the holocaust
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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.