Auschwitz

I have and have not been looking forward to today's visit to Auschwitz and Birkenau (see another post). After visiting Dachau, I sensed this would be hard. It was. In fact, it was more than I ever realized. Over 1,000,000 killed. Mostly Jews. I recognize the harshness of phrasing it this way. Please hear it as an attempt to convey the harshness and brutality of the so called "final solution."
Auschwitz was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps. What I had thought was Auschwitz was referred to as Auschwitz 1. This site is an abandoned Polish military base that was converted to a concentration camp. Death came later.
The 1st picture is of some of the barracks. The 2nd is a kitchen building. The 3rd is barrack 11, the prison building. Notice that the windows are boarded so that prisoners could not see into the yard. At the far end in the shadows is a wall for firing squads.
This is not to say there weren't any horrors here. The 4th picture is of some of the twins Mengele experimented on. The last 2 pictures are the 1st extermination chamber: gas room and crematory furnaces. This was built in an ammunition bunker that had been emptied before the Polish army abandoned this base. It couldn't be used as it was too close to the camp and screams could be heard. This became the design basis for all that came after.Read more