Six of the hundreds of concentration camps functioned officially as "killing centers". Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek, Chelmno, Sobibor, Belzec, and Treblinka were all set up with huge underground gas chambers disguised as shower rooms. Those not "selected" as fit for slave labor were herded into these rooms and gassed with Zyclon B to their death. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed in this way. This picture is of an iron door to one of the gas chambers. The peep hole was for the attendant to check to make sure the job was done.
After killing them, the Nazis made the working "inmates" carry the bodies to the crematorium. Each work group did their job here until a new group was brought in and they were "put through the system".
This carved block is inscribed with the words of one of the most famous survivors of the Holocaust. There is nothing I could or would ever say to add to or explain the words of Eli Wiesel.
After passing through a record of one of the darkest chapters in the Human existence, we emerge into the Hall of Lights. An eternal flame is the centerpiece in the room and votive candles line the walls around it.
The words inscribed in the panel behind the flame are:
Only guard yourself and guard your soul carefully, lest you forget the things yours eyes saw, and lest these things depart from your heart all the days of your life. And you shall make them known to your children, and to your children's children.