February 1(?), 1940 - Auschwitz (Oświęcim, Poland), 50km SW of Kraków - The site, a former World War I camp in Oswiecin (Southern Poland) for transient workers and later a Polish army barracks, is first suggested as a quarantine camp for Polish prisoners by Arpad Wigand, the inspector of the Sicherheitspolizei (security police) and deputy of Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, the Higher SS and Police Leader for Silesia
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| Auschwitz I |
the site on the recommendation of SS-Obersturmbannführer Rudolf Höss of the camps inspectorate and the "Auschwitz I" Camp is established =(START)
May 20, 1940 - Auschwitz - The first 30 prisoners, poles and "german career criminals", arrive from the Sachsenhausen camp
June 14, 1940 - Auschwitz - First mass transport from Tarnów to Auschwitz - 728 polish male political prisoners, including catholic priests and jews
July(?) 1(?), 1940 - Auschwitz - Construction of crematorium I begins in Auschwitz I at the end of June or beginning of July. Initially intended for prisoners who had been executed or had died in the camp
January 10, 1941 - Meanwhile in London, England - The Polish underground informs the Polish government-in-exile in London: "The Auschwitz concentration camp ...can accommodate approximately 7,000 prisoners at present, and is to be rebuilt to hold approximately 30,000"
February 1(?), 1941 - Auschwitz - Himmler orders that the jewish population of Auschwitz be expelled to make way for skilled laborers
March 1, 1941 - Auschwitz - Heinrich Himmler visits Auschwitz and orders the camp to be expanded. Prisoner number in the camp reach 10,900, most of them poles
April 1(?), 1941 - Auschwitz - Inmates begin demolishing houses in Monowitz to make way for "Auschwitz III-IG Farben", a site for a new plant to manufacture "Buna-N", a type of synthetic rubber, vital to the german war effort
April 23, 1941 - Auschwitz - Commandant Rudolf Höss sentences 10 prisoners to death by starvation in reprisal for an escaped prisoner
August 1(?), 1941 - Auschwitz - Experimental gassing in "Auschwitz I" - For the first time, Zyklon-B crystals are thrown into the basement cell of a group of soviet prisoners of war
September 3, 1941 - Auschwitz - From 3 to 5 September, a group of 600 soviet prisoners of war and around 250 sick polish prisoners are gassed
October 1(?), 1941 - Auschwitz - "Auschwitz II-Birkenau" camp begins construction 3km from "Auschwitz I"
October 7, 1941 - Auschwitz - The first group of a total of 10,000 soviet prisoners arrive at "Auschwitz I"
October 25, 1941 - Auschwitz - All 10,000 soviet prisoners are in Auschwitz
November 11, 1941 - Auschwitz - 151 inmates sentenced to death are led to the "Death Wall", stripped naked, with their hands tied behind their backs and shot in the back of the head
January 20, 1942 - Meanwhile in Wannsee, near Berlin - At the Wannsee Conference, called by the director of the Reich Security Main Office SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, senior government officials of several ministries, state secretaries and SS leaders outline the plans for the "Final Solution", whereby most of the jews of german-occupied Europe would be deported to occupied Poland and exterminated.
February 15, 1942 - Auschwitz - A transport of jews from Bytom (Poland) arrives at "Auschwitz I" and is sent straight to the gas chamber
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| Auschwitz II-Birkenau |
March 20, 1942 - Auschwitz - A transport of jews from Silesia and Zaglebie Dabrowskie arrives at "Auschwitz II" and is sent straight to the new gas chamber
March 26, 1942 - Auschwitz - A transport of 999 jews arrives from Poprad, Slovakia. On the same day, the first mass transport of women (999 non-jewish german women from the Ravensbrück concentration camp) are registered in the new women's camp.
March 28, 1942 - Auschwitz - A transport of 798 jewish women from Bratislava arrives
March 30, 1942 - Auschwitz - The first transport of jews from France arrives
May 1, 1942 - Auschwitz - By the beginning of May, all 10,000 soviet prisoners had died
May 4, 1942 - Auschwitz - First selection at "Auschwitz II-Birkenau". Those selected are gassed
June 10, 1942 - Auschwitz - Mutiny and attempted escape of about 350 polish prisoners. 7 of them escape but about 300 die
July 17, 1942 - Auschwitz - Himmler visits Auschwitz and is given a demonstration of the gassing of a selection of 499 dutch jews
July 18, 1942 - Auschwitz - Himmler is given a tour of the building site of "Auschwitz III" - the new IG Farben plant being constructed at Monowitz
July 29, 1942 - For the first time, the Allies are informed about Auschwitz and Himmler's July visit there by Edward Schulte, a german industrialist and anti-nazi.
