I didn't take a lot of pictures here. It felt like too much of an intrusion. We went inside a few buildings to see facts and figures. Too crazy to be real... or so people thought at the time.

The collected hair and eyeglasses seemed too personal to take pictures of. I did take pictures of shoes... rooms full of them... yet only one blade of grass in a field when you know most of this kind of evidence was destroyed before help was anywhere close by.

Mug shots of those who avoided the gas chambers... for a week, a month, not much more. Pictures of kids. Mistreated, abused. How could any South American in all conscience help Josef Mengele avoid prosecution?

A firing squad wall outside a prison with cells the prisoner had to crawl into, dark, no room to stand up.

The only remaining crematorium at Auschwitz... a picture that remains in my head but not on my camera.

Birkenau was massive. From the guards' tower you could see just how massive. Electric fences, a moat. Shacks with no insulation and many cracks to let in the cold winter air. Iffy toilet facilities. No quality of life at all. None.

Horrible. Most depressing of all... monsters still exist. We seem to learn nothing from history.