‘Auschwitz’ is often regarded as a symbol of the mass crimes committed by National Socialist Germany. In the years 1940 to 1945, at least 1.3 million people were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp, and 1.1 million lost their lives there. This article gives an overview of the history of the camp, the groups of victims imprisoned and murdered as well as the various functions the camp held. After Jewish inmates and non-Jewish Poles, Sinti and Roma were the third largest group of prisoners there. As far as we know to date, there is no single place in German-occupied Europe where so many Sinti and Roma were murdered as at Auschwitz camp complex.
Establishing the Camp
After the German invasion of Poland, the Konzentrationslager [KL, concentration camp] Auschwitz was established in abandoned Polish Army barracks on the outskirts of the city of Oświęcim, whose name was changed to Auschwitz after it was incorporated into Germany in October 1939, along with other parts of occupied Poland. Initially, it was supposed to be a transit camp, but this plan was abandoned and from the first days it functioned as a concentration camp, to which the German occupation authorities sent mainly Poles—members of the intelligentsia, underground activists and men trying to join the Polish Army being formed in France.
Over time, the camp grew into a large complex consisting of three main camps: Auschwitz I, the so-called Stammlager, Auschwitz II (Birkenau) and Auschwitz III (Monowitz), with a network of almost 50 satellite camps set up on nearby farms and above all at industrial plants and mines in the area of Upper Silesia, Western Lesser Poland and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Auschwitz I served as the main camp to which the other camps were subject, Auschwitz II was a concentration and extermination camp, and the inmates of Auschwitz III1Only male prisoners were used. However, female prisoners were abused in the Monowitz camp for sex work in a camp brothel. were designated as forced labourers for the IG Farbenindustrie AG.
The date of 14 June 1940, when the first Polish political prisoners, 728 men, were brought from the prison in Tarnów, is considered to be the beginning of the camp’s existence. The first prisoners registered in KL Auschwitz were 30 German men brought there on 20 May 1940 from Sachsenhausen concentration camp to take over the positions of prisoner functionaries and supervise other inmates.
Triangles and Numbers
In KL Auschwitz, inmates were marked according to the system used in other concentration camps under the rule of the SS (Schutzstaffel). The reason for their imprisonment was displayed by a triangle on the inmate’s clothes—red for political prisoners, green for ‘criminals’ (so-called professional criminals), black for ‘asocial’ inmates, pink for homosexuals, purple for Jehovah’s Witnesses, red and yellow arranged in the shape of a Star of David for Jews. Besides the triangle, inmates received camp numbers sewn onto their blue-and-white striped uniforms.
In the spring of 1942, male Jewish inmates began to have camp numbers tattooed on their left forearm, and from the summer of that year the practice was extended to Jewish women. From the beginning of 1943, numbers were tattooed on the forearms of non-Jewish inmates, and starting in the spring all other inmates were tattooed in the same way—those who had been in the camp for a long time as well as new arrivals. KL Auschwitz was the only camp in the German concentration camp system where inmates were tattooed with their prisoner numbers.
Jewish Prisoners and Victims
The largest group of deportees, numbering 1.1 million, were Jews. Starting in the spring of 1942, they were brought in mass transports from all over occupied Europe, in the framework of the ‘Final Solution of the Jewish Question’, the largest mass act of genocide in human history. After being brought to the camp, the vast majority, were subjected to a selection conducted by German physicians on the railway ramp in Birkenau. On the basis of appearance, the physicians selected young and healthy people to work in the camp.
The others, mainly mothers with children, the elderly, and the disabled, were sent to the gas chambers. There, the SS murdered them with Zyklon B—hydrogen cyanide oxide—without having registered them in the camp beforehand. Over 850,000 Jews were murdered in the gas chambers, and approximately 205,000 were registered in the camp. Because of the appalling conditions, harsh treatment by the SS, starvation and disease around 95,000 Jews died in the camp.
The Jews registered in the camp were at the bottom of the inmate community, humiliated and mistreated by the SS and prisoner functionaries. They were usually assigned to the hardest work, and they also suffered the most from hunger because, unlike many other inmates, they did not receive food parcels. In addition, until the autumn of 1944 Jews were regularly selected for death in the gas chambers.
Jewish prisoners were listed under the category ‘Jude’ [Jew] and marked with the above mentioned red and yellow triangles. Until 1944, Jewish inmates received camp numbers from the general number series. When the deportation of Jews from what was then Hungary started in May 1944, additional series were introduced, starting with the letter ‘A’ for women and ‘B’ for men.
