Classrooms don't teach reality.

"The one who does not remember history is bound to live through it again." - George Santayana

Auschwitz was the largest Nazi German concentration and death camp. At least 1.3 million people were sent to Auschwitz... 1.1 million Jews. 140,000 Poles. 23,000 Gypsies. 15,000 Soviet POW's. 25,000 other ethnic groups. The horrific figures stunned me. After seeing the effect the war had on Warsaw, the history presented here seemed so much more... Real.

The platform at Auschwitz II - Birkenau

 Piles of dead bodies are shown here on the platform at the Birkenau camp. Prisoners were told, upon leaving their country, to bring all the luggage they could, so that they could start new in a different country. They were deceived into believing that they had a chance. As the train pulled into Birkenau, doctors came along, and separated the prisoners. Fit, able to work, people would go to one side. Children, elderly, disabled, pregnant women... They would all go to the other side. The able to work group would become prisoners of Auschwitz, while those unable to work were led to "take a shower." Once the group was all in the chamber, canisters of gas were dropped into the room. within 15 minutes, 1500 people would be dead.

I hate to say it, but that's not the end. One image is burned into my memory. Hair. Two tons of hair. Two out of seven tons of hair, that were found in warehouses when the Soviet Union liberated Auschwitz. The Nazis made prisoners shave the dead bodies of all their hair. This hair was collected, and kept, to sell. They sold the hair, of those they murdered.

The following pictures are in black and white, as I feel they better represent the atrocities of what took place in this area of the world. Nothing I read in a classroom could make me feel, remember, and learn, everything that I did here. This is why I travel.

The wall at which prisoners were lined up, to be shot.

If one prisoner tried to escape, he and 12 others were hung here.

Auschwitz. Death. Genocide. Cruelty. Starvation.