Auschwitz II-Birkenau

The weather wasn’t that good that day I visited the Auschwitz. It was raining and the wind was strong. On the bus, we were told that we might not be able to visit the second site in the tour since it was an open area. I can’t really understand why they would close off the entire place just because of rain. It turned out that it was the Auschwitz II-Birkenau which was closed off to visitors. I didn’t understand it since I imagined it to be similar to the Auschwitz I which is just a matter of visiting barracks. It turned out that it wasn’t.

The Auschwitz II-Birkenau is the bigger brother of the original Auschwitz. This was built to handle 200,000 prisoners at a time. As Nazi Germany was picking a fight with the rest of the world, there were more prisoners being sent here. As a result, the camp got full and they needed to dispose of prisoners. Thus this was also designed to be an extermination camp. While we were at the Auschwitz I, we were told that the weather has gotten somewhat better so Birkenau was open. What was different about Birkenau was that we were outside the whole time. This was in contrast to our tour of the original Auschwitz. Tourists were all exposed to the elements and it just so happened that the weather turned bad again, letting us know why it was a bad idea to be coming here when the weather was bad. There were no shelters here. So visitors would have to fend for themselves.

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