Holes on ceiling of Auschwitz
gas chamber
View of Auschwitz gas
chamber, as seen from the entrance
The Krema I gas chamber in the Auschwitz
main camp has four reconstructed holes in the ceiling through
which Zyklon-B gas pellets could have been poured into the room.
You can see one of the holes in the upper left-hand corner of
the photo above. The reconstructed hole is just in front of the
reconstructed doorway into the oven room. The present doorway
is a few feet to the right of where the original doorway was
located. The originial gas chamber, before it was reconstructed
in 1947, had the wall of a washroom to the left of the door into
the oven room.
A hole on the left side of the ceiling
in the reconstructed gas chamber is shown in the photo below.
Reconstructed hole
in ceiling of gas chamber
Close-up of another
ceiling hole on left side of gas chamber
In the photo below, you can see another
hole in the ceiling on the left side of the room. This is probably
the opening for a ventilation chimney which was added when the
building was converted into an air raid shelter in 1944.
Hole in ceiling of
gas chamber on left side
Hole in ceiling can
be seen on the right hand side
In the photo above, one of the holes
in the ceiling can be seen on the right hand side. The photo
below is a close-ups of one of the reconstructed holes in the
ceiling on the right side. On the roof of the building, the holes
are covered with a wooden lid, which you can see in the photo.
Hole for pouring Zyklon-B
gas pellets into gas chamber
According to Franciszek Piper, the director
of the Auschwitz Museum, the Zyklon-B gas pellets were poured
through the holes on the roof by one SS man who opened the lids
of the openings on the roof of the building, one at a time. The
pellets were just poured onto the heads of the victims, not into
a wire basket from which they could be retrieved, as the manufacturer
recommended.
The photo below shows a gas input device
that was provided by the Degesch company which produced the Zyklon-B
pellets. This photo was taken in one of the four disinfection
chambers at Dachau where clothing was deloused with Zyklon-B.
This device automatically opened a can of Zyklon-B and dumped
the gas pellets into a wire basket.
Gas input device provided
by Degesch company
After the gassing was completed in the
Auschwitz main camp, the room had to be aired out by opening
the doors, since there was no ventilator, according to Piper.
However, Piper did acknowledge, in an article in the book "Anatomy
of the Auschwitz Death Camp," that a ventilator was added
later according to the testimony of Michael Kula at the trial
of Rudolf Hoess in Poland. The ventilator is no longer in existence
today.
This page was last updated on June 1,
2009
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