Memoria [EN] No. 33 (06/2020) | Page 15

Finally, such number became legitimate upon the ordinance of Richard Gluck as of June 1st 1940.

A reference point may be constituted here by the fact that upon the outbreak of the war, in September 1939, about 20, 000 prisoners were in total incarcerated in all concentration camps in Germany. As a result of important organizational difficulties as well as material deficiencies, adjustments to initial plans from April 1940 were made in the summer of that year.

Finally, camp fencing (planned as temporary), was constructed around 20 former brick and mortar barracks. In addition, in 14 single-level objects, next floors began to be constructed. According to the initial plan, this limited zone was supposed to accommodate 10, 000 prisoners; in reality, there were usually nearly two times more of them crowded within this space.

The aimed capacity of 30,000 prisoners was never abandoned. All activities conducted basing on revised plans were always based on the initially estimated camp size, or it was even extended (for example the plan from the spring 1942 assumed that as many as 50 thousand prisoners could be incarcerated in the camp)

6) Initially, Auschwitz was a typical concentration camp

Yes, but from the very beginning, high mortality rate of prisoners was assumed. Its establishment coincides with the A-B action conducted by German police forces, assuming further extermination among others of Polish intelligentsia as well as the members of emerging underground organizations. KL Auschwitz had its role assigned in connection with this purpose. It was the first concentration camp in which the construction of stationary camp crematorium was planned from the very beginning and implemented. Decision in this matter was made already in April 1940, while the installation of the first stove began two weeks after the arrival of the first transport of Polish political prisoners from Tarnów. It was launched in mid-August and its daily cremation capacity amounted to ca. 100 corpses. It very quickly turned out to be insufficient and already in the autumn, it was decided to extend the crematorium installation with the next identical stove manufactured by the German company Topf und Soehne from Erfurt. It can thus be assumed that, with the size of the camp at the time, SS was able to murder and cremate the bodies of all KL Auschwitz prisoners in maximum 3-4 weeks.

Official order to expand Auschwitz to a capacity of 30 thousand prisoners