Prior to the Leuchter Report1 no scientific studies of
any significance had ever been conducted about the 'gas chambers'
of Auschwitz and Majdanek, which is astonishing in view of the
importance of the topic. Even in the great Auschwitz Trial in
Frankfurt in the mid-1960s, the expert reports that were
commissioned had an exclusively historical focus, and not even
the defense thought to request a report on the alleged 'murder
weapons', which have partly survived to this day. In its verdict
the Court stated that it lacked "almost all the means of
evidence available in a normal murder trial," including
"the bodies of the victims, autopsy reports, expert reports
on the cause and time of death, (...) evidence as to the
criminals, murder weapons, etc.",2 and after a detailed
analysis of the course of the trial one cannot help but note that
this Court, just like all those which dealt with the topic before
and since, never made even the slightest effort to locate any
such evidence or to commission any subject experts. The same goes
no less for the great Majdanek Trial in Düsseldorf in the late
1970s.3
It was not until 1988, 45 years after the alleged crime(!), that
Ernst Zündel, a German-Canadian charged by a Canadian court with
knowingly disseminating false news about the Holocaust,4
commissioned the American gas chamber expert Leuchter to draw up
a report about the evidence for the supposed 'murder weapon'. The
idea for such a report had been suggested to Zündel by R.
Faurisson. In the resultant, hastily drawn up report, Leuchter
concluded that the "alleged gas chambers" of the
facilities he examined could not have been used as such. Analyses
of brick samples from the alleged 'gas chambers' showed that
these contain no traces of hydrocyanic acid poison from Zyklon B,
whereas the walls of the delousing chambers where the inmates'
clothing was deloused with Zyklon B contain great quantities of
such residue.
It is not surprising that this report caused considerable uproar,
which resulted in a number of publications.5-6 On the suggestion
of the Leuchter Report, the Rudolf Report - drawn
up in spring 1992, and expanded and revised several times -
focused on engineering and chemical aspects of the alleged 'gas
chambers' in Auschwitz, and shall be summarized and supplemented
in the following. The alleged gas chambers of the concentration
camp Majdanek, which were also a subject of the Leuchter
Report, will be briefly discussed. We shall dispense with an
account of the ongoing debate about the interpretation of the
documents found to date with respect to the issue of gas chambers
in Auschwitz; interested readers are referred to the relevant
literature.7
According to Pressac7 the facilities of Auschwitz I/Main Camp
were originally part of a barracks under the Dual Monarchy (later
Poland) and were converted into a concentration camp after the
war against Poland. After the start of the Russian Campaign,
Auschwitz II/Birkenau was rebuilt as a prisoner-of-war camp of
the Waffen-SS, to accommodate Russian prisoners-of-war. Later it
increasingly served to house Jews, who were deported there from
all German-occupied parts of Europe. The arrival of great numbers
of people made for severe health-related problems in all camps.
For this reason all the camps had extensive disinfection and
delousing facilities. Since the end of the First World War, the
general fumigant of choice for pest control (lice, bedbugs,
fleas, beetles etc.) had been the product Zyklon B (hydrocyanic
acid adsorbed onto diatomaceous earth). In Compounds 1a/b of
Birkenau, Buildings 5a and 5b each had a wing where one room was
reserved for the delousing of material objects with hydrocyanic
acid.
On the whole, historians today assume that the large cremation
facilities in the camps did not serve only the purpose they had
originally been intended for, namely the removal of victims of
epidemics, which did occur quite frequently despite intensive
efforts at disinfection. Later, it is claimed, these facilities
were used instead for mass extermination, including that of the
Jews. For this purpose, some rooms of the respective cremation
facilities were slightly renovated; people were then killed
('gassed') there with Zyklon B.
According to eyewitness testimony, there was at that time a 'gas
chamber' in Crematorium I of the Main Camp, Auschwitz I. In
Birkenau (Auschwitz II), approximately 1.5 miles away, there are
said to have been 4 more 'gas chambers' in Crematoria II through
V, as well as two farm houses, located outside the camp itself
and renovated for gassing purposes.
The individual facilities are discussed in the following.
Rooms where material objects were deloused with Zyklon B still exist intact today in the West and East wings of Buildings 5a and 5b of Compounds B1a and b respectively. The building plans identify these rooms as gas chambers, the term commonly used in those days for disinfestation facilities.8 These delousing rooms, equipped with airlocks, had two round openings approximately 20 inches in diameter in their ceiling gables, fitted with an air intake and an exhaust ventilator. The roof had three ventilation chimneys; three furnaces were installed in these rooms during the time they were in use.9 This set-up, with heating and ventilation, must have been considered the minimum requirement for a facility to be used as fumigation chamber for disinfesting material objects.
According to Pressac, there is no material or documentary
evidence for the existence of the gas chamber in the crematorium
of the Main Camp; there are, however, numerous eyewitness
accounts.10 Pressac states that the foremost characteristics of
these accounts are their numerous contradictions, technical
impossibilities, and generally unbelievable nature.11 In his
latest work, Pressac suggests that this gas chamber was in
operation only from January to April 1942, and he calls
eyewitness statements alleging a longer time of operation
'exaggerations'.12
In considering this crematorium we shall concentrate on the
Zyklon B input hatches and the ventilation holes of the 'gas
chamber'.13 Illustration 1 shows the floor plan of the building
at the start of the War, designed and constructed as an ordinary
crematorium with a mortuary.14 The mortuary is said to have been
renovated later to serve as 'gas chamber'. For purposes of
introducing the Zyklon B into the room to effect the gassing of
the victims, 3 or 4 hatches are also said to have been cut into
the roof later on, as well as 1 or 2 others to accommodate
powerful ventilators.15 In autumn of 1944 the crematorium was
renovated to serve as air-raid shelter,16 while the Zyklon B
input hatches were already sealed up in late April or early May
1942.17
Illustration 2 shows the floor plan of the crematorium as it
exists today.18 After the War, it is claimed the roof was
re-covered with roofing felt, which concealed the Zyklon B
hatches of this 'gas chamber'. The input hatches visible today
were installed after the War by the Polish Auschwitz Museum -
not, according to Pressac, at their original location, but rather
in a way that was considered more effective for tourist viewing
purposes.19
The ceiling, outside walls and pillars as well as the building
foundation are in their original state. If openings for input
hatches and ventilation facilities had existed in the reinforced
concrete roof, damage to the concrete structure would have to be
visible at the appropriate spots on the unplastered inside
ceiling, since such structures cannot be removed without leaving
visible traces.
Ill. 1: Floor plan of Crematorium 1 in Main Camp Auschwitz I
in its original design. Allegedly the mortuary was later used as
a 'gas chamber'. 1: vestibule; 2: morgue; 3: wash-room; 4:
mortuary ('gas chamber'); 5: furnace room; 6: coke storage room;
7: urn room.
At one location the ceiling clearly shows signs of disintegration
caused by water seeping in. Attempts have been made - in vain -
to check the decay by plastering over the area affected. There
are two other places where the ceiling is plastered over, in the
middle of the room and towards the outside wall. Whether these
patches cover up former holes or whether they are also the result
of repairs is something that yet needs to be investigated. In any
case they are not input openings distributed evenly throughout
the room. Other than those that were added after the War, there
are no such breaches in the ceiling.
Might the Auschwitz Museum have been mistaken, and used the old
openings as the locations of the newly installed ones after all?
The former Director of the Museum recently commented to this
effect.20 We shall take a closer look at his revised opinion.
