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The bodies of dead prisoners were cremated two or three at a time in an oven like this one. This oven was constructed from parts found at the camp after it was liberated.
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These cans once held Zyklon B crystals used to kill prisoners, probably at Auschwitz II-Birkenau. Zyklon B becomes a gas in a room heated by packed human bodies, and contains cyanide.
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The Nazis who ran the camp had the hair cut from dead women prisoners and then sold it for textile production. There were two tons of hair in storage at Auschwitz when it was liberated. Chemical analysis revealed the presence of cyanide and cyclons in the hair.
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This map indicates the origins of the Jews who were sent to the Auschwitz camp complex to die.
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Auschwitz II-Birkenau often received prisoners far faster than it could kill and cremate them, so it had the facilities to house 100,000 prisoners at a time.
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The town of Auschwitz was chosen for concentration camps because it was a rail nexus, but the number of prisoners being shipped in was so great by the end of the war that a rail station had to be built into Birkenau.
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By the end of the war, trains would stop in the midst of Auschwitz II-Birkenau, and the prisoners were generally marched directly to the gas chambers.
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The SS blew up the huge crematoria and gas chambers as they fled the Russian army, but the ruins are in very good shape. These were the crematoria, and the gas chambers are under them.
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The ashes from the crematoria were thrown into these pits. When the water level is lower, chunks of bone are visible.
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How to fit 800 prisoners into a building too small for them: triple bunk beds, two prisoners to a bed. Theoretically, the stoves at either end of the building heated it, but prisoners were rarely provided with coal.
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