Now many are wondering if Josef Mengele was not a simple sadist who, in addition to scientific work, enjoyed watching the suffering of people. Those who worked with him said that Mengele, to the surprise of many colleagues, sometimes gave lethal injections to test subjects himself, beat them and threw capsules with lethal gas into the cells while watching the prisoners die.

On the territory of the Auschwitz concentration camp there is a large pond where the unclaimed ashes of the prisoners burned in the crematorium ovens were dumped. The rest of the ash was transported by wagons to Germany, where it was used as fertilizer for the soil. In the same wagons, new prisoners were carried for Auschwitz, who were personally greeted on arrival by a tall, smiling young man who was barely 32 years old. It was the new Auschwitz doctor Josef Mengele, after being wounded, declared unfit for service in the army. He appeared with his retinue in front of the newly arrived prisoners to select "material" for his monstrous experiments. The prisoners were stripped naked and lined up in a row, along which Mengele walked, now and then pointing at suitable people with his unchanging stack. He also decided who to immediately send to the gas chamber, and who else could work for the good of the Third Reich. Death is to the left, life is to the right. Sickly-looking people, old people, women with babies - Mengele, as a rule, sent them to the left with a careless movement of a stack squeezed in his hand.

Former prisoners, when they just arrived at the station to enter the concentration camp, Mengele was remembered as a smart, well-groomed man with a kind smile, in a well-fitted and ironed dark green tunic and in a cap, which he wore slightly to one side; black boots polished to a perfect shine. One of the prisoners of Auschwitz Christina Zhivulskaya will write later: "He looked like a film actor - a sleek, pleasant face with regular features. Tall, slender ...". For his smile and pleasant, courteous manner, which did not fit in with his inhuman experiences, the prisoners nicknamed Mengele the "Angel of Death." He conducted his experiments on people in block No.

10. "No one ever got out of there alive," says former prisoner Igor Fedorovich Malitsky, who ended up in Auschwitz at the age of 16.

The young doctor began his work in Auschwitz by stopping the typhus epidemic, which he discovered in several gypsies. To prevent the disease from spreading to other prisoners, he sent the entire barracks (more than a thousand people) to the gas chamber. Later, typhus was found in the women's barracks, and this time the entire barracks - about 600 women - also went to their deaths. How else to deal with typhus in such conditions, Mengele could not think of.

Before the war, Josef Mengele studied medicine and even defended his thesis on "Racial Differences in the Structure of the Lower Jaw" in 1935, and later received his doctorate. Genetics was of particular interest to him, and in Auschwitz he showed the greatest degree of interest in twins. He performed experiments without resorting to anesthetics and dissected live babies. He tried to stitch twins together, change their eye color with chemicals; he pulled out teeth, implanted them and built new ones. In parallel with this, the development of a substance capable of causing infertility was carried out; he castrated boys and sterilized women. According to some reports, he managed to sterilize a whole group of nuns using X-rays.

Mengele's interest in twins was not accidental. The Third Reich set scientists the task of increasing the birth rate, as a result of which the artificial increase in the birth of twins and triplets became the main task of scientists. However, the offspring of the Aryan race had to have blond hair and blue eyes - hence Mengele's attempts to change the color of the children's eyes through

vom various chemicals. After the war, he was going to become a professor and for the sake of science he was ready for anything.

The twins were carefully measured by the assistants of the "Angel of Death" in order to fix common signs and differences, and then the experiments of the doctor himself came into play. Children were amputated limbs and transplanted various organs, infected with typhus and transfused with blood. Mengele wanted to track how the identical organisms of the twins would react to the same intervention in them. Then the experimental subjects were killed, after which the doctor conducted a thorough analysis of the corpses, examining the internal organs.

He launched a rather violent activity, and therefore many mistakenly considered him the chief doctor of the concentration camp. In fact, Josef Mengele held the position of senior physician of the women's barracks, to which he was appointed by Eduard Wirths, the chief physician of Auschwitz, who later described Mengele as a responsible employee who sacrificed his personal time to devote his self-education, exploring the material that the concentration camp had.

