What do the Auschwitz-Birkenau coke shipment records reveal?
Receipts for shipments of coke to fuel the crematories for some of 1942 and ten months of 1943 are in the Auschwitz archives in Poland. They indicate an amount of fuel available to cremate corpses compatible with the registered deaths in the camp for that period. The death rate was about 100 per day and the amount of coke available for each cremation works out to a little more than 21 kilograms (46 lb.) of fuel per registered death. This amount of fuel is compatible with the requirements of the crematory machinery.
