title: Uruguay

text: One of the most consumed spreadables in Uruguay is Dulce de leche (a caramel confection from Latin America prepared by slowly heating sugar and milk). And the most typical sweet is Alfajor, which is a small cake, filled with Dulce de leche and covered with chocolate or meringue, it comes in various types, fillings, sizes and brands.


title: Uruguay

text: Other typical desserts include the Pastafrola (a type of cake filled with quince jelly), Chajá (meringue, sponge cake, whipped cream and fruits, typically peaches and strawberries are added).


title: Uruguay

text: Mate (drink) is the most typical beverage in Uruguay, being a portable beverage that Uruguayans take to all manner of places.


title: Uruguay

text: José Enrique Rodó (1871–1917), a modernist, is considered Uruguay's most significant literary figure. His book "Ariel" (1900) deals with the need to maintain spiritual values while pursuing material and technical progress. Besides stressing the importance of upholding spiritual over materialistic values, it also stresses resisting cultural dominance by Europe and the United States. The book continues to influence young writers. Notable amongst Latin American playwrights is Florencio Sánchez (1875–1910), who wrote plays about contemporary social problems that are still performed today.


title: Uruguay

text: From about the same period came the romantic poetry of Juan Zorrilla de San Martín (1855–1931), who wrote epic poems about Uruguayan history. Also notable are Juana de Ibarbourou (1895–1979), Delmira Agustini (1866–1914), Idea Vilariño (1920–2009), and the short stories of Horacio Quiroga and Juan José Morosoli (1899–1959). The psychological stories of Juan Carlos Onetti (such as "No Man's Land" and "The Shipyard") have earned widespread critical praise, as have the writings of Mario Benedetti.


title: Uruguay

text: Uruguay's best-known contemporary writer is Eduardo Galeano, author of "Las venas abiertas de América Latina" (1971; "Open Veins of Latin America") and the trilogy "Memoria del fuego" (1982–87; "Memory of Fire"). Other modern Uruguayan writers include Mario Levrero, Sylvia Lago, Jorge Majfud, and Jesús Moraes. Uruguayans of many classes and backgrounds enjoy reading "historietas", comic books that often blend humour and fantasy with thinly veiled social criticism.


title: Uruguay

text: The Reporters Without Borders worldwide press freedom index has ranked Uruguay as 19th of 180 reported countries in 2019. Freedom of speech and media are guaranteed by the constitution, with qualifications for inciting violence or "insulting the nation". Uruguayans have access to more than 100 private daily and weekly newspapers, more than 100 radio stations, and some 20 terrestrial television channels, and cable TV is widely available.


title: Uruguay

text: Uruguay's long tradition of freedom of the press was severely curtailed during the years of military dictatorship. On his first day in office in March 1985, Sanguinetti re-established complete freedom of the press. Consequently, Montevideo's newspapers, which account for all of Uruguay's principal daily newspapers, greatly expanded their circulations.


title: Uruguay

text: State-run radio and TV are operated by the official broadcasting service SODRE. Some newspapers are owned by, or linked to, the main political parties. "El Día" was the nation's most prestigious paper until its demise in the early 1990s, founded in 1886 by the Colorado party leader and (later) president José Batlle y Ordóñez. "El País", the paper of the rival Blanco Party, has the largest circulation. "Búsqueda" is Uruguay's most important weekly news magazine and serves as an important forum for political and economic analysis. Although it sells only about 16,000 copies a week, its estimated readership exceeds 50,000. "MercoPress" is an independent news agency focusing on news related to Mercosur and is based in Montevideo.


title: Uruguay

text: Football is the most popular sport in Uruguay. The first international match outside the British Isles was played between Uruguay and Argentina in Montevideo in July 1902. Uruguay won gold at the 1924 Paris Olympic Games and again in 1928 in Amsterdam.


title: Uruguay

text: The Uruguay national football team has won the FIFA World Cup on two occasions. Uruguay won the inaugural tournament on home soil in 1930 and again in 1950, famously defeating home favourites Brazil in the final match. Uruguay has won the Copa América (an international tournament for South American nations and guests) 15 times, such as Argentina, the last one in 2011. Uruguay has by far the smallest population of any country that has won a World Cup. Despite their early success, they missed three World Cups in four attempts from 1994 to 2006. Uruguay performed very creditably in the 2010 FIFA World Cup, having reached the semi-final for the first time in 40 years. Diego Forlán was presented with the Golden Ball award as the best player of the 2010 tournament. In the rankings for June 2012, Uruguay were ranked the second best team in the world, according to the FIFA world rankings, their highest ever point in football history, falling short of the first spot to the Spain national football team.


title: Uruguay

text: Uruguay exported 1,414 football players during the 2000s, almost as many players as Brazil and Argentina. In 2010, the Uruguayan government enacted measures intended to retain players in the country.


title: Uruguay

text: Football was taken to Uruguay by English sailors and labourers in the late 19th century. Less successfully, they introduced rugby and cricket. There are two Montevideo-based football clubs, Nacional and Peñarol, who are successful in domestic and South American tournaments and have won three Intercontinental Cups each. When the two clubs play each other, it is known as Uruguayan Clásico and is the most important rivalry in Uruguay and one of the biggest in the American continent.


title: Uruguay

text: Besides football, the most popular sport in Uruguay is basketball. Its national team qualified for the Basketball World Cup 7 times, more often than other countries in South America, except Brazil and Argentina. Uruguay hosted the official Basketball World Cup for the 1967 FIBA World Championship and the official Americas Basketball Championship in 1988, 1997 and is a host of the 2017 FIBA AmeriCup.


title: Tyler Perry

text: Tyler Perry (born Emmitt Perry Jr., September 13, 1969) is an American actor, comedian, filmmaker, and playwright. He is the creator and performer of the Madea character, a tough elderly woman. Perry's films vary in style from orthodox filmmaking techniques to filmed productions of live stage plays. Many of his stage-play films have been subsequently adapted as feature films.


title: Tyler Perry

text: Perry wrote and produced many stage plays during the 1990s and early 2000s. He also developed several television series, most notably "Tyler Perry's House of Payne", which ran for eight seasons on TBS from 2006 to 2012. In 2011, "Forbes" listed him as the highest-paid man in entertainment, earning US$130 million between May 2010 and May 2011. In 2012, Perry struck an exclusive multi-year partnership with Oprah Winfrey and her Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN). The partnership was largely for the sake of bringing scripted television to OWN, based on Perry's previous success in this area. Perry has created multiple scripted series for the network, "The Haves and the Have Nots" crime drama being its most successful. "The Haves and the Have Nots" gave OWN some of its highest ratings during its 8-year series run, the program hailed as "one of OWN's biggest success stories with its weekly dose of soapy fun, filled with the typical betrayals, affairs and manipulations."


title: Tyler Perry

text: Perry has also acted in films not directed, written or produced by himself, including as Admiral Barnett in "Star Trek" (2009), the titular character in "Alex Cross" (2012), Tanner Bolt in "Gone Girl" (2014), Baxter Stockman in "" (2016), Colin Powell in "Vice" (2018), Arthur in "Those Who Wish Me Dead" (2021), and Jack Bremmer in "Don't Look Up" (2021). Perry has also done voice acting for animated films such as "The Star" (2017) and "" (2021).


title: Tyler Perry

text: Perry was included in "Time"'s list of the 100 most influential people of 2020. In 2020, he was awarded the Governors Award from the Primetime Emmy Awards and the following year, he received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award from the Academy Awards. In 2022, he was inducted into the Black Music & Entertainment Walk of Fame.


title: Tyler Perry

text: Tyler Perry was born Emmitt Perry Jr. in New Orleans, Louisiana, to Willie Maxine Perry (née Campbell) and Emmitt Perry Sr., a carpenter. He has three siblings. He once said his father's answer to everything was to "beat it out of you". As a child, Perry once went so far as to attempt suicide in an effort to escape his father's beatings. In contrast to his father, his mother took him to church each week, where he sensed a certain refuge and contentment. At age 16, he had his first name legally changed from Emmitt to Tyler in an effort to distance himself from his father.


title: Tyler Perry

text: Many years later, after seeing the film "Precious", Perry was moved to reveal for the first time that he had been molested by a friend's mother at age 10; he was also molested by three men prior to this and later learned his own father had molested his friend. A DNA test taken by Perry indicated that Emmitt Sr. was not Perry's biological father.


title: Tyler Perry

text: While Perry did not complete high school, he earned a General Educational Development (GED). In his early 20s, watching an episode of "The Oprah Winfrey Show", he heard someone describe the sometimes therapeutic effect the act of writing can have, enabling the author to work out his or her own problems. This comment inspired him to apply himself to a career in writing. He soon started writing a series of letters to himself, which became the basis for the musical "I Know I've Been Changed".


title: Tyler Perry

text: Around 1990, Perry moved to Atlanta, where two years later "I Know I've Been Changed" was first performed at a community theater, financed by the 22-year-old Perry's $12,000 life savings. The play included Christian themes of forgiveness, dignity, and self-worth, while addressing issues such as child abuse and dysfunctional families. The musical initially received a "less than stellar" reception and was a financial failure. Perry persisted, and over the next six years he rewrote the musical repeatedly, though lackluster reviews continued. In 1998, at age 28, he succeeded in retooling the play and restaging it in Atlanta, first at the House of Blues, then at the Fox Theatre. Perry continued to create new stage productions, touring with them on the so-called "Chitlin' Circuit" (now also known as the "urban theater circuit") and developing a large, devoted following among African-American audiences. In 2005, "Forbes" reported that he had sold "more than $100 million in tickets, $30 million in videos of his shows and an estimated $20 million in merchandise", and "the 300 live shows he produces each year are attended by an average of 35,000 people a week".


title: Tyler Perry

text: Perry raised a US$5.5 million budget in part from the ticket sales of his stage productions to fund his first movie, "Diary of a Mad Black Woman", which went on to gross US$50.6 million domestically, while scoring a 16% approval rating at the film review web site "Rotten Tomatoes". Perry made his directorial debut on his next film, an adaptation of "Madea's Family Reunion", and has directed all of his subsequent Madea films. On its opening weekend, February 24–26, 2006, "Madea's Family Reunion" opened at number one at the box office with $30.3 million. The film eventually grossed $65 million. Perry and his co-stars promoted the film on "The Oprah Winfrey Show". As with "Diary", almost all of the "Madea"s earnings have been generated in the United States.


