- published: 07 Apr 2015
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Auschwitz concentration camp (German: Konzentrationslager Auschwitz [ˈaʊʃvɪts] ( listen)) was a network of concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II. It was the largest of the German concentration camps, consisting of Auschwitz I (the Stammlager or base camp); Auschwitz II–Birkenau (the Vernichtungslager or extermination camp); Auschwitz III–Monowitz, also known as Buna–Monowitz (a labor camp); and 45 satellite camps.
Auschwitz had for a long time been a German name for Oświęcim, the town by and around which the camps were located; the name "Auschwitz" was made the official name again by the Germans after they invaded Poland in September 1939. Birkenau, the German translation of Brzezinka (= "birch tree"), referred originally to a small Polish village that was destroyed by the Germans to make way for the camp.
Auschwitz II–Birkenau was designated by the Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, Germany's Minister of the Interior, as the place of the "final solution of the Jewish question in Europe". From early 1942 until late 1944, transport trains delivered Jews to the camp's gas chambers from all over Nazi-occupied Europe. The camp's first commandant, Rudolf Höss, testified after the war at the Nuremberg Trials that up to three million people had died there (2.5 million gassed, and 500,000 from disease and starvation), a figure since revised to 1.3 million, around 90 percent of them Jews. Others deported to Auschwitz included 150,000 Poles, 23,000 Roma and Sinti, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, some 400 Jehovah's Witnesses and tens of thousands of people of diverse nationalities. Those not killed in the gas chambers died of starvation, forced labor, infectious disease, individual executions, and medical experiments.
Son morto con altri cento
son morto ch'ero bambino
passato per il camino e
adesso sono nel vento.
Ad Auschwitz c'era la neve
il fumo saliva lento
nel freddo giorno d'inverno
e adesso sono nel vento.
Ad Auschwitz tante persone
ma un solo grande silenzio
strano non ho imparato a
sorridere qui nel vento.
Io chiedo come pu l'uomo
uccidere un suo fratello
eppure siamo a milioni in
polvere qui nel vento.
Ma ancora tuona il
cannone e ancora non
contento
di sangue la belva umana
e ancora ci porta il vento.
Io chiedo quando sar che
l'uomo potr imparare
a vivere senza ammazzare
e il vento si poser.