MEMORIAL AND MUSEUM
AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU FORMER GERMAN NAZI CONCENTRATION AND EXTERMINATION CAMP
1944
May – First Ally planes flying over Auschwitz take aerial photographs, which show the gas chambers and smoke from the burning pits. Three months later American and British planes start bombing the synthetic rubber and liquid fuel plant of the German concern IG Farbenindustrie, located just a few kilometres from Birkenau.
16 May – Siding which is located inside the camp is released for use. It permits deportees to be transported directly to Gas Chambers Nos. II and III at Auschwitz II-Birkenau. The start of deportation to Auschwitz of almost 438,000 Jews from Hungary.
10–12 July – Liquidation of the so-called Theresienstadt family camp. The Nazis murder about 7,000 Jews in the gas chambers.
August – Start of deportation to Auschwitz of 67,000 Jews from the ghetto in Litzmannstadt (Łódź).
2 August – Liquidation of the “family Gypsy camp” – the SS murder some 4,200 Roma and Sinti prisoners in the gas chambers.
12 August – Start of deportation to Auschwitz of 13,000 Poles, arrested en masse after the start of the Warsaw Uprising.
7 October – Sonderkommando Mutiny. During the mutiny 3 members of the SS die as well as 450 Sonderkommando prisoners, Jewish prisoners forced to incinerate in the crematoria corpses of the murdered.
November – Mass murder of Jews in the gas chambers is stopped.
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