Concentration death camp in Poland. Concentration camps in Poland were sometimes worse than Nazi camps
August 28th, 2017
Whether the Nazis took experience in dealing with prisoners from the Poles, or from someone else, the Poles in any case were a couple of decades ahead of them.
***
Today Poles are destroying monuments to Soviet soldiers who saved their grandfathers from the Nazi gas chamber. In such a situation, it is unacceptable to remain silent about the Red Army soldiers and other people from the territory of the former Russian Empire who perished in Polish death camps, says Oleg Nazarov, a member of the Zinoviev Club, Doctor of Historical Sciences.
In October 1920, the Soviet-Polish war ended. One of the consequences of the Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth War was the mass death of Soviet prisoners of war and other immigrants from the territory of the former Russian Empire in Polish camps.
Cynical statements of the provocateur Schetyna
If the question of who was responsible for the execution of Poles in Katyn and Medny still causes heated debate among historians, and they are still far from being resolved, then the Polish side is definitely to blame for the deaths of 60 to 83.5 thousand Red Army soldiers (according to various estimates).
Official Warsaw, being unable to refute the mass death of people in the camps and dungeons of Poland, firstly, tries in every possible way to downplay the number of victims, and secondly, shifts responsibility for the tragedy from the Polish military and officials to objective circumstances. Although there was no famine or crop failure in Poland in those years.
- At the same time, Warsaw reacts extremely nervously to any proposals to perpetuate the memory of people who died in the camps of the Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The initiative of the Russian Military Historical Society (RVIO) to begin collecting funds for the opening of a monument to fallen prisoners of war in Krakow aroused the anger of Polish Foreign Minister Grzegorz Schetyna. He called it a provocation aimed at splitting Polish society.
Schetyna’s cynical nonsense can be quoted without commenting.
How the Polish authorities took care of prisoners
In those days when the USSR and the Polish People's Republic were building socialism together, they tried not to remember the Red Army soldiers and other people from the territory of the former Russian Empire who perished in Polish camps. In the 21st century, when Poles are destroying monuments to Soviet soldiers who saved their grandfathers from the Nazi gas chamber, and Poland is pursuing an anti-Russian policy, it is unacceptable to remain silent about this.
The system of Polish camps arose immediately after the appearance of the Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth on the political map of Europe- long before the emergence of Stalin's Gulag and the Nazis' rise to power in Germany.
The “islands” of the Polish, figuratively speaking, “Gulag” were camps in Dąba, Wadowice, Lancut, Strzałkowo, Szczyperno, Tuchola, Brest-Litovsk, Pikulica, Aleksandrów-Kujawski, Kalisz, Płock, Łuków, Siedlce, Zduńska-Wola, Doroguska, Piotrkow, Ostrow Lomzynski and other places.
When Russian historians and publicists call the places of detention of captured Red Army soldiers “Polish death camps,” this causes protests in Warsaw.
To figure out who is right here, let's turn to the collection of documents " Red Army soldiers in Polish captivity in 1919 - 1922. "
The reliability of his materials is not questioned by the Polish side - the main Polish specialist on this topic, a professor at the University. Nicolaus Copernicus Zbigniew Karpus and other Polish historians.- When you look at the documents, the word “inhumane” catches your eye. It is often found when describing the situation in which Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Jews, Tatars, Latvians and other prisoners of war were located.As stated in one of the documents, in a country that called itself a bastion of Christian civilization, the prisoners were treated "not as people of an equal race, but as slaves. The beating of prisoners of war was practiced at every turn."
- “The prisoners are in a casemate, quite damp; when asked about food, they answered that they were getting everything they were supposed to and had no complaints. But the hospital doctors unanimously stated that all the prisoners gave the impression of being extremely hungry, since they rake raw potatoes straight out of the ground and eat them, and collect in garbage dumps and eat all kinds of waste, such as bones, cabbage leaves, etc."
About the reason for Polish slowness
In December 1920, the High Extraordinary Commissioner for Epidemic Control, Emil Godlewski, in a letter to Polish Minister of War Kazimierz Sosnkowski, described the situation in prisoner-of-war camps as “simply inhuman and contrary not only to all the needs of hygiene, but to culture in general.”
Meanwhile, the Minister of War received similar information a year earlier. In December 1919, in a memo to the minister, the head of the Sanitary Department of the Ministry of Military Affairs of Poland, Lieutenant General Zdzislaw Gordynsky, quoted a letter he received from military doctor K. Habicht dated November 24, 1919. About the situation in the prisoner of war camp in Bialystok it said:
“In the camp at every step there is dirt, untidiness that cannot be described, neglect and human need, crying out to heaven for retribution. In front of the doors of the barracks there are heaps of human excrement, which are trampled and carried throughout the camp by thousands of feet. The sick are so weakened that they cannot can reach the latrines, on the other hand, the latrines are in such a state that it is impossible to approach the seats, because the floor is covered in several layers of human feces.
The barracks themselves are overcrowded, and there are many sick people among the healthy. In my opinion, among the 1,400 prisoners there are simply no healthy ones. Covered only with rags, they huddle together, warming each other. The stench from dysentery patients and gangrene-stricken legs swollen from hunger. In the barracks that were just about to be vacated, two especially seriously ill patients lay among other patients in their own feces, oozing through their upper trousers; they no longer had the strength to get up to lie down on a dry place on the bunks.”
However, even a year after writing the heartbreaking letter, the situation has not changed for the better. According to the fair conclusion of Vladislav Shved, who many times caught Polish falsifiers of history “by the hand,” the reluctance of the Polish authorities to improve the situation in the camps indicates “a deliberate policy to create and maintain conditions unbearable for the life of Red Army soldiers.”
Trying to refute this conclusion, Polish historians, journalists and politicians refer to numerous orders and instructions that formulate tasks for improving the conditions of detention of prisoners of war. But the conditions of detention in the camps, as stated in the book “Polish Captivity” by Gennady and Victoria Matveev, “were never brought into line with the requirements of the instructions and orders issued by the Ministry of Military Affairs. The horrific conditions of accommodation and sanitation that reigned in them with the complete indifference of the camp superiors caused the death of a huge number of captured Red Army soldiers. And the periodically issued formidable orders of the Ministry of Military Affairs were not supported by equally strict control over their implementation, remaining in fact only a fixation of inhuman treatment of captured opponents both during the war and after its end. And if in In relation to cases of execution of prisoners at the front, one can still try to refer to the state of passion in which Polish soldiers were, having just emerged from a battle in which their comrades may have died, but such an argument cannot be applied to the unmotivated killings of prisoners in the camps."