Mengele and his colleagues believed that hungry children have very pure blood, which means that it can greatly help wounded German soldiers in hospitals. This was recalled by another former prisoner of Auschwitz, Ivan Vasilievich Chuprin. The newly arrived very young children, the eldest of whom were 5-6 years old, were herded into block number 19, from which screams and crying could be heard for some time, but soon there was silence. The blood from the young prisoners was pumped out completely. And in the evening, prisoners returning from work saw piles of children's bodies, which were later burned in dug pits, the flames from which burst up several meters.

For Mengele work in k

The concentration camp was a kind of scientific mission, and the experiments that he put on the prisoners were, from his point of view, for the benefit of science. Many tales are told about Dr. "Death", and one of them is that the eyes of children "decorated" his office. In fact, as one of the doctors who worked with Mengele in Auschwitz recalled, he could stand for hours near a row of test tubes, examining the materials obtained under a microscope, or spend time at the anatomical table, opening the bodies, in an apron stained with blood. He considered himself a real scientist, whose goal was something more than eyes hanging all over the office.

The doctors who worked with Mengele noted that they hated their work, and in order to somehow relieve tension, they got completely drunk after a working day, which could not be said about Dr. Death himself. It seemed that his work did not tire him at all.

Now many are wondering if Josef Mengele was not a simple sadist who, in addition to scientific work, enjoyed watching the suffering of people. Those who worked with him said that Mengele, to the surprise of many colleagues, sometimes gave lethal injections to test subjects himself, beat them and threw capsules with lethal gas into the cells while watching the prisoners die.

After the war, Josef Mengele was declared a war criminal, but he managed to escape. He spent the rest of his life in Brazil, and February 7, 1979 was his last day - while swimming, he had a stroke and drowned. His grave was found only in 1985, and after the exhumation of the remains in 1992, they finally became convinced that it was Josef Mengele who had earned his reputation as one of the most terrible and dangerous Nazis in this grave.

Today it is recognized that experiments of Nazi doctors over disenfranchised prisoners of concentration camps greatly helped the development of medicine. But these experiments did not become less monstrous and cruel. Hundreds of butchers in white coats sent captives to be slaughtered, believing them to be just animals.

When, after the war, the public learned about the atrocities of doctors with lightning bolts in their buttonholes, a separate Nuremberg trial took place in the case of doctors. Unfortunately, one of the main criminals managed to escape justice. Doctor Josef Mengele Escaped from doomed Germany just in time!

Mengele carried out his inhuman experiments on the prisoners of the concentration camp accountable to him. Among the captives, a sadist was called " Angel of death».

For 21 months of work in Auschwitz, Josef personally sent tens of thousands of people to the next world. Tellingly, until the end of his life, the physician did not repent of his crimes.

Often in such people, cruelty is combined with incredible cowardice. But Mengele was exception to the rule.

Before Auschwitz, Josef served as a doctor in a sapper battalion in one of the SS Panzer divisions. For rescuing two colleagues from a burning tank, the medic was even awarded the Iron Cross, first class!

After a serious injury, the future "Angel of Death" was declared unfit for service at the front. On May 24, 1943, Mengele assumed the duties of a doctor in the "gypsy camp" of Auschwitz. For a year, Josef rotted all his wards in the gas chambers, after which he went on promotion, becoming Birkenau's first physician.

For a retired military doctor, concentration camp prisoners were simply consumable. Obsessed with the idea of ​​the purity of the race, Mengele was ready to do anything to achieve his dream.

Josef conducted experiments on children with an ease that terrified even his colleagues. A monster in human form, a man with equal ease cut himself a steak for breakfast and cut open live babies ...

Of particular interest to Mengele were Twins. The doctor tried to understand what causes the birth of two very similar children.

Josef's interest was purely practical: if every German woman instead of one child would give birth to two or three at once, then one could not worry about the fate of the Aryan nation.

