News

Bunker No. 1 Will Be Commemorated. This first provisional gas chamber in Birkenau

Work is under way to prepare for the commemoration of the site where, in 1942, the so-called "Little Red House" was located. This first provisional gas chamber was set up in a vacant farmhouse in the village of Brzezinka, from which the residents had been expelled. The Nazis killed thousands of people at this site. In 1943, after four new gas chambers with crematoria had gone into operation, the Germans tore down the "Little Red House."

Like many other places and building connected with the history of Auschwitz Concentration Camp, this site lay outside the boundaries of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial. The owners of the property erected a new house at the site of the gas chamber in 1955. Only this year was it possible to purchase the farm and relocate the occupants. Teams of Museum technicians demolished the vacant structure and planted over the site. There are plans to fence off the site and commemorate it in an appropriate way next spring. Marcello Pezzetti, head of the Center for Jewish Documentation in Milan, generously aided the Museum in this project, and funding was donated by Richard Prasquier, chairman of the French Yad Vashem Committee.