31 Jan Meet The People Who Are Defying Auschwitz’s Dark Past And Living There Today

The Second World War cast a dark shadow over the 20th century. The most devastating mass genocide in human history took place in a world that was ostensibly civilized, and yet six million European Jews lost their lives at the hands of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party.

This mass extermination predominately took place in concentration camps, the most notorious of which was Auschwitz.

Located in what was once Poland, the camp was the largest in existence during the Holocaust, and, from 1941 to 1945, a staggering one point one million people lost their lives there in what Hitler called the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question”.

While many prisoners died from exhaustion and starvation, the majority of them were murdered in gas chambers. To put the scale of the devastation into context, the camp’s four largest gas chambers could each kill 2,000 people at any one time.

In a meeting about the final solution, SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Main Security Office, said:

“Under proper guidance, in the course of the final solution the Jews are to be allocated for appropriate labor in the East. Able-bodied Jews, separated according to sex, will be taken in large work columns to these areas for work on roads, in the course of which action doubtless a large portion will be eliminated by natural causes.”

Once the Jews had served their purpose, they were to be murdered. In Auschwitz, the frail and elderly were often exterminated on arrival, with more able-bodied inmates being forced into labor. Those with biological abnormalities were often used for medical experiments.

Now, over 70 years since the end of the Second World War, the camp remains as a poignant reminder and memorial to the suffering of those who died during the Holocaust. However, while the camp might draw in over two million visitors a year, not many people realize that it exists in a fully functioning town.

To gain an insight into the reality of living in a place famed for such a dark reason, Vice interviewed the people living in Auschwitz today.

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