The Mystery of Krema I Roof vents (Updated)

[Fred Ziffel]

No one knows if there were even any holes,
sorry about the repeat

[Booze]

These are novice questions that might not belong in this thread...

When was this building originally built?
What was the interior layout of the walls?
Was there any plumbing at all in the original building?
What was the original building for?
How do we know that the answer to those questions is true, are there blueprints and/or photos?

Also:
Is it true that the oven flues run underground to the chimney stack?

[Eye of Zyclone]

The location of Z1 makes no sense in a gas-chamber perspective.

[Booze]

floor drain final2.png

Hopefully someone can help me out here. The story as I recall is that this was simply a storage building before the Germans arrived.

The floor slab doesn't show evidence of the building being retrofitted for plumbing unless someone is going to claim that the entire floor slab was removed then re-poured.

Plumbing fixtures don't make sense for a storage building.
So then, what was this building originally used for?
And knowing that this might sound stupid, what is the evidence for this building existing before the war?

[Booze]

Forgot to address the rebar issue. And this is a feature at the Birkenau site also.

The presence of rebar alone demonstrates that they were not zyklon insertion holes and were cut away after the war in a sloppy attempt at post-war fabrication of evidence. In the case of Birkenau this is even more strongly demonstrated as the rebar is bent back seemingly by hand, and would be a physical impediment to the secure fastening of the non-existent Kula columns.

I always looked at the rebar issue as proof positive that the story is fabricated until I saw a video of a tour guide saying that the building predates the war and the Germans converted it into a gas chamber. Which tended to nullify the whole issue with the rebar.
Up until seeing that video I was of the belief that the building was built under German occupation, but in hindsight I can't say why.

[Wetzelrad]

Hopefully someone can help me out here. The story as I recall is that this was simply a storage building before the Germans arrived. [...]

And knowing that this might sound stupid, what is the evidence for this building existing before the war?

According to Auschwitz: 1270 to the Present by Dwork and Van Pelt, the Auschwitz I camp began as a "migrant worker village" in or after 1910 (p.59). It was taken up by Polish troops in 1920 because of its ample housing space. The authors do not go in to any detail as to the construction of what they term the "ammunition depot" other than to say that it was "built by the Polish army in the 1920s" (p.322). Then they provide this German survey drawing of the site from December 1939 (p.325), which should be an accurate representation of how the Poles left it. The ammo depot is visible in the lower left.



Pressac's Auschwitz describes it as "The former powder magazine, or according to other sources, victualling store, of the Austro Hungarian and subsequently Polish barracks" (p.129). He follows this up with a photo he took of a German handwritten list of numerous drawings of construction work to convert the building into a crematorium.

I think the evidence is satisfying enough, and I see no reason to question it. At the same time, it does not very much clarify what the building was before the German occupation. However, one of the listed drawings is titled as "Entwässerung [drainage] des Krematorium." This could correspond to the construction of the drain or drains in question.