Auschwitz/Birkenau (Auschwitz II) filled our day today. (Well actually yesterday)
This is Boleslaw Szenicer ("Bolek"). He was our driver today from Warsaw to Auschwitz and back. He is an amazing driver AND human being.
By the way, we were strapped in and topping out at 160 km/h.
What an interesting man. He is an Orthodox Jew (but not religious).
His frustration roots from American Jews coming to Poland and buying historical synagogues and selling them. Rabbi Mike is certainly not his hero. Feel free to google him.
He is published and an advocate for preserving the accurate history of the Polish Jews.
He is concerned about the growing anti-Semitism in France and other places.
He is also the president of Gmina Wyznaniowa Starozakonnych w RP.
His father escaped the war by leaving Poland and joining the Russian army.
His mother survived the war because her father (his grandfather) gave her to some Polish women. She was 12 years old. (Hope I explained that accurately).
Auschwitz's main gate:
Arbeit macht frei (work sets you free or work makes you free). Not!
Main gate watch tower.
Just various photos.
Registration stuff is in here, Block 4. Keep in mind that many never were registered.
Women, children, and old men were killed almost immediately upon arrival.
Stats and Maps
Property of the prisoners: Luggage, dishes, eyeglasses and shoes.
This is just a small sampling of the actual tons we viewed.
Here are a few of the many suitcases. The Jews were instructed to mark them for later identification; you can still see the names written on the leather cases in large letters. On some of the suitcases, we saw the word "Waisenkind" which means orphan--more proof that there were children among the victims of Auschwitz.
Dishes
Eye glasses.
When the Soviet Union liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau on January 27, 1945, there were 43,000 pairs of shoes in the camp. The photo below shows some that were found in the warehouse.
This is hair cut from the heads of an estimated 140,000 victims. According to the Museum guide book, the Soviet Army found about 7,000 kg of human hair, packed in paper bags, when they liberated the camp. This was only a fraction of the hair cut from the heads of the Jews at Auschwitz; the rest of it had been sent to the Alex Zink company in Bavaria to be made into various products. Prisoners in all the Nazi concentration camps, who were selected for work, had all their body hair removed immediately upon arrival, in an effort to prevent typhus, which is spread by body lice.
At first, this is what the living quarters looked like for prisoners. Straw spread out on the floor. Imagine people lying on their sides, packed in there like sardines, with all the human waste and such with no hygiene, running water, etc.
There were also these pallets on some floors.
These cloths are filled with straw and they slept 3 people (on sides) per pallet.
Bunks were eventually built in February of 1941. Again, 3 to a bed.
Once plumbing was available, this is what the toilets looked like.
This is the washroom where women stripped before execution (left).
They were then led, two at a time, to the yard and shot at the death wall.
The photo on the right is where the men were stripped for the same purpose.
This is the enclosed courtyard between Blocks 10 and 11 that contains the death wall where prisoners were brought for punishment for what the Nazis considered serious offenses--like sabotage in the Auschwitz factories or attempting to escape. Block 11 (to the right of this courtyard) is where political prisoners from outside the camp were housed while they awaited trial in the courtroom of the Gestapo Summary Court which was also in the building. Block 10 is where some of the medical experiments on prisoners took place. You can look up those details on your own.
Death Wall
Entrance to courtyard between Blocks 10 and 11. Lock on gate.
This is right outside of the kitchen.
They would have group public hangings here
to scare the other prisoners into doing what was expected.
They would have group public hangings here
to scare the other prisoners into doing what was expected.
This guard tower was to give the guy shelter who was in charge of roll call. During roll call (appell), prisoners would have to stand still, wearing very thin clothing, in all weather conditions for hours and hours. The block kapo would count the number of prisoners before reporting to the SS officer. If the number of of prisoners appeared not to be correct, it would take hours until the SS officer finally made the numbers tally. Anyone unable to stand was taken away to his or her death. Roll calls were often used as a punishment to prisoners. The evening roll calls took longer because if a prisoner had not worked hard enough he or she would be punished. Prisoners who tried to escape would also be punished. Punishment usually meant death. This treatment was used to teach the other prisoners that it was pointless to resist.
Auschwitz's camp commandant, Rudolf Hoss, was arrested in 1946, convicted of murder and hanged at the camp, right here (by the Russians).
