Photo of Auschwitz I gas chamber taken in January 1945
My photo of Auschwitz gas chamber, Oct. 1998
In my blog post today, I am answering a comment made about my website, which shows a black and white photo of the gas chamber in the Auschwitz main camp, that was allegedly taken in January 1945. (I have since removed the photo.) This photo, which is also on the USHMM website here, is shown at the top of my post. Compare this photo with the color photo above, which I took in 1998.
There is no door on the right side of my 1998 color photo because the wall on the right side is an exterior wall. On the other side of the wall on the right is a mound of dirt.
The man who made the comment on my blog noticed that the old black and white photo on my website (which I have since removed) had been reversed. That’s right. I reversed the photo myself when I put it on my website years ago. The original photo, which I copied and put on my website years ago, was a mirror image of the black and white photo above. It showed the door on the right in the photo above as a door on the left side, claiming that this was a door into the oven room. I knew that the door into the oven room had been closed up by the Germans when they converted the gas chamber into a bomb shelter in September 1944. So I assumed that this was a fake photo, done by the Soviet Union, in an effort to claim that the gas chamber in the main Auschwitz camp was original and that it had never been converted into a bomb shelter.
For over 50 years, the staff at the Auschwitz main camp told visitors that the gas chamber in the main Auschwitz camp was original and not a reconstruction done by the Soviet Union. After Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated by Soviet troops on January 27, 1945, the gas chamber in the main camp, which had been converted into a bomb shelter by the Nazis, was reconstructed by the Soviet Union with a new door cut into the wall for an entrance into the oven room.
My photo of the Auschwitz I gas chamber, taken in 2005, is shown below.
My photo of Auschwitz I gas chamber taken in 2005
The Krema I gas chamber in the main Auschwitz camp, shown in the photo above, is a reconstruction which was done by the Soviet Union in 1947. A new entrance door, which can be seen in the background of the photo above, had been added by the Germans in 1944. For years, visitors to Auschwitz were told that this was the entrance through which the victims entered the gas chamber.
In September 1944, the original gas chamber had been divided into four small rooms when it was converted into an air raid shelter. In the photo above, you can see the reconstructed opening into the oven room on the left hand side. According to the Auschwitz Museum, this opening had been closed up when the gas chamber was converted into an air raid shelter. During the reconstruction, the opening into the oven room was moved a few feet. The new opening does not line up with the tracks for the trolleys that were used to shove the bodies into the ovens, as shown in the photo below.
New door into the oven room that was added in 1947 when gas chamber was reconstructed (1998 photo)
My 1998 photo above shows the new doorway which was cut when the gas chamber was reconstructed in 1947; as you can see, there is no door frame, nor any marks where a door frame was removed. The original doorway was closed up when the gas chamber was converted into an air raid shelter, according to the Auschwitz Museum. The reconstructed doorway is about two and a half feet closer to the ovens than the original doorway which was lined up with the trolley tracks.
Tracks inside the Auschwitz oven room do not line up with the new door added during the reconstruction in 1947
This quote is from my website on the page where I previously showed the old black and white photo which I reversed (I have since removed this photo):
The photo below shows the gas chamber in the Auschwitz main camp, as it looked in January 1945 after the camp was liberated by the Soviet Union.
This view of the gas chamber in Krema I at the main Auschwitz camp shows how the room looked when the camp was liberated by the Soviet Union on January 27, 1945. The gas chamber had been converted into an air raid shelter and a new door, shown in the background of the photo, had been cut. Notice that there is no door into the oven room on the left side; this door had been closed up when the room was converted into an air raid shelter.
I could have written on my website that the photo, taken by the Soviet Union, was a fake photo with a door added, but I didn’t want to be called a Holocaust denier. Keep in mind that David Irving became the worst kind of criminal in the world, a Holocaust denier, when he pointed out that the gas chamber in the main Auschwitz camp was a reconstruction. At the time that I first put this photo up on my scrapbookpages website, I was traveling to Germany twice a year. I didn’t want to wind up in prison for five years because of pointing out a fake photo, so that’s why I reversed the photo, and showed that the gas chamber had no door into the oven room when the camp was liberated.
I don’t recall where I first saw the gas chamber photo that I copied and then reversed. The USHMM has also reversed the photo, or maybe they copied the reversed photo from my website. In any case, the reversed photo correctly shows what the gas chamber looked like in January 1945 but without the door on the right side.
The photo below shows the original blueprint of the Auschwitz main camp gas chamber and crematorium.
Original blueprint of Auschwitz I crematorium
The photo above shows the original blueprint for the Krema I (Crematorium One) building in the Auschwitz main camp. The morgue, shown on the bottom right hand side of the blueprint, has a door into the oven room and another door into the washroom. On the blueprint, the morgue is labeled Leichenkeller which is the German word for a corpse cellar. The gas chamber was originally in the same location as the morgue and it did not include the area of the washroom, as it does now.