title: Tyler Perry

text: Perry's next Lionsgate project, "Daddy's Little Girls", starred Gabrielle Union and Idris Elba and was released in the United States on February 14, 2007. It grossed over US$31 million. Perry wrote, directed, produced and starred in his next film, "Why Did I Get Married?", released on October 12, 2007. It opened at number one, grossing US$21.4 million that weekend. It is loosely based on his play of the same name. Filming began March 5, 2007, in Whistler, British Columbia, a resort town north of Vancouver, then moved to Atlanta, where Perry had opened his own studio. Janet Jackson, Sharon Leal, Jill Scott, and Tasha Smith appeared in the film. Perry's 2008 film, "Meet the Browns", released on March 21, opened at number 2 with a US$20.1 million weekend gross. "The Family That Preys" opened on September 12, 2008, and grossed over US$37.1 million.


title: Tyler Perry

text: "Madea Goes to Jail" opened at number one on February 20, 2009, grossing US$41 million and becoming his largest opening to date. This was Perry's seventh film with Lionsgate Entertainment. At the request of director J. J. Abrams, also in 2009, Perry had a small role as the Starfleet Academy commandant Admiral Barnett in "Star Trek", which opened on May 8. This was his first film appearance outside of his own projects.


title: Tyler Perry

text: Perry next wrote, directed, and starred in "I Can Do Bad All By Myself" (2009), a film structured around his Madea character. This was Perry's eighth film and it also made number one at the box office. In 2009, Perry teamed with Oprah Winfrey to present "Precious," a film based on the novel "Push" by Sapphire.


title: Tyler Perry

text: "Why Did I Get Married Too?", the sequel to "Why Did I Get Married?", opened in theaters on April 2, 2010. It featured Janet Jackson, Tasha Smith,


title: Tyler Perry

text: Jill Scott, and Malik Yoba. The film grossed US$60 million domestically, with US$29 million made the opening weekend.


title: Tyler Perry

text: Perry directed a film adaptation of Ntozake Shange's 1975 choreopoem "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf", which was released in theaters November 5, 2010.


title: Tyler Perry

text: He appeared in the stage show "Madea's Big Happy Family", which toured the U.S. as a stage play and was released as a movie in 2011, written, directed by and starring Perry. The film version of "Madea's Big Happy Family" raked in US$25.8 million at the box office, taking second place. Perry's next film with Lionsgate was "Good Deeds", in which Perry plays lead character Wesley Deeds. "Good Deeds" is a romantic drama film written, directed by, and starring Perry. The film was released on February 24, 2012. It is the tenth of eleven films that Perry directed and appears in. The film received a 29% rating by review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes and opened with a box office US$15.5 million gross. The movie also stars Thandie Newton, Rebecca Romijn, Gabrielle Union, Eddie Cibrian, Jamie Kennedy, Phylicia Rashad, and others.


title: Tyler Perry

text: , Perry's films had grossed over US$500 million worldwide. Perry's "Madea's Witness Protection", his seventh film within the Madea franchise, was released on June 29, 2012.


title: Tyler Perry

text: Perry took over the role of James Patterson's Alex Cross from Morgan Freeman for a new film in the series, titled "Alex Cross". The film which opened on October 19, 2012, was panned by critics and audiences, with Rotten Tomatoes scores of 11% & 47% positive respectively, and became a box office bomb. His performance gained the attention of director David Fincher, who subsequently cast Perry in his 2014 thriller "Gone Girl", co-starring with Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, and Neil Patrick Harris.


title: Tyler Perry

text: Perry released his thirteenth film, "" (based on his 2008 play of the same name) on March 29, 2013. The film stars Lance Gross, Jurnee Smollett, Brandy Norwood, Robbie Jones, Vanessa L. Williams, and Kim Kardashian. He produced "Tyler Perry Presents Peeples", released on May 10, 2013. He returned to the big screen with "A Madea Christmas", released on December 13, 2013. Perry directed the film "The Single Moms Club", which opened on March 14, 2014. His first animated movie "Madea's Tough Love" was released on DVD January 20, 2015. In 2016, Perry played scientist Baxter Stockman in "". In mid-January 2016, Perry started filming his seventeenth film, and ninth within the Madea franchise, "Boo! A Madea Halloween". The film was released on October 21, 2016. A sequel, "Boo 2! A Madea Halloween", was released in October 2017. Perry, alongside Oprah Winfrey, lent his voice in his first computer-animated film, called "The Star", which is based on the Nativity of Jesus. Developed by Sony Pictures Animation, the film was released on November 17, 2017.


title: Tyler Perry

text: Perry's films are co-produced and distributed by Lions Gate Entertainment; he retains full copyright ownership under the corporate name Tyler Perry Films, and places his name in front of all titles. Perry's movies have seen very limited release outside North America, but in May 2010, Lionsgate announced plans to begin releasing his films in the United Kingdom.


title: Tyler Perry

text: Perry produced the long-running sitcom "Tyler Perry's House of Payne", which ran for 8 seasons from June 21, 2006, to August 10, 2012. The series followed an African-American household of three generations. The show demonstrated the family members' serious, true-to-life struggles with faith and love. The show ran in the spring of 2006 as a 10-show pilot. After the successful pilot run, Perry signed a US$200 million, 100-episode deal with TBS. On June 6, 2007, the first two episodes of "Tyler Perry's House of Payne" ran on TBS. After receiving high ratings, "House of Payne" entered broadcast syndication. Reruns were played through December 2007 before the second season began. Perry also wrote, directed and produced the sitcom "Meet the Browns", which premiered on TBS on January 7, 2009 and ended on November 18, 2011.


title: Tyler Perry

text: On October 2, 2012, Perry struck an exclusive multi-year partnership with Oprah Winfrey and her Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN). The partnership was largely for the purposes of bringing scripted television to OWN, Perry having had previous success in this department.


title: Tyler Perry

text: "Tyler Perry's For Better or Worse", based on his films "Why Did I Get Married?" and "Why Did I Get Married Too?", premiered on TBS on November 25, 2011. The series was cancelled by TBS in February 2013 but was revived by OWN for a third season, which began on September 18, 2013.


title: Tyler Perry

text: Perry also had two other television series featured on OWN: the hour-long soap opera/drama series "The Haves and the Have Nots" and the sitcom "Love Thy Neighbor". "The Haves and the Have Nots" premiered on May 28, 2013, and completed its series run after 8 seasons on July 20, 2021. The program was credited by Oprah Winfrey as bringing success to her network and opened the door for a host of other highly rated dramas to OWN. During its series run, "The Haves and the Have Nots" had numerous Nielsen rating highs for the OWN broadcasting station: it was reported on May 29, 2013, that "The Haves and the Have Nots" set a new record for OWN, scoring the highest ratings ever for a series premiere on the network. "Love Thy Neighbor" scored the second highest ratings ever for a series premiere on OWN, behind "The Haves and the Have Nots." Contrastingly, however,


title: Tyler Perry

text: "Love Thy Neighbor" had struggled in ratings. "The Have and the Have Nots" remained the network's highest rated program for most of its run. On February 4, 2014, "The Haves and the Have Nots" came in as the most watched program in all of cable television for the night. On March 11, 2014, a "Haves and the Have Nots" season 2 episode set an OWN record when it scored the highest ratings in the network's history. The record-breaking episode brought in 3.6 million viewers, surpassing the 3.5 million that tuned in for the "Oprah's Next Chapter" interview with Bobbi Kristina which was the network's previous highest rated viewing.


title: Tyler Perry

text: On January 9, 2014, as part of Perry's continued partnership with OWN, the network ordered its fourth scripted series (and fourth series by Perry) based on the feature film, "The Single Moms Club", called "If Loving You Is Wrong". The hour-long drama series premiered on September 9, 2014.


title: Tyler Perry

text: In 2015, Perry acquired the 330-acre former military base Fort McPherson located in Atlanta, which he converted to studios. The studios were used to film the HBO Films/OWN film version of "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks", and is currently in ongoing use for the television series "The Walking Dead". 50,000 square feet of the site are dedicated to standing permanent sets, including a replica of a luxury hotel lobby, a White House replica, a 16,000-square-foot mansion, a mock cheap hotel, a trailer park set, and a real 1950s-style diner that was relocated from a town 100 miles away; it also hosts 12 sound stages named after highly accomplished African-Americans in the entertainment industry. The blockbuster Marvel film, "Black Panther", was the first to be filmed on one of the new stages at Tyler Perry Studios as announced personally by Perry on his Instagram account on February 19, 2018.


title: Tyler Perry

text: Tyler Perry Studios is one of the largest film studios in the nation and established Perry as the second African-American to outright own a major film studio, after Tim and Daphne Reid.


title: Tyler Perry

text: On June 14, 2017, Perry signed a long-term deal with Viacom (now ViacomCBS) for 90 episodes/year of original drama and comedy series. Viacom will also have distribution rights to short video content and a first look at film concepts (the first film from this deal was Nobody’s Fool). The TV deal began fall 2019 with The Oval, Sistas and BET+ (a brand new streaming service) premiering with strong ratings for BET.


title: Tyler Perry

text: Perry's first book, "Don't Make a Black Woman Take Off Her Earrings: Madea's Uninhibited Commentaries on Love and Life", appeared on April 11, 2006. The book sold 30,000 copies. The hardcover reached number one on the "New York Times" Best Seller list and remained on the list for 12 weeks. It was voted Book of the Year, Best Humor Book at the 2006 Quill Awards.


title: Tyler Perry

text: His second book, "Higher Is Waiting", was published on November 14, 2017. It debuted at number 5 on the "New York Times" Best Seller list.


title: Tyler Perry

text: The Writers Guild of America, West filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), alleging that Perry's production company, Tyler Perry Studios, unlawfully fired four writers in October 2008 in retaliation for them trying to get a union contract. The dispute was settled a month later, when Tyler Perry Studios agreed to be a WGA signatory.


title: Tyler Perry

text: In early 2009, Perry threatened legal action against Mo' Money Taxes, a tax preparation company based in Memphis, Tennessee, for running a TV spot that he felt offensively parodied his work, in particular "Madea Goes to Jail". The ad features a large white male (John Cowan) in drag, named "Ma'Madea". The offending ad was dropped from circulation.


title: Tyler Perry

text: Despite praising Perry in 2006, director Spike Lee criticized his work in 2009, stating "Each artist should be allowed to pursue their artistic endeavors but I still think there is a lot of stuff out today that is 'coonery buffoonery'." When asked if Perry's success among black audiences was a result of just giving black America what they wanted, Lee responded, "the imaging is troubling."


