The State Museum Of Auschwitz-Birkenau & Remember.Org Present

Auschwitz Krematorium 1

Enter Auschwitz Krematorium 1 and take the tour with videos below – the top 3 are the Original Auschwitz Virtual Tour. Below those are the same 3 videos with captions and art.

At the bottom of the page are text descriptions of what you see, with details and historical information and much more.

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Auschwitz Krematorium 1

The first crematorium in Auschwitz.

The door below the chimney is the entrance to the gas chamber.

The building was converted from an old munitions bunker to a crematorium, circa July 5, 1940.

Scrolling you see the SS hospital.

Further to the right is a street that ends at the admissions building (see map), and to its right maintenance building and workshops.

Still further is a parking lot for people who work in the Memorial.

All photos and videos are Copyright Alan Jacobs and Remember.org.

Auschwitz Krematorium 1 Gas Chamber
Victims were led in through the door at the front left.

To the right and near the top edge of the photo, is another post-war reconstruction.

Notice the rectangular dark area, one of the ceiling openings through which the “Zyklon B” blue crystals were poured from the rooftop by SS guards wearing gas masks as they were immediately activated on release from their canisters.

Scrolling to another doorway, you catch a glimpse of the furnace room.

The poisonous agent, “Zyklon B”, was used in Germany before and during the war for disinfection and pest extermination in ships, buildings and machinery.

In Auschwitz it was used exclusively for sanitation and pest control until the end August of 1941.

From that time it was also used as an agent of mass annihilation, first experimentally (on Russian POW’s) and then routinely.

Zyklon B consisted of diatomite, in granules the size of fine peas saturated with prussic acid.

In view of its volatility and the associated risk of accidental poisoning, it was supplied to the camp in sealed metal canisters.

The Zyklon used at Auschwitz was produced by the firm Degesch (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Schädlingsbekämpfung mbH), with headquarters in Frankfurt am Main and forming a part of IG Farbenindustrie.

Zyklon B painting by Geoffrey Laurence

Copyright All Rights Reserved.

All photos and videos are Copyright Alan Jacobs and Remember.org.

Auschwitz Krematorium 1 Furnace

Two sets of furnaces where bodies were burned.

The device at the oven mouth is mounted on rails and used to push the bodies into the flames.

Scroll and look through the door to the gas chamber (see Krematorium 1 Gas Chambers, Video #2 on this page and described above).

After gassing, prisoners workers called Sonderkommando (special workers), men who were forced on pain of death to do this work, carried or dragged the bodies to the rail carts that were used to push the bodies into the ovens.

Scrolling around you see some of the devices used for another oven no longer there.

This was an early version of the industrial mass production methods used for murdering countless souls.

As you will see in the Birkenau exhibition (see Birkenau Map), the Nazis were to greatly improve the size and efficiency of their mass destruction methods.

All photos and videos are Copyright Alan Jacobs and Remember.org.

More Virtual Tour of Auschwitz