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Referred to by the Nazis as the Judenrampe, this railway siding received deportation convoys of European Jews between 1942 and May 1944.

Upon arrival, a “selection” process was conducted by an SS physician, who directed a minority of deportees into the camp while sending the vast majority to their deaths. Of the 1.1 million Jews deported, 900,000 were immediately murdered.

Photographed from outside the camp, this image shows the central watchtower of Auschwitz-II, constructed in 1942, with wings added later. Convoys passed beneath it starting in mid-May 1944. 

The camp perimeter was surrounded by watchtowers, 11-meter-high wooden structures where SS guards monitored detainees. The 170-hectare camp was enclosed by 16 kilometers of electrified barbed wire.

Behind Crematorium IV at Auschwitz-Birkenau lies a body of water where the Nazis disposed of the ashes of murdered victims. Memorial plaques honor their memory. 

A gate controlling access to the wide avenue between sectors BIIc and BIId of Auschwitz-Birkenau. This path was used by victims heading to Crematoriums IV and V and those directed to the Zentralsauna. 

To the left of the Bahnrampe (railway siding) stands Crematorium II, a brick building containing an undressing room, a gas chamber, and five cremation ovens. It became operational on 31 March 1943. 

No original wooden barracks from Auschwitz-II remain. The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum decided to reconstruct sector BIIa, initially made of prefabricated barracks housing over 400 detainees. 

Initiated in 1957 by the International Auschwitz Committee, the International Monument at Birkenau was inaugurated in 1967 between the ruins of Crematoriums II and III. Twenty-three plaques inscribed in all languages spoken at the camp commemorate the 1.1 million victims of the Auschwitz complex.

The entrance gate to the Auschwitz-I concentration camp, also known as Stammlager, is topped with the inscription “Arbeit macht frei” (“Work sets you free”). 

Beyond the camp’s perimeter lies the “former theater,” initially part of a Polish army barracks repurposed by the Nazis in spring 1940. It is now home to the International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust, part of the Auschwitz Birkenau Memorial and Museum in Oświęcim. 

The Auschwitz-I detainee camp covers six hectares. It initially consisted of 22 brick buildings. By August 1944, approximately 16,000 detainees were held there.

Located between Blocks 10 (used for medical experiments on detainees) and 11 (a prison block), this courtyard was the site of thousands of executions by shooting and acts of torture carried out by the Nazis. 

The first gas chamber, operating with Zyklon B, was installed by the Nazis in a former munitions depot converted into a morgue with cremation ovens. It was used from autumn 1941 to December 1942. 

This same building housed three cremation ovens installed in 1940. After the Auschwitz-Birkenau crematoriums became operational, two of the three ovens were reconstructed post-war. 

A new pathway to Auschwitz-I was inaugurated in 2023. After passing through a tunnel where the names of Auschwitz deportees are heard, visitors emerge into the light before entering the former camp, now a museum and memorial site.