title: Tyler Perry

text: In an open letter to Perry on National Public Radio, journalist Jamilah Lemieux, while thanking Perry for "giving black folks jobs in front of and behind the camera," also criticized his shows "Meet the Browns" and "House of Payne". In her letter, she stated that "both your shows are marked by old stereotypes of buffoonish, emasculated black men and crass, sassy black women." While she noted his work for its humor and "positive messages of self-worth, love and respect," she later expressed frustration that African-Americans "have been fed the same images of ourselves over and over and over because they sell." Lemieux dismissed his famous Madea character, claiming that "Through her, the country has laughed at one of the most important members of the black community: Mother Dear, the beloved matriarch. ... Our mothers and grandmothers deserve much more than that." While she expressed appreciation toward Perry for dismissing critics' negative comments, Lemieux claimed that "many black folks have expressed some of the very same attitudes about your work that white critics have," and urged him to "stop dismissing the critics as haters and realize that black people need new stories and new storytellers."


title: Tyler Perry

text: On January 6, 2020, Perry posted a video on Instagram in which he revealed that he doesn't use a writers room for his films and TV shows and prefers to write his work himself. Perry received criticism from several outlets and figures in entertainment for denying opportunities to up-and-coming black writers. Later that month, Perry responded in an interview by stating that he had experienced issues when working with both WGA writers and nonunion writers. He claims that the WGA writers would submit "scripts that would need rewrites in order to get paid multiple times." He also said that nonunion writers struggled to meet his standards of quality and that he "was unhappy with every single script they wrote" because "they were not speaking to the voice."


title: Tyler Perry

text: In October 2009, during a "60 Minutes" interview, Perry was read a quote of Spike Lee's comments about his work and responded, "I would love to read that [criticism] to my fan base. ... That pisses me off. It is so insulting. It's attitudes like that that make Hollywood think that these people do not exist, and that is why there is no material speaking to them, speaking to us." Perry also stated that "all these characters are bait – disarming, charming, make-you-laugh bait. I can slap Madea on something and talk about God, love, faith, forgiveness, family, any of those." In an interview with Hip Hollywood, Perry responded to Spike Lee's comments by telling him to "go to hell."


title: Tyler Perry

text: Perry's work has been praised by Oprah Winfrey, who joined Perry in promoting Lee Daniels' film "Precious" (2009). She told an interviewer, "I think [Perry] grew up being raised by strong, black women. And so much of what he does is really in celebration of that. I think that's what Madea really is: a compilation of all those strong black women that I know and maybe you do too? And so the reason it works is because people see themselves."


title: Tyler Perry

text: Goldie Taylor, of The Grio and MSNBC, stated in an April 21, 2011 NPR "All Things Considered" interview regarding Perry's target audience: "I don't think Tyler Perry is talking to Touré. I don't think he's talking to me, but I know that he's speaking directly to my mother, my sister, my cousins and meeting them at their point of need, and that's what art and filmmaking is about."


title: Tyler Perry

text: In his "Huffington Post" editorial, sociologist Shayne Lee lists Perry among the pantheon of today's most innovative filmmakers.


title: Tyler Perry

text: In the "American Dad!" episode "Spelling Bee My Baby", Steve Smith deliberately misspelled his words in a spelling bee so as to express his love for Akiko (who was also competing), instead spelling random Tyler Perry and Madea films.


title: Tyler Perry

text: Perry was satirized by "South Park" in the Season Fifteen episode "Funnybot". He was given an award for "Person most likely to actually show up to receive their Kathy Griffin Award" and the black characters in the episode, Tolkien Black and President Obama, express their own disbelief that they can't stop watching his comedy and giving him money. At the end of the episode Perry, as Madea, is buried and encased in steel with Obama's declaring, "I am pleased to announce that the greatest threat to mankind has now gone forever. Justice has been done."


title: Tyler Perry

text: Tyler Perry as Madea was parodied in "The Boondocks" episode "Pause", in which a thinly disguised version of Perry named Winston Jerome played a similar character to Madea dubbed "Ma Dukes." The parody had the "Ma Duke" character running a homosexual cult.


title: Tyler Perry

text: Tyler Perry was also parodied in "The Cleveland Show" episode "A Brown Thanksgiving" in which Auntie Momma is really Donna Tubbs's Uncle Kevin. In another episode, Donna receives a bottle of wine called "Tyler Perry Presents Wine", a play on his movie titles.


title: Tyler Perry

text: Perry was lampooned by Donald Glover in his FX series "Atlanta" in the episode "Work Ethic!' in 2022.


title: Tyler Perry

text: Perry is a Christian. Many of the themes in his work reflect theology and social behavior indicative of the predominantly black church culture, such as the many scenes in both his stage and screen work that feature church settings and worship styles commonly found in predominantly African American churches, including showcases of gospel music and artists.


title: Tyler Perry

text: In 2007, Perry bought a 17-acre estate in the Paces neighborhood of Buckhead, Atlanta. In May 2016, he sold the house for $17.5 million, also closing the biggest deal ever for a private home in the Georgia capital. In 2013, his company, ETPC LLC, purchased around in the New Manchester, Georgia area of Douglas County, Georgia.


title: Tyler Perry

text: On July 20, 2009, Perry sponsored 65 children from a Philadelphia day camp to visit Walt Disney World, after reading that a suburban swim club, the Valley Swim Club in Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania, had shunned them. He wrote on his website, "I want them to know that for every act of evil that a few people will throw at you, there are millions more who will do something kind for them."


title: Tyler Perry

text: On December 8, 2009, Perry's mother, Willie Maxine Perry, died at age 64, following an illness. He lives and works in Southwest Atlanta where he operates the Tyler Perry film and TV studios. In August 2010, it was reported that he had purchased Dean Gardens, a 58-acre estate in the Atlanta suburb of Johns Creek. He tore down the existing mansion and planned, but never built, a new, environmentally-friendly home on the property.


title: Tyler Perry

text: On November 30, 2014, Perry's partner Gelila Bekele gave birth to their son. In December 2020, Perry announced that he was a single bachelor.


title: Tyler Perry

text: In September 2017, Perry purchased a house in Mulholland Estates, a gated community in Los Angeles. Nine months after buying the estate, Perry sold the property for $15.6 million.


title: Tyler Perry

text: On March 7, 2021, Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex publicly revealed in the television interview "Oprah with Meghan and Harry" that Perry provided initial security and housing for three months that allowed the couple to safely relocate from Canada to California in March 2020, following the withdrawal of their British royal protection. Perry is also godfather to their daughter, Lilibet Mountbatten-Windsor.


title: Jon Bon Jovi

text: John Francis Bongiovi Jr. (born March 2, 1962), known professionally as Jon Bon Jovi, is an American singer, songwriter, guitarist, and actor. He is best known as the founder and frontman of the rock band Bon Jovi, which was formed in 1983. He has released 15 studio albums with his band as well as two solo albums.


title: Jon Bon Jovi

text: In the 1990s, Bon Jovi started an acting career, starring in the films "Moonlight and Valentino" and "U-571" and appearing on television in "Sex and the City", "Ally McBeal" and "The West Wing".


title: Jon Bon Jovi

text: As a songwriter, Bon Jovi was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2009. In 2012, he ranked number 50 on the list of "Billboard" magazine's "Power 100", a ranking of "The Most Powerful and Influential People in the Music Business". In 1996, "People" magazine named him one of the "50 Most Beautiful People in the World". In 2000, "People" awarded him the title "Sexiest Rock Star".


title: Jon Bon Jovi

text: Bon Jovi was a founder and former majority owner of the Arena Football League team, the Philadelphia Soul. He is the founder of The Jon Bon Jovi Soul Foundation, founded in 2006.


title: Jon Bon Jovi

text: John Francis Bongiovi Jr. was born in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, a son of two former Marines, barber John Francis Bongiovi Sr. and Playboy Bunny turned florist Carol (Sharkey). He has two brothers, Anthony and Matthew. His father was of Italian (the name Bongiovi comes from Sciacca, Sicily) and Slovak ancestry and his mother is of German and Russian descent. He has stated that he is a blood relative of singer Frank Sinatra. However, in a 2016 interview, he proved that this was false and that he is not a blood relative to Frank Sinatra. Bon Jovi was raised Catholic. He spent summers in Erie, Pennsylvania, with his grandparents, and sold newspapers. As a child, John attended St. Joseph High School in Metuchen, New Jersey, during his freshman and sophomore years. He later transferred to Sayreville War Memorial High School in Parlin, New Jersey.


title: Jon Bon Jovi

text: Jon Bon Jovi began playing music in 1975, at the age of 13, playing piano and guitar with his first band, Raze. At 16, he met David Bryan and formed a band called Atlantic City Expressway. Still in his teens, Bon Jovi played in the band John Bongiovi and the Wild Ones, performing in clubs such as the Fast Lane and opening for local acts. By 1980, he had formed another band, the Rest, and opened up for New Jersey acts such as Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes.


title: Jon Bon Jovi

text: When he was 17, Bon Jovi was sweeping floors at his cousin Tony Bongiovi's recording studio, Power Station. In 1980, when Meco was there recording "Christmas in the Stars: The Star Wars Christmas Album", Tony Bongiovi recommended John for the song "R2-D2 We Wish You a Merry Christmas", which became his first professional recording (credited as John Bongiovi).


title: Jon Bon Jovi

text: In 1983, Bon Jovi visited a local radio station WAPP 103.5FM "The Apple" in Lake Success, New York, to write and sing the jingles for the station. He spoke with DJ Chip Hobart and to the promotion director, John Lassman, who suggested Jon let WAPP include the song "Runaway" on the station's compilation album of local homegrown talent. Jon was reluctant, but eventually gave them the song, which he had rerecorded in 1982 (following a rough early recording in 1981) with local studio musicians whom he designated The All Star Review: Guitarist Tim Pierce, keyboardist Roy Bittan, drummer Frankie LaRocka, and bassist Hugh McDonald.


title: Jon Bon Jovi

text: In March 1983, Jon Bon Jovi called David Bryan, who in turn called bassist Alec John Such and an experienced drummer named Tico Torres. Guitarist Richie Sambora later joined the band; Bon Jovi, Sambora, Such, Bryan, and Torres became the founding members of Bon Jovi.


title: Jon Bon Jovi

text: In 1984 and 1985, Bon Jovi released their first two albums and their debut single "Runaway" managed to crack the Top 40. In 1986, the band achieved widespread success and global recognition with their third album, "Slippery When Wet", which had sold 28 million copies worldwide as of 2011. "Slippery When Wet" included three Top 10 singles, two of which reached number one: "You Give Love a Bad Name" and "Livin' on a Prayer".


