Auschwitz Camp

yesterday on Amazing Race, guess where the teams were made to go when they were in Poland?
The Auschwitz Concentration Camp.

My interest in war atrocities began way back when I was in St Nicks during a fair called Synergy, where my class did an exhibition of The Rape of Nanking and the Vietnam War, where we did extensive research, and tried to reconstruct the Cuchi tunnels. The pictures that resonated within me til date, the heads on a wall, the corpses in a pile, the babies like rag dolls ... It was part marvel, part shock, part disbelief.

How man can treat another human being in such a manner is beyond my comprehension. But perhaps if i were in that situation, that time, that place, would I have been as inhumane , as barbaric, as cruel as those people? I shiver at the thought. Perhaps man are but carnal animals.

I did a research on the Auschwitz Camp. You can read Elie Wiesel's Night for a first person's account.

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Auschwitz functioned throughout its existence as a concentration camp, and over time became the largest such Nazi camp. Over 50% of the registered prisoners died as a result of starvation, labor that exceeded their physical capacity, the terror that raged in the camp, executions, the inhuman living conditions, disease and epidemics, punishment, torture, and criminal medical experiments.

Auschwitz has become a symbol of terror, genocide, and the Holocaust. It was established by the Nazis in 1940, in the suburbs of the city of Oswiecim which, like other parts of Poland, was occupied by the Germans during the Second World War. The name of the city of Oswiecim was changed to Auschwitz, which became the name of the camp as well.

Over the years, the camp was expanded and consisted of three main parts: Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, and Auschwitz III-Monowitz. It also had over 40 sub-camps. At first, Poles were imprisoned and died in the camp. Afterwards, Soviet prisoners of war, Gypsies, and people of other nationalities were also incarcerated there. Beginning in 1942, the camp became the site of the greatest mass murder in the history of humanity, which was committed against the European Jews as part of Hitler's plan for the complete destruction of that people. The majority of the Jewish men, women and children deported to Auschwitz were sent to their deaths in the Birkenau gas chambers immediately after arrival. At the end of the war, in an effort to remove the traces of the crimes they had committed, the SS began dismantling and razing the gas chambers, crematoria, and other buildings, as well as burning documents.
Prisoners capable of marching were evacuated into the depths of the Reich. Those who remained behind in the camp were liberated by Red Army soldiers on January 27, 1945.