Auschwitz I

Today was both mentally and physically draining as we did a 6 hour long tour of Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II (Birkenau).

The tour started in Auschwitz I, originally built as a Soviet POW camp, and later transformed into the death camp used in the Final Solution.

One picture shows a long row of pages. These pages are half of a book filled with the names of the victims. Each page must have had hundreds of names written in small font, the pages having no margins, and each one completely covered. This book isn't complete.

Since we were doing the longer 6 hour tour, we had access to Block 3, a building that was formerly closed to the public and is now open only to groups 3 times a day. This precaution is to preserve the original interior.

Directly outside the barbed wire fence, was a crematorium, the only one not destroyed by the fleeing Nazis as it had previously been converted to a storage facility. Here, we got a glimpse of what many saw in their final moments.Read more