Our first full day in Poland, we toured Auschwitz-Birkenau the largest concentration camp established by the Nazis. It was established by Germans in 1940, in the suburbs of Oswiecim, a Polish city that was annexed to the Third Reich by the Nazis.
At the height of the deportations, up to 6,000 Jews were gassed each day at Auschwitz.
Most of the prisoners who entered the gates of the Madjanek concentration camp in Lublin never left. The majority arrived as forced laborers and either died as a result of the brutally inhumane living conditions or were killed in the gas chambers after the Germans determined they could no longer work.
Treblinka was a true death factory. Immediately after getting off the train, people went to the gas chambers. There was no tattooing, no huts with wooden bunks, no louses, not even any harsh labour. From the start, three gas chambers were in operation, with dimensions of 4 by 4 metres and a capacity of 300 to 500 people an hour. In September 1942, a further ten gas chambers were added, with a much greater capacity. They allowed between 1 000 and 2 000 people to be put to death in an hour. The total number of people murdered in Treblinka is estimated at 870 000.
The Jewish cemetery on Okopowa Street in Warsaw was one of our last tours. Everyone in our group got chills listening to our guide Chaim Fuchs recount the level of inhuman torture the victims were subject to. Most of the victims of the Holocaust did not have funerals or cemetery burials, traditions practiced among the Jewish people.
Creative Team
Lisa Reznik ... Director
Lisa Reznik & Terence Taylor ... Producers
Lisa Reznik, Austin Morris & Jon Reino ... Camera
Terence Taylor ... Editor & Motion Graphics
Katerina Aurigema ... Sound Mixer
Daniel Rufolo ... Sound Design
Jonathan Zalben ... Music Composition
Michiel Pilgrim ... Color Correction
Marjorie Ocho Kouns ... Narration