3) Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler gave the order to establish the camp in April 1940
From the very first days of the war, German SS Operation Groups – so called SS-Einsatzgruppen subordinated to Sicherheitspolizei and Sicherheitsdienst, with the support of so called Selbstschutz units and Freikorps consisting of the members of diversion formations were conducting intense extermination actions aimed in particular against the Poles, known among German intelligence for their patriotic, national and pro-state attitudes.
What is more, an extensive wave of arrests by Gestapo in the autumn of 1939 resulted in extreme overcrowding of prisons and detention centres. Transports directed by the German to camps located in the middle of the Reich would not solve the problem either, as they also quickly became overcrowded. The situation resulted in the outbreak of infectious diseases and high mortality rate among prisoners.
Thus, already in late 1939, former area of the colony of barracks and former Polish Army facilities in Auschwitz (Oświęcim returned to this name from the period of Partitions after the annexation of Western Polish territories to Germany in October 1939) became the subject of interest of Gruppenfuhrer Erich von dem Bach – Zelewski, Higher Commander of SS and the Police in Wrocław. By the intermediary of Arpad Wigand, his subordinate, first assumptions relating to the future camp were made. According to them, it was supposed to be treated as a concentration camp, but with the character of a gathering and quarantine area before further deportation of the arrested to other concentration camps inside Germany. Reports developed as a result of the review of Auschwitz premises in January and February 1940 revealed that the place was accepted as “appropriate for a concentration camp”; it was only necessary to remove some technical deficiencies.
The only problem left consisted in formal takeover of the area from Wehrmacht, under whose administration it remained from September 1939, when the camp for POWs, Polish soldiers taken into captivity during the September Campaign, was established. Negotiations were simultaneously carried out with German Railway of the Reich in connection with leasing railway sidings in the vicinity of the camp. Finally, at the turn of March and April, formalities were completed and on April 8th 1940, General Hans Halm, on behalf of the military side, handed the territory of former Polish Army barracks in Auschwitz over to SS. Even if the actual decision on the establishment of the camp was made in the early 1940, its formal creation can be dated as of the first half of April. The completion of all formalities automatically opened the way to assign by the SS Main Budget and Construction Office on April 15th 1940 the amount of 2 million Marks for the extension of the camp and a week later, to inaugurate the activity of so called SS Construction Department within its premises.
The agreement for the lease of the post-army barracks site by the SS