The entrance to Crematorium 1. The largest room in the crematorium was the mortuary, which was converted into a temporary gas chamber. During the years 1941 and 1942 Soviet POWs, as well as Jews from the ghettos formed by the Nazis in Silesia, were killed here.

"Höss and his colleagues soon realised that using the camp crematorium as a place of murder created difficulties for them. The biggest problem they faced was the level of noise caused by their murders: 'In order to stifle the screams there were motors,' recalls Józef Paczyñski, 'Two motorcycles were revving so that no one would hear the cries. People were yelling and then becoming weaker and weaker. They had those motorcycles to conceal the yelling, but they failed. They gave it a try but it didn't work.' The noise of screaming from inside the improvised gas chamber was never adequately masked by the revving of the engines, and the position of the crematorium so near the other buildings of the camp meant that it was impossible to hide the murders from the other inmates."
Auschwitz The Nazis and the Final Solution by Laurence Rees