Editing Auschwitz concentration camp (section)

====First mass transport of Jews====
{{Further|Bytom Synagogue|Beuthen Jewish Community}}
Historians have disagreed about the date the all-Jewish transports began arriving in Auschwitz. At the [[Wannsee Conference]] in Berlin on 20 January 1942, the Nazi leadership outlined, in euphemistic language, its plans for the [[Final Solution]].<ref>{{harvnb|Czech|2000|p=142}}; {{harvnb|Świebocki|2002|pp=126–127, n.&nbsp;50}}.</ref> According to [[Franciszek Piper]], the Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss offered inconsistent accounts after the war, suggesting the extermination began in December 1941, January 1942, or before the establishment of the women's camp in March 1942.{{sfn|Piper|2000a|p=61}} In ''Kommandant in Auschwitz'', he wrote: "In the spring of 1942 the first transports of Jews, all earmarked for extermination, arrived from Upper Silesia."{{sfn|Höss|2003|p=148}} On 15 February 1942, according to [[Danuta Czech]], a transport of Jews from Beuthen, [[Upper Silesia]] ([[Bytom]], Poland), arrived at Auschwitz I and was sent straight to the gas chamber.{{efn|[[Danuta Czech]] (''[[Auschwitz 1940–1945]]'', Volume V, [[Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum]], 2000): "February 15, 1942: "The first transport of Jews arrested by the Stapo (State Police) in Katowice and fated to die at Auschwitz arrived from Beuthen. They were unloaded at the ramp on the camp railroad siding and ordered to leave their baggage there. The camp SS flying squad received the Jews from the Stapo and led the victims to the gas chamber in the camp crematorium. There, they were killed with the use of Zyklon B gas."{{sfn|Czech|2000|p=142}}}}<ref>{{harvnb|van Pelt|1998|p=145}}; {{harvnb|Piper|2000a|p=61}}; {{harvnb|Steinbacher|2005|p=107}}; [http://auschwitz.org/en/museum/news/anniversary-of-the-first-transport-of-polish-jews-to-auschwitz,120.html "Anniversary of the First Transport of Polish Jews to Auschwitz"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200114203017/http://auschwitz.org/en/museum/news/anniversary-of-the-first-transport-of-polish-jews-to-auschwitz,120.html |date=14 January 2020 }}. Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, 13 February 2006.</ref> In 1998 an eyewitness said the train contained "the women of Beuthen".{{efn|[[Mary Fulbrook]] (''A Small Town Near Auschwitz: Ordinary Nazis and the Holocaust'', Oxford University Press, 2012): "Gunter Faerber, for example, recalled the moment in February 1942 when the Jews of Beuthen (Bytom in Polish), where his grandmother lived, were brought through Bedzin on their way to Auschwitz.&nbsp;... Two large army trucks of Jewish women from Beuthen were brought 'straight to the station, they were queuing at the station&nbsp;... I was still given a chance to say goodbye because we knew already&nbsp;... that the women of Beuthen are arriving'&nbsp;... I went down to the station, I saw the long queue of women.' Faerber asked permission of a Gestapo guard to go up to his grandmother, who was with her sister, 'and I said goodbye, and that was the last I saw of them and the whole transport was moved out by train&nbsp;...'"{{sfn|Fulbrook|2012|pp=220–221, 396, n.&nbsp;49}}}} [[Saul Friedländer]] wrote that the Beuthen Jews were from the [[Organization Schmelt]] labor camps and had been deemed unfit for work.{{sfn|Friedländer|2007|p=359}} According to [[Christopher Browning]], transports of Jews unfit for work were sent to the gas chamber at Auschwitz from autumn 1941.{{sfn|Browning|2004|p=357}} The evidence for this and the February 1942 transport was contested in 2015 by [[Nikolaus Wachsmann]].{{sfn|Wachsmann|2015|p=707}}

Around 20 March 1942, according to Danuta Czech, a transport of Polish Jews from [[Silesia]] and [[Dąbrowa Basin|Zagłębie Dąbrowskie]] was taken straight from the station to the Auschwitz II gas chamber, which had just come into operation.{{sfn|Czech|2000|p=143}} On 26 and 28 March, two transports of Slovakian Jews were registered as prisoners in the [[#Women's camp|women's camp]], where they were kept for slave labour; these were the first transports organized by [[Adolf Eichmann]]'s [[Reich Security Head Office Referat IV B4|department IV B4]] (the Jewish office) in the [[Reich Security Head Office]] (RSHA).{{efn|[[Danuta Czech]] (''[[Auschwitz 1940–1945]]'', Volume V, 2000): "March 26, 1942: Nine hundred ninety-nine Jewish women from Poprad in Slovakia arrived, and were assigned numbers 1000–1998. This was the first registered transport sent to Auschwitz by RSHA IV B4 (the Jewish Office, directed by SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann)."{{sfn|Czech|2000|p=144}}}} On 30 March the first RHSA transport arrived from France.{{sfn|Czech|2000|p=144}} "Selection", where new arrivals were chosen for work or the gas chamber, began in April 1942 and was conducted regularly from July. Piper writes that this reflected Germany's increasing need for labour. Those selected as unfit for work were gassed without being registered as prisoners.{{sfn|Piper|2000a|p=62}}

There is also disagreement about how many were gassed in Auschwitz I. [[Perry Broad]], an ''SS-Unterscharführer'', wrote that "transport after transport vanished in the Auschwitz [I] crematorium."{{sfn|Piper|2000b|p=133, n.&nbsp;419}} In the view of [[Filip Müller]], one of the Auschwitz I ''[[Sonderkommando]]'', tens of thousands of Jews were murdered there from France, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Upper Silesia, and Yugoslavia, and from the [[Theresienstadt]], [[Ciechanow]], and [[Grodno Ghetto|Grodno]] ghettos.<ref name="Müller 1999 31">{{harvnb|Müller|1999|p=31}}; {{harvnb|Piper|2000b|p=133}}.</ref> Against this, [[Jean-Claude Pressac]] estimated that up to 10,000 people had been murdered in Auschwitz I.{{sfn|Piper|2000b|p=133, n.&nbsp;419}} The last inmates gassed there, in December 1942, were around 400 members of the Auschwitz II ''Sonderkommando'', who had been forced to dig up and burn the remains of that camp's mass graves, thought to hold over 100,000 corpses.<ref>{{harvnb|Piper|2000b|p=132, for more on the corpses, p.&nbsp;140}}; for 400 prisoners and over 107,000 corpses, see {{harvnb|Czech|2000|p=165}}.</ref>