Auschwitz-Birkenau was the largest extermination center created by the Nazis, it has become the symbol of the Holocaust
and of wilful radical evil in our time. The album you will see presented here is known as the Auschwitz album and it is the only surviving visual
evidence of the process of mass murder at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The album is unique, there is not a similar
album of its kind in the entire world; it documents in photos from every direction and from every angle the arrival at Auschwitz
the selection of those slated for immediate death and of the few who were destined to be slave laborers. The confiscation of their property and the preparation for the physical annihilation of a transport of Jewish people. This transport of Hungarian Jews from the area of Carpathian Ruthenia arrived at
the ramp of the extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in May 1944. In the photos we see the men women and children step out of the overcrowded train, traumatized and fearful after their horrendous journey. They have no clue that they have just been
delivered to a death factory and that few of them will survive. Survivor and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel described his arrival as a teenager at Auschwitz "Every yard or so an SS man held his gun trained
on us hand in hand we followed the crowd 'men to the left women to the right' eight words spoken indifferently without emotion, eight short simple words. For a part of a second I glimpsed my mother and my sister moving to the right,
I saw them disappear into the distance while I walked on with my father and the other men. I did not know that at that place at that moment I was parting from my
mother and my sister forever." The selection process carried out by SS doctors and wardens took place 24 hours a day, seven days a week as train after train
unloaded its human cargo. Most Jews were sent immediately to the left to their death. The undressing rooms of the gas chambers were not sufficient for the masses of Hungarian Jews who arrived daily in the summer of 1944. They therefore had to wait until the undressing rooms were ready to absorb them. The common waiting place was the grove closest to the crematorium that would
soon turn their bodies to ash. They were told to sit among the trees and wait for further instructions. These were their last peaceful moments together before being driven into the gas chambers and murdered. It has been said that there will never be people as innocent as the victims on the threshold of
the gas chambers. The SS kept the victims destined for gassing in complete ignorance
of what lay in store for them, they were told that before being placed in the camp they had to be disinfected and washed. They would soon discover that what they had
assumed where the shower areas were actually hermetically sealed gas chambers. A minority of Jews was selected for forced labor; their personal belongings were confiscated, their hair was shaved and
a registration number was tattooed on their left arm. In the words of survivor and author Primo
Levi, "For the first time we became aware that our language lacks words to express this offense, the demolition of a man, it is not
possible to sink lower than this. Nothing belongs to us anymore, they have taken away our clothes, our Shoes, even our hair, if we speak they will
not listen to us and if they listen they will not understand. They will even take away our name and if we
want to keep it we will have to find in ourselves the strength to do so. It is in this way that one can understand the double
sense of the term extermination camp." The work of sorting the positions that the Jews brought with them to Auschwitz was done by Jewish prisoners who
were forced to collect the packages and sort the items that would then be sent to the Reich. By the time the sorting was completed most of the previous owners were already dead. No memory of the men, women and children that were deemed valueless upon their arrival remains in camp records. This album is the sole witness to their fate. The Auschwitz album was discovered after the war by Lilly Jacob, a survivor of the transports pictured here. Lilly gave the album to Yad Vashem where she
knew that it's tragic contents would be safeguarded for posterity and shared with generations to come.
