26/27 April 1943 | Three Poles escaped #Auschwitz: Edward Ciesielski (12969), Witold Pilecki (4859) & Jan Redzej (5430). #Pilecki was one of the co-founders of military resistance inside the camp. After the escape, he wrote an elaborate report about German crimes in Auschwitz.
Telegrams sent by the camp Gestapo (Politische Abteilung - Political Department) in #Auschwitz informing about the escape. One mentions "Thomas Serafinski" (false identity of Witold Pilecki) and "Johann Retko" (Jan Redzej). The other, Edward Ciesielski.
This is how Witold Pilecki described his escape in his report.
Fragment of memoirs of Edward Ciesielski about the escape.
"I've been trying to live my life so that in the hour of my death I would rather feel joy, than fear."
(Witold Pilecki)
The lesson describes the geographical location of the #Auschwitz camp, its security system, repressions faced by captured escapees, the collective revolts and finally tells the stories of 25 escapes.
The research of historians of @AuschwitzMuseum indicates that the official order of Heinrich Himmler to establish #Auschwitz concentration camp was given at least by the first days of April 1940 - not on April 27, 1940, as it was previously stated. #twitterstorians
The documents show that already on April 15, 1940, a binding pledge was made to the camp in Auschwitz in the form of the first tranche of 2,000,000 RM, assigned to cover the costs of adapting the former barracks buildings.
This means that a cursory review of the number of the available buildings and their condition must have been compiled earlier, in order to make a preliminary estimate of the cost of the required construction work. It would not be possible without the official order.
16 April 1947 | SS-Obersturmbannführer Rudolf Höss, the first commandant of the German #Auschwitz camp was hanged after he was sentenced to death by the Supreme National Tribunal in Warsaw.
Rudolf Höss was born in Baden-Baden on 25 November 1901. He joined the Nazi Party in 1922 and the SS in 1934. He started his career in Dachau in December 1934, then he worked in KL Sachsenhausen. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_H%… 2/9
In May 1940 Rudolf Höss was appointed by Heinrich Himmler as the commandant of a new concentration camp created in occupied Polish territory annexed to the Third Reich - #Auschwitz. 3/9
11 April 1987 | Primo Levi passed away. He was an Italian Jewish writer & chemist. From 26 February 1944 a prisoner of the German Nazi #Auschwitz camp no. 174517.
In September 1947 he published his book "If this is a man". #poetry#history#OnThisDay#PrimoLevi
You who live safe
In your warm houses;
You who find on returning in the evening
Hot food and friendly faces:
Consider if this is a man
Who works in the mud
Who knows no peace
Who fights for a bit of bread
Who dies because of a yes and because of a no
Consider if this is a woman,
Without hair & without name
Without enough strength to remember
Vacant eyes & cold womb
Like a frog in the winter:
Reflect on the fact that this has happened:
These words I commend to you:
Inscribe them on your heart
When staying at home & going out,
11 April 1945 | American forces liberated the #Buchenwald concentration camp. Among liberated prisoners were those evacuated from #Auschwitz.
Between 1937-45 Germans imprisoned in this camp almost 280,000 people. Over 56,000 of them were killed. buchenwald.de/en/72/
Read more about the chronology of liberation of KL Buchenwald: buchenwald.de/en/466/
"I have reported what I saw and heard, but only part of it. For most of it, I have no words."
CBS reporter Edward R. Morrow was the first reporter at Buchenwald after the liberation by @USArmy. Listen to his harrowing words on what he witnessed: collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog…
7 April 1944 | Two Slovak Jews Rudolf Vrba (b. 1924, no. 44070) and Alfred Wetzler (b. 1918, no. 29162) escaped from the German Nazi Auschwitz camp. Read their story in this thread ⬇️
In the second half of the 1943 Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler decided to escape. In the BIII sector, so-called Mexico, which was under construction at the time, they spent many days preparing a hiding place (bunker) for themselves.
Their activity was not discovered by the SS men, as the area was surrounded by a multitude of different construction materials, with which they could conceal the works conducted by them.
6 April 1944 | The Gestapo under the direction of SS-Hauptsturmführer Klaus Barbie raided the Jewish orphanage in French town of #Izieu. 44 children and their 7 educators were taken to #Drancy & later deported to #Auschwitz. Only one person survived.
Beate and Serge Klarsfeld, who brought Klaus Barbie to justice in 1983, later wrote: "Forty-four children deported - no mere statistic, but rather forty-four tragedies which continue to cause us pain ..."
In this photo you can see the children on the balcony of the children's home in Izieu, summer 1943. Seated in the center, in the second row from the bottom is Laja Feldblum. She was the only survivor of the Gestapo raid on the children's home on 6 April 1944.