Aushwitz: Part 2

Behind the gas chamber is the gallows where Rudolf Höss was hanged. He was the only person hanged in this gallows.

Höss was given the order by Himmler to devise a method of mass extermination of the European Jews. Höss turned Auschwitz into the most efficient extermination camp in the Reich.

Höss's house is directly behind me. I was unable to take a picture of it. They had fences up and were renovating it. He lived less than 100 feet away from the gas chambers with his wife and children. His wife described Auschwitz as the most beautiful place on earth and said she couldn't imagine living anywhere else.


We weren't allowed to take pictures inside any of the buildings. The buildings all had information and exhibits on Auschwitz. It was inside these buildings that I finally started to understand how many people died there. Piles of shoes, personal effects, and hair was a testament to the number of lives lost. What was even more incredible was the personal effects were only from people executed in the final days of Auschwitz's operation that weren't destroyed by the Nazi's when they left.

At one point during the visits to the exhibits my brain just shut off my emotions. At some points I felt physically ill. I don't have the words to describe the crime that happened and how it felt to be in the place that crime occurred.

Auschwitz and Birkenau

The entrance to Auschwitz. Prisoners were made to march through these gates uner the words "Arbeit macht frei": "Work makes you free." As they marched in and out of the camp an orchestra played music to further humiliate the prisoners.


Auschwitz I was a concentration camp and was created before Auschwitz II-Birkenau, the death camp. The buildings in Aushwitz I are made of brick instead of wood. This is because Aushwitz I was orignally and old Polish Army barraks.


This was the first gas chamber and crematoria, which operated from 1941- 1942, was constructed by converting a bunker. The prisoners were made to strip naked out in front of the gas chamber before they entered. This gas chamber could gas approximately 700 people at one time and was quite small compared to the gas chambers the Nazis later constructed. After the contruction of extermination camps with much larger, more efficent gas chambers, this gas chamber was deconstructed and turned into an air raid shelter for the SS.

They Really Will Kill You

The icicles hanging off Oslo's buildings are massive.

Strangely enough, building owners generally don't knock them down. They simply lean sticks against the buildings to discourage people from walking under them.

Norwegian Countryside

I didn't manage to take a single picture in Stavanger, but I did take a few photos of the landscape while I was on the train to Stavanger. It was a stunning train ride, the second half of the journey through giagantic mountains with tiny villages nestled in their valleys was even more amazing. Unfortunately it was night time during that leg.