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MEMORIAL AND MUSEUM AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU FORMER GERMAN NAZI
CONCENTRATION AND EXTERMINATION CAMP

News

First transport of prisoners sent to Auschwitz Concentration Camp. An Exhibition

12-06-2000

A new exhibition opened on June 12 in the reception center for visitors to the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. The exhibition is devoted to the first transport of prisoners sent to Auschwitz Concentration Camp by the German occupying forces.

A group of 728 Poles, a small percentage of whom were Jewish, was transported to Auschwitz from the prison in Tarnów on June 14, 1940. It was on that day that the camp officially went into operation. The exhibition includes a list of the names of those first prisoners of Auschwitz Concentration Camp. The subsequent fate of several of these prisoners can be followed. Irena Strzelecka published her research on this group in Zeszyty Oswiecimskie, number 17. According to Strzelecka, approximately 240 of them survived the war. The others died in camp or in other, unknown circumstances.

The exhibition is the work of the Exhibition Department of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, and will be on view for several months.