Zone of Interestwith industry

At Jawiszowice we stop longer and show three things in three different places. The exhibition on Monowitz in one of the mine buildings, then the mine buildings themselves, and about five hundred metres further on the subcamp bathhouse and the camp grounds. The mine was founded in 1903 and after Poland regained independence it was the only state owned coal mine in the Second Polish Republic. In August 1942 the Germans set up a subcamp beside it and, for the first time in the history of the German concentration camps, sent prisoners underground, to the coalface.

The same shaft has a second history. On 15 December 1981, four days after martial law was declared, the crew began a strike here and one thousand two hundred and sixty seven miners stayed underground for two days and two nights. We visit the surface buildings only: the headframes and the engine houses. We do not go underground.

What a participant learns along the way

• That a camp was built where the work was, and not the other way round: at the shaft, at the ironworks, at the refinery.
• That behind Auschwitz stood companies with boards and shareholders, among them IG Farben, the Göring concern and Berghütte.
• What the first shift of prisoners sent underground in the history of the German concentration camps looked like.
• What became of those companies and their assets after the war.
• That in these same mine buildings, in December 1981, one thousand two hundred and sixty seven miners went on strike against martial law.

This is only part of what we talk about during the programme.