I toured Auschwitz and Birkenau when Poland was still under Soviet control. Unfortunately most of Birkenau was torn down in the 1970s. What's at Birkenau now is mostly foundations and a few reconstructed buildings surrounded by barbed wire. The museum in Block 11 at the Auschwitz main camp is both horrible and informative. Block 11 is where the Nazis tortured and executed political prisoners. If you ever tour Auschwitz it is best to read some of the prisoner autobiographies before hand. There is an extensive literature but Filip Muller is the best source (google him). Rudolf Hoess was the SS bureaucrat and evil organizational genius who set the place up and essentially made the the Holocaust practical (google him too). Hoess wrote his own biography concerning Auschwitz while waiting to get hung by the Poles (they hung him not too far from the gas chamber / crematorium at the main camp). It's unpleasant getting inside his head but still informative about the whole SS mindset. I hired a local to act as my tour guide when I went to Auschwitz. He told me the adult children of Hoess actually came to Auschwitz to visit the place. The house where they lived in is not too far from the spot where their dad got hung.

The really frightening thing about Auschwitz was the Nazis were just getting it into high gear when the war went bad for them thus forcing them to shut down Auschwitz as an extermination camp. Their biggest problem was disposing of the bodies. They had a heck of a time keeping their crematoriums operational due to chimney fires. Then some bright guy came up with a new crematorium technology that would have solved most of their problems but this innovation came too late.

One sees an entirely "different" aspect about human beings when studying the Holocaust.

Gary