It is also significant that there was a catastrophic shortage of straw in the camps. Due to its lack, the prisoners were constantly freezing, more often getting sick and dying. Even Pan Karpus does not try to claim that there was no straw in Poland. They were just in no hurry to bring her to the camps.
One of the consequences of the deliberate “sluggishness” of Polish officials was the autumn 1920 outbreak of dysentery, cholera and typhoid, from which thousands of prisoners of war died.
- In total, in 1919 - 1921. in the Polish death camps, this very death in agony was met, according to various estimates, from 60 to 83.5 thousand Red Army soldiers. And this is not counting those wounded whom the God-fearing Polish soldiers, after praying, left to die in the field.
The number of victims did not include the Red Army soldiers who died from hunger, cold and the bullying of Polish fanatics on the way from the place of captivity to one of the “islands” of the Polish “Gulag”. In December 1920, the chairman of the Polish Red Cross Society, Natalia Krejc-Welezhinska, stated that prisoners “are transported in unheated carriages, without appropriate clothing, cold, hungry and tired... After such a journey, many of them are sent to the hospital, and the weaker ones die.”
The time has come to say frankly that the authorities of the Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth are pioneers in creating a system of camps, the conditions of detention in which guaranteed the mass death of their prisoners. Poland must be held accountable for this crime
.October 2015.
*
Let me add: we need to stop currying favor with the Poles on the Katyn issue. Of course, you will have to spit on the State Duma deputies of the 2010 model - but the loss is small.
=Arctus=
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Nazi sadists largely repeated the actions of their Polish predecessors. (And if the Germans acted more like ants - doing routine work, then the Poles killed with passion and pleasure - arctus)
Nazi sadists largely repeated the actions of their Polish predecessors.
It is known that in Poland history has long been a character active on the political scene. Therefore, bringing “historical skeletons” to this stage has always been a favorite activity of those Polish politicians who do not have solid political baggage and, for this reason, prefer to engage in historical speculation.
The situation in this regard received a new impetus when, after winning the parliamentary elections in October 2015, the party of the ardent Russophobe Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Law and Justice (PiS), returned to power. The protege of this party, Andrzej Duda, became the President of Poland. Already on February 2, 2016, at a meeting of the National Development Council, the new president formulated a conceptual approach to Warsaw’s foreign policy: “The historical policy of the Polish state should be an element of our position in the international arena. It must be offensive."
An example of such “offensiveness” was the recent bill approved by the Polish government. It provides for imprisonment of up to three years for the phrases “Polish concentration camp” or “Polish death camps,” in reference to the Nazi camps that operated in occupied Poland during World War II. The author of the bill, the Polish Minister of Justice, explained the need for its adoption by the fact that such a law would more effectively protect the “historical truth” and “the good name of Poland.”
In this regard, a little history. The phrase “Polish death camp” came into use largely with the “light hand” of Jan Karski, an active participant in the Polish anti-Nazi resistance. In 1944, he published an article in Colliers Weekly entitled “The Polish Death Camp.”
In it, Karski told how he, disguised as a German soldier, secretly visited the ghetto in Izbica Lubelska, from which prisoners Jews, Gypsies and others were sent to the Nazi extermination camps “Belzec” and “Sobibor”. Thanks to Karski’s article, and then the book he wrote, “Courier from Poland: Story of a Secret State,” the world first learned about the Nazis’ mass extermination of Jews in Poland.
I note that for 70 years after World War II, the phrase “Polish death camp” was generally understood as a Nazi death camp located on Polish territory.
The problems began when US President Barack Obama in May 2012, posthumously awarding J. Karski the Presidential Medal of Freedom, mentioned the “Polish death camp” in his speech. Poland was indignant and demanded an explanation and apology, since such a phrase allegedly cast a shadow on Polish history. Pope Francis' visit to Poland in July 2016 added fuel to the fire. Then, in Krakow, Francis met with the only woman born and survivor of the Nazi camp Auschwitz (Auschwitz). In his speech, the Pope called her birthplace "the Polish concentration camp Auschwitz." This clause was replicated by the Vatican Catholic portal “IlSismografo”. Poland was again indignant. These are the known origins of the above-mentioned Polish bill.
However, the point here is not only the above-mentioned unfortunate reservations of world leaders regarding the Nazi camps.
The Polish authorities, in addition, urgently need to block any memories that in Poland in 1919 - 1922. There was a network of concentration camps for Red Army prisoners of war captured during the Polish-Soviet war of 1919–1920.
It is known that due to the conditions of existence of prisoners of war in them, these camps were the forerunners of the Nazi concentration death camps.
However, the Polish side does not want to recognize this documented fact and reacts very painfully when statements or articles appear in the Russian media that mention Polish concentration camps. Thus, a sharply negative reaction from the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in the Russian Federation was caused by an article by Dmitry Ofitserov-Belsky, associate professor of the National Research University Higher School of Economics (Perm), entitled “Indifferent and patient” (02/05/2015.Lenta.ru https://lenta.ru/articles/2015 /02/04/poland/).
In this article, the Russian historian, analyzing the difficult Polish-Russian relations, called Polish prisoner of war camps concentration camps, and also called the Nazi death camp Auschwitz Auschwitz. He thereby allegedly cast a shadow not only on the Polish city of Auschwitz, but also on Polish history. The reaction of the Polish authorities, as always, was immediate.
The Deputy Polish Ambassador to the Russian Federation, Jaroslaw Ksionzek, in a letter to the editor of Lenta.ru, stated that the Polish side categorically objects to the use of the definition of “Polish concentration camps”, because it in no way corresponds to historical truth. In Poland from 1918 to 1939. such camps allegedly did not exist.
However, Polish diplomats, refuting Russian historians and publicists, once again got into a puddle. I had to face critical assessments of my article “The Lies and Truth of Katyn”, published in the newspaper “Spetsnaz Rossii” (No. 4, 2012). The critic then was Grzegorz Telesnicki, First Secretary of the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in the Russian Federation. In his letter to the editors of Spetsnaz Rossii, he categorically asserted that the Poles did not participate in the Nazi exhumation of Katyn graves in 1943.
