It happened in the spring of 1940. It wasn't some massive, world-altering event that made front-page news across the globe at the time. To the local residents of Oświęcim, a small town in Poland that the Nazis had renamed Auschwitz after their invasion, it looked like a repurposing of old bricks. The site was actually a former Polish army barracks. It was dusty, quiet, and honestly, a bit drab. But on May 20, 1940, the first transport arrived. That’s the short answer to when did Auschwitz concentration camp open.
But history is rarely just about a single date on a calendar.
The first group of prisoners wasn't even Polish. It was a group of 30 German "professional criminals" brought in from the Sachsenhausen camp. They weren't there to be victims in the way we usually think of Auschwitz. They were the Kapo—the overseers. Their job was to build the hell that would eventually consume millions.
Why Auschwitz and Why Then?
Heinrich Himmler was the architect of this misery. He issued the formal order to establish the camp on April 27, 1940. Why? Because the Nazis were running out of room. The prisons in occupied Poland were bursting at the seams with members of the Polish resistance, intellectuals, and anyone who looked at a German soldier the wrong way. They needed a place to put them. Auschwitz was perfect because it was isolated but had great railway connections.
It was basically a logistical choice.
The "real" opening—at least for the people who would suffer there—happened on June 14, 1940. That’s when the first mass transport of political prisoners arrived. 728 Polish men from Tarnów. They were mostly students, soldiers, and priests. When they walked through those gates, the camp was still a construction site. They were the ones who had to expand it. They slept on straw spread on concrete floors because there were no bunks.
It Started Small
You've probably seen the photos of the sprawling Birkenau complex with its chimneys and endless barbed wire. That wasn't there in 1940. That came later. In the beginning, there was only Auschwitz I. It was a labor camp. The Nazis didn't even have a clear plan for mass extermination yet. That "Final Solution" didn't kick into high gear until 1942.
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Early on, it was just about breaking the Polish spirit.
They worked the prisoners to death in gravel pits or building new barracks. The mortality rate was astronomical from day one, but it was from starvation, exhaustion, and "random" executions rather than the industrialized gas chambers we associate with the name today. It’s a chilling thought: the camp was operational for nearly two years before the gas chambers even became a primary feature.
The Evolution of the Site
By 1941, the scope changed. Rudolf Höss, the commandant, was told to expand. He started building Auschwitz II-Birkenau about three kilometers away. This is where the scale becomes hard to wrap your head around. While the original camp held maybe 15,000 to 20,000 people at its peak, Birkenau was designed to hold over 100,000.
Think about that.
The "opening" of Auschwitz wasn't a ribbon-cutting ceremony. It was a slow, agonizing crawl toward total depravity. In 1942, the first transport of Jews arrived from Bytom. From that point on, the camp’s purpose shifted from a place of detention and forced labor to a factory of death.
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Common Misconceptions About the Timeline
A lot of people think Auschwitz was always a "death camp." It's a nuance that matters. Historians like Timothy Snyder often point out that the Holocaust happened in stages. If you visited the site in 1940, you would have seen a brutal prison. If you visited in 1944, you would have seen an industrial slaughterhouse.
- 1940: Focus on Polish political prisoners.
- 1941: Soviet POWs are brought in (and treated with extreme brutality).
- 1942: Mass deportations of Jews begin from across Europe.
- 1943: The four massive crematoria and gas chambers in Birkenau are completed.
Honestly, the timeline is what makes it so terrifying. It was a series of choices. It didn't just appear overnight. It grew because people allowed it to grow.
The Logistics of Location
Oświęcim was chosen for a reason. It sat at the confluence of the Vistula and Soła rivers. It was swampy. It was miserable. But the rail lines were the key. Trains could come in from Vienna, Prague, Berlin, and Warsaw with ease. The Nazis essentially hijacked the European infrastructure to fuel their genocide.
The site also had its own coal mines and factories nearby. I.G. Farben, the German chemical giant, even built a massive synthetic rubber plant (Auschwitz III-Monowitz) to exploit the slave labor. This wasn't just a camp; it was a corporate-military-industrial hub.
When Did the Gas Chambers Start?
This is a heavy question. The first experiments with Zyklon B didn't even happen in a gas chamber. They happened in the basement of Block 11 in Auschwitz I. In September 1941, they tested the gas on 600 Soviet POWs and 250 sick Polish prisoners. The "success" of this experiment led to the conversion of an old morgue into the first gas chamber.
It’s sort of haunting to realize that for the first year and a half, the camp functioned "successfully" in the eyes of the SS without any gas chambers at all.
The End of the Beginning
By the time the camp was liberated by the Red Army on January 27, 1945, it had been open for almost five years. Five years of constant expansion. If you want to understand the scale, look at the numbers. Over 1.1 million people were murdered there. That’s roughly 600 people every single day for the entire duration of its existence.
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When you ask when did Auschwitz concentration camp open, you're looking at the start of a dark era that didn't just affect Poland, but the entire moral fabric of humanity.
How to Honor the History Today
Visiting the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum is a heavy experience, but it’s arguably the most important historical site in the world. If you can't go in person, there are ways to engage with the history that go beyond just dates.
- Read Primary Sources. Skip the filtered history books for a moment and read If This Is a Man by Primo Levi or Night by Elie Wiesel. These are first-hand accounts of people who were there shortly after it opened or during its peak.
- Support the Memorial. The museum relies heavily on donations for the conservation of the site. The barracks are literally crumbling because they were never meant to last this long.
- Check Local Archives. Many people are surprised to find they have family connections to the deportations. The Arolsen Archives have digitized millions of documents regarding Nazi victims.
- Visit Yad Vashem's Digital Library. Their online exhibits provide incredible context for the "Why" behind the "When."
Understanding the timeline of Auschwitz helps us see how easily "routine" administrative decisions can spiral into something monstrous. It started with an order to clear out some barracks in April 1940. It ended with the greatest crime in human history.
To keep this history alive, prioritize educational resources that emphasize the evolution of the camp system. Focus on the transition from political imprisonment to industrial genocide, as this nuance is crucial for recognizing the early warning signs of systemic human rights abuses. Look for documentaries like Laurence Rees’s Auschwitz: The Nazis and the 'Final Solution', which breaks down these specific chronological shifts with expert testimony and archival evidence.