How many prisoners were in buna

But where does seeking the cooperation of the Nazi concentration camp staff become collusion with Nazi genocide? Auschwitz was a cauldron of competing agendas. Unexpectedly, ideological rivalry among prisoners themselves manifested itself as well. Prominent Holocaust witnesses Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi both sought treatment at this prisoner hospital. They were built to look like shower rooms in order to confuse the victims: new arrivals at Birkenau were told that they were being sent to work, but first needed to shower and be disinfected.

They would be led into the shower-like chambers, where they were quickly gassed to death with the highly poisonous Zyklon-b gas. Some prisoners at Auschwitz, including twins and dwarfs, were used as the subjects of torturous pseudo-medical experiments. They were tested for endurance under terrible conditions such as heat and cold, or sterilized.

Despite the horrible conditions, prisoners in Auschwitz managed to resist the Nazis, including some instances of escape and armed resistance. In October , members of the Sonderkommando, who worked in the Crematoria, succeeded in killing several SS men and destroying one gas chamber.

All of the rebels died, leaving behind diaries that provided authentic documentation of the atrocities committed at Auschwitz. By January Soviet troops were advancing towards Auschwitz.

The Nazis, desperate to withdraw, sent most of the 58, remaining prisoners on a death march. Most prisoners were killed en route to Germany. The Soviet army liberated Auschwitz on January 27; soldiers found just 7, barely living prisoners throughout the entire camp complex.

In all, some one million Jews had been murdered there. Robert Rozett and Dr. Shmuel Spector. Maximilian Faust, the engineer in charge of construction, repeatedly stated in these reports that the only way to keep prisoner labor productivity at a satisfactory level was through the use of violence and corporal punishment.

The fact that the prisoners worked more slowly on the average than German construction workers, despite the beatings, was a source of irritation and dissatisfaction to factory management. However, these steps had hardly any real effect on prisoner productivity. To an enormous degree, of course, the SS men from the garrison in Monowice were responsible for the conditions that prevailed in the camp. In November , after the reorganization of the administrative system and the division of Auschwitz into three quasi-autonomous components, the camp in Monowice received a commandant of its own.

Guard Details. Prisoner Strength and Composition of the Prisoner Groups. The Racial Hierarchy in the Camp. Prisoner Administration. Prisoner Functionaries—Positions.