POLAND - 2 (Auschwitz)

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Auschwitz

Auschwitz

Auschwitz

Auschwitz

Auschwitz

Auschwitz

Auschwitz

Auschwitz

Auschwitz

Auschwitz

Auschwitz

Auschwitz

Auschwitz

Auschwitz

Auschwitz

Auschwitz

Auschwitz

Auschwitz

The camp at Oswiecim, or as the Germans and history knows it Auschwitz, was originally an army camp but was turned into the centre of a sprawling slave labour complex and extermination centre by the Germans during World War 2. It is perhaps the nearby Auschwitz-Birkenau complex that people think of when recalling the mass murder of Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, and various political opponents of the Nazi regime as it is the rail entrance to this camp that is so often used in documentaries and the memories of the unloading that feature in survivor's testimonies. Here people were not only subject to mass murder by gas and then cremated, often immediately on arrival, but those deemed fit to work were kept as slave labourers and often simply worked to death. This is not an easy place to visit and despite the evidence, the true horror remains almost impossible to comprehend but it remains not just a memorial but a reminder of what a tyrranical regime can unleash on its people. I visited it with a group of students and it was clearly an overwhelming experience for some and for me.

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