Entrance to Block 11

Photo: Alan Jacobs

This is the main entrance to Block 11, the prison inside the Auschwitz I. This notorious building was used for summary court marshals (shown in next frame); really just mock trials instituted to create an impression of legality. The basement of this block, shown here in an earlier painting by the same artist , contained the Stehbunker, or standup cells, where people were forced to crawl into a small door at the floor and then stand in an impossibly small space for one man, let alone the three of four that were sometimes in them. There were also suffocation cells where groups of as many as twenty men, were crammed with only a small opening permitting enough oxygen for perhaps one or two. There were starvation cells here as well. Sadism is not so much about inflicting pain, but about having the power to do so. The less powerful a person feels, the more grotesque the tortures invented.

Watercolor: Wladyslaw Siwek
Reproduction courtesy of Auschwitz Museum Archive, 1980