Description
This image depicts the Auschwitz II main Guard House, the Gate of Death, located at Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp, Oswiecim, Malopolska, Poland.
Anyone who came to the former Auschwitz Birkenau concentration camp surrounded by a barbed wire fence had to first pass through the main entrance gate known as the “Gate of Death”.
The name is not accidental. It was in the former German Nazi concentration and extermination camp Birkenau that the overwhelming number of KL Auschwitz victims died – over a million people, Jews, Poles, Gypsies, as well as Soviet prisoners of war and prisoners of other nationalities.
The vast majority, as much as 90% of the victims, were Jews. The contemporary shape of the Auschwitz Birkenau Death Gate comes from 1943.
The direct railway line under the crossing was built in the spring of 1944. Above the gate, through which the railway track runs today, there is a two-story watchtower.
From its windows, you can see the panorama of the former camp. Inside, however, there are still single-storey buildings made of raw brick and the main guardhouse of the camp.
The Birkenau Death Gate is located on the former Auschwitz II concentration camp site and is part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.
This image has been edited into greyscale and features a slight vignette around the photo’s edges. You can buy the colour version here, which does not have the vignette.
Please note: Most images in the Holocaust Albums have no theme or storytelling.
For more information about the Holocaust Album, please get in touch with me here.
Image size: 3553×2659
File size: 1.4MB
DPI: 300
Bit: 24 bit
Colour: No (Vignette)
Property/model release: No
Edited: Yes. Adobe Lightroom CC
Location: Auschwitz I I, Poland
Year took: 2020
Copyright owner: J. J. Williamson
