The virtual tour opens for the Birkenau Ramp to a view of a brick building – in use to delouse prisoner’s uniforms as louse-born diseases ran rampant. On the right is the “Mittelstrasse” road that runs the entire width of the camp. Continuing to scroll left you come to the women’s camp, BIa to the right of the ramp. and then the camp entrance. All one need do to glimpse the scope and vastness of the Nazi plan for extermination is stand at this spot and look round in all directions.As you scroll left the SS orderly room on the Birkenau Ramp comes into view. Immediately after disembarking from the trains, the Jews, and others, were made to line up in two columns: women and children in one, and men in the other.

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“On the ramp the primary secret purpose of deportation was finally acted out: to “deprive Jewry of its biological reserves”; to “obliterate the biological basis of Jewry,” said Himmler to Hoess; to eliminate “the germ cell of a new Jewish revival” (“Keimzelle eines neuen judischen Aufbaues”), said the Wannsee Protocol. It was the Nazi view of all women as cell-bearers that condemned the Jewish ones. Even within the lowest life-form–the anti race–women ranked lower still, for spawning it. In Hitler’s cliche, “Every child that a woman brings into the world is a battle, a battle waged for the existence of her people.” Because women in their biology held history, one gestating Jewish mother posed a greater threat than any fighting man. To be father to a child had no impact on selection. To be a mother in fact or in future–that was the final sentence. Genocide is the act of putting women and children first. Of all the deceptions a death camp settled on, this one went down deepest. This was the hardcore of the Holocaust.” Felstiner, Mary Lowenthal. To Paint Her Life. New York: Harper Collins, 1994.

The Unloading Birkenau Ramp

Scroll to the left and notice the vast expanse of the BII with its many sub-camps, first BIIf,e,d, the other part of the Mittelstrasse, and then BIIc,b,a (see map). BII – including 7 separate camps  – those for men, women, and two “family camps”. A bit further on to the far end of the ramp are ruins of Krematorium II, the Memorial and Krematorium III which are all hard to view here. Along its length, the road to the left leading to the two largest gas chambers and crematoria in any camp, KII, KIII. As you scroll left the SS orderly room on the Ramp comes into view. Immediately after disembarking from the trains, the Jews, and others, lined up in two columns: women and children in one, and men in the other. Next, SS physicians separate the strong and healthy people from the elderly, the sick, pregnant women, and children. Those fit for labor are sent to the camp. The others, usually 70-75% of each transport,  sent to their deaths in the gas chambers. All photos and videos are Copyright Alan Jacobs and Remember.org.

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