Most everyone who arrived at Ashvitz was murdered within less than an hour.

No questions were asked, no explanations given.

They were unloaded from the train, separated, and their fate decided in seconds.

The elderly, children, and pregnant women were sent straight to their deaths.

The rest were tattooed, shaved, and assigned to forced labor, medical experiments, or punishments.

Every step followed a logic.

The goal was to eliminate as many people as possible with the least expense.

Executions happened daily.

The ovens cremated thousands of bodies.

If they couldn’t keep up, pits were dug.

The pace never stopped.

Avitz wasn’t an aberration.

It was an official structure.

It operated with planning, budgets, and clear hierarchies.

It didn’t function on the fringes of the system.

it was central to it.

Who designed that process? How did it stay operational for years without interruption? And why did so many carry it out knowing exactly what they were doing? This documentary is for educational purposes and analyzes historical facts from a neutral perspective.

It doesn’t seek to glorify ideologies or incite hatred.

This is the story of Ashvitz’s design as a death machine.

On April 30th, 1940, SS Captain Rudolph Hurst reached a major milestone in his career.

After 6 years of service, this 39year-old officer was appointed commander of one of the first Nazi concentration camps in the newly conquered territories of Eastern Europe.

That spring day, he arrived to take up his duties in a small town that until 8 months earlier had been part of southwestern Poland, now incorporated into German upper Sillesia.

The Poles called this village Oshvim, but the Germans renamed it Avitz.

There was a catch.

Although Hurse had been promoted to commander, the camp he was supposed to lead didn’t exist yet.

He would have to oversee its construction from a set of dilapidated parasiteinfested barracks formerly used by the Polish army.

Clustered around a horse riding arena on the outskirts of the town.

The surrounding area was even more depressing.

Flat, monotonous terrain with a damp, unhealthy climate.

No one could have predicted that in 5 years this camp would become the site of the largest mass murder in human history.

Hurst didn’t look like the monster he would become.

According to American lawyer Whitney Harris, who interrogated him during the Nuremberg trials, he seemed like an ordinary person, similar to a grocery store cler.

Several Avitz prisoners confirmed this impression, describing him as calm and controlled, the kind of person you might pass on the street without noticing.

This unremarkable appearance made him even more terrifying.

The three years Hurst spent at Daau concentration camp before his appointment at Avitz played a decisive role in shaping his character and career.

At Dhaka, he channeled the violence and hatred the Nazis felt toward their enemies into systems and order.

Dhaka was infamous for its physical sadism where whipping and beatings were common place.

Guards or even fellow prisoners could kill inmates in cold blood and their deaths were always recorded as shot while trying to escape.

But the real power of the regime at Daau wasn’t just in physical abuse.

It was in psychological torture.

The first innovation at Daau was that unlike a conventional prison, inmates had no idea how long their sentence would last.

This uncertainty had profound psychological effects and was crucial for breaking prisoners resistance.

Guards played mind games instead of just inflicting physical punishment, even demonstrating how to tie a proper hangman’s knot and then leaving the rope within reach, suggesting suicide as an option.

At Darkau, Hurse learned the SS philosophy of prisoner management, including the infamous Karpo system, which would later play a significant role in Achvitz.

Authorities appointed a prisoner as Karpo in each block or work unit, granting them enormous power over their peers.

The KPO’s main task was to ensure work quotas were met, ruthlessly pressuring other inmates.

If SS guards were dissatisfied with a Capo’s performance, they demoted him to ordinary prisoner status.

When that happened, the other prisoners typically beat the former Capo to death on his first night back among them.

Hurse rose quickly at Dao until April 1936 when he was named chief assistant to the camp commander.

In September 1936, he was promoted to lieutenant and transferred to Saxonhausen concentration camp where he remained until his elevation to commander of the new Avitz camp.

He arrived at his new post in the spring of 1940.

Deeply honored by the responsibility entrusted to him personally by Hinrich Himmler.

Originally, Ashvitz was conceived as a quarantine camp, a place to hold prisoners before sending them to other Reich concentration camps.

