efficiency of crematoria furnaces / Stop denial / Auschwitz-Birkenau

"The crematoria did not have the capacity to burn such a large number of corpses"

Some negationist publications claim that the KL Auschwitz crematoria would have been unable to cremate as many corpses as indicated in historical data.

The facts:

The official SS calculation of the capacities of the crematoria was based on the assumption that each cremation retort (chamber) would be able to cremate two adult males within 30 minutes.

Framework programme for the expansion of the Birkenau soviet POW camp from 1941 presuming the construction of a crematorium (II) including 15 cremation retorts, each with an estimated capacity to cremate four bodies (of adult males) in an hour. This provided the possibility of cremating 1,440 bodies a day (15 retorts x 4 bodies x 24 hours). Source: Archives of Auschwitz Museum

In their postwar testimonies, some former Sonderkommando prisoners stated that there were higher numbers of cremated corpses, due to the fact the gas chamber victims were mostly women and small children whose bodies took up less space. Therefore, precise calculations are impossible. It should moreover be noted that on average smaller numbers of Jews arrived in Auschwitz, and on some days, there were no transports at all. On the other hand, when large deportations of Jews arrived (from the Dąbrowa Basin ghettos, Łódź and especially Hungary) and more people were killed in the gas chamber than the crematorium ovens could burn, the SS repeatedly resorted to burn corpses on open-air cremation pyres.

Drawing by former KL Auschwitz Sonderkommando prisoner, Davida Olère, showing prisoners crushing burnt human bones. Source: Mémorial de la Shoah, Paris (France).

Sonderkommando prisoners at work – loading of corpses into the furnace. Drawing by David Olère, former Sonderkommando prisoner. Source: Mémorial de la Shoah, Paris (France).

Henryk Mandelbaum’s video account:

‘Once they had undressed, took their belongings with: a bar of soap and toothbrush, a comb and towel, they just went to get washed. Upon entering the shower room, they saw these fake showerheads. At first glance, the people thought that this was a genuine bathhouse, that they would get washed and go to work. The whole transport had to fit into the chamber, and when three-quarters or just half of them were there, individuals began to realise that there were too many people in the bathhouse. There was no water, something was wrong. In the centre, there was murmuring, people started to talk. Why was there no water? Some were praying. When they wanted to withdraw from the gas chamber, the staff would not let them, they beat them over the head with truncheons. They slammed the door, the gas chamber was closed. Each one of them was equipped with a square inlet with a grated guard. From the ambulance – the one that drove with each transport, the one that carried the Zyklon – they took tins of Zyklon in twos, depending on how many people there would be in that chamber. They would empty these tins into the bunker inlet, it lasted 20-30 minutes. The Zyklon had such properties, that the people in the bunker had no fresh air. There were so many of them there, everyone was breathing, and this created moisture. It was due to this moisture that the Zyklon dissolved and vapourised. Closed in this chamber, the people wanted to breathe and inadvertently inhaled the Zyklon. They wanted the air and breathed the gas in. Thus, within 20-30 minutes they died. Once they were gassed, and we had opened the door, we could see that people had died standing up. There were so many of them in that bunker that they died standing up. We had to separate them because some had died holding hands.

In the crematoria, some of us dragged the bodies to the lift, taking the corpses up. We collected them from the lift. There was a funnel carved in the concrete along which we dragged the bodies to the ovens. Each oven had two rollers. There were also stretchers. We put the stretchers on the rollers, placed four bodies on each stretcher and pushed them into the oven.’

Source: A-BSMA, testimony recorded on 3rd of March 2000 in Gliwice.

Excerpt from the account of Alter Fajnzylberg:

‘People sent die entered crematorium V from the side where the road was (crematorium IV). The first chamber they entered was the vestibule, from which they were directed to the right 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. 1500-2000 people were crammed into the chamber, men, women and children. Once the door was closed, one of the SS men poured the contents of two Zyklon B tins through an opening in a side wall (from the side of crematorium IV). […] 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 already been removed. There the corpses were arranged in layers and gradually burned in the ovens. […] Three corpses on a stretcher with rollers were pushed into each of the oven’s openings. 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. […] Every two weeks, SS doctors came to the undressing room and cut out muscles from the corpses, which they put into clay jars filled with some disinfectant fluid. They cut out muscles from the corpses of men and women alike, but only those who had been shot, not those who had died from the gas. Executions were also carried out in the undressing room. There were three gas chambers, though the last one was used the most. The other two were only used when all the people could not fit into the last one. […] The SS men used gas masks when they poured in the gas, but we did not use gas masks even though the chamber was aired for a very short time, around 15 minutes. For this reason, there were cases of cyanide daze.Source: Alter Fajnzylberg, ASMA-B, Oświadczenia [Testimonies], vol. 113, pp. 3-7.