Auschwitz and Birkenau CoCamp

[The Dragon]

(15)

What is known as the "Five Chimneys" and also the facility that Jewish prisoners tried to blew up was at the bottom on the tracks on the left.

[J Melvin]

Thanks for posting these!

[The Dragon]

Your welcome Jack !

[Jay V.]

Thanks for the post,Excellent photos.

[Craig Gottlieb]

Is it true that much of what exists to day was rebuilt by the Polish, after the war?

[Marcel Banziger]

They are trying to rebuild these baracks all the time. Last summer when I visited there was also work on some of them (at the Birkenau Lager).

[Ralph P]

Thanks for posting pictures from your visit. I did not know that they put groups of people in the walls and then sealed them in while they were alive.

[The Dragon]

Thanks for posting pictures from your visit. I did not know that they put groups of people in the walls and then sealed them in while they were alive.

There was another room right beside the one where people were bricked up that was just a cell. The cell, when I was there was locked permanently in order to preserve the plaster on the walls inside of the cell but you could see in through the glass window on the door. This cell I was told held a Polish officer and POW, he had been injected with some poison or other then locked into the cell and left to die. From outside the SS doctors took notes on what they observed. Eventually the man died.

The remarkable thing about it ( not just the manner in which the man died ) and which brings me back to the preservation of the plaster was that this POW who was in there had engraved or carved into the plaster with his finger nails a portrait of the Virgin Mary which still remains.

I remember standing there outside the cell probably in the same spot where these SS Doctors stood and thinking to myself that even through all what he was suffering and I also knowing that this place had been described as hell on earth, this man still had faith.

I thought not only was it a symbol of his faith but it was a symbol of defiance to those outside, he belived that there was a higher or greater power than the people who had put him in there.

If ever there was a man that couldn be broken it must of been him. I admire who ever he was.

[Craig Gottlieb]

I have just finished re-reading the Höss memoirs, and was struck by the fact (if you can call it that, since it IS the autobiography of a condemned man giving his last words to the world) . . . the fact that Auschwitz was a dumping ground for incompetent SS personnel. It's one of the reasons, Höss explains, why Auschwitz was so bad for the prisoners. Of course, he's not talking about those liquidated in the transports - for them, ANY concentration camp was bad. Again, one must read his words with some mental reservation and caution. Definitely SOME revisionist history going on there.

[Ralph P]

Thanks for your follow up post...educational.

There was another room right beside the one where people were bricked up that was just a cell. The cell, when I was there was locked permanently in order to preserve the plaster on the walls inside of the cell but you could see in through the glass window on the door. This cell I was told held a Polish officer and POW, he had been injected with some poison or other then locked into the cell and left to die. From outside the SS doctors took notes on what they observed. Eventually the man died.

The remarkable thing about it ( not just the manner in which the man died ) and which brings me back to the preservation of the plaster was that this POW who was in there had engraved or carved into the plaster with his finger nails a portrait of the Virgin Mary which still remains.

I remember standing there outside the cell probably in the same spot where these SS Doctors stood and thinking to myself that even through all what he was suffering and I also knowing that this place had been described as hell on earth, this man still had faith.

I thought not only was it a symbol of his faith but it was a symbol of defiance to those outside, he belived that there was a higher or greater power than the people who had put him in there.

If ever there was a man that couldn be broken it must of been him. I admire who ever he was.

[Ralph P]

Hello all - The link below is from another thread from a fellow forum member who recently came back from a trip to Poland.

http://dev.wehrmacht-awards.com/foru...d.php?t=510129

[The Dragon]

Is it true that much of what exists to day was rebuilt by the Polish, after the war?

They are trying to rebuild these baracks all the time. Last summer when I visited there was also work on some of them (at the Birkenau Lager).

Craig,

Marcel Banziger already answered your question on this but since then another member EvilMike has visited the camps very recently and posted up over a hundred photographs so you will be able to see the rebuilt parts of the camp.

Hope this helps