Nazi Germany built a facility in 1942 known as A Death Factory for the purpose of exterminating the Jewish race.

Around 300 barracks were built on a 170-hectare site.

At its peak, 90,000 people were detained here at any one time to be killed.

Once people passed through this gate, the chimneys were their only way out.

The railway passing through Death Gate into the concentration camp brought Jews from all over Europe.

This Polish man was also placed here for his anti-Nazi activities. (Interview with a Polish survivor in Polish, subtitles) I remember seeing a Jewish mother and her child arriving from Slovakia. They were carrying heavy luggage and looked exhausted. The mother was leading her child by the hand. Some people were instructed to go to a building and the others were sent to the gas chamber. That was the first time I witnessed the genocide.

Jews were told that they were going to take a shower, they were stripped naked and led to a room.

What came out from the holes in the ceiling was not hot water but a gas containing a deadly pesticide.

Nearly 400 Jewish people were killed at a time. The victims suffered for up to 20 minutes before suffocating to death.

Their bodies were cremated in the incinerators in the adjoining room.

Sometimes the number of the bodies exceeded the maximum capacity and they had to be burnt in the fields.

A pile of hair from Jewish women sent to the Gas Chamber was placed in a storage room.

The Nazis sent the hair back to Germany to use as fabric. Children were separated from their parents and also sent to the Gas Chamber.

The number of people killed at the Auschwitz concentration camp was said to be over 1.4 million.

Those who managed to survive bore huge emotional scars from the horrifying experience.

(Polish former prisoner recalls his memory in German, subtitles)

.I can still hear the voice shouting,  Left! Left! Hats off!.....Heads right!

This tribute is actually a 50 minute documentary which examines Primo Levi's life and experiences through the memories of his friends and colleagues, as well as the writer's own memoirs.

The photos were taken at the end of May or beginning of June 1944, either by Ernst Hofmann or by Bernhard Walter, two SS men whose task was to take ID photos and fingerprints of the inmates (not of the Jews who were sent directly to the gas chambers). The photos show the arrival of Hungarian Jews from Carpatho-Ruthenia. Many of them came from the Berehov Ghetto, which itself was a collecting point for Jews from several other small towns.

For more info visit
http://www1.yadvashem.org/exhibitions...