My visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in pictures

I have recently visited the Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland. Probably the most famous concentration followed by Mathausen (Austria) which I visited in the 90's. The reports are that 1.1 million men, women and children were exterminated in this concentration camp, 90% of them Jews and the rest Polish, Russians, Gypsies, etc.

Usually I don't buy into any official story without some form of rational criticism. I don't reject them up front but I always try to keep my mind open to other possibilities including that the story is completely false. I know that there is people that do not agree with the official story, something that it has been even done illegal in many countries. I don't agree with making illegal expressing any ideas, which ever they are, even if they are holocaust denial ideas. Making ideas illegal is fascism, precisely what Nazis were. Fortunately in the US and UK freedom of speech prevails, at least for the moment.

Personally I'm inclined to believe that assassinations and other atrocities like cruel medical test on men, women and children were certainly performed in Auschwitz-Birnenau, in fact, many of the modern advances in medicine and pharmacology have been possible "thanks" to the tests in humans that the Nazis performed (including pregnant women and their unborn babies). After the war many Nazi "scientists" were hired by the US and the Russians and their knowledge used.

What I'm not sure is of the scale of the assassinations and whether the official story is completely true, exaggerated or fabricated. With this in mind, I visited the camp trying to search for some kind of proof that would make me believe 100% that the official story is real.

The death door

This is the famous entrance that many of us have on our memories, in fact this entrance is not Auschwitz but Birkenau which was a second concentration camps a few miles from Auschwitz. It is impressive to think that over a million people went through that door stuffed like cattle in cargo trains to never come back. The building itself is scary, it's like a monster with a hat, small eyes and an open mouth ready to eat you alive, with the rails telling you the inevitability of it.

Unloading the trains

Here is were the unfortunate prisoners were unloaded and the selection process started. The trees and the green make it almost beautiful if it wasn't for the watchtowers and the barbwire. I can imagine little boys and girls on that grass, may be still with their innocence trying to understand what was happening to them.

Inside this wagon arrived prisoners, in inhuman conditions.

Very basic, crude but functional watchtowers, without much protection for soldiers in this very windy and cold landscape

Barbwire made with concrete posts and porcelain electrical insulators although I believe they were not electrified because I didn't see any vestige of electrical circuit. On the background what is left from the barracks where the prisoners lived.

Ruins of a barrack, apparently they had two chimneys, it had a floor and perimeter built with concrete and the walls in bricks.

Remaining of one of the crematories. The story is that the SS, when they knew that the war was lost, dynamited them to cover up their crimes. It could be true but creates doubts on me about who really dynamited the buildings and why.

In this cell died sentenced to death by starvation father Maximilian Kolbe, a catholic priest who sacrificed himself to save another prisoner. This was a surprise to me because I knew about the story but was not expecting to see a memorial for it.

Another very famous image, this is actually the entrance to Auschwitz which originally was a polish military base taken over by the Nazis.

It was inside the buildings at Auschwitz, converted into museum, where most of my doubts about the official story came from. For example an exposition of shoes allegedly from the prisoners, it was all very dramatic, very old shoes, most of them brown and then some colorful women or children shoes conveniently placed, there were many shoes but those colorful shoes seemed to repeat on different places, may be at that time it was common for women to have identical colorful shoes but to me it was a bit strange. In another room there was an exposition of metal-enameled basins, jars, cups, plates, etc. supposedly belonging to the prisoners. I find a bit strange that prisoners were travelling with all that bulky and heavy stuff. Another room with suitcases, all apparently old but very "film like" they could have been in any theme park as decoration, they had big letters on them with names, some drawings, I don't know. I couldn't tell if they were decoration or real. I have no pictures of this because in theory it was not allowed to take them inside the museum, although many people was taking them.

Finally there was a room where a big case was made against the company building the crematory ovens. A funerary company that conveniently no longer exists. I found that attempt to blame a non existing company shameful when they "only" provided funerary crematories, it's like criminalizing the company that provide the body bags to the US military. To me it looked like an attempt to shift away the shame from other existing German companies, that also participated in the camps, into this other small and no longer existing company.

I had a difficult time visiting the camp, I have to recognize a few times I was crying when I imagined what those people suffered here and all the human ashes that were scattered on those fields. Still, even though I was crying, I also had in my mind the possibility that everything was fabricated or at least blown out of proportion. My final opinion is that the extermination really happened and that may be a bit of a story was also constructed by the allies, but that does not mean that the Nazi crimes were any lesser.

On the other hand, in any war there are always war crimes, war itself is a crime, all sides always commit war crimes, the allies committed them also, but victorious usually do not have to pay for them. What we have to try is never to allow any government, state, or the people really controlling them in the shadow, to lie us again into war!