Editing Cremation (section)

=== World War II {{anchor|Crematoria#World War II|Crematoria}} ===

During [[World War II]] (1939–45), [[Nazi Germany]] used specially built furnaces in at least six [[extermination camp]]s throughout [[occupied Poland]] including at [[Auschwitz concentration camp|Auschwitz-Birkenau]], [[Chełmno extermination camp|Chełmno]], [[Belzec extermination camp|Belzec]], [[Majdanek]], [[Sobibor extermination camp|Sobibor]] and [[Treblinka extermination camp|Treblinka]], where the bodies of those murdered by gassing were disposed of using incineration. The efficiency of industrialised killing of ''[[Operation Reinhard]]'' during the most deadly phase of [[the Holocaust]] produced too many corpses, therefore the crematoria manufactured to SS specifications were put into use in all of them to handle the disposals around the clock, day and night.<ref name="Berenbaum">{{cite book |title=Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp|last=Berenbaum|first=Michael|author-link=Michael Berenbaum|author2=Yisrael Gutman|year=1998|publisher=Indiana University Press|isbn=978-0-253-20884-2|page=199|url =https://books.google.com/books?id=ZrU2oS8fP3cC&pg=PA199}}</ref><ref name="Holocaust">[http://fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/timeline/camps.htm Holocaust Timeline: The Camps.] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100108092724/http://fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/TIMELINE/camps.htm |date=8 January 2010 }}</ref> The [[Vrba–Wetzler report]] offers the following description. {{quote|At present there are four crematoria in operation at B<small>IRKENAU</small>, two large ones, I and II, and two smaller ones, III and IV. Those of type I and II consist of 3 parts, i.e.,: (A) the furnace room; (B) the large halls; and (C) the gas chamber. A huge chimney rises from the furnace room around which are grouped nine furnaces, each having four openings. Each opening can take three normal corpses at once and after an hour and a half the bodies are completely burned. This corresponds to a daily capacity of about 2,000 bodies... Crematoria III and IV work on nearly the same principle, but their capacity is only half as large. Thus the total capacity of the four cremating and gassing plants at B<small>IRKENAU</small> amounts to about 6,000 daily.<ref name="Świebocki">Holocaust Research Project, [http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/othercamps/auschproto.html "The Vrba-Wetzler Report"], part 2. ''Alternate source: Świebocki (1997), pp. 218, 220, 224; in his reproduction of the Vrba–Wetzler report, Świebocki presents the material without paragraph breaks.''</ref>}}

[[File:Vrba-Wetzler report sketch (crematoria).jpg|thumb|left|alt=diagram|A sketch from the [[Vrba–Wetzler report]], showing the rough layout of the crematoria used at [[Auschwitz]], one of the several Nazi German [[extermination camp]]s in [[occupied Poland]]]]
The Holocaust furnaces were supplied by a number of manufacturers, with the best known and most common being [[Topf and Sons]] as well as Kori Company of Berlin,<ref name="Kori">{{cite web | url=http://www.deathcamps.org/gas_chambers/gas_chambers_sonnenstein.html | title=Kori Company (Berlin) | publisher=ARC | work=The Gas Chamber at Sonnenstein | year=2005 | access-date=22 April 2013}}</ref> whose ovens were elongated to accommodate two bodies, slid inside from the back side. The ashes were taken out from the front side.<ref name="jewishvirtuallibrary">{{cite web | url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/Majdanek5.html | title=Crematorium at Majdanek | publisher=Jewish Virtual Library.org | year=2013 | access-date=22 April 2013}}</ref>