The genocide of European Jews at the Auschwitz concentration camp will remain a blot on mankind. Over a million people were killed by the Nazis in the concentration and extermination camps built and operated in Polish areas annexed by the Germans.

In this genocide, there have been some heroic events. One of them is the most spectacular escape on June 20, 1942 by Ukrainian Eugeniusz Bendera and three Poles, Kazimierz Piechowski, Stanislaw Gustaw Jaster and Józef Lempart. The foursome dressed as members of the SS-Totenkopfverbände, fully armed and in an SS staff car, drove out of the main gate in the stolen automobile, a Steyr 220 belonging to Rudolf Höss. The Germans never recaptured any of them.