Auchwitz
It’s said that if walls could talk, then wouldn’t they have a story to tell. Well, if the walls at Auschwitz could talk, they would tell stories about pain, stories about torture, and stories about death. This is the story of those walls. On April 27, 1940 Heinrich Himmler ordered the establishment of a large concentration camp 37 miles west of Krakow, in Oswiecam, Poland. The location selected was a very damp and musty place. When Auschwitz opened on June 14, 1940 it was intended to be a concentration camp, and a place for a slow death for Polish political prisoners. In fact, on March 1, 1941 the population was 10,900 prisoners, most of them Polish. The first group to arrive at Auschwitz was a group of 728 Polish political prisoners (including a handful of Jews) from Tarnow, Poland on June 14, 1940. The first large group of prisoners from outside Poland was a group of Czechs in June 1941. Soviet prisoners of war arrived a month later, immediately after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. By 1942 women prisoners began arriving. In February 1942 the first transport made up entirely of Jews was shipped to Auschwitz.