2. ‘Arbeit macht frei’
It is a German phrase that can be translated as
“Work liberates” or “work makes one free”.
In 1942 it became one of the largest death camps as
part of Hitler’s “Final Solution”.
AUSCHWITZ

3. What exactly was Auschwitz?

4. What exactly was Auschwitz?
Auschwitz was the largest camp established by the
Germans during World War II. More than a million
people - the vast majority of them Jews - died there
between 1940, when it was built, and 1945, when it
was liberated.
Nazi Germany began establishing Concentration
Camps in 1933. They were places to hold political
prisoners and opponents of the Nazi regime. They
grew rapidly in number throughout the 1930s.

5. Where did the victims come from?

6. Where did the victims come from?
Hitler's Nazi regime intended to exterminate all
the Jews in Europe - about nine million people
when the war began.
Most at Auschwitz were Polish - Poland had the
largest Jewish community in Europe at the
beginning of the war. But victims were also
brought by train from the many countries
occupied by the Nazis or allied with them -
including Hungary, Czechoslovakia, the
Netherlands, Belgium and Yugoslavia.

7. How did they die?

8. How did they die?
After experimenting with various methods, they settled
on gas chambers as the most efficient. Auschwitz had
four large gas chambers, in which people were
poisoned with a gas called Zyklon-B.
When prisoners arrived at Auschwitz, guards selected
those who looked fit for work and sent the rest -
children, the elderly, anyone who looked weak - directly
to the gas chambers.
Those who survived selection had their heads shaved,
and numbers tattooed on their arms. They were
assigned striped prison clothing and set to work.

9. Why didn't the prisoners rebel?
In fact, they did. Several hundred inmates learned in
October 1944 that they were to be killed and rose up
against the Nazis, killing three guards. They also blew
up one of the crematoriums and a gas chamber with
explosives smuggled in by inmates who were used as
forced labour at an arms factory.
The Nazis crushed the uprising, killing almost everyone
who was involved. The women who smuggled the
explosives into the camp were hanged in public.

10. Why didn't the prisoners rebel?