Birkenau Judenrampe – the first Unloading Ramp

Between spring 1942 to May 1944, about half a million Jewish men, women, and children were transported here from various countries occupied by or allied with Nazi Germany, and from Germany itself.

See the Judenrampe

In addition over 13,000 Jews were brought here from other concentration camps. Tens of thousands of ethnic Poles, over 20,000 Roma (gypsies) and people from other ethnic groups were also transported here.

The great Polish writer/survivor Tadeusz Borowski wrote of his experience working on the ramp unloading a transport:

“The bolts crack, the doors fall open. A wave of fresh air rushes inside the train. People… inhumanly crammed, buried under incredible heaps of luggage, suitcases, trunks, packages, crates, bundles of every description (everything that had been their past, and was to start their future). Monstrously squeezed together, they have fainted from heat, suffocated, crushed one another. Now they push towards the open doors, breathing like fish cast out on the open sand… A huge, multicolored wave of people loaded down with luggage pours from the train like a blind, mad river trying to find a new bed…” *Borowski, T. (1976). This Way To the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen

The Judenrampe

Until the huge camp at Birkenau was completed in 1944 victims were unloaded at this Judenrampe – The First Unloading Ramp at Birkenau, now about a half-mile from the Birkenau main entrance, The Death Gate. It lay in a state of relative disrepair until the Museum restored it.

Beginning with the Judenrampe….

Between spring 1942 to May 1944, about half a million Jewish men, women, and children were transported to Birkenau from various countries occupied by or allied with Nazi Germany, and from Germany itself. Usually 70-75% of the people on each train were sent to the gas chambers, from:

• Poland over 200,000;
• France almost 63,000;
• Holland over 58,000;
• Greece over 50,000;
• Belgium almost 24,000;
• Germany and Austria almost 22,000;
• Bohemia and Moravia over 20,000;
• Slovakia over 16,000;
• Yugoslavia 9,000;
• Italy over 3,300;
• Norway 690

Source: Auschwitz Museum sign in the photo, at the Birkenau Judenrampe.

Two original cattle cars that the Nazis used to transport people to Auschwitz—a French SNCF car from the turn of the 20th century and a German car from 1917—stand on the tracks today as a reminder.