The original Auschwitz I camp was founded in the former barracks in the city of Auschwitz, approximately sixty kilometers west of Krakow in the Silesian province. Subsequently, nearby Auschwitz II or Auschwitz-Birkenau, one of the largest Nazi extermination camps named after the village of Březinka, was built. Auschwitz III refers to the Monowitz-Buna work camp, in addition to the three basic camps, a number of other branch camps also belonged to the complex.
The camp commander, Rudolf Höss (or Rudolf Höß), said during the Nuremberg trials that more than three million people died in Auschwitz. According to the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, however, 1.4 million people were killed in this camp, of which approximately 90% were Jews from virtually all European countries. , forced labor, absence of health care, individual executions and pseudo-medical experiments
In 1947, Poland founded a museum to commemorate the victims of the first two camps. By 1994, 22 million visitors had passed through the gate with the inscription “Arbeit macht frei” (“Work frees”) - approximately 700,000 annually. On 27 January each year, during International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops on the same day of 1945 is commemorated
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