Aussenkommando Sosnitz

Sośnica · subcamp of KL Auschwitz

Record no. 1 of 45
Nothing is left

30 Prisoners in the detachment

The first subcamp in the history of Auschwitz lasted barely two months and existed for one purpose only: to pull down somebody else's camp for material to build its own.

German name: Aussenkommando Sosnitz
Established: 10 July 1940
Closed: August 1940
Subordinate to: The main Auschwitz camp
Employer: KL Auschwitz, the SS's own detachment
Type of work: Dismantling and salvaging barracks from a prisoner of war camp
Surviving structures: None
Access: Built-up ground, unmarked

Period of operation against the Auschwitz system

JUL 1940 — AUG 1940

1940

1941

1942

1943

1944

1945

All 45 subcamps of KL Auschwitz on one map, this one marked with a ring. The filled square is Auschwitz I, the empty one Auschwitz II-Birkenau.

Distances in a straight line — approximate

Auschwitz I≈ 45 km
Auschwitz II-Birkenau≈ 45 km
Krakow≈ 90 km
TownSośnica

Measured from the centre of the town, accurate to within a few kilometres.

Branch of industry in the register

SS detachment

What happened here

In the summer of 1940, when Auschwitz was only just being built, about thirty prisoners were sent to Sosnica near Gliwice. Their task was to dismantle the infrastructure of a camp in which the Germans had earlier held Polish prisoners of war, and to prepare the salvaged parts for transport.

The material from Sosnica went to Oświęcim and was built into Auschwitz I. The detachment was dissolved in August 1940, when the work ran out.

What is left

Nothing of the subcamp survives. The site was swallowed by the post-war development of Gliwice-Sosnica.

There is no plaque here, no information board and no sign of any kind that this place was the first link in a network that grew to forty five subcamps.

Archival photographs of this place
Photographs and documents from the time the camp existed are held and made available by the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oświęcim.

Museum gallery →

Sources — the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oświęcim, archive and historical collections · Re-Finding the Sub Camps of Auschwitz, field research by the Tiergartenstrasse4 Association 2005–2008, subcamps-auschwitz.org · field documentation by Auschwitz Subcamps.

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