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| The entrance to Auschwitz I, the
original Auschwitz concentration camp. There were two others. Auschwitz II, or
Birkenau, was an extermination camp, and Auschwitz III, or Monowitz, was a labor
camp that provided slave labor for a unit of the IG Farben Company. The
sign says "Arbeit macht frei", work will free you. |
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Auschwitz I was on the site of a
former Polish military base, not an unpleasant place until the Nazis took it
over. |
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| Sleeping accommodations were made a
tad more crowded, for instance. |
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And they made it harder to leave. |
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| This was one way for
inmates to leave, the firing squad in front of the Wall of Death. |
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And this was another,
the gas chamber. This proved inadequate over time and so Auschwitz II, the
Birkenau Extermination Camp, was constructed, which could "process" huge
numbers. After that, this one was used to kill prisoners who were too sick or
elderly to work. Auschwitz I was about work; Auschwitz II was about
extermination. |
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| Arriving inmates had their personal
items taken, including suitcases... |
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... shoes... |
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| ... drinking utensils... |
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... and prostheses.
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| There were ways to punish
uncooperative inmates, like the standing cell, where four inmates at a time were
locked up without room to sit or lie down. |
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Gestapo court. Their most
frequent sentence was death by firing squad. |
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| The sign says it all. |
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This is where you went after the gas
chamber: the crematorium. |
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The entrance to Auschwitz II, the
Birkenau extermination camp. Very efficient. Trains rolled right into the
camp, filled with inmates.
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For most, there was only one reason to be
brought here here: to be exterminated in the gas chambers. About a
thousand were diverted to work for the industrialist Oskar Schindler (as in the
movie Schindler's List) and some were taken for Josef Mengele's gruesome medical
experiments.
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| The barracks were not quite so
solid as at Auschwitz I... |
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...though the sleeping
arrangements were similar. |
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| The gas chambers at Birkenau were
blown up by inmates as the Allies were moving in and have been left in ruins as
a memorial. They were very efficient, capable of processing 20,000 per
day. |
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They were in three parts.
The first room (above) is where the inmates removed their clothes. They then
moved to the next room, where they were gassed with Zyklon-B, produced by a
pest-control company. From there, special inmate-workers would move the
bodies to the next room (after first removing any gold fillings), where they
were cremated. The ashes were either used as fertilizer on nearby fields or
dumped in holding tanks. |
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| Birkenau toilets. |
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Guard tower at Auschwitz I. |