However, within days, it became clear that the camp would function as a permanent site of imprisonment.

Its purpose was to incarcerate and terrorize Poles at a time when the entire country was being ethnically restructured.

Even in its first incarnation as a concentration camp, Avitz had a proportionally higher death rate than any other normal Reich camp.

Of the 20,000 Poles initially sent there, more than half were dead by early 1942.

In September 1940, Oswald Pole, head of the SS main administrative and economic office, inspected the camp and ordered Hurst to expand its capacity.

He explained that the SS would enter business not as a capitalist enterprise, but as a series of companies operating on Nazi philosophical ideas in service to the state.

Concentration camps would provide raw materials for the new Germany, like the vast amounts of granite needed for Hitler’s gigantic new Reich Chancellery in Berlin.

The transformation of Ashvitz from concentration camp to the deadliest extermination center began in 1941 following the invasion of the Soviet Union in June.

The Nazi regime’s policy toward Jews escalated from persecution to systematic murder.

The war with the Soviet Union precipitated the most radical solution to what the Nazis called the Jewish problem.

The destruction of the Soviet Jewish population through the shooting of men, women, and children.

The implementation of what would become known as the final solution changed everything for Awitz.

In December 1941, in a closed door meeting with Hinrich Himmler, Hitler gave the order to exterminate all Jews by any means necessary.

Using Himmler as an intermediary between himself and the final solution’s implementation, Hitler ensured no documentary trail linked him directly to history’s greatest crime.

The final solution wasn’t the Nazis first option.

In 1940, Himmler himself had written an article stating that mass murder of a people was fundamentally unger.

Initially, the Nazis wanted to deport Jews to a place as far from the Reich as possible.

In 1940, they proposed the African island of Madagascar as a potential destination.

This plan was abandoned as the war progressed, and by early 1941, Hitler ordered Reinhard Hydrich to prepare a scheme for deporting Jews to some German controlled location.

The war with the Soviet Union was expected to last only weeks, so Hitler and Hydrich planned to push Jews further east.

That fall, as Nazi forces murdered Jews in the Soviet Union, SS officers often expressed discomfort at shooting women and children at point blank range.

In response to these protests and what he had witnessed himself, Himmler ordered a search for an execution method that caused fewer psychological issues for his men.

Incredibly, one of the first methods the Nazis tried was explosion, placing mentally ill patients in a bunker with dynamite.

They quickly learned that killing by explosion was impractical.

The solution came during the summer of 1941 when Rudolph Hurse learned of a gas called Zclon B used to kill insects near Avitz.

Hurse reasoned that if Cyclone B could kill lice, it could also eliminate human pests.

Since block 11 was already the execution site within the camp and its basement could be sealed, it was the natural location for the first experiment.

With the newly built IG Farin production plant just 5 kilometers away, Hurst could secure all the gas he needed almost instantly.

By late 1941, as the final solution was underway, a completely new camp was built 3 km from the existing one on marshy ground the poles called Bridzinka and the Germans Burkanau.

Though Burkanau would eventually become the site of the largest mass murder of Jews in history, that wasn’t its original purpose.

Initially, Burkanau was conceived as a camp for prisoners of war captured during Operation Barbar Roa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union.

The task of designing and building the new camp fell to SS Captain Carl Bishoff, newly appointed head of Avitz construction office and an architect.

From the start, it was obvious the planned facilities were inadequate to sustain human life.

His initial plan stipulated that one barrack would house 550 prisoners while at Dhau a similar block could only hold 200.

This meant prisoners at Avitz Burkanau would be crammed like firewood into barracks exposed to inhuman conditions.

By late 1942, Avitz had evolved into a vast complex comprising three main camps.

Avitz one, the main camp and administrative headquarters.

Avitz 2, Berkanau, the extermination center, and Avitz three Monovitz, the labor camp supporting the Age Farbin factory.

These constructions turned Avitz Burkanau into an impressive and deadly complex that became a crucial part of the Third Reich’s killing machinery.

