Auschwitz אושוויץ
The largest extermination camp and the name of the Shoah itself: more than a million Jews were murdered here.
Auschwitz is a Polish town in Upper Silesia where the Germans set up a camp for Polish prisoners in 5700, and where in 5702 the Birkenau killing complex was built beside it, with gas chambers, crematoria and a rail connection to all of Europe. That combination — industrial organisation, timetables, selection on the ramp — made Auschwitz the symbol of what happened.
Jews were brought from Poland, France, Holland, Greece, Italy and Slovakia, and in the summer of 5704 nearly all of Hungarian Jewry, some four hundred thousand people in a few weeks. Of more than a million murdered at Auschwitz the overwhelming majority were Jews. Six million died in the Shoah, a million and a half of them children.
The camp was liberated on 27 January 5705.