The breaches visible in the concrete today are not plastered, nor
have the remnants of the severed iron reinforcement bars been
properly removed. The holes are fitted with a makeshift wooden
frame, and sealed with tar. Such sloppy work does not reflect the
care required in handling poison gas, nor is it typical of German
workmanship. If the SS had indeed cut these holes through the
concrete, one might expect not only a proper removal of the
reinforcing bars, but also a uniform arrangement of the 4 hatches
over the ceiling of the original mortuary to allow for the even
distribution of Zyklon B in the room. The hatches present today,
however, are spread evenly over the ceiling only if one regards
the washroom, which was not added to this room until after the
War, as being part of the mortuary ('gas chamber'); see
Illustration 2. The configuration of the input hatches,
therefore, makes sense only if they were added specifically for
the facilities as they exist today as 'museum reconstructions' of
incorrect dimensions, ie. if they were added after the War.
Ill. 2: Floor plan of Crematorium I in Auschwitz I (Main
Camp) today, after the post-War alterations: 1: gas chamber; 2:
fake Zyklon-B input hatches; 3: toilet plumbing; 4: former
dividing wall between mortuary and wash-room; 5: bomb shelter
ventilation chimney; 6: bomb shelter airlock, today called
'entrance for the victims'; 7: urns; 8: coke fuel; 9:
reconstructed ovens; 10: new doorway to furnace room; dashed
lines indicate location of original doorway; 11: ruins of old
furnace; 12: fake chimney.
In his new book Pressac states that temporary ventilation
facilities were installed in the Mortuary of Crematorium I in
March 1941, that these were never replaced with permanent
fixtures, and that it is not known how they worked.21 To support
this claim Pressac cites Pery Broad,22 whose statements he had
dismissed as implausible in his first book23 and which,
furthermore, tell of a ventilator installed in one of the
concrete chimneys. But just as the Zyklon B input hatches, this
ventilator would have had to leave detectable traces in the
ceiling. It is also possible, however, that the ventilation pipe
was laid through breaches in the walls, into the oven room and on
from there, for example to the chimney. But since the dividing
wall between the oven room and the mortuary were extensively
rebuilt when the facilities were renovated as air-raid shelter,
no traces remain to be found today.
One can conclude from all this that in all likelihood there were
no hatches for the input of Zyklon B to allow these facilities to
be used as 'gas chamber' at the time of their alleged use as
such.
2.4.1 Crematoria II and III
Ill. 3: Floor plan of Mortuaries I ('gas chambers') of
Crematoria II and III (latter, mirror image) in the camp
Auschwitz II (Birkenau). a: Mortuary I / 'gas chamber',
30x7x2.41m b: Mortuary II / 'Undressing room', 49.5x7.9x2.3m c:
Mortuary III, subsequently subdivided d: Lift for transport of
the bodies to the furnace room, ground floor e: Ventilation shaft
f: Concrete supporting pillars g: Concrete beam h: Entrance to
cellar, added later 1-3: Sites from which Samples 1-3 for the
Rudolf Report were taken
In terms of size, fittings and construction, these crematoria are
comparable with other facilities built in the Reich at that time,
as well as with modern ones.24 Details of the construction of
Mortuary I, allegedly used as 'gas chamber', have already been
discussed elsewhere.7,15,16,18,25 We shall again focus on the
Zyklon B input hatches ie. holes in this basement room, which was
equipped with ventilation but no heating facilities.
Ill. 3 shows the floor plan of Mortuary I (the 'gas chamber') of
Crematorium II and also represents the mirror image of Mortuary I
of Crematorium III; Ill. 4 shows the cross-section.26 According
to eyewitnesses, there were also three or four hatches in the
ceiling here, through which the Zyklon B was introduced.27
Regarding the evidence provided by Allied air photos, the reader
is referred to the chapter by J.C. Ball in the present volume.
Clearly this information suggests that either there were no input
hatches on the roofs, or that these were so small that they did
not show up on the air photos, so that someone deemed it
necessary to resort to photo retouching in order to falsify the
air photos accordingly.
Today the roofs of Mortuaries I (the 'gas chambers') of both
crematoria are broken and collapsed. There are no signs of shell
impacts. It is assumed that these rooms were blasted.28 The
ceiling of Mortuary I ('gas chamber') of Crematorium II is still
more or less intact and stillrests partially on the concrete
supporting pillars. Large parts of the walls and concrete ceiling
still accessible in the interior of the cellar remain in their
original state, protected from weathering. There are no visible
signs of any erosion or corrosion.
In his book Pressac shows pictures of ventilation pipe openings
in the roof of Mortuary II of Crematorium II as well as in the
concrete ceiling of the oven room of Crematorium III.29 Ill. 5
shows one of the five openings into the oven room. In contrast to
these cleanly cut holes, the only two alleged Zyklon B input
hatches to be found in the roof of Mortuary I ('gas chamber') of
Crematorium II are clearly openings that were broken through the
reinforced-concrete roof later (see Ills. 6 and 7). Pressac
concedes that these are the only holes visible today.30
Without exception the openings visible today in the roofs of
Mortuaries I ('gas chambers') of Crematoria II and III are holes
that were broken through the concrete after completion of the
roofs. If any of these holes had served as Zyklon B input
hatches, then they would have to have been added after the roofs
were completed. Since the roofs of these facilities were poured
in the winter of 1942/43,31 any additional openings could have
been added to the roofs of both crematoria in spring 1943 at the
earliest. But the mass extermination in the facilities of
Crematorium II is said to have been in full swing by then. This
would imply an inconceivably stupid error in planning.
Also, given such an opening broken through the roof of one of the
Mortuaries I ('gas chambers') after construction, ie. causing
damage to the concrete and the iron reinforcementstructure, it
would have been inevitable for the ceiling breaks and cracks
resulting from a subsequent blasting of the building to run
primarily through these holes. The reason for this is that
blasting represents an abnormal force, that material tension
reaches very high peak levels around the corners of inserted
openings (notch or fatigue effect), and that cracks proceed
preferentially from weak points. Therefore, particularly such
openings whose belated addition has already damaged the structure
of the surrounding concrete represent points where cracks and
breaks are not only likely, but inevitable. This is demonstrated
by Illustrations 5 and 8. Even though, in Illustration 5, the
explosion pressure in the ground-level oven room was able to
escape in every direction and the ceiling connecting to the upper
floor remained almost fully intact, three of the five oven room
air vent holes, which had been neatly cast into the concrete
ceiling and reinforced, were completely destroyed. Clearly
visible cracks formed at the corners of two other holes, shown in
the photos reproduced by Pressac. Ill. 8 shows the consequences
of a rockfall on a house wall with a window. The only crack in
the wall proceeds from the window.
In the mortuaries of Crematoria II and III the pressure from the
explosion could only escape upward, which is why their ceilings
were much more severely damaged than the ceiling of the oven room
or the wall of the house hit by a rockfall. The alleged Zyklon B
input hatches in the roof of Mortuary I ('gas chamber') of
Crematorium II, however, are conspicuous for their relatively
undamaged condition; all the cracks and breaks in the ceiling
center on the hole shown in Illustration 7. An on-site
examination reveals the random arrangement of openings in places
where the mortuary ceiling is undamaged! As John C. Ball shows in
this volume, in terms of size or location these holes also do not
correspond at all with the patches apparent on the air photos -
something which even Pressac has realized.32
What is more, at the opening shown in Illustration 7 the
reinforcement bars were only cut through once and then bent back.
