Auschwitz & Birkenau Concentration Camps

ReizigerThis was referred to as the Women's dorm, but it was specifically for older women who could no longer work. Being assigned here meant you were waiting for availability in the gas chambers. Given that they were older women, many had trouble getting to the top sleeping area. Many crammed into the bottom area. While the floor has a walkway and a general floor for tourists. Back then it was a fully dirt or mud floor and likely freezing in the winter.

ReizigerA nearby plaque read: In the courtyard between blocks 10 and 11, in the years 1941-1943, SS men shot several thousand people at the Death Wall. Mainly Polish political prisoners, leaders and members of resistance organisations died here. Poles brought from outside the camp were also executed here, including hostages arrested in retaliation for actions by the Polish resistance against the German occupation authorities. Here, men, women, and even children lost their lives. There are also known tases of prisoners of other nationalities, Jews and Soviet prisoners of war, being shot here. In the courtyard, SS men performed the punishments of flogging and "the past", which consisted of hanging prisoners by their arms that were twisted behind their back. In 1944, on orders of camp authorities, the Death Wall was dismantled and executions by shooting were then carried out by SS men most often in the crematoria at KL Auschwitz II-Birkenau. After the war, the Museum partially reconstructed the Death Wall.

ReizigerA plaque from elsewhere in Auschwitz read: Immediately after getting off the train, the Jews were ordered to line up into two columns, one of women and children and the other of men. Each column was subjected to 'selections' by SS doctors and medical orderlies, there and then on the ramp: the strong and the healthy were separated from the old, the sick, and children. People selected as fit for work were sent to the camp. The others, usually 70 to 75 per cent of a transport, were sent to be murdered in the gas chambers.