Talk:Auschwitz

British were involved
According to WP: The gas chambers of Birkenau were blown up by the SS in January 1945 in an attempt to hide the German crimes from the advancing Soviet troops. On January 20 the SS command sent orders to murder all the prisoners remaining in the camp, but in the chaos of the Nazi retreat the order was never carried out. On January 17, 1945 Nazi personnel started to evacuate the facility; nearly sixty thousand prisoners, most of those remaining, were forced on a death march to the camp toward Wodzisław Śląski (German: Loslau). Some 20,000 Auschwitz prisoners made it to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany, where they were liberated by the British in April 1945. So British were involved in liberating the prisoners (not the camp). As it stood, the context in the article was accurate. --Irrational Atheist 11:42, 22 December 2008 (EST)

Belsen is not Auschwitz. The article implies that Auschwitz was liberated by the British, which is wrong. PFoster 11:43, 22 December 2008 (EST)
 * The article implied the prisoners of the local camps were liberated by British and Soviet troops. Perhaps a better explanation of the shifting of prisoners from this to other camps, and links to other such camps, would suffice? --Irrational Atheist 11:47, 22 December 2008 (EST)


 * Something--Belsen was near Hanover, not anywhere near Poland and hundreds of kilometers away; what I want to avoid is an easy conflation with us boiling everything down to Auschwitz. As well, we may want to complicate things by talking about how Auschwitz has been dealt with not only in Holocaust/Jewish memory--but in Polish memory--some interesting debates there...PFoster 11:50, 22 December 2008 (EST)


 * Right, but WP already does a good job tackling the details of Auschwitz and other camps. RW needs to tackle either the deceitful nature of places like CP or bring some humor to a delicate subject. Which way to go should be up to the hivemind, not to one or two users. --Irrational Atheist 11:59, 22 December 2008 (EST)


 * 1. sorry about deleting your comment--I got EC'd, must've fucked something up...2. I agree that it's not our job to write an encyclopedic article on the subject--but why say specifically that the British liberated Auschwitz when they didn't? It was liberated by the Soviets, full stop. You want to talk about camps liberated by the Western Allies, that can go in the Holocaust article or something. PFoster 12:03, 22 December 2008 (EST)


 * I didn't believe it was intentional. Sometimes the software tells people something changed, but the interface isn't intuitive for explaining what. And I included the British in liberating the prisoners; those moved to Germany during the end of the war were British-freed and not Soviet-freed. How would be the best way to indicate this? --Irrational Atheist 12:41, 22 December 2008 (EST)

Attempts to stop atrocities failed until 1945
Which attempts? PFoster 11:46, 22 December 2008 (EST)
 * I need to find a better source, but Rabbi Weissmandl tried unsuccessfully to convince the Allies to liberate the prisoners; he was also unsuccessful in staging a revolt of prisoners and locals. Churchill also wanted to disrupt the rail lines to the camp but was unable to do so. --Irrational Atheist 11:51, 22 December 2008 (EST)
 * There's your problem; there were no real attempts. There may have been talk about trying, but nothing--to the best of my knowledge--was ever seriously attempted. There's actually a huge literature on the subject. The Allies' final position was, essentially, that the military defeat of Germany was the only priority, and that would end the killings in itself...PFoster 11:55, 22 December 2008 (EST)

Birds
There's a legend that birds don't sing at Auschwitz, but the only sites I can find refuting this are here and here - every other one supports the claim. I don't know if this is worth putting in the article, it's comparatively trivial but it's been at the back of my mind since I was told it in school. Totnesmartin (talk) 22:00, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Anne Frank
Anne Frank has never been to Auschwitz..
 * According to, she spent some time there before being transferred to Bergen-Belsen, where she finally died. 11:56, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Not quite - The name "Auschwitz" referred to a network of camps and sub camps, as well as the original concentration camp at the centre. There were three large camps: Auschwitz I (the Stammlager or base camp); Auschwitz II–Birkenau (the Vernichtungslager or extermination camp) and Auschwitz III–Monowitz, also known as Buna–Monowitz (a labor camp). Anne Frank and her sister were at Auschwitz II - Birkenau. --Stickie 86.31.11.119 (talk) 23:24, 19 April 2013 (UTC)