First mass transport to Auschwitz concentration camp

The first mass transport of prisoners by Nazi Germany to Auschwitz Concentration Camp was organized in occupied Poland on 14 June 1940 during World War II.

[4] Dubbed political prisoners by Nazi Germans, in reality, many of them including school teachers, lawyers, and priests were caught at the Nazi-Soviet demarcation line trying to cross the border to get to France through Hungary.

[5] According to Tarnów historian Aleksandra Pietrzykowa, on the evening before the transport, the 728 Polish prisoners were rounded up based on a previously prepared list, and ordered to take a shower and to disinfect themselves in a public bath.

[6] They were then detained until the early hours of 14 June, when the whole group, escorted by the SS, were marched out of the prison and along the deserted Tarnów streets to the railway station.

[6] Camp survivor Eugeniusz Niedojadlo, who was one of the group prisoners, recalled later: "The day of our departure was hot and sunny.

He had been captured and arrested by the Gestapo while crossing the border with Hungary on 7 May 1940, en route to join the Polish Army in the West.

He survived the ordeal for several years before managing to escape from the camp successfully in 1944, together with his Polish-Jewish girlfriend Cyla Cybulska, who was an inmate of Auschwitz II.

[6] The prisoner number 349 was assigned to the well-known Polish artist and Olympic skier Bronislaw Czech, who was captured in his hometown of Zakopane, also in May; he was killed in the camp four years later on 4 June 1944.

[11] Upon arrival, the Poles lined up in five rows and were met by Schutzhaftlagerführer Hauptsturmführer Karl Fritzsch, who announced: "You have not come here to a sanatorium, but to a German concentration camp and there is no other way out than through the chimney of the crematorium.