Meanwhile, it is well known and documented that specialists from the Technical Commission of the Polish Red Cross participated in the Nazi exhumation in Katyn from April to June 1943, fulfilling, in the words of the Minister of Nazi Propaganda and the main falsifier of the Katyn crime J. Goebbels, the role of “objective” witnesses. Equally false is the statement of Mr. J. Książyk about the absence of concentration camps in Poland, which is easily refuted by documentation.
Polish forerunners of Auschwitz-Birkenau
To begin with, I will conduct a small educational program for Polish diplomats. Let me remind you that in the period 2000–2004. Russian and Polish historians, in accordance with the Agreement between the Russian Archives and the General Directorate of State Archives of Poland, signed on December 4, 2000, prepared a collection of documents and materials “Red Army soldiers in Polish captivity in 1919–1922.” (hereinafter referred to as the collection “Red Army Men...”).
This 912-page collection was published in Russia in a circulation of 1 thousand copies. (M.; St. Petersburg: Summer Garden, 2004). It contains 338 historical documents revealing the very unpleasant situation that prevailed in Polish prisoner of war camps, including concentration camps. Apparently, for this reason, the Polish side not only did not publish this collection in Polish, but also took measures to buy up part of the Russian circulation.
So, in the collection “Red Army Soldiers...” document No. 72 is presented, called “Temporary instructions for concentration camps for prisoners of war, approved by the Supreme Command of the Polish Army.”
Let me give a short quote from this document: “...Following the orders of the Supreme Command No. 2800/III of 18.IV.1920, No. 17000/IV of 18.IV.1920, No. 16019/II, and also 6675/San. temporary instructions for concentration camps are issued... Camps for Bolshevik prisoners, which should be created by order of the Supreme Command of the Polish Army No. 17000/IV in Zvyagel and Ploskirov, and then Zhitomir, Korosten and Bar, are called "Concentration camp for prisoners of war No. ...".
So, gentlemen, a question arises. How, having adopted a law on the inadmissibility of calling Polish concentration camps, will you deal with those Polish historians who allow themselves to refer to the above-mentioned “Temporary Instructions...”? But I will leave this issue for consideration by Polish lawyers and return to Polish prisoner of war camps, including those called concentration camps.
Familiarization with the documents contained in the collection “Red Army Soldiers...” allows us to confidently assert that the point is not in the name, but in the essence of the Polish prisoner of war camps. They created such inhuman conditions for keeping Red Army prisoners of war that they can rightfully be considered as the forerunners of Nazi concentration camps.
This is evidenced by the absolute majority of documents placed in the collection “Red Army Men...”.
To substantiate my conclusion, I will allow myself to refer to the testimony of former Auschwitz-Birkenau prisoners Ota Kraus (No. 73046) and Erich Kulka (No. 73043). They went through the Nazi concentration camps of Dachau, Sachsenhausen and Auschwitz-Birkenau and were well aware of the rules established in these camps. Therefore, in the title of this chapter I used the name “Auschwitz-Birkenau”, since it was this name that was used by O. Kraus and E. Kulka in their book “The Death Factory” (M.: Gospolitizdat, 1960).
The atrocities of the guards and the living conditions of Red Army prisoners of war in Polish camps are very reminiscent of the Nazi atrocities at Auschwitz-Birkenau. For those who doubt, I will give a few quotes from the book “Factory of Death”.
O. Kraus and E. Kulka wrote that
“They didn’t live in Birkenau, but huddled in wooden barracks 40 meters long and 9 meters wide. The barracks had no windows, were poorly lit and ventilated... In total, the barracks housed 250 people. There were no washrooms or toilets in the barracks. Prisoners were forbidden to leave the barracks at night, so at the end of the barracks there were two tubs for sewage...”
“Exhaustion, illness and death of prisoners were caused by insufficient and poor nutrition, and more often by real hunger... There were no utensils for food in the camp... The prisoner received less than 300 grams of bread. Bread was given to the prisoners in the evening, and they ate it immediately. The next morning they received half a liter of a black liquid called coffee or tea and a tiny portion of sugar. For lunch, the prisoner received less than a liter of stew, which should have contained 150 g of potatoes, 150 g of turnips, 20 g of flour, 5 g of butter, 15 g of bones. In fact, it was impossible to find such modest doses of food in the stew... With poor nutrition and hard work, a strong and healthy beginner could only last for three months...”
Mortality was increased by the punishment system used in the camp. The offenses varied, but, as a rule, the commandant of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, without any analysis of the case, “... announced the sentence to the guilty prisoners. Most often, twenty lashes were prescribed... Soon bloody shreds of old clothes were flying in different directions...” The person being punished had to count the number of blows. If he got lost, the execution started all over again.
“For entire groups of prisoners... a punishment commonly used was called 'sport.' Prisoners were forced to quickly fall to the ground and jump up, crawl on their bellies and squat... Transfer to a prison block was a common measure for certain offenses. And staying in this block meant certain death... In the blocks, the prisoners slept without mattresses, right on bare boards... Along the walls and in the middle of the block-infirmary there were bunks with mattresses soaked in human waste... The sick lay next to the dying and already dead prisoners.”
Below I will give similar examples from Polish camps. Surprisingly, the Nazi sadists largely repeated the actions of their Polish predecessors. So, let’s open the collection “Red Army Men...”. Here is document No. 164, called “Report on the results of the inspection of the camps in Dąba and Strzałkowo” (October 1919).
“Inspection of the Dombe camp... The buildings are wooden. The walls are not solid, some buildings do not have wooden floors, the chambers are large... Most of the prisoners are without shoes - completely barefoot. There are almost no beds or bunks... There is no straw or hay. They sleep on the ground or boards... No linen or clothes; cold, hunger, dirt and all this threatens with enormous mortality...".
“Report on the inspection of the Strzalkowo camp. ...The state of health of the prisoners is appalling, the hygienic conditions of the camp are disgusting. Most of the buildings are dugouts with holes in the roofs, earthen floors, planks are very rare, the windows are covered with boards instead of glass... Many barracks are overcrowded. So, on October 19 this year. The barracks for captured communists were so crowded that entering it in the midst of the fog it was difficult to see anything. The prisoners were so crowded that they could not lie down, but were forced to stand, leaning on one another...”
It has been documented that in many Polish camps, including Strzałkowo, the Polish authorities did not bother to resolve the issue of prisoners of war meeting their natural needs at night. There were no toilets or buckets in the barracks, and the camp administration, under pain of execution, forbade leaving the barracks after 6 pm. Each of us can imagine such a situation...