Though orders came directly from Hinrich Himmler, the day-to-day operations and most innovations that distinguished Avitz from other extermination camps originated in Rudolfph H’s mind.

Arrival and prisoner selection, the gateway to death.

The journey to Avitz began long before the cattle cars arrived at the infamous ramp.

For Jews across Europe, deportation orders marked the start of a terrible odyssey.

On October 6th, my name appeared for deportation to the east, recalled one survivor.

We didn’t know where we were going.

We were told we’d be transported east, where we’d work for the German Reich, probably in industrial areas.

We had no idea we were headed to a concentration camp.

Victims typically had just hours to pack a single suitcase with their belongings.

They were instructed to bring valuables, work clothes, and essentials.

a cruel deception as most would be stripped of these possessions upon arrival.

The Nazis maintained this facade of resettlement to the end, issuing official looking documents, travel tickets, and even charging resettlement fees to their victims.

The deportation trains were true instruments of torture.

Freight cars designed for livestock were crammed with 80 to 100 people with no seats, minimal ventilation, and often just one bucket for sanitary needs.

It was the hottest day I can remember in my life, recalled a Dutch survivor.

We were all packed like sardines, bodies burning hot.

I remember telling my wife, if I don’t come back, you can remarry, find a husband who’s good to the baby.

We were thinking about the child, nothing else.

But we were very scared.

These journeys could last days or even weeks.

Many passengers, especially the elderly and young children, died on route from dehydration, suffocation, or illness.

Bodies remained wedged among the living until the doors finally opened at Avitz.

When the trains arrived at the Uden Rampa Jewish ramp, or later the specially built rail spur leading directly into Burkanau, passengers emerged disoriented, exhausted, and desperate for fresh air.

What greeted them was a scene of controlled chaos.

Wagon doors were flung open amid shouts of rouse, rouse, out, out.

SS guards with dogs and whips ordered prisoners to leave all belongings and form separate lines of men and women.

And there went my wife and the baby.

We were told we’d see our families every Sunday, every weekend.

It wasn’t true.

It never happened.

The selection process on the ramp was the critical moment determining immediate life or death.

SS doctors, including the infamous Joseph Mangle, directed newcomers with a flick of the finger or a gesture.

Those sent to the right became registered prisoners, assigned a number, and put to work.

Those directed left, typically the elderly, children under 14, pregnant women, the visibly weak or disabled, were sent straight to the gas chambers.

The entire selection process usually took no more than seconds per person.

SS doctors made these life ordeath decisions not based on medical evaluations but on apparent work capacity.

During the arrival of Hungarian Jews in 1944 when trains came daily selections became even more superficial with up to 70 to 75% of each transport sent directly to the gas chambers.

Kittyhart Moxon, who was 15 when she arrived at Burkanau, witnessed the entire extermination process from her barrack.

Mine was a very quick block overlooking the gas chambers and crerematorium 4.

You could see what was happening.

It was incredible to actually watch hundreds and thousands of people arriving right in front of me, separated by an electrified fence, and not be able to communicate.

Communicating with those people was forbidden.

The Nazis maintained an elaborate deception to prevent panic or resistance among those selected for immediate death.

Victims were told they were going to shower before entering the camp.

A plausible explanation after their long journey.

The SS created beautifully landscaped gardens along the path from the trains to the gas chambers.

And the crematoria themselves were hidden behind a wall of birch trees.

Many were sitting in the woods.

There are lots of woods there.

just waiting to go into the gas chambers because they had no idea, recalled Hart Moxon.

People didn’t know.

They thought they were going for a shower.

They were told over loudspeakers that they were going to shower.

So, they were lulled into a false sense of security.

For those selected for work, a different horror awaited.

They were led to processing centers where they were stripped of their last possessions and their identity.

Heads were shaved.

They were disinfected with harsh chemicals that burned their skin, and they were given striped prison uniforms.

Significantly, they were tattooed with identification numbers, marking the complete eraser of their individual humanity in the Nazi system.

