We went to the Birkenau death camp after seeing Auschwitz  1 concentration camp. It was also a very emotional and somber place for us.

Another part of the Auschwitz concentration camp was the expansion of the camp to create the Birkenau death camp. The Nazis began erecting this camp in the fall of 1941 in a village of Brzezinski, three kilometers from the Auschwitz concentration camp. The Nazis expelled the villagers and destroyed their homes to build the Birkenau death camp. This camp was designed for the mass murder of prisoners most of which were Jews.

There is a railway spur which went directly through the gate into the camp. Prisoners referred to the Birkenau gate as “The Gate of Death”.

Prisoners would exit the train cars and this is where the Nazi SS physicians carried out their selection of the jews.  They determined which were for work, or sent for medical experiments and the remainder were sent immediately to the gas chambers. This included pregnant women and children.

We walked through the death camp looking at the train tracks and just couldn’t imagine the horror of what happened here. As we walked alongside the tracks, we came to a cattle car which was used to transport Jews and other prisoners here.

At the rear of the train car was a small raised lookout which was used by a Nazi guard.

The size of the Birkenau death camp was much bigger than we expected. There were rows upon rows of chimneys and ruins from the prisoner barracks on one side of the main road.

There were some wooden barracks that remained in part of the Birkenau death camp.

We went into some of the existing prisoner barracks. The conditions were very harsh. It was hard to imagine the living conditions they had to endure.

We walked long the main road towards the back of the camp. As we approached the rear of the camp we could see a monument and some building ruins.

There were plaques in different languages which read

“For ever let this place be a cry of despair and a warning to humanity, where the Nazis murdered about one and a half million men, women, and children mainly Jews from various countries of Europe”

The Nazis transported jews from many european countries to be murdered here in Birkenau.

After viewing the monument we went to an area with ruins at the far end of the camp. These ruins are all that is left of the gas chambers and crematorium used to kill approximately one and half million people, primarily Jews.

They would walk down the long corridor to an area where they would disrobe and then enter a second room, which was disguised as a shower room. There they would be gassed to death and then moved to a crematorium room to be burned.

The size of the ruins showed the magnitude of the horrors that occurred here. After pausing to reflect on the site we were looking at, we began our long walk back to the main gate of Birkenau.

There were flowers placed on the train tracks close to where the gas chambers were. When you look down the tracks you can barely see the main gate of Birkenau in the distance.

We walked slowly back to the main gate contemplating the horrors and atrocities that occurred here. A very emotional day for us, but it is one time in history that no one should ever forget.

“do widzenia i dobry dzień”