title: Jon Bon Jovi

text: As of 2019, Bon Jovi has released 14 studio albums, five compilations and three live albums. They have sold more than 100 million records worldwide, making them one of the bestselling American rock bands. Bon Jovi has performed more than 2,700 concerts in over 50 countries for more than 34 million fans. Bon Jovi was inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2006, and into the U.S. Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2018.


title: Jon Bon Jovi

text: In 1990, Jon Bon Jovi recorded a soundtrack to the movie "Young Guns II" more commonly known as "Blaze of Glory". Having been originally approached by his friend Emilio Estevez to lend "Wanted Dead or Alive" as the theme song for his upcoming Billy the Kid sequel, Bon Jovi ended up composing an all-new theme song for the film's soundtrack and delivering his first solo album. The album featured guests such as Elton John, Little Richard and Jeff Beck. The title track, "Blaze of Glory", peaked at number one on the "Billboard" Hot 100. In 1991, "Blaze of Glory" won an award for Favorite Pop/Rock Single at the American Music Awards and awarded a Golden Globe, as well. The song also earned him an Academy Award nomination and a Grammy Award nomination.


title: Jon Bon Jovi

text: In 1991, Jon Bon Jovi started his own label, Jambco Records, and produced Aldo Nova's album "Blood on the Bricks", and Billy Falcon's album "Pretty Blue World".


title: Jon Bon Jovi

text: Bon Jovi's second solo album was 1997's "Destination Anywhere". A short movie of the same name was recorded right around the record's release, based entirely on the songs from the record and starring Jon Bon Jovi, Demi Moore, Kevin Bacon and Whoopi Goldberg. The film debuted in 1997 on both MTV and VH1.


title: Jon Bon Jovi

text: In 2012, Bon Jovi recorded a soundtrack to the movie "Stand Up Guys" more commonly known as "Not Running Anymore". On December 13, 2012, it was announced that "Not Running Anymore" would be nominated for a Golden Globe Award.


title: Jon Bon Jovi

text: In 2020, Bon Jovi released a Christmas single called "A Jon Bon Jovi Christmas", with three new holiday songs.


title: Jon Bon Jovi

text: Bon Jovi is a credited actor in the films "Moonlight and Valentino", "The Leading Man", "Destination Anywhere", "Homegrown", "Little City", "No Looking Back", "Row Your Boat", "Vampires Los Muertos", "U-571", "Cry Wolf", "National Lampoon's Pucked", and "New Year's Eve". He also had a supporting role in the movie "Pay It Forward", where he played Helen Hunt's abusive ex-husband. His TV series appearances include "Sex and the City", "30 Rock", "Las Vegas", "The West Wing", and an extended stint on "Ally McBeal" as a plumber who was Ally's boyfriend for a short period of time. He also had a brief, uncredited role in the 1990 film "Young Guns II". On January 24, 2011, it was confirmed that Bon Jovi would be cast in the film "New Year's Eve", released later that year, as a successful rock star who is connected with Katherine Heigl's character.


title: Jon Bon Jovi

text: In 2004, Bon Jovi became founder and primary owner of the Philadelphia Soul of the Arena Football League. He appeared in several television commercials for the league, typically with John Elway, Hall of Fame quarterback for the Denver Broncos (and co-owner of the AFL's Colorado Crush). Bon Jovi is no longer part owner of the Soul. In 2011, Bon Jovi expressed interest in purchasing 15% of the Atlanta Falcons for $150 million.


title: Jon Bon Jovi

text: In 2014, a group of investors including Bon Jovi made it to the final round of bidding to acquire the Buffalo Bills of the National Football League, but the team was sold to Terry Pegula, the owner of the Buffalo Sabres of the National Hockey League.


title: Jon Bon Jovi

text: During an appearance on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" in 2005, Bon Jovi (the band, not the individual) donated $1 million to the Angel Network foundation.


title: Jon Bon Jovi

text: In July 2007, Jon Bon Jovi announced a project that would rehabilitate a block of 15 homes in north Philadelphia.


title: Jon Bon Jovi

text: The Jon Bon Jovi Soul Foundation (formerly the Philadelphia Soul Charitable Foundation) was founded in 2006. It supports community efforts to break the cycle of poverty and homelessness. On October 19, 2011, it opened the JBJ Soul Kitchen, a community restaurant in Red Bank, New Jersey, where patrons pay what they can afford for their meals, either with money or by volunteering work. On January 21, 2019, the restaurant provided free meals to government workers and family members who had been affected by the federal government shutdown. Two additional locations have been opened in Toms River and on the Newark campus of Rutgers University.


title: Jon Bon Jovi

text: Jon Bon Jovi is one of 21 artists singing on "Everybody Hurts", a charity single organized by Simon Cowell aiding victims of the 2010 Haiti earthquake.


title: Jon Bon Jovi

text: Although Bon Jovi's voter registration indicates that he is unaffiliated, he has supported and toured with many Democratic politicians. He toured extensively on behalf of presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004, appearing at and playing acoustic sets (with Richie Sambora) at rallies for the Kerry-Edwards ticket throughout the United States. He also played at a 2009 Manhattan fundraiser for former Secretary of State and 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton to lessen some of her $6.3 million 2008 campaign debt. On January 18, 2009, Bon Jovi performed a duet at the Obama Inauguration Concert of the Sam Cooke classic "A Change is Gonna Come" with Bettye LaVette. On June 4, 2009, Bon Jovi performed an acoustic benefit show for Democratic Governor Jon Corzine at the NJPAC in Newark, New Jersey.


title: Jon Bon Jovi

text: On June 24, 2009, Bon Jovi, Sambora and Andy Madadian recorded a musical message of worldwide solidarity with the people of Iran. The handwritten Persian sign in the video translates to "we are one".


title: Jon Bon Jovi

text: On December 15, 2010, Bon Jovi was appointed by Barack Obama to the White House Council for Community Solutions.


title: Jon Bon Jovi

text: In 2017, Bon Jovi raised money for Jim Renacci, a Republican representative from Ohio's 16th congressional district and then a potential candidate for Ohio governor with whom he had had common business interests several years prior.


title: Jon Bon Jovi

text: In the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries, Bon Jovi endorsed fellow New Jerseyan Cory Booker for President of the United States.


title: Jon Bon Jovi

text: On October 24, 2020, Bon Jovi performed at a drive-in event for Joe Biden at Dallas High School in Dallas, PA.


title: Jon Bon Jovi

text: On January 20, 2021, Jon Bon Jovi and the Kings of Suburbia performed a cover of the Beatles song "Here Comes the Sun" as part of the "Celebrating America" Inauguration of Joe Biden event.


title: Jon Bon Jovi

text: During a stop in Los Angeles on The New Jersey Syndicate Tour in 1989, Bon Jovi secretly took a trip to Las Vegas and married his high school sweetheart, Dorothea Hurley, on April 29 at the Graceland Wedding Chapel. The couple has four children: a daughter born in 1993, and three sons, born in 1995, 2002 and 2004.


title: Jon Bon Jovi

text: A former resident of Rumson, New Jersey, Bon Jovi established his Sanctuary Sound recording studio in the basement of his home there.


title: Jon Bon Jovi

text: Bon Jovi is a close friend of New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and head coach Bill Belichick. He owns two Super Bowl rings from the Patriots and has performed several times at the Patriots' home field, Gillette Stadium.


title: Jon Bon Jovi

text: On May 16, 2021, Bon Jovi received an honorary degree from Princeton University. He was recognized for his contributions in society areas, including music, history, education, literature, public service, public health, social justice and ending homelessness.


title: Jon Bon Jovi

text: In October 2021, Jon Bon Jovi tested positive for COVID-19 and canceled his tour in Florida. He was reported as feeling "great" and being fully vaccinated. He had recovered from the disease by November 12, 2021. In April 2022, Bon Jovi spoke of how much his COVID-19 experience had impacted him, including in his songwriting, saying about COVID-19 that it made him realize "how volatile we are and how fragile life is. It didn't matter if you were young or old, American or Egyptian, no matter who you were or where you were from, the COVID-19 pandemic affected you. I was aware of that when I was writing the record."


