US Army Air Force

Birkenau under the snow

Yad Vashem The Holocaust Martyrs\' and Heroes\' Remembrance Authority

Enlargement of a section of a photograph of the snow-capped Birkenau Extermination Camp (Auschwitz or Oswiecim) taken by a Lockheed F-5 Lightning of 15th Air Force’s 5th Photo Recon Group, based at Pomigliano d’Arco, Naples, on December 21st, 1944. Further to an order issued by Himmler at the beginning of November to halt the gassings, the extermination installations were dismantled in November-December 1944, as can be seen in the photograph (Gas Chambers Partially Dismantled). Note the ruins of Crematorium IV, which was destroyed (high on the right) in the Sonderkommando uprising of October 7th, 1944. Also this photos, as the other of this series, was released by the CIA in 1979. Victor Sierra