Auschwitz

All over the world, Auschwitz has become a symbol of terror, genocide, and the Holocaust. It was established by the Nazis in 1940. Over the following years, the camp was expanded and became the site of the greatest mass murder in the history of humanity.

Various exhibitions in Auschwitz I detail the life and death in the concentration camp, including photos and documents as well as piles of shoes, suitcases, glasses and bales of human hair.

The enormity and scale of Auschwitz is most evident at the ghastly Auschwitz II or Birkenau camp which was purpose-built nearby as an extermination camp. Far more than one million people were killed here - men, women and children.

We remember the tragic sufferings of the victims not for the sake of reopening painful wounds or of stirring up sentiments of hatred and revenge, but rather in order to honour the dead, to acknowledge historical reality and above all to ensure that those terrible events will serve as a summons for the men and women of today to ever greater responsibility for our common history. Never again, in any part of the world, must others experience what was experienced by these men

Electrified fence
Auschwitz-Birkenau

and women
Message from John Paul II, 27 January 2005 (60th anniversary of liberation of Auschwitz)

Auschwitz website.

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