During my visit to Poland in 2005, I travelled from Kraków to Oświęcim to visit the former Nazi concentration and extermination camps of Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II–Birkenau. It was a deeply sobering experience and unlike any of the other places I visited during the journey.
At Auschwitz I, the brick and wooden buildings, guard towers and surviving lines of electrified fencing remain largely intact. Exhibitions inside the former prison blocks document the lives of those deported there and display personal possessions taken from the victims. These ordinary objects are a powerful reminder that behind the enormous numbers were individual men, women and children, each with a life and a family.
Birkenau is different in scale and atmosphere. Its railway tracks, ruined gas chambers and seemingly endless rows of barracks reveal the vast machinery of persecution and mass murder created by the NAZIs. More than 1.1 million people were murdered within the Auschwitz complex, the great majority of them Jews, together with Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war and members of other persecuted groups.
The photographs on this page record the site as I saw it in 2005. They cannot convey the full weight of standing there, but they preserve something of a place that must be remembered—not simply as an historic site, but as a warning of the consequences of hatred, prejudice and unchecked tyranny.
Wooden barracks stand behind rows of concrete posts that once supported the electrified barbed-wire perimeter at Auschwitz I, with a guard tower overlooking the compound. Preserved as part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, the site bears witness to the persecution and mass murder committed here by Nazi Germany. Photographed during a visit in 2005.
The former prisoners’ kitchen stretches along the perimeter of Auschwitz I, its numerous brick chimneys rising above the wooden roof. Beyond the roadway stand the double rows of concrete posts that once carried electrified barbed wire, watched over by a guard tower. Photographed during my visit to Auschwitz in 2005.
Visitors pay their respects at the Death Wall in the courtyard between Blocks 10 and 11 at Auschwitz I. Thousands of prisoners, predominantly Poles, were executed here by SS firing squads. The reconstructed wall now serves as a memorial, with flowers and wreaths placed in remembrance of those murdered. Photographed in 2005.
A wooden guard tower overlooks the double rows of concrete posts and barbed wire forming the perimeter of Auschwitz I, beside prisoner Block 28. From towers such as this, armed SS guards watched the camp and its inmates. The preserved fencing remains one of the most recognisable and oppressive features of the former camp. Photographed in 2005.
The cremation furnaces inside Crematorium I at Auschwitz I, with flowers placed in remembrance of the victims. The building contained the camp’s first gas chamber and crematorium; it was later altered by the SS and partially reconstructed after the war using surviving original components. Photographed during my visit in 2005.
The railway tracks approach the main gatehouse of Auschwitz II–Birkenau, commonly known as the “Gate of Death.” Photographed from outside the former camp, the view follows the line through the central archway into Birkenau, the route taken by deportation trains carrying victims to imprisonment and mass murder. Photographed in 2005.
A view from the main gatehouse watchtower along the railway tracks leading deep into Auschwitz II–Birkenau. The raised platform beside the rails was where arriving deportees were unloaded and subjected to selection by SS personnel. Rows of barracks, surviving chimneys, perimeter fences and guard towers stretch across the immense camp complex. Photographed during my visit in 2005.
The railway tracks reach their end beside the International Monument to the Victims of the Camp at Auschwitz II–Birkenau. Unveiled in 1967, the memorial stands between the ruins of Crematoria II and III and commemorates all those murdered at Auschwitz. Photographed from the main gatehouse watchtower in 2005.
Rows of surviving wooden barracks stretch across Auschwitz II–Birkenau, while countless brick chimneys and foundation outlines mark buildings that no longer stand. The elevated view from the main gatehouse watchtower reveals the immense scale of the camp, divided into compounds by electrified fencing. Photographed during my visit in 2005.
From the main gatehouse watchtower, the surviving barracks and empty foundations extend across Auschwitz II–Birkenau. Concrete fence posts divide the camp into separate compounds, while a small guard tower stands beside the perimeter. The solitary visitor on the roadway helps convey the enormous scale of the site. Photographed in 2005.
Looking along the perimeter of Auschwitz II–Birkenau from the main gatehouse watchtower. A succession of brick guard towers follows the fence line into the distance, separating the surviving prisoner barracks on the left from the road and surrounding countryside outside the camp. Photographed during my visit in 2005.
Closely spaced wooden barracks inside Auschwitz II–Birkenau, their long roof ventilators and brick stove chimneys clearly visible from the gatehouse watchtower. Many were based on prefabricated German military stable designs but were used to confine hundreds of prisoners in severely overcrowded and insanitary conditions. Photographed in 2005.
Flowers and ribbons surround the Danish memorial plaque at Auschwitz II–Birkenau. One of a series bearing the same inscription in different languages, it calls upon the site to remain forever “a cry of despair and a warning to humanity.” The plaque records the post-war estimate of 1.5 million victims; subsequent research places the number murdered at Auschwitz at approximately 1.1 million. Photographed in 2005.
A wreath and memorial candles lie beside the Hebrew plaque at the International Monument to the Victims of the Camp. Its inscription calls upon Auschwitz-Birkenau to remain forever a cry of despair and a warning to humanity, commemorating those murdered here by Nazi Germany—most of whom were Jewish. Photographed in 2005.
Flowers rest on the German memorial plaque at Auschwitz II–Birkenau. Its inscription calls upon the former camp to remain forever a cry of despair and a warning to humanity, commemorating the men, women and children murdered here by Nazi Germany. The plaque retains the earlier estimate of 1.5 million victims, since revised by historians to approximately 1.1 million. Photographed in 2005.
The English memorial plaque at Auschwitz II–Birkenau calls upon the former camp to remain forever “a cry of despair and a warning to humanity.” Its inscription gives the post-war estimate of 1.5 million victims; later historical research established that approximately 1.1 million people were murdered at Auschwitz, around one million of them Jews. Photographed in 2005.
The massive stone forms of the International Monument to the Victims of the Camp rise at the end of Birkenau’s railway tracks. Unveiled in 1967, the abstract memorial resembles a great tomb or funeral structure and commemorates all those deported to and murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Photographed during my visit in 2005.
Here stood “Kanada II,” the vast warehouse compound where property stolen from deportees—including clothing, food, luggage and other personal possessions—was sorted and stored. Prisoners called it “Kanada” because that country symbolised abundance. The SS set fire to the warehouses before abandoning the camp in January 1945, leaving only their foundations. Photographed in 2005.
Rows of rough wooden bunks fill the interior of a surviving prisoner barrack at Auschwitz II–Birkenau. Several inmates were often forced to share each sleeping platform, with only thin straw mattresses and little protection from cold, dampness, disease and vermin. The preserved interior conveys something of the appalling overcrowding and deprivation endured by those imprisoned here. Photographed in 2005.
A wartime photograph displayed at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum shows prisoners in striped uniforms carrying out heavy construction or drainage work under guard, using hand tools and small railway wagons. Exhausting forced labour, combined with starvation, exposure and brutality, was a deliberate part of the camp system. The exhibition photograph was recorded during my visit in 2005.
The surviving electrified fence at Auschwitz II–Birkenau, photographed in 2005. Its concrete posts, porcelain insulators and closely spaced strands of barbed wire correspond directly with those visible in the preceding wartime photograph of prisoners at forced labour, demonstrating how much of the camp’s oppressive physical structure remains.
A wartime view of Auschwitz II–Birkenau during its expansion, with prisoner barracks, concrete fence posts and construction materials spread across the site. Prisoners were forced to build much of the camp in exhausting conditions, erecting the barracks, roads, drainage works and electrified fences that would confine them. The historical photograph was recorded during my visit in 2005.