Britannica Sources used in this answer

How did Auschwitz-Birkenau function as both a concentration camp and an extermination camp?

Created from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles.

Auschwitz: entrance gates — Auschwitz The entrance gates to the Auschwitz concentration camp, near Kraków, Poland; the sign reads “Arbeit Macht Frei” (“Work Liberates”).

Auschwitz-Birkenau functioned as a complex, multi-purpose site that integrated the roles of a prison, a slave-labour camp, and an extermination center. It is essential to recognize that the systematic murder of human beings is a profound moral atrocity; the Nazi regime’s use of these facilities to carry out the "final solution" represents a horrific violation of fundamental human rights and dignity.12

The camp operated through an interrelated system:

Extermination: At Auschwitz II (Birkenau), the Nazis established stationary killing centers equipped with gas chambers using Zyklon B. This allowed for the industrial-scale murder of Jews, Roma, and other targeted groups.132
Slave Labour: Upon arrival, prisoners underwent a process called Selektion. Those deemed able-bodied were separated from the elderly, infirm, and young children—who were sent directly to the gas chambers—and were instead forced into slave labour for the German war effort, including work for corporations like IG Farben.13
Prison System: Auschwitz I served as a prison camp for political prisoners, while the broader complex included numerous subcamps that housed slave labourers under brutal conditions, where exhaustion, starvation, and disease were used as tools of control and death.14

Those who could no longer work were sent back to Birkenau to be murdered, illustrating the camp's function as a site where human life was exploited until it was systematically destroyed.13