Roll Call Area & Officer's Booth in Auschwitz I

The site of former Gestapo HQ in Auschwitz I.The gallows in the location was used to hang 47-year old SS-Obersturmbannführer Rudolf Höess-the first commandant of Auschwitz on April 16, 1947. He was one of the most sought-after war criminal and when arrested by British soldiers he was disguised as a lowly Gardner.

The Crematorium of Auschwitz I.

The current square shaped chimney is reconstructed, but the original is said to be round shaped. The four reconstructed holes through which Zyklon B pellets were dropped into the chambers are visible on the ceiling.

The reconstructed crematorium (Krema I) and the trolley-switching mechanisms of Auschwitz I.

These crematorium ovens in the main Auschwitz camp was active from September, 1940 to July, 1943. There were a total of three ovens in operation. Thousands of bodies were incinerated in these ovens. The trolley on wheels were used to shove the bodies inside the crematorium. The current ovens were reconstructed in 1947 by Russians, when the camp was turned into museum.

The electrified barbed wire fence surrounding the barracks buildings in Auschwitz I.

AUSCHWITZ II-BIRKENAU-the extermination camp.

Opened on October 7, 1941 as a camp for Soviet POWs by the Nazis, Auschwitz II (Birkenau) later became the largest death factory in history. Spread across 425 acres (2.5 Km x 1.6 Km) with over 300 buildings (including 250 barracks) and inhabiting 200,000 prisoners at its peak, Auschwitz II (Birkenau) in a short span of time (early 1942 to late 1944) took the lives of more than one million Jews through its 6 gas chambers and 4 crematoriums.

The Gate of Death, Auschwitz II (Birkenau)-Main Entrance to the Extermination Camp.

It is the main entrance to the largest killing center in the entire Nazi system.The gate house was built in 1943 for the passage of trucks and pedestrians. Railway tracks were laid through the gate only in 1944, when Hungarian Jews were to be massacred. They were brought directly inside the camp and gassed immediately upon arrival. Hungarian Jews suffered the heaviest causality in Auschwitz which amounts to 50% of the Jews that were murdered in Auschwitz. Within a period of 10 weeks in 1944 (15 May and 8 July) 437,402 Jews, were deported to Auschwitz on 147 trains and gassed. The Hungarian prisoners called the entrance to Birkenau as the "Gate of Death."