It was the largest of the German concentration camps, consisting of Auschwitz I ( the Stammlager or base camp ); Auschwitz II – Birkenau ( the Vernichtungslager or extermination camp ); Auschwitz III – Monowitz, also known as Buna – Monowitz ( a labor camp ); and 45 satellite camps.

* English translation of Borowski's Night on Birkenau at Poems Found in Translation

For months, young Jewish women, like Ester Wajcblum, Ella Gärtner, and Regina Safirsztain, had been smuggling small amounts of gunpowder from the Weichsel-Union-Metallwerke, a munitions factory within the Auschwitz complex, to men and women in the camp ’ s resistance movement, like Róza Robota, a young Jewish woman who worked in the clothing detail at Birkenau.

In 1979, the newly elected Polish Pope John Paul II said mass on the grounds of the Auschwitz II ( Birkenau ) extermination camp to some 500, 000 people.

In December 1944, Kramer was transferred from Birkenau to Bergen Belsen, near the village of Bergen.

Auschwitz II – Birkenau was designated by the Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, Germany's Minister of the Interior, as the place of the " final solution of the Jewish question in Europe ".

Zyklon B was used by Nazi Germany to poison prisoners in the gas chambers of the extermination camps Auschwitz Birkenau and Majdanek, and in Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

Zündel's Samisdat Publications published his findings as The Leuchter Report: An Engineering Report on the Alleged Execution Chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Majdanek Poland ( published in England as Auschwitz: The End of the Line: The Leuchter Report-The First Forensic Examination of Auschwitz ) which the court accepted only as evidentiary display and not as direct evidence ; Leuchter was therefore required to explicate it and testify to the veracity of his findings under oath in the trial.

His journey to France took him through Berlin as the events of Kristallnacht unfolded, and also introduced him to his uncle, Bruno Schrager, who was later among the French detainees who died at Birkenau.

The last transport of Jews from Chrzanów to Birkenau was organized by the Germans in February 1943.

At its peak, Auschwitz was three separate facilities, Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II / Birkenau, and Auschwitz III / Monowitz, including many satellite sub-camps, and was built on about 8, 000 ha ( 20, 000 acres ) that had been cleared of all inhabitants.

Auschwitz I was the administrative center for the complex ; Auschwitz II Birkenau was the extermination camp, where most of the killing took place ; and Auschwitz III Monowitz the slave labour camp for I. G.

He was also in Birkenau along with the new Pope Benedict XVI in May 2006.

In 1942, he was appointed the commandant of Birkenau.

In October 1942, she was moved to the newly opened Auschwitz II camp at Birkenau.

On October 7, 1942, Mandel was assigned to the Auschwitz II Birkenau camp in Poland where she succeeded Johanna Langefeld as SS-Lagerführerin, a female commandant under ( male ) SS-Kommandant Rudolf Höß.

On April 27, 1942, Dreschel was selected for transfer to the newly opened Auschwitz II – Birkenau concentration camp in occupied Poland.

Dreschel began her duties at Birkenau in August 1942 as soon as the women's camp was established there, with women transferred from Auschwitz to Birkenau during expansion.

The number of subcamps under Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II ( Birkenau ), and Auschwitz III ( Monowitz ) was forty-eight ( 48 ).

From November 1943 until the end of 1944 Fritz Hartjenstein and Josef Kramer were responsible for the extermination camp Auschwitz II, Birkenau, so that Baer was only Commandant of this part of the camp from the end of 1944 until January 1945.

The compiled report was published as The Leuchter Report: An Engineering Report on the Alleged Execution Gas Chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Majdanek, Poland, by Zündel's Samisdat Publications, and as Auschwitz: The End of the Line.

Josh is a non-practicing Jew ; his grandfather was held in the Nazi concentration camp Birkenau during World War II.

From testimony given by a French physician of Jewish descent, who was a prisoner in Auschwitz from September 1943 to January 1945, it can be found that sterilization of Jewish inmates was carried out in Birkenau camp by SS doctors.

By order of Heinrich Himmler, the crematoria and gas chambers at Birkenau were destroyed by the SS in order to hide evidence of genocide.

Leuchter's book had been first published in Canada by Zündel's Samisdat Publishers in 1988 as The Leuchter Report: The End of a Myth: An Engineering Report on the Alleged Execution Gas Chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdenek.

Leuchter traveled to Auschwitz and Birkenau to examine the structures identified by guards, prisoners, and investigators, as gas chambers, and concluded that they could not have been used for mass murder.

Also, while the delousing chambers were left intact, the ruins of the crematoria at Birkenau had been exposed to the elements for over forty years by the time Leuchter collected his samples.

Given that the ruins of the gas chambers at Birkenau have been washed by a column of water at least 35m in height based on climatological records since 1945, Markiewicz and his team were not optimistic at being able to detect cyanides so many years later ; nevertheless, having the legal permission to obtain samples, they collected some from areas as sheltered from the elements as possible.

About 100 male Poles who had been sterilized at Birkenau were attended to by the witness after the operation.

Later, four large gas chambers and crematoria were constructed in Birkenau to make the killing more efficient and to handle the increasing rate of exterminations.

Whereas the Auschwitz II ( Auschwitz – Birkenau ) and Majdanek camps were parts of a labor camp complex, the Operation Reinhard camps and the Chełmno camp were exclusively for the quick extermination of many people ( primarily Jews ) within hours of their arrival.

The prisoners were unloaded in the Birkenau camp ; those fit for labor were marched to barracks in either Birkenau or one of the Auschwitz camps, while those unsuitable for work were driven into the gas chambers.

According to some accounts, Mandel often stood at the gate into Birkenau waiting for an inmate to turn and look at her: any who did were taken out of the lines and never heard from again.

However the IFRC points out that the controlled samples they took from living areas which may have been fumigated only once as part of the 1942 typhus epidemic tested negative for cyanide, and that the typhus epidemic occurred before the crematoria at Birkenau even existed.

Eva survived Auschwitz, and when the Russians liberated Birkenau, the women's sector of the camp, she walked the mile-and-a-half distance to the men's camp to look for her father and brother, finding out much later that they had not survived the prisoner march out of Auschwitz.

" She was transported to Auschwitz in 1942, and was sent to Auschwitz-II, the adjacent Birkenau labor camp for women, where she was involved in the underground dissemination of news among the prisoners.

* 1944 – Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler escape from the Birkenau death camp.

* 1944 – World War II: Uprising at Birkenau concentration camp, Jewish prisoners burn down the crematoria.

Mandel took a liking to Irma Grese, whom she promoted to head of the Hungarian women's camp at Birkenau.

She regularly moved between the Auschwitz I camp and Birkenau, and involved herself in selections of women and children to be sent to the gas chambers.

Volkenrath trained under Johanna Langefeld at Ravensbrück concentration camp during 1941, and in October 1942 went to Auschwitz Birkenau as an Aufseherin along with her sister Gertrud Weininger-Mühland.

**" Herb Girls of Birkenau " describes the victims of human experiments in the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, from the point of view of a powerless witness.