Birkenau

If Auschwitz were not chilling enough, Birkenau was overwhelming. The Germans were able to destroy much of it as they withdrew in 1944, so there are few exhibits. It is the scale of the thing--a square mile of barracks, the railroad, the gas chambers, the crematoria--that is staggering.

A USAAF photo of the Auschwitz complex

in May, 1944; Auschwitz II, Birkenau, is

the huge installation at the top

The scale is staggering, even with most of the buildings

destroyed; this is half the complex

The other half

Auschwitz III, a chemical plant and other industry, in the

distance, under the stacks

The railroad tracks led virtually to the gas chambers

One of the small railway cars, packing in 100 or so men,

women, and children, and their belongings, instruments

of murder themselves; in April/May of 1944, the

Germans occupied Hungary and forced its hitherto

reluctant government to allow deportation of nearly

500,000 Hungarian Jews, nearly all of whom died at

Auschwitz or Mauthausen, in Austria; Greek Jews

were forced to pay their own railway fares

Before the "selection," women and children on one side, men

on the other; typically, about 80% went directly to the gas

chambers

Remains of gas chamber and crematorium 3

As it appeared in 1944

At the Auschwitz/Birkenau Memorial