Haapalah / Aliyah Bet

Auschwitz Konzentrationslager, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, is the site of the largest mass murder in human history.
Laurence Rees cited from more than 100 original interviews with Auschwitz survivors and Nazi perpetrators who spoke on the record for the first time, their testimonies provided a portrait of the inner workings of the camp in unrivalled detail—from the techniques of mass murder, to the politics and gossip mill that turned between guards and prisoners, to the on-camp brothel in which the lines between those guards and prisoners became surprisingly blurred. R
Laurence Rees wrote about the strategic decisions that led the Nazi leadership to prescribe Auschwitz as its primary site for the extinction of Europe's Jews—their "Final Solution."
He concluded that many of the horrors that were perpetrated in Auschwitz were driven not simply by ideological inevitability, but as a "practical" response to a war in the East that had begun to go wrong for Germany.
A terrible immoral pragmatism characterized many of the decisions that determined what happened at Auschwitz.
The story of the camp is a morality tale, in which evil is shown to proceed in a series of deft, almost noiseless incremental steps until it produces the overwhelming horror of the industrial scale slaughter that was inflicted in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

In October 1941, construction of Auschwitz II-Birkenau was begun, to ease congestion at the main camp.
Auschwitz II-Birkenau was larger than Auschwitz I, and more people passed through its gates than through Auschwitz I.
by March 1942, the first gas chamber at Birkenau was. the Little Red House, a brick cottage converted into a gassing facility by tearing out the inside and bricking up the walls, was operational.
A second brick cottage, the Little White House, was converted some weeks later.
In early 1943, the gassing capacity of Birkenau was increased by converting Crematorium II, originally designed as a mortuary, with morgues in the basement and ground-level furnaces, into a gassing facility by placing a gas-tight door on the morgues and adding vents for Zyklon B and ventilation equipment to remove the gas.
Crematorium III was built using the same design.
In the spring of 1943, Crematoria IV and V, designed as gassing centers, were constructed.
By June, 1943, all four crematoria were operational.