Aid dispensed to Auschwitz survivors by Polish doctors and medical staff in 1945 Jacek Lachendro
A
uschwitz (Konzentrazionslager Auschwitz) was the biggest German concentration and death camp. In August 1944 the number of its inmates in its three major parts, the main Auschwitz camp, Birkenau, and Monowitz,
and over 40 sub‑camps, amounted to over 105 thousand registered, chiefly Jewish
prisoners, plus about 30 thousand unregistered Jews in transit camps. However, by the late summer and autumn of that year, in view of the victories scored on the fronts by the Red Army and its systematic westward movement, the SS evacuated around 65 thousand prisoners to camps in the interior of the German Reich. The second stage of the evacuation, coupled with the dismantling of the camp, came on 17–23 January 1945, when SS men moved about 56 thousand prisoners out of Auschwitz and its sub‑camps, forcing them to march scores of kilometres in difficult winter conditions. The main routes for the march were for Wodzisław
About the author: Jacek Lachendro is a historian and has been Deputy Head of the Research Centre at the Auschwitz‑Birkenau State Museum since 2008. His research interests include such aspects of the history of Auschwitz‑Birkenau concentration camp as the fate of the Polish elites and the Soviet POWs, prisoners’ orchestras, escapes from the camp, as well as the history of the Memorial and Museum itself.
This paper is an extended version of an article which first appeared on pages 35–48 of the book Medicine Behind the Barbed Wire of the German Concentration Camp, eds. Z. J. Ryn and W. Sułowicz, Wydawnictwo Przegląd Lekarski: Kraków, 2013 (First Edition), ISBN: 9788 391 817 056.