Blood transfusions from one twin to another were only the most harmless from Mengele's experiments. Izover transplanted organs of twins, tried to recolor their eyes with chemicals, sewed living people together, wanting to form a single living organism from brothers and sisters. Of course, all these experiments were carried out without anesthesia.

The cold-blooded cruelty of the scientist caused internal fear among the captives. Many prisoners of Auschwitz will always remember how Mengele met them at the gate.

To the point of impossibility clean and tidy, always dressed like a needle, invariably cheerful and smiling, Josef personally examined each batch of newcomers. Having selected the most interesting and healthy "specimens", the doctor did not hesitate to send the rest to the gas chambers.

Cold-blooded scoundrel good luck. From 1945 to 1949, Mengele hid in Bavaria, and then, seizing the moment, fled to Argentina. Traveling around Latin America, the "Angel of Death" hid from Mossad agents hunting for his head for almost 35 years.

Until the end of his life, the hardened Nazi claimed that " never hurt anyone personally". But one day, when Josef was swimming in the ocean, he had a stroke. An elderly sadist went to the bottom like a stone ...

Josef Mengele always dreamed of becoming famous. The terrible criminal not only managed to escape justice, but also, in a sense, fulfilled his dream. But it is unlikely that the doctor wanted his name, as it is now, to make people cringe in disgust!

Previously, we wrote about a concentration camp where blood was pumped out of child captives!

And before that, they talked about the secret Nazi project "Lebensborn".

As a prisoner of Auschwitz, she helped thousands of captive women survive. Through clandestine abortions, Gisella Pearl saved women and their unborn children from the sadistic experiences of Dr. Mengele, who left no one alive. And after the war, this courageous doctor calmed down only when she delivered three thousand women.

In 1944, the Nazis invaded Hungary. This is how the doctor Gisella Pearl lived at that time. She was first moved to the ghetto, and then with her whole family, son, husband, parents, like thousands of other Jews, they were sent to the camp. There, many prisoners were immediately distributed on arrival and taken to the crematorium, but some, subjected to a humiliating disinfection procedure, were left in the camp and distributed in blocks. Gisella fell into this group.

Hungarian Jews at the train after arriving at the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Then she recalled that in one of the blocks there were cages where hundreds of young, healthy women were sitting. They were used as blood donors for German soldiers. Some girls, pale, exhausted, lay on the floor, they could not even talk, but they were not left alone, the remaining blood was periodically taken from the veins. Gisella kept an ampoule of poison and even tried to somehow use it. But nothing came of it - either the body turned out to be stronger than the poison, or providence intended to leave her alive.

Women prisoners in the barracks. Auschwitz. January 1945.

Gisella helped women in any way she could, sometimes even simply with her optimism - she told amazing and bright stories that inspired hope in desperate women. Having no tools, no medicines, no painkillers, in conditions of complete unsanitary conditions, she managed to perform operations with just a knife, inserting a gag into the mouths of women so that screams could not be heard.

Gisella was appointed as an assistant in the camp clinic to Dr. Josef Mengele. On his instructions, the camp doctors had to report all pregnant women whom he took away for his terrible experiments on women and their children. Gisella, in order to prevent this, tried to save women from pregnancy, secretly performing abortions on them and inducing artificial births, so that they would not get to Mengele. The day after the operation, women already had to go to work so as not to arouse suspicion. So that they could rest, Gisella diagnosed them with severe pneumonia. About three thousand operations were performed by Dr. Gisella Perl in Auschwitz, hoping that the women she operated on would still be able to give birth to children in the future.

Pregnant women in the Auschwitz camp.

At the end of the war, some of the prisoners, including Gisella, were transferred to the Bergen-Belsen camp. They were released in 1945, but few of the prisoners lived to see this bright day. After being released, Gizella tried to find her relatives, but found out that they were all dead. In 1947 she left for the USA. She was afraid to become a doctor again, memories of those months of hell in Mengele's laboratory haunted, but soon, nevertheless, she decided to return to her profession, especially since she gained colossal experience.

An autobiographical book by Gisela Pearl published after the war.