Non-Jewish Polish Prisoners
Between 140,000 and 150,000 non-Jewish Poles were deported to the Auschwitz camp from all over German-occupied Poland. Until mid-1942, they constituted the largest group of prisoners. A large number of the Poles belonged to the intelligentsia, regarded by the Germans as especially dangerous because they could organise and command resistance movements. People involved in clandestine activities were also imprisoned in the camp, as well as people arrested during street roundups. In December 1942 and January 1943, Polish families expelled from the Zamość region were also brought to KL Auschwitz, and in August and September 1944 from Warsaw, during the Warsaw Uprising. Poles received mainly the category of a political prisoner and were marked with a red triangle.
Sinti and Roma
Almost from the beginning of the Auschwitz camp existence, a small number of Roma were detained there—men in the men’s camp, women in the women’s camp. As far as we know to date, the first Roma were sent to KL Auschwitz on 9 July 1941. These were the Poles Franciszek Buriański (1898–1942) and Ryszard Buriański (1882–unknown) and the Czech Rudolf Richter (1915–unknown), who were sent there by the German criminal police in Kattowitz [Katowice]. From July 1941 to February 1943—before the systematic deportation of Sinti and Roma from German-controlled territory to Auschwitz-Birkenau—, it is estimated that at least 370 Roma, mostly of Polish or Czech nationality, were sent to KL Auschwitz. These inmates were included in different categories and received numbers from the general series.
On 16 December 1942, Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945) issued the order to send Sinti and Roma to a concentration camp (Auschwitz Decree), and in an express order dated 29 January 1943, the responsible authorities were informed that this was to be KL Auschwitz. On 26 February 1943, the deportation of families of Sinti and Roma from Germany, annexed Austria, the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and occupied Poland to KL Auschwitz II began. In 1944, two transports from the occupied Netherlands as well as Belgium and Northern France followed. In addition to these large deportation trains, smaller groups of Sinti and Roma were also frequently sent in from these and other countries.
The arriving Sinti and Roma were placed in the part of the Birkenau camp marked BIIe, called ‘Zigeunerlager’. There, during registration in the General Ledger of Camp Section BIIe, they received the black triangle with an additional letter ‘Z’ (‘Zigeuner’) and a number from a specially issued number series.
The sanitary conditions in the camp were catastrophic, and this led to epidemics of infectious diseases. In addition, limited food rations meant that the prisoners suffered from hunger. All this resulted in a very high death rate. Prisoners from Camp Section BIIe were victims of experiments conducted by the SS physician Josef Mengele (1911–1978). For many, they ended in death. Despite the oppressive conditions, some Sinti and Roma dared to attempt escape. Many were recaptured, sent to the penal company or imprisoned in Block 11 of Auschwitz I and shot at the ‘Death Wall’.
The camp section for Sinti and Roma existed until 2 August 1944, when it was ordered to be ‘liquidated’—which meant the killing of all inmates in that section. 20,982 Sinti and Roma—women, men and children—who were deported in the context of the ‘Auschwitz Decree’ to Auschwitz-Birkenau were registered in the ‘General Ledger’. When cases of typhus were identified in May 1943, 1,035 people were murdered in the gas chambers. Most of those registered, around 12,500 individuals, died of hunger and exhaustion, diseases or medical experiments or through abuse by the SS. Around 3,700 inmates were transferred to other concentration camps for medical experiments or forced labour. On 2 August 1944, the 4,200 to 4,300 remaining in the camp were murdered in the gas chambers.
Even after the ‘liquidation’ of Camp Section BIIe, Sinti and Roma continued to be deported to KL Auschwitz. Among them were children and young people who had previously been transferred from Birkenau to Buchenwald, but were sent back again in September 1944. Only two of them survived. Some women who had previously been transferred to Ravensbrück concentration camp also returned to Birkenau via satellite camps in October 1944. In addition, there were always individuals or small groups who were deported to KL Auschwitz, including Italian and Hungarian Roma.
It is not known how many Sinti and Roma were imprisoned in KL Auschwitz III Monowitz and were forced to work at the IG Farben plant. We only know about the German Sinto Reinhard Florian (1923–2014), deported in June 1943 from Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp to KL Auschwitz I. After a quarantine of four weeks he was sent to Monowitz. He survived the death march to Loslau in January 1945, was taken by train to Mauthausen concentration camp, and liberated in the satellite camp Ebensee on 6 May 1945.2Cf. http://www.wollheim-memorial.de/en/reinhard_florian [accessed: 10/07/2025].
