Ashes and stories: A visit to Switzerland's largest crematorium (2024)

Inside Europe

As many as 40 people per day are cremated at Nordheim Crematorium in the city of Zurich. A day in the life of a mortician at Switzerland's largest crematorium.

Stefan Müller (text), Annick Ramp (photos)

January 10, 2024 6 min

The Nordheim Crematorium, the largest of its kind in Switzerland, towers like a small fortress at the foot of the Käferberg in the north of the city of Zurich. A veil of mist envelops the gray, unconventional concrete building from the sixties.

On this winter morning, mortician Alexandra Koller started her work at seven o'clock. After our reporter rings the bell at the gate, the automatic sliding door opens silently. Koller lets the visitor in and takes him through neon-lit corridors to the crematorium's «engine room,» a large red-tiled hall.

The air inside is hot and dry. A sweet smell penetrates the nose. The six gas-powered incinerators are running at full speed, operated by a colleague who monitors the screens in the «control room.» The ovens burn continuously into the evening hours.

«We have a lot to do,» says the mortician, who is wearing black trousers, a wine-red blouse and a dark blue vest. As many as 40 bodies are cremated every day, she adds. «In the winter months, during flu season, is when the most people die.» And most people in Zurich want to be cremated, she says.

The 44-year-old has been working for the city of Zurich's funeral and cemetery office for four years. She says she got to know death at an early age. «When I was 13, my older brother was killed in a car accident,» Koller says. A few years later, her biological father was shot and killed in South America. Another brother later committed suicide. Death was also a constant companion during her more than 20 years in the social and care sector, she says.

A few kilos of ash remain

In the crematorium, the door of oven 5 is opened to reveal the glowing oven chamber. Koller's colleague has already pushed the next coffin from a trolley onto the entry rails in front of the oven. After the coffin goes into the oven and is touched by the first flames, the door closes.

In around three to four hours, at temperatures over 1,000 degrees Celsius, a corpse is turned into a few kilos of bone ash, which accumulate in the lower part of the two-storey furnace chamber.

Koller is on duty down here today, in the sweltering heat. Equipped with a rake-like tool – similar to the bread peel used by bakers – she stands in front of the oven, now wearing practical cargo pants. She uses the tool to pull the crumbly ash to the edge of the stove to cool. Above, the next coffin is already catching fire. This way, up to three bodies can be cremated at the same time without interrupting the process. «There cannot be any mixing,» the mortician emphasizes. That would be the worst-case scenario in a crematorium.

Koller is on oven duty every few weeks, she says. It's a tough job that can last up to 13 hours at a stretch.

The 40 morticians at the funeral home, half of whom are women, take turns handling all the services, including oven duty, public viewings of bodies, burials, transportation services and counseling relatives. «This variety helps to reduce the mental strain,» says Michael Müller, who heads the city of Zurich's funeral and cemetery office. «We don't have many staffers leaving us at the moment.»

The industry has no shortage of skilled workers. «We regularly have a large selection of good applicants, mostly people making career changes,» says Müller. He adds that finding the right person among this group is the challenge. However, they all acquire their specialist knowledge only after starting the job. The federal qualification can be obtained after three years of full-time professional experience.

In the meantime, the bone ash has cooled down in Nordheim Crematorium. With well-practiced movements, the mortician pours the ashes into a metal box underneath the oven door. Processing continues at a workstation opposite the oven. Koller has to use a magnetic rod to sort metal residue from the ash. She mainly finds coffin nails, but occasionally there are also more unusual items: artificial hip or knee joints, for example, or unburned items such as watches, glasses or stone jewelry.

Koller says she loves her job. «It is quite varied and fulfilling,» she adds. She is not only in charge of cremation, but also collects the deceased, from retirement homes, hospitals or home. She places them in coffins, even if they are to be cremated. She prepares the bodies, tends to any wounds and dresses them. «Mostly in their own clothes, especially for children and young people,» she says.

Koller holds public viewings of the bodies when relatives want to say goodbye, typically in the crematorium's chapel. Relatives are free to arrange these as they wish. «This is sometimes very moving,» she says.

Sometimes she delivers urns in person

Koller also enjoys the various customs and rites associated with funerals, for example from the Tamil-Indian community: «These are spectacles lasting several hours, with sobbing women and incense sticks.» The nondenominational chapel, which has more than 400 seats, is sometimes even too small for such events, she says.

In addition to counseling relatives, the mortician's activities also include inscribing grave crosses and procuring floral wreaths. Koller now attends cemetery burials only rarely. This is usually done by the cemetery gardener.

«There are sad moments, but also beautiful ones,» says Koller. Some relatives reach out to her long after the funeral to thank her, she notes. But there are bizarre moments too. She says that she and her colleague once had to collect a deceased person from a care home. They approached the room of the deceased with an empty coffin. An old man was sitting nearby. Suddenly he said to the mortician: «Please take me with you in your coffin.» A few days later, the man actually turned up at the crematorium, dead in a coffin.

Back in the crematorium, Koller pushes the clean ash box into the grinding machine. The machine rattles for a few minutes. The mortician then carefully pours the finely ground ashes into an urn, dust swirling up. Finally, the lid is put on the urn and glued in place.

Shortly before midday, the funeral director drives a coffin trolley with filled urns into the logistics room. There, a colleague packs the urns. They will later be sent to the post office, distributed to cemeteries or collected by relatives. Sometimes Koller personally delivers urns to relatives' homes – a free service provided by the city of Zurich. «I enjoy doing it and it rounds off my work,» she says.

Now she joins colleagues from her team for lunch in the break room, with a view of a terrace with a barbecue and extensive greenery behind it. Their work will soon continue.

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