They are still full length. It would be quite possible to
bendthem back down and weld them to the protruding stubs at left
(covered in snow). Remnants of the reinforcement bars are also
still visible at the edge of the hole in Illustration 6. No
devices for the introduction of gas could ever have been securely
installed, much less sealed to the outside, in such crudely cut
and unfinished holes from which not even the reinforcement bars
had been removed. Any attempt to do so would have endangered the
entire vicinity, including the alleged perpetrators, with the
poison gas that would have escaped in enormous quantities. What
is more, only brute force could have stopped the supposed victims
from escaping through these holes or even throwing the poison gas
carrier out, since after all these holes could never have served
as input hatches - they were never finished.
One can therefore conclude with absolute certainty that the
alleged input hatches were not added until after the buildings
had been blown up, ie. after the German retreat.33
2.4.2 Crematoria IV and V
All that exists for these facilities34 are a few documents and
contradictory, partly unbelievable eyewitness statements.35
According to Pressac, the two western, heated, unidentified
rooms, as well as their anterooms, served as 'gas chambers'.
There is no evidence for any ventilation facility for these rooms
prior to May 1944. For this reason Pressac suggests that up to
that date ventilation was achieved by means of natural draft. In
Crematorium IV, but not in Crematorium V, a ventilation facility
is said to have been installed in May 1944, when the
extermination of the Hungarian Jews allegedly began.36 Pressac
shows a blueprint for this, but fails to cite a source for it.
According to his blueprint, the ventilation shaft would have
opened into an additional chimney of Crematorium IV. However,
such a chimney is not visible on the air photos of May, June and
September 1944.37 As well, and strangely enough, the rooms
described as 'gas chambers', beside the coke fuel and the
physician's rooms, lack any ventilation chimneys - unlike all the
other rooms in the two crematoria. Pressac himself points out
that the lack of ventilation of the chambers would have resulted
in the gas spreading through the entire rest of the building, so
that all work would have had to cease for many hours.38 He adds
further that due to the technical inadequacies the gassings in
these rooms must have been a ludicrous procedure resembling a
circus act.39
Unfortunately one must deal with such witness stories and try to
keep a straight face in the process.
2.4.3 Farm Houses ('Bunkers') I and II
The location and design of the renovated farm houses ('bunkers')
and undressing barracks, allegedly situated west to northwest of
the Birkenau camp, are not precisely known.40 Pressacdescribes
the eyewitness testimony in this respect as contradictory.41 The
building called Farm House (or Bunker) II is sometimes visible on
air photos, whereas there is never any trace of Farm House I.42
Since the gassings attested to for these facilities resemble
those for Crematoria IV and V (input chutes at the side, no
ventilation, but no heating either), our remarks in Section 2.3
apply all the more strongly in this case. In his new book Pressac
even goes one better: he shows43 that, due to a paper authored by
G. Peters,44 the Camp Administration had been aware of the
advanced delousing technique using Zyklon B since 1941. Without
documenting his reasoning(!), he interprets the Camp
Administration's interest in this paper to the effect that this
new technique of killing human beings was to have been
implemented in Bunker II, which was due for renovation. In the
end, however, according to Pressac, they refrained from doing so
because the suppliers allegedly had difficulties in keeping up
with the demand, and so Bunker II, like Bunker I, was operated
without heating or ventilation.
A nugget of absurdity truly worth savoring: the Camp
Administration, while being fully aware of the advanced methods
available, allegedly resorted to sledgehammer methods to gas
people not only in Bunkers I and II, but later on in all other
crematoria as well, while at the same time there were no
noteworthy production delays to interfere with the construction
of hundreds of advanced delousing chambers throughout the Third
Reich and in the war zone and even in the new central sauna of
Auschwitz-Birkenau!
Even the most primitive and temporary delousing facilities -
whether in the early days of Auschwitz, or elsewhere - were
always equipped with an exhaust ventilator and a heating system,
of which the latter is helpful but not absolutely necessary (for
details see Section 4.1). No room, however, which lacked a
ventilation system need be seriously considered as a facility for
fumigation with poison gas, whether for killing lice or human
beings. For execution gas chambers, there must further be a way
to introduce the poison gas substance from outside, which is not
absolutely necessary, but also helpful, in the case of delousing
chambers for material objects. The salient point, therefore, is
that a room that had either no means for introducing the poison
gas from outside, or no ventilation facilities, cannot be
seriously considered as execution gas chamber. An overview of the
rooms discussed here is reflected in Table 1.
| Fumigation Chamber | Poison Gas Input | Heating | Ventilation | Suitable as Delousing Chamber | Suitable as Execution Chamber |
| Delousing Chambers 2 |
1 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 |
| Crematorium I | X | X | 1 | 1 | X |
| Crematoria II & III | X | X | 2 | 1 | X |
| Crematoria IV & V | 2 | 2 | X | X | X |
| Farm Houses I & II | 1 | X | X | X | X |
2 = present; 1 = possibly present; X = not present
This does not even consider, among other things, that a
hypothetical execution gas chamber would need to be proof against
victims attempting to break out, and that the ventilation system
would have to be powerful enough for its task.
Even though the literature largely agrees on the outfitting of
the rooms of Crematoria IV and V as well as of the Farm Houses,
the matter is nevertheless somewhat speculative due to a lack of
documentation and material evidence. Pressac's recent discovery
regarding Crematorium IV's alleged ventilation system of unknown
properties pertains only to the time after May 1944 and strikes
us as no less speculative.
Fortunately, precisely that so-called gas chamber in which the
most people were allegedly killed with poison gas during the
Third Reich has survived to the present in an almost perfectly
intact state: Mortuary I of Crematorium II. It is an engineering
certainty that, contrary to all eyewitness testimony, these
facilities had no Zyklon B input openings in their ceiling during
the time of their alleged operation. And if this is so, then this
room cannot have been used as site for mass murder with poison
gas.
Until and unless the question of how the poison gas substance
should have been introduced into this putative gas chamber is
answered, all further speculations as to the nature of the
killings and the possible chemical evidence for them are merely
academic exercises without substance. Therefore the discussion of
Auschwitz could well end right here. The following, however,
discusses some of the questions of a chemical nature that have
been raised by Leuchter.
Hydrocyanic acid (HCN) blocks the oxygen supply to the cells,
preventing the oxidation processes vital for cell life.45 Due to
the brain's great sensitivity to lack of oxygen, a person who has
inhaled high concentrations of HCN passes out before the onset of
muscle cramps. Thisis the reason why the painless method of HCN
execution is used in some states in the USA. A dose of 1 mg HCN
per kg body weight is generally considered fatal, whereas
non-lethal doses of HCN are quickly eliminated by the body
without aftereffects. The bright red color of the blood and of
the cadaveric lividities are typical post-mortem findings in
HCN-related deaths.46
It is generally advisable to avoid perspiring when dealing with
HCN, since damp skin absorbs HCN most readily. Concentrations of
0.6%/vol. are then hazardous, and a few minutes' exposure to
1%/vol. may be fatal.47
Table 2 shows which concentration of HCN in air is rapidly fatal
to humans. Naturally these values are not the results of
experiments on humans, but projections based, for safety reasons,
on the lower safety limit. To demonstrate: a stout person
weighing 100 kg (roughly 220 lbs.) must absorb approximately 100
mg HCN for this to be fatal. The respiration rate of a person at
rest is about 15 liters of air per minute.48 Given a HCN
concentration of 0.02% (approximately 0.24 mg/liter), the victim
must breathe in about 416 liters of air before he has absorbed
the fatal dose of HCN. At 15 liters per minute, this would take
just under half an hour. If he has a robust constitution, he may
survive even this exposure time. If, however, one postulates a
sensitive person of only 50 kg (approximately 110 lbs.) body
weight, whose respiration rate hard work or excitement has
increased to 40 liters per minute, then the fatal 208 liters of
air will have been breathed in by this person within 5 minutes.
