Prague, July 13 (CTK) – Students of programming at a vocational school in Prague have completed a computer 3D model of Auschwitz (Oswiecim), the wartime Nazi extermination camp, including scenes from the camp life and some premises that are unaccessible to the public, the daily Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) reported.
About 30 third- and four-graders have been working on the model for one year now.
The otherwise unaccessible places the model offers include the camp’s number 10 building where doctor Carl Clauberg performed sterilisation tests on 400 women, and Bloc 2, a former inmates’ dormitory where a part of the original equipment has been preserved.
The project also shows a reconstruction of Crematory II that the Nazis destroyed before leaving the camp in January 1945, the daily writes.
“We based its model on documents and pictures made by the inmates. We created replicas of the cremators and gas chambers… The model also includes an autopsy room used by [infamous Nazi doctor] Josef Mengele,” the school head teacher Radko Sablik said.
The crematory that visitors can see in the Polish museum now is smaller, but still the Germans killed about 10,000 people there.
A total of up to 1.3 million inmates died in Auschwitz.
The 3D model shows a number of details, pieces of technical equipment, designs and scenes from various parts of the camp which the students created based on preserved pictures by former prisoners, using the programme that was also used by the animators of Shrek, a popular Hollywood film.
The author of many of the pictures was David Olere, a painter by profession, who spoke more languages and the Nazis used him as an interpreter in the Auschwitz II (Birkenau) crematory.
The students also carefully made models of the train carriages in which prisoners arrived in the camp, of a Mercedes car used by the Nazi wardens, and created painful scenes from the selection of prisoners and from the crematory.
“The students were aware of this part of history, but a visit to Oswiecim strongly affected them,” Sablik said.
The models of the Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II camps are noteworthy for carefully following reality.
“We cooperated with the museum in Oswiecim where we gained some material. We went there and our students toured the [former camp] buildings, photographed and made laser measurements,” Sablik said.
One of the project’s goals is to serve as a warning to some debaters on social networks.
“We wanted to tell people: watch out, something like that may repeat if we failed to learn a lesson from the past,” Sablik is quoted as saying.
The project has its website which also offers texts about the camp’s history and short documentary film made by the students, the daily writes.
