Over the following years, the camp was expanded and consisted of three main parts: Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, and Auschwitz III-Monowitz. It also had over 40 sub-camps. At first, Poles were imprisoned and died in the camp. Afterwards, Soviet prisoners of war, Gypsies, and prisoners of other nationalities were also incarcerated there.

Beginning in 1942, the camp became the site of the greatest mass murder in the history of humanity, which was committed against the European Jews as part of Hitler's plan for the complete destruction of that people. The majority of the Jewish men, women, and children deported to Auschwitz were sent to their deaths in the Birkenau gas chambers immediately after arrival. At the end of the war, in an effort to remove the traces of the crimes they had committed, the SS began dismantling and razing the gas chambers, crematoria, and other buildings, as well as burning documents.

Now, in the beautiful setting of Hanchurch in the Staffordshire countryside at the United Christian Broadcasters (UCB) Europe studios, which seemed to be a million miles from the horrors of Auschwitz, comes the astonishing news that a Christian radio station is broadcasting the Gospel in this city of death. Henryk Krol, the head of the Radio Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) network, said in an interview during the recent UCB International Conference in Yarnfield, Staffordshire, United Kingdom, "Our first transmitter of Radio CCM started its operation in 1998 and our antennas are not in the camp, but on the chimney of the factory where Zyklon-B was manufactured and used by Nazis in the death camp. So now, out of that chimney, the signal is spilling out with the Good News for people of this city where there was so much suffering." (Zyklon-B are pellets–hydrocyanic acid–that vaporize when exposed to air. Originally intended for commercial use as a disinfectant and an insecticide, the Nazis discovered through experimentation that the gas could be used to kill humans.)

Krol, who, along with his family, were deeply in involved in Billy Graham’s historic visit to Poland in the 1970s, said that another of his radio stations is based in Gliwice, and the radio antenna is placed on a historical timber radio tower, the exact place where the so-called Gliwice German provocation triggered the beginning of World War II.

(By Dan Wooding and Peter Wooding, Assist News, June 28, 2005)

PRAYER FOCUS
Praise God He brings light into darkness. He is truly amazing.