I have had very few experiences in life that have repulsed me to my very core. Standing in a courtyard with a wall designed to provide an appropriate backdrop to aid the systematic death of people by firing squad is a viscerally awful experience. Seeing an entire building dedicated to death via various means was unpleasant and gut-wrenching at the same time. In Block 11 (The Death Block), people were starved, asphyxiated and shot depending on various offences that one might have committed. In one infamous event, some people had tried to escape, so to discourage other such occurrences, 10 prisoners were randomly selected for death in Block 11. This is where Maximilian Kolbe stepped in for someone, choosing to die so another might live. He was placed in Cell 18 which now houses a memorial set up by Pope John Paul II. As you peep through the holes of the cells, you see tiny slithers of light from the blocked window - you just know that in its time, these tiny holes would have been filled to ensure that no perception of time-of-day was possible. Starved of food, starved of perception and starved of dignity and hope - this place is one of the most depressing spaces on the planet. Other cells were designed to restrict movement - you were forced to buckle under your own weight in tiny cells that only allowed you to stand up. I just can’t begin to describe this really - we weren’t allowed to take photos in there, and to be honest, I don’t think I would have wanted to. Outside you have the firing-squad courtyard that I already mentioned, but also around the walls of this space are poles with hooks on top - where prisoners were attached by ropes around their wrists and hung up and lashed. It never ceases to amaze me that someone could concoct and design this kind of place, and then plan and implement so many ways to inflict so much suffering on other human-beings.
Auschwitz was a home for the development of systematic killing, you can see that the people operating this horrific establishment realised that they would require a much more efficient system and that leads you to the more mass-production side of things. The Gas Chamber at Auschwitz I is a re-purposed building that formed the early prototypes for the death-factories that you will hear about at Auschwitz II (Birkenau). A bleak concrete room is lit by few lamps - holes in the ceiling look like ventilation shafts, but served as the portals in which the SS would drop in the Zyklon-B Pellets that would produce the suffocating gas that would so efficiently act as an agent of death. Zyklon-B was initially developed as a pesticide - but became more useful in helping the Nazi’s find a more efficient way to kill people than the Carbon Monoxide they had been producing with vehicles. Next to the Gas-Chamber is a Crematorium building where the dead were burned. An almost efficient system that would be built to a much bigger scale at Birkenau in the next phase of the Auschwitz story.
Auschwitz has also kept the gallows that were constructed to express some form of Justice in this whole experience. The Camp Commandant Rudolph Hoss was hung on these gallows. I don’t know that this was truly justice - a quick death doesn’t seem quite enough on the balance of all stories. The Gestapo building at Auschwitz is not far from both the Gas Chamber and the Gallows. I have popped a picture of this too - as the nature of the building’s occupants would no doubt contributed to it being a fearful place.