Poland

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

The ovens for burning bodies.

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

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)

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

Remains of one of the five gas chambers.

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

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).

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

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

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

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