Holocaust
concentration camp
Hitler jugend (Hitler Youth)
Grim beyond their years, boys belonging to the Hitler jugend (Hitler Youth) turn eyes at a Nazi rally. Their belt buckles carry the stern motto: "Blood and Honor". The Hitler jugend admitted children at the age of 10, and continued until the age of 18. It was organized on a military pattern and prepared a young man to become a soldier or an SS. The young men were indoctrinated with the Nazi ideology.
Burning corpses, summer of 1944
Members of the Sonderkommando at Auschwitz-Birkenau burn corpses in open pits during the summer of 1944. When the crematoria ovens were not functioning properly, or were insufficient to dispose of the huge volume of corpses, the bodies were burned and then buried in ditches. These photographs from Birkenau were made secretly by members of the Polish resistance, and several of them were smuggled to England.
ash pool at crematorium 2
At Auschwitz-Birkenau there were ash pools near crematoria II,III,IV,and V which were used to dispose of the human ashes.
Entrance to crematory 1
The Commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Hoss, was hung just outside of this crematorium on April 16, 1947. The building was originally an ammunition depot. It was adapted for use as a crematorium, but only to burn the bodies of prisoners who had died in confinement. Later it was re-adapted into a gas chamber and crematorium combination. The victims would enter this door, which would be hermetically sealed. The victims would then be in the gas chamber. There was no undressing room, and the victims had to be paraded in sight of the whole camp, which had a demoralizing effect. These defects would be corrected in crematoria II, III, IV and V, which were located in remote areas of Birkenau camp. After the war this building was partially reconstructed--including rebuilding the chimney and installing 3 ovens that were built for another camp. The SS headquarters building can be seen to the left.
Food Fight in the Krankenlager
In the Mauthausen Krankenlager, the camp for the sick, hungry inmates fight for a slice of bread.
Stairs of death
A Soviet honor guard stands before the Todesstiege, "Stairs of Death." Mauthausen was designated a category III or penal camp. Inmates in punishment details were forced to carry heavy stone blocks up the 186 steps leading from the camp quarry. Mauthausen was located 12.5 miles southeast of Linz near an abandoned stone quarry on the Danube River in Upper Austria.
Holocaust prisoners survive and prepare a meal
Units of the 80th Division overran the large Nazi prison camp in Ebensee, Austria, a sub-camp of Mauthausen. They liberated about 60,000 prisoners of 25 different nationalities, all in various stages of starvation. Here, some of the prisoners prepare a meal over an open fire in the camp.