It was mentioned in document No. 333 “Note of the Russian-Ukrainian delegation to the chairman of the Polish delegation with a protest against the conditions of detention of prisoners in Strzalkowo” (December 29, 1921) and in document No. 334 “Note of the Plenipotentiary Mission of the RSFSR in Warsaw of the Polish Foreign Ministry regarding the abuse of Soviet prisoners of war in the Strzalkowo camp" (January 5, 1922).
It should be noted that in both Nazi and Polish camps, the beating of prisoners of war was commonplace. Thus, in the above-mentioned document No. 334 it was noted that in the Strzalkowo camp “to this day, abuses of the personality of prisoners occur. Beatings of prisoners of war are a constant phenomenon...” It turns out that brutal beatings of prisoners of war in the Strzalkowo camp were practiced from 1919 to 1922.
This is confirmed by document No. 44 “Attitude of the Ministry of War of Poland to the Supreme Command of the Supreme Command regarding an article from the newspaper “Courier Nowy” regarding the abuse of Latvians who deserted from the Red Army with a transmittal note from the Ministry of War of Poland to the High Command” (January 16, 1920). It says that upon arrival at the Strzalkovo camp (apparently in the fall of 1919), the Latvians were first robbed, leaving them in their underwear, and then each of them received 50 blows with a barbed wire rod. More than ten Latvians died from blood poisoning, and two were shot without trial.
Responsible for this barbarity were the head of the camp, Captain Wagner, and his assistant, Lieutenant Malinovsky, who were distinguished by their sophisticated cruelty.
This is described in document No. 314 “Letter from the Russian-Ukrainian delegation to the Polish delegation of the PRUSK with a request to take action on the application of Red Army prisoners of war regarding the former commandant of the camp in Strzalkowo” (September 3, 1921).
The Red Army statement said that
“Lieutenant Malinovsky always walked around the camp, accompanied by several corporals who had wire lashes in their hands and ordered whoever he didn’t like to lie down in a ditch, and the corporals beat him as much as was ordered. If the beaten one moaned or begged for mercy, it was time. Malinovsky took out his revolver and shot... If the sentries shot the prisoners then. Malinowski gave them 3 cigarettes and 25 Polish marks as a reward... Repeatedly it was possible to observe how a group led by por. Malinovsky climbed onto machine gun towers and from there fired at defenseless people...”
Polish journalists became aware of the situation in the camp, and Lieutenant Malinowski was “put on trial” in 1921, and Captain Wagner was soon arrested. However, there are no reports of any punishments they suffered. Probably, the case was slowed down, since Malinovsky and Wagner were not charged with murder, but with “abuse of official position”?! Accordingly, the system of beatings in the Strzalkowo camp, and not only there, remained the same until the closure of the camps in 1922.
Like the Nazis, the Polish authorities used starvation as an effective means of exterminating captured Red Army soldiers. Thus, in document No. 168 “Telegram from the fortified region of Modlin to the section of prisoners of the High Command of the Polish Army about the mass disease of prisoners of war in the Modlin camp” (dated October 28, 1920) it is reported that an epidemic is raging among prisoners of war at the concentration station of prisoners and internees in Modlin stomach diseases, 58 people died. “The main causes of the disease are the prisoners’ consumption of various raw peelings and their complete lack of shoes and clothing.” I note that this is not an isolated case of starvation deaths of prisoners of war, which is described in the documents of the collection “Red Army Soldiers...”.
A general assessment of the situation that prevailed in Polish prisoner-of-war camps was given in document No. 310 “Minutes of the 11th meeting of the Mixed (Russian, Ukrainian and Polish delegations) repatriation commission on the situation of captured Red Army soldiers” (July 28, 1921). It was noted there, that “RUD (Russian-Ukrainian delegation) could never allow prisoners to be treated so inhumanely and with such cruelty... RUD does not remember the sheer nightmare and horror of beatings, mutilations and complete physical extermination that was carried out on Russian prisoners of war of the Red Army, especially communists, in the first days and months of captivity... .
The same protocol noted that “The Polish camp command, as if in retaliation after the first visit of our delegation, sharply intensified its repressions... Red Army soldiers are beaten and tortured for any reason and for no reason... the beatings took the form of an epidemic... When the camp command considers it possible to provide more humane conditions for the existence of prisoners of war, then prohibitions come from the Center.”
A similar assessment is given in document No. 318 “From the note of the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs of the RSFSR to the Charge d'Affaires Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Polish Republic T. Fillipovich on the situation and death of prisoners of war in Polish camps” (September 9, 1921).
It said: “The Polish Government remains entirely responsible for the unspeakable horrors that are still being committed with impunity in places like the Strzałkowo camp. It is enough to point out that within two years, out of 130,000 Russian prisoners of war in Poland, 60,000 died.”
According to the calculations of the Russian military historian M.V. Filimoshin, the number of Red Army soldiers who died and died in Polish captivity is 82,500 people (Filimoshin. Military History Magazine, No. 2. 2001). This figure seems quite reasonable. I believe that the above allows us to assert that Polish concentration camps and prisoner of war camps can rightfully be considered the forerunners of Nazi concentration camps.
I refer distrustful and inquisitive readers to my research “Antikatyn, or Red Army soldiers in Polish captivity”, presented in my books “The Secret of Katyn” (M.: Algorithm, 2007) and “Katyn. Modern history of the issue" (M.: Algorithm, 2012). It gives a more comprehensive picture of what was happening in the Polish camps.
Violence due to dissent
It is impossible to complete the topic of Polish concentration camps without mentioning two camps: the Belarusian “Bereza-Kartuzskaya” and the Ukrainian “Bialy Podlaski”. They were created in 1934 by the decision of the Polish dictator Jozef Pilsudski, as a means of reprisal against Belarusians and Ukrainians who protested against the Polish occupation regime of 1920–1939. Although they were not called concentration camps, in some ways they surpassed the Nazi concentration camps.
But first, about how many Belarusians and Ukrainians accepted the Polish regime established in the territories of Western Belarus and Western Ukraine captured by the Poles in 1920. This is what the newspaper Rzeczpospolita wrote in 1925. “...If there are no changes for several years, then we will have a general armed uprising there (in the eastern cresses). If we don’t drown it in blood, it will tear several provinces away from us... There is a gallows for an uprising and nothing more. Horror must fall on the entire local (Belarusian) population from top to bottom, from which the blood in their veins will freeze.”
