Nazi barracks of Hell - Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau

Gates made of red brick with a tower in the middle and stretching into the distance railway line. Roads from life to death. Road which passed many thousands of people. One of the most famous symbols of fascism a crime on humanity.

Photography, which unites on this railway line: Majdanek and Dachau, Treblinka and Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen and Breitenau, Ravensbrück and Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bergen-Plaszow and Bahlsen ... Arbeitsdorf, Borgermoor, Berlin-Marzahn, gelsenberg lager, Gross-Rosen, Dora-Mittelbau, kaufering, Malchow. Mauthausen, Niederhagen, Neuengamme, Oranienburg, Ohrdruf, Flossenburg, Hammelburg, Hinzert concentration camp, Hohenasperg, Stalag, Stutthof, Esterwegen, Amersfoort, Belzec, Bogdanovka, Bolzano, Bredtveit Prison, Bronnaya Gora, Vapnyarka, Vaivara, Vernet, Westerbork, Gęsiówka, Herzogenbusch concentration camp, Greaney , Gurs, Darnitsya, Dzialdowo, Drancy Dretel, space invaders, Dulag 183 Zhadovno, Zaslav, IX fort Kaunas Klooga Red, Trostenets, Natzweiler-Struthof, Alderney Kaiserwald concentration camp, Rivalta, Risera di S. Sabbah, sajmište concentration camp, Salaspils, Sobibor, Stara Gradiska, Syrets, Theresienstadt, Topovske Shoop e, Herbalists, Falstad, Fort Breendonk Fort de Romainville, Fossoli, Fyunbrunnen, Chelmno, Crveni Krst concentration camp, Jungfernhof concentration camp, Yanovsky, Jasenovac, Jastrebarsko and dozens and dozens of local, small camps in different cities in the Nazi-occupied areas of Europe and the USSR.

Concentration camps, in which millions of people were destroyed. Living people. Other people. Human beings.

"Work makes you free". The phrase, consisting of metal letters, which became the symbol of the Holocaust, genocide and terror. Same as the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz, where it is located above the entrance gate, it became a symbol for the world of egregious crimes against humanity.

Auschwitz (or as it is often referred to in our countries Auschwitz) was established by the Germans in mid-1940 on the outskirts of the Polish city of Oswiecim, which the Nazis incorporated into the Third Reich and renamed Auschwitz. The reason for the formation of the camp was a large number of Poles arrested by the German police and the consequent overcrowding.

For the organization in 1940-1941 Germans evicted from camps of Auschwitz and eight surrounding villages in the territory of which organizes the camp, all the inhabitants. In and around the city were demolished 1200 houses near the camp farms were built, workshops, warehouses, barracks and houses for officers and junior officers of the camp SS garrison.

Location of the camp is almost in the center of German-occupied Europe, and convenient rail links are the reason that the German authorities have decided to expand the camp to enormous proportions and deportation to the camp of people with almost the entire continent. In the period of large-scale existence of the camp consisted of three main parts.

The first and main part - Auschwitz I camp (Auschwitz I) - so-called Stammlager, calculated on the contents of 12-20 thousand prisoners.. It was established on the site and in the buildings of prewar Polish barracks which are converted into a camp needs.

The second part - the camp Auschwitz II - Birkenau (Auschwitz-Birkenau), built on the territory of the village of Brzezinka (which is why this camp in some sources called as Birkenau). It was the largest camp in the Auschwitz complex. It stayed to 90 thousand. Prisoners.

The third part - camp Auschwitz III - Manowiz (also referred to as Buna-Auschwitz). At first it was one of the branches of Auschwitz, located away 6 km around the plant for the production of synthetic rubber Buna-Werke, and then it became an independent camp, called Monowitz. Here, it contained up to 11 thousand prisoners.

All branches of the camp and the Auschwitz complex of towers Germans surrounded with barbed wire, which was passed through an electric current. Any contact of prisoners with the outside world were forbidden under threat of death. The exclusion zone extends far beyond the camps. It occupied an area of ​​about 40 square kilometers around the camps of Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau, and was called the "zone of interest".

Over the lifetime of the Auschwitz functioned as a concentration camp. In the initial period of existence here exiled Polish political prisoners, recognized as particularly dangerous. The first tier, numbering 728 prisoners arrived at the camp from the prison in Tarnów June 14, 1940.

This day was the first when, under the cynical inscription Arbeit macht Frei passed the first column of the doomed people with a cold heart not looking strange rows of barbed wire, arranged in several rows.

Later, the camp sent people who were arrested during street raids to evict residents operations (including whole families). Then a group of prisoners began to arrive in Auschwitz from other occupied countries, as well as Roma and Soviet prisoners of war.

