Auschwitz; Frenzied Killing

During the start of 1944, 550,000 Jews were murdered in Auschwitz. In a matter of weeks, this increased by 300,000. (850,000 people murdered in maximum 4 weeks.) In this time, the majority of the fatalities were of Hungarian origin. Below is a photograph of one of the gas chambers prisoners would've been huddled into and then gassed. 

These YouTube clips help to illustrate the horrors of this year, and there are 5 parts to the documentary. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dg1W6iPxOLg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbxUPglWGS0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsEKYaKHLQk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gS-LO1WLvY0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBCkXiXv2H4

On the 25th April of this year, from a SS proposal, they wanted to 'sell' one million Hungarian Jews in return for 100,000 trucks. This confused Hungarian government to an extent, and nothing was done about it at this time. 

-  Subsequently in July 1944, the truck/Jew swap was rejected as the Americans, Brits and Soviets didn't want to negotiate with the Nazis. 

After this, Germany began to lose its grip on the world war. Allied countries were starting to realise that Germany was in fact losing the war, and cut ties with the country. The Americans were aware of the concentration camps, and sent spy planes over the camps to take photographs of what the Germans had built. This was all part of a plan to bomb the railway lines into the camps so that no more Jews could be sent there and exterminated. Although this plan fell through, and is still the biggest un-answered question in the history of WWII. 

- Photographic evidence of Auschwitz during 1944. Taken from American planes. Referenced from googleimages.com

Whilst all of this was going on, on the 1st of July 1944; the liquidation of the gypsy camp began. This is the worst killing recorded in the history of Auschwitz. Gypsy children were taken off in SS trucks, with some children attempting to escape from them. In Response to this, the guards would beat their limbs with wooden batons breaking them and throwing them back into the trucks, ensuring that they were so injured they couldn't escape. They were taken to the gas chambers to be murdered. The gypsy race was seen as 'dirty', 'racially dangerous' and as 'anti social' as the Jewish race, hence the cruel handling of them. Their barracks were the worst to live in, with death, starvation and disease increasingly killing innocent people. 

some of the gypsy inmates - pre liquidation. 

As the months progressed, 1000 people were murdered per day over the Autumn, compared to the 10,000 a day in May. This showed that the SS were slipping, and slowly losing control over the mass executions. 

On the 7th October 1944, two of the crematoriums were set alight by rebelling inmates (2&5), SS guards were attacked, and the rebelling prisoners escaped into nearby woods, but were captured and shot shortly afterwards. Survivors state that they were made to lay face down on the floor with their hands behind their backs. Every third person was killed. The remaining escapees were sent back to the camps to carry out their slave labour aka death by work. 

During this time also - tens of thousands of Jews were trekked from Hungary to Austria for slave labour, and not sent to the concentration camps. Many died en-route. They were forced to trek due to the lack of trains available to take them - probably because authoritative SS guards had their own trains.