Clandestine activity in Auschwitz was initiated by Polish political prisoners. With the deportation of other ethnicities to Auschwitz, above all Jews, new formations sprang up in the resistance movement—Jewish as well as Austrian and German, Czech, French, Russian and Yugoslavian. Some of them, mostly leftist, joined some Polish leftists in 1943 to create the organization called Kampfgruppe Auschwitz (Combat Group Auschwitz). A year later, this organization and members of the camp AK founded the Auschwitz Military Council.

The main goals of the underground were among others acquiring and distributing food and medicine, providing the outside world with the information about what was happening in the camp (informing the world) and preparing escapes. The plans for an armed uprising against the camp SS garrison with the aid of the Polish resistance movement (partisans) outside the camp were also prepared. This never came about, however, because of the disproportion of forces and the impracticality of concealing tens of thousands of prisoners after their hypothetical escape from the camp.

(Mini dictionary of terms from the history of Auschwitz)