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Photo Gallery Drawings Detail Birkenau Death Camp

Found hidden away in a bottle, the Auschwitz Memorial Museum has published sketches drawn by a prisoner at the Birkenau extermination camp. They provide a rare first-hand glimpse at life and death inside. The book is part of the museum's plans to launch a catalogue of 6,000 artworks in its archives.
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"The Sketchbook from Auschwitz" includes 32 sketches by an unknown prisoner at Birkenau. They depict detailed scenes from the extermination camp in 1943. Here prisoners are seen arriving by train.

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Families in the death camp were often separated, as depicted in this scene. The recently published sketches are "the only work of art made in Birkenau that depict exterminations," according to Pawel Sawicki, a spokesman for the museum.

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A prisoner is seen stepping forward for a roll call. "You can clearly see that the author was determined in presenting the largest number of details," said art historian with the museum and author of the study, Agnieszka Sieradzka, in a statement. "Badges of functionary prisoners, number plates of the trucks, train cars on the ramp as well as block numbers are carefully depicted. The author of the sketchbook hoped that someone would find his work so that it would became a witness to extermination."

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The crematorium, where more than a million people were killed, is seen here in the prisoner's sketches.

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The publication of the Polish-English book is part of the Auschwitz Memorial Museum's plans to release further material from its archives this year to mark the 70th anniversary of the start of exterminations at Birkenau.

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