Auschwitz - Birkenau Extermination Camp

One more visit to make during this trip to Poland - Auschwitz.

Auschwitz, the largest of six "death camps" constructed by the Nazis.  Here over 1.1 million people were murdered.  And as our very patriotic Polish guide reminds us, not all were Jews.  Auschwitz became a symbol of terror, genocide and death, the most streamlined mass killing center ever created.

Nothing prepares you for a visit to this place, an eerie silence prevails all around, no one shouts and the place is void of any birds singing. 

I was apprehensive about taking photographs, but as long as you are not intrusive, have respect for other people and the horrors that went on here.

On April 27, 1940, Heinrich Himmler ordered the construction of a camp near Oswiecim, Poland (about 37 miles west of Krakow).  Auschwitz is the German spelling of Oswiecim.  By the time of its liberation, Auschwitz had grown to include three large camps and 45 sub-camps.

Auschwitz I - the Main Camp was the original camp.  This camp housed prisoners, was the location of medical experiments, and the site of Block 11 (a place of severe torture) and the Black Wall (a place of execution).  At the entrance of Auschwitz I stood the infamous sign that stated "Arbeit Macht Frei" ("work makes one free").  Auschwitz I also housed the Nazi staff that ran the entire camp complex.

Entering Auschwitz you pass under the infamous words
 "Arbeit Macht Frei" 

The camp is enclosed by twin rows of barbed wire
(which would have been electrified). 

Auschwitz kitchens

Located between Blocks 10 and 11, this courtyard was an execution area,
where an estimated 20,000 inmates lost their lives.
Most were shot from behind whilst standing naked.

Auschwitz II - Birkenau was completed in early 1942.  Birkenau was built approximately 1.9 miles away from Auschwitz I, and was the real killing center of the Auschwitz death camp.  It was in Birkenau where the dreaded selections were carried out on the ramp and where the sophisticated and camouflaged gas chambers laid in waiting. Birkenau, much larger than Auschwitz I, housed the most prisoners and included areas for women and Gypsies.

Aerial views taken by US air force.

Through this entrance, train transports from
23 countries brought millions to their death.

These buildings were originally designed as horse stables.
Each one housed 800+ inmates.

The gate which separated the men and women camps.

On each bunk between 6 to 8 people slept.

This central brick and mortar duct carried heating from a fire.

Several thousand inmates would have used these toilet blocks.
Many were infected with typhus or dysentery.

The view from the toilet block.

Auschwitz III - Buna-Monowitz was built last as "housing" for the forced labourers at the Buna synthetic rubber factory in Monowitz.  There were 45 other sub-camps where they housed prisoners that were used for forced labour.

Many miles of fencing still remains.

Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, prostitutes, criminals, and prisoners of war were gathered, stuffed into cattle cars on trains, and sent to Auschwitz.  When the trains stopped at Auschwitz II- Birkenau; the newly arrived were told to leave all their belongings on board and were then forced to disembark from the train and gather upon the railway platform, known as "the ramp."

The unloading area. New arrivals arrived exhausted, confused and frightened.
 On arrival they immediately went through a selection process. Those chosen for work went in one direction,
 the remainder, falsely told they were going to take disinfecting showers and have a warm meal, were moved in procession to the gas chambers. 

The "ramp" today.

Families, who had disembarked together, were quickly and brutally split up as an SS officer, usually a Nazi doctor, ordered each individual into one of two lines.  Most women, children, older men, and those that looked unfit or unhealthy were sent to the left; while most young men and others that looked strong enough to do hard labour were sent to the right.  Unbeknown to the people in the two lines, the left line meant immediate death at the gas chambers and the right meant that they would become a prisoner of the camp. Most of the prisoners would later die from starvation, exposure, forced labour, and/or torture.

Once the selections had been concluded, a select group of Auschwitz prisoners gathered up all the belongings that had been left on the train and sorted them into huge piles, which were then stored in warehouses.  These items (including clothing, eye glasses, medicine, shoes, books, pictures, jewellery, and prayer shawls) would periodically be bundled and shipped back to Germany.

Footless shoes - the victims remembered only by the absence.

The people who were sent to the left, which was the majority of those who arrived at Auschwitz, were never told that they had been chosen for death.  The entire mass murder system depended on keeping this secret from its victims.  If the victims had known they were headed to their death, they would most definitely have fought back.

But they didn't know, so the victims latched onto the hope that the Nazis wanted them to believe.  Having been told that they were going to be sent to work, the masses of victims believed it when they were told they first needed to be disinfected and have showers.

