Auschwitz-Birkenau

Not one camp but two, to perfect the industry of death.

A matrix almost on a human scale, Auschwitz, where the victims were so close to their executioners that they came to know one another - if their time in the camp spared them for at least a few months (900,000 of the 1.1 million deportees did not survive more than three hours after arriving at the two camps...).

And a concentration-camp Leviathan, Birkenau, conceived, built, organised to speed up the “output” in the madness of the extermination project, straight from the train to the gas chamber.

As certain psychological experiments have shown, the distance from horror shrinks little by little if no one stops the fall, until the moral barrier can no longer stand.

It began gently - while there was still time to halt the gestation of the serpent’s egg.

Once it had hatched, it was too late. Even if the world knew.

PS: To photograph is to speak without words. The colour photos are transitions. No one can hold their breath for too long...