Since 1942 the camp with the camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau became the center of the mass extermination of Jews.

The Auschwitz prisoners got only one way - through these gates. Through the same gate of every day we go to work, and through them the exhausted people to go back.

Ever leave the camp could only be one way, according to the chief of the camp - "... you have arrived at the camp from which the only way out - through the crematorium chimney." Some tried to escape, and there have been such cases. And some of the prisoners is even able to.

On arrival at the camp the prisoners lined up for a long time to check the area. Where they were registered and given camp numbers. If a prisoner was not a Jew. If a Jew - he was subject to registration only in the event that the child's doctor or SS workable suitable for medical experiments. If the doctor has endured a decision, it is not even recorded. These Jews sent to the gas chamber, and then into the crematorium furnace.

Those who have registered on the arm tattooed with camp numbers. Auschwitz - the only Nazi camp, where camp number was applied in this way.

In the area of ​​verification common set gallows. It was one of the many places of public executions in Auschwitz.

For example, the July 19, 1943 the SS hanged on it 12 Polish prisoners because they maintained relations with the civilian population and helped to escape 3 to his comrades.

A further prisoners distributed among the barracks where they lived. If you can call it.

Schematically Auschwitz camp area I looked. To date, there remain all existed in the years 1940-1944 the barracks and facilities.

The wall of barbed wire separating the barracks for the prisoners from the premises, which houses the service and staff of the SS

The residential block, easting and building registration of prisoners in the background.

The building catering, in which prepared food for prisoners.

Calorie daily diet of a prisoner was about 700 calories. For breakfast, he got about half a liter of "coffee" or decoction of herbs for dinner - about 1 liter of vegetable soup, usually cooked from rotten vegetables or rutabaga, dinner consisted of 300-350 grams of black clay bread and small amounts of other additives ( e.g. sausage 30 g or 30 g of margarine or cheese) and herbs or beverage from "coffee". Soviet prisoners of war were fed much worse, and their diet does not hold up to 550 calories.

A tree growing in front of the catering department, recalls an old man with spiky gray hair with horror ... because 70 years ago this tree was probably a young twig sticking out of the earth and observe everything that went on in the area of ​​inspections.

The outer wall and a double fence of barbed wire. On it was passed an electric current

One of the worst places in Auschwitz is located between 10 and 11 units. Yard, shielded by a high wall and massive wooden shutters, window 10, put on the block. And the wall of death. Beside her were shot several thousand people, mostly Poles. It also remained a pillar on which to punish the prisoners hung by his hands and flogged with whips.

The street between the apartment blocks. Usually hung heavy over her low smoke from the chimney of the crematorium, which is surrounded by barbed wire on the opposite side.

The trunks of birch trees growing today for residential blocks of Auschwitz, if taken on a part of the pain and anguish of prisoners, they are clumsy and ugly.

But the main camp to exterminate the Jews in 1942, becoming the camp Auschwitz II - Birkenau. Through the brick gate of the main SS guard, called the "Gate of Death", as if through the mouth here arriving trains with the doomed people, mostly Jews, who had only one way - to the gas chambers and crematoria.

Auschwitz-Birkenau began building in October 1941, and on 1 March 1942, he took his first prisoners. The camp was so great that there is at the same time could be up to 100 thousand prisoners who were placed in more than 300 huts. The total area of ​​the camp Auschwitz-Birkenau was 175 hectares.

The camp Auschwitz-Birkenau was divided into several zones - quarantine the female camp, family camp of Jews from Terzina, camp Jews from Hungary, the male camp, gypsy camp, a hospital, warehouses, unloading platforms, crematoria and gas chambers. All zones were separated by a series of barbed wire and security towers

The corridor between the former men's camp and the camp of Jews from Hungary. At the moment of huts situated in these zones, there were only brick furnace and chimneys. Sami wooden barracks were destroyed. Almost completely preserved barracks in the women's section of the camp - 45 stone and 22 wooden barracks quarantine zone

The wire, which is not afraid of time. The wire, which has no memory.

Most of condemned to death the Jews arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau with the belief that they were being taken "to settle" to the east of Europe. This is especially true of the Jews of Greece and Hungary, which the Germans had even sold non-existent building plots and land or offered a job at the fictitious factories. That's why people, aimed at the destruction of the camp, often brought with them the most valuable items, jewelry and money. The distance that separated the prisoners from the camp, reached 2,400 km, which they overcame in sealed and barred freight cars, without food or water. Cars, crowded, went to Auschwitz for 7 or even 10 days. Therefore, when the camp opened its doors, it turned out that some of the deportees were dead, and a part in a stage of extreme exhaustion.

