News
Water Seepage in the Crematorium
Preservation work began several weeks ago on the Crematorium I building at the site of the Auschwitz I Main Camp. The walls were extremely vulnerable to water leakage. Any hard rain resulted in the seepage of water into the building, damaging its structure. The waterproofing work now underway, scheduled for completion by the end of January, will dry the walls and protect the building against seepage.
The building is well over 60 years old. It was erected before the Second World War and served as an ammunition bunker for the 73rd Polish Infantry Regiment and the 21st Light Cavalry Regiment when they were stationed at the site that the Germans later adapted as a concentration camp.
After opening the camp, the Germans used the structure as a crematorium and morgue. From the autumn of 1941 through the autumn of 1942, they used the morgue as the first gas chamber in Auschwitz Concentration Camp. After the gigantic crematoria and gas chambers went into operation in Birkenau in 1943, the Main Camp gas chamber was turned into storage space for pharmaceutical items used in the nearby SS hospital. The furnaces and chimneys, unused for a year, were dismantled in 1944, and the building readapted as an air-raid shelter for the SS.
The Germans demolished the other six gas chambers before vacating the camp in January 1945.
