the holocaust

The Holocaust

Through the eyes of Poland..

Site of a mass grave the Jews made themselves when so many died in the ghetto

and there was no room or time to make proper graves

Site of a mass grave the Jews made themselves when so many died in the ghetto

and there was no room or time to make proper graves

Memorial for the children that died in the Holocaust

Memorial for the children that died in the Holocaust

Last surviving synagogue in Warsaw, Poland

Last surviving synagogue in Warsaw, Poland

Last surviving synagogue in

Warsaw, Poland

The Warsaw Ghetto Wall

Another Section Warsaw Ghetto Wall

“Curator” who petitioned to keep the last remaining piece of the Warsaw Ghetto Wall

Photo of a building that is still standing from the Warsaw ghetto that was attached to the bridge connecting the two

sections of the ghetto

During the Nazi occupation the Pawiak Jail served as the Gestapo prison. Over 100,000 people passed

through its cells.

Over 30,000 people were shot to death and cremated in Pawiak and on the nearby ghetto ruins.

The building Mila 18: its cellar was a bunker, which the command of Jewish Fighting Organization occupied. On May 8,

1943 it was discovered by German divisions and most of the fighters committed suicide.

After the war, in 1946, a mound was formed on the ruins of the

house and a memorial stone placed there with inscriptions in

Polish, Yiddish and Hebrew.

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Memorial

Front side to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Memorial:depicts the martyrdom of the Jewish heroes of the Uprising

Rear side to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Memorial: depicts the struggle and suffering of the Jewish people

Transports of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to the Treblinka death camp began on July 22,

1942.

Everyday 5,000 to 6,000 people were sent to their death. Many families saw each other for the last time at this point,

the “Umschlagplatz”

Four hundred forty-eight first names, from Abel to Żanna, were engraved in the wall as a symbol

of the approx. 450,000 Jews imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto.

When Nazis created the Warsaw Ghetto in 1940, Janusz Korczak was forced to move his orphanage to

the ghetto.

In August 1942, German soldiers came to collect the roughly 200

orphans and about one dozen staff members to

take them to Treblinka

extermination camp. Korczak

had been offered sanctuary on the “Aryan side” of

Warsaw but turned it down

repeatedly, saying that he

could not abandon his children and

ultimately went to the gas

chambers with them.

Sobibor extermination camp: approx. 250,000 people were killed

Trains entered the railway station, and the Jews onboard were told they were in a transit camp, and were forced to

undress and hand over their valuables. They were then led into the "Road to

Heaven" which led to the gas chambers, where they were killed using the carbon monoxide released from the

exhaust pipes of tanks.

Train tracks and the “ramp” (where families separated before going to the gas chambers) still remaining from

Sobibor

Memorial at Sobibor built where the gas chambers once stood

The pile of ashes and debris of

those who died at

Sobibor

The wind has blown some of the ashes into the surrounding greenery

Majdanek is the site of a German Nazi concentration and extermination camp, roughly 2.5 miles away from the center

of the Polish city Lublin.

The camp was liquidated in July 1944, but the crematoria were all that could be destroyed before the Soviet Red

Army arrived, making Majdanek the best-preserved camp of the Holocaust.

Because of how well preserved the camp remains, the horrific fact stands that this camp can be fully running

again within half an hour

Unlike many other Nazi concentration and extermination camps, Majdanek is not hidden away in some remote

forest or hidden from view by natural barriers, nor was it surrounded by a "security zone."

(this is the view of the city of Lublin from the exit of the crematorium)

Another view of the nearby city of Lublin from the

Majdanek concentration and extermination camp

The gas chamber at Majdanek

The showers where the prisoners would be taken before going into the actual gas chamber, in many occasions they were

used to quiet them down, not necessarily to clean them

Reinforced concrete gas chamber for exterminating prisoners with Cyclone B, which was dropped into the chamber through a

hole in the ceiling and/or carbon monoxide, supplied from containers in the SS-

man’s booth.

Extermination lasted about 10 minutes with Cyclone B (canisters pictured above) and about 40 minutes with carbon

monoxide

The Crematorium at Majdanek

Row of ovens in the crematorium used to burn the bodies from the gas chamber where about 1,000 bodies were

cremated daily

Auschwitz was the largest of the

Nazi concentration camps

The camp complex consisted of three main camps: Auschwitz I, the administrative center;

Auschwitz II (Birkenau), an extermination camp,

and Auschwitz III (Monowitz), a work

camp.

“Arbeit Macht Frei” = Work Makes Freedom

The entrance to Auschwitz I was and still is marked with this sign

The barracks at Auschwitz

“Danger High Voltage” sign for what used to be the electric fence

Block 10 was the building where all types of medical

experiments were performed on prisoners, mostly women,

twins, and dwarfs

The execution yard is between blocks 10 and 11. In this area, prisoners who were thought to merit individual execution received it in the most

horrendous of ways.

These pictures show an example of a type of torture chamber used by the Nazis:

Tiny square box chamber where 4

prisoners would have to stand for days (the

bricks went to the ceiling, whereas here they are opened up)

Block 11 was where the jail and torture chambers

were located

The barracks at Auschwitz I are now museums. One

barrack in particular houses the prisoners’ pictures which

took up the walls of the entire barrack hallway

The picture above shows a group of prisoners killed on the same day, most likely in a mass

murder

The museum at Auschwitz contains very large numbers of men's, women's and children's shoes taken from the

victims; also suitcases, which the deportees were encouraged to bring with them, and many household

utensils. One display case, some 30 metres long, is filled entirely with human hair which the Nazis gathered from

the people before and after they were slaughtered.

This hair still contains so much poisonous gas in it that over exposure to the hair could kill you

Eyeglasses taken from the

prisoners

The gas chamber and crematorium at

Auschwitz. This was used quite frequently

however most prisoners were sent to Auschwitz II: Birkenau

for extermination

Birkenau (Auschwitz II) was larger than Auschwitz I, and more people passed

through its “Gates of Death” than those of Auschwitz I

It was a purpose-built camp built for extermination. It was the site of

imprisonment of hundreds of thousands, and of the killing of over one million

people

Train tracks through the “Death Gate” into Birkenau, the extermination camp of

Auschwitz

Views of the camp from the Guard’s tower

Most of the buildings of

Birkenau were burnt down by the

Germans as the Russians came near

yet the brick chimneys and

formations remain, and roughly 19 out

of 300 survived

The “shelves” that the prisoners would sleep on in the barracks where people would be stacked on top of one another in the most wretched of conditions

The gas chambers of Birkenau were blown up by the SS in November 1944 in an attempt to hide their crimes from the advancing Soviet

troops.

In October 1944 however, a group of resistance crematoria workers

destroyed one of the crematoria

Krakow, Poland

Krakow, one of Poland’s oldest cities, was home to a large and bustling Jewish community prior to Nazi occupation

Door into Norman Infeld’s apartment

The imprint from the “mezzuzah” that was on the doorpost from before the war is still

present

The apartment which Norman and his family lived in before the Nazi occupation. The blue colored building in the bottom left was where the family

distillery was located

Norman and the current occupant (who has been living here since the war)

The area of the wall which is plastered up was where another room existed. In this room there was a closet where Norman

and his siblings would hide from the Nazis.