These are small gas-chambers,
designed to exterminate vermin, mainly lice, a population that
thrived in Birkenau. There were many of these chambers, operated
by prisoners, in the Sauna. They were placed in the wall, with
a room on either side; one side was dirty, the other, clean.
Ex-prisoner Manya Buki, worked here gassing vermin in the clothes
of new arrivals. "Vermin" was also a term used by
Nazi propagandists to describe the Jews. It is easier to kill
people seen as insects. This term, "vermin", used
by Nazi theoreticians, propagandists and camp officials to consciously
desensitize those ordered to commit murder. Mrs. Buki also did
this to prisoner's uniforms, while they waited outside, sometimes
all day in freezing weather. The irony of it: a Jewish women
using Zyclon B, the same gas used to exterminate people, gassing
actual "vermin" in Birkenau.