Auschwitz

“Auschwitz” – the very word itself is synonymous with man’s inhumanity against man.

Auschwitz was a network of concentration and extermination camps built and operated in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. 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 is the German name for Oswiecim, the town the camps were located in and around; it was renamed by the Germans after they invaded Poland in September 1939. Birkenau, the German translation of Brzezinka (birch tree), refers to a small Polish village nearby that was mostly destroyed by the Germans to make way for the camp.

Auschwitz II-Birkenau was designated by Heinrich Himmler, who was the Reichsfuhrer and Germany’s Minister of the Interior, as the locus of the “final solution of the Jewish question in Europe”. From spring 1942 until the fall of 1944, transport trains delivered Jews to the camp’s gas chambers from all over Nazi occupied Europe. The camp’s first commandant, Rudolf Hoss, testified after the war at the Nuremberg Trials that up to three million people had died there (2.5 million exterminated, and 500,000 from disease and starvation), a figure since revised to 1.1 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, and tens of thousands of people of diverse nationalities. Those not killed in the gas chambers died of starvation, forced labor, lack of disease control, individual executions, and medical experiments.

  

All Auschwitz Trips in 2012 are £449 per guest. Plus £30 a night single room supplement, where applicable.

Next Trip Dates:

November 15th to 17th 2012

Just £100 deposit secures a place. E mail us today for more details about this trip and to book your place.