1 AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU
OŚWIĘCIM, LESSER POLAND VOIVODESHIP
he site of the worst atrocity in history, AuschwitzBirkenau was the principle and largest of the extermination camps used by the Third Reich to carry out the 'Final Solution'. Built in 1939 by the SS as a concentration camp for Polish prisoners and then Soviet POWs, by 1942 it had become a complex of 40 concentration and extermination camps for Jews, homosexuals, gypsies and other minorities. Between 1942-44 an estimated 1.1 million people were murdered here, with the camp holding around 90,000 prisoners in 1944. The camp was liberated by Soviet troops on 27 January 1945, a day now commemorated as