The remaining crematorium at Auschwitz I.
They were told they were going to get a shower. Then, they were ordered to enter the "showers" with raised arms to allow as many people as possible to fit into the gas chamber. The tighter the gas chambers were packed, the faster the victims suffocated. These poison pellets were dropped from the top. Bodies were found stacked in the shape of a pyramid because they were all trying to get to the top to get air (see photo of model). After they died, they were wheeled to the ovens to be burned.
Here is a model of the gas chamber after the victims have been gassed.
These cans were full of these Zyklon B pebbles (poison used in the gas chambers).
The pebbles were converted to a lethal gas when exposed to air.
The bodies were shoved in the ovens with these devices.
Each oven held two bodies, end to end.
The doors below the ovens were used to scoop out the ashes.
Birkenau, Auschwitz II
(FROM THE INTERNET)
Two types of barracks, brick and wooden, housed prisoners in the second part of the camp, Birkenau. The brick barracks stood in the oldest part of the camp, known as sector BI, where construction began in the fall of 1941. Inside each of them were 60 brick partitions with three tiers, making a total of 180 sleeping places, referred to as “buks,” designed to accommodate 4 prisoners. The SS therefore envisioned a capacity of over 700 prisoners per block. At first, the buildings had earthen floors. Over time, these were covered with a layer of bricks lying flat, or with a thin layer of poured concrete. The barracks were unheated in the winter. Two iron stoves were indeed installed, but these were insufficient to heat the entire space. Nor were there any sanitary facilities in the barracks. Only in 1944 were sinks and toilets installed in a small area inside each block. Nor was there any electric lighting at the beginning.
Wooden stable-type barracks were installed in segment BI, and above all in segments BII and BIII. These barracks had no windows. Instead, there was a row of skylights on either side at the top. A chimney duct, which heated the interior in the winter, ran almost the entire length of the barracks. The interior was divided into 18 stalls, intended originally for 52 horses. The two stalls nearest the door were reserved for prisoner functionaries, and containers for excrement stood in the two stalls at the far end. Three-tier wooden beds or three-tier wooden bunks intended for 15 prisoners to sleep in were installed in the other stalls, for a total capacity of more than 400 prisoners per barracks.
In the brick blocks, prisoners slept on straw strewn on the boards of the buks; paper mattresses stuffed with so-called “wood wool” were placed on the beds or bunks in the wooden barracks.
The number of prisoners that the barracks were supposed to hold should be treated as only a starting point, since the actual number was often much higher. It varied according to the size and number of transports arriving at any given time.
Krema II at Auschwitz-Birkenau was the site of the largest mass murder in the history of mankind. It was here that over 500,000 Jews were gassed to death with Zyklon-B, an insecticide that was also used to disinfect clothing in the camp. Remember, the Jews were told they were going to get a shower and fresh clothes. They were instructed to tie their shoes together and they were assigned a hook for them. They were told to remember their hook number so they could retrieve their shoes after bathing. Then they were gassed.
Expansion of Auschwitz (from the internet)
In March 1941, visited Auschwitz and commanded its enlargement to hold 30,000 prisoners. The location of the camp, practically in the center of German-occupied Europe, and its convenient transportation connections and proximity to raillines was the main thinking behind the Nazi plan to enlarge Auschwitz and begin deporting people here from all over Europe.
At this time only the main camp, later known as Auschwitz I, had been established. Himmler ordered the construction of a second camp for 100,000 inmates on the site of the village of Brzezinka, roughly two miles from the main camp. This second camp, now known as Birkenau or Auschwitz II, was initially intended to be filled with captured who would provide the slave labor to build the SS "utopia" in Upper Silesia. Chemical giant expressed an interest in utilizing this labor force, and extensive construction work began in October 1941 under terrible conditions and with massive loss of life. About 10,000 Russian POWs died in this process. The greater part of the apparatus of mass extermination was eventually built in the Birkenau camp and the majority of the victims were murdered here.
You really can't tell how big these places are from the photos. You should google aerial views or look at a map. So much walking!
Gate Watch Tower---as we exited.
Oh my gosh.....that left me in tears! Great learning experience, but I don't think I could have done that part of your trip, let alone taking notes/providing all the detail you did. So heartbreaking.
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