But problems arose - she was suspected of having links with the Nazis. Indeed, in the laboratory she sometimes had to be an assistant to the sadist Mengele in his sophisticated and inhuman experiments, but at night, in the barracks, she did everything in her power to help women, alleviate suffering, save them. Finally, all suspicions were removed, and she was able to start working in a New York hospital as a gynecologist. And every time she entered the delivery room, she prayed, "God, you owe me a life, a living baby." Over the next few years, Dr. Giza helped give birth to more than three thousand babies.

In 1979, Gisella moved to live and work in Israel. She remembered how, in the stuffy carriage that carried her and her family to the camp, she, her husband and father, vowed to each other to meet in Jerusalem. In 1988, Dr. Gizella died and was buried in Jerusalem. More than a hundred people came to see Gisella Pearl on her last journey, and in a report on her death, the Jerusalem Post newspaper called Dr. Giza "the angel of Auschwitz."

Josef Mengele was born on March 6, 1911, a German doctor who conducted medical experiments on prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. Mengele personally engaged in the selection of prisoners arriving at the camp, conducted criminal experiments on prisoners, including men, children and women. Tens of thousands of people became its victims.

Horrible experiments of Dr. Mengele - Nazi "Dr. Death"

"Death Factory" Auschwitz (Auschwitz) more and more overgrown with terrible glory. If in the rest of the concentration camps there was at least some hope of surviving, then most of the Jews, gypsies and Slavs staying in Auschwitz were destined to die either in gas chambers, or from overwork and serious illnesses, or from the experiments of a sinister doctor who was one of the first persons meeting new arrivals at the train.

Auschwitz was known as a place where experiments were carried out on people.

Participation in the selection was one of his favorite "entertainments". He always came to the train, even when it was not required of him. Looking perfect, smiling, happy, he decided who would die now and who would go for experiments. It was difficult to deceive his keen eyes: Mengele always accurately saw the age and state of health of people. Many women, children under 15, and the elderly were immediately sent to the gas chambers. Only 30 percent of the prisoners managed to avoid this fate and postpone the date of their death for a while.

Dr. Mengele has always accurately seen the age and health of people

Josef Mengele craved power over human destinies. It is not surprising that Auschwitz became a real paradise for the Angel of Death, who was able to exterminate hundreds of thousands of defenseless people at a time, which he demonstrated in the very first days of work in a new place, when he ordered the destruction of 200,000 gypsies.

The chief physician of Birkenau (one of the inner camps of Auschwitz) and the head of the research laboratory, Dr. Josef Mengele.

“On the night of July 31, 1944, there was a terrible scene of the destruction of the gypsy camp. Kneeling before Mengele and Boger, women and children begged for mercy. But it did not help. They were brutally beaten and forced into trucks. It was a terrible, nightmarish sight, ”surviving eyewitnesses say.

Human life meant nothing to the Angel of Death. Mengele was cruel and merciless. Is there a typhus epidemic in the barracks? So we send the whole barrack to the gas chambers. This is the best way to stop the disease.

Josef Mengele chose who to live and who to die, who to sterilize, who to operate

All the experiments of the Angel of Death boiled down to two main tasks: to find an effective way that could influence the reduction in the birth rate of races objectionable to the Nazis, and by all means to increase the birth rate of the Aryans.

Mengele also had his associates and followers. One of them was Irma Grese, a sadist who works as a warden in the women's block. She enjoyed tormenting the prisoners, she could take the lives of prisoners only because she was in a bad mood.

The head of the labor service of the women's unit of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, Irma Grese, and his commandant, SS Hauptsturmführer (Captain) Josef Kramer, under British escort in the courtyard of the celle prison, Germany.

Josef Mengele had followers. For example, Irma Grese, who can take the lives of prisoners because of a bad mood

Josef Mengele's first task to reduce the birth rate was to develop the most effective method of sterilization for men and women. So he operated on boys and men without anesthesia and exposed women to x-rays.

To reduce the birth rate of Jews, Slavs and Gypsies, Mengele proposed the development of an effective method for sterilizing men and women.

