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Auschwitz


ropo54

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Thank you for posting those photos. You have certainly shown the vastness of Auschwitz-Birkenau II. (Unfortunately, my visit did not allot sufficient time there, as most of my time was at Auschwitz I).

Rob

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Thank you for posting those photos. You have certainly shown the vastness of Auschwitz-Birkenau II. (Unfortunately, my visit did not allot sufficient time there, as most of my time was at Auschwitz I).

Rob

We had a extended walk in/around Birkenau in the late Afternoon which was very creepy as no one was around.

Area around "Kanada" and the wood was the most cruel experience for me but all of this place is just horrible but needs to be visited.

Edited by T00m
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T00m,

 

I was there on a lovely, sunny day during the summer. It seemed so incongruous to the reality that it was a sadistic and massive murderous enterprise. The smell of death permeating the air. The hollowed out matchsticks of people whose dignity was slipping from their last grasps. The screams, the tortured cries. The sickness of it all. 

 

                                          --------------------------------------------------------

 

Yes, seeing the personal possessions takes the sterility out of seeing the buildings.  The photo below is from Yad Vashem in Israel.

 

The goods coming from the Jews on the train were dropped on the platform upon arrival at Auschwitz. The goods were then sent to Nazi warehouses for re-use. The caption: "By the time the sorting was done, most of the previous owners were dead".

 

Again, thanks for posting your photographs.

 

Rob

 

We had a extended walk in/around Birkenau in the late Afternoon which was very creepy as no one was around.
Area "Kanada" was the most cruel experience for me but all of this place is just horrible but needs to be visited.

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Thank you for posting. We visited Auschwitz a few years ago on a cold December afternoon. Were almost the only visitors which added to the feel of the camp, but unfortunately we saw some selfies being taken at some very unappropriate locations. Cannot contribute pictures as those were taken with the Nikon I had at the time.

First time I revisited those images after a long time as they are utterly depressing.

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Thanks, Stephan54.  

 

I cannot comprehend the notion of light-hearted "selfies" there either.

 

The day before seeing Auschwitz, I was in Krakow and there is a large memorial in the former Jewish ghetto called "Empty Chairs". See below. It is a large empty plaza only filled with permanently erected larger than life black chairs to symbolize the "missing" Jewish community.  While there, I saw some visitors taking photos as they mockingly posed in front of a chair, smiling and making gestures of slitting their necks.

 

A sad thought for me.

 

Rob

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Thank you for sharing these impressive pictures of a very very sad place. I came in contact with that as a young school boy, have seen the pictures and films made by military cameramen and reporters when the concentration camps where freed, having read so much about this horrible part of younger history it never let me go over the last 50 years.

I will never understand how humans can do something barbarous and inhumane   …  words are not enough to describe  …

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  • 2 months later...

Contemplating Auschwitz

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Windows of despair

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As the caption reads, this photo was taken by the Sonderkommandos (German: [ˈzɔndɐkɔˌmando], special unit). 

These were work units made up of German Nazi death camp prisoners. They were composed of prisoners, usually Jews, who were forced, on threat of their own deaths, to aid with the disposal of gas chamber victims during the Holocaust.

I cannot imagine how these prisoners would have gotten their hands on a camera to document the atrocities at Auschwitz.

 

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On 9/16/2018 at 5:49 AM, T00m said:

Say Cheese! - While being speechless I hat to capture that "scene of respectful piety". -_-

Nothing compared to when I went to Belsen in 1980: I walked into the building containing the crematoria only to see two young Canadians  posing for photos whilst smiling, laughing, and lying on the steel trundles used to slide bodies directly into the furnaces.  Once the other visitors and I had finished abusing them they very quickly departed, I think without have yet taken their hideous photographs. 

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Two summers back on a visit to Aix en Provence, where I was vacationing I checked into my hotel in Les Milles nearby and found a visitor guide. It listed as a place of interest an internment camp that I had no idea existed there. Of course I was well aware of camps in France, the Vichy Goverment and so on.  I went late on a that Sunday afternoon so I was one of only a handful of visitors. Something about that town and beyond the town changed for me as I walked through the facility, and for days after.

Studying history as a kid but also having had a dad who form NYC went to Germany to med school in the 30s, I was intimately aware of our history.  Never though had the time between my birth and childhood, and the war felt so compressed, or ever present; history strangely disappeared. I hope to visit Auschwitz and or Bergen-Belson one day and am appreciative Rob for this thread and to others who have shared here.

I kept my M9 in the bag for most of my time in the facility as there was so much to take in and so daunting to try and capture anything I felt at the time would be meaningful. This is one image I made looking out to the world outside.

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Thanks for sharing, DwF.  

Visiting the Washington D.C. Holocaust Memorial is a shattering experience; seeing and hearing video testimony of survivors is overwhelming. Bearing witness to Auschwitz was on my bucket list, having lost a branch of my family on my maternal great grandmother's family tree.  (Any relatives on that branch of my family who had not fled by the mid 1930s were murdered in the camps).

Despite the enormity of it all, there are also many stories of the righteous and courageous who risked their own lives to save Jews;  those stories can are enormously compelling. 

I hope you will see Auschwitz. I hope many will see Auschwitz. It is most difficult to make any sense as to how it could have happened.

Regards,

Rob

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Rob,

I visited the Holocaust Museum this summer and yes, to say that it was indeed very moving. I also appreciate the point you make about the courageousness that non-Jews faced in their heroism saving neighbors and countrymen. I still feel an affinity for France and other countries in Europe as well.  Lord knows the hatred and ignorance that fueled the Holocaust is still tragically present and on this side of the pond as well.

David

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  • 1 month later...

This photo was taken by forum member, DJMay.  

Fabulous photography; so very haunting.

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