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AUSCHWITZ:
Technique
and Operation
of
the Gas Chambers © |
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Page 179 |
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State of the site at the
liberation of the camp, as recorded
by the
Soviet Commission
The two drawings [Documents 10 and
11] presented come from the Moscow "October Revolution" Central
State Archives. The references are not known. They were drawn at the beginning
of March 1945 by a Pole for the Soviet investigation commission that started
work immediately on the liberation of the Auschwitz camp.
The first
drawing [Document 10] is an overall plan of the western part of K.G.L.
Birkenau, where there were six extermination points: Krematorien II, III, IV
and V and Bunkers 1 and 2/V. While the location of five of them, of which ruins
remain, is physically defined, this is not the case with Bunker 1. The drawing
locates it approximately seven hundred meters northwest of B.A. III. Present
knowledge would now situate it rather in the proximity of the northwest corner
of B.A. III and the location of its cremation pits would be in the wood which
borders it to the west as shown on the drawing. Entirety dismantled by the SS,
Bunker 1 can no longer be precisely situated.
The second drawing
[Document 11] shows in detail the area around Bunker 2/V. Its four gas
chambers are shown as running southwest/northeast, whereas in reality the
remains of the foundations and the drawing attached to Szlam[y] Dragon's
deposition of 10th May 1945, indicate southeast/northwest. It seems that the
draughtsman made an error of orientation. Today, of all this there only remain
the original foundations of the house that was fitted with four primitive gas
chambers and the cement outlines, built by the Auschwitz Museum to show the
location of the two undressing huts. The drawing shows a cremation ditch of
30m² (7m long by 4.3m wide) as having been in activity. The survey, made a
little more than a month after the liberation of the camp, faithfully records
the state in which the premises were abandoned. Not having been destroyed,
except for the house that had contained the gas chambers, the installation was
almost certainly as it was in the summer of 1944, at the moment of the
Hungarian extermination, when it was designated Bunker V.
This document
makes it possible to appreciate the validity of Chapter Thirteen of
"Auschwitz: a Doctor’s eyewitness account" by Dr. Miklos
Nyiszli. Nyiszli slightly overestimates the distance separating Bunker V from
Krematorium V (his “number four”), five or six hundred meters instead
of three or four hundred meters. He correctly describes the path for getting
there, the clearing surrounded by the forest with, in the center, the old
farmhouse then used as an undressing room. An auxiliary means of extermination,
Bunker V was according to Nyisli, used only to eliminate: “The surplus
from the Jewish ramp ... ...that is, those for whom there was no room in the
four crematoriums”, a surplus representing a “terrified crowd of
about 5,000 souls”, led in groups of three to four hundred at a time into
the house to undress, the victims emerged naked and were propelled towards two
pits “fifty yards long, six yards wide and three yards deep”, killed
by a shot in the back of the neck and thrown into one of the two pits. While
these murders without gassing and the sequence of operations are confirmed by
other witnesses, the fact remains that Nyiszli’s figures are
worrying.
Nyiszli considers that the “surplus of a convoy” was
5,000 people, while this number represents in fact the greater part of a single
convoy (the average being 5,400). Part of this number would be declared fit for
work and enter the camp, while those declared unfit were destined to die.
Krematorien II and III could “absorb” about 3,000 “unfit”
per day; Krematorium V about 1,000; the rest or “surplus” were sent
to Bunker 2/V. A “surplus” would more probably be 200 to 300 people,
If the state of the site on 3rd March 1945 corresponded to that of summer 1944,
which is more than likely, the TWO ditches of 300m² described by Nyiszli,
would be reduced to A SINGLE ONE of 30m². A pit of this size is more
compatible with the incineration of 200 to 300 people than 5,000. |
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| Document 10 |
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Translation of
inscriptions: (top to bottom and left to right)
PLAN D'ENSEMBLE /
Plan of the area:
Location of the Krematorien, gas chambers and corpse
incineration ditches
Scale 1:5000
Scale 1:10000
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EXPLICATIONS /
Key: |
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1:
Krematorium |
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2: Gas chamber
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3: Corpse
incineration site |
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Hatched
areas: incineration zones |
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Dotted
areas: marshland |
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Trees: wooded areas |
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PLAN DE SITUATION /
Location drawing |
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Based on survey
Drawn [by]: [signature]
Auschwitz, 3rd March 1945 |
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AUSCHWITZ:
Technique and operation
of the gas
chambers
Jean-Claude Pressac
© 1989, The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation |
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