Auschwitz

 A day tour to Auschwitz and Birkenau is an experience  which deeply affected me. Concentration camps which were killing machines for 1.3 million people. We should never forget these atrocities. 

Auschwitz below. 

The gas chambers entry. 

700 people at a time were gassed in this room. Babies, children men and women, taking up to 20 minutes to die. 

Then burned in the crematorium, the next room. 

Birkenau below was  purpose built concentration camp for POW but it’s main purpose was as an extermination camp with 5 gas chambers and crematoriums. On arrival at Birkenau those selected as unable to work were sent straight to the gas chambers. If you were selected to work most POW’s died within 5 months of arrival at Birkenau. 

Only rubble remains of the 5 crematoriums at Birkenau. Crematorium number 4 was set fire to and damaged beyond repair in 1944 by rebel Jewish prisoners who were subsequently put to death. Tbe other 4 crematoriums at Birkenau were blown up by the Germans in the days prior to Allied forces liberating the prisoners. 

Conditions in the buildings at Birkenau would have been indescribable. Prisoners 6 to a bunk very malnourished, diseased, many with dysentery and diarrhea too weak to move. And minus 20 degrees in Winter. 

https://www.auschwitz.org/en/history/auschwitz-ii/the-functions/

Tour dated 20/7/2023