I squint and splutter as a relentless frigid wind whips small, hard pellets of snow into my face and eyes.
My hair is icy – snap frozen in places - and the tips of my toes, fingers, ears and nose sting painfully in the -9 degrees Celsius conditions.
But I dare not complain, for it's the silence here I find most chilling, broken only by the soft, careful crunch of my boots on the winter white snow below.
I'm retracing the final path walked by more than a million Jews who were cruelly, callously and calculatingly transported as human rail freight to their undignified deaths at the world's largest extermination camp.
This isn't my first visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau, but I am again shocked by the horrifying labyrinth of collapsed gas chambers, incinerators and guard towers, encircled by more than 13 kilometres of barbed wire.
Together, the Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II sites sprawl 1,170,000 square metres: the equivalent of 240 football fields.
The scale of the site – and the killing – is simply overwhelming.
I shiver as I pass along the infamous snowcapped rail tracks, just beyond the imposing red brick entrance gate, where German SS doctors carried out 'the selection' – deciding which of those unloaded from the crammed carriages would live as prisoners, their names replaced with a number, and those who would be taken to 'shower' - a chillingly engineered system of mass murder where men, women and children were lured into underground chambers to be fatally gassed, their bodies later burned in purpose-built furnaces.
For many – myself included – the journey across Auschwitz II is a nauseating pilgrimage, but for the twelve people I've come here to meet, it is their morning walk to work.
Their ‘office’ is not hard to find: two white aluminum tents, side by side and stretching 13 metres into the sky, towering high above the haunting ruins that surround them.
It reminds me of a crime scene – and of course, it is – but those working inside aren’t merely here to investigate the holocaust, they are here to preserve the evidence the perpetrators left behind for the close to 2 million visitors a year to see what happened here with their own eyes.
Aluminum tents protect conservation teams working to restore the Birkenau barracks. Source: @BrettMasonNews
For 69 years, this site has been an open-air museum.
Inside the tents, protected, temporarily, from the harsh winter elements, I find two of the Birkenau barracks.
Like so many structures here, both are sinking and twisting into the mud and clay on which they were hurriedly built by prisoners in the early 1940s.
“It’s like a race against time," preservation worker Kamil Będkowski tells me.
“There are so many objects, so many buildings that require our attention. The scale of the museum is just astonishing, it's hard to determine which buildings should undergo treatment works first."
Preservation and conservation teams are responsible for protecting the site’s one hundred and fifty buildings and three hundred ruins.
The collapsed ruins of gas chamber and crematorium II, which evacuating German forces tried – and failed – to destroy. Source: @BrettMasonNews
"Water is the number one factor destroying and decaying these structures," Mr Będkowski explains.
“The clay ground holds the water – it does not penetrate the ground, it does not drain away – it settles.”
And that’s a problem for poorly constructed buildings, built on soil barely 30 centimetres above the water table.
An archeological study revealed roads built by prisoners had repeatedly sunk during the peak of the camp’s operation and had to be built and rebuilt on top of each other.
In 2013, the Auschwitz Museum began drawing up a comprehensive water regulation plan to "limit the destructive action of rain and groundwater”.
Two buildings – barracks 7 and 8 in BIb camp - were quickly identified as being in most urgent need of intervention and conservation crews began work on the site in 2015.
“We started here because they needed help most,” explains conservator Ewa Cyrulik.
Each of the Birkenau barracks were hurriedly constructed by prisoners with construction skills, often using scrounged materials from war-damaged buildings.
Conservation crews restore Birkeanu Barracks Block 7, in former camp BIb. Source: @BrettMasonNews
“It's a miracle they are still standing," says chief of construction Szymon Jancia.
Each was designed to house seven hundred people, with a capacity of four prisoners for every one of the building’s 60 three-tier bunks.
In reality, six, seven, or even eight people crammed uncomfortably into each ‘bed’, stretching their emaciated bodies on straw scattered across the uncomfortable wooden slats.
They shared shabby blankets and small stoves provided little comfort from the elements.
Conservation crews are moving through the buildings brick by brick, constructing a modern foundation before putting the structure back together, exactly as they found it.
While graffiti will be removed, blemishes – such as broken brick and wood work – will not.
The $4 million project will take until at least until 2019 to complete and similar restoration works will need to be completed on 30 additional brick barracks, 10 brick latrines and washrooms and five other brick structures at BI sector of the former Birkenau camp.
