X-Nico

unusual facts about Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp



A Contract with God

The idea that God must uphold his end of the first commandment has been a subject of works such as Elie Wiesel's play The Trial of God (1979), made in response to the atrocities Wiesel witnessed at Auschwitz.

Aleksander Świętochowski

His son Ryszard Świętochowski (Warsaw, 17 October 1882 – 1941, Auschwitz) was an engineer, journalist and politician who supported Władysław Sikorski, and published many papers in the field of physics; he died at Auschwitz Concentration Camp.

And Along Come Tourists

Thalheim himself did his civilian service (Zivildienst) at the International Youth Meeting Center in Oświęcim/Auschwitz in 1996–1997, and portions of the film were shot at the Center and in the nearby town of Oświęcim, Poland.

Auschwitz Report

Auschwitz Report (book), a 2006 book about Auschwitz, unrelated to the Auschwitz Protocols, first published in 1946 as a 48-page medical report by Leonardo de Benedetti and Primo Levi about Buna-Monowitz, one of the Auschwitz satellite camps

Auschwitz Trial

The trial of camp commandant Höss which took place at the Supreme Court of Poland in Warsaw throughout March 1947 was the actual first ever Auschwitz trial, followed by the trials in Kraków several months later.

Dominic Sutherland

In 2003 he directed "Churchill - Secrets of Leadership" before working as a director on the 2005 documentary series Auschwitz: The Nazis and the 'Final Solution', for which he shared the Grierson Award for Best Historical Programme.

Drobytsky Yar

Excursions to the ravine had already been held before, but the official opening was on January 27, the anniversary of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp's 1945 liberation (later designated International Holocaust Remembrance Day).

Endre Szász

He had several exhibitions all over the world, including the Museum of Modern Art (Mexico City), Auschwitz Museum (Poland), the Hungarian National Gallery (Budapest), and also exhibited in Madrid, Copenhagen, Brussels, Berlin, Rome, Oslo, Johannesburg, New Orleans, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Budapest, Amman (Jordan) and Tokyo.

Forgiving Dr. Mengele

In 1993, Eva Mozes Kor met with Doctor Hans Münch, a Nazi doctor at Auschwitz who was acquitted of war crimes at the Kraków War Crimes Trial in 1947.

Franz Löschnak

On September 1, 1992 the first Austrian Holocaust Memorial Servant started his service at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.

Hadassah Lieberman

Her mother, Ella (Wieder) Freilich, had survived both Auschwitz and Dachau.

Harry van Bommel

The incident was reason for the Rabbi Raphael Evers of the "Dutch Israelite Religious Community" (Nederlands Israëlitisch Kerkgenootschap - NIK) to require that van Bommel would not be present at the Auschwitz Memorial in Amsterdam on January 25.

I Never Saw Another Butterfly

This book is named after a poem by Pavel Friedman, a young man born in 1921 who was incarcerated at Theresienstadt and was later killed at Auschwitz.

International Youth Meeting Center in Oświęcim/Auschwitz

The Center has become well known in German-speaking Europe following release of the dramatic film Am Ende kommen Touristen (2007) (And Along Come Tourists), which was partly filmed at the Center.

Jarmila Novotná

In 1948, she won acclaim for her leading role in The Search, co-starring Montgomery Clift, as an Auschwitz survivor who searches for her young son.

John Guzlowski

Growing up in Chicago's immigrant and DP neighborhoods, Guzlowski regularly interacted with Jewish hardware store clerks with Auschwitz tattoos on their wrists, Polish Cavalry officers who still mourned for their dead horses, and women who walked from Siberia to Iran to escape the Russians.

John K. Roth

Later volumes include Approaches to Auschwitz: The Holocaust and Its Legacy (with Richard Rubenstein, 1987), Holocaust: Religious and Philosophical Implications (ed. with Michael Berenbaum, 1989) and Memory Offended: The Auschwitz Convent Controversy (ed. with Carol Rittner), 1991.

Josef Rosensaft

He was injured by gunfire during the escape but walked back to Będzin, where he was captured again, given 250 lashes and confined to a chicken cage, before being sent to Auschwitz and several other concentration camps until he was sent on a death march to Bergen-Belsen, where he was liberated on April 15, 1945.

Judaeo-Spanish

In 2001, the Jewish Publication Society published the first English translation of Judeo-Spanish folk tales, collected by Matilda Koén-Sarano, Folktales of Joha, Jewish Trickster: The Misadventures of the Guileful Sephardic Prankster. A survivor of Auschwitz, Moshe Ha'elyon, issued his translation into Ladino of the ancient Greek epic The Odyssey in 2012, in his 87th year, and is now translating the sister epic, the Iliad, into his mother tongue.

Kurt Gerron

Once filming was finished, Gerron and members of the Jazz pianist Martin Roman's Ghetto Swingers were deported on the camp's final train transport to Auschwitz.

Le Mur Rose

A pre-war expert in decontamination techniques, Gerstein was assigned to the Hygiene Institute of the SS, becoming responsible for delivering Zyklon B poison used in the final solution gas chambers, including Auschwitz concentration camp.