In the same year, the famous Polish publicist Adolf Nevchinsky, on the pages of the Slovo newspaper, stated that it was necessary to conduct a conversation with Belarusians in the language of “gallows and only gallows... this will be the most correct resolution of the national question in Western Belarus.”
Feeling public support, Polish sadists in Bereza-Kartuzska and Biała Podlaska did not stand on ceremony with the rebellious Belarusians and Ukrainians. If the Nazis created concentration camps as monstrous factories for the mass extermination of people, then in Poland such camps were used as a means of intimidating the disobedient. How else can one explain the monstrous tortures to which Belarusians and Ukrainians were subjected? I will give examples.
In Bereza-Kartuzskaya, 40 people were crammed into small cells with a cement floor. To prevent prisoners from sitting down, the floor was constantly watered. They were forbidden to even talk in the cell. They tried to turn people into dumb cattle. A regime of silence for prisoners was also in force in the hospital. They beat me for moaning, for grinding teeth from unbearable pain.
The management of Bereza-Kartuzskaya cynically called it “the most athletic camp in Europe.” It was forbidden to walk here - only run. Everything was done on the whistle. Even the dream was on such a command. Half an hour on your left side, then the whistle, and immediately turn over to your right. Anyone who hesitated or did not hear the whistle in a dream was immediately subjected to torture. Before such a “sleep”, several buckets of water with bleach were poured into the rooms where the prisoners slept, for “prevention”. The Nazis failed to think of this.
The conditions in the punishment cell were even more terrible. The offenders were kept there from 5 to 14 days. To increase the suffering, several buckets of feces were poured onto the floor of the punishment cell. The pit in the punishment cell had not been cleaned for months. The room was infested with worms. In addition, the camp practiced group punishment such as cleaning camp toilets with glasses or mugs.
The commandant of Bereza-Kartuzska, Józef Kamal-Kurganski, in response to statements that prisoners could not withstand the torture conditions of detention and preferred death, calmly declared: “The more of them who rest here, the better it will be to live in my Poland.”
I believe that the above is enough to imagine what Polish camps for the rebellious are, and the story about the Biala Podlaska camp will be redundant.
In conclusion, I will add that the use of feces for torture was a favorite means of Polish gendarmes, apparently suffering from unsatisfied sadomasochistic tendencies. There are known facts when employees of the Polish defense forces forced prisoners to clean toilets with their hands, and then, without allowing them to wash their hands, they gave them lunch rations. Those who refused had their hands broken. Sergei Osipovich Pritytsky, a Belarusian fighter against the Polish occupation regime in the 1930s, recalled how Polish police poured slurry into his nose.
This is the unpleasant truth about the “skeleton in the Polish closet” called “concentration camps” that forced me to tell the gentlemen from Warsaw and the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in the Russian Federation.
P.S. Panova, please keep this in mind. I am not a Polonophobe. I enjoy watching Polish films, listening to Polish pop music, and I regret that I did not master the Polish language at one time. But I “hate it” when Polish Russophobes brazenly distort the history of Polish-Russian relations with the tacit consent of official Russia.
On April 27, 1940, the first Auschwitz concentration camp was created, intended for the mass extermination of people.
Concentration camp - a place for the forced isolation of real or perceived opponents of the state, political regime, etc. Unlike prisons, ordinary camps for prisoners of war and refugees, concentration camps were created by special decrees during the war, the aggravation of political struggle.
In Nazi Germany, concentration camps were an instrument of mass state terror and genocide. Although the term "concentration camp" was used to refer to all Nazi camps, there were actually several types of camps, and the concentration camp was just one of them.
Other types of camps included labor and forced labor camps, extermination camps, transit camps, and prisoner of war camps. As war events progressed, the distinction between concentration camps and labor camps became increasingly blurred, as hard labor was also used in concentration camps.
Concentration camps in Nazi Germany were created after the Nazis came to power in order to isolate and repress opponents of the Nazi regime. The first concentration camp in Germany was established near Dachau in March 1933.
By the beginning of World War II, there were 300 thousand German, Austrian and Czech anti-fascists in prisons and concentration camps in Germany. In subsequent years, Hitler's Germany created a gigantic network of concentration camps on the territory of the European countries it occupied, turning them into places for the organized systematic murder of millions of people.
Fascist concentration camps were intended for the physical destruction of entire peoples, primarily Slavic ones; total extermination of Jews and Gypsies. For this purpose, they were equipped with gas chambers, gas chambers and other means of mass extermination of people, crematoria.
(Military encyclopedia. Chairman of the Main Editorial Commission S.B. Ivanov. Military Publishing House. Moscow. in 8 volumes - 2004. ISBN 5 - 203 01875 - 8)
There were even special death (extermination) camps, where the liquidation of prisoners proceeded at a continuous and accelerated pace. These camps were designed and built not as places of detention, but as death factories. It was assumed that people doomed to death were supposed to spend literally several hours in these camps. In such camps, a well-functioning conveyor belt was built that turned several thousand people a day into ashes. These include Majdanek, Auschwitz, Treblinka and others.
Concentration camp prisoners were deprived of freedom and the ability to make decisions. The SS strictly controlled every aspect of their lives. Violators of the peace were severely punished, subjected to beatings, solitary confinement, food deprivation and other forms of punishment. Prisoners were classified according to their place of birth and reasons for imprisonment.
Initially, prisoners in the camps were divided into four groups: political opponents of the regime, representatives of the “inferior races,” criminals and “unreliable elements.” The second group, including Gypsies and Jews, were subject to unconditional physical extermination and were kept in separate barracks.
They were subjected to the most cruel treatment by the SS guards, they were starved, they were sent to the most grueling works. Among the political prisoners were members of anti-Nazi parties, primarily communists and social democrats, members of the Nazi party accused of serious crimes, listeners of foreign radio, and members of various religious sects. Among the “unreliable” were homosexuals, alarmists, dissatisfied people, etc.
There were also criminals in the concentration camps, whom the administration used as overseers of political prisoners.
All concentration camp prisoners were required to wear distinctive insignia on their clothing, including a serial number and a colored triangle (“Winkel”) on the left side of the chest and right knee. (In Auschwitz, the serial number was tattooed on the left forearm.) All political prisoners wore a red triangle, criminals wore a green triangle, “unreliables” wore a black triangle, homosexuals wore a pink triangle, and gypsies wore a brown triangle.
In addition to the classification triangle, Jews also wore yellow, as well as a six-pointed “Star of David.” A Jew who violated racial laws ("racial desecrator") was required to wear a black border around a green or yellow triangle.
