Auschwitz One, the main camp, is located on the outskirts of Oswiecm, a Polish city thirty- seven miles west of Krakow. It was originally the site of pre-war Polish Army barrachs, but in 1940 Nazis claimed it for confining Poles and later Soviet POWs, gypsies and prisoners from other countries.

By 1942, Hitler’s strategy to wipe out the Jewish population in Europe was in full gear. His plan was called The Final Solution and his killing field expanded to include Auschwitz Two which was located two miles away in Birkenau.

Birkenau was linked to locations all over Europe by the rail system, and became the site of the infamous selection process. Auschwitz Three, a labor camp, and over forty sub-camps were also established.

At the height of the mass murder, trains arrived at Birkenau every half hour packed with starving, thirsty Jews. Here, the Angel of Death, Dr. Josef Mengele, with a flick of a finger and while humming The Blue Danube, chose the fate of men, women and children. He pointed in one direction for those deemed fit to work. Young mothers with children, the elderly or the infirm were sent straight to the gas chambers.

During the selection process, an orchestra made up of prisoners, uncannily played classical music evoking calm and normalcy. It blotted out the barking dogs, guards with whips and utter chaos. It worked because most of the prisoners did not realize their fate, and nearly all were dead within an hour of their arrival.

Rudolph Hoess was the camp’s commandant and lived, with his wife and children, yards away from the gas chamber and screams at Auschwitz One. In 1947, he served as a witness at the Nuremberg trials. He was returned to face his fate on the same site where masses of innocent people were murdered. He was hanged at Auschwitz.

Sixty years ago, in civilized Europe, six million Jews died in the Holocaust. More than one million were murdered at Auschwitz.

Birkenau 1944

Most Jews who arrived from across Europe, by train to Birkenau, under went the " selection" process, and were dead within the hour. Children, young mothers, the elderly, and the ill were sent directly to the gas chambers by the Nazi's.

Photos ( 1944) Courtesy of Yad Vashem.