1945 Poland. Auschwitz concentration camp. Children, prisoners of the camp, are waiting for their release.

Eugenics, if we turn to encyclopedias, is the doctrine of human selection, that is, the science that seeks to improve the properties of heredity. Scientists making discoveries in eugenics argue that the human gene pool is degenerating and this must be fought.

Josef Mengele believed that in order to breed a pure race, it is necessary to understand the reasons for the appearance of people with genetic "anomalies"

Josef Mengele, as a representative of eugenics, faced an important task: in order to breed a pure race, one must understand the reasons for the appearance of people with genetic "anomalies". That is why the Angel of Death was of great interest to dwarfs, giants and other people with genetic abnormalities.

Seven brothers and sisters, originally from the Romanian town of Roswell, lived in the labor camp for almost a year.

When it came to experiments, people had their teeth and hair pulled out, extracts of cerebrospinal fluid were taken, unbearably hot and unbearably cold substances were poured into their ears, and terrible gynecological experiments were performed.

“The most terrible experiments of all were gynecological. Only those of us who were married passed through them. We were tied to a table, and systematic torture began. They introduced some objects into the uterus, pumped out blood from there, opened up the insides, pierced us with something and took pieces of samples. The pain was unbearable."

The results of the experiments were sent to Germany. Many learned minds came to Auschwitz to listen to Josef Mengele's lectures on eugenics and experiments on midgets.

Many learned minds came to Auschwitz to listen to reports by Josef Mengele

"Twins!" - this cry was carried over the crowd of prisoners, when the next twins or triplets timidly clinging to each other were suddenly discovered. They were spared their lives, taken to a separate barracks, where the children were well fed and even given toys. A cute smiling doctor with a steely look often came to them: treated them with sweets, drove around the camp in a car. However, Mengele did all this not out of sympathy and not out of love for the children, but only with the cold expectation that they would not be afraid of his appearance when the time came for the next twins to go to the operating table. "My guinea pigs" called the twin children the merciless Doctor Death.

Interest in twins was not accidental. Mengele was worried about the main idea: if every German woman instead of one child immediately gives birth to two or three healthy ones, the Aryan race can finally be reborn. That is why it was very important for the Angel of Death to study to the smallest detail all the structural features of identical twins. He hoped to understand how to artificially increase the birth rate of twins.

In experiments on twins, 1500 pairs of twins were involved, of which only 200 survived.

The first part of the twin experiments was harmless enough. The doctor had to carefully examine each pair of twins and compare all their body parts. Centimeter by centimeter measured arms, legs, fingers, hands, ears and noses.

All measurements Angel of Death scrupulously recorded in the table. Everything is as it should be: on the shelves, neatly, accurately. As soon as the measurements were over, the experiments on the twins moved into another phase. It was very important to check the body's reactions to certain stimuli. For this, one of the twins was taken: he was injected with some dangerous virus, and the doctor observed: what will happen next? All results were again recorded and compared with the results of the other twin. If a child became very ill and was on the verge of death, then he was no longer interesting: he, while still alive, was either opened or sent to the gas chamber.

Josef Mengel in his experiments on twins involved 1500 pairs, of which only 200 survived

The twins received blood transfusions, transplanted internal organs (often from a pair of other twins), injected coloring segments into their eyes (to test whether brown Jewish eyes could become blue Aryan ones). Many experiments were carried out without anesthesia. Children screamed, begged for mercy, but nothing could stop Mengele.

The idea is primary, the life of "little people" is secondary. Dr. Mengele dreamed of turning the world (in particular, the world of genetics) with his discoveries.

So the Angel of Death decided to create Siamese twins by sewing gypsy twins together. The children suffered terrible torment, blood poisoning began.

Josef Mengele with a colleague at the Institute of Anthropology, Human Genetics and Eugenics. Kaiser Wilhelm. Late 1930s.

Doing terrible deeds and conducting inhuman experiments on people, Josef Mengele everywhere hides behind science and his idea. At the same time, many of his experiments were not only inhumane, but also meaningless, not carrying any discovery to science. Experiments for the sake of experiments, torture, pain.

