CRUCIAL DATES IN, THE HISTORY OF THE CAMP

25 January 1940: Auschwitz in south-west Poland is chosen by the SS-Reichsführer, Heinrich Himmler as a place for a new concentration camp.

29 April 1940: SS-Sturmbannführer Rudolf Höss, the camp commandant, arrives in Auschwitz.

14 June 1940: the first transport of 728 Poles arrives and this date is accepted as the official beginning of the camp.

6 July 1940: the first prisoner, a young Pole, escapes from the camp.

1 March 1941: Heinrich Himmler comes to Auschwitz for the first time.

6 June 1941: the first transport of Czechs arrives and after that new transports start to bring in prisoners from all over Europe. Finally at least 30 nations are represented in the camp: Americans, Austrians, Belgians, British, Bulgars, Czechs, Croats, Dutch, French, Germans, Greeks, Hungarians, Italians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Norwegians, Poles, Rumanians, Russians, Serbs, Slovaks, Spaniards, Swiss, Turks, Ukrainians, Gypsies and Jews from many countries, including Palestine.

There were also one Chinese, one Egyptian and one Persian.

End of July 1941: Father Maksymilian Maria Kolbe offers up his own life for another prisoner. Kolbe died in the ‘bunker’ on 14 August.

Late Summer 1941: Rudolf Höss is called to Berlin and gets the order from Himmler to prepare Auschwitz for the ‘final solution’ of the Jewish question.

September-October 1941: 12,000 Soviet prisoners-of-war are brought to Auschwitz.

September 1941: 600 Soviet prisoners-of-war and 250 consumptives are driven into the camp ‘bunker’ on Block No 11, which was made air-tight, and gassed by Cyklon B. They were the first prisoners to be killed this way.

7 October 1941: the SS decides to build a sub-camp at Birkenau, about 3 kilometres from Auschwitz, for 200,000 prisoners.

Late Autumn 1941: the first gas chamber is built in a deserted peasant cottage, made air-tight, in Section B III of Birkenau.

February 1942: Berlin informs the camp authorities that they are no longer to apply the principle of collective responsibility for escape.

26 March 1942: the first transport of 999 women arrives from Ravens-brück. The number of women later reached 20,000.

26 March 1942: the first Transport-Juden of 999 Jewesses arrives from Slovakia.

12 May 1942: for the first time a transport reaches the camp and is sent straight from the railway ramp to the gas chamber. The victims were 1500 Jewish men, women and children from the Polish town of Sosnowiec.