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An Annotated Bibliography: Auschwitz Concentration Camp

Anthony Ravasio
Ms. Schmidt
H. English 9
March 8, 2017
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Annotated Bibliography
"Auschwitz." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum, Web. 06 Mar. 2017. www.ushmm.org/

The Auschwitz concentration camp complex was the largest of its kind established by the
Nazi party of Germany. The SS authorities established three main camps: Auschwitz I in
April 1940, Auschwitz II (also called Birkenau) in October 1941, and Auschwitz III in
October 1942. The best estimates of the number of victims at the Auschwitz
concentration camp complex, between 1940 and 1945 are: Jews, with 1,095,000 deported
to Auschwitz, of which 960,000 died; Poles, with 147,000 deported, of which 74,000
died; Soviet prisoners of war, of which 15,000 deported and died; and other nationalities,
of which 25,000 deported, and 12,000 died. In November 1943, the SS said that the
Auschwitz complex would split to become two independent concentration camps. SS
offices for maintaining prisoner records and managing prisoner labor deployment
continued to be located and run from Auschwitz I. In November 1944, Auschwitz II was
reunified with Auschwitz I, and Auschwitz III was renamed Monowitz concentration
camp.

Arnett, George. "Auschwitz: A Short History of the Largest Mass Murder Site in Human
History." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 27 Jan. 2015. Web. 06 Mar. 2017.
theguardian.com
About 7,000 starving prisoners were found alive in the camp. Millions of items of
clothing that once belonged to men, women and children were discovered along with
6,350kg of human hair. The Auschwitz museum holds more than 100,000 pairs of shoes,
12,000 kitchen utensils, 3,800 suitcases and 350 striped camp garments. Auschwitz was
the site of at least one out of every six deaths during the holocaust. The only camp with
comparable figures was Treblinka in north-east Poland, where about 850,000 are thought
to have died. In January 1942, the Nazi party decided to roll out the Final Solution.
Camps dedicated solely to the extermination of Jews had been created before, but this
was formed by SS Lieutenant General Reinhard Heydrich in a speech at the Wannsee
conference. The extermination camp, Auschwitz II (or Auschwitz-Birkenau) was opened
in the same year. With its sections separated by barbed-wire fences, Auschwitz II had the
largest prisoner population of any of the three main camps. In January 1942, the first
chamber using lethal Zyklon B gas was built on the camp. Four further chambers were
built later on. These were used for systematic genocide right up until November 1944.
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History.com Staff. "Auschwitz." History.com. A&E Television Networks, 2009. Web. 06 Mar.
2017. History.com
Hitler became convinced that his Jewish problem would be solved only with the
elimination of every Jew in his domain, along with artists, educators, Gypsies,
communists, homosexuals, the mentally and physically handicapped and others deemed
unfit for survival in Nazi Germany. To complete this mission, Hitler ordered the
construction of death camps. Unlike concentration camps, which had existed in Germany
since 1933 and were detention centers for Jews, political prisoners and other
enemies of the Nazi state, death camps existed for the only purpose of being to kill Jews
and other undesirables, in what became known as the Holocaust. Auschwitz, the largest
and arguably the most notorious of all the Nazi death camps, opened in the spring of
1940. Auschwitz originally was conceived as a concentration camp, to be used as a
detention center for the many Polish citizens arrested after Germany annexed the
country in 1939. Auschwitz was deemed an ideal death camp location. For one thing, it
was situated near the center of all German-occupied countries on the European
continent. For another, it was close to the string of rail lines used to transport detainees to the
network of Nazi camps.

Wiesel, Elie. Night. Logan, IA: Perfection Learning, 1995. Print.

In this book made by an actual Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust and
Auschwitz is mentioned heavily throughout the text. He was a survivor of Auschwitz,
because he was fit enough for the forced labor the jobs there gave. Also in the text is an
account of a mad woman (Mrs. Schaetaer) chanting, There, there it is! The fire and
flames coming out of the chimney! She sees the future coming. She imagines Auschwitz
and all of the dead bodies being cremated and sent into the sky. They all think she is
crazy, until they get there and see what she has been seeing for so long. The long
chimney of Auschwitz and their own people being killed and burnt. Elie himself writes a
long paragraph of how so many things he lost the day he got to Auschwitz. His faith was
one of them. This was one of the quotes in the paragraph, Never shall I forget the
smoke. Never shall I forget the smoke that engulfed my faith forever. Never shall I forget
those moments that murdered my God and my soul forever.