In the woods behind the concentration camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau is something very ominous. Black marble headstones are places in various areas around the area. They mark the spots where the Nazi’s tried to dump the ash from all the bodies they where incinerating.
Used as fertilizer much of it was shipped away to farms. The rest dumped in to fields around the camp. Here ash from human remains was dumped into ponds of water.
It’s cold, start and callus. It was worse in the day. Hundred crammed into one barracks. Three to four or more to a bunk bed.
Many of these have been rebuilt as the Nazi’s did their best to destroy them, and the evidence at the end of the war.
In the background you can see the remain chimneys where these barracks used to stand. Fields upon fields of them.
The Wieliczka Salt Mine in Poland is a fascinating place to see what can happen to a mine after it has closed. Miners from its rock salt era carved out depictions of their everyday lives there. From a giant underground cathedral to day to day workers pulling carts.