The families of Ovits and Shlomovits and 168 twins waited for the long-awaited freedom. The children ran to meet their rescuers, crying and hugging. Is the nightmare over? No, he will now haunt the survivors for life. When they feel bad or when they are sick, the ominous shadow of the insane Doctor Death and the horrors of Auschwitz will again appear to them. It was as if time had turned back and they were back in their 10 barracks.

Auschwitz, children in a camp liberated by the Red Army, 1945.

The word Auschwitz (or Auschwitz) in the minds of many people is a symbol or even the quintessence of evil, horror, death, the concentration of the most unimaginable inhuman fanaticism and torture. Many today dispute what former prisoners and historians say happened here. This is their personal right and opinion. But having visited Auschwitz and seeing with your own eyes huge rooms filled with glasses, tens of thousands of pairs of shoes, tons of cut hair and children's things, you understand how serious everything is...

A young student, Tadeusz Uzhinski, arrived in the first echelon with prisoners.

As it was said in yesterday's article "Nazi Barracks of Hell", the Auschwitz concentration camp began to function in 1940, being a camp for Polish political prisoners. The first prisoners of Auschwitz were 728 Poles from the prison in Tarnow. . Some of them were converted for mass detention of people, and 6 more buildings were additionally built. The average number of prisoners fluctuated between 13-16 thousand people, and in 1942 it reached 20 thousand. The Auschwitz camp became the base camp for a whole network of new camps - in 1941, the Auschwitz II - Birkenau camp was built 3 km away, and in 1943 - Auschwitz III - Monowitz. In addition, in the years 1942-1944, about 40 branches of the Auschwitz camp were built, built near metallurgical plants, factories and mines, which were subordinate to the Auschwitz III concentration camp. And the Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II - Birkenau camps have completely turned into a plant for the destruction of people.

Upon arrival at Auschwitz, the prisoners were selected and those who were found fit by the SS doctors for work were sent for registration. Rudolf Höss, the head of the camp, told them on the very first day that they "... arrived at the concentration camp, from which there is only one way out - through the crematorium pipe." and assigned personal numbers. Initially, each prisoner was photographed in three positions

In 1943, a tattoo of the prisoner's number was introduced on the arm. Infants and young children were most often numbered on the thigh. According to the Auschwitz State Museum, this concentration camp was the only Nazi camp in which prisoners were tattooed with numbers.

Depending on the reasons for the arrest, the prisoners received triangles of different colors, which, together with the numbers, were sewn onto camp clothes. Political prisoners were supposed to have a red triangle, criminals - green. Gypsies and anti-social elements received black triangles, Jehovah's Witnesses - purple, homosexuals - pink. The Jews wore a six-pointed star, consisting of a yellow triangle and a triangle of the color that corresponded to the reason for the arrest. Soviet prisoners of war had a patch in the form of the letters SU. The camp clothes were rather thin and almost did not protect from the cold. Linen was changed at intervals of several weeks, and sometimes even once a month, and the prisoners did not have the opportunity to wash it, which led to epidemics of typhus and typhoid fever, as well as scabies

Prisoners in the Auschwitz I camp lived in brick blocks, in Auschwitz II-Birkenau - mainly in wooden barracks. Brick blocks were only in the women's part of the Auschwitz II camp. During the entire existence of the Auschwitz I camp, about 400 thousand prisoners of different nationalities, Soviet prisoners of war and prisoners of corps No. 11, who were awaiting the conclusion of the Gestapo police tribunal, were registered here. there were checks on which the number of prisoners was checked. They lasted for several, and sometimes more than 10 hours (for example, 19 hours on July 6, 1940). The camp authorities very often announced penal checks, during which the prisoners had to squat or kneel. There were verifications when they had to keep their hands up for several hours.

Living conditions in different periods were very different, but they were always catastrophic. The prisoners, who were brought in at the very beginning by the first echelons, slept on straw scattered on the concrete floor.

Later, hay bedding was introduced. They were thin mattresses stuffed with a small amount of it. About 200 prisoners slept in a room that barely accommodated 40-50 people.

