Page 29 - Witness
P. 29
BIRKENAU
This is all that remains of Birkenau Crematorium No. 4, destroyed by Jewish Sonderkommando in the uprising of October 7, 1944.
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In the spring of 1943, the SS completed four new crematoria in Birkenau. Although constructed to burn two corpses at once, in practice, however – according to testimony by inmates and by Auschwitz Camp Commander Rudolf Höss – this number was often exceeded. At times in the summer of 1944, during the height of the destruction of Hungarian Jews, more than 9,000 people were killed daily. At these times the incineration capacity of the ovens no longer sufficed.
The duty of the Sonderkommando (a special detachment of mainly Jewish prisoners) was to remove bodies from the gas chambers and operate the crematoria. Women prisoners who worked in a munitions factory smuggled gunpowder into the camp and passed it to the Sonderkommando for use in the uprising.
