Crimes & persecution
Auschwitz concentration camp: establishment and operation
20 May 1940 – 26 Jan 1945 · Oświęcim (Auschwitz)
Himmler approved the Auschwitz site in April 1940 as a quarantine camp for Polish political prisoners, and the first 30 prisoners arrived on 20 May 1940. On 14 June 1940 the first mass transport, 728 Polish male political prisoners including Catholic priests and Jews, arrived from Tarnów. The first gassings, of Soviet prisoners of war and sick Polish prisoners, took place at Auschwitz I in late summer 1941, and construction of Auschwitz II-Birkenau began in October 1941. The first gas chamber at Auschwitz II was operational by March 1942, and from 1942 Jews were transported there and gassed on arrival. Soviet troops liberated the camp on 27 January 1945.
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- [1]Auschwitz concentration camp
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