Auschwitz and Birkenau CoCamp

[The Dragon]

Hello everybody,

I was in Krakow, Poland some ten years ago back packing with my friends when we came across a tour guide stand. The tour was of Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camp which are memorial as well as a state museum.

For anyone that does not know there were two actual camps Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II. The camp Auschwitz II was also known as Birkenau.

The following pictures are of Auschwitz and Birkenau. I believe the photographs will be self explanatory but I will name each camp to try and clarify which one is which. I have included a link of the officail website also incase I make any mistakes in my explanations. The link is below.

http://en.auschwitz.org.pl/m/

Thanks for looking.

[The Dragon]

The infamous "Arbeit Macht Frei" gates. I believe they were cut up and stolen some years back but have been recovered. However the orignal gates are no longer there. The ones in the picture were taken before the theft.

(2)


(1)

[The Dragon]

(3)

[The Dragon]

(4)

[The Dragon]

(5)

[The Dragon]

(6)

[The Dragon]

(7)

In the barracks in photograph (6) there were many rooms which were separated from each other. The reason for this was because the people in charge of the camp were separating the items of clothing, spectacles, prosthetic limbs, suit cases, shoes. pots, pans etc etc that had arrived with the victims on the trains into different rooms for recycling. Below is a photgraph od a room full of hair combs.

[The Dragon]

(8)

Crematory and Gas Chamber

I will explain here a few things because the nest few photographs will be easier to understand the layout of what actually occurred in this particular area of death and also the practical element of this set up. On the left you will see the chimney itself of the crematory. On the right is a door way into the gas chamber itself.

[The Dragon]

(9)

Again I have misplaced my own picture of the crematory and my picture of the gas chamber itself is very dark due to the poor camera that I had with me so I have borrowed some photographs from the website mentioned earlier.

The crematoru and gas chamber in this particular building were right beside each other. The collage below is how it looked the day I was there.

Crematory (Left) Gas Cahmber (Right)

[The Dragon]

(10)

The following photgraph taken by myself. The chamber in photgraph (9) is the same chamber as in this post. Note the candles lighting on the stand for the departed.

[The Dragon]

(11)

This photograph is a room designed specifically with torture and punishment in mind. Half a dozen people would be made get into this little compartments and stand upright. The the bricks were rebuilt up towards the ceiling again. As you can see in the bottom right a small door or opening, this was to let the least amount of air possible in for breathing. Slowly but surely these people bricked up inside would die of affixation.

This ends the tour of Auschwitz I.

[Marcel Banziger]

I've been there last summer and I was speechless. I plan to go back this summer because previous time I had only a couple of hours and to see all it takes perhaps a day or 2.

[The Dragon]

(12)

Auschwitz II or Birkenau

[The Dragon]

(13)

This photgraph was taken from inside the building (12) looking back towards the brick built buildings in Auschwitz I.

[The Dragon]

(14)

You will note that there is not much to see here as the buildings in camp II were made out of wood and none remain. This again taken from the building (12) looking straight into the camp II.

I am not sure how many times bigger the second camp was but you can see for yourselfs from the photographs that it was. This photograph was only to the right of the camp the same again amount of open space was on the left.