| Original caption: “Oven where prisoners were burnt, dead and alive.” To make the increasing numbers of the dead disappear without any eyewitnesses, in mid-1940 the Schutzstaffel (SS) started operating a crematorium within the camp. The basement rooms of this building were used as execution sites. Up until 1940, the SS had incinerated those who perished at the camp at the Weimar city crematorium. As the rate of deaths in the camps increased use was made of local municipal crematoria for which the SS paid a fee to the crematoria as per any normal civil cremation. Burial urns of ashes were also delivered to the camp for purchase by relatives if they so wished. In some camps, the local municipal crematorium came to collect the bodies from the camp. The cremation of the camp prisoners was registered in the municipal crematorium record book as for any other person. By 1940, this system had became too public for Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler (October 7, 1900 – May 23, 1945). The Erfurt-based company, Johann Andreas Topf & Söhne Company, developed special ovens for the Buchenwald concentration camp, which were based on trash incinerators. 10 ovens of this same kind were later installed at the concentration and extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau. These ovens made it possible for the SS to burn an 80 bodies in a short period of time. From 1943 onward, the ashes of most of the dead were dumped into the surrounding area like garbage. A side wing of the crematorium contained 2 pathology dissecting rooms. Here, the golden teeth of the deceased were extracted, and organs were removed as anatomical specimens, which were provided to universities. Another specialty was the production of macabre gift items, which members of the SS bestowed on one another: human skin – preferably tattooed — was cut from the bodies, tanned, and worked into everyday objects. The morgue beneath the crematorium was 1 of the execution sites of the camp. Here the SS strangled some 1,100 men, women, and teens on wall hooks, usually Gestapo detainees but also concentration camp inmates. In the yard at the back, the SS stored its mobile show gallows, with which they carried out public hangings outside the camp for the Gestapo. When not in use, the gallows was stored inside the crematorium. | |
| Image Filename | wwii0545.jpg |
| Image Size | 533.68 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 1816 x 2904 |
| Photographer | Walter Chichersky |
| Photographer Title | United States Army Signal Corps |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | April 16, 1945 |
| Location | Konzentrationslager Buchenwald |
| City | Weimar |
| State or Province | Thuringia |
| Country | Germany |
| Archive | National Archives and Records Administration |
| Record Number | NLR-PHOCO-A-4822(3952)40 |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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