These mathematical examples show that safety guidelines are
always set in such a way as to protect even the smallest and
weakest persons from harm under the worst possible conditions.
Also, the specifications given in the literature, 'immediately'
and 'rapidly fatal', are so indefinite as to be unsatisfactory.
| Source | Concentration | Effect |
| DuPont, Hydrogen Cyanide | 0.03% | rapidly fatal |
| F. Flury, F. Zernik, | 0.02% | fatal after 5-10 mins. inhalation |
| Schädliche Gase | 0.027% | immediately fatal |
The limiting values look very different when the requirement is
that even the most robust among the hypothetical victims must be
dead after a few minutes.4950 Naturally the concentration
required for this greatly exceeds the values cited in Table 2. It
could be determined accurately only by mass screening, which of
course is not an option. The only data available here are those
that have been collected in the course of executions with HCN
that have been performed in the United States. F. A. Leuchter,
the expert in this respect, reports that, depending on their
constitution, the victims are clinically dead after 4 to 10
minutes of exposure to concentrations of 0.32%, in other words,
concentrations more than ten times greater than that cited as
'immediately fatal' in Table 2.5152 From cases of accidental
poisoning we also know that even victims who were exposed to
great overdoses die only after a surprisingly long period of
unconsciousness and subsequent respiratory arrest.5354
Insects and especially their eggs are considerably less
sensitive to HCN. For the most part it is necessary to expose
them for several hours to rather high concentrations (0.3 to 2%)
before their death is certain. Right until the end of World War
Two, 'Zyklon B', a substance produced and licensed by the company
DEGESCH of Frankfurt/Main, was of paramount importance in
combating insects and rodents in food storerooms, large-capacity
transports (trains, ships), public buildings, barracks,
prisoner-of-war camps, concentration camps, and of course for
hygiene and for disease control in general in many countries
around the world.55 The Zyklon B allegedly used for gassing human
beings consisted of lumps of diatomaceous earth(kieselguhr)
1/5" to 2/5" in diameter and soaked with hydrocyanic
acid.56 The evaporation of the poison gas from its carrier
proceeds rather slowly. The characteristics of HCN evaporating
from the carrier substance have been provided by Detia Freyberg
GmbH, successor company of DEGESCH, which had been the chief
supplier of hydrocyanic acid products until the end of the War.
Since the release of the gas depends on temperature and air
movement, Detia Freyberg GmbH gives a rule of thumb only, stating
that at a temperature of greater than 20C, and given an even
distribution of the substance, the carrier releases 80% to 90% of
its hydrocyanic acid within 120 minutes; see Graph 1.
At lower temperatures this process slows down at a rate
proportional to the decreasing vapor pressure of the HCN. At 20C,
therefore, one may expect 50% of the HCN to have evaporated after
40 to 45 minutes. For future reference we shall point out here
that at a temperature of 20C a maximum of 10% of the HCN will be
released by the carrier substance during the first five, probably
even ten minutes.
3.3.1 Formation
If the hydrocyanic acid from the Zyklon B had bonded with the
brickwork only through the process of adsorption, then due to the
volatility of hydrocyanic acid (boiling point: 25.7C) it would no
longer be possible today to detect any hydrocyanic acid residues
in the remaining walls. But even a brief glance into the clothing
disinfestation chambers of Buildings 5a and 5b of Birkenau (Ills.
10 and 11) immediately shows a chemist that what he is in fact
dealing with is a very common substance: iron berlinate,57 an
extremely stable compound formed by the interaction of
hydrocyanic acid with iron (ferrous cyanide58).
Iron is an element almost ubiquitous in nature, occurring most
commonly as ferric oxide ('rust'). The sand used for concrete and
mortar, for example, contains up to 4% iron, while Portland
cement contains between 2 to 5% iron.59 In general, the iron - in
the form of rust - is the reason why building and similar
materials (concrete, mortar, plaster, but loam and clay as well)
take on an ochre to red color with time.
So how does the iron berlinate pigment form? First the
hydrocyanic acid must accumulate in the brickwork. A cool and
therefore damp wall is conducive to this process, since
hydrocyanic acid is most readily soluble in water. Accordingly,
cool (10C) basement walls with a moisture content some ten times
greater than that of warm, dry rooms (20C) also have an
approximately ten times greater tendency to become enriched with
hydrocyanic acid.60
A damp environment (ie. wall) is also of prime importance for the
further steps involved in the chemical conversion into iron
berlinate, and in fact all other factors are secondary.61
3.3.2 Stability
The relevant literature consistently describes iron berlinate as
an extremely stable pigment. It is insoluble in water,62
resistant to acid rain63 and also surprisingly resistant to
sunlight.64 When exposed to weathering, other compounds of
hydrocyanic acid will even convert preferentially into iron
berlinate.
Three examples will demonstrate the environmentally resistant
nature of iron berlinate. First, the outside walls of the
Birkenau delousing building, which are stained blue by iron
berlinate, have lost none of their color despite 50 years of
exposure to the adverse environmental conditions of the
industrial region of Upper Silesia (Ill. 10). One might now
object that the soluble compounds of hydrocyanic acid in the
interior of the walls gradually migrate to the surface, thereby
making up for any loss caused by surface erosion and thus only
"simulating" long-term stability. However, a long-term
test begun in the 1950s to ascertain the environmental resistance
of paints has clarified this matter. In this test, many pigments
including iron berlinate and iron oxide (ie. 'rust') were tested
by applying them only superficially and without protective
coating onto a piece of aluminum. After more than 20 years'
exposure to the air of a western industrial suburb of London, two
pigments exhibited the least (barely noticeable)changes: iron
berlinate and iron oxide.65 Even scattered on the ground, iron
berlinate remains stable and fixed for decades, as tests in gas
works shut down decades ago have shown. In this case the iron
berlinate obtained in the city's gas works was used as a
herbicide, and is still present today in virtually undiminished
quantities.66 Therefore, if iron berlinate has formed on and in a
wall, one may expect to find a long-term stability similar to
that of the iron oxide from which it formed.
Thus, once noticeable quantities of hydrocyanic acid salts have
accumulated in brickwork, and once damp conditions have allowed
these to convert into iron berlinate, then no appreciable
reduction in hydrocyanic acid content is to be expected after 50
years.
A typical example of the way the media deal with these facts is
the report that was issued by the press agency dpa and carried on
March 29, 1993 in almost all major daily newspapers and even in
some radio news broadcasts, in which it was claimed that,
according to one expert, the hydrocyanic acid salts at issue here
have a life of only a few months.67 Inquiries at the Stuttgart
dpa office responsible for this press release revealed that the
editor in charge, Albert Meinecke, had invented this 'expert
opinion' out of thin air. Evidently even the dpa press agency
does not shy back from issuing false reports.68
Initially, ordinary rooms were turned into disinfestation
facilities for material objects by means of makeshift renovations
intended to render the windows and doors as gas-proof as possible
and to provide adequate heating and ventilation systems for the
rooms. Workers wearing protective masks distributed the Zyklon B
evenly on the floor of the room, which had been previously
stocked with the items to be fumigated. This procedure was
similar to that used at the time for the fumigation of ordinary
rooms for purposes of disinfestation.
Later, special facilities were constructed, and outfitted with
heating, ventilation and air turnover ('circulation system')
facilities. These facilities had a relatively small volume to
avoid any dead space, ie. to conserve the rather costly
insecticide.
