1. The HOLOCAUST
A total of 22 main concentration camps were established, together with approximately 1,200 affiliate camps in all parts of Nazi-controlled Europe. The 22 main camps were: Arbeitsdorf, Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau, Flossenbürg, Gross-Rosen, Herzogenbosch, Kaunas, Krakow-Plaszow, Majdanek, Mauthausen, Mittelbau-Dora, Natzweiler-Struthof, Neuengamme, Ravensbrück, Riga-Kaiserwald, Sachsenhausen, Stutthof, Vaivara, Warsaw, Wewelsburg.
6 extermination camps Chelmno, Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor, Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek

3. Auschwitz
Auschwitz I was the main camp; it was a Class I concentration camp, which was opened in June 1940 in the barracks of a former Polish Army garrison. The first prisoners were mostly non-Jewish Polish political prisoners, but a few Jews were also imprisoned there.
Auschwitz II, also known as Birkenau was the death camp where over a million prisoners, mainly Jews, were killed, mostly in gas chambers; today, it is the world's largest Jewish graveyard, the place where the ashes of innocent victims were scattered over the fields, thrown into the rivers, or dumped into several small ponds sixty five years ago.
Auschwitz III was a work camp where prisoners worked in the factories of the I.G. Farben company, along side civilian workers who were not prisoners.
Interactive Map – BBC
Tour of the Camp today

4. Aerial view of Auschwitz I

5. Auschwitz
Above the gate at Auschwitz the words read “Work will make you free.” The B is upside down – a small rebellion on the part of an inmate.
The sign was stolen in 2009 and recovered a few days later, cut into 3 pieces.

6. The size of the Auschwitz "Zone of Interest" was 40 square kilometers (Sussex – 9 sq km, almost 10,000 acres). There was a security zone, consisting of 5,000 acres of potential farmland, which was eventually turned into a huge farm where 10,000 inmates, mostly women, were put to work. This was an agricultural experiment station for the benefit of the German farmers who were brought to the region to settle on farms that were taken away from the Polish inhabitants.

7. Arrival

8. Barracks
Dampness, leaky roofs, and the fouling of straw and straw mattresses by prisoners suffering from diarrhea made difficult living conditions worse. The barracks swarmed with various sorts of vermin and rats. A constant shortage of water for washing, and the lack of suitable sanitary facilities, made the situation worse.

9. Barracks at Buchenwald, 1945.
The bunks had no pillows or blankets. People slept crowded together. This picture was taken as the camp was liberated. Some of these men died soon after, their bodies unable to recover from years of starvation and hard work.
Elie Wiesel is in the second row from the bottom, seventh from the left.

10. Latrines
It was impossible for inmates to keep clean or have a change of clothes. For the first two years of the camp’s existence the prisoners had no access to water for washing. When, later, there was water, it was not clean. Prisoners, therefore, spent their existence in the camp dirty and in filthy clothes, which increased the likelihood of them contracting infections and diseases.

11. Gas Chambers
At Auschwitz there were seven buildings that were used as gas chambers.
people at a time
The Zyklon B was poured into the gas chamber through openings in the roof. This gas chamber had no dummy shower fittings on the ceiling.
This was Gas Chamber 1 and was not considered big enough….

12. The Crematorium
Up to 12,000 Jews per day were murdered upon arrival in the gas chambers at Birkenau and their bodies were burned in the ovens in the crematoria.
This is to the far right in the previous picture – no smoke during the arrivals.

13. Tattooing Tattoos were only done at the Auschwitz camp.
Only those selected to work (put in line to the left upon arrival) were tattooed.

14. Confiscated items

15. Human Hair
7000 kilos of human hair were discovered when the camp was liberated. It was bagged and labelled for shipment.
Hair was used to stuff mattresses.

16. 10,000 shoes in Majdanek (which were incinerated in a fire weeks after this picture was taken.

17. Inmates at work
Shoe repair, locksmiths, farming, sorting through suitcases in Kanada, munitions factories, granite quarry, and the worst – taking bodies from the gas chamber to the crematorium.

18. “Meals”
Breakfast - You must have your mess-tin in hand. No mess-tin, no food. A kapo gives you approximately 10 ounces of bread and some "coffee”. Sometimes, if you are lucky, you'll receive some margarine or a thin slice of sausage with your bread. The "coffee" is tasteless. No sugar and no milk, of course. The bread you just received will be the only solid food you'll receive until tomorrow. If you have strength of will, you'll try to spare it for the rest of the day.
Lunch and dinner - You run in order to receive your "dinner": a kind of "soup", just like the one you received at noon. If you spared some bread, you may eat it now, with the soup.

19. Children of the Holocaust
1.5 million children were murdered -including more than 1.2 million Jewish children, tens of thousands of Gypsy children and thousands of institutionalized handicapped children.
Joseph Mengele, a doctor at Auschwitz, performed experiments on twins – measurements, blood transfusions, eye colour, shots and diseases and operations.

20. Survivors - barely
In the 2 months following the liberation of Bergen- Belsen, 13,944 survivors died.
These men are eating sugar cubes - they were too weak to eat solid food.

22. Something to think about
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing”
"In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up." --Martin Niemoeller, German Lutheran Pastor

23. Survivors Oprah tours Auschwitz
Elie Wiesel - born Sept. 30, 1928 – parents and younger sister were killed in concentration camps, he and 2 older sisters survived – Auschwitz, Buna and Buchenwald, Nobel Peace Prize winner as a “messenger to mankind”
Philip Riteman -  born in Poland - has personal identification number 98,706 tattooed on his arm

24. One thing that I will emphasize when teaching about the Holocaust is that systematic killing of millions of people wasn't necessarily the worst of the Nazi atrocities. It was the deliberate humiliation and calculated cruelty that preceded extermination. The Nazis attempted to shatter people's souls before they destroyed their bodies. One was confronted time and time again with accounts and images of those who gloried in their grisly task and revelled in their mercilessness. Even more tragic, Elie Wiesel has pointed out that "the victims suffered more, and more profoundly, from the indifference of the onlookers than from the brutality of the executioner.
Dr. Cheryl Fury, a member of the Department of History & Politics at UNBSJ