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1. 1 2017-07-03T18:53:06-04:00 Boxcar Gallery 24 plain 1072 2020-03-30T10:27:03-04:00

   A few young people were hastily selected...  We saw five of them approaching from among the first to be chosen; each was accompanied by a German policeman carrying a handgun.  The moment they reached the ditch, a policeman would grab hold of a prisoner, stand him against the wall, and shoot him in the head.

   All of us were racked with thirst.  I saw some of my comrades pushed to the point of drinking their own urine, others to licking the sweat off the backs of fellow prisoners, while still others tried to catch the occasional drops of water that condensed on the walls of the boxcar.

   At the terminal in Bremen we were denied water by the German Red Cross, who told us that there was no water for us.

   From every car there were reports of outbreaks of madness.  Some of the prisoners had no choice but to silence others who had become either crazed or dangerous.

   The boxcars were forced open and the SS guards stormed in.  Shouting wildly, they prodded us with rifle butts and bayonets and beat us with clubs, then set the dogs loose on us.  Those who fell and could not get up were ripped apart.  I was wearing a large cape which the dogs sank their teeth into, forcing me to submit.

   The last car of the train, which had remained empty, was reserved for corpses.  It contained not only the dead, but also the wounded who were thrown in together with the dead.  I saw this car again at Buchenwald and heard the moaning and groaning of the wounded.  I know with absolute certainty that all of them were killed and thrown in the ovens along with those already dead.

2. 1 2017-07-03T15:59:21-04:00 Auschwitz 15 plain 733 2020-07-07T17:08:39-04:00 The Auschwitz concentration camp complex included three main camps near the Polish town of Oswiecim.  Auschwitz I functioned as an administrative center to Auschwitz II (Auschwitz-Birkenau), the largest of the killing centers, and Auschwitz III (Monowitz), a forced labor camp.  SS physicians, including Dr. Josef Mengele, carried out medical experiments in the hospital (Block 10) of Auschwitz I.  It is estimated that the Nazi regime deported at least 1.3 million people to the Auschwitz complex between 1940 and 1945.  Of these, 1.1 million were murdered.
   
   Transports of Jews from all over Europe began arriving at Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1942.  After being unloaded from the trains, prisoners underwent selection, where the majority of Jews were deemed unfit for forced labor and sent directly to the gas chambers to be murdered with Zyklon B gas.  Authorities also selected prisoners to work in the killing areas (Sonderkommando or "special detachment"), where they moved the bodies from the gas chambers to the crematorium ovens.  At the height of the deportations, the SS gassed up to 6,000 Jews a day.  In November 1944, as Soviet forces approached, Himmler ordered the gas chambers to be dismantled.  Auschwitz-Birkenau continued to function as a forced labor camp until the camp's evacuation in January 1945.
   
   
   Listen to Judith Szentivanyi (nee Szasz) describe selections at Auschwitz-Birkenau: