Today, Auschwitz survivors around the world are commemorating the first transport of prisoners, which arrived at the newly established German concentration camp at Auschwitz on 14 June 1940.

The 728 prisoners were mainly young Poles and Polish Jews, who had their prisoner numbers tattooed and their hair shaved off that same day. Most of them had attempted to flee Poland in order to join armed forces abroad and continue fighting against the German occupiers of their homeland. After being imprisoned and tortured in Tarnów, Poland, they were transported to Auschwitz on 14 June 1940.

During a visit to the Auschwitz Memorial, Christoph Heubner, Executive Vice-President of the International Auschwitz Committee, stressed: ‘The prisoners included the 17-year-old schoolboy Kazimierz Albin from Kraków, who was given the number 118 that day. Upon their arrival at Auschwitz, they quickly realised what a hell of hatred and annihilation they had stumbled into, even though they could not possibly imagine the eventual industrial scale of extermination at Auschwitz and Birkenau, nor the systematic murder of Europe’s Jewish families. The first prisoners banded together all the more closely to confront the hatred of the SS.

The prisoners who were deported to Auschwitz after them still remember them today with great respect and gratitude. They were the ones who had known the inner workings of the camp for the longest time, as well as the mentality of the SS. They helped many prisoners not to give up and to survive hunger, beatings and the fear of death.

A group of apprentices from Volkswagen AG will also be taking part in today’s commemorative ceremonies. For the past week, they have been working alongside Polish vocational school students on conservation work at the Auschwitz Memorial and taking part in a seminar organised by the International Auschwitz Committee.