On 17 January 1945, according to statistics on male inmates compiled after the last roll call, there were four Sinti or Roma among the inmates of KL Auschwitz.3Cf. Czech, Auschwitz Chronicle, 782. The names of these four men are not known. There is no information on the number of Romani women in KL Auschwitz at that time.
Other Groups of Prisoners
From the summer of 1941, the SS authorities sent Soviet prisoners of war (POW) to the Auschwitz camp. They were killed there without being recorded, mainly in executions by shooting. At the beginning of September, about 600 POWs, along with 250 sick Polish prisoners, were murdered in the basement of Block 11 using Zyklon B. In October, about 10,000 POW were imprisoned in KL Auschwitz, in nine blocks separated from the rest of the camp (later, another 2,000 POWs were deported to KL Auschwitz). During registration, they received numbers from a series introduced exclusively for them, which were tattooed above their left breast.
The prisoners of war were sent to work on the construction of the second part of the camp in the nearby village of Brzezinka [German: Birkenau]. During this time, the vast majority of them died of exhaustion, starvation and disease. It is estimated that at least 15,000 POW were brought to KL Auschwitz, of whom about 12,000 were registered. At least 3,000 were not included in the record; they were murdered soon after being sent to the camp. In total, over 14,000 POW lost their lives in KL Auschwitz. Several hundred were transported to other concentration camps in the Reich, and probably several dozen managed to escape from the camp.
Throughout the camp’s existence, political prisoners—citizens of various countries of occupied Europe—were imprisoned there. The largest group were Czechs, eight to nine thousand, mainly members of patriotic organisations. In addition, Belarusians (more than 5,000 people, including children, arrested during anti-partisan actions, and brought from the Minsk and Vitebsk regions), Yugoslavs, French, Germans, Austrians and Spaniards. Their number is estimated at around 25,000.
Women
At least 131,000 women were registered in the Auschwitz camp. The largest group were Jewish women, at least 82,000, another large group were non-Jewish Polish women—31,000, then women of the communities of Sinti and Roma—11,000. Apart from them, there were also—non-Jewish, non-Romani—German, Russian, Ukrainian and French women imprisoned in the camp. The first women were imprisoned in KL Auschwitz on 26 March 1942. On that day, 999 female, non-Jewish inmates from the Ravensbrück camp were brought and marked with numbers from 1 to 999. As in the case of the men’s camp, they were to take up the positions of prisoner functionaries. On the same day, 999 female Jewish prisoners were also brought from Poprad in Slovakia and marked with consecutive numbers.
The female inmates were placed in ten separate buildings of the main camp, separated from the other blocks by a wall. In August 1943, about 17,000 female prisoners were transferred to the so-called Frauenlager [women’s camp] in Birkenau.
Children
At least 232,000 children and adolescents (14 years of age and older) were brought to Auschwitz camp. The largest group were Jewish children—at least 216,000, brought with their families. During the selection, most of them were considered ‘unfit for work’ and murdered in the gas chambers. Only a small number of teenagers were found ‘fit for work’ and placed in the camp. Children brought from Theresienstadt ghetto in September and December 1943 stayed in the so-called ‘family camp’ in Birkenau (Camp Section BIIb). They died there of diseases and hunger, and some were murdered in the gas chambers in March 1944 and during the ‘liquidation’ of the camp in July that year.
11,000 Sinti and Roma children were also brought with their relatives or from children’s homes and placed in the so-called ‘Zigeunerlager’ in Birkenau. Most of them died within a short time, and those who survived until 2 August 1944 were murdered in the gas chambers.
Over 3,000 non-Jewish Polish children and adolescents were held in KL Auschwitz. Some were incarcerated in the first months of the camp’s existence. They were often scouts arrested for their activities in underground organisations, as well as participants in the Clandestine Teaching Organisation that worked to preserve Polish culture. Among the inhabitants expelled from villages in the Zamość region, a large group were children and adolescents. They were sent to work in the camp and treated as adults. Most died in the camp, and many boys were killed by intracardiac injections of phenol.
Another large group of minors was brought with adults from Warsaw during the uprising in August and September 1944. They were registered in the camp, but had no numbers tattooed on them. Some of the children and young people died, while others were transported to other camps and forced to work in German industry. Only a small group remained and lived to see the liberation.
Juveniles from the territories of the former Soviet Union (Ukrainians, Belarusians, Russians), and also some number of Czechs, were also held in KL Auschwitz. Their number is estimated at over 1,000. At the liberation of the camp, there were over 700 children and adolescents on its premises.
