Lower Thirds:

0:13 Report by Rayna Breuer

(((info:  
It was the largest concentration and extermination camp complex built by Nazi-Germany in Europe. It has become the epitome of the Holocaust, genocide and inhumanity. In no other single place were so many people systematically murdered: At least 1.1 million. More than 900,000 of them were Jews. 81 years ago, on January 27, 1945, soldiers of the Red Army reached the concentration camps of Auschwitz. This day has been recognized in Germany since 1996 as a statutory nationwide day of remembrance for the victims of National Socialism. ))))

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00:04
Oświęcim is a small town in southern Poland.

00:10
In 1939, Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany and Oświęcim, renamed Auschwitz, was incorporated into the German Reich.  

00:19
At the Wannsee Conference in Berlin, 1942, the Nazi regime, which had already decided to systematically murder the entire Jewish population of Europe, agreed on the implementation: the deportation of Jews to the occupied East and their systematic murder. (0:36)

00:36
Auschwitz - conveniently located at a major junction of key railway lines and far from German public view - was to become the main location for the darkest chapter in German history. 

00:49
The entire complex comprised three main camps and extended over several villages. 

00:55
In Auschwitz I medical experiments were conducted on prisoners. And people killed en masse in gas chambers.

The extermination camp was built in Auschwitz-Birkenau, known also as Auschwitz II. 

1:09
Trains with tens of thousands of people arrived here day and night. The deportees – mostly Jewish families- were divided up immediately. SS doctors decided who was fit for work and who wasn't. Families were torn apart. The elderly, sick and children usually went straight to the gas chambers.

01:32
These were disguised as showers; the people had to undress first and were crammed into large rooms. Zyklon B poison was introduced through a hatch. An agonizingly slow suffocation, taking up to 30 minutes. Afterwards, prisoners had to take the bodies to the crematorium - and burn them there. 

01:52
In the years 1943 - 1944, an average of 6,000 Jews were gassed per day.  
The victims in Auschwitz also included Roma and Sinti, prisoners of war, people with disabilities and homosexuals. 

02:11
When the Soviet Red Army reached Auschwitz in January 1945, only around 7,000 had survived the Nazi death machine. The SS had destroyed the gas chambers and crematoria a few weeks earlier and sent many prisoners on so-called “death marches”. 

Most of the perpetrators disappeared and never faced trial. 

2:32
Auschwitz was the largest camp, but only one of some 1,000 concentration camps and six extermination camps operated by the Nazis.+++