HUMAN COST Some 1.3 million people were deported to Auschwitz. More than 1.1 million were murdered there, of which one million were Jews. Most were killed on arrival in the death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in specially built gas chambers. Some 75,000 ethnic Poles were also murdered in Auschwitz, together with 21,000 Roma and Sinti, 15,000 Soviet POWs, and 10-15,000 political opponents of the Nazis. Smaller numbers of gay men, criminals, and Jehovah's Witnesses were also killed. As with all other Nazi concentration camps, the SS - short for Schutzstaffel, or Protection Squad — ran Auschwitz. It was a Nazi paramilitary organisation under the command of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. Himmler received authority from Adolf Hitler to destroy all political and so-called racial enemies of the Nazi regime. Auschwitz played a central role in these crimes.

The railway network built and extended to kill people in an industrial scale. Unimaginably evil.

So the 80th anniversary of Auschwitz and #InternationalHolocaustDay

We saw an exhibition #SeeingAuschwitz in London about 3 years ago.

I had hoped we’d live in a kinder, better, more equitable world. I still have that hope and that aim.