page_title: Auschwitz concentration camp
section_title: Transports
hierarchical_section_title: Auschwitz concentration camp / Life in the camps / Transports
caption_attribution_description: Polski: Oświęcim, obóz koncentracyjny "Auschwitz-Birkenau", 1940-1945 This is a photo of a monument in Poland identified by the ID 619247 English: Freight train of the kind used to transport prisoners to Auschwitz. This one stands inside the German extermination camp Auschwitz II-Birkenau, in occupied Poland, at the Judenrampe (Jewish ramp) that operated from May until around October 1944. See "An Original German Train Car at the Birkenau Ramp".&#32;Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum&#32;(14 October 2009). Archived from the original on 25 January 2019.
context_page_description: The Auschwitz concentration camp was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschwitz I, the main camp in Oświęcim; Auschwitz II-Birkenau, a concentration and extermination camp built with several gas chambers; Auschwitz III-Monowitz, a labor camp created to staff a factory for the chemical conglomerate IG Farben; and dozens of subcamps. The camps became a major site of the Nazis' Final Solution to the Jewish Question.
  After Germany sparked World War II by invading Poland in September 1939, the Schutzstaffel converted Auschwitz I, an army barracks, into a prisoner-of-war camp for Polish political prisoners. The first inmates, German criminals brought to the camp in May 1940 as functionaries, established the camp's reputation for sadism; prisoners were beaten, tortured, and executed for the most trivial reasons. The first gassings—of Soviet and Polish prisoners—took place in block 11 of Auschwitz I around August 1941.
context_section_description: Deportees were brought to Auschwitz crammed in wretched conditions into goods or cattle wagons, arriving near a railway station or at one of several dedicated trackside ramps, including one next to Auschwitz I. The Altejudenrampe (old Jewish ramp), part of the Oświęcim freight railway station, was used from 1942 to 1944 for Jewish transports. Located between Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II, arriving at this ramp meant a 2.5 km journey to Auschwitz II and the gas chambers. Most deportees were forced to walk, accompanied by SS men and a car with a Red Cross symbol that carried the Zyklon B, as well as an SS doctor in case officers were poisoned by mistake. Inmates arriving at night, or who were too weak to walk, were taken by truck. Work on a new railway line and ramp (right) between sectors BI and BII in Auschwitz II, was completed in May 1944 for the arrival of Hungarian Jews between May and early July 1944. The rails led directly to the area around the gas chambers.
caption: Freight car inside Auschwitz II-Birkenau, near the gatehouse, used to transport deportees, 2014[118]
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