Auschwitz-Birkenau was known not only as a concentration and labor camp, but also as an extermination camp, which started operating in 1942.

The rail road entrance to Auschwitz-Birkenau was known as the Gate of Death. Through this gate, trains from all parts of occupied Europe came in bringing the prisoners who, in their majority, would be assassinated in the gas chambers. It was here that the victims of the largest extermination center in the Nazi system would start their trajectory.

After passing through the gate, the trains would stop by a ramp where the Nazis select those who would go to forced labor and those who would go straight away to the gas chambers. May and June 1944 had the highest numbers of prisoners assassinated an average of 10.000 per day, mostly Hungarian Jews come from the ghetto of Budapest.