Note the door from the vestibule into the washroom that is shown on the blueprint; this door no longer exists and the area of the former wash room is included in the reconstructed gas chamber.
Was it wrong for the staff at Auschwitz to claim that the gas chamber in the main camp is original? Not according to Robert Jan van Pelt who wrote that this was done for the sake of visitors who want to see a gas chamber when they go to Auschwitz.
Was it wrong for me to reverse an old photo of the gas chamber? I don’t think so. I wanted to show what the gas chamber really looked like when the Soviets arrived, and at the same time, I wanted to show that there was no door into the oven room in January 1945 when this photo was allegedly taken. I thought that the Soviets had reversed the original photo and added a door. I reversed the photo back to the way I thought it was originally taken.
Update Jan. 1, 2012:
On this page of my website, I show the original old black and white photo of the Auschwitz I gas chamber with a photo credit to the USHMM. I did this part of my web site in 2005.
Display board outside of Auschwitz I gas chamber building
The photo above shows a poster, which is located outside the gas chamber building in the Auschwitz main camp. On the left, the poster depicts the layout of the gas chamber building as it originally looked and on the right, the way it looked after the gas chamber was reconstructed in 1947.
The gas chamber room was originally used as a morgue to store corpses prior to cremation in the ovens. According to the model on the poster, neither the gas chamber nor the morgue included the area where a washroom was once located. This means that the victims had to go through two small rooms to get to the gas chamber, and that neither the morgue, nor the gas chamber, had a floor drain since the only drain that can be seen today is in the washroom area of the reconstructed gas chamber. The gas chamber, as seen by tourists today, includes the area of the former washroom.
When the building was converted into an air raid shelter in September 1944, a new door was cut into the gas chamber room, as shown on the right hand side of the poster.
During the time that the building was used as an air raid shelter, the morgue room was divided into four small rooms. During the reconstruction in 1947, the walls of the small rooms in the morgue were removed, along with the wall of the small washroom. The washroom is designated by the letter b on the poster shown in the photo above. The wall of the washroom is shown as a dotted line in the diagram on the right, which shows the gas chamber the way it looks today.
The most recent comments on my blog have left me confused. I will leave it to the experts to sort this out.
Update Jan. 2, 2012:
My thanks to Bob and all the others who commented on this post and set the facts straight.
Thanks a million to Bob who did the comparison of the old black and white photo with my 2005 photo of the gas chamber, shown below:
Comparison of Auschwitz gas chamber photos, contributed by Bob
Scrapbookpages Blog 
I came across this blog entry when I was looking for information to counter a holocaust revisionist use of the term fake to describe the gas chamber on display at Austweitz. I was impressed with the detailed information and have subsequently followed your blog.
Comment by kate blair — November 7, 2015 @ 3:06 pm
Very distatseful and disrepectful to take any photographs at all where so many innocent people were murdered and cremated on an industrial scale. Guess we are all different in how we perceive morality.
Comment by lunaticfringe — November 6, 2013 @ 5:14 am
IT LOOKS GOOD TO ME… I SAY FIRE IT UP AND START THROWING THEM IN HEAD FIRST. DIP THEIR CURLS IN KEROSENE FIRST FOR A PROPER BURN.
Comment by vOOTeN vON hOOGEHSHTEIN — May 21, 2012 @ 6:14 pm
you are a horrible person
Comment by savannah green — November 25, 2013 @ 9:19 am
I wrote this “As far as it goes there is obvious signs of a door where the door used to be located.”
What I meant was: As far as it goes there is NO obvious signs of a door where the door is supposed to have been located.
In other words it is a completely smooth, unbroken stucco surface. If the door was sealed up, the Germans did a very good job of removing all traces of it. If I was to make a guess I would say originally there was no door directly connecting the crematorium with the gas chamber/morgue.
But there should be scientific techniques that could demonstrate this one way or the other
Comment by littlegreyrabbit — January 1, 2012 @ 9:52 pm
You are not alone, me too wonder where are the signs of the former entrance to oven room. My opinion – when I look on the black and white photo which is propably the oldest photo of this chamber so far, you can notice big changes on the place where the former entrace was, it looks like the new mortar was added on the wall (look on the 2005 photo, there is large mortar patch, on the B&W photo, there is none, only damaged wall) I think that the changes are so big that is hardly visible where the former entrance was, maybe Soviets or Poles tried to cover the signs of former entrance as much as possible to make the new entrance look as original? Yes, if needed, is definitely possible to locate former entrance.
I think that original entrance was there, without it would be too “complicated” to transport bodies from morgue through washroom, but not impossible of course. For practical purposes and according to the plans, the entrance was there.
