The Florida Holocaust Museum: History, Heritage and Hope Permanent ExhibitionMain MenuIntroductionAntisemitismJewish Life Prior to WWIIOther VictimsNazis in PowerThe Rising Tide of HateGhettoization and Final SolutionThe CampsResistance: Fighting BackLiberationAftermathPortraits of Courage & SacrificeLessons for TodayAcknowledgementsThe Florida Holocaust Museum
Auschwitz selection
12017-07-03T15:35:12-04:00Anonymous123After arriving at Auschwitz, prisoners were ordered to form lines ready for selection.plain2017-07-03T15:42:53-04:00Photographs by Bernhardt Walter and Ernst Hofman. Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Yad Vashem.Anonymous
12017-07-03T15:59:21-04:00Auschwitz15plain7332020-07-07T17:08:39-04:00The Auschwitz concentration camp complex included three main camps near the Polish town of Oswiecim. Auschwitz I functioned as an administrative center to Auschwitz II (Auschwitz-Birkenau), the largest of the killing centers, and Auschwitz III (Monowitz), a forced labor camp. SS physicians, including Dr. Josef Mengele, carried out medical experiments in the hospital (Block 10) of Auschwitz I. It is estimated that the Nazi regime deported at least 1.3 million people to the Auschwitz complex between 1940 and 1945. Of these, 1.1 million were murdered.
Transports of Jews from all over Europe began arriving at Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1942. After being unloaded from the trains, prisoners underwent selection, where the majority of Jews were deemed unfit for forced labor and sent directly to the gas chambers to be murdered with Zyklon B gas. Authorities also selected prisoners to work in the killing areas (Sonderkommando or "special detachment"), where they moved the bodies from the gas chambers to the crematorium ovens. At the height of the deportations, the SS gassed up to 6,000 Jews a day. In November 1944, as Soviet forces approached, Himmler ordered the gas chambers to be dismantled. Auschwitz-Birkenau continued to function as a forced labor camp until the camp's evacuation in January 1945.
Listen to Judith Szentivanyi (nee Szasz) describe selections at Auschwitz-Birkenau:
