Auschwitz-Birkenau Death Camp

Auschwitz Birkenau was the principal and most notorious of the six concentration and extermination camps (all located in Poland) established by Nazi Germany to implement the "Final Solution" policy aimed at exterminating the entire Jewish population of Europe.

Built in Poland near the town of Oswiecim in 1940 under Nazi German occupation initially as a concentration camp for Poles and later for Soviet prisoners of war, it evolved into a network of camps where Jewish people and other perceived enemies of the Nazi state were exterminated, often in gas chambers, or died of exhaustion, hunger, diseases or beatings as slave labor.

Some prisoners including children were also subjected to barbaric medical experiments led by notorious nazi doctor Josef Mengele.

In addition to the mass murder of well over a million Jewish men, women and children, and tens of thousands of Polish victims, Auschwitz also served as a camp for the racial murder of thousands of Roma and Sinti and prisoners of several European nationalities.

Introduced by Heinrich Himmler and administered by Adolf Eichmann, the "Final Solution" policy resulted in the murder of 6 million Jewish people in concentration camps between 1941 and 1945.