The Concentration Camp 2

Hello everyone!

On Tuesday we went to Auschwitz-Birkenau and Auschwitz-Monowitz, the two other parts that were built onto the original Auschwitz nearby. Monowitz was a small camp, but Birkenau was massive. It was here that the most people were murdered.

I saw in Monowitz a community that wanted to put the horror behind them. There were almost no remains of the camp.

I saw a community that had built up where once was a concentration camp. This was the people who had lived here before the Nazi's drove them out.

In Birkenau I saw the train tracks where train loads of people were brought, and if they were fit for work they were sent to one of the more than one hundred barracks, and if they weren't they were sent straight to the gas chamber.

I saw the brick barracks where up to 700 people would be crammed in, to sleep in the cold, on stone.

I saw the wooden barracks where 700 people had to sleep. These wooden barracks were originally stables for horses.

I saw their toilets and washing "facilities", the toilets being literally just one hole after another over a pit, and the washing "facilities" having either cold water, or no water in the winter.

I saw the ruins of the 5 crematoria where millions of people were burned after they had been gassed.

I saw a pond where the ashes of these people were thrown.

I saw little pieces of bone in the ground that are still there from this time.

I saw where people were brought when they first arrived, where their clothes, belongings, hair, and identity were stolen from them, where they no longer had a name, but were a number.

Birkenau was massive. No matter what direction you looked, it seemed to go on forever. Everything was perfectly linear. The ground was stony and harsh. There was no hope to be found here. The biggest atrocities ever committed by mankind were committed here.


"The biggest graveyard in the world"