Auschwitz-Birkenau

After arriving in Krakow Sunday morning I decided to visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp.  This visit was one of the most humbling and moving experiences of my life.  Being at this place on 9/11 made me ponder what people do when they fill themselves with hatred and ignorance.  It also put things into perpestive and made me appreciate the things I have in my life.

Beginning of the tour in Auschwitz.  Behind the guide is the famous Auschwitz gate.

Walking into the camp

Barracks where the prisioners slept and were made to line-up each day

Example of the line-ups

Human ashes found when the camp was liberated

Photos were abound throughout the camp making this experience more personal

People unloading from the cattle cars

Actual gas containers used to kill the prisoners

Luggage people brought with them to begin their "new lives"

Shoes..there was another room like this filled with children's shoes

Barrack where the medical experiments took place

Sleeping quarters

Electrical fences were everywhere...cannot imagine being here during the war

This is where the Nazis would hang prisoners for hours from their hands tied behind their backs

This is where the Nazis would execute individual prisoners

This is the ventilation connected to the suffocation room

This is where the camp director, Rudolph Hess, was eventually hanged

One of the gas chambers

This is where the Nazis would empty the gas into the room

Once dead the bodies would be put into the crematorium

Leaving Auschwitz

This is where the trains would arrive for selection in Birkenau

This a photo depecting the selection of life or death

One of the cattle cars that brought in Jews throughout Europe

Gas chamber that was destroyed by Nazis at the end of the war

Marker at the site of the gas chambers