Auschwitz-Birkenau

Auschwitz II (Birkenau)
SS barracks
Vistula
Auschwitz I
SS workshops
Oswiecim
IG Farben
Auschwitz III (Monowitz)
1km 0.62 miles

Entrance: Prisoners selected for death are led to underground Badeanstalten – “bathhouses”

Changing room: Victims are made to hand over valuables and remove clothes

Gas chamber: Cyanide-based pesticide –Zyklon B – is dropped down wire-mesh columns.
Death takes up to 20 minutes

Crematoria: Corpses incinerated

Attic: Quarters for Sonderkommandos – slave labourers who have to remove gold teeth and hair from corpses

Elevator
 

1 1940-42: First camp built for Poles, political prisoners and SS garrison

2 Women and children: About 230,000 children and teenagers deported to Auschwitz

3 Men’s quarantine: Newly arrived prisoners terrorised into absolute submission

4 Czech Jews: Camp for families from Theresienstadt ghetto near Prague

5 Hungarian Jews: Within 10-week period in 1944, Nazis send 330,000 to gas chambers.
1940-45: At least 990,000 European Jews, 70-75,000 Poles, 21,000 Roma, 14,000 Soviet POWs, and some 15,000 others are killed or die at Auschwitz

6 Men’s camp: Opened 1943

7 Sinti and Roma camp: Of estimated 23,000 men, women, and children, 19,000 are killed in gas chambers

8-9 Gas chambers and crematoria: Four units

10 “Kanada” section: Belongings of victims are sorted in warehouses

11 Main hospital: Thousands of inmates are selected by camp doctor, Josef Mengele, for medical experiments on behalf of Army and German pharmaceutical companies

12 “Mexico” section: In final phase of war, new section is started, but only 32 of 188 barracks are completed


Human ashes found in fields

Sewage plant

1944: Railway extended to gas chambers

Unloading ramp

Hospital: Used for medical experiments under direction of SS chief Heinrich Himmler

Main gate
AUSCHWITZ II (BIRKENAU)
B-I 
B-II
B-III
400 metres 437 yards

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Sources: Auschwitz Memorial, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
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