Prisoners received colored triangles to sew onto their uniforms.

Red for political prisoners, green or purple for criminals, brown for Roma, pink for homosexuals, black for socials, and Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Jews wore a yellow star of David.

Initially, tattoos weren’t placed on prisoners arms, but pierced into their chests with long needles.

The resulting wound was filled with ink to aid identification, especially when dead inmates were found around the camp.

No one was exempt from selection.

Periodically, selections occurred in the barracks where prisoners too weak to work were removed and sent to the gas chambers.

A Dutch survivor recalled one such selection.

I remember the day of the big selection.

A large barrack full of naked men, two tables at the front, at each table an SS man, and we had to walk toward the two tables.

Behind me is Eddie Hayon, a professional footballer from Ajax Amsterdam.

He says, “I have an abscess in my mouth, and I don’t know what’s going to happen.

” We had to line up completely naked and walk in front of them.

We all had to stand upright, chest out, and show them how wonderfully we could walk in front of them and smile at them to show, “I’m fine.

Don’t select me.

” Because we knew that when you were selected, you were gone.

You didn’t live anymore.

The line moves forward.

I’m near the two tables.

I walk between the two tables, and the SS directs me to the right.

As I walk away, I look back, thinking Eddie Haymon will come behind me.

They direct him to the left and I never saw Eddie Haymon again.

He was gassed because of the abscess in his mouth.

The selection process was the gateway to two different fates in Avitz.

Immediate death in the gas chambers or a slower death through forced labor, starvation, disease, and eventual selection when one became too weak to work.

For the few lucky survivors, the memory of that first selection on the ramp, the moment that separated them from loved ones they’d never see again, remained one of the most traumatic experiences of their ordeal.

The gas chambers of Ashvitz represent the ultimate perversion of human ingenuity.

Principles of technology and design applied not to improve life, but to end it with maximum efficiency.

The evolution of these extermination facilities reflects the Nazi regime’s methodical approach to mass murder, transforming what started as improvised operations into industrialized killing on an unprecedented scale.

The first experimental gassing at Avitz took place in the basement of Block 11 in September 1941.

The victims were Soviet PS and sick Polish prisoners.

After this successful test, the main camp’s crematorium was adapted by adding a gas chamber, but its killing capacity was limited.

As the final solution accelerated, Nazi leadership demanded more efficient facilities.

In Burkanau, the first improvised gas chambers were operational by March 1942.

They were housed in two converted farm houses that prisoners called the Little Red House and the Little White House, known to the SS as bunker one and two.

The brick houses windows had been bricked up and their rooms turned into sealed chambers with signs reading disinfection on the doors.

When Heinrich Himmler visited the camp on July 17th to 18th, 1942, he observed the selection of Dutch Jews being murdered in the bunker to gas chamber.

Impressed by this method of extermination, Himmler approved the expansion of Avitz’s killing facilities.

The limited capacity of these initial chambers drove the construction of four large crematoria numbered 2 through 5 in Burkanau between March and June 1943.

These were purpose-built for mass murder.

Crematoria 2 and three each contained an underground undressing room and gas chamber plus a ground level furnace room with multiple cremation ovens.

Crematoria 4 and 5 were smaller facilities with gas chambers and furnace rooms at ground level.

The gas chambers were disguised as showers complete with fake showerheads to maintain the deception.

Victims were told they needed to shower for hygienic reasons after their journey.

Once inside, doors were sealed with airtight locks as personnel climbed onto the roof or accessed a side opening to drop cyclone B pellets into the chamber through specially designed columns or vents.

Cyclone B was hydrogen cyanide absorbed into a carrier material originally developed as a pesticide.

When exposed to air, it released lethal cyanide gas in the warm, crowded gas chambers.

Death came in 10 to 20 minutes, though the process was agonizing.

Witnesses described hearing muffled screams and banging on doors as victims realized their fate.

“I actually saw them being led into the gas chamber, groups of people,” recalled Kittyhart Moxon.

“You actually saw the men putting the gas in.

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