Auschwitz-Birkenau

On August 15, 1912 the Titanic sank more than 12,000 feet. It took 70 years to find the wreck. The ocean floor near the wreck had many pairs of shoes. The owners of the shoes were gone, but it was clear that the shoes had been on someones feet when the ship sank. Marine organisms quickly consumed flesh and acidic levels on the ocean floor dissolved bone quickly. The shoes remained.

At the time the loss of 1,000 lives was a sensation, It was caused by poor design, poor planning, hubris and arrogance. Nearly 7,000 times that  number were killed deliberately 30 years later by incredible human evil. Birkenau was built 3 kilometres from Auschwitz because the older camp could not gas and cremate sufficient victims.

The Germans collected shoes, hairbrushes, gold teeth, suitcases, glasses and even the hair of their victims. The picture above shows a few of the shoes that remained when the SS guards fled a week ahead of the advancing Russian Army.

The "Work Make Free" gate at the entrance to Auschwitz.

It took about 20 minutes for 2,000 victims to choke to death, but the time required to clean the gas chambers and cremate the bodies meant they could only process 2,000 each 24 hours.

Existential philosophers say that the nature of man is plastic. You can be an SS Camp guard or you can be Mother Theresa....It's up to you...This place reminds most visitors that it might be better to listen to ones better angels.

German doctors chose those healthy enough to be worked to death (about 25%) right here. The rest went directly to the gas chambers. Children were not selected as workers. The doctors performed sterilisation experiments on many women. They hoped to enable a doctor to sterilise 100 or more women a day. This would ensure that the population of conquered countries did not breed so that there would be more room for the Master Race.

This is one of the most of the most popular tour in Krakow. They now get over 2,000,000 visitors a year...almost as many as they got from 1942 to 1945...