The victims were ushered into an ante-room, where they were told to remove all their clothing.  Completely naked, these men, women, and children were then ushered into a large room that looked like a big shower room (there were even fake shower heads on the walls).  When the doors shut, a Nazi would pour Zyklon-B pellets into an opening in the roof or through a window, which would turn into poison gas once it contacted air.

Empty Zyklon B containers found during liberation.

The gas killed quickly, but it was not instantaneous.  Victims finally realizing that this was not a shower room, clambered over each other trying to find breathable air.  Others would claw at the doors until their fingers bled.

Once everyone in the room was dead, special prisoners called “Sonderkommandos” would air out the room and then remove the bodies.  The bodies would be searched for gold and then placed into the crematoria.

Wagons like this would have been used to collect and haul the dead to Crematories.

Although Auschwitz I did have a gas chamber, the majority of the mass murdering took place in Auschwitz II - Birkenau’s four main gas chambers; each of which had its own crematorium.  Each gas chambers could murder about 6,000 people a day.

Auschwitz Main Camp Crematory, remains as it was, complete
with gas chamber, iron body carts and furnaces.

Those that had been sent to the right during the selection process on the ramp went through a dehumanizing process that turned them into camp prisoners.  All of their clothes and any remaining personal belongings were taken from them and their hair was shorn completely off.  They were given striped prison outfits and a pair of shoes, all of which were usually the wrong size.  They were then registered, had their arms tattooed with a number, and transferred to one of Auschwitz's camps for forced labour.

The new arrivals were then thrown into the cruel, hard, unfair, horrific world of camp life.  Within their first week at Auschwitz, most new prisoners had discovered the fate of their loved ones that had been sent to the left.  Some of the new prisoners never recovered from this news.

Train rails used for mass hangings.

In the barracks, prisoners slept cramped together with three prisoners per wooden bunk.  Toilets in the barracks consisted of a bucket, which had usually overflowed by morning.  In the morning, all prisoners would be assembled outside for roll call.  Standing outside for hours at roll call, whether in intense heat or below freezing temperatures.

Haunting photo of Main Camp accommodation with reflections of inmates who were housed here.

After roll call, the prisoners would be marched to the place where they were to work for the day.  While some prisoners worked inside factories, others worked outside doing hard labour.  After hours of hard work, the prisoners would be marched back to camp for another roll call.

Auschwitz muster point for roll calls.

Food was scarce and usually consisted of a bowl of soup and some bread.  The limited amount of food and extremely hard labour was intentionally meant to work and starve the prisoners to death.

Also on the ramp, Nazi doctors would search among the new arrivals for anyone they might want to experiment upon.  Their favourite choices were twins and dwarfs, but also anyone who in any way looked physically unique, such as having different coloured eyes, would be pulled from the line for experiments.

At Auschwitz, there was a team of Nazi doctors who conducted experiments, but the two most notorious were Dr. Carl Clauberg and Dr. Josef Mengele.  Clauberg focused his attention on finding ways to sterilize women, by such unorthodox methods as X-rays and injections of various substances into their uterus's.   Mengele experimented on identical twins, hoping to find a secret to cloning what Nazis considered the perfect Aryan.

When the Nazis realized that the Russians were successfully pushing their way toward Germany in late 1944, they decided to start destroying evidence of their atrocities at Auschwitz.  Himmler ordered the destruction of the crematoria and the human ashes were buried in huge pits and covered with grass.  Many of the warehouses were emptied, with their contents shipped back to Germany.

In January 1945 the SS blew up Crematories II and III, in an attempt to cover-up their crimes.
The underground rooms survived relatively intact, as did the rail system built into the furnace floor.

Crematories II and III were both built by inmates. Each building had three main parts; the underground undressing room, the gas chamber and the furnace. The attic area was used for drying the cut off hair from gassed women and also sleeping quarters for the Sonderkommando.

In the middle of January 1945, the Nazis removed the last 58,000 prisoners from Auschwitz and sent them on death marches.  The Nazis planned on marching these exhausted prisoners all the way to camps closer or within Germany.

On January 27, 1945, the Russians reached Auschwitz.  When the Russians entered the camp, they found the 7,650 prisoners who had been left behind.  The camp was liberated; these prisoners were now free.

On 16 April, 1947, Rudolf Hess, the Commandant of Auschwitz was hanged
on this spot - near to Crematory I.  Hess wrote this whilst in prison:
 "History will mark me as the greatest mass murdered of all time".

In amongst the ruined Gas Chambers - now a memorial site.

The end of the road -

 looking back to the entrance and vast camp from the Gas Chambers.