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My main job in the upper camp was to stand at the entrance to the new gas chamber building with a long bull whip, driving the Jews inside as they came through the tube. The building was big, I guess about 16 x 40 metres. In the front section were the chambers and covering the entire width of the back section was the engine room. In the corridor the Jews were driven into the chambers by some Ukrainians.
There were five chambers on either side. Each measured about 50 square metres and held about 300 Jews. The first chambers to be filled were chambers one and two behind the curtain. The doors to the first two chambers were shut and the next group of Jews were forced into chambers three and four. When all the chambers were filled with about 3,000 Jews, the heavy wooden doors were fastened with iron bolts. Now I went through the corridor, opened the door to the engine room, and gave a sign to Schmidt or Zänker to start both diesel engines. The Russian T34 tank engines were started by three Ukrainians and a Jew. They needed a lot of diesel. Schmidt brought the diesel from the garage in the lower camp in cans of 20 litres.
The operation lasted twenty minutes, and from time to time I looked through the glass windows into the chambers. Then the Ukrainians opened the doors in the corridors and I went to the west side of the building. There I watched the emptying and cleaning of the chambers. At the same time the chambers were ventilated. All of that lasted about fourty minutes.
Then the big outer doors were closed and secured with wooden beams. Now Rum and his corpse team took over the transportation of bodies to the pits or burning grills, and I went back to the entrance. There Sepp brought the next group of Jews.
In the peak time between August and November 1942, sometimes there were eight operations without a break.
The following Germans served with me in the upper camp: Heinrich Matthes - chief, Karl Pötzinger - deputy chief, Franz Rum and Willy Großmann - corpse transport, Herbert Floss and Otto Horn - corpse burning, Karl Eiselt and Johannes Eisold – excavator drivers, Karl Ludwig and Alfred Forker - dentists, Erwin Keina and Kurt Arndt - pits, Fritz Schmidt and Hans Zänker - gas chambers, Alfred Löffler and Erwin Lambert - building team, Lothar Boelitz and Josef Hirtreiter - tube and guard, Erich Fuchs and Lorenz Hackenholt – occasional installation work.
© ARC 2006