THE GAS CHAMBERS

The gas chambers, designed by the SS architects and approved by Berlin, and the ovens, manufactured by the engineering company "Topf & Sons" according to SS guidelines, were located in the very heart of the Auschwitz killing factory. The crematoria were separated from the rest of the compound in which the prisoners worked as slave labor and under the direct orders of the political department of Auschwitz (the camp Gestapo). A few dozens of soldiers from the SS were in charge. Prisoners assigned to the Sonderkommando (special command that performed tasks such as collecting bodies) were relieved in twelve-hour shifts. In each crematorium there were twenty of them in the room where the victims were to be forced to strip naked , ten in charge of emptying the gas chamber, six cutting hair and collecting the gold teeth of the dead, six loading the bodies into the freight elevator that connected the ground floor with the basement, and eight feeding the fire in the ovens and filling them with bodies.

Iñaki Mur. Gas chambers (CC0)

During the summer of 1944, when the Hungarian trains arrived at Auschwitz, the SS tripled the number of Sonderkommando members in order to cope with the additional work. The executions were supervised by SS doctors, who ordered their subordinates to bring the Zyklon B into the gas chambers and, after the prisoners died, gave permission for the doors to be opened.

Iñaki Mur. Zyklon B (CC0)