Auschwitz Birkenau Tour Auschwitz has become a symbol of terror, genocide and the Shoah. It was established by Germans in the mid-1940 in the suburbs of Oswiecim, as incorporated by the Nazis in the Third Reich. The immediate reason for the establishment of the camp was the growing number of mass arrests of Poles and an overflow of existing prisons. Initially it was to be another of the concentration camps created by the Nazis from the beginning of the thirties. Auschwitz fulfill this function throughout the period of its existence, even when – in 1942 – became.