Auschwitz concentration camp: Difference between revisions

==Background==

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When Germany [[Invasion of Poland|invaded Poland]] in September 1939, triggering World War II, Hitler ordered that the Polish leadership and intelligentsia be destroyed.<ref>{{harvnb|Browning|2004|pp=24–26}}; {{harvnb|Longerich|2010|p=144}}.</ref> The area around Auschwitz was [[Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany|annexed to the German Reich]], as part of first [[Gau Silesia]] and from 1941 [[Gau Upper Silesia]].{{sfn|Haar|2009|pp=41–46}} The camp at Auschwitz was established in April 1940, at first as a quarantine camp for Polish political prisoners. On 22 June 1941, in an attempt to obtain new territory, Hitler [[Operation Barbarossa|invaded the Soviet Union]].{{sfn|Cesarani|2016|p=xxxiii}} The first gassing at Auschwitz—of a group of Soviet prisoners of war—took place around August 1941.{{sfn|Piper|2000b|p=117}} By the end of that year, during what most historians regard as the first phase of the Holocaust, 500,000–800,000 Soviet Jews had been murdered in mass shootings by a combination of German ''[[Einsatzgruppen]]'', ordinary German soldiers, and local collaborators.{{sfn|Matthäus|2004|p=244}} At the [[Wannsee Conference]] in Berlin on 20 January 1942, [[Reinhard Heydrich]] outlined the [[Final Solution to the Jewish Question]] to senior Nazis,{{sfn|Gerlach|2016|pp=84–85}} and from early 1942 freight trains delivered Jews from all over [[occupied Europe]] to German [[#Extermination camps|extermination camps]] in Poland: Auschwitz, [[Belzec extermination camp|Bełżec]], [[Chełmno extermination camp|Chełmno]], [[Majdanek concentration camp|Majdanek]], [[Sobibor extermination camp|Sobibór]], and [[Treblinka extermination camp|Treblinka]]. Most prisoners were gassed on arrival.<ref name=deathcamps>{{cite web |url=https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005145 |title=Killing Centers: An Overview |website=Holocaust Encyclopedia |publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170914220116/https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005145 |archive-date=14 September 2017 |url-status=live}}</ref>

 

==Camps==