Depending on the facilities and on the kind of vermin to be
exterminated, the concentrations of hydrocyanic acid varied from
0.5 to 2%, while the duration of use ranged from less than 2
hours to 10 hours and more.
The delousing chambers of Buildings 5a and 5b in Birkenau had
been constructed especially for delousing purposes (with
ventilation facilities, heating, aeration chimneys), but their
size made them very expensive to operate. They had an area of
approximately 130m2 and a volume of at least 400m3. Using the
entire room as delousing chamber would require quantities of
Zyklon B containing at least 4 to 5 kg (10g/m3) hydrocyanic
acid.69 Assuming onefumigation cycle per day, these facilities
alone used up 3.6 tons of Zyklon B a year, which corresponds to
almost 50% of the entire quantity of Zyklon B delivered to
Auschwitz in 1942, where the total amount delivered was 7.5
tons.70
If one considers that Birkenau also had other hydrocyanic acid
delousing facilities of various size71 and that inmates' barracks
were also fumigated with this insecticide on occasion,72 then it
becomes apparent that the quantities of Zyklon B supplied to
Auschwitz can be explained by the normal disinfestation
operations, which is in fact generally accepted. Pressac, for
example, suggests that 95 to 98% of all the Zyklon B supplied to
the camp was used for its original purpose, namely to delouse
clothing and facilities,73 and he cites findings of the Nuremberg
Tribunal in support of this.74 And in fact, relative to the
numbers of people in the Auschwitz camp, the quantities of Zyklon
B supplied to this camp did not exceed the quantities supplied to
other concentration camps where it is known that no
exterminations took place. Clearly, the annual quantity supplied
to Auschwitz was not even enough, since the typhus epidemics
could never be entirely prevented. These considerations show that
the disinfestation chambers of Buildings 5a and 5b could not have
been used more than once a day.
4.2.1 Eyewitness Testimony
Where the trustworthiness and credibility of eyewitness testimony
are concerned, Pressac himself judges at times quite harshly.75
He attempts to explain the untruths, impossibilities and
exaggerations, and in many cases corrects them. For example,
Pressac estimates the numbers of victims per gassing as
considerably less than do the eyewitnesses, who frequently tell
of several thousand victims per cycle.76 Since the number of
victims in Auschwitz has been officially reduced from 4 million
to approximately 1 million77 since spring 1990, Pressac,drawing
primarily on a work by D. Czech,78 has manipulated the claims of
the witnesses to reflect these new figures. The following
describes the procedures of the alleged homicidal gassings for
the individual facilities, as Pressac feels he can reconstruct
them following his correction of the eyewitness testimony:
Crematorium I:
500 to 700 victims undress out of doors; the 'gas chamber'
(mortuary) is entered via the furnace room; Zyklon B is
introduced through input shafts; after the victims have died
(some 5 minutes later) the ventilators are turned on; after 15 to
20 minutes of ventilation, the door to the furnace room is
opened, the chamber is cleared - sometimes without the use of gas
masks on the part of the workers - and the victims are
cremated.79 According to Pressac only a few gassings took place
here, with a total of less than 10,000 victims.80
Crematoria II & III:
800 to 1,200 victims undress in Mortuary II; they enter Mortuary
I (the 'gas chamber'); Zyklon B is introduced via input shafts;
after the victims have died (5 minutes) the ventilators are
turned on; after approximately 20 minutes the doors are opened;
the bodies, covered with blood, vomit and faeces, are hosed off;
the bodies are removed, usually without the use of gas masks on
the part of the workers; cremation takes place on the ground
floor.81 According to Pressac the total number of victims for
Crematorium II was some 400,000 (one gassing per day on average),
350,000 for Crematorium III.82
Crematoria IV & V:
Several hundred victims undress out of doors when the weather
permitted, otherwise in the Mortuary; victims walk to the 'gas
chamber', Zyklon B is thrown in through input hatches, from a
ladder; after 15 to 20 minutes the doors are opened; bodies are
removed to the mortuary or outside to the burning pits behind
Crematorium V, while the workers sometimes do and sometimes do
not wear gas masks. According to Pressac, the number of victims
is difficult to estimate, presumably approximately 100,000
each.83 The same goes for Bunkers I and II.
Pressac repeatedly mentions concentrations of 12g hydrocyanic
acid per m3, or 1% by volume. To support this claim he cites many
eyewitness accounts which allege that 4 to 6 1-kg-tins of Zyklon
B were emptied into the 'gas chambers' (mortuaries) of Crematoria
II and III, which indeed corresponds to a concentration of 1% by
volume.84
Another indirect and surely the most conclusive source to
determine the quantities of hydrocyanic acid used are the gassing
times attested to by the witnesses. These times are consistently
a matter of minutes,85 and it is no doubt justified to wonder how
the witnesses could possibly know this, since according to the
conventional accounts the gas chamber doors had at most one
peephole, which SS physicians allegedly availed themselves of to
supervise the proceedings. Such witnesses would thus be the only
ones not reporting from hearsay. In his 1992 report Professor G.
Jagschitz quotes one such qualified witness.86 The Auschwitz camp
physician he quotes - Dr. Horst Fischer, who claims to have
frequently supervised 'gas chamber executions' himself - reports
of gassing times of 2 to 3 minutes, which agrees with the claims
of the vast majority of all other witnesses. The former Camp
Commandant R. H"á also spoke of 3 to, in exceptional cases,
15 minutes.87 Such a relatively quick execution would require the
use of correspondingly large quantities of Zyklon B. The
approximate quantity shall be determined in the following.
4.2.2 Criticism of Eyewitness Testimony
In order to assess the degree to which official eyewitness
testimony and other accounts of the alleged gassing procedures
approximate reality, one must consider the following factors.
1. Is the gassing procedure attested to physically possible, and
if so, under what conditions?
2. What time would have been required to ventilate the facilities
crowded with bodies? or: were the clean-up operations attested to
in the chambers possible?
4.2.2.1 Poisoning or Suffocation?
If one assumes an execution time roughly commensurate to that in
American gas chambers (4 to 10 minutes, with approximately 0.3%
hydrocyanic acid per m3), then the concentration of 0.3% by
volume (3.6 g/m3) must have prevailed in even the hindmost corner
of the gas chamber by the end of the execution process at the
latest, ie. after 10 minutes. Given a volumeof 413 m3 of the
Mortuaries I of Crematoria II and III,88 this corresponds to
approximately 1.5 kg of hydrocyanic acid. Since after 5 to 10
minutes the carrier substance has released only 10% of its
hydrocyanic acid, then an execution that takes only a few minutes
would require the use of 10 times this quantity, ie. at least 15
kg Zyklon B. Of course this would work only on the condition that
the hydrocyanic acid that is released would reach the victims
right away, which one cannot expect in large and overcrowded
rooms. We note, therefore that for the gassing procedures
attested to, at least 20 kg of Zyklon B would have had to be used
per gassing. The quantities actually attested to by witnesses - 5
to 12 kg - thus correspond at best to the absolute minimum
required.
On the basis of detailed calculations, Rudolf has demonstrated
that the victims could not possibly have breathed the available
air volume of the chamber (400 m3) more than once within the 5 to
10 minutes for which the people locked into the gas chamber
allegedly still lived following the introduction of the poison
gas.89 This shows that the respiration of the victims could not
have reduced the poison gas content of the air significantly
below 50% of its hypothetical maximum initial concentration. But
since the Zyklon B still contains 90% of its original content
after the first 5 to 10 minutes following its distribution, ie.
after the death of the victims, the poison gas content of the air
will continue to rise. This shows that under the conditions
attested to by the witnesses, the victims could have breathed in
only a small fraction of the poison used.
