Photos, videos and docs of Don Barrett (aka DBs travels), with the keywords: "Auschwitz"

Poland Auschwitz-Birkenau (#2376)

nobody@ipernity.com (Don Barrett (aka DBs travels)) — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 16:34:27 +0000

Don Barrett (aka DBs travels) has posted:

From the guard tower, the foundations and chimneys indicate the expanse of wooden barracks.

The tour had been 2.5 hours, the guide was thorough, providing both excellent information as well as some time to reflect on what you were seeing. However, the logistics of running multiple tours through the camp at the same seemed to remove the viewer from the horror. As a very small example, you don't walk away from this view with a sense of the thousands of emaciated and self-sullied prisoners mulling and flailing about in this space -- or of the number who chose suicide by jumping on to the electrified fences.

Poland Auschwitz-Birkenau (#2374)

nobody@ipernity.com (Don Barrett (aka DBs travels)) — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 16:34:09 +0000

Don Barrett (aka DBs travels) has posted:

The rail line from the upper floor of the guard tower, looking across the camps to the ovens at the end of the line.

Looking back and combining this tour with other sites I later saw, Auschwitz impressed upon me three things. One was the very strong evidence it provides for the magnitude of possible human evil. Second was how the process of extermination became increasingly a factory-like process of mass dehumanization. And finally, given the extent of the involvement in this factory of human debasement and destruction, what to do about the perpetrators and compliant others?

(Per Wikipedia, there were 7,000 SS employees, 12% of whom were convicted of war crimes: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_concentration_camp)

Poland Auschwitz-Birkenau (#2372)

nobody@ipernity.com (Don Barrett (aka DBs travels)) — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 16:33:51 +0000

Don Barrett (aka DBs travels) has posted:

Poland Auschwitz-Birkenau (#2371)

nobody@ipernity.com (Don Barrett (aka DBs travels)) — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 16:33:28 +0000

Don Barrett (aka DBs travels) has posted:

Latrine. Prisoners were allowed less than a minute, once a day, for bowel movements, thus prisoners typically lived in badly soiled clothes.

Poland Auschwitz-Birkenau (#2364)

nobody@ipernity.com (Don Barrett (aka DBs travels)) — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 16:32:59 +0000

Don Barrett (aka DBs travels) has posted:

Prisoners slept on straw or rags,12 to each space.

Poland Auschwitz-Birkenau (#2363)

nobody@ipernity.com (Don Barrett (aka DBs travels)) — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 16:32:32 +0000

Don Barrett (aka DBs travels) has posted:

Chimneys, from the very marginal heaters that were in some brick barracks that had been destroyed.

Poland Auschwitz-Birkenau (#2361)

nobody@ipernity.com (Don Barrett (aka DBs travels)) — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 16:32:02 +0000

Don Barrett (aka DBs travels) has posted:

On one side of Birkenau, the barracks were brick, on the other side wood (few of the wood barracks remain).

Poland Auschwitz-Birkenau (#2360)

nobody@ipernity.com (Don Barrett (aka DBs travels)) — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 16:31:24 +0000

Don Barrett (aka DBs travels) has posted:

The area in front of me was where prisoners were corralled into an assembly line of undressing and then entering the 'showers'. There were multiple gas chambers here, each with similar design.

During the summer of 1944, the crematorium plus additional outdoor pits operated at full capacity of 20,000 bodies per day (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_concentration_camp).

Poland Auschwitz-Birkenau (#2359)

nobody@ipernity.com (Don Barrett (aka DBs travels)) — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 16:30:53 +0000

Don Barrett (aka DBs travels) has posted:

At the far end of Birkenau, at a point once surrounded by gas chambers, a monument to those who died.

Poland Auschwitz-Birkenau (#2357)

nobody@ipernity.com (Don Barrett (aka DBs travels)) — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 16:30:28 +0000

Don Barrett (aka DBs travels) has posted:

Remains of one of the five gas chambers.

