About an hour away from Krakow is perhaps the most powerful Holocaust memorial in all of Europe—the concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

About an hour away is perhaps the most powerful Holocaust memorial in all of Europe—the concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

This was the biggest and most notorious concentration camp in the vast Nazi system. After invading and occupying Poland in 1939, Nazi Germany built many such camps here—far from mainstream German society. Ultimately, they murdered an estimated 6 million people, mostly Jews—and about half of those came from Poland.

The Nazis turned this army base into a death camp. Over a million people—the vast majority of them Jews—were systematically exterminated here at Auschwitz.

The notorious gate welcomed inmates with a cruel lie: Arbeit Macht Frei…”Work will set you free.”

The former cellblocks now display powerful museum exhibits that, while difficult to see, must—out of respect to its victims—be seen. People were told they’d be starting new lives and to bring luggage—clearly labeled with their names. After they were killed, everything of value was seized and sorted.

Crutches and prosthetic limbs remind us that the first people exterminated were the mentally and physically ill. Piles of glasses…a seemingly endless mountain of shoes…it’s hard to comprehend the numbers. Even children…the Nazis spared no one.

Halls are lined with photographs of victims—men…and women…each marked with the date of arrival and the date of death. Inmates rarely survived more than a couple months.

The gas chamber and crematorium is marked by its chimney. Up to 700 people at a time could be gassed, but it required two days to burn that many bodies. The Nazis wanted an even higher death toll, so they built a far bigger camp nearby.

That camp—called Birkenau— was an efficient factory for the mass production of death designed to implement the Nazis’ Final Solution: genocide…the murder of all Jews. It could hold about 100,000 prisoners at a time.

People from all over Europe were loaded like animals into train cars like this. They’d pass under the infamous gatehouse, into the camp, and to the dividing platform.

A Nazi doctor stood here and evaluated each prisoner as they stepped off the train. If he pointed one way, that prisoner marched—unknowingly—directly to the gas chamber. If he pointed the other, that person was judged fit to work and would live a little while longer. It was here that countless families from across Europe were torn apart forever.

The gas chambers—where the mass killing was done—were disguised as showers. At Birkenau the Nazis gassed and cremated thousands of people per day.

The camp monument represents gravestones and the chimney of a crematorium. Plaques—in each of the languages spoken by camp victims—explain the mission of this memorial.