Auschwitz: Place of Horrors

CAUTION: The links in this chapter are graphic drawings, videos or pictures of war.

Is there any primary evidence available that documents what actually happened at Auschwitz and Auschwitz II (also called Birkenau)? Links in the following bullet points provide a partial answer to that question.

• Original blueprints for a crematorium at Auschwitz still exist and can be found at the Auschwitz museum. Crematorium I was used from August 15, 1940 to July, 1943 when it was replaced by additional places of death and incineration.
  
  
• By the summer of 1943, the five crematoria could process 4,756 “personen” a day.
  
  
• Sometimes the operating crematoria were insufficient to accommodate the massive numbers of people killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau. When that happened, bodies were burned in pits.
  
  
• The plan of the gas chamber of “Krema II” is worthy of special note. The air extraction system (which Holocaust deniers claim did not exist) is clearly shown. "Entluftungskanal" means air extraction duct, and "Beluftung" means ventilation.
  
  
• In 1944, the Nazi war machine was producing materiel at the I.G. Farben plant located in Dwory. Close to the Auschwitz concentration camp, the plant was a potential target for allied bombing. But before air raids could commence, aerial reconnaissance photographs were needed.
  

• The CIA, reviewing those photos with the help of sophisticated equipment in 1979, made startling discoveries. What they found - an operating death camp - provides evidence that the CIA Report calls “unique in the world.”