The question is, where was the entrance for victims into this alleged gas chamber? Through the washroom? Through the oven room? Sounds absurd to me and one of the reasons why I don´t believe.
Comment by Bob — January 2, 2012 @ 12:43 pm
“I am also not sure about closed up entrance to oven room during the conversion to air raid shelter. Pressac presented plan for conversion”
Generally I agree with Bob’s comments about the photo being miscaptioned rather than falsified. On the subject of the door, the Museum itself says the room was sealed up and this was a new opening cut post 1945. The door is not in the same place as it is on the blueprint that Pressac presents in as much as it does not line up with the rails in the floor to transport corpses.
As far as it goes there is obvious signs of a door where the door used to be located. Nor is there any indication that any attachment or screening/gas tight seal visible at the current opening.
Make of that what you will. The crematorium was unquestionably genuine as in the location of the third oven it is possible to see ash covered under-floor flues. But I can’t have any certainty about any possible door to the morgue/gas chamber and hence a question mark hangs over the blueprint in my mind
Comment by littlegreyrabbit — January 1, 2012 @ 12:24 am
Pressac published a photo of Krema I before the Soviets added the crematory chimney, and a photo of the roof minus the Soviet addition of the Zyklon B introduction holes.
http://winstonsmithministryoftruth.blogspot.com/2011/09/soviet-adjustments-to-auschwitz-gas.html
http://www.holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/pressac/technique-and-operation/pressac0144.shtml
http://www.holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/pressac/technique-and-operation/pressac0149.shtml
The Yad Vashem has on its website a photo of Krema I after the Soviets added the chimney, but before the exterior door to the crematorium was half-bricked-up and converted to a window.
http://collections.yadvashem.org/photosarchive/en-us/64791.html
But according to the “original” 1942 blueprints for the crematorium published by Robert Jan van Pelt in Auschwitz 1270 to the Present, this door never existed.
http://winstonsmithministryoftruth.blogspot.com/2011/07/soviets-had-disco-on-auschwitz-gas.html
Comment by Black Rabbit — December 31, 2011 @ 4:02 pm
Is interesting that on the page 133, Pressac wrote:
“During this work a dance was organized on the roof [Photo 4] of the gas chamber, an event no doubt to be explained by the euphoria be resulting from the end of the war. ”
http://www.holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/pressac/technique-and-operation/pressac0133.shtml
Propably some “amnesia” which resulted in which he wrote on page 149.
I also don´t see any “good garage door” as the star liewitness Rudolf Vrba testified:
A. It was originally a garage which connected the S.S. barracks with that small crematorium.
Q. Mm-hmmm.
A. And there were garage doors.
Q. Mm-hmmm.
A. And the roof was reinforced with earth. The inside was dark. The door was opened —
Q. How wide were the doors?
A. Like a good garage door, and two side opening to two sides.
Q. Mm-hmmm.
Did someone notice any traces of “good garage door” in this “garage”?
Comment by Bob — December 31, 2011 @ 4:49 pm
Thanks for your reply.
I am a bit confused, my opinion is, that this photo isn´t from liberation, is obviously from later years and wrongly captioned with “January 1945” to make impression that this is how the chamber looked like when the Soviets discovered it, false captioning is casual trick from holocaustians. I still don´t understand why the photo is reversed. If the reason was to show how it looked like and that the door on the left wasn´t there, there is still problem with the entrance in background which is in wrong direction and the missing walls are problem too and this can confuse people as well. This isn´t Soviet fake, photo isn´t altered (except the reversing), but photo is from later years with false caption. Your article now looks like that this is how the chamber looked like after liberation which can confuse readers I think, maybe there should be caption “photo is reversed by author only to demonstrate absence of entrance to former oven room, which was closed up, everything else is reversed”
The source for USHMM is “Dokumentationsarchiv des Oesterreichischen Widerstandes” I will contact them for info about this photo. It looks like that they reversed it too if the phot is from them. Maybe they took it from your pages?
I am also not sure about closed up entrance to oven room during the conversion to air raid shelter. Pressac presented plan for conversion
http://www.holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/pressac/technique-and-operation/pressac0156.shtml
and the entrance is still there. Or maybe I missed something? Maybe the “closing up” wasn´t drawn to the plan? Did Germans really closed this entrance?
“Was it wrong for me to reverse a fake photo of the gas chamber? I don’t think so. I wanted to show what the gas chamber really looked like when the Soviets arrived, and at the same time, I wanted to show that there was no door into the oven room in January 1945 when this photo was taken. The Soviets reversed the original photo and added a door. I reversed the photo back to the way it was originally taken.”