Leon Schiller

During World War II, as part of German repressive measures after the Volksdeutsch German-collaborator actor Igo Sym had been shot dead by the Polish underground (7 March 1941), Schiller was imprisoned at the Pawiak prison and at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Lisa Goldstein

Elizabeth Joy "Lisa" Goldstein's father was Heinz Jurgen "Harry" Goldstein (born June 8, 1922 in Krefeld, Germany; died May 24, 1974 in Los Angeles), a survivor of concentration camp Bergen-Belsen; her mother, Miriam Roth (born April 8, 1922 in Mukachevo, Czechoslovakia; died October 12, 2011 in Los Angeles), survived the extermination camp Auschwitz.

Maria Mandl

She controlled all the female Auschwitz camps and female subcamps including at Hindenburg, Lichtewerden, Budy and Raisko.

Marion's Triumph

Both were young girls during the war, and both traveled from Westerbork, a deportation camp, to concentration camps; Marion went directly to Bergen-Belsen, but Anne Frank was sent first to Auschwitz and then to Bergen-Belsen.

Mizocz Ghetto

Didi-Huberman, Georges, and Lillis, Shane B., Images in Spite of All: Four photographs from Auschwitz, Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2008 ISBN 978-0-226-14816-8

Münch

Hans Münch (1911–2001), SS doctor acquitted in the Auschwitz trials

Muselmann

The psychologist and Auschwitz survivor Viktor Frankl, in his book Man's Search for Meaning, provides the example of a prisoner who decides to use up his last cigarettes (used as currency in the concentration camps) in the evening because he is convinced he won't survive the Appell (roll call assembly) the next morning; his fellow captives derided him as a Muselmann.

Ovitz

Ovitz family, a family of Jewish dwarf musicians who survived Auschwitz

Petr Ginz

Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon, whose mother and grandmother were survivors of Auschwitz, was asked by S. Isaac Mekel, director of development at the American Society for Yad Vashem, to take an item from Yad Vashem onto the American Space Shuttle Columbia.

Polish United Workers' Party

Bierut oversaw the trials of many Polish wartime military leaders, such as General Stanisław Tatar and Brig. General Emil August Fieldorf, as well as 40 members of the Wolność i Niezawisłość (Freedom and Independence) organisation, various Church officials and many other opponents of the new regime including the "hero of Auschwitz", Witold Pilecki, condemned to death during secret trials.

Restoring Courage tour

It featured an invocation by Rabbi Moshe Rothchild, remarks by Beck, actor and activist Jon Voight, the screening of the documentary film Kleiner Rudy by Michelle Stein Teer about her grandfather, Holocaust survivor Rudy Wolff and personal family memoirs, a short documentary about a solemn tour by Beck and his wife Tania of Auschwitz, and a panel discussion including Beck, Rabbi David Greenblatt of United With Israel, David Brog of Christians United for Israel, and author Mike Evans.

Robert Thalheim

The film was shot on location at the International Youth Meeting Center in Oświęcim/Auschwitz, where Thalheim was a volunteer in 1996–97, and at the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Ruins of the Reich

Part 3 - Warsaw Ghetto, Gestapo headquarters, Pawiak Prison, Palmiry massacre site, Oskar Schindler's Deutsche Emalia Fabrika, Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Fermont, Immerhof and Hackenberg on the Maginot Line, Compiègne, tomb of Napoleon and the German submarine pens and Cross-Channel guns in Normandy and the Pas-de-Calais.

Shigeru Nakanishi

This series of paintings covered war-torn and deserted cities such as Sarajevo, Belgrade, Chernobyl, and Auschwitz.

Smoleń

Kazimierz Smoleń (1920−2012), Polish political prisoner of KZ Auschwitz and latterly long term director of Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum

Stuttgart North station

Between 1941 and 1945 the loading tracks of the inner North Station freight yard were used for the deportation of more than 2,200 Jews from all over Württemberg to Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, Riga and Izbica.

Táňa Fischerová

Her father, theatre director Jan Fischer (or Fišer), was imprisoned in Theresienstadt and Auschwitz concentration camps during the World War II.

The Man who Broke into Auschwitz

The Man Who Broke Into Auschwitz is the title of an autobiographical book by Denis Avey, who became a recipient of a British Hero of the Holocaust award for the actions narrated in his book.

Thomas Geve

He stayed in Auschwitz till its evacuation in January 1945, after which he still survived the death march, Gross-Rosen concentration camp and Buchenwald concentration camp before the latter was self-liberated by the inmates in April 1945.

Topf and Sons

After 1939, and the demonstration or "proof of concept" that the firm could design an incinerator which would handle large numbers of corpses, Nazi officials further contracted Topf and Sons to provide similar incineration furnaces for the Belzec, Dachau, Mauthausen, Gusen Concentration Camps, and larger industrial incinerators especcialy designed for Auschwitz Concentration Camp.

Victor Perez

Perez was denounced to the Occupation authorities and arrested in Paris on September 21, 1943 and detained in the Drancy internment camp before being transported to Auschwitz where he was assigned to the Monowitz subcamp to serve as a slave laborer for I.G. Farben at the Buna-Werke.

Vrbové

The ghetto was liquidated by the Slovak Nazis known as the Hlinka Guard and the German SS; most of the Jewish people were deported to the death camp at Auschwitz.

Westerbork transit camp

The German film actress and cabaret singer Dora Gerson was interned at Westerbork with her family before being sent on a transport to Auschwitz.

Wilhelm Brasse

--Can you give an idea of numbers? "some 500"?--> are on display in the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, Israel's official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust.


see also