Visiting Auschwitz Birkenau Concentration Camps

Aside from its beautiful Old Town and fantastic vibe, one of the main reasons we chose Krakow over any of the other cities in Poland, is because we wanted to visit the Concentration Camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Of the hundreds of Concentration Camps that sprung up as Hitler rose to power in the 1930's, Auschwitz-Birkenau is the most well known, the most infamous, and was the site of some of the most horrific acts to have occurred in history.

Auschwitz was made up of several camps, starting with Auschwitz I, and with the largest being Auschwitz II, or Birkenau. The main camp Auschwitz I, was first opened in 1940 to house Polish political prisoners, though soon became a site of mass extermination as part of the Final Solution to the Jewish Question. Between 1942 and 1944 thousands upon thousands of Jewish people, Roma, Homosexuals and people with disabilities were transported by train from all across Europe right to the doors of Birkenau which was a purpose built death camp.

In the early years, new arrivals at Auschwitz would be subject to a selection process. They would be sorted into various groups, with the elderly, infirm and mothers with children declared unfit for work and sent to their deaths in the gas chambers. The gas chambers were designed to look like showers, and the people were told they needed to shower first before being admitted to the camp. 

The most tragic of stories came from the Sonderkommando, Jewish people forced to work for the SS Guards. Trying to save their own people they would wander through the crowd telling people to say they were strong and fit, and trying to separate mothers from their children. In many cases the mothers were aware of their intended fate, and would not leave their children.

The people considered fit for work were stripped of their belongings, had their heads shaved and were sent off to work in the camps. Thousands of people died of starvation, dehydration and unclean living conditions. Others died as the result of horrendous medical experiments performed in the camps.

Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated by Allied and Soviet forces  in January 1945. Upon realising that Soviet forces were approaching the camps, the SS Guards evacuated 58,000 prisoners on a Death March, leaving behind 7,000 prisoners who were unable to walk, or who were considered close to death.

Upon Liberation of Auschwitz, the Soviet troops discovered these scenes of horror, along with thousands of personal belongings hoarded by the Germans, these included shoes, clothing, artificial limbs and most horrifyingly, several tonnes of human hair shaved from the prisoners heads. This hair had been used in the creation of army uniforms and these items are still on display in the camps.

This display is easily the most horrific thing I have ever seen in my entire life.

We arrived at Auschwitz I at 8.00 a.m. on a piercingly cold day, with the wind cutting through our layers of thermals, coats, gloves and hats. We had organised a private taxi transfer from Krakow, where the driver would take us to Auschwitz I, wait while we visited and continue down the road to Birkenau, waiting again, and then dropping us home afterwards.

There are several tours from Krakow you can take, and many guided tours in Auschwitz itself throughout the day in several languages. We chose to go it alone as I personally believe that such a place deserves to be visited alone so we had time to reflect and not be surrounded by people taking selfies of themselves in front of the camps.

We were the first people to arrive for the day and had the camp to ourselves for almost two hours before the first tour group arrived.

It is an incredibly eerie feeling to be alone and surrounded in complete silence in a place full of painful memories and horrifying stories. No matter how much you read or what documentaries you might watch, nothing can prepare you for the haunting feeling of standing inside one of the most infamous Concentration Camps in history.

Visiting in Winter felt appropriate too, as we were freezing with our rugged up layers, and it was so hard to imagine standing in that weather in only a thin pair of pyjamas and no shoes.

Auschwitz I originally held 16,000 prisoners in the buildings above in cramped and unsanitary conditions. These buildings have now been converted into several exhibits showing different stages of the holocaust and camps, showing daily life in the camps, including one building dedicated solely to Extermination.

This is the first building to enter and upstairs shows a graphic portrayal of the deaths of millions of people. I mentioned earlier the room full of hair, there are also rooms full of shoes, artificial limbs, suitcases and kitchen instruments. All the tools people believed they would need to start a new life in the 'Work Camps'.

This is the place where we were glad we were alone. The steps are worn on one side from millions of feet going up and down and it's a place of reflection, to remember that this happened only 70 years ago and that we cannot forget the lives that were lost so needlessly.

The museum is set up so people who visit can tell the stories and share their photos with the world. Photos are forbidden inside the buildings, but I could never bring myself to take photos of such a personal thing even if it was allowed.

Between 1941 and 1943 the majority of executions were carried out in the yard above, a walled off courtyard next to Block 11. Prisoners set for execution had to strip naked in Block 11, before being led out to the yard in pairs, with women always being executed first.

Block 11 was intended only for the torture of prisoners. Inside the block were several torture chambers, including four standing only cells where prisoners had to stand for up to days at a time. It was also in Block 11 where the first attempts to kill people using Zyklon B gas occurred.

After a mutiny of Sonderkommando in 1944, 200 Jewish people were shot in reprisal in this yard.

Executions were also carried out by public hanging to intimidate other prisoners. This usually occurred during roll call which was held in the same yard, for prisoners who attempted to escape or who had assisted in the resistance in the camp.

The gas chambers in Auschwitz I were put into operation in 1941 and the last killings in the gas chambers were of the Sonderkommando in 1944, after they had cleared the mass graves at Birkenau. Few Sonderkommando survived the war as they had an intimate knowledge of the first hand horrors of the Nazi regime. 

Many died trying to escape in order to let the world know about the atrocities in Auschwitz, and others died after they were executed for destroying one of the Gas Chambers at Birkenau in 1944.

These gas chambers had no fake shower fittings, the gas was simply poured through the ceiling. This gas chamber was no longer used after the four gas chambers were built in Birkenau, which were a lot more efficient in that the Nazi's could execute people quicker as the crematoriums could accommodate more people.

This building was terrible to be inside, there was no mistaking the building for anything other than a place of death and was particularly haunting as we were the only ones inside.

After spending around two and a half hours inside Auschwitz I, we headed back to our taxi and were taken 5 minutes down the road to Auschwitz II- Birkenau.

While Auschwitz I has been completely turned into a museum, with a lot of information and the scale of the horror is explained to you, Birkenau is a huge open space with very little information. The scale of Birkenau is hard to describe, it is absolutely huge, and though the majority of the buildings were destroyed by the Nazi's while trying to cover up their crimes before the Allied forces discovered the camps, the foundations still remain and you can see that when the camp was in operation there would have been hundreds of buildings housing thousand of prisoners.

The railway tracks lead directly from Auschwitz straight to four gas chambers and crematoriums at the end of the camp. People were literally driven straight to their deaths at Birkenau.

When we arrived it was drizzling with rain, which quickly turned to biting winds and sleet. When we left Auschwitz I there were a lot of tour buses starting to arrive, so we were heading out at the right time. I can't imagine Birkenau would ever feel overcrowded however, simply due to its immense size.

Birkenau was constructed in 1941 to ease congestion in Auschwitz I. The camp was originally intended to house 50,000 people, however extensions soon were in place and the camp could hold up to 200,000 at any one time.
 

Inside the housing facilities, each bunk held 8-9 prisoners, who could only turn over all at once as there was not enough room. The longer you were in the camp, the higher the bunk you got. People in the lower bunks tended to be sicker as it was not always possible to leave the higher bunks to use the bathroom, or if you were sick.

Each of these buildings was heated only by a small stove, hardly enough to heat a small room, let alone a large one such as this.

The remains of the houses after the Nazi's tried to hide what they had done

In 1942 Hitler had made plans to exterminate all the European Jews, and Birkenau was now an Extermination Camp. Two empty houses at Birkenau were recommissioned into Gas Chambers. There was Bunker 1, which was called The Red House, and housed two gas chambers, each of which could house 400 victims. 

Bunker 2 was called The White House and had four gas chambers and was more efficient than Bunker 1 as it had a ventilation system. Consequently more people were killed in Bunker 2 on a daily basis than Bunker 1.

In 1943 the Nazi's decided to increase their capacity for gassing people, and built Crematorium I and II. These were originally designed as mortuaries and were converted into gas chambers by installing gas tight doors. Crematorium III was built later in the same way, however Crematoriums IV and V were built solely for the purpose of killing.

It's hard to write in such a matter of fact way. We learnt so much while we were there about the Holocaust and the extermination of Jewish people at Auschwitz and even after visiting it is still hard to process such a scale of murder.

Today the crematoriums and gas chambers have been mostly demolished. Crematorium IV was destroyed by the Sonderkommando during an uprising in the camp in 1944 and Crematoriums II, III and V were destroyed by the Nazis in 1945 before the liberation of the camp.

The Birkenau Memorial was completed in 1967. They originally stated that 4 million people were killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau. This number has now been changed to the more accurate figure of 1.5 million.

One of the railway cars that brought millions of people to Auschwitz-Birkenau

These photos were particularly haunting and hard to forget. The last photos of these people as they were herded along the roads to the Gas Chambers.

We have visited a Concentration Camp before, Dachau in Munich, which was one of the first to be built. That gave us an idea of what to expect, but you can't really expect anything, it's so much more emotional and horrifying to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau. It was a hard and emotional day, but I really think that you must visit if you can, so the world never forgets.