Auschwitz-Birkenau: a museum of horror and the risks of some areas of the camp

@ElentirENG ES 8·14·2024 · 23:47 0

The Auschwitz extermination camp is the most infamous example of how far evil and crime can go..

A sad monument for sad days when ghosts from the past are reappearing
Perm-36: the only surviving camp of the Soviet Gulag shown by a Russian youtuber

Auschwitz, located in German-occupied Poland during World War II, was part of the nazis’ so-called “final solution” to the Jewish question – a miserable euphemism for the mass extermination of 6 million Jews. In addition, this genocide also included other minorities. The victims were mostly killed in gas chambers using the pesticide Zyklon B, and their bodies were then incinerated in crematoriums. In addition, many prisoners were also killed by hanging and shooting, or died from disease, starvation and the effects of the inhuman working conditions to which they were subjected.

Auschwitz included several concentration camps. The main ones were Auschwitz I (the original camp), Auschwitz-Birkenau (the largest camp), and Auschwitz III, which was a labor camp. In total, Auschwitz held 1.3 million prisoners, of whom almost 1.1 million were murdered. The vast majority of the victims (960,000) were Jews, but there were also 74,000 Poles (mostly Catholics), 21,000 Roma, and some 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war and 15,000 people from various countries, including Spanish Republicans, as well as hundreds of Jehovah's Witnesses and dozens of homosexuals.

The first prisoners arrived at Auschwitz on 14 June 1940: 728 Polish men, most of them Catholics. Today is the day the murder of St. Maximilian Kolbe in that camp. He was killed by injection of carbolic acid on 14 August 1941, after the Polish Catholic priest had offered his life for that of another prisoner who was to be killed.

Prisoners were usually brought to the camp in cattle trains, in inhumane conditions. Once in the camp, the so-called selection took place: children, babies, the elderly and pregnant women were separated from the rest and murdered, while those able to work were taken to the camp barracks to be subjected to gruelling work days.

The current Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum was founded on 2 July 1947. It covers an area of ​​191.97 hectares and houses personal belongings of the victims of the extermination camp, including shoes, suitcases, prostheses, etc. Auschwitz is a museum of horror, a place that everyone should visit, because the best way to prevent the worst of history from repeating itself is to not forget what happened. A visit to the camp must be done with respect: it is the place where more than a million people were murdered. There is often controversy over selfies with smiles and other disrespectful attitudes that must be strictly avoided.

You can watch an official video of the museum here showing some of the facilities preserved from this extermination camp (the video is in Polish, you can activate automatic subtitles in English in the bottom bar of the player):

On the other hand, some areas of the camp are dangerous. The areas near the forest still have the ditch created by the Germans, a ditch that has a marshy character. A few days ago, the author of the channel Everyday Treasure visited Auschwitz and published the video of the visit. At the end, it shows the accident he suffered in that ditch, which should be signposted.

NOTE 22.8.2024 17:00h: After reading this Auschwitz Memorial Twitter thread, I have decided to remove the embedding of the Everyday Treasure video because of what the aforementioned thread indicates about the video. Nothing is further from my intention than to subscribe to the author's erroneous statements or to the mistakes he made when recording the video.

---

Photos: Muzeum Auschwitz / Auschwitz Exhibition.