The Auschwitz Concentration Camp
Auschwitz
I, with its sister camp, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, was the largest Nazi
concentration camp. It is 60 km (40 miles) west of Krakow, on the site of
a Polish army barracks outside the town of Oswiecim. It was originally
intended to house Polish political prisoners, but was instead developed
into an enormous death factory, exterminating between 1.5 and 2 million
"undesirables", about 90 percent of whom were Jews.
Over the
camp's gate is the chilling legend Arbeit Macht Frei ('work will make you
free'). The camp authority's attempt to destroy the evidence of genocide
before they fled the advancing Soviet army did not succeed and about 30
prison blocks remain, some of which house part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau
State Museum.
The Visitor
Center screens a bleak, 15-minute documentary about the camp's liberation
in 1945. Auschwitz-Birkenau, just 3 km (2 miles) away, was where most of
the exterminations took place. At the height of its operation, it could
hold 200,000 people at once. It enclosed 300 prison barracks, five huge
gas chambers, each built to hold 2,000 people, and crematoria. The ruins
are haunting and utterly shocking.
The site is
well worth visiting, although it is not for the faint of heart. The
unspeakable horror of the sight of thousands and thousands of toys,
shoes, spectacles and bundles of human hair, heaped up in neat mounds,
makes an impression that will never leave you and remain long after you
have left. You can reach the Auschwitz Concentration Camp by train, bus
or taxi from Krakow.
