"The rooms in the crematoria at Birkenau were used exclusively for disinfection"

Negationist publications often propagate false information, claiming that the chambers in Birkenau crematoria were exclusively disinfection chambers, where no people were ever killed.

Facts:

The previous chapter mentioned the existence of chambers in Auschwitz which were used to disinfect prisoner clothes, for instance. They were introduced after the outbreak of an epidemic that affected not only the inmates but also SS personnel. To address this problem, the SS authorities decided to improve sanitary conditions in the camp. Among other things by disinfecting clothes and living quarters.

The so-called ’Sauna‘ in Birkenau sector BIb, which included disinfection chambers that used Zyklon B. The part of the building where a disinfection gas chamber was located is marked by the red frame. Source: Auschwitz Museum.

Interior of a sector BIa building where a disinfection chamber was operating. Source: Auschwitz Museum

The gas-tight door of the block 1 disinfection chamber, Auschwitz concentration camp. Source: Auschwitz Museum.

 

Moreover, it is worth noting that in July 1943 (i.e. at a time when all the Birkenau crematoria had been built) the Zentralbauleitung (the camp’s construction department) issued to the central authorities in Berlin a full list of the locations of all the disinfection chambers in the camp. None of these disinfection chambers were located in any of the crematoria:

A list prepared by the KL Auschwitz construction department in mid-1943 includes all the disinfection installations operating in the camp. The following were listed: KL Auschwitz item 1, two disinfection chambers in block 1, as well as chambers in blocks 3 and 26. In a sub-item for this part of the camp, a disinfection chamber in the DAW plant (i.e. the ‘Canada I’ warehouses) and installations in the civilian worker’s camp. In Birkenau, the list mentions three disinfection chambers in sectors BIa and b, a complex of disinfection chambers in BIIg (the so-called ‘Central Sauna’) as well as a disinfection chamber in sector BIIe (the Roma camp). In addition, there is information about the planned installation of disinfection chambers using electromagnetic waves and five disinfection chambers for the disinfection of the clothes for the SS-men. Source: Archives of the Auschwitz Museum.

 

Another, closely related claim made by Holocaust deniers, stating that the gas chambers in crematoria II, III, IV and V also used Zyklon B for disinfection and not to kill people, is equally untrue.

Gas chamber and crematorium no. II. Source: Archives of Auschwitz Museum.

Letter from the Auschwitz Zentralbauleitung dated 28th June 1943 to the head of the SS construction department in Berlin, SS-Brigadeführer Hans Kammler, informing that the maximum daily output of all the crematoria in KL Auschwitz was 4,756 ‘persons’ (Personen), which – multiplied by 30 days – gave a monthly total of 142,680 corpses. The average monthly death rate in remaining German concentration camps, where prisoners died at the time for various reasons, was many times lower. For example, in July 1943, a total of 43 prisoners died in KL Dachau, 194 in KL Sachsenhausen, 118 in KL Buchenwald, and 290 in KL Mauthausen. Source: Archives of the Auschwitz Museum.

 

Excerpt from the account of Alter Fajnzylberg:

