A visit to @AuschwitzMuseum is a unique personal & educational experience. Thanks to our free online lessons everyone can learn about different aspects of the history of Auschwitz.
"Auschwitz – concentration and extermination camp"
This is a compendium of knowledge about the history of the German Nazi camp. The lesson explains the two functions of the camp that was used to persecute different groups of people.
The lesson is dedicated to a unique document that shows the reality of functioning of Auschwitz and the fate of its victims through the works of art created by the prisoners.
The lesson about the extermination of the Hungarian Jews in Auschwitz, but also about the history of the Jews in this country before the Second World War & during the period before the deportations.
The lesson describes the geographical location of the Auschwitz camp, its security system, alarm system, repressions faced by captured escapees, the collective revolts and finally tells the stories of 25 escapes.
The lesson tells about the initial stage of liquidation of the camp in late 1944, final days of the Auschwitz, liberation and medical assistance provided to liberated prisoners.
"Expulsion of Polish and Jewish population from Oświęcim and nearby villages 1940-42"
The lesson dedicated to expulsions that the German authorities carried out between 1940-42 against the Polish and Jewish inhabitants of Oświęcim and nearby villages.
The lesson analyses the situation of Jewish prisoners of the concentration camp in different periods & chronology of events that led to the transformation of Auschwitz into an extermination center.
The lesson tells the story of the first weeks of the newly created German Nazi camp and its first prisoners - Poles deported from the Cracow district in the General Government.
The lesson tells the story of nearly 13 thousand citizens of Warsaw deported to Auschwitz through a transit camp in Pruszków after the outbreak of an armed Uprising in Warsaw.
Learn about the creation of Auschwitz, reasons of incarceration of Poles as well as the plans of development of Auschwitz into the main camp for prisoners in occupied Poland.
"Preparation to the visit at the Auschwitz Memorial for youth"
The lesson presents basic information about the Nazi ideology, describes the history of Auschwitz and the development of extermination of Jews and Roma.
The lesson summarizes the organization of secret resistance activity that took place at Auschwitz from the very beginning of its operation, including informing the world about the crimes perpetrated in the camp.
The central theme of the lesson is the history of a special working group, composed mainly of Jewish prisoners, who were forced by the Germans to operate gas chambers, burning pits and crematoria.
The Auschwitz Museum has completed a two-year project, “Reconstructing the identities of deportees and prisoners of KL Auschwitz based on archival data from @AuschwitzMuseum and @ArolsenArchives". The research focused on the KL Buchenwald documents.
Thanks to the research we acquired some 90,000 documents, such as personal files, files from the prisoners’ employment department, various name lists, and documents informing about further transfers or prisoners’ death.
During the project, we also obtained several names and photographs of Sinti and Roma and Soviet prisoners of war. Furthermore, the lists of Jews deported from the Litzmannstadt and Theresienstadt ghettos, and French political prisoners have been partly reconstructed.
23 February 1943 | SS guards transferred 39 prisoners (13 to 17 years old) from Auschwitz II-Birkenau to #Auschwitz I and placed them in Block 20, one of the infirmary buildings. In the evening of this day, they were all killed with phenol injections. 1/4
The injections were administered by SS-Unterscharführer Herbert Scherpe, the Second Medical Officer. Some of the boys arrived with their parents on December 13 and 16, 1942 and February 5, 1943, in transports of Poles expelled by Germans from the Zamość Region. 2/4
After the end of the war Herber Scherpe initially stayed in a POW camp, then lived in Mannheim. In 1961 he was arrested by the West German authorities. During the second Auschwitz trial, he was sentenced by the court in Frankfurt am Main to four and a half years in prison. 3/4
6 February 1943 | At 3:30 am a general roll-call ordered by the SS camp authorities started in the female camp at Auschwitz II-Birkenau. All the female prisoners were driven outside of the camp. Poorly dressed, with no food they stood on snow-covered land until 5 pm. 1/5
Return was ordered in running. Female guards & SS men stood at the gate and rushed the coming back prisoners with hits of their clubs. Those women who were not able to keep up, as well as those weak, sick & older were pulled from the ranks with a hook. 2/5
They were brought to Block 25, where they awaited transportation to the gas chambers. Block 25 at BIa sector of Birkenau camp (also known as the block of death) was called "waiting room for the gas". 3/5
On 5 February 1919 | A Pole, Jerzy Radwanek, was born in Krakow. A pilot.
In #Auschwitz from 19 December 1940.
No. 7782
In 1944 transferred to Gross-Rosen. He survived.
For helping Jewish prisoners in Auschwitz he was recognized as a Righteous Among the Nations.
After work in different groups and a stay in the hospital, Jerzy Radwanek become an electrician in the leather tannery. The inmates working there included members of the resistance—Witold Pilecki, Henryk Bartosiewicz, and Stanisław Kazuba—who enlisted him into the resistance.
When female Jewish prisoners were employed in the warehouses containing the personal belongings of killed Jews on the premises of the tanning factory, he began to help them, providing them in secret with food and medications.
3 February 1915 | Pole Jan Baraś Komski was born in Bircza. A painter; He arrived at #Auschwitz on 14 June 1940 in the first transport of Poles (no. 564). He escaped on 29 Dec 1942, was imprisoned again (no. 152884), transferred to Buchenwald, Gross-Rosen & Dachau. He survived.
In the years 1934‒1939 he studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow. During the German occupation, he attempted to reach the Polish Army which was being created in France. He was arrested while crossing the border between the General Government and Slovakia.
On June 14, 1940 he was brought to Auschwitz in the first transport of Polish political prisoners. In the camp he was registered under the surname Baraś; he received number 564. In 1942, he was employed as a sketch artist in Arbeitseinsatz (prisoner employment department).
2 February 1925 | A German Jew, Esra Jurovics, was born in Berlin.
He arrived in #Auschwitz in November 1942 in a transport of Jews deported from Mechelen / Malines in occupied Belgium (number unknown).
He perished in the camp on 29 January 1943
In the 1930s, Esra fled to the Netherlands and found refuge in the Loosdrechtsche Rade Pavilion, a group of German-speaking Jewish youths who had fled to the Netherlands after 1938 were staying. They were known as aliyah youth or Palestine pioneers.
During the war, after the first pioneers were called up in 1942, a hiding place was found for all pioneers from Loosdrecht. Esra had gone into hiding with a farmer in Nijehorne.