12. “ Curator” who petitioned to keep the last remaining piece of the Warsaw Ghetto Wall
13. Photo of a building that is still standing from the Warsaw ghetto that was attached to the bridge connecting the two sections of the ghetto
14. During the Nazi occupation the Pawiak Jail served as the Gestapo prison. Over 100,000 people passed through its cells.
15. Over 30,000 people were shot to death and cremated in Pawiak and on the nearby ghetto ruins.
16. The building Mila 18: its cellar was a bunker, which the command of Jewish Fighting Organization occupied. On May 8, 1943 it was discovered by German divisions and most of the fighters committed suicide.
17. After the war, in 1946, a mound was formed on the ruins of the house and a memorial stone placed there with inscriptions in Polish, Yiddish and Hebrew.
19. Front side to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Memorial: depicts the martyrdom of the Jewish heroes of the Uprising
20. Rear side to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Memorial: depicts the struggle and suffering of the Jewish people
21. Transports of Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto to the Treblinka death camp began on July 22, 1942.
22. Everyday 5,000 to 6,000 people were sent to their death. Many families saw each other for the last time at this point, the “Umschlagplatz”
23. Four hundred forty-eight first names, from Abel to Żanna, were engraved in the wall as a symbol of the approx. 450,000 Jews imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto.
24. When Nazis created the Warsaw Ghetto in 1940, Janusz Korczak was forced to move his orphanage to the ghetto.
25. In August 1942, German soldiers came to collect the roughly 200 orphans and about one dozen staff members to take them to Treblinka extermination camp. Korczak had been offered sanctuary on the “Aryan side” of Warsaw but turned it down repeatedly, saying that he could not abandon his children and ultimately went to the gas chambers with them.
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27. Sobibor extermination camp: approx. 250,000 people were killed Trains entered the railway station, and the Jews onboard were told they were in a transit camp, and were forced to undress and hand over their valuables. They were then led into the "Road to Heaven" which led to the gas chambers, where they were killed using the carbon monoxide released from the exhaust pipes of tanks.
28. Train tracks and the “ramp” (where families separated before going to the gas chambers) still remaining from Sobibor
30. The pile of ashes and debris of those who died at Sobibor
31. The wind has blown some of the ashes into the surrounding greenery
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33. Majdanek is the site of a German Nazi concentration and extermination camp, roughly 2.5 miles away from the center of the Polish city Lublin.
34. The camp was liquidated in July 1944, but the crematoria were all that could be destroyed before the Soviet Red Army arrived, making Majdanek the best-preserved camp of the Holocaust. Because of how well preserved the camp remains, the horrific fact stands that this camp can be fully running again within half an hour
35. Unlike many other Nazi concentration and extermination camps, Majdanek is not hidden away in some remote forest or hidden from view by natural barriers, nor was it surrounded by a "security zone." (this is the view of the city of Lublin from the exit of the crematorium)
36. Another view of the nearby city of Lublin from the Majdanek concentration and extermination camp
38. The showers where the prisoners would be taken before going into the actual gas chamber, in many occasions they were used to quiet them down, not necessarily to clean them
39. Reinforced concrete gas chamber for exterminating prisoners with Cyclone B, which was dropped into the chamber through a hole in the ceiling and/or carbon monoxide, supplied from containers in the SS-man’s booth.
40. Extermination lasted about 10 minutes with Cyclone B (canisters pictured above) and about 40 minutes with carbon monoxide
42. Row of ovens in the crematorium used to burn the bodies from the gas chamber where about 1,000 bodies were cremated daily
43. Auschwitz was the largest of the Nazi concentration camps The camp complex consisted of three main camps: Auschwitz I, the administrative center; Auschwitz II (Birkenau), an extermination camp, and Auschwitz III (Monowitz), a work camp.
44. “ Arbeit Macht Frei” = Work Makes Freedom The entrance to Auschwitz I was and still is marked with this sign
45. The barracks at Auschwitz “ Danger High Voltage” sign for what used to be the electric fence
46. Block 10 was the building where all types of medical experiments were performed on prisoners, mostly women, twins, and dwarfs
47. The execution yard is between blocks 10 and 11. In this area, prisoners who were thought to merit individual execution received it in the most horrendous of ways.
48. These pictures show an example of a type of torture chamber used by the Nazis: Tiny square box chamber where 4 prisoners would have to stand for days (the bricks went to the ceiling, whereas here they are opened up) Block 11 was where the jail and torture chambers were located
49. The barracks at Auschwitz I are now museums. One barrack in particular houses the prisoners’ pictures which took up the walls of the entire barrack hallway The picture above shows a group of prisoners killed on the same day, most likely in a mass murder
50. The museum at Auschwitz contains very large numbers of men's, women's and children's shoes taken from the victims; also suitcases, which the deportees were encouraged to bring with them, and many household utensils. One display case, some 30 metres long, is filled entirely with human hair which the Nazis gathered from the people before and after they were slaughtered.
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52. This hair still contains so much poisonous gas in it that over exposure to the hair could kill you
54. The gas chamber and crematorium at Auschwitz. This was used quite frequently however most prisoners were sent to Auschwitz II: Birkenau for extermination
55. Birkenau (Auschwitz II) was larger than Auschwitz I, and more people passed through its “Gates of Death” than those of Auschwitz I It was a purpose-built camp built for extermination. It was the site of imprisonment of hundreds of thousands, and of the killing of over one million people
56. Train tracks through the “Death Gate” into Birkenau, the extermination camp of Auschwitz
57. Views of the camp from the Guard’s tower Most of the buildings of Birkenau were burnt down by the Germans as the Russians came near yet the brick chimneys and formations remain, and roughly 19 out of 300 survived
58. The “shelves” that the prisoners would sleep on in the barracks where people would be stacked on top of one another in the most wretched of conditions
59. The gas chambers of Birkenau were blown up by the SS in November 1944 in an attempt to hide their crimes from the advancing Soviet troops. In October 1944 however, a group of resistance crematoria workers destroyed one of the crematoria
60. Krakow, Poland Krakow, one of Poland’s oldest cities, was home to a large and bustling Jewish community prior to Nazi occupation
63. The imprint from the “mezzuzah” that was on the doorpost from before the war is still present
64. The apartment which Norman and his family lived in before the Nazi occupation. The blue colored building in the bottom left was where the family distillery was located
65. Norman and the current occupant (who has been living here since the war)
66. The area of the wall which is plastered up was where another room existed. In this room there was a closet where Norman and his siblings would hide from the Nazis.