Sometimes thousands of words can not replace the picture.
Auschwitz
Table of Contents
- 1 Auschwitz photos – a testimony of immense suffering
- 2 Deadful way to Auschwitz
- 3 Selection ramp in Auschwitz photos
- 4 Confisticated goods in Auschwitz pictures
- 5 Kanada barrack close in Auschwitz photos
- 6 Auschwitz barracks – terrible condidtions shown in pictures
- 7 Photos from Auschwitz of deadly gas chambers
- 8 Crematories as one of the most fearful view in Auschwitz pictures
- 9 Mengele cruel experiments taken in Auschwitz photos
- 10 Liberation of the camp in Auschwitz photos
- 11 The hanging of Rudolph Hoss
- 12 The impact of Auschwitz on human psyche
- 13 Not easy to forget Auschwitz photos
Auschwitz photos – a testimony of immense suffering
Watching Auschwitz photos, we often leave our comfort zone.
In the Auschwitz pictures, we can see inhumane conditions of the camp and sad moments from prisoners’ everyday life.
Thanks to those views we can also imagine how big was the scale of their suffering.
Victims of Auschwitz / source: news.bbc.co.uk
The numbers complete this picture.
There were 1,100,000 human beings killed in Auschwitz between May 1940 and January 1945.
Shocking enough?
Even more, when you realize that the people perished in Holocaust would amount to the current population of Krakow.
Deadful way to Auschwitz
The first transport to Auschwitz Concentration Camp took place on June 14, 1940.
Cattle car
Soon, thousands of cattle cars overloaded with people would arrive at the ramp of Auschwitz a year.
It wasn’t a nice trip.
Many people did not survive the transport with the horrific conditions kept inside.
Cattle car on ramp
Where were they from?
The prisoners of Auschwitz were transported from many ghettoes of occupied Europe.
But they were not only Jews
A considerable number of non-Jewish inmates were constituted by the political enemies of the Third Reich. They were also members of resistance movements.
Woman from transport
Selection ramp in Auschwitz photos
author: www.szymonkaczmarczyk.pl
The selection of prisoners was conducted within the three railroad ramps of the camp.
The last one was put inside Auschwitz-Birkenau facility.
Ramp in Auschwitz
As seen in the Auschwitz pictures below, the transported ones are carrying heavy bags and suitcases with the possessions of their lifetime.
Why do they have all their properties?
They were usually thinking that they will be transported to another ghetto to live on.
Transport of people
There are countless people of all ages, nationalities or beliefs.
After unloading from the cattle cars arriving at the ramp they were robbed and first forced to form lines on the basis of their sex.
Crowd on ramp
Nazi physiologists were classifying people according to their health status and availability for work.
Newcomers of Auschwitz
Children and people of poor health were sent gas chambers.
Concerned woman
Families were separated and “troublesome” individuals immediately shot.
Pocket searching
Confisticated goods in Auschwitz pictures
Have you seen such a sad view before?
Confisitcated shoes
The piles of shoes, glasses, toys, false teeth and luggages – all of these remains on display within Auschwitz exhibitions up to this date.
Confisticated teeth
Anything that was deemed suitable for re-use in the territory of the Third Reich was subject to brutally-carried out confiscation from the inmates of Auschwitz.
There also exist the recently confirmed reports of having tried to use the fat tissue of Auschwitz victims for soap-making.
Nazis loading the stolen goods from the trains to the trucks.
It’s hard to accept, right?
Kanada barrack close in Auschwitz photos
Have you heard about Auschwitz’s “Kanada”?
author: www.szymonkaczmarczyk.pl
This was the place where the most valuable items from prisoners were stored.
According to the literature by Tadeusz Borowski – it was named after Canada as it was regarded as the richest country in the world at the time.
Confiscated suitcases
Things left in “Canada” were destroyed as the Soviets advanced through Europe. The Nazis preferred to burn them than to have them taken by the enemy.
Confiscated jewellery
Wedding rings were melted back into pure gold. The picture shows U.S. troops as they find these rings.
These pictures show the enormity of the tragedy.
Auschwitz barracks – terrible condidtions shown in pictures
Fence of the camp
The barracks of Auschwitz II were originally designed to serve as stables for horses.
Aimed to accommodate for 400 prisoners, they were reported to house as many as 2,000 per a barrack at the end of 1944.
In the Auschwitz photos we can see the horrific conditions inside their cramped interiors. The presence of lice and illnesses, hunger and mental breakdowns all around the place.
Barrack from the insdie
It was the everyday reality of the Auschwitz camp.
Crowded barracks
As stated by many survivors, there were only one latrine operating per 30,000 prisoners of Auschwitz, with the precisely set time when one was able to use it.
Eating place
Photos from Auschwitz of deadly gas chambers
Gas chambers
The set of 4 gas chambers built in Auschwitz-Birkenau was ready for use in 1943.
