FOLIO III · ORT
The German extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in occupied Poland was, from 1942, the central site of the National Socialist mass murder of Europe's Jews. The Viennese jurist and economic official Emil Perels, rooted in the early Austrian School around Mises and Böhm-Bawerk, was murdered here on 16 October 1944.
Auschwitz, Oświęcim in Polish, became the largest camp complex of the National Socialist extermination apparatus after the German occupation of Poland in 1940. From 1942, European Jews, Sinti and Roma, Polish civilians and Soviet prisoners of war were murdered systematically in Auschwitz II-Birkenau. In all, about 1.1 million people lost their lives here. Among the victims is Emil Perels, born in Vienna in 1880, a jurist with a doctorate and for many years a participant in the Böhm-Bawerk seminar. Perels was a co-founder of the discussion circle from which the Nationalökonomische Gesellschaft emerged in 1918; he headed the Austrian clearing office until 1921 and was succeeded there by Ludwig von Mises. Friedrich August von Hayek found his first post in the very same office shortly after completing his doctorate. After being deported to Theresienstadt on 24 September 1942, Perels was sent on to Auschwitz on 16 October 1944 and murdered.