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also ' or ') was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschwitz I, the main camp ("Stammlager") in Oświęcim; Auschwitz II-Birkenau, a concentration and extermination camp with gas chambers; Auschwitz III-Monowitz, a labor camp for the chemical conglomerate IG Farben; and dozens of subcamps. The camps became a major site of the Nazis' final solution to the Jewish question.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: After Germany sparked World War II by invading Poland in September 1939, the "Schutzstaffel" (SS) converted Auschwitz I, an army barracks, into a prisoner-of-war camp.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: The initial transport of political detainees to Auschwitz consisted almost solely of Poles for whom the camp was initially established. The bulk of inmates were Polish for the first two years.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: In May 1940, German criminals brought to the camp as functionaries, established the camp's reputation for sadism. Prisoners were beaten, tortured, and executed for the most trivial reasons. The first gassings—of Soviet and Polish prisoners—took place in block 11 of Auschwitz I around August 1941. Construction of Auschwitz II began the following month, and from 1942 until late 1944 freight trains delivered Jews from all over German-occupied Europe to its gas chambers. Of the 1.3 million people sent to Auschwitz, 1.1 million were murdered. The number of victims includes 960,000 Jews (865,000 of whom were gassed on arrival), 74,000 ethnic Poles, 21,000 Roma, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, and up to 15,000 other Europeans. Those not gassed were murdered via starvation, exhaustion, disease, individual executions, or beatings. Others were killed during medical experiments.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: At least 802 prisoners tried to escape, 144 successfully, and on 7 October 1944, two "Sonderkommando" units, consisting of prisoners who operated the gas chambers, launched an unsuccessful uprising. Only 789 Schutzstaffel personnel (no more than 15 percent) ever stood trial after the Holocaust ended; several were executed, including camp commandant Rudolf Höss. The Allies' failure to act on early reports of atrocities by bombing the camp or its railways remains controversial.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: As the Soviet Red Army approached Auschwitz in January 1945, toward the end of the war, the SS sent most of the camp's population west on a death march to camps inside Germany and Austria. Soviet troops entered the camp on 27 January 1945, a day commemorated since 2005 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. In the decades after the war, survivors such as Primo Levi, Viktor Frankl, and Elie Wiesel wrote memoirs of their experiences, and the camp became a dominant symbol of the Holocaust. In 1947, Poland founded the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum on the site of Auschwitz I and II, and in 1979 it was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: The ideology of National Socialism (Nazism) combined elements of "racial hygiene", eugenics, antisemitism, pan-Germanism, and territorial expansionism, Richard J. Evans writes. Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party became obsessed by the "Jewish question". Both during and immediately after the Nazi seizure of power in Germany in 1933, acts of violence against German Jews became ubiquitous, and legislation was passed excluding them from certain professions, including the civil service and the law.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: Harassment and economic pressure encouraged Jews to leave Germany; their businesses were denied access to markets, forbidden from advertising in newspapers, and deprived of government contracts. On 15 September 1935, the Reichstag passed the Nuremberg Laws. One, the Reich Citizenship Law, defined as citizens those of "German or related blood who demonstrate by their behaviour that they are willing and suitable to serve the German People and Reich faithfully", and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor prohibited marriage and extramarital relations between those with "German or related blood" and Jews.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, triggering World War II, Hitler ordered that the Polish leadership and intelligentsia be destroyed. The area around Auschwitz was annexed to the German Reich, as part of first Gau Silesia and from 1941 Gau Upper Silesia. The camp at Auschwitz was established in April 1940, at first as a quarantine camp for Polish political prisoners. On 22 June 1941, in an attempt to obtain new territory, Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. The first gassing at Auschwitz—of a group of Soviet prisoners of war—took place around August 1941. By the end of that year, during what most historians regard as the first phase of the Holocaust, 500,000–800,000 Soviet Jews had been murdered in mass shootings by a combination of German "Einsatzgruppen", ordinary German soldiers, and local collaborators. At the Wannsee Conference in Berlin on 20 January 1942, Reinhard Heydrich outlined the Final Solution to the Jewish Question to senior Nazis, and from early 1942 freight trains delivered Jews from all over occupied Europe to German extermination camps in Poland: Auschwitz, Bełżec, Chełmno, Majdanek, Sobibór, and Treblinka. Most prisoners were gassed on arrival.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: A former World War I camp for transient workers and later a Polish army barracks, Auschwitz I was the main camp ("Stammlager") and administrative headquarters of the camp complex. Fifty km southwest of Kraków, the site was first suggested in February 1940 as a quarantine camp for Polish prisoners by Arpad Wigand, the inspector of the Sicherheitspolizei (security police) and deputy of Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, the Higher SS and Police Leader for Silesia. Richard Glücks, head of the Concentration Camps Inspectorate, sent Walter Eisfeld, former commandant of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, to inspect it. Around 1,000 m long and 400 m wide, Auschwitz consisted at the time of 22 brick buildings, eight of them two-story. A second story was added to the others in 1943 and eight new blocks were built.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, approved the site in April 1940 on the recommendation of SS-Obersturmbannführer Rudolf Höss of the camps inspectorate. Höss oversaw the development of the camp and served as its first commandant. The first 30 prisoners arrived on 20 May 1940 from the Sachsenhausen camp. German "career criminals" ("Berufsverbrecher"), the men were known as "greens" ("Grünen") after the green triangles on their prison clothing. Brought to the camp as functionaries, this group did much to establish the sadism of early camp life, which was directed particularly at Polish inmates, until the political prisoners took over their roles. Bruno Brodniewicz, the first prisoner (who was given serial number 1), became "Lagerälteste" (camp elder). The others were given positions such as "kapo" and block supervisor.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: The first mass transport—of 728 Polish male political prisoners, including Catholic priests and Jews—arrived on 14 June 1940 from Tarnów, Poland. They were given serial numbers 31 to 758. In a letter on 12 July 1940, Höss told Glücks that the local population was "fanatically Polish, ready to undertake any sort of operation against the hated SS men". By the end of 1940, the SS had confiscated land around the camp to create a 40-square-kilometer (15 sq mi) "zone of interest" ("Interessengebiet") patrolled by the SS, Gestapo and local police. By March 1941, 10,900 were imprisoned in the camp, most of them Poles.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: An inmate's first encounter with Auschwitz, if they were registered and not sent straight to the gas chamber, was at the prisoner reception center near the gate with the "Arbeit macht frei" sign, where they were tattooed, shaved, disinfected, and given a striped prison uniform. Built between 1942 and 1944, the center contained a bathhouse, laundry, and 19 gas chambers for delousing clothes. The prisoner reception center of Auschwitz I became the visitor reception center of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: Construction of crematorium I began at Auschwitz I at the end of June or beginning of July 1940. Initially intended not for mass murder but for prisoners who had been executed or had otherwise died in the camp, the crematorium was in operation from August 1940 until July 1943, by which time the crematoria at Auschwitz II had taken over. By May 1942 three ovens had been installed in crematorium I, which together could burn 340 bodies in 24 hours.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: The first experimental gassing took place around August 1941, when Lagerführer Karl Fritzsch, at the instruction of Rudolf Höss, murdered a group of Soviet prisoners of war by throwing Zyklon B crystals into their basement cell in block 11 of Auschwitz I. A second group of 600 Soviet prisoners of war and around 250 sick Polish prisoners were gassed on 3–5 September. The morgue was later converted to a gas chamber able to hold at least 700–800 people. Zyklon B was dropped into the room through slits in the ceiling.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: Historians have disagreed about the date the all-Jewish transports began arriving in Auschwitz. At the Wannsee Conference in Berlin on 20 January 1942, the Nazi leadership outlined, in euphemistic language, its plans for the Final Solution. According to Franciszek Piper, the Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss offered inconsistent accounts after the war, suggesting the extermination began in December 1941, January 1942, or before the establishment of the women's camp in March 1942. In "Kommandant in Auschwitz", he wrote: "In the spring of 1942 the first transports of Jews, all earmarked for extermination, arrived from Upper Silesia." On 15 February 1942, according to Danuta Czech, a transport of Jews from Beuthen, Upper Silesia (Bytom, Poland), arrived at Auschwitz I and was sent straight to the gas chamber. In 1998 an eyewitness said the train contained "the women of Beuthen". Saul Friedländer wrote that the Beuthen Jews were from the Organization Schmelt labor camps and had been deemed unfit for work. According to Christopher Browning, transports of Jews unfit for work were sent to the gas chamber at Auschwitz from autumn 1941. The evidence for this and the February 1942 transport was contested in 2015 by Nikolaus Wachsmann.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: Around 20 March 1942, according to Danuta Czech, a transport of Polish Jews from Silesia and Zagłębie Dąbrowskie was taken straight from the station to the Auschwitz II gas chamber, which had just come into operation. On 26 and 28 March, two transports of Slovakian Jews were registered as prisoners in the women's camp, where they were kept for slave labour; these were the first transports organized by Adolf Eichmann's department IV B4 (the Jewish office) in the Reich Security Head Office (RSHA). On 30 March the first RHSA transport arrived from France. "Selection", where new arrivals were chosen for work or the gas chamber, began in April 1942 and was conducted regularly from July. Piper writes that this reflected Germany's increasing need for labor. Those selected as unfit for work were gassed without being registered as prisoners.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: There is also disagreement about how many were gassed in Auschwitz I. Perry Broad, an "SS-Unterscharführer", wrote that "transport after transport vanished in the Auschwitz [I] crematorium." In the view of Filip Müller, one of the Auschwitz I "Sonderkommando", tens of thousands of Jews were murdered there from France, Holland, Slovakia, Upper Silesia, and Yugoslavia, and from the Theresienstadt, Ciechanow, and Grodno ghettos. Against this, Jean-Claude Pressac estimated that up to 10,000 people had been murdered in Auschwitz I. The last inmates gassed there, in December 1942, were around 400 members of the Auschwitz II "Sonderkommando", who had been forced to dig up and burn the remains of that camp's mass graves, thought to hold over 100,000 corpses.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: After visiting Auschwitz I in March 1941, it appears that Himmler ordered that the camp be expanded, although Peter Hayes notes that, on 10 January 1941, the Polish underground told the Polish government-in-exile in London: "the Auschwitz concentration camp ...can accommodate approximately 7,000 prisoners at present, and is to be rebuilt to hold approximately 30,000." Construction of Auschwitz II-Birkenau—called a "Kriegsgefangenenlager" (prisoner-of-war camp) on blueprints—began in October 1941 in Brzezinka, about three kilometers from Auschwitz I. The initial plan was that Auschwitz II would consist of four sectors (Bauabschnitte I–IV), each consisting of six subcamps (BIIa–BIIf) with their own gates and fences. The first two sectors were completed (sector BI was initially a quarantine camp), but the construction of BIII began in 1943 and stopped in April 1944, and the plan for BIV was abandoned.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: SS-Sturmbannführer Karl Bischoff, an architect, was the chief of construction. Based on an initial budget of RM 8.9 million, his plans called for each barracks to hold 550 prisoners, but he later changed this to 744 per barracks, which meant the camp could hold 125,000, rather than 97,000. There were 174 barracks, each measuring , divided into 62 bays of . The bays were divided into "roosts", initially for three inmates and later for four. With personal space of to sleep and place whatever belongings they had, inmates were deprived, Robert-Jan van Pelt wrote, "of the minimum space needed to exist".


