Well, that we got bad way...

...And arrived first to KL Auschwitz II - Birkenau - Brzezinka, which is situated about three kilometers from maternal camp. Camp is vast, built on 175 ha, was built-up by 300 barracks, from which saved entirely only 45 bricked and 22 wooden. In place of burned and damaged wooden barracs today stand only chimneys, but contours of places, which occupied particular barracs show their scale and number, what you can see also on photos.


Camp Birkenau is as huge, that if we would begin our tour from camp Auschwitz I - to Birkenau we would not come at all, first because of tiredness, second because of psyche, which is not so tolerant in these places.

Camps in Oswiecim (KL Auschwitz I) and Brzezinka (KL Auschwitz II - Birkenau) are retained in form of reservation and made available for visitors. The most important objects are: in Brzezinka - remains after four crematories and gas chambers, as well as burning stacks (corpses of prisoners was burned there at the end of 1944, when crematories fell behind with burning dead bodies; it was so much cruel, that children were sometimes burned alive), railway platform, where carried out selection of deported to camp (famous picture from the movie "Schindler's List" by Steven Spielberg from 1993), pond with human ashes, and in Oswiecim - "Block of Death".
Further in both camps are retained blocks and part of prisoner's barracks, also camp gates, guardhouses and barbed wire fences. Some of destroyed by SS objects were reconstructed from original elements - for example furnaces in Crematory I, which were pulled down during liquidation of camps in 1945.

More about these camps you can read on http://www.auschwitz.org.pl.
More photos you an see at my homepage http://www.adventure.go.pl/oswiecim2006.php?english=1