Empire of Destruction by Alex J. Kay

Author:Alex J. Kay [Kay, Alex J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2021-09-27T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

THE GATES OF HELL

AUSCHWITZ

Auschwitz was not only the largest but also the most lethal camp complex of all. From a total of at least 1.3 million people who were deported to Auschwitz between 1940 and 1945, 1.1 million perished, of whom approximately 900,000 – that is, over 80 per cent – were Jews. This means that around one in six Jews killed in the Holocaust died here. In view of Auschwitz’s pre-eminence in Holocaust memory, it is worth noting that the camp was not created for the annihilation of Jews. Unlike the single-purpose death camps in the Government General, Auschwitz was always a site with multiple missions. This applies indeed to the concentration-camp system as a whole: as of early 1942, Jews made up fewer than 5,000 of the 80,000 concentration-camp inmates. Initially, what made Auschwitz – the seventh main camp in the National Socialist orbit, following Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Flossenbürg, Mauthausen and Ravensbrück – different to its forerunners was the fact that it was the first concentration camp to be set up for overwhelmingly non-German-speaking prisoners. Aside from a few exceptions, such as German prisoner functionaries, only Polish prisoners were in Auschwitz in the years 1940 and 1941. Mass deportations of Jews began only in March 1942 with the admittance of German and Slovak female Jews to the newly created women’s compound, located on the grounds of the main camp. From the second half of 1942 onwards, Jewish inmates accounted for around 50 per cent of all prisoners at Auschwitz, including the satellite camps. From 1943, Jews comprised the majority of prisoners. Ultimately, almost every country in Europe was represented in the inmate community of Auschwitz and its satellite camps.1

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