April 27: Hell on Earth

Heinrich Himmler ordered the creation of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Oswiecim, Poland on this date in 1940. It would consist of three camps with five crematoria and 45 subcamps, and was one of the Nazis’ few combination labor-and-extermination camps. Gassing experiments with Xyclon B would be conducted on Soviet prisoners of war in September; construction of the crematoria would be complete by June, 1943. On October 7, 1944, an uprising by the Sommerkommando (slave laborers who helped to run the gas chambers) destroyed or damaged the crematoria. On January 27, 1945, the Soviet Red Army liberated Auschwitz, by which time and estimated 1.1 million Jews, Gypsies and other victims of Nazism had been killed there, mostly in Birkenau, or Auschwitz II.

“We have only one task, to stand firm and carry on the racial struggle without mercy.” —Heinrich Himmler