The for­ti­fied walls, barbed wire, plat­forms, bar­racks, gal­lows, gas cham­bers and cre­ma­tion ovens show the con­di­tions with­in which the Nazi geno­cide took place in the for­mer con­cen­tra­tion and exter­mi­na­tion camp of Auschwitz-Birke­­nau, the largest in the Third Reich. Accord­ing to his­tor­i­cal inves­ti­ga­tions, 1.5 mil­lion peo­ple, among them a great num­ber of Jews, were sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly starved, tor­tured and mur­dered in this camp, the sym­bol of humanity‘s cru­el­ty to its fel­low human beings in the 20th cen­tu­ry.