More people died in Auschwitz than the British and American losses of WW2 combined.
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About 1 in 6 Jews killed in the Holocaust died at Auschwitz.
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1.1 million people died during the four and a half years of Auschwitz's existence.
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Auschwitz was first constructed to hold Polish political prisoners, who began to arrive in May 1940.
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144
prisoners are known to have escaped from Auschwitz successfully.
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Besides Jews, others deported to Auschwitz included 150,000 Poles, 23,000 Romani and Sinti, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war and 400 Jehovah's Witnesses.
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Witold Pilecki, a Polish soldier, volunteered to be imprisoned in Auschwitz in order to gather information, escape and let the world know about the Holocaust.
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Auschwitz's camp commandant Rudolf Hoss, was arrested in 1946, convicted of murder and hanged at the camp.
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About 60 million Reichmarks, equivalent to £125m today, was generated for the Nazi state by slave labour at Auschwitz during the Holocaust.
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During the Holocaust, a Jewish woman exposed up to 3,000 hiding Jews to the Gestapo to save her family. Even after the Nazis sent her parents and husband to Auschwitz anyway in 1943, she continued to work for the Gestapo until 1945.
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Of a total of about 7,000 staff at Auschwitz, only 750 were ever punished.
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Josef Mengele's "scientific" experiments at Auschwitz often involved studies of twins. If one twin died, he would immediately kill the other and carry out comparative autopsies.
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The main camp of Auschwitz was like a small town, with its own staff canteen, cinema, theatre and grocery store.
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Polish midwife Stanislawa Leszczynska helped pregnant women in Auschwitz deliver over 3,000 babies.
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Antoni Dobrowolski, the oldest known survivor of Auschwitz, died aged 108 on October 21, 2012, in Poland.
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In Auschwitz, an SS guard fell in love with a Jewish prisoner. He saved her life multiple times and she testified on his behalf during his post-war trial.
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The company that created Zyklon B, the gas that was used to kill millions of Jews in the Holocaust, still exists as a pest control company.
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During the Holocaust, Jewish boxer Salamo Arouch was imprisoned at Auschwitz. He was forced to fight fellow prisoners; the losers were sent to the gas chambers or shot. He survived over 2 years and 200 fights until the camp was liberated.
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Bayer, famous for producing aspirin, bought prisoners from Auschwitz to use as research subjects for testing new drugs.
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Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl drew on his imprisonment at Auschwitz in writing "Man's Search for Meaning," the base for Logotherapy.
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On July 21, 1944, inmate Jerzy Bielecki dressed in an SS uniform and using a faked pass, managed to cross the Auschwitz's gate together with his Jewish girlfriend, Cyla. Both survived the war.
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During a revolt at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp, a member of the SS was stabbed, then burned alive in a crematorium oven.
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Anne Frank's father survived Auschwitz and died in 1980 of lung cancer.
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After Auschwitz became a museum in 1947, exhumation work lasted for more than a decade.
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In 1942, four Auschwitz inmates successfully escaped by stealing SS officer uniforms and driving a stolen Nazi car through the camp's front gate.
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Rabbits lived a life of luxury in concentration camps such as Auschwitz and Dachau. Their wool was used to make warm clothes for the German military.
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