August 6, 1942 - Auschwitz - 13,000 women are transfered from "Auschwitz I" to "Auschwitz II"
September 1(?), 1942 - Auschwitz - Eduard Wirths is appointed as chief camp physician at Auschwitz
October 7, 1942 - Auschwitz - Maria Mandl is assigned to Auschwitz II-Birkenau, succeding Johanna Langefeld as SS-Lagerführerin of the women camp
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| Auschwitz III-Monowitz |
November 12, 1942 - The Allies are told that jews were being killed en masse in Auschwitz
November 25, 1942 - Meanwhile in the United States - The "New York Times" publishes a report about Auschwitz
December 1(?), 1942 - Auschwitz - Last inmates gassed in "Auschwitz I" - around 400 members of the Auschwitz II Sonderkommando, who had been forced to dig up and burn the remains of that camp's mass graves, thought to hold over 100,000 corpses
January 25, 1943 - Auschwitz - 53 people suspected of resistance activities are executed at the "Death Wall", including Colonel Jan Karcz and Major Edward Gött-Getyński
February 26, 1943 - Auschwitz - First transport of German Roma people arrives
March 1(?), 1943 - Auschwitz - Irma Grese is transfered from Ravensbrück to Auschwitz II-Birkenau
March 23, 1943 - Auschwitz - A transport of 1,700 polish Sinti and Roma people arrives and all are gassed on arrival because of illness
May 25, 1943 - Auschwitz - A transport of 1,035 polish Sinti and Roma people arrives and all are gassed on arrival
May 30, 1943 - Auschwitz - Dr.Josef Mengele is assigned to "Auschwitz II" at first in the gypsy family camp
July 1(?), 1943 - Auschwitz - The crematoria in "Auschwitz II" replaces the one in "Auschwitz I" that was in operation since August 1940
July 19, 1943 - Auschwitz - 19 polish prisoners are hanged as reprisal for the escape of a few prisoners
September 8, 1943 - Auschwitz - The first jewish 2,293 male and 2,713 female prisoners are deported by the SS from the Theresienstadt Ghetto in Terezin, Czechoslovakia
November 1(?), 1943 - Auschwitz - "Auschwitz III-Monowitz" camp becomes autonomous, with Heinrich Schwarz as its commandant
November 11, 1943 - Auschwitz - Arthur Liebehenschel becomes the overall commander of Auschwitz
November 19, 1943 - Auschwitz - Polish medical student Jerzy Tabeau escapes Auschwitz
November 22, 1943 - Auschwitz - Fritz Hartjenstein becomes commandant of "Auschwitz II-Birkenau"
December 16, 1943 - Auschwitz - 2,491 more jews are deported from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz
December 20, 1943 - Auschwitz - 2,473 more jews are deported from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz
March 8, 1944 - Auschwitz - 3,791 czech jews are gassed. Twins are held back for medical experiments
April 4, 1944 - Auschwitz - Auschwitz camps are photographed by a Royal Air Force aircraft
April 10, 1944 - Auschwitz - Rudolf Vrba and Alfréd Wetzler, two slovak jews, escape Auschwitz
April 25, 1944 - Meanwhile in Žilina, Slovakia - Vrba and Wetzler write a 33-page eye-witness account of the Auschwitz concentration camp
April 29, 1944 - Auschwitz - The first 1,800 hungarian jews arrive at the camp
May 11, 1944 - Auschwitz - Richard Baer becomes commandant of "Auschwitz I"
May 14, 1944 - Auschwitz - The first group of a total of 437,000 hungarian jews begin arriving at Auschwitz
May 16, 1944 - Auschwitz - The SS tries to liquidate "Auschwitz II" but the Roma people fight them, armed with knives and iron pipes, forcing the SS to retreat
May 27, 1944 - Auschwitz - Arnošt Rosin and Czesław Mordowicz escape Auschwitz
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| Arrival of the trains in Auschwitz II-Birkenau, June 1944 (Source: picture-alliance/dpa/ ?Mary Evans Picture Library) |
June 15, 1944 - Meanwhile in London, England - BBC World Service Press coverage about Auschwitz
June 20, 1944 - Meanwhile in the United States - The "New York Times" publishes another report about Auschwitz, which carried a 22-line story that 7,000 Jews had been "dragged to gas chambers in the notorious German concentration camps at Birkenau and Oświęcim [Auschwitz]"
June 27, 1944 - Auschwitz - Mengele kills four pairs of twins by injecting chloroform or phenol in them. The interest was apparently on an anomaly in their eye colour