Arriving cars passed through the Gate of Death and stopped at the unloading ramp. Here arrived collected suitcases with things shared by men, women and children were rounded up on the inspection and sorting. For many it was the last days of life.

A place where end railroad tracks. Then there is no road. Behind cellars gas chambers and furnaces crematories.

Spring of 1944, Auschwitz-Birkenau was the apogee of its activities. Long compositions shuttled between camping and Hungary, and back. The plan was to destroy all the Jews of Hungary at a time. Railway line leading to the new crematoria, consisted of three ways, that allows you to simultaneously unload longer trains with people condemned to death.

On average Aushfits-Birkenau during these months was coming every day about 10 thousand people. Many more on the way went mad from thirst and mental depression, so coming out of the wagon obediently walked barely dragging his feet on his last way into the bunkers crematoria II, III, IV and V

All the four crematoria worked without interruption day and night. However, as a result of overload soon began to blow the furnace and for some time was only operate a crematorium III. At this time, the corpses were burned at the stake behind the crematoria, what evidence remained in the form of multiple photos, secretly made one of the SS men.

Destroyed building gas chamber and crematorium III, located on the end of the unloading platform. They blew up the SS have noticed traces of their crimes before the retreat. The preserved ruins clearly visible underground dressing room and the gas chamber 5 and craters left over from the bombed five ovens of the crematorium.

One of the surviving intact residential barracks in the women's camp sector. Barracks were built without a foundation, right on the marshy ground. In most barracks instead of rammed earth floors it was that during the rain often turned into a quagmire.

women prisoners lived here. Three-tiered bunks with rotten rotting straw, lack of water and sanitary conditions appalling. That's all that was in these accidents. No, not all. Still they were neighbors. Rats. Which have become a real disaster for the inmates.

Residential stand for two people. Who likes to rant about an ordinary labor camp and that person gets used to any conditions and nothing terrible happened here?

I wonder what these people would say, held here for many years among the damp, cold, hunger, with the rats and the constant fear of being shot, burned or fallen helplessly while working? Also boasted? Or would stand on the other side of the barbed wire fence in a gray-green uniform, in a helmet and with a gun in his hand?

According to Rudolf Hess, Theodor Eicke, who was responsible for the daily life and the punishment of prisoners, invented especially brutal collective punishment for the Jews.

Jews were ordered to remain on the benches for a month. They could get out of them and out of the barracks just to check, and the dining room. Ventilate the premises was prohibited, the windows were tightly closed. It was a heavy punishment, traumatized. The constant force lying next to each other inmates came into a state of extreme excitement, often it came to violent fights.

In the middle of the barracks housed the oven - the only means of heating. Do I need to say how difficult it was to survive here in the winter?

Roll conducted twice a day, and this meant many hours of standing in the mud, water, in the cold. If the day was rain, the night the prisoners had to sleep on a bunk in wet clothes. It is no wonder that hundreds of people were dying daily.

The gate between the two women's camp.

The barracks are surrounded by drainage ditches to somehow divert the water from the marshy soil. And the only tree growing on the territory of the residential part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau. More live here there is nothing. Now, even the rats.

The barbed wire that separates the men from the quarantine camp.

The wooden barracks, which were in the camp, most have previously been field stables, designed for 52 horses. After alterations are placed up to 1,000 prisoners. The barracks were built furnace with long chimney, which forms the smoke and warms the entire room from the inside.

Dressing barracks. Three long concrete ramps, two of which openings are cut spravleniya needs densely, and one part is the washbasin. In this camp, everything was arranged so as to completely destroy the human dignity. People sitting on the "points" actually rested on the back and shoulders of each other. And the other five feet washed.

All in the camps of Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau, in museum-memorial of information, all the time visited killed 1, 3 million people, of which about 1, 1 million (!) - the Jews ...

At the end of 1944, before the advance of the Red Army, the camp authorities started to destroy the traces of their crimes - burned documents, blew some objects and people ....

January 27, 1945 the camp was liberated by the Red Army. Soviet soldiers met here around 7000 detainees who had not evacuated the Nazis, t. To. They did not have the strength to go on their own ...

Thus ended the terrible story of the largest and most terrible death camps in World War II history.

Today on the territory of two former concentration camps Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum is located, whose territory is included in the list of world heritage by UNESCO. Every year the camp museum attracts more than a million tourists who go never-ending stream.

In order to know. To remember. To prevent.

Go as once were thousands of slaves condemned to death.