Mostly placed underground, they were designed to resemble shower rooms.
Gas chamber’s wall / source: commons.wikimedia.org
What was the whole process like?
Prisoners selected for immediate death went to a special room where they took off their clothes.
Sonderkommando officers locked the heavy door of the chamber each time a group of 800-2,000 individuals filled the place.
Zyklon B
20 to 30 minutes after Zyklon B cans were dropped inside, gas chambers would be ventilated.
The corpses were dragged out of the chamber after gassing.
But it wasn’t the end.
Final things taken away were the hair, any metal dental elements and jewellery.
Crematories as one of the most fearful view in Auschwitz pictures
Crematoria / author: www.szymonkaczmarczyk.pl
Sonderkommando transported the bodies from the gas chambers to the 5 crematories of Auschwitz.
A lot, right?
Bodies of victims
What happened next?
The bodies were burnt inside them.
Crematories chimneys
How many of them?
8,000 a day what means 1,600,000 bodies that might have potentially been burnt inside the camp a year.
Hair taken from the corpses of gassed women.
Some of corpses were being prepared to be disposed of in the fire pits. This happened as the crematoria didn’t have the capacity to deal with all the bodies.
Burning bodies
Mengele cruel experiments taken in Auschwitz photos
You had to hear about the mengele.
Mengele’s block
“The Angel of Death”, Josef Mengele was the expert on medicine in Auschwitz.
Starvation victims
But he wasn’t helpping people at all.
For example his methods of getting rid of the “lice problem” relied on sending the entire number of 750 female inmates to gas chambers.
Inside the block 10.
He drew the famous line at the height of 150-56 on one of the walls of Auschwitz.
What for?
Being shorter than this made everyone ultimately sentenced to death.
Effects of starvation
Joseph Mengele had his interest focused on twins. Auschwitz pictures of them are one of the most shocking photos.
Over 3,000 twin children were spared from death at the selection ramp and subject to his inhuman experiments.
Mengele’s twins
What kind of?
Twins were:
- forced to enter pressure chambers
- starved
- frozen to death
- castrated
- injected with eye colour-changing agents
- sewn together to make Siamese twins
and operated in many others inhuman ways.
Twins after experiment
With the help of family, Joseph Mengele fled to Argentina once the war was over. After all the inhuman deeds he made, he peacefully reached the age of 68 in Brazil.
Liberation of the camp in Auschwitz photos
On January 27, 1945, the Soviet forces entered the Auschwitz Concentration Camp.
Auschwitz today / author: www.szymonkaczmarczyk.pl
The 2,819 inmates were left after the Nazi troops abandoned the place.
But the sight that they found was much sadder.
Forces found also 600 bodies of prisoners shot during the escape of the camp staff or deceased because of the barbaric treatment there.
Auschwtiz survivors
Unfortunatelly prior to the liberation, more than 110,000 prisoners of Auschwitz were forced to be evacuated to the more west-oriented camps.
In what way?
Taking part in “dead marches” during which most of people were shot, marking the trail of blood with their massacred bodies.
Camp’s survivors
Before the Nazis abandoned the camp, they had managed to destroy a lot of records and facilities serving their murderous ideology.
The hanging of Rudolph Hoss
Zdjęcie autorstwa Szymona Kaczmarczyka www.szymonkaczmarczyk.pl
This longest-serving commandant of Auschwitz Concentration Camp has been directly involved in each part of Auschwitz’s functioning.
For what was he convicted?
Accused of having caused the death of 3,500,000 people, he “only” admitted to be related to 2,500,000 of such deaths.
Gallow in Auschwitz
He hanged in front of Crematorium I of Auschwitz on April 2, 1947.
Execution of Hoss
Justice will be served.
The impact of Auschwitz on human psyche
There are also many paintings of Auschwitz everyday’s life.
Leo Haas drawing
All Auschwitz pictures drew by Auschwitz survivors were smoky and filled with dark, yellow and grey colours.
Scary scenes from Auschwitz
In many cases confronting with the outcome of human memory of Auschwitz placed on paper exposed them to the real vision of the tragedy that happened there.
Not easy to forget Auschwitz photos
Fortunately, there are many photos showing Auschwitz left.
“Arbeit Macht Frei” gate
But it’s only a small piece of that huge tragedy for humanity.
You can still watch more in the footage below:
And if you would like to see this place by your own – we recommend you join one of Auschwitz-Birkenau trip.
I recently visited terezin concentration camp just outside Praque my first visit to such a camp.i learned about theses camps from my father who joined the army after WW2 he was stationed in Berlin and saw the devastation of the bombings he also visited auschwits,Belsen and dachau.he said it was the worst things he ever saw..although the bodies of all those poor people had been burned or buried he said you could smell death everywhere! The conditions in the camps were appalling he taught me about the holocaust I never new about it until he told me,I thought why is the part of history not being taught in school.
