Auschwitz – Birkenau and the Gate of Hell

By

WoodyandQuincy

Honors English II

Mrs. Gregory

1 February 2007

The name Auschwitz – Birkenau struck fear in the hearts of any who heard they were being shipped there during the Second World War. Tales of the happenings of the camp were far from pretty. Started in October of 1941, the gassing of political prisoners, Jews, and other peoples deemed as a bad gene in the gene pool by Hitler started without reprieve for four years. Over one million people died as a result in this one camp. This is their story after their trip through the Gate of Hell.

The camp was opened on 8 October 1941 as an extermination camp, or 'Vernichtungslager'(Auschwitz II, Gate to Hell). The camp was established outside the town of Owiecim, Poland(Gate to Hell). It was built to hold up to 100, 000 prisoners in horse sheds with bunks that would normally only hold three full size people(Auschwitz II). It was an offshoot of the original Auschwitz, a concentration camp that was considered two small and technically behind to do the job of completing the “Final Solution.”(Auschwitz II)
The camp had 4 gas chambers, four crematoriums, and a long pit that was used to burn bodies in during 1944-45 to speed up to process of hiding the evidence of the atrocities done to the camp occupants(Gate to Hell). The gas chambers and crematoriums were light in comparison with the other forms of torture done to a lot of the prisoners of Auschwitz – Birkenau.

The doctors of Auschwitz – Birkenau were some of the well known. Among them were Dr. Josef Mengele, Prof. Carl Clauberg, and Dr. Herta Oberhauser(Gate to Hell). Hundreds of children and adults fell victim at the hands of these so called “doctors.”(The Children: Nazi Victims of Auschwitz) Prisoners soon decided that the hospitals weren’t really hospitals. They were a way of finding death sooner thanexpected(Auschwitz II).

Soon after coming to the camp in 1941, Mengele earned the name “Angel of Death.” It was said among the new arrivals to the camp that going to the left was death and the right was life. Mengele would casually wave his gloved hand to the left without the slightest change in expression. The only time he ever looked interested in the life of the arrivals was when he saw a set of twins. He would separate them from the groups and perform tests on them. He seemed particularly to enjoy drawing blood from one twin to inject into the second twin. One witness said that Mengele had five sets of twins brought to the hospital where he put them to sleep, injected chloroform into their hearts to kill them instantly so he could perform a dissection on them. Mengele was caught by the Soviets, but under an assumed name. He was released, and he fled to South America. He lived there under an assumed name, even though his naturalization was under his real name. He died in the 1970’s after having a stroke while swimming and drowning(Gate to Hell).

Prof. Carl Clauberg was a doctor who performed the sterilization experiments on Jewish women that came into the camps. Most of his experiments were carried out in Auschwitz I, or the main camp. His experiments usually left women with horrible pain, bleeding, and some to the point of death. He was acquitted at the Nuremburg Trials. After being released, he openly bragged about what he had done during the war. After many complaints, Clauberg was finally arrested, but died before his trial began(Gate to Hell).

Dr. Herta Oberhauser was a woman doctor that was known to rub sawdust and glass in open wounds. She was cruel to all the patients that came to the hospital for an illness or injury. Some of the children victims of Auschwitz were killed by her. She would inject oil or evipan into them. She received a 20 year sentence during the Nuremburg Trials. She was released only a few years later, but had her medical license revoked a few years after returning when she had her own clinic in Germany(Gate to Hell).

The victims of Auschwitz were mostly Jews. Other races and groups included Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, liberals, homosexuals, Poles, Soviet POWs, as well as mentally and physically handicapped(Auschwitz II). The children victims at Auschwitz weren’t counted, but thought to be unfathomable. One story came from France, from a town known as Izieu. A small orphanage, where Jewish families sent their kids when they heard of being sent to Auschwitz, was raided on 6 April 1944. The children from the orphanage, upon arrival to Auschwitz, were all sent to the gas chambers. Only two escaped the group from Izieu, a nanny and a boy. The raid was led by Gestapo “Butcher of Lyon” Klaus Barbie. The number of children killed in Auschwitz is around 1.5 million. This number is only an estimate, since all newborn babies were immediately sent to the crematoriums and burned alive(Auschwitz II, Gate to Hell, Izieu).

The gas chambers of Auschwitz were first used in 1941 for an experimental testing. They grouped 800 Soviet POWs into an underground room and gassed them with Zyklon-B pellets(Auschwitz II). Further uses weren’t till the next year. The gas chambers weren’t in much use until 1944. It is recorded that in 1944, there had been 105,168 prisoners in the camp. At the last roll call on 18 January 1945 showed only 64,000 prisoners (Auschwitz II).

Upon hearing that the Soviets were getting closer to the camp, the SS and other German soldiers ordered the gas chambers and crematoriums to be blown up and remains to be hidden(Memorial and Museum: Auschwitz – Birkenau). They burned down a building they called “Canada”, a place that the SS put the belongings and valuables of the prisoners sent to the gas chambers immediately after arriving at Auschwitz (Auschwitz II). The bodies of the gassed people were too many to be burned in the crematoriums all at once, which is why the SS had the sonderkammandos (people who worked the crematoriums) dig a pit, pile the bodies, and burn the remains as well as pile three bodies in the crematoriums (Memorial and Museum: Auschwitz – Birkenau).

The Gate to Hell officially closed on 27 January 1945 when the Soviets liberated the prisoners left in Auschwitz (Auschwitz II). The Soviets only found 7,600 survivors, mostly the ill left in the hospitals (Auschwitz II). The other 58,000 plus prisoners were led on one last march, known as the Death March, to Germany. Most of the prisoners did die on the way to Germany. Either by being shot for being too
slow, the hard conditions, malnutrition, or beatings.

Most of the survivors of Auschwitz have made sure that the inhumane treatment done by the German SS officers is known. Some have written of their time in Auschwitz. A famous Nobel Prize winner, Ellie Wiesel, said: “In those times there was darkness everywhere. In heaven and on earth, all the gates of compassion seemed to have been closed. The killer killed and the Jews died and the outside world adopted an attitude either of complicity or of indifference. Only a few had the courage to care.” Another author, Filip Müller, wrote a book (Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers) of his years as a sonderkammando. He told of stories of Jews and his own Czech people being sent through the chambers. He survived to tell the story of his people, of the people that didn’t have a chance to tell their own.

The gate leading into Auschwitz – Birkenau has often been called the Gate to Hell (Memorial and Museum: Auschwitz – Birkenau). The camp itself was known as the innermost circle of Hell. The stories of atrocities are beyond comprehension. No matter the different perspectives, it still paints a chilling picture of hatred and destruction. Auschwitz – Birkenau was the foremost extermination camp. It is
estimated to have killed up to 2.5 million Jews alone(Auschwitz II). This was their story.