The “firing wall” at Auschwitz where prisoners were shot

The black wall at the Auschwitz main camp where prisoners were shot after they had been convicted in a court of law

I am writing about the black wall at the Auschwitz main camp, shown in the photo above, where prisoners were shot. This wall is mentioned in the news article cited below:

http://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/auschwitz-local-students-learn-from-visit-to-nazi-death-camp-1-7939242

The black wall at Auschwitz is shown on the left in my photo above

Begin quote from news article:

[The students] had walked quietly and in sombre mood through the camp as they saw the firing wall -where inmates were shot.

End quote

 

Oh no! Did those cruel Nazis shoot innocent prisoners for no reason? That must be what happened; if there was a reason that prisoners were shot, the person who wrote this news article would surely have included that in the news article.

The picture at the top of this page shows some artwork done by a survivor of the Auschwitz camp, after he had been liberated. He has depicted an execution scene at The Black Wall.

The picture shows a uniformed SS man shooting three prisoners while other SS officers look on. Two camp inmates will carry the bodies from the wall and add them to the pile in the foreground; it was the Jews who were assigned to this task.

To the left in the picture is an object made out of logs which was not at the wall when I was there. This is the portable gallows which was used to hang political prisoners who had been convicted in the Gestapo court in Block 10.

At the far end of a long, narrow courtyard between Block 10 and Block 11 at the Auschwitz camp is a brick wall which connects the two buildings. In front of this brick wall, the Nazis had placed another removable wall, constructed out of logs and covered with cork painted black; the ends of the wall were angled slightly toward the center. The purpose of the black wall was to protect the beautiful brick wall behind it.

The photo below shows what the brick wall looked like when the camp was liberated by the Soviet Union in January 1945. The Nazis had removed the portable wall that had protected the bricks.

The brick wall after the wooden had been removed by the Nazis

Many people have noticed that there are no bullet holes in the wall today. That’s because this is not the original black wall. According to my tour guide, this is a reconstruction which looks like the original.

The original wall was removed after Arthur Liebehenschel replaced Rudolf Hoess as the camp commander in November, 1943, and ordered the executions at the wall to stop.

Are you getting sick of “there’s no there, there”?

How many times do you hear someone on the news today say “there’s no there, there”?

Young people today probably don’t know who originated this expression, nor do they know what it means. Gertrude Stein wrote this about the city of Oakland, CA which is very close to San Francisco, CA.

Oakland is famous for having expensive, luxury homes: https://www.zillow.com/oakland-ca/luxury-homes/

Gertrude Stein was a rich Jew. The expensive homes in Oakland were not good enough for her. That’s why she wrote her famous line.

Shown below is a typical Oakland home, which was not good enough for Gertrude Stein.

Buchenwald concentration camp was liberated 72 years ago

The former Buchenwald camp is in today’s news: http://www.dw.com/en/minutes-silence-at-buchenwald-concentration-camp-marks-72-years-since-liberation/a-38384666

My photo of Buchenwald monument

I have a section about Buchenwald on my website at http://www.scrapbookpages.com/Buchenwald/Tour.html

The following quote is from the news article:

Begin quote

The state of Thuringia’s culture minister, Benjamin-Immanuel Hoff, was among those who joined Tuesday’s commemorations. The minute’s silence at 3:15 p.m. (1315 UTC) marked the moment troops from the US army first entered the camp near Weimar on April 11, 1945.

There they found 21,000 survivors, including several hundred children and teenagers.

Between 1937 and 1945 the Nazis sent almost 280,000 people from all over Europe to Buchenwald and its 139 satellite camps.

At least 56,000 people died there. They were murdered, used in medical experiments or perished due to starvation or cold while being forced to work making weapons for Adolf Hitler’s war machine.

End quote

My photo of the fence around the Buchenwald camp

You can read more about the Buchenwald camp on my website at http://www.scrapbookpages.com/Buchenwald/JedemDasSeine.html

You can read about Elie Wiesel and his claim of being a prisoner at Buchenwald on this blog post: https://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2011/09/29/elie-wiesel-at-buchenwald-i-was-there-but-i-wasnt-there/