Auschwitz Hell on Earth
Memories with a Polish flag. "This place was Hell on Earth," said Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski, during a memorial to mark the camp's 60th anniversary. Auschwitz began in 1940 as a labor camp for Polish prisoners. Gradually it grew into a death factory for European Jews, gypsies, and prisoners from across Europe and Russia.
Camp survivors mourn for those who did not survive the Nazi brutality. "What would have become of them, the more than a million Jewish children and adolescents who were murdered, here or in ghettos and in other death camps? I only know that I cry whenever I think of them and that I will never forget them," said Simone Veil, who was 17 when she arrived in Auschwitz.
"We want to believe that the unimaginable pain of this place will oblige future generations to respect the human dignity of each human being they encounter," said former Polish Foreign Minister Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, who as a young man was an Auschwitz prisoner.
Candles are lit as a wreath is laid on the railway tracks leading from the main gate of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz II-Birkenau.
German president Horst Koehler after a visit to Auschwitz. "We have to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again."
The entry of Auschwitz: The gates of Hell. "It is as if we can still hear the screams of the dead," one survivor said.
