Just reflect for 30 seconds on the photograph above. It depicts the nail scratch lines on the walls of a gas chamber at Auschwitz. It is easy to imagine the sheer terror and panic of the victims as the gas started pouring in through the ventilation shafts. The hoary maxim, a picture can paint a thousand words is appropriate here.
Visualise in your mind’s eye their last thoughts about their children, about their loved ones, about how precious life is before they collapse and convulse in agony as they gasp for breath. With the last remnant of strength, some even try to prize open the sturdy doors but to no avail.
Finally nobody is left standing. They are writhing on the cold concrete floor of what is to become their death bed. As their lives ebb away, the most pious chant a silent prayer and some even forgive their killers and tormentors.
Then it is quiet. Not a sound is heard. Nothing moves. Everything is motionless: a striking testament to man’s inhumanity to man.
This is the culmination of the warped misanthropic vision of one brooding soulless individual and his morbid psyche: Adolph Hitler.
San Jose police Sgt. Rick Delisser watches over a man who says he is the older brother of a homicide victim
Child saves his beloved pet during a flood
Two-week-old baby rescued from rubble in Syria
Nothing can compare to a child’s innocence and imagination
Polish heart surgeon Zbigniew Religa after a 23-hour heart transplantation, which was successful. His assistant is sleeping in the corner
An emotional soldier is comforted during the Korean war
Forest wildfire threatens all living things
Fallen Canadian soldier Nathan Cirillo’s dogs wait patiently for his return, unaware that he won’t be coming home
Woman crying in the middle of the wreckage caused by a massive earthquake and tsunami in Natori, Japan, March 2011
Woman’s reaction upon learning of her liberation at a concentration camp in 1945
He Xiuling, 25, from Xiantao, Hubei Province in China, was sentenced to death for smuggling 7,000 grams of drugs. In this image, she is waiting to be executed
In southwest China’s Sichuan Province, a dog refuses to leave its dead companion
What a sunset view looks like from Mars
In 2012, Greg Cook reunited with his dog Coco after a tornado demolished his home in Alabama
A couple’s final embrace during the tragic eight-story Rana Plaza building collapse in Bangladesh
Young cancer patient envisions herself with hair
Theodore Roosevelt’s diary entry the day he lost both his wife and mother
This is one of the most powerful pictures from the Iraq war: a trembling eight-year-old being handed a folded flag at his father’s funeral
An old woman contemplates her life while a pianist plays classical music in Santa Monica, California
A stray kitten begging to be taken home
Heartbreaking picture of Lesleigh Coyer, 25, of Saginaw, Michigan as she lies in front of her brothers grave
Firefighter David Tree shares his water with an injured Australian Koala at Mirboo North after wildfires swept through the region
Homeless man in Los Angeles holds “hungry” sign while guy sitting next to him scarfs down his pizza
This bomb-detecting dog was buried with full honors in 2000 after saving thousands of lives
In 1980 Mike Wells took this powerful photograph of a missionary holding the hand of a starving Ugandan boy
Young girl reaches out to embrace her dead father.
