--------------------- The Auschwitz concentration camp complex was the largest of its kind established by the Nazi regime. It included three main camps, all of which deployed incarcerated prisoners at forced labor. One of them also functioned for an extended period as a killing center. The camps were located approximately 37 miles west of Krakow, near the prewar German-Polish border in *Upper* Silesia, an area that Nazi Germany annexed in 1939 after invading and conquering Poland

West Berlin was not legally part of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and despite Communist claims, east Berlin was not legally part of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). Territory to the east which fell within the 1937 frontiers of the German Reich but was not included within the borders of either post-war German state was technically under Polish and Soviet administration, but not officially annexed by those countries. And the last government of the Third Reich, headed by Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, was not abolished, merely declared "incapable of acting" by the Allies. Does this mean that, until the treaties permitting unification to come about in 1990, the German Reich technically continued to exist in Greater Berlin and the Laender of East Prussia, Upper Silesia, Lower Silesia, Pommerania and east Brandenburg? What is the legal status of the territories east of the Oder-Neisse Line today? Have they been formally annexed by Poland and Russia?