Auschwitz: Place of Horrors

What is this evidence the CIA called "unique in the world?" More importantly, what does it prove about Auschwitz as an operating death camp?

• Although remotely located, Auschwitz was on the rail line running from Krakow to Vienna. Before 1944, no Allied reconnaissance planes had flown over the complex. But on the 4th of April that year, before a rail spur routing prisoners directly into the camp had been completed, an American plane approached the I.G. Farben complex for the first time.



• Another American reconnaissance mission took place on June 26, 1944. The photograph obtained that day, and others like it, have since been used by other interested parties (like the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum) to position camp buildings demolished by the fleeing Nazis.



• To keep newly arriving prisoners calm, the SS kept a Red Cross "ambulance" on premises. Its actual purpose was to transport the deadly gas pellets, Zyklon B, to the gas chambers. The CIA photo-interpreters believe such a vehicle may be visible on the aerial reconnaissance photo of April 4, 1944.