Today marks 70 years since the Soviet Red Army reached the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland which was the largest and best known established by the Nazis during WW2, and probably the best documented as most of both Auschwitz 1 and Auschwitz 2 (Birkenau) remains. There was also a third camp called Monowitz which was part of the IG Farben chemical works.
Most of those who arrived at Birkenau did so in a cattle car like that shown. Boxcars were often used by the Germans for their own troops too, but the difference was the soldiers weren't packed in like sardines and did not have to remain in them for sometimes days as the railway lines were very crowded during the war - and often the target of Allied bombing.
The Nazis blew up the gas chambers before they left, but for the mini-series War and Remembrance from the late 1980s, the producers rebuilt one from the original plans; they demolished it again after filming.
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