Ruins of Krema IV
Krema IV was blown
up by the inmates on October 7, 1944
The Ruins of Krema
IV are a reconstruction
View of Krema IV with
Krema V in the background behind the trees
The spot where the
clothing warehouses once stood
Krema IV was located just north of the
clothing warehouses, which were in a section that the prisoners
called Canada. Across the road from Canada was the Central Sauna
which had a shower room and disinfection chambers where the prisoners'
clothing was deloused. Krema IV had a fake shower room which
was actually a gas chamber.
According to Michael J. Neufeld and Michael
Berenbaum, in their book entitled "The Bombing of Auschwitz:
Should the Allies Have Attempted It?" the Krema IV and Krema
V buildings were 220 feet long by 42 feet wide.
The Krema IV building was completely
demolished, blown up with dynamite which several women prisoners
stole from the factory where they were working. All the bricks
were removed by Polish civilians after the war, and the ruins
that visitors see today are a reconstruction, according to the
The prisoners who worked in the crematory
buildings, removing the bodies of the victims who had been gassed,
were members of a special group called the Sonderkommando. According
to Dr. Miklos Nyiszli, a prisoner who did autopsies at Birkenau,
each Sonderkommando group was killed after a few months and replaced
by a new crew. Knowing that they were soon going to be killed,
the members of the next-to-last Sonderkommando revolted and blew
up the Krema IV building. A sign at Krema IV says that there
were 450 prisoners who were killed by the SS during the revolt
or afterwards in retaliation.
The men in the last Sonderkommando were
not exterminated. Around 100 of them were marched out of the
camp when it was abandoned by the Nazis on January 18, 1945.
Several members of the Sonderkommando survived and three of them
gave eye-witness testimony at the 1947 trial of Auschwitz Commandant
Rudolf Hoess, about how the prisoners were gassed at Birkenau.