“It could take 20 years, 30 years – maybe more,” says Ewa Cyrulik.
“But it’s important to show and keep the reality. People who come here have this need to see the authenticity of these artifacts and to be able to enter them. Ruins would be nothing.”
Temporary support structures have already been added to some other structures, and the collapsed gas chamber and crematoria II have had support beams added to preserve the layout of the ruins.
Heavier construction work is underway at gas chamber and crematoria III.
Metal support beams have been added to the ruins of gas chamber and crematoria II at Auschwitz-Birkeanu. Source: @BrettMasonNews
Szymon’s builder mates joke they could demolish the failing barracks and have a flawless replica built in a fortnight: “but that’s not the point,” he says.
At Auschwitz I, notorious Block 10 (where prisoners were subjected to medical experiments by German doctors) and Block 2 (prisoners’ barracks) have been the focus of restoration efforts with the same attention to authenticity, revealing for the first time original furnishings and graffiti uncovered in the untouched toilets and washrooms.
Neither block is currently included on public tours, but the Museum hopes to facilitate this in the future when works are complete.
Nearly 72 years after being liberated by Soviet forces in 1945, the two camps continue to reveal their secrets.
The autopsy table inside Block 10 at Auschwitz I. More than 800 deceased women were examined by German doctors in this room. Source: @BrettMasonNews
A rare look inside Block 2 at Auschwitz I, which has been restored to its original 1940’s condition. Source: @BrettMasonNews
Conservation teams located as many as 30 artifacts from inside the two barracks during repair works, including notes, gold coins, watches, buttons, pocket knives and jewelry.
“They were not buried, but hidden," says Kamil Będkowski.
“As bricks and wood is moved, they have been discovered.”
These newly discovered items will join the museum’s staggering collection, including 110,000 shoes, 40 kilograms of eye glasses, 12,000 pots and pans, 4,500 works of art and nearly two tons of human hair, shaved from the heads of prisoners.
The museum’s document archive stretches more than 250 metres and contains 39,000 photographic negatives, 70,000 death certificates, 13,000 letters and 16 volumes of prisoner personnel files.
Perhaps the most well-known and emotional collection is the museum’s 3,800 suitcases.
A small selection of the 110,000 shoes retained in the Auschwitz Museum’s collection. Source: @BrettMasonNews
Each a different shape, size, colour and texture – individual, like their owners – many of these suitcases bear the handwritten names of those who carried them into Auschwitz only to be first robbed of their lives and then finally their most treasured and personal possessions.
In a sparse laboratory of lights and ventilation shafts, I watch staff silently pouring over six such cases, diligently and purposefully cleaning each of seven decades of filth – one cotton tip at a time.
Preservationists have spent the last eleven months restoring one hundred suitcases, which will be returned in their best possible condition to a new, specifically designed, state-of-the-art storage facility.
"These were items brought by the prisoners, and prisoners tried to hide valuables inside them, that's why they were ripped and torn and cut on arrival at Auschwitz," says Kamil Będkowski.
An expert in resorting and preserving paintings, he passionately explains that the museum had no one to turn to regarding techniques for preserving '20th Century objects'.
Every suitcase is a different size, shape, colour and texture – individual, like the owner who carried it to Auschwitz and their death. Source: @BrettMasonNews
"These are not works of art,” he explains.
“These are everyday objects, but at Auschwitz many everyday objects – like a toothbrush - are of special value that we need to restore and keep for future generations, and it's very hard to even find any suggestions, ways of conserving modern plastics. In this way our work is pioneering, unheard of.”
My visit today has been long and surreal.
As I walk through Oświęcim trying to process all that I have seen, I stumble across a group of young locals laughing as they throw snowballs.
Watching the children cheekily dart across the snow, I realise the true significance of the work being carried out at the museum a few hundred metres down the road – it is to preserve the story of the holocaust so that these young boys and girls will never forget the individual lives lost and forever changed in their village, and to safeguard them – and all others – by ensuring the horrors that happened here are never repeated.
It’s hard to imagine a more important or pressing job and it’s happening right now, brick by brick, in a snow sodden village in Poland.
"It's never ending,” Mr Będkowski tells me.
“Auschwitz-Birkenau is a never ending project."
One of the twelve-member conservation crews working to restore Birkeanu Barracks Block 7, in former camp BIb. Source: @BrettMasonNews