The theory occasionally advanced, that the victims had absorbed
all of the poison gas,90 would require that only very small
quantities of poison gas were used, so that the people could have
acted as living filters for the entire duration of outgassing,
ie. the time for which the Zyklon B released the poison (2
hours). This means that the doses of poison were too small to
kill them, ie. the concentrations were below 0.01% by volume -
meaning that less than 500 g of Zyklon B was used. However,
Rudolf has pointed out that the victims in the airtight chamber
would probably have suffocated after only one hour and without
any poison gas, so that even under these conditions the victims'
complete absorption of the hydrocyanic acid would have failed due
to the slow rate of outgassing of the Zyklon B. Thus, this theory
not only contradicts the eyewitness statements with respect to
quantities of Zyklon B and speed of execution, but is also
technically utterly nonsensical, since if the victims had been
killed by suffocation there would have been no need to expend the
costly Zyklon B, which was in short enough supply even without
being wasted.
4.2.2.2 Speed of Ventilation of the 'Gas Chambers'
The following shall help explain a somewhat complex mathematical
concept. Imagine, if you will, that someone is given a bucket
containing 100 blue balls. Each time he reaches into the bucket,
he puts in one red ball, briefly mixes the contents and, without
looking, takes out one randomly selected ball. How often will he
have to do this until only 50 blue balls are left in the bucket
and all the others are red? Clue: assuming that he has already
replaced half of all the blue balls with red ones, what is the
chance that in blindly taking out another ball he will take out a
red one instead of a blue one, thus defeating his purpose, ie.
the intended exchange? This is the sort of problem that arises in
ventilating a room, when stale and freshair mix. It means that it
takes considerably longer to successfully ventilate a room than
is generally assumed. In the case described above, it takes an
average of 70 exchanges before half the blue balls have been
replaced by red ones.
Calculations have shown that the ventilation facilities in the
alleged gas chambers of Crematoria II and III in Birkenau -
facilities designed only for ventilation of ordinary mortuaries -
could have performed at most 6 to 8 air exchanges per hour.91 Due
to the poor system configuration (inlet right above outlet) and
the overcrowding of the room with bodies, half an hour would
never have sufficed to achieve harmless levels of hydrocyanic
acid following a gassing, even if there had been no Zyklon B
still releasing gas for hours on end. The eyewitness testimony
claiming adequate ventilation after 20 to 30 minutes in
Mortuaries I of Crematoria II and III are thus not credible.
This goes all the more for Crematoria IV and V as well as for the
sinister Farm Houses (Bunkers) which could have been aired out
only via one or two doors. Since they are said to have been
equally crammed full of bodies, with the Zyklon B scattered among
them, the ventilation time would have been at least one day, the
same as was required for ordinary room disinfestations.92 What is
more, ordinary rooms would allow for the removal of the Zyklon B,
and generally have windows to facilitate ventilation and are not
packed with bodies. Eyewitness testimony telling of work
performed without the benefit of gas masks in these 'gas
chambers' immediately or shortly after the gassing is thus
utterly unbelievable. And even if the workers had worn gas masks
- carrying the corpses would have been hard work (causing
perspiration! cf. Section 3.1), and in these rooms high in
hydrocyanic acid any such work would have been extremely risky
due to the potential for poisoning via the skin.
4.2.3 Evaluation of Eyewitness Testimony
We will ignore for the moment the problem of the Zyklon B input
hatches, which demonstrably were not present in the ceilings of
Mortuaries I of Crematoria II and III, and pretend that they were
in fact there.
Under the given technical conditions, the executions with Zyklon
B as recounted by the witnesses would not under any circumstances
have been possible as rapidly as some allege ("a few
moments", "immediately"), and "within a few
minutes" only if horrendous quantities of Zyklon B had been
used - which would have been nonsensical (too costly), dangerous
and awkward at once. As well, the walls of the chambers would
have been exposed to high concentrations of hydrocyanic acid for
long periods of time.
The alleged entering of the 'gas chambers' without safety
measures, the hard work performed in them - sometimes done
bare-chested and while eating and smoking - and thesimultaneous
claim that great quantities of poison gas were used, combine to
prove these witnesses guilty of making false statements.
No less false are the times alleged for the ventilation of
Mortuaries I (the 'gas chambers') of Crematoria II and III, since
the witnesses proceeded on the mistaken assumption that a single
air exchange would remove all the poison gas. The delay in the
reduction of the remaining concentration of hydrocyanic acid
means that in a realistic scenario the required ventilation time
would exceed that recounted by the witnesses by a factor of 10 or
more (diminished circulation due to the bodies, 'short-circuit'
of air, aftergeneration of gas from the Zyklon B). As well, the
problem of continued aftergeneration of gas from the remaining
Zyklon B, which would have made it impossible to enter the
chambers in anything less than 2 hours even with ongoing
ventilation, also prove that the witnesses have not told the
truth.
The 'gas chambers' of Crematoria IV and V as well as of Bunkers I
and II would have had to be designed and built as instruments of
mass murder if the mass gassings alleged to have been planned and
in progress during the construction of these facilities had
really taken place, yet even Pressac admits that the gassing
procedures attested to were illogical and ridiculous, and highly
dangerous to the Sonderkommandos in particular; in the face of
all this, anyone approaching this issue from a scientific and
technical perspective cannot but conclude that the alleged
murderers went to great lengths to devise the most expensive,
complicated, dangerous and problematic way to kill people en
masse. For example, the coal-refining BUNA works of I.G. Farben
AG, only a few miles away, could easily have provided a cheap
supply of coal gas high in carbon monoxide for poisoning, or
bottled nitrogen for asphyxiation. But in Auschwitz, of all
places, it had to be the expensive, scarce and awkward-to-use
Zyklon B that was used, even though it was badly needed
everywhere else for pest control. Yet in other alleged
extermination camps far distant from the BUNA plant, carbon
monoxide is said to have been used to kill people, and to have
been generated for this purpose with diesel engines from captured
Russian tanks, whose exhaust fumes, however, contain only
non-lethal quantities of carbon monoxide when operated in neutral
gear (as they would have to have been).93
One must realize that near the alleged 'homicidal gas chambers'
in Auschwitz there were highly efficient delousing facilities,
with airlocks, heating, powerful ventilators etc., and all of
them had been constructed prior to the alleged 'homicidal gas
chambers'. Further, at the time of construction of these alleged
'gas chambers' the technology for fumigating material objects had
advanced greatly and the production of such facilities was in
full swing. From everyday practical experience in delousing, the
difference in time and material (Zyklon B) requirements between
fumigations with and without air circulation will have been
well-known. One might therefore expect the application of at
least similar technological standards for the alleged homicidal
gassing facilities, but clearly nothing even remotely approaching
such standards was in fact used.
For propagandistic reasons it would have been the obvious thing
to present such facilities as the delousing chambers of Buildings
5a and 5b as homicidal gas chambers. But no attempts were ever
made to do so, and there are also no eyewitness statements
alleging such a use of these rooms. Further, the doors of the
delousing room of Building 5b - both as shown on the construction
plans and as they actually exist there today - open inward, which
means that in any mass gassing the bodies lying by the doors
would have kept these from being opened afterwards. These rooms,
therefore, were certainly never used as 'execution gas chambers'.
