Auschwitz how many prisoners

The two-story barracks were originally designed to hold prisoners. Women in the barracks at Auschwitz, Poland, January Photo taken by a Russian photographer shortly after the liberation of the camp. Over its five-year tenure, some 8, worked at the camp , including female guards. According to the limited available information, many were Catholic or Lutheran.

Of 1, Auschwitz SS men, 70 percent had only an elementary education, while 5. While some of the charged of crimes were sentenced to death or spent years in prison, many were acquitted of their crimes. Other former SS workers known to have worked in the camps were called by the court as witnesses but did not face trial, themselves.

But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Twice a week we compile our most fascinating features and deliver them straight to you. Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault. Recommended for you. The number was used instead of last names on every day basis, as the spelling was often ambiguous, causing fuss in the documentation. While analyzing the records in the original documentation, one last name could be written in several manners, regarding which language was used by the camp writer, who filled in a particular form.

It principally refers to Russian, Polish or Hungarian names, especially difficult for German writers. Numbers ascribed by camp authorities to those deported to KL Auschwitz became their second name during their incarceration.

Being awaken in the middle of the night, they needed to be able to provide their number in German. Those who survived were unable to forget them. The prisoner numbers were issued chronologically to the newly arrived in KL Auschwitz, similarly as in the majority of German Nazi concentration camps.

Therefore, the prisoner number allows us to determine a specific date of deportation. However, when the camp functioned, there were several number series applied - separate for women and for men, and also for various prison categories-groups.

These series were prepared by camp administration, regarding the needs, as new transports continued to arrive. Jointly, about of prisoner numbers were issued in all series. Below, we would like to present separate number series applied in KL Auschwitz from May , when the first 30 numbers were ascribed to criminals that arrived from KL Sachsenhausen, to January , when the camp was released by the Red Army.

Numbers of general series of men and women were issued from the beginning of the camp operation May until its evacuation January The first 30 numbers were ascribed to criminal prisoners - Germans BV category - Berufverbrecher , who arrived at the camp on 20 May At least numbers were issued totally in the period of five years. The last one - - was ascribed on 18 January to a German criminal prisoner.

The main female series was started on 26 March , when the first female prisoners came to the camp from Ravensbrueck. Similarly as it was in case of men, the first transport mostly included criminal and so called asocial prisoners, who afterwards played roles of block supervisors and kapos in the female camp. About 1. Jews from all across Nazi-controlled Europe made up the vast majority of the victims. Almost one million Jewish people were murdered at Auschwitz.

One specific example was Hungary's Jewish population. In the space of just two months, between May and July , Hungary transported , of the , Jewish people it sent to Auschwitz. Tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews were sent to Auschwitz every day. Three quarters of them were killed on arrival. Some 75, Polish civilians, 15, Soviet prisoners of war, 25, Roma and Sinti, as well as Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals and political prisoners were also put to death by the German state at the Auschwitz complex.

German authorities ordered a halt to gassing and the destruction of the gas chambers and crematoria in late , as Soviet troops advanced westward. The stockpile of stolen valuables in the Canada sector was shipped to Germany shortly afterwards.

Determined to erase the evidence of their crimes, the Nazis ordered 56, remaining prisoners to march west to other concentration camps, such as Bergen-Belsen, Dachau and Sachsenhausen. Those too sick to walk were left behind; any who fell behind on the march itself were killed. Soviet forces found only a few thousand survivors when they entered the camp on 27 January , along with hundreds of thousands of clothes and several tonnes of human hair.

Soldiers later recalled having to convince some survivors that the Nazis had truly gone. Elie Wiesel later said in a speech to mark the 50th anniversary of the liberation that the Nazi crimes at Auschwitz "produced a mutation on a cosmic scale, affecting man's dreams and endeavours". After Auschwitz, nothing will ever be the same. Image source, Getty Images. A group of child survivors behind a barbed wire fence at the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz.

What was the Holocaust? This video can not be played To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. What was Auschwitz? Auschwitz: Drone footage from Nazi concentration camp.

How did Auschwitz work?