This camp is massive, it's hard to comprehend just how big this is.
As you go through the main gate (seen in the film Schindler's List), you start to realise just what a massive site this is. So many people were prisoners here and were murdered here. The railway line going through the middle of it was used to bring the prisoners in. As they got off the train they were sorted into 2 groups. Those who were fit to work - mainly men and young boys and some women without children, and the rest were sent straight to their deaths. The old, infirm and women with children lasted no more than 30 minutes after they arrived. They were not told what was happening. They were taken to one of 5 crematoria. They were told they were to have showers so that they didn't spread any disease to anyone else in the camp. As they undressed they were given a number of the peg were their clothes were & told to remember it. They were then gassed & cremated.
The barracks here were long & crammed with bunks, each layer of bunk held, I think they said between 5 and 8 people, they couldn't move during the night because they were so crammed in.
This is the toilets. They were allowed to go twice a day, but had to go when told in groups of 200. They were given a set amount of time & were told when to sit down & when to get up
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The vast majority of this camp is in ruins & these are the ruins that you can see. There are so many of them, it's mind blowing.
This is one of the carriages they used to use for transporting the prisoners. It has obviously been restored, Prisons could be travelling for days in these, all crammed in, with one bucket of water & one bucket to use as a toilet. Many people died before they were let out.
The crematoria were destroyed to try to hide the evidence of what had happened & the photos above are all that remain of them. The prisoners were taken into the chamber in the top photo and told to undress. They then went into the underground chamber in photo 2 to "take a shower", and were gassed. The other part was where the bodies were cremated. Crematoria 2 & 3 were the largest and could burn around 1500 bodies every day each. So with the other ones they could kill 5000 people a day. Sometimes, there were more. Crematoria V was situated in the woods & when there were too many bodies they made a pyre near by and burned the bodies there.
We then walked quite a way to near where crematoria V had been and the woods where the bodies were burned. Near there was the field & the remains of the clothing stores where all the possessions were taken & sorted by women prisoners. Opposite the fields there was a building called the Birkenau Sauna. This is where the prisoners who were going to be used for slave labour were sent, and disinfected. Here they were shaved, tattooed and all their belongings removed. Right at the end of the tour of this building there is a display of photos of life before the war, I think taken from peoples belongings, so everyone would have been killed. But while people were looking at these I noticed a window, behind which was a cart.
This "ash cart" was found in a nearby pond, the Nazis had tried to hide it. It was used to carry the ashes from the crematoria and dump them in nearby ponds, rivers and even fields where it was as fertilizer. Again I couldn't take a photo. (https://www.steengalleries.com/ashes-cart-sauna-building-birkenau)
By now pain & exhaustion were beginning to take hold, but there was one last thing and that was the memorial service.
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