Auschwitz 1

The reason I named this post Auschwitz 1 is, yes, I'm putting up two parts, but there were actually 3 camps under Auschwitz and this first one was called "Auschwitz 1".

On Monday LeeAnn and I woke up early and had breakfast at the hotel, very similar to our other European breakfasts, including rolls, cheese and deli meats, along with eggs and sausage. Then we found our way to the bus station and bought tickets to Auschwitz. It took a little under an hour and half from Krakow to get there. Once there, we headed for the information center. We bought tickets (24 zloty, or 6 euro) which included a 15 minute film, a guided tour thru Auschwitz 1, a bus ride to Auschwitz 2, called Birkenau, and a tour there, taking about 4 hours to complete.

The video was a bunch of footage taken the day the Auschwitz prisoners, those who were left behind, were rescued by the Soviet troops in 1945. On learning that the camp would be taken over, the SS took most of the prisoners and walked them to Germany, where 9,000 would not make it. 7,000 were left behind in the camp. They included the sick, the injured - ones who could not walk, and the weak.

Auschwitz 1 was the main camp. It was the largest concentration camp, tho there were many smaller camps set up around Europe. This started out as a camp for Polish political prisoners. When the Nazis invaded Poland, there was a lot of resistance. Those who resisted were sent to Auschwitz. But soon after Jews, gypsies, intellectuals, homosexuals, and political leaders were sent there. Of course the Jews were the largest population. The gypsies, unlike everyone else, got to stay in their own group with their own families with all of their belongings and clothes that they brought and were not made to work.

To start off, the Jews had to buy their own train tickets to arrive at the camps. The train cars would stuff 80 people a piece, which were meant for cattle, and the trips would take 7-10 days, without stopping for food, water, or bathroom needs. Upon arrival they were asked to leave their bags at the cars, and were promised to be reunited with them later. Then the items were separated into piles and meant for recycling. During the tour, I saw a room with 2 tons of women's hair. This was only a fraction of the hair found. There were 80,000 pairs of adult shoes. There were buildings filled with brushed, suitcases, glasses, clothes, children's shoes, children's apparel and dolls. And these were what had not been shipped to Germany or destroyed before the camp was discovered.

We know that there were gas chambers, which could fit 2,000 people at a time, to kill prisoners, but doctors would experiment with poisons and drugs on people and others starved to death. They would work from 9am-9pm with 1 dinner break, and the caloric intake was no more than 1500 calories a day. At supper, after work, they would get a piece of bread with butter. They were also given bathroom breaks which lasted 30 seconds, no more.

Here's how I will try to do this - I will order the photos (as best as I can control it) and explain what is being seen. Many of them are just photos around the camp. But the first several I will try to describe.

Also, at this camp, it was not allowed to take photos inside the buildings, which is why you'll only see outside pix and video.

The first is a shot of me and LeeAnn outside the camp, very little skin exposed, because it was so cold.

2. Arbeit Macht Frei. This means work will set you free. Ironic since the work was never meant to lead to freedom. This is the sign as you enter the camp. As some of you may have read in December, the sign was stolen. A few weeks later it was recovered tho it was cut into 3 parts. I asked the guide about this who said that this is not the original sign, that that sign is now in a museum.

3. This is a photo from the SS of a band that stood in front of this building. These were all imprisoned professional musicians. When the prisoners would come back from working all day, they had to march to the beat of the music played by the band so that they could be counted easily. If any prisoners died that day, the others had to carry the bodies back so that the same number would come back as who left.

4. The prisoners were always counted, and if the number was different, like when they were leaving for work in the morning than from the night before (meaning if someone had escaped), the people will made to stand in the snow for hours as punishment for the missing person. At the far end on the right is a little black viewing area, where a nazi guard would keep watch (when the weather was bad) of the prisoners standing where I was standing. One little girl who was rescued at the end had frost bitten feet from standing in the snow for 17 hours.

5. I have this photo in a the first video as well. This was the shooting wall. Mostly Polish political prisoners were killed here. They were taken from the building on the right, seen in the video, and made to face the wall so they could be shot in the back of the head.

6. This is the building to the left of the wall. All of the windows here were blacked out so that prisoners from this building could not see the shootings.

7. This is the back of the gas chamber. It's very small compared to the ones at Birkenau

8. Here is the map of the rooms inside the gas chamber. Since I could not take photos inside, this shows how it was set up.

9. This is the front of the gas chamber. You can see members from my tour walking inside.

The rest of the photos are pictures around the concentration camp.

The first video I mentioned above. It shows the wall where prisoners were shot and the building to the left where the windows were kept closed so there could be no witnesses. On the right, the first window at the bottom was the small window cell. Prisoners would be held in this cell without food. It was the starvation cell. At the very end you see the guide knocking on the black part sticking out of the wall. This was the cell meant for suffocation. Since there was no window, no oxygen could get in and prisoners would slowly suffocate. Another cell inside that building was a holding cell that could fit 4 men in each room, each with room only to stand. The doors were very small so the prisoners had to crawl in, and 4 men would stand in the cell all night long, then be let out the next day to work for 12 hours.

The 2nd video starts out looking past the gate at a house that stands just outside the camp. It's currently privately owned, but when the camp was running, the house was occupied by the nazi captain who was in charge of the concentration camp and his wife and kids. Then the video moves to the place where the captain was hung after the war. And then you can see the gas chamber to the left with the chimney in the back