Are accounts of cremation pits at Auschwitz-Birkenau credible?
No. Various accounts from former prisoners who spent time detained at Birkenau and staff who worked there include claims that a large number of corpses was burned in open pits up to three meters deep because the crematories there, despite a fabulous cremation capacity of 10,000 bodies per day, were not fast enough to dispose of all of the gas chamber victims. There are several problems with this allegation. Birkenau was built in a marsh. The camp was crisscrossed with drainage ditches to help deal with the high water table. Any pit dug into the ground there would fill with water making the burning of bodies impossible. Even in a case where striking water is not a problem, burning anything in a deep pit is difficult since the fire consumes all of the oxygen available for combustion and puts itself out. There is no point in digging a pit for cremating bodies and is entirely counterproductive to the effort. Open air cremation is done on pyres, not in pits. After Dresden was bombed, the Ge
