Auschwitz

"It was a horrible realization that the Nazis intended to kill us all. Young and old, secular or pious, our destiny was death. Our days were numbered and we knew it. I knew that I had to put it out of my mind and after a while, I learned to ignore what was happening outside our camp. The daily fight for survival occupied all my senses."

Nate Leipciger
Auschwitz

A map of the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944. For more information and additional maps detailing key facts related to the Auschwitz camp complex, visit the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum media essay.

Auschwitz

Photos

Photographs collected during camp operation and at the time of liberation shine a spotlight on the conditions of the camp and its prisoners.

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Auschwitz

Confronting Auschwitz

Auschwitz was a complex of camps, including concentration, extermination, and forced-labor and was the largest camp established by the Germans.

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A Child in Auschwitz - The Story of Palo (Yaakov) Shelah

Palo (Yaakov) Shelah was born in Czechoslovakia in 1938, to Arthur and Jolan Schlezinger. With the beginning of deportations of Slovak Jews in 1942, his family moved to the city of Nitra, where his father worked in a brick factory which served as a labor camp. Later his parents were caught and taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Palo, then six years old, and brother Shmulik, aged ten, hid in the factory for a time. They then marched tens of miles until reaching a farm owned by their relatives. After remaining there on their own for a month, they were caught, sent to Sereď concentration camp and from there to Auschwitz-Birkenau in early November 1944. They were released in January 1945. Palo immigrated to Israel in 1949, settled in the Gan Shmuel kibbutz, married Nira, and started a family.

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