After visiting terezin I became interested to find out more about these camps ,we have the internet now and more facts have come to light and I was intrigued to find out how people thought about the holocaust in the year 2017..I stupidly went on to a web site and wrote a small piece about the suffering in the camps,I was horrified to see the responses from people who denied the holocaust even happened! And called me a stupid bitch,,they said no gas chambers were at any camps and the Germans did not kill the Jews typhus did and the ovens were not used to exterminate the Jews.but I’m sure the ovens were built the same time as the camp, the ovens were built by topf and sons and they knew what they were being built for so the Germans just decided to have industrial ovens built just incase the prisoners died of typhus,the Germans/nazis were trying to wipe out the people who didn’t fit the aryan race they started out by shooting people but that proved to slow so they had to come up with a better plan hence the concentration camps having gas chambers and ovens,many witnesses said they saw people going into the gas chambers then they were being put in to the ovens.yes many,many people in the camps died of typhus and other illnesses,starvation and exhaustion,but this was perpetrated by the captors for keeping the people in awfull conditions.we have photos,paperwork,and film of this atrocity also the best information..the survivors whatever the deniers say you really can’t argue with the evidence..they say it’s a conspiracy by the Jews.. yes really thousand of Jews sacrificed their lives for a conspiracy..so what did the other people who were shot gassed and burned die for,,it’s pure antisemitism do they know they are acting like hitter did towards the none conforming people..we should never let this kind of genocide happen again..I hope these uninformed idiots go back and take another look at the history and the evidence.
Karen, that is kind of a story. You seem to know a lot of about holocaust. I imagine how you feel listening to people who deny evidence and facts. Thank you for sharing this thoughts with us. I suppose going to Terezin was not an easy step for you. I have been to Terezin as well and might say that Auschwitz seem even worse to watch.
The problem is precisely that the evidence conflicts with the official original narrative. I include “original” since a lot has been revised in the last couple of decades. If you really want to know the truth, then please do study the evidence.
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v07/v07p-73_berg.html
http://www.vho.org/GB/c/DC/gc46-ORIGI.html
http://www.vho.org/GB/c/GR/RudolfOnVanPelt.html
And consider this interesting fact about the 6 million number:
http://balder.org/judea/Six-Million-140-Occurrences-Of-The-Word-Holocaust-And-The-Number-6,000,000-Before-The-Nuremberg-Trials-Began.php
I am personally interested in one thing (regarding this subject as well as any other): the truth. The problem is that the truth is the first thing to die in any war. Forensic evidence, scientific investigation from a neutral starting point should be the basis for research. But this is made very difficult because if is punishable by law in 14 countries to deny the holocaust (which is pretty odd for any European country that hasn’t seen such a measure since the 15th century(?)) .
A lot of researchers have spent considerable time in jail after they published their findings
Well said Karen. I have been too Auschwitz- Birkenau twice. Itis not a lie.
Holocaust belief in the year 2017 is just absurd, in 80 years not a single argument for the Holocaust has ever survived being slaughtered and all arguements refutiing it have been proven to undeniable fact.
We were the bad guys, they were the good guys.
The extermination of the Germans by us was flipped to the extermination BY the Germans.
That’s why this entire argument was almost entirely fraudulent and ridiculous in it;s information.
The “whole thing” is a lie. Anybody who doesn’t understand that should be disallowed from any political opinion on the grounds they are intellectually incompetent.
Sadly, the reverse is true, the truth is censored and the liars are held as the righteous.
That’s “psychological warfare for you”. You people should be ashamed of yourselves for promoting the most racist doctrine the world has ever known
ive always wanted to visit one of the remaining concentration camps because i hear its life changing but ive never had the money to go. so instead i visited the washington DC holocaust memorial and it was enough to make me cry
Thank you this and it is important that people know what really happened. Deniers can’t accept it because of deep-seated antisemitisim that they cannot admit. Also, it is gruesome to know that we as humans are capable of such inhumane behavior.
Dear Elisabeth,
it’s totally true, unfortunately. Latest studies have shown that people care less and less every year about the tragedy of Concentration Camps and since the generation of people that lived this hell gets smaller we simply have to talk about this just so people remember about what happened.
Thank you for your comment!
Best regards,
Karolina
It’s a terrible crime and one that should not be forgotten. I’m angry that it’s talked about so little in schools both primary and secondary. The victims of the Holocaust are slowly becoming a forgotten group. This must not happen…
For me many, many German soldiers got away with atrocities whilst wearing and hiding behind a uniform…
Germany never repaid the victims relatives for possessions, houses,business’ taken away from them. Similar story for the Greek Islands Rhodes an example where Jews sent away on ships to camps. Houses/land taken.