Auschwitz-Birkenau

Located at 3 km of Auschwitz I, this was the largest concentration and extermination camp of the Nazis and was busy as such between 1942 and 1945. A railway line crossed the entrance gate to bring loads of prisoners - more than a million of these died there from mass extermination, individual executions, disease, hypothermia, starvation or cruel experiments. This site became UNESCO heritage in 1979, along with Auschwitz I.

After days of journey, standing in crammed locked wagons, deprived of light, food and water, prisoners were delivered beyond that gate, in Auschwitz-Birkenau - a journey with no return, for the great majority.

This is the zone where prisoners should step off the wagons and where it was arbitrarily decided which would go to the barracks, for further forced labour, and which would go straight to the gas chambers.

Poor ventilation, no light, no water, no food, no toilets. That's how prisoners were forced to travel to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp.

Beside the railway terminal used to carry prisoners to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Beyond this gate stood the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau, where more than one million prisoners were killed.

In ruins, as they were destroyed with dynamite in January 1945, when the Russian Army seized the camp.

With lots of trees behind, very convenient to hide all the horrors that happened inside the fence from the sight of whoever might be outside.

Located at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp, this ditch was used between 1942 and 1945 to pile up corpses of the victims of gas chambers, remaining there until final cremation.