What is Auschwitz-Birkenau?
Within a year of the Nazi occupation of Poland, Henreich Himmler (an SS leader and perpetrator of the Holocaust) ordered the establishment of a concentration camp in the town of Oswiecim (or the Germanised name Auschwitz). Auschwitz itself had been a purpose built barracks for Government agencies, sometimes being used to house Polish refugees and army members. 300 local Jews were used in the conversion of the barracks of Auschwitz into the concentration camp it as known as today. Eventually Auschwitz itself was regarded as too small, and its gas chamber (which killed 500 people a day) was regarded as inefficient, the Nazis wanted to kill as many people as possible. It was then that Birkenau was established, with its purpose built gas chambers and crematorium, a factory of killing. Auschwitz-Birkenau is one of the six killing centres created in Poland with the sole purpose of eliminating German enemies and cleansing the German race. It is here that the majority of murder was concentrate
