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65th Anniversary of the Mutiny of the Poles in the Penal Company
Museum staff placed floral tributes at the place where Polish prisoners in the so-called penal company attempted to escape while working on the grounds of the Birkenau camp on June 19, 1942.
As a result of a misunderstanding, about fifty prisoners, rather than the planned several hundred, made a run for it. Only seven of them succeeded in escaping. In reprisal, the SS took more than three hundred Polish prisoners from the penal company to the gas chamber and murdered them.
The escape claimed many victims. The Germans shot 13 prisoners in hot pursuit. The next day, as revenge, they shot 20 men and killed about 320 Poles from the penal company in the gas chamber.
Over the history of Auschwitz, a total of at least 800 people, most of them men, attempted to escape. Not more than 150 of them succeeded.
