The above video is a BBC commissioned drones-eye view of what the Auschwitz concentration camp looks like today, 70 years after the liberation of the camp that saw the extermination of approximately 1.1 million Jews and the imprisonment and torture of many more.
The footage is haunting, of course, beginning with the railroad that brought so many scared and confused prisoners to that horrible place, before turning its focus to the vacant spaces where the wooden execution huts used to be, the prison buildings, and the fences that must have seemed like the end of the world to the people that were sent there by Hitler’s Nazi regime.
At one point in the video, a delivery truck can be seen driving beyond the fence — it’s so free and so much a part of this modern world. It really stands out.
The whole video is a little bit more than six minutes long and it’s extremely affecting, especially if you have a familial connection to someone who knew the hell of Auschwitz first hand, as I do. But as painful as it is to think about that and to see this place still standing, videos like this and the tours that go through Auschwitz do serve a purpose: they remind us all of the atrocities that took place not too long ago.