Hans is correct, it does say underneath the Bauwerk Nr. (building designation) KGL 30 and KGL 30a: “Kellergeschoß”. It is a bit difficult to decipher.
Still, there was ventilation equipment provided for both morgues 1 and 2 and the five big furnaces, the forced air blowers and the electrical control equipment. But not a word about these in the lists.
And what happened to the inventory lists for the rest of the crematorium building? Why are we only fed that part of the list that may possibly be interpreted in favor of the extermination doctrine, and not the rest of the document?
Another point about the crematoriums that bothers me is their destruction: Who disassembled the crematorium equipment and subsequently, who dynamited the buildings?
The conventional story is that the SS did this in order to destroy the evidence of their misdeeds.
Topf engineer Prüfer during his interrogation by Captain Schatanowski and Major Moruschenko of SMERSH on March 5, 1946 however stated:
I was ordered by the SS-leadership to disassemble the crematoriums of the camp Auschwitz and to pack the equipment as well as the brick work carefully for the transfer to another location. In my opinion this was because the front came closer. Although I did on all my trips what was necessary in order to fulfill the instructions of the SS-leadership of the concentration camp, but the latter I could not complete, because there was no labor force, and therefore the crematoriums were not taken apart.
If Prüfer did not take the crematorium apart, then who did?
Did the SS with the help of 900 Heizers may be? They could have worked in 2 or 3 shifts, and probably did not work very hard at it either.
Or did the Soviets do this with the help of German POW’s (Auschwitz served as a Soviet POW camp after the war)? They were in the habit at that time to take all the mechanical equipment which they could lay their hands on in territories occupied by them apart and shipped it to the Soviet Union (I worked for Siemens Schuckert and the Russians stripped everything from our factories in Berlin, mainly the dynamo and switchgear works, all machine tools, plus lighting fixtures and toilets). And the disaasembled crematorium equipment from Birkenau was never found as far as I know.
And I always wondered how they would have moved the furnaces during disassembly from the basements. How did they get them upstairs? Were there any hatches provided in the ceiling? The drawings don’t show any. The furnaces with the gas generators came as units, completely assembled in the Topf factory in Erfurt, they must have been quite heavy.
