35. Auschwitz Poland

We all know what happened at Auschwitz. If you need a refresher, there is a summary at the end of this post.

Visiting the site was a reminder of the events that took place there, and made me sick to my stomach. The tour focused on how the Nazis gradually and methodically improved the logistics around the management of the mass-slaughter so that they not only maximized the efficiency of the process, but the efficiency of their pillage and plunder as well. Some of these methods included:

- Separating arriving prisoners in 2 lines, those who can work, and those who cannot, so that the ones who could not work did not even need to be registered - they could be put on a train and sent directly to the gas chamber.

- Having unsuspecting new arrivals write their name on their luggage and leave it by the train when they arrived, so they would believe it when they were told they would be able to retrieve their luggage later. After they left, the luggage was looted for valuables.

- Working to identify the best method of mass-murder. Some 850 Soviet and Polish prisoners were gassed in the basement of Block 11 in Auschwitz as a test in 1941. The ‘operation’ was deemed overwhelmingly successful by Germans, who subsequently used the same method to kill thousands of people on a daily basis. After penetrating the lungs through inhalation, Zyklon B caused in its victims excruciating pain, violent convulsions and finally, a heart attack.

- Combing through the dead to pull any gold teeth they could find, and to check for any valuable gemstones that may have been hidden.

- Using prisoners for medical "research". Josef Mengale, the most notorious doctor involved in this, was particularly interested in twins. Most of his subjects were children, and he would reportedly do blood transfusions from the one twin to the other, do amputations and try to sew it onto the other twin, stitch two twins together to form Siamese twins, infect one twin with typhus or another disease and many other experiments. More often than not, the twins died during the procedures or he would have them killed afterwards so he can do an autopsy. If one twin died from a disease, Mengele would often kill the other as well to mark the differences between the sick and healthy subjects.

I could go on and on. But, enough.

Auschwitz history
Auschwitz, also known as Auschwitz-Birkenau, was the largest and most notorious of the Nazi concentration and extermination camps during World War II. Established by the Nazis in 1940, Auschwitz initially served as a detention center for political prisoners, but soon evolved into a network of camps where millions of Jews and other perceived enemies of the Nazi state were systematically exterminated or used as forced labor.

The Auschwitz complex consisted of three main camps: Auschwitz I, the original concentration camp; Auschwitz II-Birkenau, an extermination camp; and Auschwitz III-Monowitz, a labor camp. Auschwitz II-Birkenau was the largest and most infamous, with its gas chambers and crematoria becoming symbols of the Holocaust. Here, the Nazis implemented their "Final Solution," the plan to annihilate the Jewish population of Europe. Over 1.1 million people, including Jews, Poles, Romani people, Soviet POWs, and others, were murdered at Auschwitz.

Life in Auschwitz was brutal and dehumanizing. Prisoners faced overcrowding, starvation, forced labor, and constant fear of death. Many were subjected to inhumane medical experiments conducted by Nazi doctors, most notoriously Josef Mengele. The camp's conditions were designed to break the spirit and bodies of the inmates, leading to a high mortality rate.

In January 1945, as Soviet forces advanced, the Nazis attempted to evacuate Auschwitz, forcing approximately 60,000 prisoners on death marches to other camps. When the Soviets liberated Auschwitz on January 27, 1945, they found around 7,000 emaciated survivors and piles of corpses. The liberation of Auschwitz revealed the full extent of the horrors committed there and became a powerful symbol of the Holocaust.Read more