A BROKEN doll and piles of spectacles, false legs, clothes and shoes bear witness to the countless lives cruelly snuffed out in the Holocaust.
Images of belongings stripped from doomed inmates in Auschwitz, Poland, reveal the horror that unfolded there as the world marks 75 years since the death camp was liberated.
Heaps of glasses which were stolen from victims on arrival to AuschwitzEPA
The possessions were taken because of the severe shortages in essential goods Germany was experiencingEPA
The irony was these false legs often belonged to Jewish World War One veterans who fought for GermanyEPA
Images released by the Auschwitz Memorial and Museum starkly evoke the tragedy which saw more than 1.1 million perish.
The largest Nazi death camp was liberated by the Soviet Red Army on January 27, 1945.
The day is commemorated as International Holocaust Remembrance Day worldwide.
Auschwitz-Birkenau was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps.
Operated by Nazi Germany near Oswiecim in occupied Poland during World War Two, it was the central site in Adolf Hitler’s so-called “Final Solution” and the Holocaust.
It is estimated that at least 1.3 million people were sent to Auschwitz, and 1.1 million died there.
This belonged to a child inmate… kids were often killed as a priority because they were of little use as slavesEPA
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This included 960,000 Jews, 74,000 non-Jewish Poles, 21,000 Roma people, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, and up to 15,000 other Europeans.
Prisoners who were not gassed in chambers died of starvation, exhaustion, disease, individual executions and beatings, or were killed in medical experiments.
Since 1947, the site houses a memorial and museum that also offers guided tours and an education centre.
Entrance to hell… The unloading ramp and the main gate called the ‘Gate of Death’EPA
Most of the victims had been living ordinary lives before the war only to find themselves in AuschwitzEPA
The sprawling Auschwitz-Birkenau complex was murder on an industrial scaleEPA
Combs and hair brushes…. hair was cut off prisoners and reusedEPA
Piles and piles of shaving brushes… dignity was also stripped from prisonersEPA
Final destination… Emptied suitcases were stored before being sent back to GermanyEPA
Each of the cases were registered and marked as part of the efficiently run criminal enterpriseEPA
Piles of pans and pots brought by people with no idea about what was about to happen to themEPA
Often inmates would be forced to strip the corpses of those murdered in the gas chambersEPA
An oven used to cremate victims of the gas chambersEPA
Block 10, where prisoners were used as experimental subjects for German doctorsEPA
The camp has been preserved as a reminder of the nightmare which unfolded there and elsewhereAFP or licensors
