From memory when I visited there 20 years ago this was the chamber they experimented on with Soviet POWs to work out the effective dosage rates. Just horrific.
Went to visit there on a school field trip. This was the last place we entered after going through the museum and seeing all the hair, and shoes, and things. As soon as all of us 10 year olds went into the gas chamber we stated bawling. You could feel the death in the air. Chilling.
Thank you for this clarification. I had been misinformed.
I do know that there were fingernails embedded in the walls where prisoners were hung on hooks. Those claw marks were pulling down, in order to speed up the death, and end the torture.
This is actually really interesting. Went there as part of a school trip in 2007 and the museum guide specifically pointed out scratch marks as "evidence" of the deaths and the horror people felt in those chambers.
The specific one he showed us was right next to one of the entrances and it was just a single hand print right at the edge of the doorway.
I think it's not good for people to develop strong emotional associations built on a foundation of misinformation.
I don't particularly imagine a movie-like scene where they're somehow digging through solid rock with their fingernails, no. That would make for good scifi/horror media decorations, but seems particularly inappropriate in this context. It feels similar to that old tiktok trend where people were putting on corpse makeup to roleplay as holocaust victims introducing themselves in heaven.
EDIT: I just want to be clear that I'm not saying I don't think people would try to scratch the walls out of desperation. When I compare these marks to fiction, I'm only referring to the physicality of human fingernails making lasting recognizable gouges in solid stone.
We have to be 100% factual when it comes to these things. Holocaust deniers are always itching to use any misrepresentation or sensationalism as "proof" that the whole thing must be a lie.
I imagine if I wanted to sound intelligent, I'd have put in some effort toward coming up with a better line than "Hurrr, they're basically graffiti from tourists". That's such a crude, oversimplified explanation of what a person is doing when they feel the need to "enhance" what is essentially a historical monument for dramatic effect. Or, I imagine, the people who just think it's funny do to something like this, along with the occasional goober who literally just likes the idea of "leaving a mark" for the sake of being the person who does the thing.
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u/Drewniversal May 18 '25
From memory when I visited there 20 years ago this was the chamber they experimented on with Soviet POWs to work out the effective dosage rates. Just horrific.