European Excursion - Photo Montage Part V: Auschwitz-Birkenau

I decided to devote the Auschwitz-Birkenau visit its own page because it was not a sightseeing trip like the others.  I selected a few photographs and excerpts from the Auschwitz-Birkenau Guide Book with an attempt to share with you the sights I witnessed, and the feelings they invoked.

With Google and Wikipedia and a plethora of online resources, you may search for information about the topic literally at your fingertips.  My intention of this blog entry is not to educate anyone about Auschwitz-Birkenau, or to sensationalize my visit.  The sole attempt of this entry is to translate what I visualized and felt to a written format, in the most respectful way I know how.  

I am including basic information about the Camp and the links for important references.  

The Auschwitz 1 Concentration Camp was part of the network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps.  It is located in Oświęcim, about 90 minutes by car from Krakow.  Oświęcim was part of the Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany between mid-1940 to 1945.  Initially the camp comprised of 20 buildings - 14 at ground level and 6 with an upper floor. During the period from 1941 to 1942, an extra story was added to all ground floor buildings, and 8 new blocks were constructed.  All labor force came from the camp prisoners, of course.  

While Auschwitz I was most associated with the concentration camp, Auschwitz II - Birkenau - located in the village of Brzezinka just 3km away, was where majority of killings occurred.  Auschwitz II Birkenau was constructed in 1942 with four crematoria, gas chambers, cremation pits and pyres, a special platform where deportees were selected, and a pond with human ashes.  

Remaining in both camps are well preserved blocks and a part of the prisoners' barracks, the main entrance gates to the camps, watch towers, as well as barbed wire fences.  Some of the constructions destroyed by the Nazis were rebuilt from the original elements; some were completely destroyed by the SS obliterating evidence of their crimes.  

In cases of special importance, constructions were reproduced by the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Musuem, and placed in the same area as they were during the existence of the Auschwitz camp.  Above all these are the "Death Wall" and the collective gallows at the roll-call ground.  I did not, and would not, take pictures at the Death Wall; it became just a bit too much for me, although the link I provided gives a very good 360-view of the location.  

The Death Wall is located in the "Death Block", completely isolated from the rest of the camp.  The courtyard is enclosed on two sides by a high wall.  Thousands of prisoners were shot to death at the Wall, especially Poles.  On the ground floor was the Gestapo Police Court, which determined the verdict of prisoners.  Victims were always made to undress in one of two washrooms before the execution; some executions were actually just carried out in the washrooms.  


All prisoners were marked with different colored triangles, which were sewn onto their camp clothes along their inmate number:  red for political prisoners; yellow for Jews and another one for the corresponding reason of their arrest; black for Gypsies or those regarded as "antisocial"; violet for Jehovah Witnesses; pink for homosexuals; green for criminals. Inmate numbers were also tattooed on forearms. 

It rained lightly the day we visited the camps.  The temperature was in the low mid-to-high 50's, with wind gusting at an unknown speed.  If my memory serves me right, one can expect the normal temperature in Auschwitz to be 10 degrees fahrenheit (about 4 degrees celsius) lower than Krakow, due to its location and the openness of the lay of the land.  


It was a somber and reflective day, and an important one on my trip.  

Excerpt from Anne Frank's Diary on exhibit

Entrance to Auschwitz I Concentration Camp

"Arbeit macht frei" - "Work sets you free"

The sign was made by prisoners with metal work skills
and erected by order of the Nazis in June, 1940.  The slogan
is known for having been placed over the entrances to a number
of Nazi concentration camps, the most infamously one, Auschwitz.

The sign placed over the gate is a replica.  The original one
was stolen in December 2009 by a Swedish former neo-Nazi,
and later recoverd in three pieces.  The original sign
is now in the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.

There was a haunting feeling to pass under the cynical sign,
imagined hearing the camp orchestra played marches -
mustering the thousands of prisoners so that they could be
counted more efficiently by the SS.

Each row of barracks is called a block.
Some of the barracks are now national exhibitions,
portraying the history of the camp or tracing the
torments of the various nations whose citizens were murdered here.

Roll calls were taken daily at the roll-call ground - the small
overhead cover served as protection for the SS guard
in inclement weather.  If anyone was missing, the entire squad of
prisoners would stand outside until the escapee was found,
regardless of time, weather, or duration. 

Part of the barbed wire fences,
with high voltage electricity

One of several exhibitions shows mountains of
personal property confiscated from prisoners and
murdered victims:  shoes, suitcases, eye-glasses,
baby clothes, prayer shawls, kitchen and serve-wares,
and so on.
  

