I include these things because I honestly think people should see them. Again, not out of morbid curiosity, but rather, as the memorial plaque at Birkinau says, “as a warning to humanity”.
The first picture is of a “mass gallows” that was erected to terminate any prisoner suspected of subversion, cooperation with the “outside world”, or helping other prisoners to escape. At one time, 12 men hung simultaneously for supposedly helping to plot another inmate’s escape. Read that again. “supposedly helping to plot”. The inmate didn’t actually escape. And the 12 men in question didn’t actually help him. They just “supposedly” thought about trying to help him.
These next few pictures are of an area in the camp reserved for executions that involved a bullet. This courtyard was used to parade those slotted for execution (usually non-Jews, and included Poles, Soviet POWs, and anyone else they thought might be conspiring against them) and line them up along the back wall where they would be shot at close range. The “original” wall was destroyed shortly before the Red Army liberated the camp, but a portion of it (seen here) was reconstructed and set as a memorial (note the candles, flowers and stones placed on it as a memorial to those whose family members or descendants still survive).
These small concrete “bunkers” are the coverings to windows to cells in the buildings that bordered the courtyard mentioned above. These cells were reserved for prisoners who were, in the words of one of the nearby signs, “sentenced to death by starvation” for such offenses as stealing food.
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