Auschwitz And Birkenau Similarities

It’s the year 2018, people all around the world know about tragedies of the holocaust. It’s normally being compared with mass shootings such as Columbine and Sandy Hook. This was much more than just a mass shooting. Not just a few hundred or even a thousand people were killed, but millions upon millions were killed at concentration camps during the war.. All of these of these shootings can’t even compare to the two topics I would like to focus on in this paper, Auschwitz and Birkenau.
Birkenau is the second a concentration camp that was an addition to the main camp, Auschwitz. Birkenau is located three kilometers from the main camp in Oswiecim, Poland. The camp was established on May 26 of 1940 and liberated almost six years later in January

The camp was meant to scare Poles and prevent resistance to German rule. Hendrick Himmler, a Reich leader, visited Auschwitz in March of 1941. He commanded an enlargement on the camp so it could hold 30,000 people. He then commanded a second camp for a remaining of 100,000 inmates. This camp was set on the site of a village called Brzezinka or Birkenau (“Auschwitz-Birkenau - ‘The Death Factory’”).
There are three major camps with numerous sub-camps. The major camps include Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Monowitz. The second camp, Birkenau, was designed for extermination and the third, Monowitz, for work. Sub-camps included camps for gypsies, families, holding and sortings, plundered goods, and women. The women’s camp was established in August 1942. In 1943 both the gypsy and family camps were established (“Auschwitz-Birkenau - ‘The Death

There were two twin chambers that were labeled II and III and IV and V. Those who were selected to be gassed were undressed and shoved into the gas chambers. It took roughly 20 minutes for everyone to die from the gas. The gassings in II and III took place in underground rooms. After everyone was dead, the corpses were carried to ovens. The chambers and ovens in IV and V were on the same level. The ovens there was built poorly and were used frequently. This caused many malfunctions. The ovens were abandoned and corpses were burned outside (“Auschwitz-Birkenau - ‘The Death Factory’”). The crematoriums at Birkenau were originally a munitions bunker for the Polish army, but was converted into a morgue and crematorium. They then were used as a gas chambers. Inmates weren’t just gassed. There were sets of gallows located around the camps (“Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration and Extermination