Ophir Palmon – Artistic Visions

The Line
Memorial cards, notes, and flowers are left by visitors at the Execution Wall in Auschwitz I.  Prisoners from inside and outside of the camp were interrogated and tortured in the basement of this Block (11) and then “tried” in the courtroom above.  Condemned prisoners were lined up against this wall to be shot, alone, or in groups.  This wall was built to absorb bullets and was known to prisoners as the “Black Wall” or the “Wall of Death.”
Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Auschwitz, Poland

Silent Wall
A group tours a display of prisoners’ pictures at the former barracks of the Auschwitz death camp.  Prisoners at Auschwitz were doomed to slave labor and death.  Upon being processed into the camp, the prisoners who were selected for slave labor were photographed and had their prisoner number tattooed on their left arm for identification.  Most Jewish prisoners were never photographed or tattooed and died within hours of arrival.
Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Auschwitz, Poland

Final Touch
The walls of the first gas chamber at Auschwitz bear scratch marks left as a final act of life by the dying, trying to escape their fate.  Between 700 and 800 men, women, and children were herded into the room together, and the steel door shut behind them.  Pellets of Zyklon B (Hydrogen cyanide, HCN), a common pesticide, were then dropped in from hatches in the roof, releasing their deadly gas once in contact with warm air.  This mass murder technique was deemed more efficient by the Nazis, as it provided for systematic executions while preserving ammunition for the war effort and minimizing trauma on the perpetrators themselves.
Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Auschwitz, Poland

In Memoriam
A group of Jewish American teens conducts a memorial ceremony in front of the gas chamber I at the Auschwitz death camp.  This structure survives because camp administrators converted it to a bomb shelter in 1944 after gassing responsibilities had shifted to Auschwitz II.  The structure today has been partially reconstructed as it would have appeared when used as a gas chamber and crematorium.  The primary gas chambers used for killing operations in Birkenau (Crematoria II, III, IV, and IV) were demolished by the Nazis in an unsuccessful attempt to destroy evidence of genocide.  Their ruins are still visible today.
Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Auschwitz, Poland

And You Shall Tell Your Children
Seated on the ground in one of Birkenau’s barracks, a group of Jewish American teens listens as Holocaust survivor Trudy Album shares her memories from this place.  Trudy was brought to the camp with her family at age thirteen, and survived there for four years.  After they were liberated in 1944, many of the survivors spent years trying to locate lost relatives and friends, while attempting to start new lives in the wake of the horrors they had endured.
Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Auschwitz, Poland

Generations
Tokens of commemoration are left on the railroad tracks at Birkenau.  The tracks that once led hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children to their death now lead thousands of youths on a life-changing educational experience every year.  The March of the Living, an annual event that is observed on Yom HaShoah (the Jewish Holocaust Remembrance Day), sees over ten thousand people march from Auschwitz I to Birkenau in a display of respect, unity, and hope.
Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Auschwitz, Poland

With These Words
At the conclusion of the March of the Living ceremony at Auschwitz-Birkenau, HaTikvah (The Hope), the Israeli anthem, is heard throughout the camp.  Trudy Album, a Holocaust survivor who survived the camp, is overcome with emotions while flanked by members of her tour group, Jewish American teens.
Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, Auschwitz, Poland

Shadows In A Forest
A forest an hour north of Auschwitz.  As the trees pass by the bus window, like a nickelodeon playing in the setting sun, I imagine the Resistance fighters during World War II, who used these woods as staging grounds for their attacks against the Nazi forces occupying Poland.
Highway E75, Poland

Subterranean
Resistance fighters used the sewer system underneath the Warsaw ghetto streets as a conduit for moving people, supplies, and information within the ghetto and into the surrounding city.  The postwar symbolic emblem on the manhole cover, located in front of the memorial monument to the Warsaw ghetto uprising, displays scrolls with the Hebrew letter Bet, the first letter of the book of Genesis (B’reshitבְּרֵאשִׁית‎ ) and an olive branch extending from it.
Warsaw ghetto site, Warsaw, Poland

The Screaming Earth
The way to Treblinka travels off a highway, and then via narrowing roads that pass through small villages which seem to have evaded the progress of time.  A quiet path leads to the death campgrounds, long sanitized of the extermination operation and horrors that placed its name in infamy.  The peaceful atmosphere does not cloud the aura of this clearing in the forest.  Even absent of the physical evidence, this place is clearly one of hell’s compartments.
Treblinka extermination camp, Treblinka, Poland

The Quiet Earth
The Treblinka extermination center memorial features hundreds of stones bearing the names of the Jewish communities annihilated throughout Europe during the Holocaust.  The place is eerily quiet, peaceful, and beautiful.  Hundreds of stones are visible in all directions, designating communities that have been erased from existence.  For many of them, these are the only headstone remaining.
Treblinka extermination camp, Treblinka, Poland

Treblinka extermination camp, Treblinka, Poland

Chamber of Death
Inside one of the gas chambers at Majdanek extermination camp.  The Nazis disguised the room as a public shower to maintain the illusion of normality for the victims until the last moment.  Majdanek, located in the suburbs of Lublin, remained largely intact as retreating Nazi authorities lacked time to destroy it.  It was the first major camp liberated on July 24, 1944, by the Red Army.
Majdanek extermination camp, Lublin, Poland

The Way Out
A gas chamber at Majdanek extermination camp.  This door to the yard would open after the crowded room had entirely perished.  Camp prisoners would remove the bodies for further processing such as extraction of gold teeth and final examination for hidden valuables.  The bodies would be moved to the crematorium or burned in the open.  The walls of the room have a blue tinge from the repeated use of Zyklon B.
Majdanek extermination camp, Lublin, Poland

Empty Shoes
The murder process was similar in all the extermination centers.  This visitor is passing by a display of shoes taken from those whose steps ended here at Majdanek.
Majdanek extermination camp, Lublin, Poland

To Ashes
The crematorium at Majdanek is a large, silent room.  Thousands of men, women, and children’s bodies were turned to ash in this room.  Some visitors choose to light memorial candles and place them in front of the ovens, others sit or stand in quiet vigil.
Majdanek extermination camp, Lublin, Poland

Mass Grave
From the gas chambers, the victims’ bodies were carried into crematoriums and burned.  Their remains were then taken to a corner of the camp, where they were piled into a giant mound of ash in the open air.  Following the liberation of the camp, a concrete dome was erected over this final resting place for thousands of victims.
Majdanek extermination camp, Lublin, Poland