Silent witnesses of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Two functions of the camp

“Birkenau was a huge camp, and in fact from the very beginning of its planning there was an intention to build a separate railway siding here, which was to direct wagons from the old Jewish ramp directly into the camp,” says Piotr Setkiewicz. “However, no such work was undertaken until the autumn of 1943 due to material difficulties. The ramp was finally completed in May 1944,” he adds, pointing out that the rails used to lay the tracks connecting the two ramps were imported from the Soviet Union by a German company which used slave labour. 

The completion of the new ramp coincided with the so-called Hungarian Action, the deportation of more than 400,000 Jews from Hungary to Auschwitz. According to the historian, this streamlined the process of both selection and directing those selected to the gas chambers, which were much closer. From the ramp, it was also possible to go directly to the housing barracks, whether in the women’s camp or the men’s camp, located 100-200 metres away.

“Various publications say that the Birkenau camp was an extermination camp, while Auschwitz was only a labour camp,” points out Piotr Setkiewicz. “This is not true, because the fate of the prisoners was the same. If there was a need, prisoners were transferred from Birkenau to Auschwitz and vice versa. Prisoners in both camps received the same striped uniforms, numbers from the same series, tattooed on their forearms, and so on. The density of prisoners in the various rooms at Auschwitz and Birkenau was also similar. While a single barrack in the Auschwitz Main Camp housed about 500-600 prisoners, in Birkenau there were about 400 in a similar space. The main difference was that the crematorium and gas chambers in Auschwitz ceased operating at the turn of 1942 and 1943, while in Birkenau they remained open practically until the end of the camp’s operation,” he adds. 

Jacek Lachendro stresses that the camp complex was much larger than Auschwitz-Birkenau itself, and throughout the period of the camp’s operation there were nearly 50 sub-camps set up in various locations. Some were in the immediate vicinity of the main camp, while others were near factories, mines, and steelworks in western Lesser Poland and Upper Silesia. Most of the prisoners in these sub-camps in 1943 and 1944 were Jews sent to do heavy work, although there were exceptional places, such as the Bobrek sub-camp, where all sorts of small components were made for the Siemens company and for this reason precision mechanics, turners and millers were employed there. The working conditions there were exceptionally good. In the mines, on the other hand, they were nightmarish and many of the Jewish prisoners sent there, who were not accustomed to hard physical work in such harsh conditions underground, lost their lives, including suicide.”

The podcast was produced as part of the Jan Nowak-Jeziorański Eastern Europe College project funded by the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Public task financed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland within the grant competition “Public Diplomacy 2022”.  The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not reflect the views of the official positions of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland.