AUSCHWITZ II: The German Nazi extermination camp, a complete tour

us i mean a very very special place today but let me tell you exactly where i am first of all i'm a couple of kilometers away from the train station of the polish city of vietnam what you're looking at behind me is the entrance to auschwitz ii the actual extermination camp that was built by the nazis with the sole purpose of liquidating and killing innocent people now for the next 20 minutes or so i'll take you through a tour of this incredibly horrible place it is hard to imagine why anybody would build such a place to kill innocent people i've been here before and i had promised myself never ever to come back again but i came back because i wanted to videotape this for the rest of the world to see so join me for the next 20 minutes or so let's go through a tour of this as i said horrible place i'll show you most of the sites this is big thank you for joining me let's go [Applause] now for those of you that have uh studied auschwitz or seen pictures or films or documentaries about this uh notorious place you can recognize what's right in front of me which is the uh the gate into the extermination camp you can also see that i'm standing on the actual tracks right here they used to bring the innocent people to be killed the trains used to use this track right here that you are looking at and then i and i'm standing right in the middle of it and that's the notorious day to hell right there you can see a lot of people lining up over the last few years he has become very very famous this place and it has been visited by millions of people so let's walk on the track and head towards the entrance [Applause] and uh here's another view from the outside of the notorious guard house right there and you can imagine the trains you can see the tracks right here imagine the trains coming into the camp full of babies and women and old people to be killed this is why i call it a gate to hell because it was nothing else but hell now before we start our tour from inside the uh the camp let's look at one of the watch towers you can see one right here this is the barbed wire next to it to keep the people from escaping here's the watchtower you can see in the distance i can see another five going into the far distance you can picture the nazis the soldiers standing guard up there [Applause] here's the door and the steps let's go close so you can get an idea of the barbed wire this is the original [Music] or now the the towers here seem to be about 50 to 60 meters apart here's the next one down there in every four columns here there's a light and i believe these wires that you see here were loaded with electrical current so if you touch them it will be instant death i am now inside the extermination camp i just passed the gate to hell and as a historian of course i have read many books about our switching watch many documentaries and the figures as far as how many people died here differ anywhere from 1.1 million to 2 million people and this really make a difference does it if let's say one and a half million people died here to take the average number the fact remains that this camp here was a factory for killing liquidating people burning the people their bodies in ovens now another fact that everybody needs to know is about 85 to 90 of the people that died here were jews this is where the main chapter of the holocaust was written exactly where i'm standing at let's continue our tour now once you are inside the camp the watchtowers you can see a much simpler the ones i showed you in the beginning of the documentary uh were placed around the periphery of the camp but this one is much simpler and on this side is the part of the camp for men and you can see quite a few more in the distance right there right there so you can imagine the guards standing up there on that side watching make sure nobody escapes and watching the camp but they were doing something absolutely horrible at the same time because if you look let me show you if you look this way to my left right there this is where the trains arrived at and they were watching the trains as they were unloading they're victims and here's a view of the fence separating the the camp to my right with the part where the trains arrived right there in the middle of the frame and with a selection that i would describe to you in a couple of minutes used to take place but here's the fence let's go a little closer you can get a good look at it and this fence you've seen in a lot of photographs taken here and it's part of the evil image of ausfitch along with the watchtowers and everything else and here are the train tracks right behind me is the gate to hell as i described now once a train came through the gate it would follow one of these two directions that you see here and i'm gonna show you now where the train would park and i will describe to you what used to take place now these tracks here are the original tracks and we don't see it here today but when i was here about six years ago they were full of flowers placed here by visitors it was a very touching thing to see here take a good look imagine a train rolling here with 20 25 cars loaded with people they had traveled for days with their last belongings thinking they were going to a factory to work when in reality they we're going to a factory of death look again and try to imagine and i'm now standing exactly absolutely exactly at the spot where the selection used to take place i'm gonna show you this is the place where the trends used to stop the doors of the train used to open and people would just jump out here and it would be absolute chaos for the first few moments this is where everybody will be selected into one category or another and most of the people will be sent directly to the crematorium for death there's no other place on earth really that if you stand on will really bring such emotions in you if you really believe in history and believe in what happened now another note i have spoken to a lot of people over the years as a historian and if there is anybody that doubts that the holocaust took place or osfits ever existed well too bad all you have to do is come here spend half an hour and i guarantee you're gonna change your mind let's go see some more okay so let's select the track to the right and here's an original part of a train that used to transport the victims and the jews here to ostrich so imagine this door here opened by a guard and people just coming through the door they haven't seen sunlight they haven't eaten or drunk anything for days so they will line up here and it will be absolute chaos the guards will be holding the the dogs the officers the natural officers screaming orders in german and people being selected to follow one line or another those who were strong enough or they were judged to be strong enough we're going to the camp left or right right is for men left is for women and the rest of them will go way down there in the corner we're gonna see that to the crematoria for for death and extermination now if you want to see a movie there are a lot of movies made by hollywood that portrays this scene right here where i'm standing at do yourself a favor and watch sophie's choice with meryl streep from the 1980s in my opinion and i've watched them all there's nothing as accurate as that movie now the story may be fictional but the scene or the scenes portrayed right here where i'm standing at in the movie are the best documentary i've ever seen from hollywood here is a view of the watchtower that i showed you in the beginning of the documentary you can see more of them down there in the distance i am inside the camp and here's a ditch if you can see that right there that was dug up and used by the nazis here for drainage purposes so if there was any water flowing it would flow right along this ditch here you can see going all the way down to the end of the camp down there what you're looking at is one of the barracks here you can see quite a few of them in a row now this is the only road that survives in this part of the camp of the barracks and they were literally hundreds of them in several rows now these these ones here survived the destruction of the camp by the nazis in 19 in 1944 as they were withdrawing from the uh from the camp and from poland now i'm looking for a particular one that i saw quite a few years ago let's go find it and let's go inside you can see they're all made out of wood right there and there is one which is very very special we'll find it let's go okay now i am inside one of the barracks and you're looking at the original bedding or the beds that were used by the unfortunate inmates or prisoners or victims you can see them right there you can see them all the way down in the distance right there and to my left as well you can see the mattress was nothing else but wood and you can imagine i don't know how many per level these are three levels one two three and i would say at least five people or more right there imagine a horror experienced living in this conditions here in each one of the buildings [Music] when you first enter you will find a a stove right there with a chimney you can see the chimney right above it and this similar structure at the end of the building you can see they're both joined with this pipes so to speak on the ground and this was used for heating now keep in mind this chimney here because we're gonna see quite a few of them in a couple of minutes you can see right there in the far distance the other chimney and you can see this duct or pipe joining these two and on either side there are beds right there at the end of their row where the wooden barracks are that i showed you there is this complex here that seems to me to be a kitchen you can see what most likely were sinks right here there are more here [Music] right there you can see a ditch where the water was running the ground here is covered with a very thick clay brick and it's very uneven and at the end of this complex you will see three large chimneys right there that we used for cooking now i have exited the camp the fence is right behind me about 10 meters away what you're looking at now here is the foundation of a building you can see how large it was right there they used to house the guards so if you were a guard if you had the unfortunate task of being a guard here at this horrible place this is where you would live now looking down i don't know if the camera can show it but looking down right in the distance you can see the fence to my left there are quite a few i can see about six more so every 30 meters or so there was one of these buildings of course they're all destroyed and all the remains is the foundation where these guards would be living let's go back into the camp now let me show you something that very rarely people get to see because they never come this far into the into the camp now the house feeds extermination camp here is of course known as ios feeds 2 there's another concentration camp called house feeds 1. now austria 2 was so successful as far as eliminating and killing people that the nazis were actually building outfits three you can see here the fence for ours fits three and in the distance if i can show you you can see the foundation of the buildings right there most likely you can see it in the middle of the frame so their plans were actually to create more and more of these monstrous places to kill more and more to finally eliminate all jews from europe and there was of course himmler's and hitler's dream but thankfully it didn't happen not completely anyway now remember when i was inside the barracks and i was pointing out the chimney to you and i said we'll see more chimneys later here's a very good example now what happened is in 1944 as the germans were retreating from auschwitz and poland in general they actually burned down most of these buildings here however what survived are the chimneys and once you go deep into the camp you're gonna see hundreds of them here's a very good example one still standing and you can see another one in the distance so there are literally hundreds and hundreds of them and they're really haunting sight to be honest you can see here the other one in the distance at the other end of this particular building here you can see another one right there and in the far distance you can see the three chimneys that are a kitchen as i correctly assumed before a good view of a chimney and again there is hundreds of them standing tall and it is truly a haunting sight now every seven buildings you can see i can count seven on this particular row there was another one here which was used as a toilet so let's go through this one you can see that you can see the toilets right here let's walk through something has happened to this particular building it looks like a explosives have you been put into this building because the floor has it looks like it's as if he has been blown up right there but you can see the toilets let's go down a little bit more you're going to see better evidence of the toilets right there right there and there right there completely destroyed but very strong evidence so you can see how close the uh were to each other the toilet so if you had to go to the bathroom or the toilet and let's say you were assigned to one of the barracks at the end you had to run across [Music] six of these buildings to get here and that's if you are allowed to do so take a view on this side you can see the destruction to this particular building you can see part of the sewer system here there must be hundreds and hundreds of toilets here judging from that particular little part right there you can see two four six eight ten different right there so i would say there's at least a couple of hundred per row and there are three rows here now what you see here the two brick let's go a little closer here you can see brick walls here actually what they do these two parts here they form a ditch right there in the middle that's where the excrement would flow [Music] the cutest thing i don't see sinks anywhere [Applause] now i am somewhere in the middle of the center of the camp and you can see the two chimneys or one of uh of the many buildings you can see this chimney very close to me is about ready to fall it's leaning over but at the end of the uh of the building that is strange structure here and what seems to be to be sinks for washing or for whatever purpose right there and also this particular building looks like he had a room built at the end of it you can see a third chimney here i wonder what the purpose of this particular building or room was probably for guards you can see in this whole row let's go to the next one the same thing happens so here in this particular section of the camp the buildings look a little different so there must be a another part of uh a different kind of uh victims selected to live in these buildings because you can see the sinks here you can see there was certainly water flow here and there is a building right there at the end i wonder here's another one and another one and another one well i have been walking around this camp for at least two hours now and i'm taking a break i'm gonna get a sip of water i will continue now what's really uh sad is most of the people that come here come in tour groups and they go to one corner of the uh of the camp they pass the gate of hell and they walk around a little bit going to one of the barracks and then they leave what's really uh worthwhile if you get here is to take the whole day walk around you're gonna get exhausted it's uh it's a lot of walking you probably do about six to eight kilometers if you walk around the whole camp and see everything now what i'm looking for and i hope i get to show to you is dr mengele's uh place here at the camp where he did the experiments on twins when i was here in 2008 by a mistake i happened to step into what was his laboratory so to speak and i will never forget the feeling because i read the sign and i jumped right off that place so let me go find it and i hope i get to show it to you but time for a break [Music] so once you walk deep into the camp you're gonna see this water tower with a huge tank right there which you're not gonna miss but that's not the special thing i wanted to show you very close to the tank right here where the sign is it was a platform and this is the spot where public executions took place of prisoners right here so if the nazis and vss thought that you were resisting or part of the resistance movement or you were trying to escape or someone tried to escape that unfortunate person would be killed and executed right here by the water tower right there and this sign here indicates the spot and it's written in polish english and hebrew well unfortunately i have found it and i was hoping i wouldn't find this particular place here at austria but since i found it might as well show it to you and you will understand why you're not stepping inside this is the building that dr mengele performed his experiments on twins dwarfs handicapped people it is unit 15 and it's almost at the end of the camp so you can imagine the horror that has taken place in this building here of course you can only see the foundation but this is where it all happened there's no more to say is there and a last look now dr mangulas if we can call him doctor his place where he performed the experiments was right there on top of the frame this particular building here adjacent to his unfortunately holds the same horrible place in history this is where the majority of the medical experiments would take place and most importantly this is where forced abortions would take place if there was a female inmate or prisoner that was pregnant or she arrived pregnant by train if a jewish person lady arrived pregnant she would come over here if she survived the gas chambers and she would go through a forced abortion right here and again i'm refusing to step inside just enough that i can videotape it and show it to you anyone can only imagine between these two buildings i just showed you the horrible horrible places actually horrible things that have taken place here's a very last glimpse of it let's get out of here this place is absolutely full of evil presence i am now approaching the gas chambers that i'm going to show you in a couple of minutes now when the nazis were burning these people after they executed them by using cyclone b the gas in the gas chambers they had a logistical problem the problem was how to get rid of the ashes this pond that you see here holds the unfortunate place in history that it holds the ashes of thousands and thousands of dead people so when the uh people were burned the nazis would bring here actually not the nazis but the campos the leaders they had selected they would select prisoners and they would transport and carry the ashes and dump them into this lake now don't let the blue light the blue in the middle of the frame which is a reflection of the blue sky don't let that fool you this pond unfortunately after 70 years it's still deep gray has a deep gray color to it it is an absolute horrible sight to see it is a little bit difficult to find in the camp but if you have the right map you're going to find it right here i am now in one of the corners of the camp at crematorium v or five and i'm gonna give you a quick tour i'm gonna go inside now you're gonna see it's destroyed because the nazis before leaving in january of 1945 they really dynamited this place and destroyed it along with the other crematoria as well that you will see now this room is room d this is where the prisoners would come or the new arrivals jews roma's anybody that the nazis would like to kill this is where they would undress right here in this room and then horror of horrors we are entering the gas chambers here's one part we're gonna go to the main one here it is we're gonna go into two rooms is one room you can imagine the horror that has taken place in this place in this room here's the other room in these two rooms people would scream and die or so here are the rooms again now most of the people that died here will be burned in the back and this is one of the crematoria let's go see the other ones now there were special holes here on the wall where the zyklon b gas would be dropped in they don't exist anymore there was somewhere over there let's go well i am right next to crematorium v or five that you just saw and i am standing on a forested area i'm inside the camp i'm in the corner of the camp and this area here was used by the nazis to dump the ashes of their victims now along with the pond that you saw this is the area where they dumped the ashes so nobody really knows how many hundreds of thousands of people their ashes have been dumped here and in the pond all around this area incredible and here's crematorium four which is almost next to crematorium five i just showed you this particular one was destroyed during an uprising here at auschwitz in october actually on october 7th 1944 and they succeeded in blowing this one up as a result of this uprising more than 450 people were executed by the nazis in order to retaliate you can see the same layout here you can see the center room where the prisoners will undress and then at the end you can see the gas chamber same layout as crematorium five i am now inside a room actually it's a big building but this is the room where the newcomers or the prisoners would come into once they came into the camp and they made it through the selection they were fortunate enough to make it to the selection or unfortunate and this is the room that would come into they would dump their clothing here so this is where they would dump their clothing and we're going to go through the building here to show you the path they would follow to receive their new clothing which would be that notorious outfit with the star of david so let's go through this building it has changed a little bit but here's the room once again this is where the prisoners will be naked at this point you can see the uh this structure over here and i need to explain it to you what happened is all the belongings that were dumped in the previous room will be lifted to a higher floor and also will be stored in here i should have said stored in here not lifted and then the naked prisoners would walk along this way for a shower and to be disinfected also this is where their hair will be completely cut off this is where the showering and the disinfection would take place as a matter of fact if you look here on the floor you will see a groove through which the water will run run off right there you can see you can imagine horrible scenes hundreds of naked people screaming and wondering what's happening to them now once the shower and the disinfection had taken place in that room hundreds of them would accumulate and stand here all wet freezing and shivering and sometimes they would wait here for hours for somebody to come in and get them so you go from a room where you get naked all you things are taken you get your head shaped men and women you go through a room where you get a shower disinfected whatever that meant and then you wait here this horrible room now these devices that you see here are furnaces and the sign here says that the clothing would be disinfected here by using steam and finally this is the room where the prisoners will receive their notorious outfit of uh the striped shirt and pants and wooden clogs or shoes now the sun here says that by 1944 there was a huge shortage of these uniforms and a lot of