Auschwitz

Today I toured the German concentration camps at Auschwizt (real name Oświęcim) in Poland.

Current scholarly estimates of the inmates include 1.3 million people, around 90 percent of them Jews, as well as 150,000 Poles, 23,000 Roma and Sinti, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, some 400 Jehovah's Witnesses and tens of thousands of people of diverse nationalities.  Those not killed in the gas chambers generally died of starvation, forced labor, infectious disease, individual executions, and medical experiments.

About 20,000 (of 60,000) inmates survived a forced march away from the oncoming Soviets in January 1945.  About 7,500 remaining inmates were liberated by the Soviets in the camp.

Please see the Wikpedia article 'Auschwitz concentration camp'.

Auschwitz I (Stammlager or base camp)

Arbeit macht frei ("work makes free")

Zyklon B

Among the artifacts of automated murder found by the Russians were 348,820 men's suits and 836,255 women's garments.

Thousands were executed against this (reconstructed) wall for crimes such as stealing bread.

At least 60,000 people were gassed to death here.

They were efficiently cremated here.

 Auschwitz II–Birkenau (Vernichtungslager or extermination camp)

'Gate of death'

Wagons such as these transported 80 people without food or water for days.

Hungarian Jews on the Judenrampe (Jewish ramp) after disembarking from the transport trains, to be sent rechts! – to the right – meant labor; links! – to the left – the gas chambers. Photo from the Auschwitz Album (May 1944)  [Museum photo caption from Wikipedia]

Crematorium II where more than 20,000 people could be gassed and cremated each day.  Hundreds of thousands of people, mostly jews but also The gas chambers of Birkenau were blown up by the SS in January 1945 in an attempt to hide the German crimes from the advancing Soviet troops. 

If someone did manage to escape, the SS would pick 10 people at random from the prisoner's block and starve them to death.

Each of the three levels of each bunk unit slept seven people.