Haley Connell
Evans
5th Hour
29April2013

Auschwitz; the World’s Largest Death Center

“Before describing daily life in the concentration camps, it is necessary to take a broader look at the entire Nazi camp system. In all, there were more than nine thousand concentration camps: transit camps, prisoner-of-war camps, slave-labor camps, camps for “work-education,” camps for political prisoners, camps for police detention, camps for children whose parents were inmates of labor camps, and camps for killing. Six of these camps were primarily killing centers: Chelmno, Sobibor, Belzec, Treblinka, Majdenek, and Auschwitz. Auschwitz is the largest death center the world has ever seen” (Soumerai 171). Auschwitz was a terrible concentration camp because many people died and many people are still haunted by the memories. The concentration camp known as Auschwitz was established on May 20, 1940. Auschwitz was divided into three camps: Auschwitz 1, for resistance fighters; Buna, which was for slave laborers; and Birkenau, which housed the crematoria, medical laboratories, gas chambers, and barracks for the waiting victims (Soumerai 171). Built on approximately eighteen square miles of land that is located in Poland, the camp was “owned” by the Reich SS. In all, Auschwitz comprised three large camps. It was guarded by 6,000 men in twelve companies of SS Death’s Head Units (Soumerai 174). Auschwitz 1, a concentration camp for political prisoners and non-Jews, contained two- and three-story brick buildings, some of which were barracks and others of which housed laboratories for some of the medical experiments conducted under the supervision of Mengele. Auschwitz 3, also known as Buna, was the labor camp. Here German companies, such as I. G. Farben, were able to solve the labor shortage created when Jews were expelled from their homes in the ghettos and were no longer