July 3, 1944 - Meanwhile in the Unites States - New York Times - "Inquiry Confirms Nazi Death Camps"
July 6, 1944 - Meanwhile in the United States - New York Times - "Two Death Camps Places of Horror; German Establishments for Mass Killings of Jews Described by Swiss"
July 7, 1944 - Meanwhile in Budapest, Hungary - The Regent of Hungary, Miklós Horthy, orders an end to deportations to Auschwitz
July 10, 1944 - Auschwitz - During 3 days, the nazis liquidate the Theresienstadt sub-camp, sending 7,000 jews to the gas chambers
July 28, 1944 - Auschwitz - Mengele starts medical experiments in twins
August 1(?), 1944 - Auschwitz - Last mass transport of 67,000 jews from the Łódź Ghetto arrives. Another 8,000 jews from Slovakia and 2,000 from Theresienstadt also arrive to the camp
August 2, 1944 - Auschwitz - The last 2,897 Roma people are gassed
August 20, 1944 - Auschwitz - The Allies bomb the IG Farben plant next to "Auschwitz III" camp
September 3, 1944 - Auschwitz - Mengele's notebook: "The Czech section of Auschwitz concentration camp was liquidated this date due to a prevalence of typhus among the prisoners"
September 13, 1944 - Auschwitz - The Allies bomb the IG Farben plant next to "Auschwitz III" camp
October 3, 1944 - Auschwitz - Mengele finishes his experiments with twins
October 7, 1944 - Auschwitz - A riot takes place in Auschwitz concentration camp when the Sonderkommando Jewish collaborators understood that they also were slated for extermination. Over 450 are killed in suppressing the revolt, along with many others who escaped the camp in the melee
October 30, 1944 - Auschwitz - Last selection
November 1, 1944 - Himmler orders the SS to halt the mass murder by gas
November 2, 1944 - Auschwitz - Gassing bunker #2 in "Auschwitz II" is demolished
November 25, 1944 - Auschwitz | Meanwhile in the United States - Himmler orders that Auschwitz's gas chambers and crematoria be destroyed. The Vrba-Wetzler report is published in english by the Executive Office of the US War Refugee Board. In Auschwitz, the last 13 prisoners are gassed or shot
December 1, 1944 - Auschwitz - Over one million items of clothing begin being packed to be shipped out of Auschwitz
December 18, 1944 - Auschwitz - The Allies bomb the IG Farben plant next to "Auschwitz III" camp
December 26, 1944 - Auschwitz - The Allies bomb the IG Farben plant next to "Auschwitz III" camp
January(?) 1(?), 1945 - Himmler orders the evacuation of all camps, telling camp commanders: "The Führer holds you personally responsible for ... making sure that not a single prisoner from the concentration camps falls alive into the hands of the enemy."
January 6, 1945 - Auschwitz - Last public execution at Auschwitz. 70 polish prisoners are sentenced to death by a german summary court. Also, four jewish women are hanged for helping the preparation of the Sonderkommando mutiny
January 17, 1945 - Auschwitz - 58,000 Auschwitz detainees (2/3 of them jews) are evacuated under guard to other concentration camps. Fewer than 9,000 remain in the camps, deemed too sick to move. Mengele leaves Auschwitz and heads to Gross-Rosen Concentration camp, leaving his notebook behind
January 18, 1945 - Auschwitz - Engelbert Marketsch, a german criminal transfered from Mauthausen, becomes the last prisoner to be assigned a serial number in Auschwitz
January 19, 1945 - Auschwitz - The SS orders the "Auschwitz III-IG Farben" to be evacuated, sending 9,000 inmates (most of them jews) on a death march to another Auschwitz subcamp at Gliwice
January 20, 1945 - Auschwitz - Crematoria II an III are blown up
January 23, 1945 - Auschwitz - Auschwitz warehouses are set on fire
January 26, 1945 - Auschwitz - Crematorium V is blown up
January 27, 1945 - Auschwitz - The "Auschwitz III-IG Farben" camp and 800 inmates left behing in the Monowitz hospital are liberated by the Red Army.
January 28, 1945 - Auschwitz - At dawn, the Red Army liberates "Auschwitz I" and "Auschwitz II-Birkenau". They find another 6,200 prisoners alive, 500 in other subcamps and over 600 corpses =(END)
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