SUTTON Travels: Auschwitz Concentration Camp Poland

26 October 2024

Auschwitz Concentration Camp Poland

Auschwitz Concentration Camp was created by the Nazis in 1940 to house prisoners taken following the invasion of Poland. The site was previously an army barracks. The first transport arrived from Tarnow 14 June 1940.

Early on, most prisoners were Poles.

We entered Auschwitz into a dark grey cement tunnel where a large steel door banged shut behind us. We did not know what to expect.

We emerged into an outdoor grey cement corridor with tall walls that make you feel small. Only the blue sky looked inviting.

At first, the brick buildings don't look so bad.

But the barbed wire reminds us--this is a prison camp.

A local guide explains life in Auschwitz. Were are in Auschwitz I known as the main camp, which houses some 15,000 to 20,000 prisoners. Later we will visit Auschwitz II known as the Birkenau camp.

Collections of objects remind us that real people occupied these spaces.

Thousands existed side by side.

Pictures of the past...haunting memories

1941

The first people murdered by gas occurred on 3 September--about 850 Soviet prisoners of war and Polish prisoners who were sick. The Nazis used Zyklon B to kill them in block 11.