With the increase in the number of prisoners in the camp, it became necessary to compact their accommodation. There were three-tiered bunks. There were 2 people on one level. In the form of bedding, as a rule, there was rotten straw. The prisoners were covered with rags and what was there. In the Auschwitz camp, the bunks were wooden, in Auschwitz-Birkenau both wooden and brick with wooden flooring.

The toilet of the Auschwitz I camp, compared to the conditions in Auschwitz-Birkenau, looked like a real miracle of civilization

Toilet barracks in the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp

Washroom. The water was only cold and the prisoner had access to it for only a few minutes a day. The prisoners were allowed to wash extremely rarely, and for them it was a real holiday.

The plate with the number of the residential block on the wall

Until 1944, when Auschwitz became an extermination factory, most of the prisoners were sent to grueling labor every day. At first they worked to expand the camp, and then they were used as slaves at the industrial facilities of the Third Reich. Every day, columns of emaciated slaves left and entered through the gate with the cynical inscription "Arbeit macht Frei" (Work makes free). The prisoner had to do the work on the run, without seconds of rest. The pace of work, meager portions of food and constant beatings increased mortality. During the return of prisoners to the camp, dead or exhausted, who could not move on their own, were dragged or carried in wheelbarrows. And at this time, a brass band consisting of prisoners played for them near the gates of the camp.

For every inhabitant of Auschwitz, Block 11 was one of the scariest places. Unlike other blocks, its doors were always closed. The windows were completely bricked up. Only on the first floor there were two windows - in the room where the SS men were on duty. In the halls on the right and left sides of the corridor, prisoners were placed awaiting the verdict of the emergency police court, which came to the Auschwitz camp from Katowice once or twice a month. Within 2-3 hours of his work, he passed from several dozen to over a hundred death sentences.

The cramped cells, in which there were sometimes a huge number of people awaiting sentence, had only a tiny barred window right up to the ceiling. And from the side of the street, near these windows, there were tin boxes that blocked these windows from the influx of fresh air.

Those sentenced before being shot were forced to undress in this room. If there were few of them that day, then the sentence was carried out right here.

If there were many sentenced, they were taken to the "Wall of Death", which was located behind a high fence with blank gates between buildings 10 and 11. Large digits of their camp number were applied with an ink pencil on the chest of the undressed people (until 1943, when tattoos appeared on the arm), so that later it would be easy to identify the corpse.

Under the stone fence in the courtyard of Block 11, a large wall of black insulating boards, sheathed with absorbent material, was built. This wall became the last facet of the lives of thousands of people sentenced to death by the Gestapo court for their unwillingness to betray their homeland, attempted flight and political "crimes".

The fibers of death. The condemned were shot by the reporter or members of the political department. To do this, they used a small-caliber rifle so as not to attract too much attention with the sounds of shots. After all, not far away was a stone wall, beyond which there was a highway.

In the Auschwitz camp there was a whole system of punishments for prisoners. It can also be called one of the fragments of their deliberate destruction. The prisoner was punished for picking an apple or a potato found in the field, defecation during work, or for working too slowly. hermetic punishment cells with dimensions of 90x90 centimeters in the perimeter. In each of them there was a door with a metal bolt at the bottom.

Through this door, the punished was forced to squeeze inside and closed it with a bolt. In this cage, a person could only be standing. So he stood without food and water for as long as the SS wanted. Often this was the last punishment in the prisoner's life.

"Directions" of punished prisoners to standing punishment cells

In September 1941, the first attempt was made to mass exterminate people with the help of gas. About 600 Soviet prisoners of war and about 250 sick prisoners from the camp hospital were placed in small batches in sealed cells in the basement of the 11th building.

Copper pipelines with valves have already been laid along the walls of the chambers. Gas entered the chambers through them ...