‘… I was assigned to work in crematoria IV and V. … The extermination process was executed as follows. People sent to die entered crematorium V from the road. The first chamber they approached was the vestibule, subsequently they turned right and passed through a door leading to the undressing room. Everything was carried out in a hurry, with the SS guards constantly beating people, so that they had no time to get their bearings and see what was happening around them. In the large undressing room, Kommandoführer Moll sometimes spoke to those gathered, announcing that they would be bathed and disinfected. After undressing, the people were again beaten and herded back to the vestibule, and thence to the gas chamber. Once the door was closed, one of the SS men poured the Zyklon granules through an opening in a side wall. He had to stand on a stool to reach the opening. The lower side of the opening slanted downwards into the gas chamber. The gas chamber had a normal ceiling and was plastered and painted white. There were doors to the gas chamber: one from the vestibule and one from the outside. The gassing lasted around half an hour. After that, the inside door was opened and once the chamber was aired, which lasted a short time, the Sonderkommando prisoners dragged the corpses back into the undressing room, from where all the clothes had been removed previously. It was here that corpses were stacked in layers, one on top of the other, and then gradually pulled away to be burned in the ovens. From the undressing room, the corpses were dragged towards the ovens via two small chambers to the right and the left of the chimney. In these small chambers, the prisoners extracted teeth with precious metals, removed any jewellery and put it all into a special 1-metre-high container with a closed lid that had an open slot to throw these items in. Every so often, the SS men took the container away to a facility in crematorium III, where these items were melted. […] Three corpses were put on stretchers moving on rollers into each furnace. Practically, once the furnaces were fully heated up, the heat of the burning corpses alone kept the cremation process going for whole weeks. We crushed the charred remains of bones in the ashes with wooden pounders with planks attached to their heads to increase the impact surface area. Crematorium V was camouflaged from the road by an improvised fence of branches held up by wires stretched between trees and wooden [missing word]. People being sent to death would undress in between this fence and the crematorium whenever the undressing room was not yet emptied. One of the three photographs, known as the resistance movement photographs, showing women walking naked from the grove was taken by us, i.e. Alex, the Greek Jew, myself and others, from the vestibule leading to the gas chamber. The two other photographs, showing corpses lying in front of smoking pits were taken from within the gas chamber. We took these three pictures with a camera provided to us by Dawid Szmulewski. The camera came from the baggage of victims, and it had only three unexposed frames left. Szmulewski later took the negative film, and I buried the camera near the crematorium. […] The cremation pits, which had an enormous capacity, were located several dozen metres away to the west of crematorium V. There were two pits, both with a capacity to fit about 2,000 corpses. The bodies were laid on top of wood in layers, alternately of the bodies of men and women because they burned better that way. The corpses of children were also burned there. The cremation pits burned simultaneously with the furnaces. Trenches were dug next to the pits for the outflow of human fat, but I did not see any fat collecting there – the corpses must have been burned through in their entirety. The gas chamber had no mechanical ventilation system, nor did it have any imitation showerheads. Initially, imitation showerheads were installed, but people would pull them off, so this was discontinued. …’

Source: ASMA-B, Zespół Oświadczenia [Testimonies], vol. 113, pp. 1–7.

 

Excerpt from the account of Hilde Denneberg:

‘…When we arrived in Auschwitz, we were immediately selected on the ramp. There, I noticed a prisoner employed in one of the Kommandos who kept whispering to the new arrivals: ’You’re young and healthy! You’re young and healthy! You’re young and healthy! ’ Initially, we did not know what he meant. But later we understood it. Whoever was old and sick went from the ramp to the gas. All the children, all the mothers with children, and all the pregnant women went down the ramp to the gas. Here, I also lost my friend.’

Source: ASMA-B, Hilda Denneberg, Zespół Oświadczenia [Testimonies], vol. 6, p. 921.

 

Stanisław Chybiński’s account

‘We often observed them, secretly from the windows. These people walked in single file, quite oblivious to anything, calmly. The men proceeded at the front, behind them the women and at the very end the mothers with children, leading them by their tiny hands, holding them in their arms or pushing them in prams like on an evening stroll.

Seeing this, it was simply hard to believe that these people were proceeding in long columns to their deaths, such horrible deaths. Over time, the columns became too large for the immediate absorption capacity of our crematorium. Then some of the people were marched back to the camp, and thence in the nighttime they were taken to the ‘bathhouse’.

Source: ASMA-B, Stanisław Chybiński, Mat. RO, vol. VB, p. 356.

 

Maria Żumańska’s account:

‘From our camp, we could observe the unloading on the ramp. When a train arrived, the people were thrown out of the wagons. […] During the unloading, the SS guards often beat people mercilessly, pushing them, and mocking them, with no regard for the elderly or small children. The newcomers were lined up in fives, and the procession extended along the tracks, from the crematorium to the start of sector B. The people were very thirsty. We saw them trying to drink water from the fire-fighting pool between the barbed wire fence and the road where they stood. They lay down on the ground, and because the water level was so low in the pool, some of them fell in and drowned, while others paid no attention to this and continued to drink the water.

In many cases, no selections were carried out for some of the people to go to work. We saw these people enter the crematorium and seemingly disappear underground. They vanished in batches, and the rest moved forward, awaiting their turn. Once all of them had descended into the crematorium basement, a giant pile of belongings (suitcases and other baggage) appeared before our eyes, as tall as the wagons and stretching along the entire length of the train. These things the prisoners loaded onto trucks to be transported to ‘Canada’.

Source: ASMA-B, Maria Żumańska, Zespół Oświadczenia [Testimony], vol. 4, p. 418.