Poland Auschwitz-Birkenau (#2355)

nobody@ipernity.com (Don Barrett (aka DBs travels)) — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 16:30:04 +0000

Don Barrett (aka DBs travels) has posted:

From the end of the rail line, where the gas chambers were, looking back past the sorting location and then to the main entrance.

Poland Auschwitz-Birkenau (#2353)

nobody@ipernity.com (Don Barrett (aka DBs travels)) — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 16:29:46 +0000

Don Barrett (aka DBs travels) has posted:

One of the freight cars that was used to bring prisoners to the camp. The freight cars often carried a hundred or more, thus many died in the multiple days of transit.

In one period of less than two months in 1944, 12,000 Hungarian Jews were processed through this point, for a total of 437,000. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_concentration_camp)

Poland Auschwitz-Birkenau (#2349)

nobody@ipernity.com (Don Barrett (aka DBs travels)) — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 16:29:15 +0000

Don Barrett (aka DBs travels) has posted:

Birkenau section at Auschwitz, looking from the point of disembarkation back to where the trains of prisoners entered the camp, back to where the last vestiges of life ended for most.

Auschwitz, being a reconfiguration of an existing Army base, was inefficient given the large number of prisoners. Birkenau was initially created to be a slave labor camp but was quickly converted into being a combination slave labor camp and murder factory.

Though this particular photograph is made by many, the sense of sorrow from visiting the site is not forgettable.

The Wikipedia on Auschwitz/Birkeneau is excellent: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_concentration_camp

Poland Auschwitz (#2348)

nobody@ipernity.com (Don Barrett (aka DBs travels)) — Mon, 15 Jun 2015 08:34:00 +0000

Don Barrett (aka DBs travels) has posted:

The ovens for burning bodies.

Poland Auschwitz (#2347)

nobody@ipernity.com (Don Barrett (aka DBs travels)) — Mon, 15 Jun 2015 08:33:31 +0000

Don Barrett (aka DBs travels) has posted:

Entrance to the gas chambers. We walked through the rooms where people were gassed.

Poland Auschwitz (#2346)

nobody@ipernity.com (Don Barrett (aka DBs travels)) — Mon, 15 Jun 2015 08:32:52 +0000

Don Barrett (aka DBs travels) has posted:

The gas chambers at Auschwitz, with exhaust chimneys for the ovens.

Poland Auschwitz (#2345)

nobody@ipernity.com (Don Barrett (aka DBs travels)) — Mon, 15 Jun 2015 08:32:14 +0000

Don Barrett (aka DBs travels) has posted:

In the distance is the house of the commander of Auschwitz, where he raised his children and entertained in his garden, while prisoners were dying in these barracks or being gassed in the gas chambers, which are just over my left shoulder.

Poland Auschwitz (#2343)

nobody@ipernity.com (Don Barrett (aka DBs travels)) — Mon, 15 Jun 2015 08:31:51 +0000

Don Barrett (aka DBs travels) has posted:

I don't remember the specifics here other than that multiple prisoners were publicly hanged and then left hanging, with all prisoners forced to view the hangings.

Poland Auschwitz (#2340)

nobody@ipernity.com (Don Barrett (aka DBs travels)) — Mon, 15 Jun 2015 08:31:10 +0000

Don Barrett (aka DBs travels) has posted:

The firing squad area, used for executing able-bodied prisoners who were found guilty of some charge (trumped up or not). Note the coverings of the windows on the left and on the upper floor so that prisoners could not see the identity of the person killed. The person in the brown coat on the right was our tour guide.

Poland Auschwitz (#2337)

nobody@ipernity.com (Don Barrett (aka DBs travels)) — Sun, 14 Jun 2015 07:25:25 +0000

Don Barrett (aka DBs travels) has posted:

An example of the sleeping area for those who were able-bodied and thus assigned to the barracks. If you look at the larger version of the photo, you can see in the illustration on the wall that multiple people slept on each sleeping pad.