest of the Nazi camps and had the most streamlined mass killing center ever created.
Auschwitz had over 1.1 million people, mostly Jews.

4. Auschwitz II:Birkenau
In Birkenau, labor was one of the means used to destroy prisoners. They labored in various sectors of the economy.
At first they worked on building the camp by leveling the ground, erecting new blocks and buildings, laying roads, and digging drainage ditches.

5. Auschwitz II:Birkenau continued
Later, the industries of the Third Reich made increasing use of cheap prison labor.
The pace of the work, the starvation rations of food, and constant beatings and abuse drastically increased the death rate.

6. Auschwitz III: Monowitz
Monowitz was the first along with the largest sub camps in Auschwitz.
Monowitz was the most important camp inside Auschwitz because of the factories which were extremely crucial for the German war effort. Monowitz was built by Auschwitz inmates in April 1941.

7. Auschwitz III: Monowitz continued
Monowitz was built by Auschwitz inmates in April 1941.

8. Resistance
Active resistance: Occurred in ghettos, concentration camps, and death camps.
Armed resistance: One of four crematoria at Auschwitz was blown up by Sonderkommandos.

9. Resistance continued
Spiritual resistance: Socializing with friends, card playing, any sort of religious practicing were all against the rules. Actors, musicians, comics, singers, and dancers all entertained small groups.

10. Killing Method
The function of of the concentration camps of Auschwitz was to kill people imprisoned there.
The different methods to killing people were executions, lethal injections, and gas chambers.
Starvation, murderous labor, torture/beatings, woefully inadequate housing, insufficient clothing, and the lack of medical care caused the mass majority of deaths in the prison.

11. Notable Inmates
Boris Braun- Boris was university professor. Both his mother and father were killed in the Holocaust. Boris is still alive today, sharing his story with people around the world.
Witold Pilecki-using the name Tomasz Serafiński, he had allowed himself to be be captured by the Germans for the purpose of gathering information and to organize resistance inside the camp.
Stanislaw Gustaw Jaster- Stanislaw was a veteran of the Invasion of Poland. On June 20, 1942 he escaped from Auschwitz along with 3 other prisoners dressed as SS. They stole a staff car and left through the main gate.

12. Notable People:
Reichsfuhrer- SS Heinrich Himmler- Himmler was the supreme commander of the SS. Everything in Auschwitz was said to run through Himmler. Not so often he would receive orders from Hitler himself, but for the most part he would make his own orders.
Josef Mengele- Mengele was one of the highest ranking Physicians in Auschwitz. He was nicknamed the “Angel of Death”. He was named the Angel of Death because the choice of weather you lived or died was in his hands.

13. New Facts -Birkenau
Birkenau held up to 150,000 inmates at any given time.
Himmler ordered construction of the camp in 1940.
The camp developed a reputation for torture and mass killings.
Germans isolated Birkenau and sub-camps from the outside world and surrounded them with barbed wire fencing.
The gas chambers and crematoria at Birkenau were opened in March 1943.

14. Facts Con.
Two provisional gas chambers at Birkenau were constructed out of peasant huts, known as the “bunkers.”
Birkenau accounted “only” 11 percent of the victims of the ‘Final Solution.’
From April 1943 to March 1944 “only” 160,000 Jews were killed at Birkenau.
6,000 people were killed per day by gas chambers or crematoriums.
The amount of people that died at Birkenau would be a total of 4.1 million people.

15. Liberation
On January 27,1945 Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated by soldiers of the Soviet Union.
Upon arrival of the camps, soldiers found hundreds of thousands of men's suits, more than 800,000 women's outfits, and more than 14,000 pounds of human hair.

16. Liberation continued
The Polish Red Cross came in and opened a camp hospital. Medical treatment was made available to the prisoners. Hundreds of bedridden patients were removed from their filth ridden bunks, and taken to clean wards. Due to the extreme starvation conditions prisoners had to be gradually introduced to real food.
After prisoners left the camp, they were pretty much on their own.