The Saddest Spot on Earth?

Skip this post if you have a weak constitution.

While in Krakow I decided, perhaps against my better judgement, to take a side trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau not far away to see one of the most infamous sites in human history - a place where about 1.2 million people were cruelly executed in the second world war. I'll let the pictures mainly speak for themselves for themselves starting with the derisory inscription above the entrance to Auschwitz - Arbeit Macht Frei (work makes free).

The kitchen block.

Men separated from women and children. The men had some chance of survival, the latter none.

En route to the gas chambers.

Burning corpses.

Empty cans that once contained the ingredients of gas.

Thousands of spectacles, prostheses, suit cases, shoes and shaving brushes.

Some of the 'better' bunk beds.

Execution wall - by firing squad - with nearby shuttered windows to hide the awful fate of naked prisoners.

A crematorium.

Entrance to Birkenau, which was almost entirely a killing machine, with passengers making a one-way trip in wagons of the kind shown next to the alighting platform.

One of the crematoria blown up by retreating guards to conceal their atrocities.

A hollow that used to house the ashes of the dead.

Bunk beds of the 'worse' kind - the shack used to take 400 prisoners on 3 levels crammed together some of whom seemed to have left their signatures on the wall.

The wall in the mid-distance hides the blocks where women and their babies were killed.

AS