Foreigners also had their own distinctive signs (the French wore the sewn letter “F”, the Poles - “P”, etc.). The letter "K" denoted a war criminal (Kriegsverbrecher), the letter "A" - a violator of labor discipline (from German Arbeit - "work"). The weak-minded wore the Blid badge - “fool”. Prisoners who participated or were suspected of escaping were required to wear a red and white target on their chest and back.
The total number of concentration camps, their branches, prisons, ghettos in the occupied countries of Europe and in Germany itself, where people were kept in the most difficult conditions and destroyed by various methods and means, is 14,033 points.
Of the 18 million citizens of European countries who passed through camps for various purposes, including concentration camps, more than 11 million people were killed.
The concentration camp system in Germany was liquidated along with the defeat of Hitlerism, and was condemned in the verdict of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg as a crime against humanity.
Currently, the Federal Republic of Germany has adopted the division of places of forced detention of people during the Second World War into concentration camps and “other places of forced confinement, under conditions equivalent to concentration camps,” in which, as a rule, forced labor was used.
The list of concentration camps includes approximately 1,650 names of concentration camps of the international classification (main and their external commands).
On the territory of Belarus, 21 camps were approved as “other places”, on the territory of Ukraine - 27 camps, on the territory of Lithuania - 9, in Latvia - 2 (Salaspils and Valmiera).
On the territory of the Russian Federation, places of forced detention in the city of Roslavl (camp 130), the village of Uritsky (camp 142) and Gatchina are recognized as “other places”.
List of camps recognized by the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany as concentration camps (1939-1945)
1.Arbeitsdorf (Germany)
2. Auschwitz/Auschwitz-Birkenau (Poland)
3. Bergen-Belsen (Germany)
4. Buchenwald (Germany)
5. Warsaw (Poland)
6. Herzogenbusch (Netherlands)
7. Gross-Rosen (Germany)
8. Dachau (Germany)
9. Kauen/Kaunas (Lithuania)
10. Krakow-Plaszczow (Poland)
11. Sachsenhausen (GDR-FRG)
12. Lublin/Majdanek (Poland)
13. Mauthausen (Austria)
14. Mittelbau-Dora (Germany)
15. Natzweiler (France)
16. Neuengamme (Germany)
17. Niederhagen-Wewelsburg (Germany)
18. Ravensbrück (Germany)
19. Riga-Kaiserwald (Latvia)
20. Faifara/Vaivara (Estonia)
21. Flossenburg (Germany)
22. Stutthof (Poland).
Largest Nazi concentration camps
Buchenwald is one of the largest Nazi concentration camps. It was created in 1937 in the vicinity of Weimar (Germany). Originally called Ettersberg. Had 66 branches and external work teams. The largest: "Dora" (near the city of Nordhausen), "Laura" (near the city of Saalfeld) and "Ordruf" (in Thuringia), where the FAU projectiles were mounted. From 1937 to 1945 About 239 thousand people were prisoners of the camp. In total, 56 thousand prisoners of 18 nationalities were tortured in Buchenwald.
The camp was liberated on April 10, 1945 by units of the US 80th Division. In 1958, a memorial complex dedicated to Buchenwald was opened. to the heroes and victims of the concentration camp.
Auschwitz-Birkenau, also known by the German names Auschwitz or Auschwitz-Birkenau, is a complex of German concentration camps located in 1940-1945. in southern Poland 60 km west of Krakow. The complex consisted of three main camps: Auschwitz 1 (served as the administrative center of the entire complex), Auschwitz 2 (also known as Birkenau, "death camp"), Auschwitz 3 (a group of approximately 45 small camps set up in factories and mines around general complex).
More than 4 million people died in Auschwitz, including more than 1.2 million Jews, 140 thousand Poles, 20 thousand Gypsies, 10 thousand Soviet prisoners of war and tens of thousands of prisoners of other nationalities.
On January 27, 1945, Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz. In 1947, the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum (Auschwitz-Brzezinka) was opened in Auschwitz.
Dachau (Dachau) - the first concentration camp in Nazi Germany, created in 1933 on the outskirts of Dachau (near Munich). Had approximately 130 branches and external work teams located in Southern Germany. More than 250 thousand people from 24 countries were prisoners of Dachau; About 70 thousand people were tortured or killed (including about 12 thousand Soviet citizens).
In 1960, a monument to the victims was unveiled in Dachau.
Majdanek - a Nazi concentration camp, was created in the suburbs of the Polish city of Lublin in 1941. It had branches in southeastern Poland: Budzyn (near Krasnik), Plaszow (near Krakow), Trawniki (near Wiepsze), two camps in Lublin. According to the Nuremberg trials, in 1941-1944. In the camp, the Nazis killed about 1.5 million people of various nationalities. The camp was liberated by Soviet troops on July 23, 1944. In 1947, a museum and research institute was opened in Majdanek.
Treblinka - Nazi concentration camps near the station. Treblinka in the Warsaw Voivodeship of Poland. In Treblinka I (1941-1944, so-called labor camp), about 10 thousand people died, in Treblinka II (1942-1943, extermination camp) - about 800 thousand people (mostly Jews). In August 1943, in Treblinka II, the fascists suppressed a prisoner uprising, after which the camp was liquidated. Camp Treblinka I was liquidated in July 1944 as Soviet troops approached.
In 1964, on the site of Treblinka II, a memorial symbolic cemetery for victims of fascist terror was opened: 17 thousand tombstones made of irregular stones, a monument-mausoleum.
Ravensbruck - a concentration camp was founded near the city of Fürstenberg in 1938 as an exclusively women's camp, but later a small camp for men and another for girls were created nearby. In 1939-1945. 132 thousand women and several hundred children from 23 European countries passed through the death camp. 93 thousand people were killed. On April 30, 1945, the prisoners of Ravensbrück were liberated by soldiers of the Soviet army.
Mauthausen - the concentration camp was created in July 1938, 4 km from Mauthausen (Austria) as a branch of the Dachau concentration camp. Since March 1939 - an independent camp. In 1940 it was merged with the Gusen concentration camp and became known as Mauthausen-Gusen. It had about 50 branches scattered throughout the former Austria (Ostmark). During the existence of the camp (until May 1945), it housed about 335 thousand people from 15 countries. According to surviving records alone, more than 122 thousand people were killed in the camp, including more than 32 thousand Soviet citizens. The camp was liberated on May 5, 1945 by American troops.
