Auschwitz: the facts
13 April 2012
- Auschwitz-Birkenau, built in May 1940 and liberated by the Red Army on 27 January 1945, was the largest Nazi concentration camp
- At least 1.2 million people were killed there - more people than the British and US losses of the Second World War combined
- In total 90 per cent of the Jewish population in Poland died - some 2.8 million people
- Victims included a million Jews, plus political prisoners, Soviet PoWs, gipsies, homosexuals, people with disabilities and prisoners of conscience or religious faith
- Gassing with Zyklon B began in autumn 1941
- A Hebrew sign at the gas chamber entrance proclaimed: "This is a Gateway to God"
- Some non-Jewish female prisoners were given the option of "light work", prostitution
- Josef Mengele experimented on twins; if one died, he would kill the other to compare autopsies
- Some prisoners buried accounts of the atrocities, which were discovered after the war
- Slave labour at Auschwitz generated about £125million for the Nazi state
- Guards had their own athletics team and there was a cinema, theatre and grocery store
- Rudolf Hess, commander until May 1943, was hanged on 16 April 1947 - one of only 750 of the 7,000 staff to be punished
- Others went on to successful careers - one as human resources chief in a large firm
- Some 500 survivors of Nazi death camps or ghettos live in Britain
- Almost half of adult Britons have not heard of Auschwitz, a BBC survey revealed