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: The prisoners were forced to live in the barracks as they were building them; in addition to working, they faced long roll calls at night. As a result, most prisoners in BIb (the men's camp) in the early months died of hypothermia, starvation or exhaustion within a few weeks. Some 10,000 Soviet prisoners of war arrived at Auschwitz I between 7 and 25 October 1941, but by 1 March 1942 only 945 were still registered; they were transferred to Auschwitz II, where most of them had died by May.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: The first gas chamber at Auschwitz II was operational by March 1942. On or around 20 March, a transport of Polish Jews sent by the Gestapo from Silesia and Zagłębie Dąbrowskie was taken straight from the Oświęcim freight station to the Auschwitz II gas chamber, then buried in a nearby meadow. The gas chamber was located in what prisoners called the "little red house" (known as bunker 1 by the SS), a brick cottage that had been turned into a gassing facility; the windows had been bricked up and its four rooms converted into two insulated rooms, the doors of which said ""Zur Desinfektion"" ("to disinfection"). A second brick cottage, the "little white house" or bunker 2, was converted and operational by June 1942. When Himmler visited the camp on 17 and 18 July 1942, he was given a demonstration of a selection of Dutch Jews, a mass-murder in a gas chamber in bunker 2, and a tour of the building site of Auschwitz III, the new IG Farben plant being constructed at Monowitz. Use of bunkers I and 2 stopped in spring 1943 when the new crematoria were built, although bunker 2 became operational again in May 1944 for the murder of the Hungarian Jews. Bunker I was demolished in 1943 and bunker 2 in November 1944.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: Plans for crematoria II and III show that both had an oven room on the ground floor, and an underground dressing room and gas chamber . The dressing rooms had wooden benches along the walls and numbered pegs for clothing. Victims would be led from these rooms to a five-yard-long narrow corridor, which in turn led to a space from which the gas chamber door opened. The chambers were white inside, and nozzles were fixed to the ceiling to resemble showerheads. The daily capacity of the crematoria (how many bodies could be burned in a 24-hour period) was 340 corpses in crematorium I; 1,440 each in crematoria II and III; and 768 each in IV and V. By June 1943 all four crematoria were operational, but crematorium I was not used after July 1943. This made the total daily capacity 4,416, although by loading three to five corpses at a time, the "Sonderkommando" were able to burn some 8,000 bodies a day. This maximum capacity was rarely needed; the average between 1942 and 1944 was 1,000 bodies burned every day.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: After examining several sites for a new plant to manufacture Buna-N, a type of synthetic rubber essential to the war effort, the German chemical conglomerate IG Farben chose a site near the towns of Dwory and Monowice (Monowitz in German), about east of Auschwitz I. Tax exemptions were available to corporations prepared to develop industries in the frontier regions under the Eastern Fiscal Assistance Law, passed in December 1940. In addition to its proximity to the concentration camp, a source of cheap labor, the site had good railway connections and access to raw materials. In February 1941, Himmler ordered that the Jewish population of Oświęcim be expelled to make way for skilled laborers; that all Poles able to work remain in the town and work on building the factory; and that Auschwitz prisoners be used in the construction work.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: Auschwitz inmates began working at the plant, known as Buna Werke and IG-Auschwitz, in April 1941, demolishing houses in Monowitz to make way for it. By May, because of a shortage of trucks, several hundred of them were rising at 3 am to walk there twice a day from Auschwitz I. Because a long line of exhausted inmates walking through the town of Oświęcim might harm German-Polish relations, the inmates were told to shave daily, make sure they were clean, and sing as they walked. From late July they were taken to the factory by train on freight wagons. Given the difficulty of moving them, including during the winter, IG Farben decided to build a camp at the plant. The first inmates moved there on 30 October 1942. Known as "KL Auschwitz III-Aussenlager" (Auschwitz III subcamp), and later as the Monowitz concentration camp, it was the first concentration camp to be financed and built by private industry.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: Measuring , the camp was larger than Auschwitz I. By the end of 1944, it housed 60 barracks measuring , each with a day room and a sleeping room containing 56 three-tiered wooden bunks. IG Farben paid the SS three or four Reichsmark for nine- to eleven-hour shifts from each worker. In 1943–1944, about 35,000 inmates worked at the plant; 23,000 (32 a day on average) were murdered through malnutrition, disease, and the workload. Within three to four months at the camp, Peter Hayes writes, the inmates were "reduced to walking skeletons". Deaths and transfers to the gas chambers at Auschwitz II reduced the population by nearly a fifth each month. Site managers constantly threatened inmates with the gas chambers, and the smell from the crematoria at Auschwitz I and II hung heavy over the camp.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: Although the factory had been expected to begin production in 1943, shortages of labor and raw materials meant start-up was postponed repeatedly. The Allies bombed the plant in 1944 on 20 August, 13 September, 18 December, and 26 December. On 19 January 1945, the SS ordered that the site be evacuated, sending 9,000 inmates, most of them Jews, on a death march to another Auschwitz subcamp at Gliwice. From Gliwice, prisoners were taken by rail in open freight wagons to the Buchenwald and Mauthausen concentration camps. The 800 inmates who had been left behind in the Monowitz hospital were liberated along with the rest of the camp on 27 January 1945 by the 1st Ukrainian Front of the Red Army.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: Several other German industrial enterprises, such as Krupp and Siemens-Schuckert, built factories with their own subcamps. There were around 28 camps near industrial plants, each camp holding hundreds or thousands of prisoners. Designated as "Aussenlager" (external camp), "Nebenlager" (extension camp), "Arbeitslager" (labor camp), or "Aussenkommando" (external work detail), camps were built at Blechhammer, Jawiszowice, Jaworzno, Lagisze, Mysłowice, Trzebinia, and as far afield as the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in Czechoslovakia. Industries with satellite camps included coal mines, foundries and other metal works, and chemical plants. Prisoners were also made to work in forestry and farming. For example, "Wirtschaftshof Budy", in the Polish village of Budy near Brzeszcze, was a farming subcamp where prisoners worked 12-hour days in the fields, tending animals, and making compost by mixing human ashes from the crematoria with sod and manure. Incidents of sabotage to decrease production took place in several subcamps, including Charlottengrube, Gleiwitz II, and Rajsko. Living conditions in some of the camps were so poor that they were regarded as punishment subcamps.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: Rudolf Höss, born in Baden-Baden in 1900, was named the first commandant of Auschwitz when Heinrich Himmler ordered on 27 April 1940 that the camp be established. Living with his wife and children in a two-story stucco house near the commandant's and administration building, he served as commandant until 11 November 1943, with Josef Kramer as his deputy. Succeeded as commandant by Arthur Liebehenschel, Höss joined the SS Business and Administration Head Office in Oranienburg as director of Amt DI, a post that made him deputy of the camps inspectorate.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: Richard Baer became commandant of Auschwitz I on 11 May 1944 and Fritz Hartjenstein of Auschwitz II from 22 November 1943, followed by Josef Kramer from 15 May 1944 until the camp's liquidation in January 1945. Heinrich Schwarz was commandant of Auschwitz III from the point at which it became an autonomous camp in November 1943 until its liquidation. Höss returned to Auschwitz between 8 May and 29 July 1944 as the local SS garrison commander ("Standortältester") to oversee the arrival of Hungary's Jews, which made him the superior officer of all the commandants of the Auschwitz camps.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: According to Aleksander Lasik, about 6,335 people (6,161 of them men) worked for the SS at Auschwitz over the course of the camp's existence; 4.2 percent were officers, 26.1 percent non-commissioned officers, and 69.7 percent rank and file. In March 1941, there were 700 SS guards; in June 1942, 2,000; and in August 1944, 3,342. At its peak in January 1945, 4,480 SS men and 71 SS women worked in Auschwitz; the higher number is probably attributable to the logistics of evacuating the camp. Female guards were known as SS supervisors ("SS-Aufseherinnen").


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: Most of the staff were from Germany or Austria, but as the war progressed, increasing numbers of "Volksdeutsche" from other countries, including Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, and the Baltic states, joined the SS at Auschwitz. Not all were ethnically German. Guards were also recruited from Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia. Camp guards, around three quarters of the SS personnel, were members of the "SS-Totenkopfverbände" (death's head units). Other SS staff worked in the medical or political departments, or in the economic administration, which was responsible for clothing and other supplies, including the property of dead prisoners. The SS viewed Auschwitz as a comfortable posting; being there meant they had avoided the front and had access to the victims' property.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: Certain prisoners, at first non-Jewish Germans but later Jews and non-Jewish Poles, were assigned positions of authority as "Funktionshäftlinge" (functionaries), which gave them access to better housing and food. The "Lagerprominenz" (camp elite) included "Blockschreiber" (barracks clerk), "Kapo" (overseer), "Stubendienst" (barracks orderly), and "Kommandierte" (trusties). Wielding tremendous power over other prisoners, the functionaries developed a reputation as sadists. Very few were prosecuted after the war, because of the difficulty of determining which atrocities had been performed by order of the SS.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: Although the SS oversaw the murders at each gas chamber, the forced labor portion of the work was done by prisoners known from 1942 as the "Sonderkommando" (special squad). These were mostly Jews but they included groups such as Soviet POWs. In 1940–1941 when there was one gas chamber, there were 20 such prisoners, in late 1943 there were 400, and by 1944 during the Holocaust in Hungary the number had risen to 874. The "Sonderkommando" removed goods and corpses from the incoming trains, guided victims to the dressing rooms and gas chambers, removed their bodies afterwards, and took their jewelry, hair, dental work, and any precious metals from their teeth, all of which was sent to Germany. Once the bodies were stripped of anything valuable, the "Sonderkommando" burned them in the crematoria.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: Because they were witnesses to the mass murder, the "Sonderkommando" lived separately from the other prisoners, although this rule was not applied to the non-Jews among them. Their quality of life was further improved by their access to the property of new arrivals, which they traded within the camp, including with the SS. Nevertheless, their life expectancy was short; they were regularly murdered and replaced. About 100 survived to the camp's liquidation. They were forced on a death march and by train to the camp at Mauthausen, where three days later they were asked to step forward during roll call. No one did, and because the SS did not have their records, several of them survived.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: Uniquely at Auschwitz, prisoners were tattooed with a serial number, on their left breast for Soviet prisoners of war and on the left arm for civilians. Categories of prisoner were distinguishable by triangular pieces of cloth (German: "Winkel") sewn onto on their jackets below their prisoner number. Political prisoners "(Schutzhäftlinge" or Sch), mostly Poles, had a red triangle, while criminals ("Berufsverbrecher" or BV) were mostly German and wore green. Asocial prisoners ("Asoziale" or Aso), which included vagrants, prostitutes and the Roma, wore black. Purple was for Jehovah's Witnesses ("Internationale Bibelforscher-Vereinigung" or IBV)'s and pink for gay men, who were mostly German. An estimated 5,000–15,000 gay men prosecuted under German Penal Code Section 175 (proscribing sexual acts between men) were detained in concentration camps, of whom an unknown number were sent to Auschwitz. Jews wore a yellow badge, the shape of the Star of David, overlaid by a second triangle if they also belonged to a second category. The nationality of the inmate was indicated by a letter stitched onto the cloth. A racial hierarchy existed, with German prisoners at the top. Next were non-Jewish prisoners from other countries. Jewish prisoners were at the bottom.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: Deportees were brought to Auschwitz crammed in wretched conditions into goods or cattle wagons, arriving near a railway station or at one of several dedicated trackside ramps, including one next to Auschwitz I. The "Altejudenrampe" (old Jewish ramp), part of the Oświęcim freight railway station, was used from 1942 to 1944 for Jewish transports. Located between Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II, arriving at this ramp meant a 2.5 km journey to Auschwitz II and the gas chambers. Most deportees were forced to walk, accompanied by SS men and a car with a Red Cross symbol that carried the Zyklon B, as well as an SS doctor in case officers were poisoned by mistake. Inmates arriving at night, or who were too weak to walk, were taken by truck. Work on a new railway line and ramp "(right)" between sectors BI and BII in Auschwitz II, was completed in May 1944 for the arrival of Hungarian Jews between May and early July 1944. The rails led directly to the area around the gas chambers.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: The day began at 4:30 am for the men (an hour later in winter), and earlier for the women, when the block supervisor sounded a gong and started beating inmates with sticks to make them wash and use the latrines quickly. Sanitary arrangements were atrocious, with few latrines and a lack of clean water. Each washhouse had to service thousands of prisoners. In sectors BIa and BIb in Auschwitz II, two buildings containing latrines and washrooms were installed in 1943. These contained troughs for washing and 90 faucets; the toilet facilities were "sewage channels" covered by concrete with 58 holes for seating. There were three barracks with washing facilities or toilets to serve 16 residential barracks in BIIa, and six washrooms/latrines for 32 barracks in BIIb, BIIc, BIId, and BIIe. Primo Levi described a 1944 Auschwitz III washroom:


