Video: 'Architecture of Murder: The Auschwitz-Birkenau Blueprints'

(Saturday, April 27, 1940; during The Holocaust) — Following a number of inspections at various sites, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, a leading member of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) of Germany, ordered the establishment of a new concentration camp today in the former artillery barracks in Oswiecim, known in German as Auschwitz.

Of the 1.3 million people sent to Auschwitz from 1940 to 1945, 1.1 million died. The death toll includes 960,000 Jews (865,000 of whom were gassed on arrival), 74,000 non-Jewish Poles, 21,000 Roma, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, and up to 15,000 other Europeans.

Those not gassed died of starvation, exhaustion, disease, individual executions, or beatings. Others were killed during medical experiments.