Most deportees arrived were convinced that they had been deported for "resettlement" in Eastern Europe, particularly Jews from Greece and Hungary were deceived and betrayed that the Nazis sold them non-existence plots of land, farms, shops, or offered them to work in fictitious factories.  For this reason, deportees always brought their most valuable possessions with them. 

All personal possessions brought to the camp were confiscated, sorted, stored, and transported to the Reich for use by the SS.  The labor was performed by prisoners, of course. The storage warehouses were constantly overflowing with plundered goods. Prisoners nicknamed the warehouses "Canada", as that was the land they associated with as the land of plenty.  

In addition to personal properties, 7 tons of human hair, packed tightly into bags, were found in the camp warehouses upon liberation.  These were the remains which the camp authorities had not yet managed to sell and send to factories inside the Reich.  Human hair usage included tailor's lining (haircloth).  Gold fillings were removed from the teeth of the corpses and melted into ingots.  Ashes were used as fertilizer, or filling in nearby ponds or river beds. 

In addition to the most atrocious genocide, most people did not realize or associate the Holocaust being the largest robbery in human history. 

September 1, 1939
Nazi Germany invaded Poland
At 0445, WWII broke out

Auschwitz II - Birkenau
Facing the entrance and the watch tower

As the number of inmates increased, the area covered by the camp also grew, until it was transformed into one gigantic and horrific factory of death.  Auschwitz I became the parent to a whole generation of new camps.  Construction of Auschwitz II Birkenau began in 1941 and by 1942, Auschwitz III was built in Monowice, also near Oświęcim.   

Most, if not all, deportees arrived by rail.
The distance traveled sometimes reached as much as
2,400 km (1,500 miles).  Deportees typically traveled for 7-10 days
before reaching their final destination.  Upon arrival,
some victims - above all old people and children -
were already dead; while the rest were
in a state of extreme exhaustion.

About 100 people would be crammed
into this sealed goods wagon, crowded like
cattle, without food, water, ventilation, or toilets.
There were typically ten wagons to
a train, bringing approximately 1,000 prisoners
to the camp each time. 

Upon arrival, prisoners were unloaded from the trains
and families members were immediately wrenched from each other.
Men on one side, women and children on the other.

Each person was then examined by a SS physician,
whose finger would point to the right or the left:
Right to the barracks to perform endless hard labor.
Left - children under 15, old people, the sick and the weak -
 were sent to the gas chambers for immediate execution. 

The exterior of a woman's brick barrack (obviously there would not be any grass...)


Brick barracks were built without foundations,
directly on swampy ground.  Most of these had no floor
at all.  Brick barracks housed women prisoners.

Men and women were placed in separate barracks, some constructed in brick; others in wood.  

Interior of the same woman's brick barrack

Eight women were placed on each of three tiers.  The bottom tier
would have rotten straw scattered over the concrete floor.
Up to a thousand inmates would live in a primitive barrack,
without any plumbing systems or heating in the winter. 
Diseases especially typhus, typhoid fever, and scabies were rampant, 
as were rats, insects, and other vermin.

The "left" finger determined the fate of
millions who walked this very road
to the gas chambers.  

The runis of a crematorium in Birkenaun.
There was one small crematorium with four furnaces in Auschwitz I.  
The furnaces could burn approximately 350 bodies daily. 
Four crematoria each with ten furnaces were built in Birkenau.

There were so many bodies that these furnaces were
operating 24/7.  By 1944 additional temporary crematoria were
built to accommodate the demand.

Ashes were dumped in a pond behind these
commemorative stones

Children were sent to Auschwitz together with adults.
They were first of all Jews, Gypsies, but also Poles
and Russians; and were treated in the same way as adults.

Some children, especially twins, served as objects of
criminal experiments.  SS doctor Joseph Mengele experimented on twins as part of a genetic program and anthropological research.
Other SS doctors also experimented
application of medical and chemical preparations on inmates,  
including injections or applications of known toxin, viruses; 
sterilization experiments on Jewish women to develop
efficient method for biological extermination
of the nations, mainly Slavs. 


Mengele survived the war, and later fled to South America,
where he evaded capture for the rest of his life despite
being hunted as a war criminal.  Mengele died in Brazil in 1979.
He drowned, possibly the result of a stroke or heart attack,
while swimming in the Atlantic. 

Steps led to the International Monument
which stands between crematoria II and III.
Each one of these paving stones symbolically
represented a Holocaust victim.  
The International Monument was ceremonially unveiled
in April 1967.