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: Prisoners received half a liter of coffee substitute or a herbal tea in the morning, but no food. A second gong heralded roll call, when inmates lined up outside in rows of ten to be counted. No matter the weather, they had to wait for the SS to arrive for the count; how long they stood there depended on the officers' mood, and whether there had been escapes or other events attracting punishment. Guards might force the prisoners to squat for an hour with their hands above their heads or hand out beatings or detention for infractions such as having a missing button or an improperly cleaned food bowl. The inmates were counted and re-counted.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: After roll call, to the sound of ""Arbeitskommandos formieren"" ("form work details"), prisoners walked to their place of work, five abreast, to begin a working day that was normally 11 hours long—longer in summer and shorter in winter. A prison orchestra, such as the Women's Orchestra of Auschwitz, was forced to play cheerful music as the workers left the camp. "Kapos" were responsible for the prisoners' behavior while they worked, as was an SS escort. Much of the work took place outdoors at construction sites, gravel pits, and lumber yards. No rest periods were allowed. One prisoner was assigned to the latrines to measure the time the workers took to empty their bladders and bowels.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: Lunch was three-quarters of a liter of watery soup at midday, reportedly foul-tasting, with meat in the soup four times a week and vegetables (mostly potatoes and rutabaga) three times. The evening meal was 300 grams of bread, often moldy, part of which the inmates were expected to keep for breakfast the next day, with a tablespoon of cheese or marmalade, or 25 grams of margarine or sausage. Prisoners engaged in hard labor were given extra rations.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: A second roll call took place at seven in the evening, in the course of which prisoners might be hanged or flogged. If a prisoner was missing, the others had to remain standing until the absentee was found or the reason for the absence discovered, even if it took hours. On 6 July 1940, roll call lasted 19 hours because a Polish prisoner, Tadeusz Wiejowski, had escaped; following an escape in 1941, a group of prisoners was picked out from the escapee's barracks and sent to block 11 to be starved to death. After roll call, prisoners retired to their blocks for the night and received their bread rations. Then they had some free time to use the washrooms and receive their mail, unless they were Jews: Jews were not allowed to receive mail. Curfew ("nighttime quiet") was marked by a gong at nine o'clock. Inmates slept in long rows of brick or wooden bunks, or on the floor, lying in and on their clothes and shoes to prevent them from being stolen. The wooden bunks had blankets and paper mattresses filled with wood shavings; in the brick barracks, inmates lay on straw. According to Miklós Nyiszli:


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: Sunday was not a work day, but prisoners had to clean the barracks and take their weekly shower, and were allowed to write (in German) to their families, although the SS censored the mail. Inmates who did not speak German would trade bread for help. Observant Jews tried to keep track of the Hebrew calendar and Jewish holidays, including Shabbat, and the weekly Torah portion. No watches, calendars, or clocks were permitted in the camp. Only two Jewish calendars made in Auschwitz survived to the end of the war. Prisoners kept track of the days in other ways, such as obtaining information from newcomers.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: About 30 percent of the registered inmates were female. The first mass transport of women, 999 non-Jewish German women from the Ravensbrück concentration camp, arrived on 26 March 1942. Classified as criminal, asocial and political, they were brought to Auschwitz as founder functionaries of the women's camp. Rudolf Höss wrote of them: "It was easy to predict that these beasts would mistreat the women over whom they exercised power ... Spiritual suffering was completely alien to them." They were given serial numbers 1–999. The women's guard from Ravensbrück, Johanna Langefeld, became the first Auschwitz women's camp "Lagerführerin". A second mass transport of women, 999 Jews from Poprad, Slovakia, arrived on the same day. According to Danuta Czech, this was the first registered transport sent to Auschwitz by the Reich Security Head Office (RSHA) office IV B4, known as the Jewish Office, led by SS "Obersturmbannführer" Adolf Eichmann. (Office IV was the Gestapo.) A third transport of 798 Jewish women from Bratislava, Slovakia, followed on 28 March.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: Women were at first held in blocks 1–10 of Auschwitz I, but from 6 August 1942, 13,000 inmates were transferred to a new women's camp ("Frauenkonzentrationslager" or FKL) in Auschwitz II. This consisted at first of 15 brick and 15 wooden barracks in sector ("Bauabschnitt") BIa; it was later extended into BIb, and by October 1943 it held 32,066 women. In 1943–1944, about 11,000 women were also housed in the Gypsy family camp, as were several thousand in the Theresienstadt family camp.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: Conditions in the women's camp were so poor that when a group of male prisoners arrived to set up an infirmary in October 1942, their first task, according to researchers from the Auschwitz museum, was to distinguish the corpses from the women who were still alive. Gisella Perl, a Romanian-Jewish gynecologist and inmate of the women's camp, wrote in 1948:


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: Langefeld was succeeded as "Lagerführerin" in October 1942 by SS "Oberaufseherin" Maria Mandl, who developed a reputation for cruelty. Höss hired men to oversee the female supervisors, first SS "Obersturmführer" Paul Müller, then SS "Hauptsturmführer" Franz Hössler. Mandl and Hössler were executed after the war. Sterilization experiments were carried out in barracks 30 by a German gynecologist, Carl Clauberg, and another German doctor, Horst Schumann.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: German doctors performed a variety of experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz. SS doctors tested the efficacy of X-rays as a sterilization device by administering large doses to female prisoners. Carl Clauberg injected chemicals into women's uteruses in an effort to glue them shut. Prisoners were infected with spotted fever for vaccination research and exposed to toxic substances to study the effects. In one experiment, Bayer—then part of IG Farben—paid RM 150 each for 150 female inmates from Auschwitz (the camp had asked for RM 200 per woman), who were transferred to a Bayer facility to test an anesthetic. A Bayer employee wrote to Rudolf Höss: "The transport of 150 women arrived in good condition. However, we were unable to obtain conclusive results because they died during the experiments. We would kindly request that you send us another group of women to the same number and at the same price." The Bayer research was led at Auschwitz by Helmuth Vetter of Bayer/IG Farben, who was also an Auschwitz physician and SS captain, and by Auschwitz physicians Friedrich Entress and Eduard Wirths.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: The most infamous doctor at Auschwitz was Josef Mengele, the "Angel of Death", who worked in Auschwitz II from 30 May 1943, at first in the gypsy family camp. Interested in performing research on identical twins, dwarfs, and those with hereditary disease, Mengele set up a kindergarten in barracks 29 and 31 for children he was experimenting on, and for all Romani children under six, where they were given better food rations. From May 1944, he would select twins and dwarfs from among the new arrivals during "selection", reportedly calling for twins with ""Zwillinge heraus!"" ("twins step forward!"). He and other doctors (the latter prisoners) would measure the twins' body parts, photograph them, and subject them to dental, sight and hearing tests, x-rays, blood tests, surgery, and blood transfusions between them. Then he would have them killed and dissected. Kurt Heissmeyer, another German doctor and SS officer, took 20 Polish Jewish children from Auschwitz to use in pseudoscientific experiments at the Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg, where he injected them with the tuberculosis bacilli to test a cure for tuberculosis. In April 1945, the children were murdered by hanging to conceal the project.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: A Jewish skeleton collection was obtained from among a pool of 115 Jewish inmates, chosen for their perceived stereotypical racial characteristics. Rudolf Brandt and Wolfram Sievers, general manager of the "Ahnenerbe" (a Nazi research institute), delivered the skeletons to the collection of the Anatomy Institute at the Reichsuniversität Straßburg in Alsace-Lorraine. The collection was sanctioned by Heinrich Himmler and under the direction of August Hirt. Ultimately 87 of the inmates were shipped to Natzweiler-Struthof and murdered in August 1943. Brandt and Sievers were executed in 1948 after being convicted during the Doctors' trial, part of the Subsequent Nuremberg trials.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: Prisoners could be beaten and killed by guards and "kapos" for the slightest infraction of the rules. Polish historian Irena Strzelecka writes that "kapos" were given nicknames that reflected their sadism: "Bloody", "Iron", "The Strangler", "The Boxer". Based on the 275 extant reports of punishment in the Auschwitz archives, Strzelecka lists common infractions: returning a second time for food at mealtimes, removing your own gold teeth to buy bread, breaking into the pigsty to steal the pigs' food, putting your hands in your pockets.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: Flogging during roll-call was common. A flogging table called "the goat" immobilized prisoners' feet in a box, while they stretched themselves across the table. Prisoners had to count out the lashes—"25 mit besten Dank habe ich erhalten" ("25 received with many thanks")— and if they got the figure wrong, the flogging resumed from the beginning. Punishment by "the post" involved tying prisoners hands behind their backs with chains attached to hooks, then raising the chains so the prisoners were left dangling by the wrists. If their shoulders were too damaged afterwards to work, they might be sent to the gas chamber. Prisoners were subjected to the post for helping a prisoner who had been beaten, and for picking up a cigarette butt. To extract information from inmates, guards would force their heads onto the stove, and hold them there, burning their faces and eyes.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: Known as block 13 until 1941, block 11 of Auschwitz I was the prison within the prison, reserved for inmates suspected of resistance activities. Cell 22 in block 11 was a windowless standing cell ("Stehbunker"). Split into four sections, each section measured less than and held four prisoners, who entered it through a hatch near the floor. There was a 5 cm x 5 cm vent for air, covered by a perforated sheet. Strzelecka writes that prisoners might have to spend several nights in cell 22; Wiesław Kielar spent four weeks in it for breaking a pipe. Several rooms in block 11 were deemed the "Polizei-Ersatz-Gefängnis Myslowitz in Auschwitz" (Auschwitz branch of the police station at Mysłowice). There were also "Sonderbehandlung" cases ("special treatment") for Poles and others regarded as dangerous to Nazi Germany.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: The courtyard between blocks 10 and 11, known as the "death wall", served as an execution area, including for Poles in the General Government area who had been sentenced to death by a criminal court. The first executions, by shooting inmates in the back of the head, took place at the death wall on 11 November 1941, Poland's National Independence Day. The 151 accused were led to the wall one at a time, stripped naked and with their hands tied behind their backs. Danuta Czech noted that a "clandestine Catholic mass" was said the following Sunday on the second floor of Block 4 in Auschwitz I, in a narrow space between bunks.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: An estimated 4,500 Polish political prisoners were executed at the death wall, including members of the camp resistance. An additional 10,000 Poles were brought to the camp to be executed without being registered. About 1,000 Soviet prisoners of war died by execution, although this is a rough estimate. A Polish government-in-exile report stated that 11,274 prisoners and 6,314 prisoners of war had been executed. Rudolf Höss wrote that "execution orders arrived in an unbroken stream". According to SS officer Perry Broad, "[s]ome of these walking skeletons had spent months in the stinking cells, where not even animals would be kept, and they could barely manage to stand straight. And yet, at that last moment, many of them shouted 'Long live Poland', or 'Long live freedom'." The dead included Colonel Jan Karcz and Major Edward Gött-Getyński, executed on 25 January 1943 with 51 others suspected of resistance activities. Józef Noji, the Polish long-distance runner, was executed on 15 February that year. In October 1944, 200 "Sonderkommando" were executed for their part in the "Sonderkommando" revolt.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: A separate camp for the Roma, the "Zigeunerfamilienlager" ("Gypsy family camp"), was set up in the BIIe sector of Auschwitz II-Birkenau in February 1943. For unknown reasons, they were not subject to selection and families were allowed to stay together. The first transport of German Roma arrived on 26 February that year. There had been a small number of Romani inmates before that; two Czech Romani prisoners, Ignatz and Frank Denhel, tried to escape in December 1942, the latter successfully, and a Polish Romani woman, Stefania Ciuron, arrived on 12 February 1943 and escaped in April. Josef Mengele, the Holocaust's most infamous physician, worked in the gypsy family camp from 30 May 1943 when he began his work in Auschwitz.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: The Auschwitz registry ("Hauptbücher") shows that 20,946 Roma were registered prisoners, and another 3,000 are thought to have entered unregistered. On 22 March 1943, one transport of 1,700 Polish Sinti and Roma was gassed on arrival because of illness, as was a second group of 1,035 on 25 May 1943. The SS tried to liquidate the camp on 16 May 1944, but the Roma fought them, armed with knives and iron pipes, and the SS retreated. Shortly after this, the SS removed nearly 2,908 from the family camp to work, and on 2 August 1944 gassed the other 2,897. Ten thousand remain unaccounted for.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: The SS deported around 18,000 Jews to Auschwitz from the Theresienstadt ghetto in Terezin, Czechoslovakia, beginning on 8 September 1943 with a transport of 2,293 male and 2,713 female prisoners. Placed in sector BIIb as a "family camp", they were allowed to keep their belongings, wear their own clothes, and write letters to family; they did not have their hair shaved and were not subjected to selection. Correspondence between Adolf Eichmann's office and the International Red Cross suggests that the Germans set up the camp to cast doubt on reports, in time for a planned Red Cross visit to Auschwitz, that mass murder was taking place there. The women and girls were placed in odd-numbered barracks and the men and boys in even-numbered. An infirmary was set up in barracks 30 and 32, and barracks 31 became a school and kindergarten. The somewhat better living conditions were nevertheless inadequate; 1,000 members of the family camp were dead within six months. Two other groups of 2,491 and 2,473 Jews arrived from Theresienstadt in the family camp on 16 and 20 December 1943.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: On 8 March 1944, 3,791 of the prisoners (men, women and children) were sent to the gas chambers; the men were taken to crematorium III and the women later to crematorium II. Some of the group were reported to have sung Hatikvah and the Czech national anthem on the way. Before they were murdered, they had been asked to write postcards to relatives, postdated to 25–27 March. Several twins were held back for medical experiments. The Czechoslovak government-in-exile initiated diplomatic manoeuvers to save the remaining Czech Jews after its representative in Bern received the Vrba-Wetzler report, written by two escaped prisoners, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, which warned that the remaining family-camp inmates would be gassed soon. The BBC also became aware of the report; its German service broadcast news of the family-camp murders during its women's programme on 16 June 1944, warning: "All those responsible for such massacres from top downwards will be called to account." The Red Cross visited Theresienstadt in June 1944 and were persuaded by the SS that no one was being deported from there. The following month, about 2,000 women from the family camp were selected to be moved to other camps and 80 boys were moved to the men's camp; the remaining 7,000 were gassed between 10 and 12 July.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: The first gassings at Auschwitz took place in early September 1941, when around 850 inmates—Soviet prisoners of war and sick Polish inmates—were killed with Zyklon B in the basement of block 11 in Auschwitz I. The building proved unsuitable, so gassings were conducted instead in crematorium I, also in Auschwitz I, which operated until December 1942. There, more than 700 victims could be killed at once. Tens of thousands were killed in crematorium I. To keep the victims calm, they were told they were to undergo disinfection and de-lousing; they were ordered to undress outside, then were locked in the building and gassed. After its decommissioning as a gas chamber, the building was converted to a storage facility and later served as an SS air raid shelter. The gas chamber and crematorium were reconstructed after the war. Dwork and van Pelt write that a chimney was recreated; four openings in the roof were installed to show where the Zyklon B had entered; and two of the three furnaces were rebuilt with the original components.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: In early 1942, mass exterminations were moved to two provisional gas chambers (the "red house" and "white house", known as bunkers 1 and 2) in Auschwitz II, while the larger crematoria (II, III, IV, and V) were under construction. Bunker 2 was temporarily reactivated from May to November 1944, when large numbers of Hungarian Jews were gassed. In summer 1944 the combined capacity of the crematoria and outdoor incineration pits was 20,000 bodies per day. A planned sixth facility—crematorium VI—was never built.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: From 1942, Jews were being transported to Auschwitz from all over German-occupied Europe by rail, arriving in daily convoys. The gas chambers worked to their fullest capacity from May to July 1944, during the Holocaust in Hungary. A rail spur leading to crematoria II and III in Auschwitz II was completed that May, and a new ramp was built between sectors BI and BII to deliver the victims closer to the gas chambers (images top right). On 29 April the first 1,800 Jews from Hungary arrived at the camp. From 14 May until early July 1944, 437,000 Hungarian Jews, half the pre-war population, were deported to Auschwitz, at a rate of 12,000 a day for a considerable part of that period. The crematoria had to be overhauled. Crematoria II and III were given new elevators leading from the stoves to the gas chambers, new grates were fitted, and several of the dressing rooms and gas chambers were painted. Cremation pits were dug behind crematorium V. The incoming volume was so great that the "Sonderkommando" resorted to burning corpses in open-air pits as well as in the crematoria.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: According to Polish historian Franciszek Piper, of the 1,095,000 Jews deported to Auschwitz, around 205,000 were registered in the camp and given serial numbers; 25,000 were sent to other camps; and 865,000 were murdered soon after arrival. Adding non-Jewish victims gives a figure of 900,000 who were murdered without being registered.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: During "selection" on arrival, those deemed able to work were sent to the right and admitted into the camp (registered), and the rest were sent to the left to be gassed. The group selected to die included almost all children, women with small children, the elderly, and others who appeared on brief and superficial inspection by an SS doctor not to be fit for work. Practically any fault—scars, bandages, boils and emaciation—might provide reason enough to be deemed unfit. Children might be made to walk toward a stick held at a certain height; those who could walk under it were selected for the gas. Inmates unable to walk or who arrived at night were taken to the crematoria on trucks; otherwise the new arrivals were marched there. Their belongings were seized and sorted by inmates in the "Kanada" warehouses, an area of the camp in sector BIIg that housed 30 barracks used as storage facilities for plundered goods; it derived its name from the inmates' view of Canada as a land of plenty.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: The crematoria consisted of a dressing room, gas chamber, and furnace room. In crematoria II and III, the dressing room and gas chamber were underground; in IV and V, they were on the ground floor. The dressing room had numbered hooks on the wall to hang clothes. In crematorium II, there was also a dissection room ("Sezierraum"). SS officers told the victims they had to take a shower and undergo delousing. The victims undressed in the dressing room and walked into the gas chamber; signs said "Bade" (bath) or "Desinfektionsraum" (disinfection room). A former prisoner testified that the language of the signs changed depending on who was being killed. Some inmates were given soap and a towel. A gas chamber could hold up to 2,000; one former prisoner said it was around 3,000.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: The Zyklon B was delivered to the crematoria by a special SS bureau known as the Hygiene Institute. After the doors were shut, SS men dumped in the Zyklon B pellets through vents in the roof or holes in the side of the chamber. The victims were usually dead within 10 minutes; Rudolf Höss testified that it took up to 20 minutes. Leib Langfus, a member of the "Sonderkommando", buried his diary (written in Yiddish) near crematorium III in Auschwitz II. It was found in 1952, signed "A.Y.R.A":


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: "Sonderkommando" wearing gas masks dragged the bodies from the chamber. They removed glasses and artificial limbs and shaved off the women's hair; women's hair was removed before they entered the gas chamber at Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka, but at Auschwitz it was done after death. By 6 February 1943, the Reich Economic Ministry had received 3,000 kg of women's hair from Auschwitz and Majdanek. The hair was first cleaned in a solution of sal ammoniac, dried on the brick floor of the crematoria, combed, and placed in paper bags. The hair was shipped to various companies, including one manufacturing plant in Bremen-Bluementhal, where workers found tiny coins with Greek letters on some of the braids, possibly from some of the 50,000 Greek Jews deported to Auschwitz in 1943. When they liberated the camp in January 1945, the Red Army found 7,000 kg of human hair in bags ready to ship.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: Just before cremation, jewelry was removed, along with dental work and teeth containing precious metals. Gold was removed from the teeth of dead prisoners from 23 September 1940 onwards by order of Heinrich Himmler. The work was carried out by members of the "Sonderkommando" who were dentists; anyone overlooking dental work might themselves be cremated alive. The gold was sent to the SS Health Service and used by dentists to treat the SS and their families; 50 kg had been collected by 8 October 1942. By early 1944, 10–12 kg of gold were being extracted monthly from victims' teeth.


title: Auschwitz concentration camp

text: The corpses were burned in the nearby incinerators, and the ashes were buried, thrown in the Vistula river, or used as fertilizer. Any bits of bone that had not burned properly were ground down in wooden mortars.