The names of the destroyed people were entered in the "Book of the Daily Status" of the Auschwitz camp

Lists of people sentenced to death by the Emergency Police Court

Found notes left by those sentenced to death on scraps of paper

In Auschwitz, in addition to adults, there were also children who were sent to the camp with their parents. These were the children of Jews, Gypsies, as well as Poles and Russians. Most of the Jewish children perished in the gas chambers as soon as they arrived at the camp. The rest, after a strict selection, were sent to the camp, where they were subject to the same strict rules as adults.

Children were registered and photographed in the same way as adults and were labeled as political prisoners.

One of the most terrible pages in the history of Auschwitz was medical experiments by SS doctors. Including children. So, for example, Professor Karl Klauberg, in order to develop a quick method for the biological destruction of the Slavs, conducted sterilization experiments on Jewish women in building No. 10. Dr. Josef Mengele, within the framework of genetic and anthropological experiments, conducted experiments on twin children and children with physical disabilities. In addition, various experiments were carried out in Auschwitz with the use of new drugs and preparations, toxic substances were rubbed into the epithelium of prisoners, skin grafts were performed, etc.

Conclusion on the results of X-rays carried out during experiments with twins by Dr. Mengele.

Letter from Heinrich Himmler ordering the start of a series of sterilization experiments

Maps of records of anthropometric data of experimental prisoners in the framework of Dr. Mengele's experiments.

Pages of the register of the dead, which indicate the names of 80 boys who died after being injected with phenol as part of medical experiments

List of released prisoners admitted to a Soviet hospital for treatment

Since the autumn of 1941, a gas chamber began to function in the Auschwitz camp, in which Zyklon B gas is used. It was produced by the Degesch company, which received about 300 thousand marks from the sale of this gas during the period 1941-1944. To kill 1500 people, according to the commandant of Auschwitz Rudolf Goess, about 5-7 kg of gas was needed.

After the liberation of Auschwitz, a huge number of used Zyklon B cans and cans with unused contents were found in the camp warehouses. According to documents, about 20 thousand kg of Zyklon B crystals were delivered to Auschwitz alone in the period 1942-1943

Most of the Jews doomed to death arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau with the conviction that they were being taken "to a settlement" in Eastern Europe. This was especially true of Jews from Greece and Hungary, to whom the Germans even sold non-existent building plots and land or offered work in fictitious factories. That is why people sent to the camp for destruction often brought with them the most valuable things, jewelry and money.

Upon arrival at the unloading platform, all things and valuables were taken away from people, SS doctors selected the deported people. Those who were deemed incapacitated were sent to the gas chambers. According to Rudolf Goess, there were about 70-75% of those who arrived.

Things found in the warehouses of Auschwitz after the liberation of the camp

Model of the gas chamber and crematorium II of Auschwitz-Birkenau. People were convinced that they were being sent to the bathhouse, so they appear relatively calm.

Here, the prisoners are forced to take off their clothes and are taken to the next room, which imitates a bathhouse. Shower holes were located under the ceiling, through which water never flowed. About 2,000 people were brought into a room of about 210 square meters, after which the doors were closed and gas was supplied to the room. People were dying within 15-20 minutes. Gold teeth were pulled out from the dead, rings and earrings were removed, women's hair was cut off.

After that, the corpses were transported to the crematorium ovens, where the fire hummed continuously. In the event of an overflow of the ovens or at a time when pipes were damaged by overloading, the bodies were destroyed in the places of burning behind the crematoria. All these actions were carried out by prisoners belonging to the so-called Sonderkommando group. At the peak of the activity of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, its number was about 1000 people.

Photo taken by one of the members of the Sonderkommando, which shows the process of burning those dead people.

In the Auschwitz camp, the crematorium was located behind the camp fence. Its largest room was the mortuary, which was converted into a temporary gas chamber.

Here, in 1941 and 1942, Soviet prisoners of war and Jews from the ghetto located on the territory of Upper Silesia were exterminated.

In the second hall there were three double furnaces, in which up to 350 bodies were burned during the day.

In one retort, 2-3 corpses were placed.

The crematorium was built by Topf & Sons from Erfurt, which in 1942-1943 installed furnaces in four crematoria in Brzezinka.