Description
This grey-scale image illustrates the double crematoria at the Auschwitz I concentration camp at ulica Więźniów Oświęcimia 20, Oświęcim 32-600, Poland.
All of the gas chambers were destroyed on the orders of SS chief Heinrich Himmler.
Heinrich Himmler ordered the destruction of all gas chambers and crematoriums to conceal war crimes evidence after realising the Soviets were soon to liberate the Auschwitz camps.
After the Soviet liberation, the Auschwitz camps were turned into a memorial museum where several crematoriums and one gas chamber were rebuilt for historical documentation and to provide friends and families of loved ones killed in the camps shrine to remember the dead.
Auschwitz was probably chosen to play a central role in the “final solution” because it was located at a railway junction with 44 parallel tracks—rail lines that were used to transport Jews throughout Europe to their death.
Heinrich Himmler, chief of the SS, the Nazi paramilitary corps, ordered the establishment of the first camp, the prison camp, on April 27, 1940, and the first transport of Polish political prisoners arrived on June 14.
This small camp, Auschwitz I, was reserved for political prisoners, mainly Poles and Germans.
Image size: 4075×2447
File size: 2.6MB
DPI: 300
Bit: 24 bit
Colour: No
Property/model release: No
Edited: Yes. Adobe Lightroom CC
Location: Auschwitz I, Poland
Year took: 2020
Copyright owner: J. J. Williamson