We will just comment briefly on the widely-held belief that the
poison gas entered the alleged 'execution gas chambers' via
showerheads, particularly since there are also some instances of
eyewitness testimony to this effect. In 'Zyklon B' the active
substance hydrocyanicacid is adsorbed on the solid carrier
substance, diatomaceous earth, and is released only gradually.
Since the poison is neither a liquid nor a gas under pressure,
the hydrocyanic acid from this product could never have been
channelled through narrow water pipes and showerheads. Any
showers, real or fake, could thus only have served to deceive the
victims, but never to introduce the poison gas. Even with all the
arguing and dissension that characterizes the overall subject,
there is a general consensus on this particular point.
Before taking sample material from the Auschwitz 'gas chambers' one ought to verify that the material is in fact original, and to investigate its post-War history. The foundations and foundation walls of Crematoria IV and V visible today were constructed after the War by the Museum Administration.94 Since the origin of the material used is uncertain, it makes no sense to take samples here. By incredible good luck, however, the 'gas chamber' (Mortuary I) of Crematorium II has largely survived intact. Aside from the holes in the ceiling, the building materials are not only indisputably original and unaltered, but are also largely protected from weathering by the ceiling. Further, according to Pressac, this room was allegedly the central site, as it were, of the mass murder. This is where most of the gassings are said to have occurred. Taking samples here is thus appropriate not only by virtue of the original nature and the history of the material, but also due to the results which an analysis may be expected to return. If iron berlinate residue is to be expected in 'homicidal gas chambers', then here is where one should strike paydirt. To date there have been three samplings worth mentioning:95 by Leuchter,1 Rudolf16 and Ball.96 The reader is referred to these sources for details on sample removal and characterization.
Table 3: Cyanide Concentrations in the Walls of 'Gas Chambers'
and Delousing Chambers of Auschwitz & Birkenau0.3
0.1Concentrations are in mg of cyanide (CN-) per kg of building
material (brick, mortar, concrete, plaster). Cyanide values of
less than 10 mg/kg are uncertain, samples returning values of
less than 1-2 mg are considered cyanide-free.
Table 3 summarizes the most important results of the analyses of
material samples for cyanide content (cyanides = hydrocyanic acid
compounds). The first part of the Table reflects samples taken
from alleged 'gas chambers'. The second section pertains to
samples from delousing chambers. The third shows the results of
analyses of samples relating neither to 'gas chambers' nor to
delousing chambers. This would actually also be the proper
category for all samples taken from the reconstructed foundations
and foundation walls of Crematoria IV and V as well as from the
Farm Houses ('Bunkers'), whose building materials are of unknown
origin. On the basis of control samples Rudolf has shown that due
to the nature of the sample material, concentrations of less than
10 mg/kg are unreliable and hence must be considered null.97 One
can thus observe that the alleged 'gas chambers' exhibit the same
concentrationsof hydrocyanic acid residue as any building
selected at random - namely, none that are great enough to be
reliably interpreted. In contrast, the residual quantities in the
delousing barracks range from 1,000 to 10,000 mg/kg, meaning that
0.1 to 1% of the brickwork in fact consists of cyanides. These
findings are not only not questioned by the Director of the
Auschwitz Museum, but are in fact expressly confirmed. Since the
results are no longer subject to doubt, we would urge that no
further samples be removed without official sanction, lest these
facilities suffer the same fate as did the Berlin Wall.
In view of these perfectly clear results and of the fact that
they cannot be explained away by any disintegration processes of
iron berlinate, which remains stable for great periods of time,
the question which needs to be addressed is how these results are
to be interpreted correctly.
The first attempt at explanation which the advocates of
prevailing opinion advanced was the consideration that perhaps
the murders had been committed by means of a different poison
gas. Since such an explanation would have required jettisoning
all the eyewitness testimony, this approach was rejected.
Bailer has claimed that no iron berlinate could form in brickwork
merely as consequence of hydrocyanic acid fumigation,12 which has
been sufficiently disproved.98 He explains the blue color of the
delousing chamber walls as paint that was applied during or after
the War. However, this second escape attempt fails to explain
The fact is that the walls of the delousing buildings are
saturated through and through with hydrocyanic acid compounds, of
which only a part becomes visible as iron berlinate,
predominantly in damp areas.
The third attempt at explaining the paradox was somewhat more
complicated. As mentioned before, humans are more sensitive to
HCN than are insects. Holocaust advocates now argue that the
execution gassings were performed using only very little
hydrocyanic acid, and that they did not take nearly as long as
the delousing fumigations of material objects, which often took
hours.99 These two factors - low concentrations of HCN and
shorter fumigation times - resulted in a lack of residue
formation.8,10,12 This argument may be tested by some rough
calculations:
If one recalls our previous findings regarding the quantities
allegedly used (similar to those for delousing fumigations) and
the problems of ventilation, which would have taken hours, if not
days, then any comment is superfluous. The results of the
chemical analyses can therefore not be explained in this way.
G. Wellers was the first to advance the theory that the victims
had absorbed all the hydrocyanic acid by respiration.13 This
theory has already been clearly refuted in Section 4.2.2.1.
A further attempt at explanation hinges on those eyewitness
statements which report that the bodies were hosed down after the
gassings.101 It would thus be possible that the walls were also
hosed down in the process, and cleansed of the HCN. We note:
The latter two points, however, are demonstrably not the case.
There are no significant amounts of cyanide to be found anywhere!
One must also consider that the additionalmoistening of the
chamber walls would have dramatically increased their absorption
of hydrocyanic acid during subsequent gassings, and would have
greatly accelerated the conversion into the stable compound iron
berlinate. To conduct HCN fumigations in such wet, cold basement
rooms with untiled floors and walls would have been madness.
The last explanatory attempt of which we are aware is the claim
that today's ruin of the alleged gas chamber is entirely flooded
by ground water for long periods of time and especially in
spring, so that the cyanides were completely washed away in the
first years after the War. We note:
The latest trend in the official school of thought is towards
altering various factors relating to the homicidal gassings, even
if this is in crass contradiction to the eyewitness testimony or
the technical facts.
Only a few years ago it was still the norm to speak of daily,
even of continual gassings,103 but the recent, drastic reductions
in the numbers of victims, down to at most 630,000 or even only
470,000 to 550,000 gassing victims,104 have resulted in the
revised assumption of considerably fewer gassings per 'gas
chamber' - and in fact some estimates have been reduced to only a
few ten-thousand victims per chamber.105
Further, there is a trend, demonstrated above, to noticeably
reduce the quantities of hydrocyanic acid allegedly used,
contrary to what witnesses claim.
But there are also physical factors that may influence the
interpretation of the findings. For example, the 1926 patent for
Zyklon B claims that the product releases practically all its
hydrocyanic acid content within ten minutes.106 Recent findings
not yet published have shownthat in about 1930, on the initiative
of the Materials Testing Lab in Berlin, DEGESCH replaced the
carrier substance with one high in gypsum, since it had been
found that pure diatomaceous earth already released its
hydrocyanic acid content in the can, after only a few days. Due
to this modification of the carrier, the evaporation time
required by the HCN increased sharply in the early 1930s.107
According to a publication by G. Peters, the Zyklon B expert with
DEGESCH, in the early 1930s Zyklon B released 50% of its HCN in
about 30 minutes.108 Therefore it is likely that the substance
used in Auschwitz had an evaporation time roughly between the
values given in 1933 by G. Peters and in 1991 by the firm Detia
Freyberg, in other words, between 30 and 50 minutes.109
And finally, Mattogno points out that the delousing chambers may
also have been hosed down with water after each disinfestation
process, thus rendering these rooms no less damp than the
mortuaries of Crematoria II and III.110 Since this would
inevitably have resulted in a gradient of cyanide concentration
in the walls, decreasing from the damp floor towards the dry
ceiling, this theory is open to empirical verification.