Children Born in KL Auschwitz
Until mid-1943, all children born in the camp, regardless of nationality, were killed. Later, non-Jewish children were registered and received a camp number tattooed on their thigh or buttock. As a result of the terrible sanitary conditions, most of them died within a few months. Jewish children were killed until October 1944, when a decision was made to stop the mass killing of Jews.
In the camp hospital for women in Birkenau, there was a maternity unit, where the prisoner-midwife Stanisława Leszczyńska (1896–1974) worked with great dedication. A maternity unit was also in the so-called transit camp for Jewish female prisoners in Birkenau. Children who were born in the BIIe section (Sinti and Roma) or the BIIb section (Jews from the Theresienstadt ghetto) were registered, but died soon because of the terrible conditions in the camp. Those who survived until the ‘liquidation’ of these sections were murdered in the gas chambers.
The documentation that has survived allows us to state that at least 700 children were born in Auschwitz camp, of whom at least 378 were children of Sinti and Roma.4Kubica, Pregnant Women and Children Born in Auschwitz, 12. A small number of children born in KL Auschwitz lived to see the liberation, mainly those who were born in the last weeks before the liberation of the camp.
Medical Experiments
A large number of inmates, both adults and children (precisely how many has yet to be determined) were abused for medical experiments at KL Auschwitz. The doctors who conducted these criminal experiments acted on behalf of the SS, the Wehrmacht, or German pharmaceutical concerns or to further their own careers, and often cooperated with German universities and scientific institutions. For many inmates, the experiments ended in death or permanent mutilation.
A method of mass sterilisation was developed by Carl Clauberg (1898–1957) and Horst Schumann (1906–1983) working there. The effects of drugs not yet introduced into treatment were studied by numerous physicians, among them: Helmuth Vetter (1910–1949), Friedrich Entress (1914–1947) and Bruno Weber (1915–1956). The changes in the body caused by starvation disease were studied by Johann Paul Kremer (1883–1965). Emil Kaschub (1919–1977) was sent to the Auschwitz camp by the Wehrmacht to study the effects of various toxic substances, rubbed or swallowed, used by German soldiers who wanted to avoid being sent to the front. The Standortarzt Eduard Wirths (1909–1945) assisted his brother, who was researching cervical cancer. The collection of the University of Strasbourg was to be enlarged by a collection of Jewish skeletons commissioned by August Hirt (1898–1945).
Children from families of Sinti and Roma or Jewish children from the camp for Jews from Theresienstadt ghetto as well as those brought in mass transports from Hungary at that time, mainly twins, were the victims of Josef Mengele. In addition, Mengele was interested in the anthropology of various groups of prisoners, the incubation and course of selected infectious diseases, the physiology and pathology of dwarfism, and the inheritance of genetic defects. For most of the prisoners selected by Josef Mengele, the experiments ended in death.
Labour
In the Auschwitz camp, work became part of the killing process, regardless of its real effectiveness. Inmates worked beyond their physical capacity, without training, protective clothing, or safety precautions. Most often, they carried building materials (cement bags, bricks, fence posts) from railway wagons to the construction sites, dug drainage ditches or foundations for camp buildings, broke down the walls of demolished houses, and dragged heavy rollers to level the ground.
They also worked on camp farms and livestock farms, and starting from 1942 in mines, steelworks, and various other industrial plants, where they were forced to work in conditions contrary to the standards prescribed for non-prisoner labour. In 1942, conditions improved slightly for inmates with specialist technical training, whose skills were difficult to replace.
SS Garrison
It is estimated that a total of about 8,500 SS men and at least 200 female overseers [Aufseherinnen] were sent to serve in Auschwitz camp. Some of them performed guard duty, while others were employed in the administration. The number of staff increased gradually along with the increase of inmate numbers; in March 1941 it amounted to about 700 SS men, and in January 1945—4,480.
The first commandant of the camp was Rudolf Höss (1901–1947), his successor from November 1943 Arthur Liebehenschel (1901–1948) and the last from May 1944 Richard Baer (1911–1963). Each camp and satellite camp was led by a camp director [Lagerführer], with the help of lower-level officers [Rapportführer, Blockführer and Kommandoführer].
Initially, the staff was dominated by Germans and Austrians and the so-called ethnic Germans from the Sudetenland and western Poland. Later, Volksdeutsche from Yugoslavia, Hungary and Romania joined them. The level of education these officers declared was not high—70% of the SS men had completed only a few years of primary school. Five percent of the staff, doctors and engineers from the construction department [Bauleitung], could claim a university education.
