Crematorium II. Steps in foreground led to an underground undressing room. The gas chamber is out of view on the right in the distance, and was also built underground. All the combined gas chamber/crematoria at Birkenau were destroyed by the Germans in late 1944.

Several hundred thousand Jewish men, women and children were murdered by gas and their bodies burned. The crematorium was also used for the disposal of the bodies of prisoners of the concentration camp, both Jews and non-Jews, who had died from other causes. The gas chamber and crematorium II operated from March 1943 to November 1944.

On October 23, 1943, there was a revolt here by Jewesses brought here from Bergen-Belsen concentration camp who resisted being herded into the gas chamber.