The Gas Chambers of Auschwitz!
The Gas Chambers & Crematoria
Mass Extermination
A special commission of doctors arrived in Auschwitz Concentration Camp on 28 July 1941, and select unfit prisoners mostly from Block 15 to be murdered in one of the Euthanasia killing centres.
Dr Horst Schumann, the director of the Euthanasia Centre at Sonnenstein, is one of the members of this commission.
Altogether 573 inmates, mostly Polish prisoners are selected, and two brutal Capos join the transport at the last moment. Ernst Krankemann, Capo of the road construction squad, and Johann Siegruth, the one-armed head Capo of the Lumber- yard.
Krankemann is murdered during the trip, Siegruth committed suicide, the rest were gassed at Sonnenstein euthanasia centre, in a bathroom where carbon monoxide gas was introduced through the showerheads.
In late August 1941 Lagerfuhrer Karl Fritzsch uses the gas Zyklon B to kill Russian Prisoners of War in the cellar of Block 11.
On 3 September 1941 following the success of the experimental gassing, the experiment was repeated in the cellar of Block 11.
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Corpses of prisoners in block 11 as discovered by Soviet war crimes investigators |
In the bunker they are crammed together in a few cells. The cellar windows are blocked up with earth. Then about 600 Russian POW’s officers, and political commissars are driven into the cellar. As soon as they are pushed into the cells the SS men threw in the Zyklon B gas, the doors were locked and sealed.
On 4 September 1941 Roll-Call leader Gerhard Palitzsch protected by a gas mask opens the doors and discovers that one of the POW’s is still alive. More Zyklon B is poured and the doors are closed once more.
On 5 September the prisoners of the penal colony and the orderlies of the camp hospital were summoned and taken to the courtyard of Block 11, for “special work”.
They were then ordered to don gas masks and taken down to the cellar where the gassing had been carried out. Thence they had to carry the bodies up to the courtyard, strip them of their military uniforms and then transport them to the crematorium.
On 16 September 1941 900 Russian Prisoners of War are gassed in the morgue of the crematorium, and Commandant Hoss described this in his memoirs.
“While the transport was detraining, holes were pierced in the earth and concrete ceiling of the mortuary. The Russians were ordered to undress in an anteroom, then they quietly entered the mortuary, for they had been told they were to be deloused.
Read the full story here: http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/othercamps/auschwitzgaschambers.html
The Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team
www.HolocaustResearchProject.org
