Places of Memory · Konzentrationslager Auschwitz I · Between Block 10 and 11

Oświęcim, Poland

Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau are in Oświęcim, Poland which is about an hour from Kraków.

I took these photos at Auschwitz I.

These brick buildings comprise the majority of Auschwitz I. There are 28 of them. They are referred to as blocks. Many of them have underground areas.
© 2026 Bryan R. Hinton

Block 11 was a punishment block and the basement contains different types of punishment cells. I will not be going into any detail regarding the punishment methods and activities that occurred in these areas as it is sensitive material.
© 2026 Bryan R. Hinton

The discussion of the things that occurred within this block at Auschwitz I is sensitive to many people. But just as important, there is an equal or greater amount of dismissal, denial, and distortion of what really happened. Remembrance is important, and an acute awareness of what is going on now, in and across our world, is the only thing that has ever given us a chance of preventing it from happening again.

If you can't make it to Poland, I recommend visiting the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. The traveling exhibition Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away., produced by Musealia with the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, is coming there. Here is the press release page.

The Wall of Death between Block 10 and Block 11 at Auschwitz I
© 2026 Bryan R. Hinton

Suitcase with the name "Anna Kraus" behind glass at Auschwitz I
© 2026 Bryan R. Hinton

Suitcase with the name "Sara" behind glass at Auschwitz I
© 2026 Bryan R. Hinton

Systematic renaming of Jewish individuals and families was written into German law before the war. A decree of 17 August 1938 forced Jews in Germany and annexed Austria to add "Sara" or "Israel" to their given names on every official document. The persecution continued through the war and its aftermath. These people were told they would begin a new life with work. Here is the luggage they brought with them on the train.

provenance · integrity record

canonical processed file hashes · sha-512

Hashes are of the byte-identical JPEGs converted from raw sensor data. Verify with sha512sum -c SHA512SUMS

SHA512SUMS

classical signature · gpg ed448

fingerprint: 2969 AEB8 0A42 E021 5E66 4D93 BD9B C85E 0213 8166 415C 9171 2074 3657 B386 AF51

SHA512SUMS.asc · public key

post-quantum signature · ml-dsa-87

SHA512SUMS.mldsa · public key

post-quantum signature · slh-dsa-shake-256s

SHA512SUMS.slhdsa · public key

blockchain timestamp · opentimestamps

The .ots file proves that SHA512SUMS existed at or before the Bitcoin block timestamp below.

Anchor: Bitcoin block 951183
Timestamp: 2026-05-26 23:40 UTC
SHA512SUMS.ots

© 2026 Bryan R. Hinton. All rights reserved. All original text, photographs, and processed imagery on this page, including hyperspectral reconstructions, abundance maps, classification maps, anomaly maps, and any other algorithmically derived visualizations, are the sole intellectual property of Bryan R. Hinton. The underlying spectral data, latent representations, and intermediate pipeline outputs are likewise reserved. No portion of this material may be reproduced, redistributed, modified, displayed, or used to train, fine tune, or evaluate machine learning models without prior written permission. Brief quotation for the purposes of criticism, scholarship, or review is permitted under standard fair use principles, provided attribution is given.