The wooden barracks at Auschwitz Birkenau were mostly destroyed at the end of the Second World War, however, many brick chimneys survived. I asked the tour guide (educator) why they had chimneys as the prisoners certainly didn’t receive coal or wood for fires to warm the barracks? Her reply revealed the perversity of the whole system. Although these camps were erected to either kill people outright or work them to death, German building regulations still required that communal accommodation must have facilities to heat the buildings in winter. These regulations of course did not prescribed that the facilities had to be used but surely somebody with connections made a packet out of erecting these unused brick chimneys.
