This was one of the most sobering experiences of my life. Over the years, I have heard and read in various ways about the concentration camps of the Nazi's in World War II, but none of that prepared me for actually experiencing being there where it all took place. These buildings were actually barracks that the Nazi's used at first until there were too many Jews, political prisoners and gypsies to keep here. Over 90% were Jews, but it was interesting to find out that there were others incarcerated here. There was only one gas chamber here and one crematorium to burn the bodies so a short distance they built Auschwitz II, which was named Birkenau. Much of it was destroyed when the Nazi's found out the Soviets were coming to liberate Poland, in fact 85% of Warsaw was destroyed by the Nazi's to hide their evil practices. Much of historic "old town" Warsaw was leveled by them. It has since been rebuilt, but you can tell the buildings are "restored" and not truly "old".
This is not a "grassy mound", but the gas chamber and chimney of the crematorium where the Jews were taken for their "shower", after having removed their clothing and having their hair shorn. They were taken into this cement room and the poison gas was dropped down through the ceiling. Some died quickly, some not! They were then cremated, however they could not burn them fast enough, given the number that had been killed each day, thus the Birkenau gas chambers and crematoriums and sheds to house the prisoners were built. The prisoners were used for the labor to build the new facilities.
These are the train tracks that brought the Jews to Birkenau. In the distance was the point where they were taken out of the cattle cars and separated according to the Nazi's judgement of whether or not they were "fit" to work. Women with children and older people were summarily sent to the gas chambers. The rest were sent to the barracks to be sent to work.
These are the bathroom facilities at Birkenau. No privacy, no dignity. They were brought here summer and winter with no clothes to wash and use the "facilities".
This was the "sleeping" facilities originally designed to hold about 50 horses, but about 1,000 prisoners would sleep on these pallets, usually about 12 people to each wooden pallet with little or nothing to sleep on or put over you. The cement down the center was supposedly a heating system. Whether cold or hot or wet, they had to try to survive.
A picture from the guard tower of the buildings that are left. You can see the entire area that has been destroyed. This picture was taken of the right side, the train unloading being in the center and more buildings on the left. The gas chambers and crematoriums were in the distance and could be identified by the chimneys.
There are about 4 million visitors to these memorials/museums at Auschwitz and Birkenau every year. There were many teary eyes and quiet sober faces as we walked around and heard and read the stories of what happened here. In the buildings at Auschwitz there were many rooms of memorabilia, but no pictures were allowed. They had suitcases with peoples names on them, thousands of pairs of glasses, toothbrushes, hair brushes, and to me, hardest to see was the hair that had been cut from their heads before they were taken to die. One of the members of our tour group was a woman from Canada whose mother survived Auschwitz. She even knew the building (#25) that her mother had been in and miraculously survived. It was a difficult experience, but one that I am glad that I had.
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