Auschwitz
Between 1940 and 1945, over six million
European Jews were murdered by the Nazis in
concentration camps such as AuschwitzBirkenau (in Poland).
They also killed captured soldiers, gypsies
and people who were handicapped.
At first they were starved to death or shot, but
then they developed a quicker way of killing
them – the gas chambers.
We remember these victims on Holocaust
Day.
In 2005, five Inverclyde pupils visited Auschwitz-Birkenau
Jan Reagan, Chris Shearer, Jaclyn Malloy, Melissa Wilson and Andrew McCullagh
This is Auschwitz today.
This is where the Nazis
tried to exterminate
Europe’s Jewish people
just over 60 years ago.
Millions arrived along this
rail line.
On arrival they were spilt
into two groups – those
who would be worked &
starved to death and
those who would go
straight to the gas
chambers.
The Gates Into Auschwitz: ARBEIT MACHT FREI means
‘Work brings freedom’
Gas Chamber, Auschwitz
800 people a day were gassed. It took too long to burn the
bodies so more gas chambers were built at nearby Birkenau
The ‘Firing Wall’. Prisoners were lined up and shot.
These cans
contained Cyclone
B – the pellets gave
off poison gas when
they were tipped
into the ‘showers’
(really the gas
chambers).
A whole room of human hair cut from the dead
bodies. Cyclone B traces were found in the hair.
The hair has turned grey over 60 years.
Hair was made into rugs and to make German soldiers’ coats
warmer
German soldiers took away the prisoners’ glasses, artificial
limbs and other belongings, partly to humiliate them.
Ordinary lives: photographs of some of the prisoners
before coming to the camps
25 % of the prisoners who died were children
Birkenau
Over 1.5 million prisoners were killed in nearby
Birkenau alone.
Prisoners were crammed into beds in unheated sheds - some
on the floor. There could be 5 on each shelf. Many had
dysentery. Some died when the beds collapsed on them.
This was the only
ventilation for a tiny
punishment cell.
Prisoners died of cold or
suffocated.
The Memorial Tower. Visitors light candles for the six million
Jews who died in the Holocaust.
At the end of the day we lit a candle in memory of all
those who died
Auschwitz was freed by
Russian soldiers in 1945.
The Germans had tried to
destroy the evidence, but
there were piles of bodies
and other remains. There
were also some survivors,
most of whom were close
to death.
When he was captured,
the camp commandant
was hanged on these
gallows.
Could something like
the Holocaust ever
happen again?