Block 11

Block 11 in the Stammlager was the prison block that was located in a walled courtyard. Most of the building was set up for torture of one sort or another.

Between Block 10 and 11 was the 'Extermination Wall' where thousands of prisoners were shot by firing squad. The windows of Block 10 looking over the courtyard were blocked in with wood. A guide informed me that the windows were shuttered so the prisoners in Block 10 could not see what was happening at the Extermination Wall.

A strange room near to the main entrance on the ground floor was a court room where people were tried before being taken into an adjacent room to undress before being taken out into the courtyard to be shot. I suppose its strange to me that the SS guards would take the time to put prisoners on trial with everything else that was happening at Birkenau. I wondered what sort of 'fair' trial it was?

In memory of all those who lost their lives in block 11 the Stammlager Auschwitz I












Block 11 has a basement containing a rabbit warren of corridors and cells. Looking through the small holes in the door of one of these cells reveals an empty cell with a square box in the corner with a hole in the lid, the toilet I presume.

Down one corridor are the apply named 'standing cells'. A meter square from floor to ceiling with a small trap door where four prisoners were forced to climb in and stand (lack of space prevented them sitting or lying) all night and then work the next day, then back to the cells and so on until the punishment ended or they died. The museum has cut away some of the wall of one of the cells to give an idea of how small it is inside the cell.

I first heard on the BBC documentary 'Auschwitz The Nazis and the Final Solution', that the basement underneath block 11 was the site where approximately 600 Russian prisoners were poisoned with Zyklon B for the first time. History describes what happened next.

Below I am looking down the very corridor where 600 Russian prisoners were murdered.