prisoners would get used clothing that would be the end of the process in this room right here absolute horror horror in this room there is also a memorial wall with some of the photographs taken from the prisoners from their belongings there's quite a few here i would say about a thousand look at this one and here's part of the sewer system of the camp very close to the crematoria so the nazi sophistication extended to all areas from building extermination camps with complete sewer systems how ironic and finally we arrive at crematorium 3. you're looking at a small part of the crematorium now it has been left like this since the germans the nazis as they were retreating they put dynamite into this crematoria thinking that somehow nobody would figure or learned or find out what was going on in these buildings it is really relevant for me to show you were the prisoners were undressing where were the gas chambers where did cyclone be was really dropped through into the gas chambers all i wanted to do is i wanted to walk around so you can look at this place this horrible horrible building where hundreds of thousands of people found a horrible death look at it you're looking at the roof [Applause] right here [Applause] there are extensive maps that describe where every room was but that's not what i want to do i want to show you this place and just picture try to imagine what has taken place in here imagine the innocent people women babies old people men jews 90 of the people that died here as i said dreams four they had dreams for a full life happy life they ended up dying in our switch horrible deaths because they were jews or because they were aromas because they were handicapped somehow so it doesn't really matter which room is which here just allow me to show you it's absolutely horrible building [Applause] i mean when you look at it you can almost hear the screams because when the cyclone big was was dropped people would fight for air and breath and they would fight each other trying to go to the door and scratch the walls and try to beat the door open i don't have to tell you this read the hundreds of books that have been written on the subject let's continue and a quick view of the monument and of the memorial that stands next to crematorium three um and here you see crematorium two the monument and the memorial you just saw has been built between crematorium two and three and again this crematorium was destroyed by the nazis and it has been left intact and it's just as huge as crematorium 3. and the same thoughts run through my head as the ones i expressed just a couple of minutes ago okay now i am inside one of the buildings where the women were kept and this is the part of the camp which is to the left as the train entered through the gate of hell you can see the the beds here actually you can see all the way down to the end of the building and a lot of these beds have survived intact let's go a little closer right there so you can see that the architecture if you can call it architecture inside of these buildings is completely different from the previous part of the camp that we explored let's go down this way here's a good example of the bedding here the light is sufficient for the camera to pick up the details right here you can picture i don't know four or five maybe more women lying there you're looking at a ladder that was used by women to get to the second level of the bedding up there i am now inside a different building and again this is a women's building you can see the stove and the chimney right there right there but you can also see a lot of graffiti which is very very sad and no wonder why the guards have been very uh restrictive now as far as entering the uh the houses and uh watching everything that is going on here now if i turn around here's the uh the bedding and here's the uh another good example of the ladder used to get to the second level right there and if i turn around here we're going to get a very good view right there on the sides of it right there [Applause] uh and uh here's a wreath that was left here today and it's by the stoves in the chimney in the center of the building here's a view what it looks like here's a view on the other side so you can imagine all these poor women squeezed into this place wondering what happened to their children and husbands and fathers and so on in this part of the camp we also find similar buildings that we saw quite a few similar buildings like the ones that was on the other part of the camp that is the buildings with a wooden frame and with the two chimneys this one this particular building has only one that has survived but the majority of the buildings here in the latest part of the prison are the brick buildings you can see one in the very very far distance right there hello this is vic and once again thank you for joining me my channel i hope you have enjoyed this remarkable documentary from our switch it took me about five hours of walking around the video table these video clips you just saw send me a uh an email with your ideas or comments about this documentary or anything else about my channel thank you for joining me once more this is vic signing off from auschwitz in poland bye

Channel: Vic Stefanu - Amazing World Videos

Views: 1,073,422

Keywords: Auschwitz concentration camp, Auschwitz extermination camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau Extermination Camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Auschwitz Birkenau German Nazi Concentration camp, Auschwitz Birkenau German Nazi Extermination camp, Nazi Concentration Camp, Nazi Extermination Camp, #VicStefanu, Konzentrationslager Auschwitz, Auschwitz, Auschwitz II, Auschwitz guide, what to see Auschwitz, travel guide Auschwitz, holocaust, Oświęcim, Birkenau, Final Solution

Id: jV6yuSZS8ak

Length: 60min 32sec (3632 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 31 2014