The Latch
The barracks on the right side of Birkenau were all prefabricated horse stables, originally intended for use in the Russain campaign. Certainly no horse could open even this crude latch. Here up to a thousand prisoners would be crammed beside and atop one another in a space where two hundred would be a crowd. In the mechanical industrial age this latch demonstrates just how crudely inmates were treated, certainly much worse than the horses these "barracks" were intended to shelter.
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