Block 11 in the main camp of Auschwitz was known among prisoners as the “Death Block”. It held the camp prison, with its cells in the basement, and next to it, in the yard between Blocks 10 and 11, stood the wall where the SS shot thousands of people. Today it is one of the most visited places at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial, and one of the hardest to walk through.
The camp prison
When the SS opened the camp in 1940, the brick barracks of the former Polish army base were given numbers. The building later known as Block 11 was originally numbered 13 and received its final number when the blocks were renumbered in 1941. Its ground floor and upper floor housed prisoners, at first those of the penal company, while the basement became the camp prison, the so-called bunker.
Prisoners were locked in the bunker for alleged breaches of camp rules, for suspected contacts with the resistance, or after attempted escapes. People arrested by the Gestapo outside the camp and awaiting a verdict were also held there. Many never left the building alive.
The cells in the basement
The bunker had several kinds of cells, each designed to torment.
- Dark cells. Prisoners were kept in complete darkness, with only a small opening for air.
- Starvation cells. Prisoners selected as reprisal for escapes were locked in and left without food or water until they died. In such a cell the Franciscan friar Maksymilian Kolbe spent his last days in August 1941.
- Standing cells. Four tiny cells, each less than one square metre, were entered through a small opening near the floor. Up to four prisoners were forced to stand in one of them all night, and then sent to work the next day, sometimes for many nights in a row.
On the walls of the cells, prisoners scratched their names, numbers, dates, crosses and drawings. Many of these inscriptions have survived and are among the most personal traces of the victims in the whole Memorial.
The first gassing with Zyklon B
The basement of Block 11 was also the place of the first mass killing with Zyklon B at Auschwitz. In early September 1941 the SS locked about 600 Soviet prisoners of war and about 250 sick Polish and other prisoners from the camp hospital in the cells and poured in the gas. Because not all of them died at once, the gas was added again. The SS then moved the killing to the gas chamber of the crematorium in the main camp, and later to Birkenau. Read more about the fate of these prisoners in our article on Soviet prisoners of war in Auschwitz.
The court that sat in Block 11
From 1943 a police summary court of the Gestapo from Katowice held its sessions in a room on the ground floor of Block 11. It tried Poles, mostly from Upper Silesia, who had been arrested for resistance activity or other offences against the German occupation. The sessions lasted only minutes. Most of the accused, men and women, were sentenced to death and taken straight to the yard to be shot.
The Death Wall
The yard between Blocks 10 and 11 is closed on both sides by high walls. At its end the SS built a wall of insulating panels, in front of which prisoners were shot in the back of the head, usually with a small-calibre rifle. The windows of Block 10, where women were held for medical experiments, were boarded up so that no one could see the executions.
According to the Memorial, the SS shot several thousand people at the Death Wall between 1941 and 1943, most of them Polish political prisoners, members of the resistance, and people sentenced by the Gestapo court. Executions also took place in other parts of the camp. In 1944 the SS dismantled the wall. The one visitors see today is a reconstruction, put up after the war on the original spot.
Block 11 and Block 10 today
Block 11 is preserved much as it was in the war. Visitors pass the washroom where condemned prisoners undressed before execution, the room where the Gestapo court sat, and descend to the cells in the basement. Block 10, next door, where the SS doctor Carl Clauberg carried out sterilisation experiments on Jewish women, is closed to visitors. Read more in our article on medical experiments at Auschwitz.
In front of the Death Wall, visitors and delegations lay flowers and light candles. It is one of the places where many guides ask groups to pause in silence. For more about the main camp and Birkenau, read our article on the three main camps of Auschwitz.
Frequently asked questions
The camp prison in the main camp, known as the Death Block, with punishment cells in its basement.
A wall in the yard between Blocks 10 and 11 where the SS shot several thousand people, mostly Polish political prisoners, between 1941 and 1943.
In the basement of Block 11 in early September 1941, when about 600 Soviet prisoners of war and about 250 sick prisoners were killed with Zyklon B.
Plan your visit to the Memorial
Visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau in person is the most powerful way to understand its history. We organise guided visits with licensed Memorial educators from Kraków, Warsaw, Prague, Vienna and other cities. See our tours