The women’s camp was supervised by an Oberaufseherin. Until October 1942, this was Johanna Langefeld (1900–1974), and thereafter, until the evacuation, Maria Mandl (1912–1948). These camp overseers were employed on the basis of a contract with the SS after prior training in the Ravensbrück camp.
Evacuation
The SS authorities began the evacuation of the Auschwitz camp complex in the late summer of 1944. As a result, by mid-January 1945, about 65,000, mostly non-Jewish, inmates (Poles, Russians, Czechs) were deported to concentration camps in the Reich. At that time, the traces of crimes committed in the camp were erased: documentation was destroyed, the gas chambers and crematoria in Birkenau were blown up and the pits into which the ashes of the murdered prisoners had been dumped were removed. From 17 to 21 January, at least 56,000 male and female inmates were led out of Auschwitz I, Birkenau and Monowitz, as well as satellite camps.
Most of the prisoners were sent on a death march to Loslau [Wodzisław Śląski] and Gleiwitz [Gliwice]. The route of the march was littered with the bodies of prisoners who were too exhausted to keep up with the marching columns and were killed by the SS men who were escorting them, or who were shot while trying to escape. The prisoners reached their destination after two or three days of walking, and then they were transported in open goods wagons to concentration camps located in Germany.
Liberation
KL Auschwitz was liberated on 27 January 1945 by soldiers of the Red Army. In the morning they reached the Monowitz camp and in the afternoon Birkenau and Auschwitz I. There were at least 7,000 inmates—men, women and children—in the liberated camps. About 500 were liberated by Soviet soldiers in some satellite camps a few days before or a few days after 27 January. About 4,500 sick and exhausted survivors were provided with medical care in Soviet field hospitals and the hospital of the Polish Red Cross organised in the area of the former main camp (Auschwitz I).
Trials
After the war, only 800 SS men and overseers—about ten per cent of the camp staff—were held legally accountable for the crimes they committed. Between 1946 and 1949, 673 members of the SS garrison in the Auschwitz camp (including 21 women) faced justice in Poland. The first, and best known, was the trial of the first camp commandant, Rudolf Hӧss. The Supreme National Tribunal in Warsaw, on 2 April 1947, sentenced him to death.
In 1947, the Supreme National Tribunal sat in Krakow, for the trial remembered as the ‘Auschwitz garrison trial’. The 40 indicted garrison members included the second camp commandant, Arthur Liebehenschel, political department head Maximilian Grabner (1905–1948), and women’s camp director Maria Mandl. All three were sentenced to death along with 18 other defendants and executed on 24 January 1948. Two of those sentenced to death were pardoned and given life imprisonment, six defendants received life sentences, ten defendants received temporary prison sentences, and SS doctor Hans Münch (1911–2001) was acquitted.
Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum
After liberation, the areas of the former main camp Auschwitz and Birkenau were under the control of the Soviet military authorities. At the turn of 1945 and 1946, they were taken over by the Polish administration.Starting from April 1946, thanks mainly to the dedication of former inmates, the authorities began to create a museum and memorial there. On 2 July 1947, pursuant to an act adopted by the Parliament, a museum was established on the site of the former main camp—Auschwitz and Birkenau (currently the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum). Today, it is a place of commemoration, research and education.
Sinti and Roma are specifically commemorated in a permanent exhibition located in block 13 in Auschwitz Memorial, which opened on 2 August 2001. Every 2 August, civil society organisations from Germany and Poland, together with the State Museum, organise an international commemoration in Birkenau to honour the Sinti and Roma victims. The participants gather at a monument that was erected in 1973 on the initiative of Vinzenz Rose (1908–1996) and the German Sinti Association. One volume of the Museum publication ‘Voices of Memory’ is dedicated to Sinti and Roma and was published in 2011. In 2019, the Association of Roma in Poland [Stowarzyszenie Romów w Polsce] published a guide book for visitors to the Auschwitz Memorial, highlighting all sites that are relevant for the history of the persecution and murder of Sinti and Roma.
Research into the history of the Sinti and Roma in KL Auschwitz began in the 1990s. A milestone was the publication of the Memorial Book, which appeared in 1993 and is based on the General Ledger of the former ‘Zigeunerlager’. Further publications, often initiated by or in collaboration with civil society organisations of Sinti and Roma, followed. However, there are still numerous gaps in the research. The importance of empirical research was recently demonstrated in an article by Helena Kubica (born 1954) and Piotr Setkiewicz (born 1963), which provided new findings concerning the number of Sinti and Roma murdered in the gas chambers on 2 August 1944. In 2025, the State Museum published its first monograph on Roma and Sinti in the Auschwitz camp complex.