In this reversed photo, there is everything wrong, this photo can make impression that except the door, everything is correct. As I mentioned, this photo wasn´t taken in January 1945, but later and someone used false caption. I am not expert on history of photo forgeries, but I think that wasn´t possible to add entrance to original photo and make it look like that in 40s, no photoshop, no advanced techniques to make such brilliant looking forgery. This is also highly unlikely since the best way how to fake it is to take a photo after reconstruction in 1947+ and add only wrong caption, and this is what actually happened. This is clearly genuine photo with false date caption to make a fake photo of alleged gas chamber immediately after liberation. No reversing needed.
I didn´t wanted to blame you for reversing the photo, no way. I only think that you didn´t know that is reversed when you wrote about absence of entrance to oven room which is actually there, but reversed. I am sorry if my comment sounded offensive.
Comment by Bob — December 31, 2011 @ 1:47 pm
I have updated my post and added some more photos. I now know that I copied the black and white photo from the USHMM web site. After I reversed the photo, it seems that the USHMM changed their photo to my reversed version.
I now think that the old black and white photo might have been taken by the Germans before they turned the gas chamber into a bomb shelter. There was probably a door on the opening into the oven room. This door would have been removed when the gas chamber was turned into a bomb shelter. The Soviet liberators might have found this old photo and used it to prove that the reconstructed gas chamber was original. In 1998, on my first visit to Auschwitz, my tour guide was telling me that the gas chamber was original — at the same time that I was taking photos that showed that the tracks up to the ovens didn’t line up with the doorway. She didn’t want me to take photos, but I did it anyway. I took the photo, that I added to the top of this post, after she told me to stop taking pictures. Whoops! My flash accidentally went off when she had her back turned.
Comment by furtherglory — January 1, 2012 @ 7:46 am
Here is a comparison.
Red – you can see clearly where the former dividing walls of the air shelter were. I also drawed on the Pressac´s plan where the present entrance is, everything match perfectly.
Blue – you can see correct position of southeast entrance which was added during conversion in 1944. This is non-reversed correct position.
Green – you can see almost perfectly matched dark patches on the both sides of new pierced entrance.
Yellow – you can also see cabel and light switch. The only difference is in the new color photo, there is also second cable, this prove, that this black-white photo is older.
My conclusion, both photos match almost perfectly (except damaged mortar on the walls, floor and etc.), both photos are genuine and not fakes. The black and white photo is much older, someone did lot of damage to walls (propably make them look more scary and depresive?) and today look is much more depresive.
Black and white photo is not definitely from January 1945 or before liberation from Germans or before the conversion to shelter, because you can see marks where the former dividing walls were, you can see today entrance to oven room also with cabel and with the light switch at new entrance and as we know, these changes were made after 1947. In my honest opinion, this photo is propably from 50s-70s. I can´t find any comparison, is unbelieveable that there isn´t some photo from this period, the oldest which I found is from Pressac´s book from the late 80s.
The only problem with this photo is caption “gas chamber after liberation in January 1945” – this is another lie and false information to make an impression, that this is how the chamber looked like after liberation, we only need to find who presented this false caption, as I said, this is known trick from holocaustians. This photo is genuine and correct (non-reversed) older photo of alleged gas chamber. I think that would be better to remove reversed version which can confuse readers, only my two cents.
Comment by Bob — January 1, 2012 @ 12:25 pm
Thank you very much for this analysis. I removed the photo on my website today. Happy New Year!
Comment by furtherglory — January 2, 2012 @ 8:52 am
I put up, on my blog post, the photo comparison which Bob linked to in his comment. The strange thing is that I had not yet seen the old black and white photo before I took my color photo in 2005, standing in the same spot as the photographer who took the old photo. It was purely a coincidence that I happened to take the photo from the same spot. I was only trying to improve on my 1998 shot which I secretly took while my tour guide was not looking.
Comment by furtherglory — January 2, 2012 @ 11:32 am
Thanks God for this coincidence 🙂 No problem, I am glad I could help.
Did she explain to you why is forbidden to take photos?
Comment by Bob — January 2, 2012 @ 12:52 pm
It was not “forbidden” to take photos in 1998. My tour guide did not want me to take photos in the gas chamber because she had deduced that I knew that the gas chamber was not original and that my photos would prove that it was not original. Just before she told me not to take any more photos, I had taken the photo that shows that the opening into the oven room has no door frame and no marks where a door frame was removed. After I took that photo, we entered the gas chamber again and were walking out; that was when I turned around and shot the photo that I put at the top of my post. When I visited Auschwitz in 2005, there was a sign with a picture of a camera with a red slash mark through it. On that visit, I did not have a guide. I wandered around by myself and took lots of photos. I think that the reason for not allowing photos is that there are 1.4 million or more tourists per year now and if everyone stopped to take photos, it would be impossible to take that many tourists through the camp. Tourists must now be on a guided tour — no more wandering around alone and taking photos.
Comment by furtherglory — January 3, 2012 @ 6:59 am