At the end of October 1944, the last mass murder in a gas chamber was carried out in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Historical sources do not indicate the same exact day, but they are unanimous that the last transport sent to the gas chambers arrived on October 30 from the Theresienstadt ghetto.
2,038 Jews were transported in it. After selection, 217 men and boys were registered as prisoners, and 132 women were sent to the temporary camp. The rest were killed in the gas chambers of Birkenau. This transport is considered the last in which the arrivals were subjected to selection on the ramp and some of them were sent directly to death.
The end of mass extermination
The Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum states that the mass extermination of Jews in the gas chambers ended in November 1944. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum places the last mass gassing in the period October–November, reflecting the lack of reliable documentation of a specific last session.
The cessation of killings did not mean an end to violence in the camp. On October 7, prisoners from the so-called Sonderkommando, forced to service the crematoriums and remove the bodies of the murdered, revolted. They damaged Crematorium IV, but the revolt was suppressed. About 450 participants were killed in the fighting and the subsequent repressions.
As the Red Army approached, the SS began to erase evidence of the crimes committed. The crematoriums were partially dismantled, documents were destroyed, and the pits with human ashes were liquidated. On November 26, 1944, Heinrich Himmler ordered the destruction of the crematoriums and gas chambers. Crematorium V remained in operation until the last days and was blown up on January 26, 1945.
Auschwitz's place in history
Between 1940 and 1945, about 1.1 million Jews passed through the Auschwitz complex. Approximately one million of them were killed. The victims included Poles, Roma and Sinti, Soviet prisoners of war and other groups persecuted by the Nazi regime.
Soviet troops liberated the camp on January 27, 1945, finding about 7,000 surviving prisoners. Tens of thousands had previously been forced to leave Auschwitz on death marches to camps in Germany.
“Witnesses leave, the world changes, technology changes, and new generations come,“ Andrzej Kakorczyk, deputy director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum, told The Associated Press. His words place the last mass gassing not only in the chronology of World War II, but also in the ongoing task of documenting and passing on the crimes of the Nazi regime.
Sources: apnews.com