After the war, on the site of Mauthausen, 12 states, including the Soviet Union, created a memorial museum and erected monuments to those who died in the camp.
Next, we suggest going on a virtual tour of a terrible place - the German Majdanek death camp, which was built on Polish territory during the Second World War. Currently, there is a museum on the camp grounds.
From Warsaw to the museum at the site of the “death camp” (outskirts of Lublin) it takes two and a half hours by car. Admission is free, but few people want to visit. Only in the crematorium building, where five ovens turned prisoners into ashes every day, is a school field trip crowded with a Catholic priest. Preparing to celebrate Mass in memory of the Poles martyred in Majdanek, the priest lays a tablecloth on the prepared table, takes out the Bible and candles. Teenagers are clearly not interested here - they joke, smile, and go out to smoke. “Do you know who liberated this camp?” - I ask. There is confusion among young Poles. "English?" – the blonde girl says hesitantly. "No, Americans!" - a thin guy interrupts her. - “It seems there was a landing party here!” “Russians,” the priest says quietly. The schoolchildren are amazed - the news for them is like a bolt from the blue. On July 22, 1944, the Red Army was greeted in Lublin with flowers and tears of joy. Now we cannot wait for the liberation of the concentration camps, not even gratitude - just basic respect.
Almost everything has been preserved in Majdanek. Double fencing with barbed wire, SS guard towers and blackened crematorium ovens. On the barracks with the gas chamber there is a sign screwed on - “Washing and disinfection.” Fifty people were brought here at a time, supposedly “to go to the bathhouse” - they were given soap and asked to fold their clothes carefully. Victims entered the cement shower room, the door was locked and gas was leaking from holes in the ceiling. The peephole in the door is amazing - some bastard from the SS calmly watched people die in agony. Rare visitors speak quietly, as if in a cemetery. A girl from Israel cries, burying her face in her boyfriend's shoulder. A museum employee reports: 80,000 people died in the camp. "Like this? – I’m surprised. “After all, at the Nuremberg trials the figure of 300 thousand appeared, a third of them were Poles.” It turns out that after 1991, the number of victims has been constantly decreasing - at first it was decided that 200 thousand people were tortured in Majdanek, and recently they “knocked it down” to eighty: they say, more precisely, they recounted it.
I wouldn’t be surprised if in ten years the Polish authorities begin to claim with such standards that no one died in Majdanek at all, the concentration camp was an exemplary sanatorium-resort where prisoners underwent health procedures,” says Maciej Wisniewski, editor-in-chief of the Strajk Internet portal, indignantly. - My father, who was a partisan during the war, said: “Yes, the Russians brought us a regime that we did not want. But the main thing is that the gas chambers and ovens stopped working in the SS concentration camps.” In Poland, state propaganda at all levels is trying to silence the merits of Soviet soldiers in saving tens of millions of lives. After all, if it were not for the Red Army, the Majdanek crematorium would continue to smoke every day.
It only takes a minute to walk from the gas chamber - you find yourself in a barracks filled to the brim with old, half-rotten shoes. I look at her for a long time. Expensive shoes of fashionistas (one even made of snakeskin), men's boots, children's boots. There are more of them - but in 2010, one museum barrack burned down for unknown reasons (possibly from arson): 7,000 pairs of shoes were lost in the fire. On November 3, 1943, as part of the so-called “Operation Erntedankfest” (harvest festival), the SS shot 18,400 Jews in Majdanek, including many citizens of the USSR. People were forced to lie down in ditches on top of each other, “in a layer,” and then were shot in the back of the head. 611 people then spent a week sorting the property of the executed, including these very shoes. The sorters were also destroyed - the men were shot, the women were sent to the gas chamber. In the room nearby there is a memorial to nameless prisoners whose identities could not be established: rows of light bulbs shrouded in balls of barbed wire are burning. An audio recording is played - in Polish, Russian, Yiddish, people ask God to save their lives.
The current museum occupies only a quarter of the actual territory of Majdanek: founded on October 1, 1941, it was a concentration camp city with “districts” where women, Jews, and Polish rebels were kept separately. The first inhabitants of the “SS special zone” were 2,000 Soviet prisoners of war; after just a month and a half (!), three quarters of them died from unbearable conditions of detention. The museum's exhibition does not focus on this fact. By January 1942, all the remaining prisoners had died - the camp stood empty until March, when 50,000 new prisoners were brought in. They were destroyed so quickly that one crematorium could not cope with the burning of bodies - a second one had to be built.
The towers above the camp darkened with time, the wood became coal black. 73 years ago, two SS guards stood on each one, watching Majdanek - often, in despair, the prisoners themselves walked into the bullets just to end their torment. The ashes of thousands of prisoners were buried in a huge mausoleum built next to the crematorium - the Red Army soldiers who liberated Majdanek discovered boxes of ashes, which the guards prepared for disposal. The crematorium ovens are smoked by fire; they cannot be cleaned of the remains of hundreds of thousands of people soaked into the metal. One of the prisoners who ended up in Majdanek at the age of six (!), a native of the Vitebsk region, Alexander Petrov, said that Jewish preschool children were burned alive in these ovens. Survivors in the camp testify that the Germans did not show much hatred towards them. They boredly tried to kill as many people as possible while doing their job. Of all the trees in the camp, only one survived. On the rest, the prisoners, dying of terrible hunger, ate the bark and chewed off the roots.
Looking at this camp even now makes me feel uneasy. And people lived there for almost 3 years. In the photo - Majdanek itself, the gas chamber, barracks, crematorium.
Just hearing this name alone brings a lump to your throat. Auschwitz remains in people's minds for many years as an example of genocide that resulted in the death of an incredible number of people. Every year, hundreds of thousands of people come to Auschwitz, a city whose name is inextricably associated with the infamous Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz, to learn its history and honor the memory of those killed.
The Auschwitz concentration camp became one of the most effective elements of this conveyor belt of death. An excursion here and to the neighboring Birkenau camp leaves an unforgettable impression.
Auschwitz
Open: daily 8.00-19.00, free admission, www.auschwitz.org.pl
Above the camp gate are written the words: "Arbeit Macht Frei" (“Work will set you free”). The camp authorities, fleeing the advancing Soviet army, tried to destroy evidence of the genocide, but did not have time, so that about 30 camp blocks were preserved, some of them became part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.
Up to 200,000 people could be held in the camp every day. There were 300 prison barracks, 5 huge gas chambers, each of which could accommodate 2,000 people, and a crematorium. It is impossible to forget this terrible place.
