Before we visit the ruins of Krematorium II, and the scope of death hard to imagine; step inside a model which shows what it actually looked like. This is a plaster model of one of the two largest crematoria and gas chambers in the Nazi concentrationary universe.
in a response to an email about visiting and taking photos at Auschwitz, he suggests stopping your Tour, and sit still for a minute:
Alan Jacobs in 1979, the year he first visited Auschwitz.
“Look we go in there warm, well fed, with clean toilet facilities taken as a matter of course, with the ability to sit down and rest, this in contrast to the killing labor.
So why should it be so difficult? Well the first time it is for most people as it was for me. But then, if you really want to know more, go back to Krakow for a day or two, eat, sleep drink, wear clean clothes… all that, and then go back and sit at the entrance to Krematorium II, Birkenau.
Sit on the top step leading to the undressing room. Just sit. It is very quiet back there, apart from the roaring of the past millions.
Sit there for a while, calm down and think about why this happened.”
Krematorium II in Birkenau Model
Krematorium II operated from March 31, 1943 to November 27, 1944. A wartime Allied aerial reconnaissance photo shows it when active. To the left are the undressing rooms with numbered pegs with hooks on the wall and prisoners told to remember them after the disinfecting shower.
From the undressing room they went into the gas chamber. After evacuation from the gas chamber the bodies were taken by lift to the crematorium on the first floor.Then they were cremated in the ovens. Both Krematoria II, and III had the capacity to burn 1440 corpses a day.
“The crematorium is a big building with a wide chimney and 15 ovens. Under a garden there are two enormous cellars. One is where people undress and the other is the death chamber. People enter it naked and once about 3,000 are inside it is locked and they are gassed. After six or seven minutes of suffering they die,” Marcel Nadjari – took part in the preparation of the Sonderkommando uprising.
