One of the objectives of the war started by the Third Reich on 22 June 1941 was to destroy Communism. For this reason the German Nazi authorities ordered captured political commissars and other representatives of the Communist intelligentsia to be eliminated. During the war such jobs were performed by police task forces (Einsatzgruppen). However, some of the commissars avoided identification and were dispersed among ordinary prisoners of war. In order to find them (as well as members of the Soviet intelligentsia and Jews), security police units of several people (Einsatzkommandos) became active in POW camps. The commissars they identified were to be killed in the nearest concentration camp. According to prisoner accounts, already in July/August 1941 groups comprising what, as much would suggest, were most probably commissars were brought to Auschwitz and without registration killed. Then in the first days of September a group of 600 prisoners of war were delivered. Together with 250 Polish prisoners who were sick, they were murdered in the basement of Block 11 with the use of Zyklon B. This was the first case of mass extermination by gassing in the camp.

In October 1941, the SS authorities isolated part of the Main Camp for some 10,000 Soviet prisoners of war. The main task of these Soviet POWs was to build a camp in the fields of the village of Brzezinka (Birkenau), which, according to plans, was to hold over 100,000 prisoners. In the first months mortality among the POWs was high. Every day some 60 people died, chiefly as a result of executions, beatings, cruel tortures devised by SS guards and inmate functionaries as well as the physical exhaustion of hard labour, malnutrition and disease. In March 1942 the several hundred POWs who were still alive were moved to the newly built barracks in Birkenau. Smaller groups of Soviet POWs continued to be transported to the Auschwitz camps in subsequent years. By the end of 1942 their number was 150 and it rose to 900 in the summer of 1944. In the autumn of that year most of them were transferred to camps in the Reich’s interior. At the last Auschwitz roll call, on 17 January 1945, there were 96 Soviet prisoners of war.

Soviet prisoners of war who were sent to Auschwitz in 1941 continued to wear their uniforms, though these were then marked with oil paint stripes and the letters ‘SU’.

ADAM PIOTROWSKI

Born on 21 November 1913 in Boruszyn, a teacher by profession. Arrested as a hostage in Kalisz on 6 March 1941 and sent to Auschwitz on 2 May 1941. Registered in the camp as Polish political prisoner number 15302. Employment as a prisoner included demolishing the houses of evicted Poles, the loading and transporting of slag to the camp, agricultural labour and the levelling of land in Birkenau. Released from the camp on 6 April 1943.

It has been estimated that at least 15,000 POWs were deported to Auschwitz. Of these 12,000 were registered, whereas approximately 3,000 were not registered and soon murdered. In total over 14,000 POWs died in the camp, several hundred were transferred to other camps inside the German Reich and several dozen escaped.

ANTONI KRÓLAK

Born in Prochownia on 19 January 1888; by profession a farmer. Arrived at Auschwitz with the first transport from Warsaw on 15 August 1940. Registered in the camp as Polish political prisoner number 3101. Employment as a prisoner included work in various Kommandos (work squads) in the construction of the Buna-Werke chemical factory complex and later in the prisoners’ clothes warehouse. On 26 June 1944 transferred to Buchenwald, from where evacuated in April 1945. Finally held in Dachau, from where liberated on 29 April 1945.