Auschwitz was originally a barracks for the Polish army. Jews from countries such as Norway, Greece, etc., were herded onto freight trains, where there was no water, no food, no toilets and almost no air to breathe, and were taken to concentration camps in Poland. The first 728 “prisoners of war,” most Poles and all from the city of Tarnow, were brought here in June 1940. Then whole streams of Jews and Soviet prisoners of war were sent to the camps. They turned into slaves; some died of starvation, others were executed, and many were sent to gas chambers, where mass murder was carried out using the poisonous gas "Cyclone-B".
Auschwitz was only partially destroyed by the retreating Nazis, so many buildings that bear witness to the atrocities that took place have been preserved. The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum is located in the ten surviving barracks (Tel.: 33 844 8100; www.auschwitz.org.pl; admission free; 08.00-19.00 June-August, 08.00-18.00 May and September, 08.00-17.00 April and October, 08.00-16.00 March and November, 08.00-15.00 December - February).In 2007, UNESCO, when adding the complex to the World Heritage List, gave it the name “Auschwitz-Birkenau - Nazi German Concentration Camp” (1940-45)”, to focus attention on Poland’s non-involvement in its creation and functioning.
A 15-minute documentary is shown every half hour in the visitor center cinema located at the entrance to the camp. (ticket for adults/discount 3.50/2.50zt) about the liberation of the camp by Soviet troops on January 27, 1945. It is shown in English, German and French throughout the day. Check the information desk for the schedule as soon as you arrive. The film is not recommended for viewing by children under 14 years of age. Documentary footage filmed after the camp was liberated by Soviet troops in 1945 will provide a useful introduction to those trying to comprehend what they are about to see. The visitor center also has a cafeteria, bookstores, and a currency exchange office. (kantor) and a storage room.
At the end of the war, the Nazis tried to destroy the camp during their flight, but about 30 barracks survived, as well as guard towers and barbed wire. You can freely walk between barracks and enter those that are open. In one of them, glass cases contain piles of shoes, crooked glasses, piles of human hair and suitcases with the names and addresses of prisoners who were told they were simply being relocated to another city. Photographs of prisoners are hung in the corridors, some of which are decorated with flowers brought by surviving relatives. Next to block No. 11, the so-called “death block,” there is an execution wall, where prisoners were shot. Here the Nazis conducted their first experiments using the Zyklon-B. The barrack next door is dedicated to the “Trials of the Jewish People.” At the end of the exhibition of historical documents and photographs, the names of people killed in the concentration camps are listed to the piercing, sad melody of “Merciful God.”
General information is provided in Polish, English and Hebrew, but to better understand everything, purchase the small guide to Auschwitz-Birkenau (translated into 15 languages), available at the visitor center. From May to October, visitors arriving between 10.00 and 15.00 can explore the museum only as part of a guided tour. English-language excursions (price for adults/discounted 39/30zl, 3.5 hours) start daily at 10.00, 11.00, 13.00, 15.00, and they can also organize a tour for you if there is a group of ten people. Excursions in other languages, including Russian, must be booked in advance.
Auschwitz can be easily reached from Krakow. If you want to stay nearby, the Center for Dialogue and Prayer is 700 meters from the complex (Centrum Dialogu i Modlitwy w Oswiecimiu; Tel.: 33 843 1000; www. centrum-dialogu.oswiecim.pl; Kolbego street (ul. Kolbego), 1; camping place 25zl, single/double room 104/208zl). It is cozy and quiet, the price includes breakfast, and you can also be offered full board. Most rooms have private bathrooms.
Birkenau
Admission to Birkenau is free, open from 08.00-19.00 June - August; 08.00-18.00 May and September; 08.00-17.00 April and October; 08.00-16.00 March and November; 08.00-15.00 December - February.
Birkenau, also known as Auschwitz II, is located 3 km from Auschwitz. A short inscription in Birkenau reads: “Let this place be forever a cry of despair and a warning to humanity, where the Nazis exterminated about one and a half million men, women and children, mostly Jews, from various countries of Europe.”
Birkenau was built in 1941, when Hitler moved from isolating political prisoners to a program of mass extermination. Three hundred long barracks on an area of 175 hectares served as storage for the most brutal machine of Hitler’s “solution” to the Jewish question. Approximately 3/4 of the Jews brought to Birkenau were sent to the gas chambers immediately upon arrival.
Indeed, Birkenau was the epitome of a death camp: it had its own railway station for transporting prisoners, four huge gas chambers, each of which could kill 2,000 people at once, and a crematorium equipped with elevators for loading the ovens with the bodies of prisoners.
Visitors are given the opportunity to climb to the second floor of the main guard tower at the entrance, which offers views of the entire huge camp. Seemingly endless rows of barracks, towers and barbed wire - all this could accommodate up to 200 thousand prisoners at a time. At the back of the camp, behind a terrible pond where the ashes of the murdered people were poured, there is an unusual monument to the victims of the Holocaust with an inscription in 20 languages of those prisoners who were killed in Auschwitz and Birkenau.
While retreating, the Germans, although they destroyed most of the structures, just look at the area fenced with barbed wire to understand the scale of the crimes committed by the Nazis. A viewing platform at the entrance to the camp will allow you to look around a large area. In some ways, Birkenau is even more shocking than Auschwitz, and there are generally fewer tourists here. It is not necessary to visit the memorial as part of a tour group.
Road there and back
Typically, a visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau takes place as a day trip from Krakow.
There are 12 daily flights from Krakow Main Station to Auschwitz (13zt, 1.5 hours) Even more trains depart from the Krakow-Plaszow station. A more convenient way to travel is the hourly bus service to Auschwitz from the bus station. (11zt, 1.5 hours) who are either passing by the museum or it is their final stop. For bus schedules in the opposite direction, see the information board at the Birkenau Visitor Center. From a stop near the street. Pavia near Galeria Krakowska, numerous minibuses go in this direction.
From April 15 to October 31, from 11.30 to 16.30, buses run between Auschwitz and Birkenau every half hour. (from May to September traffic stops at 17.30, from June to August - at 18.30). You can also walk the 3 km between camps or take a taxi. There are buses from Auschwitz to the local train station (movement interval 30-40 minutes). Many Krakow travel agencies organize excursions to Auschwitz and Birkenau (from 90zt to 120zt per person). Find out in advance how much time you will be given to stay at museums, as some of them have a very busy schedule and you may not have time to see everything that interests you.
