“Little White House”
(Bunker no. 2)
The second gas chamber, after the so-called “Little Red House”, constructed near the Birkenau camp under construction. The decision to convert another building, a farmhouse of the expelled Polish owners, into a gas chamber was made in June 1942 as a result of the arrival of numerous transports of Jews designated by the Germans for extermination.
Because the walls were plastered, it was called the “Little White House.” Its interior was divided into four gas chambers with a total floor space of 120 sq. m. The system of interior doors and hatches for Zyklon B was the same as in the Little Red House.
The gas chambers in the Little White House were taken out of operation at the turn of April/May 1943; they were again put to use when the transports from Hungary began arriving in May 1944 (Sonderaktion “Ungarn”). The building was demolished in the late autumn, when extermination operations in Birkenau were completed. Traces of the foundations of the gas chambers are still visible today at this location.