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Webinar "SS Garrison in KL Auschwitz" - 3 December 2025

The International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust invites you to the webinar “The SS Garrion in KL Auschwitz.” It will take place on 3 December 2025 on the Zoom platform and will be simultaneously translated into English.

Two lectures are planned. Dr. Piotr Setkiewicz, Head of the Museum Research Center, will discuss the SS personnel in KL Auschwitz and the contrast between the nature of their service and the seeming normality of their private lives. Dr. Sylwia Wysińska from the Museum Archives will speak about the female guards in the women’s camp.

Program (time zone CET)

16:00 | Opening of the webinar

16:05–17:35 | Everyday life of SS men in KL Auschwitz – living conditions and leisure time - lecture by Dr. Piotr Setkiewicz, Museum Research Center

17:35–17:45 | Break

17:45–18:45 | Female supervisory personnel (Aufseherinnen) in KL Auschwitz - lecture by Dr. Sylwia Wysińska, Museum Archives

Participation in the webinar is free of charge. Please submit applications using the online form by 1 December 2025. After this date, you will receive an email with the link to join the event. The webinar is intended for adults.

For additional information, please contact Dr. Maria Martyniak, ICEAH:

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The Auschwitz garrison consisted of two principal components: the administrative branch and the guard units. The camp commandant—who was simultaneously the commander of the garrison—stood at its head. The size of the garrison increased steadily as the number of prisoners grew:
March 1941: approx. 700 SS men, June 1942: 2,000, April 1944: almost 3,000, August 1944: 3,342,  January 1945: 4,480 (the highest figure, reached on the eve of the camp’s evacuation). 

The SS personnel had access to a hospital, a rest home, military facilities (including shooting ranges), as well as SS canteens. Rank-and-file SS men were quartered in barracks, while officers lived in houses in Oświęcim together with their families—homes from which the pre-war Polish residents had been forcibly removed. Of all SS men who served in Auschwitz, no more than 15 percent were prosecuted after the war.

From 1942 onward, women were also assigned to serve in KL Auschwitz. This was linked primarily to the establishment of the women’s camp, but also to personnel shortages among SS men increasingly deployed to the Eastern Front. Female guards were not members of the SS. They signed employment contracts with the SS-Totenkopf unit stationed at the camp. Once contracted, they were considered part of the SS personnel and were subject to the authority and disciplinary regulations of the camp commandant. In total, around 180 female guards served in Auschwitz.

More:

- Online lesson: “The SS Garrison of KL Auschwitz”
- Podcast about the SS garrison
- Online lesson: “Women working for the SS”
- Podcast about the women guards in Auschwitz