Auschwitz: Place of Horrors

Nazis slaughtered Jews, Poles, Gypsies, Soviet prisoners of war, sick people and children at Auschwitz. Do the aerial reconnaissance photographs taken in 1944 provide evidence of extermination at Auschwitz? The CIA Report concludes that they do:

• By the time of the June 26, 1944 aerial photo, the new rail spur directly into Auschwitz II (Birkenau) was complete. It was located near gas chambers I and II. According to the government's report: "Extermination operations in progress were recorded on aerial photography of 25 August 1944." Evidence shows a line of approximately 1500 people likely en route to their deaths (because the gate to the gas chamber is clearly open).


• The government's report continues: "The gas chambers and crematoria at Birkenau were designed to process some 12,000 people a day." The CIA believes aerial photograph #6 is historically unique since no other photograph of this Birkenau gas chamber, with its gas vents clearly visible, exists.


• A 13 September 1944 photograph clearly shows gas chambers and crematoria IV and V.


• By the time of the next aerial photography, the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex had "changed radically." Nazi evacuation from the camp was clearly visible by December, 1944. So were efforts to disassemble the gas chamber and crematoria.