The flowers of Birkenau, photo essay by Andrea Giubelli

[V]isiting the nazi extermination camp of Birkenau, the first thing you notice is the large dimension. A huge area surrounded by netting. Auschwitz-Birkenau was the most important concentration and extermination camp established by Nazi Germany to implement its Final Solution policy. In the camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau 1,2 million people were exterminated. Nowadays the camp is a large green field spotted by flowers, but seventy years ago the prisoners couldn’t see the grass and the flowers: the field was trampled by wooden clogs of the prisoners and the boots of the guards. The prisoners lived in a world without color: the field dry and dusty in the short Polish summer and muddy and snow during the long winter months. Thinking to the monochrome place of those days, I have taken the images where the grass and the flowers are the main subjects: the colors that the prisoners didn’t see. For this reason I didn’t choose the black and white to increase the drama (could a photo increase the level of drama seen at Auschwitz-Birkenau?). With the flowers and the green grass that nowadays covering the extermination camp, I’d like to make a small gift to the victims. (Andrea Giubelli)