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The camp is about 37 miles west of Krakow, near the prewar German-Polish border in Eastern Upper Silesia, an area annexed to Germany .
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The Auschwitz I concentration camp opens with the arrival of 30 German prisoners. They are the first prisoners to receive serial numbers in the camp.
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German authorities will begin the deportation of Polish prisoners to Auschwitz.
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Heinrich Himmler, leader of the SS and chief of German police, inspects Auschwitz. Because nearby factories use prisoners for forced labor, Himmler is concerned about the prisoner capacity of the camp. On this visit, he orders both the expansion of Auschwitz I camp facilities to hold 30,000 prisoners and the building of a camp near Birkenau for an expected influx of 100,000 Soviet prisoners of war.
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Construction of the Auschwitz-Birkenau (Auschwitz II) camp begins. Of the three camps established in the Auschwitz complex, Birkenau will have the largest prisoner population.
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Himmler will make additional visits to Auschwitz, when he will witness the killing of prisoners in the gas chambers.
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Mass killings will begin at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
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The SS puts the new gas chambers at Auschwitz into operation. The gas chambers are located in specially renovated farmhouses near the Birkenau section of the camp.
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The first mass transport of Jews from France arrives at Auschwitz. There are about 1,000 people in this transport.
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German authorities open the I.G. Farben labor camp at Monowitz (Auschwitz III).
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A typhus epidemic breaks out in Auschwitz-Birkenau. 184 male prisoners and an unknown number of female prisoners die in this epidemic.
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The first transports of Jews from the Netherlands arrive at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Out of two transports carrying close to 2,000 people, nearly 500 people are gassed or shot immediately.
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The first transport of close to 1,000 Jews from Belgium arrives in Auschwitz-Birkenau. After a selection, nearly 750 people are registered in the camp. The others are gassed or shot.
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The first gassings of prisoners occur in Auschwitz I. The SS tests Zyklon B gas by killing 600 Soviet prisoners of war and 250 other ill or weak prisoners.
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The first transport of Roma (Gypsies) from Germany and Austria arrives in Auschwitz. The SS places the arrivals in a section of Birkenau that becomes the Gypsy family camp.
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The first transport of Jews from the ghetto in Salonika, Greece, arrives in Auschwitz. Of 2,800 deportees, the SS registers about 600 men and women in the camp to work as forced laborers.
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The first of four new gas chambers and crematoria in Auschwitz-Birkenau is ready for use. The new facilities each have three components: a disrobing area, a large gas chamber, and crematorium ovens. Each chamber has the capacity to gas about 2,000 people daily.
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Over 5,000 Jewish prisoners from the Theresienstadt ghetto in the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia arrive in Auschwitz-Birkenau. A special family camp is set up for the Jews deported from Theresienstadt.
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The first train carrying Jews from Italy arrives in Auschwitz-Birkenau, with over 1,000 people. Only about 200 men and women are admitted to the camp. The rest are killed in the gas chambers or shot. Some 8,300 Jews will be deported from Italy to Auschwitz over the next year.
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An Allied aerial reconnaissance plane takes photographs of the I.G. Farben complex at Auschwitz. This is the first of many aerial reconnaissance missions resulting in photographs that show Auschwitz barracks and crematoria.
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Two Slovak Jews, Alfred Wetzler and Rudolf Vrba, escape from Auschwitz and flee to Slovakia. They make contact with representatives of the Jewish council in Zilina, Slovakia, and present a detailed report of their experiences in Auschwitz.
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Following the German occupation of Hungary, the first transports of Hungarian Jews begin arriving in Auschwitz-Birkenau.
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Transports from France will continue to arrive on a regular basis. The majority of the 75,000 Jews deported from France will be killed in the gas chambers.
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Members of the Jewish prisoner detachment (the Sonderkommando) that was forced to remove bodies from the gas chambers and operate the crematoria stage an uprising. They successfully blow up Crematorium IV and kill several guards.
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As Soviet and Allied forces continue to move into German-occupied territory, Heinrich Himmler orders the destruction of the Auschwitz-Birkenau gas chambers and crematoria. During this SS attempt to destroy the evidence of mass killings, prisoners will be forced to dismantle and dynamite the structures.
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An estimated 25,000 prisoners will die in the Monowitz labor camp.
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As Soviet forces approach from the east, the SS begins evacuating (to the west) the prisoners of the Auschwitz camp complex. Tens of thousands of prisoners, mostly Jews, are forced to march to the city of Wodzislaw in the western part of Upper Silesia.
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The Soviet army enters Auschwitz and liberates the few thousand prisoners remaining in the camp.
