We spent all day at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest of the Nazi extermination camps. Basically no one (147 out of 1.1 million) was able to escape alive. In a state of near-starvation, you’d have to make it past two rows of electric fences at Auschwitz I, then somehow try to get help from the local population before the SS arrived. And if you did escape successfully, the Nazis would select 10 prisoners in your unit and and send them to a slow, tortuous death.
Even those of us against the death penalty had a hard time finding any tears for Rudolf Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz. He was hanged for his crimes right in front of gas chamber/crematorium complex I. (His wife had described her time at Auschwitz in a letter to a friend as ‘paradise’.) About 5,000 of the 100,000 people involved in running the extermination camps were ever brought to justice.
The place is falling apart, mostly because the death camp is so large. (Auschwitz-Birkenau II kept 100,000 prisoners at a time.) The Polish government needs 120 million euros for maintenance and repairs. The German government has offered to help with 1 million.