Taking all these hypothetically conceivable marginal requirements
into consideration, it would be possible to arrive at a point
where the duration for which the hydrocyanic acid was in contact
with the cool and damp walls of Mortuaries I of Crematoria II and
III was in fact so short that a definite prediction of the
results yielded by chemical analyses is no longer possible.
By this process the historians of the Establishment in fact
declare the eyewitness statements regarding the number of victims
and the execution conditions to be unbelievable, and they ignore
the circumstance that Crematoria II and III had no holes through
which the Zyklon B could have been introduced. But what do most
historians care about factual arguments - they evidently have
their ironclad opinion, and that's all there is to it.
Examination of the construction of the facilities allegedly
used for the mass gassings has shown that the alleged main gas
chambers of Auschwitz - the mortuary of the Main Camp
crematorium, and the Mortuaries I (the 'gas chambers') of
Crematoria II and III - had no contrivances for the introduction
of the poison gas substance. The holes visible in the ceilings
today were added after the War. If these findings remain
unrefuted, this alone renders any mass gassings, as these have
been attested to, entirely impossible.
The examination of the formation and long-term stability of
hydrocyanic acid residue in the walls of the facilities in
question ('gas chambers' and delousing chambers for material
objects), as well as the interpretation of the results of
analysis of brick samples from these facilities in Auschwitz,
have shown:
1. Hydrocyanic acid which reacts to form iron berlinate in the
brick walls etc. remains stable for many centuries. Its
disintegration requires a time frame similar to that of the brick
itself. Therefore, cyanide residue ought still to be present in
virtually undiminished quantities today, regardless of weathering
effects. The outside walls of the delousing buildings BW5a/b in
Birkenau, which are still blue on the outer surface today, as
well as high in cyanide content, serve to prove this.
2. Under such conditions as would actually be possible, the
attested-to mass execution gassings with hydrocyanic acid would
result in the rooms in question exhibiting cyanide residue on the
same scale as is the case in the disinfestation chambers for
material objects, including the resultant blue discoloration of
the walls.
3. In fact, however, the alleged 'gas chambers' exhibit only
insignificant traces of cyanide residue, on the same order of
magnitude as may be found in any other building.
Therefore, it is our conviction that the only conclusion which
can explain all factors involved is that in the facilities
alleged, no mass gassings with Zyklon B can have occurred under
the conditions attested to.
Ill. 13: Floor plan of Bath and Disinfection II of the
concentration camp Lublin-Majdanek.
The alleged gas chambers of the concentration camp
Lublin-Majdanek have been discussed by F. A. Leuchter.
Illustration 13 shows a floor plan of the building "Bath and
Disinfection II" of this camp,112 as it was accepted by the
Düsseldorf Jury Court in the Majdanek Trial.113 Three gas
chambers intended for execution purposes were allegedly located
in the far-right wing of the building, as well as another one
adjacent to the bath room; it is marked on the plan as 'A'. A
further gas chamber is said to have been in the crematorium, but
we shall confine ourselves here to those in the building
"Bath and Disinfection II".
These facilities are brick constructs, with a concrete ceiling at
a height of approximately 6 ft. Metal pipes lead from Room E and
open into Rooms B and C; there is also a crudely barred
10"x6" opening into Room C. In a remote corner Room A
has a wooden-framed hole in the ceiling, while Room B has two
ceiling holes and Rooms C and D have one each. Outside Rooms A
and B there is a boiler room each, where hot air (250F) was
generated and blown into the chambers. According to J. Marszalek,
these facilities were officially constructed as delousing
chambers.114
Marszalek repeats the generally held opinion that carbon monoxide
(CO) in pressure cylinders was piped from Room E through the
metal pipes and into Rooms B and C to gas the people there.
Zyklon B was thrown in through the openings in the ceilings to
kill the victims. The hot air from the boiler rooms itself
allegedly sufficed to cause the death of the victims,while also
speeding up the action of the hydrocyanic acid.115 According to
statements by witnesses, the Zyklon B supplied to the Lublin camp
(approximately 7.7 tons116) was used entirely for killing
purposes,117 and the killing process was identical to that of
Auschwitz. The number of victims alleged for Majdanek varies
between 2 million and less than 100,000.118
a) The residue is the result of the few execution gassings with Zyklon B which are postulated for these chambers today. If this is the case, then the only explanation for the absence of any such residue in Auschwitz would be that no gassings took place there. All eyewitness testimony telling of homicidal gassings in these rooms in Auschwitz would therefore be false. This begs the question why the identical eyewitness testimony regarding Majdanek should then be true.
b) The residue is the result of disinfestations with Zyklon B. Therefore these rooms are not execution gas chambers for human beings, but rather delousing chambers. In other words, the witnesses for Majdanek did not tell the truth. This in turn begs the reciprocal question, why the witnesses should then have told the truth for Auschwitz.
If the execution gas chambers of Majdanek existed, then those
of Auschwitz cannot have existed, for the iron berlinate which
one finds in Majdanek is absent in Auschwitz. But if there were
no homicidal gas chambers in Auschwitz, in other words if all the
eyewitness testimony affirming them is false, then who or what is
there to prove the homicidal gas chambers of Majdanek?
And vice versa! If the execution gas chambers of Auschwitz
existed, then those of Majdanek cannot have existed, for the iron
berlinate which one finds in Majdanek could then only be
explained by delousing chambers. But if there were no homicidal
gas chambers in Auschwitz, in other words if all the eyewitness
testimony affirming them is false, then what is there to prove
the homicidal gas chambers of Auschwitz?
Technical and toxicological impossibility and the chemical and
engineering evidence are not the only things to suggest that the
witnesses have not told the truth about Auschwitz or about
Majdanek. Logic as well shows that the witnesses have become
hopelessly entangled in their own conflicting claims, and it
seems as though the contradictory findings for Auschwitzand
Majdanek will themselves ultimately take the witness tales of
homicidal gassings ad absurdum.
1 F. A. Leuchter, An Engineering Report on the Alleged Execution
Gas Chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek, Poland,
Toronto: Samisdat Publishers Ltd., 1988, 195 pp.; German ed.: Der
erste Leuchter-Report, ibid., 1988; British ed.: The Leuchter
Report, London: Focal Point Publications, 1989, 67 pp.
2 Verdict of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial, Ref. 50/4 Ks 2/63;
cf. I. Sagel-Grande, H. H. Fuchs, C. F. Rüter (eds.), Justiz und
NS-Verbrechen, v. XXI, Amsterdam: University Press, 1979, p. 434.
3 District Court Düsseldorf, Ref. 8 Ks 1/75.
4 Re. the trials cf. R. Faurisson, Journal of Historical Review
(JHR) 8(4) (1988): 417-431. The law under which E. Zündel was
charged was quashed by the Supreme Court of Canada in spring 1993
as being in violation of human rights. The reason: no-one other
than the accused himself could possibly know whether the accused
had knowingly told untruths (in other words, had lied or denied).
Everyone must be granted the right to be wrong. This antediluvian
law required the Court to be able to read minds, and was an
elastic, ambiguous paragraph posing a dire threat to the free
expression of opinion. The Court rejected subsequent motions to
re-charge Zündel under other paragraphs. Zündel was thus
acquitted of all charges.
5 F. Finke, Deutschland in Geschichte und Gegenwart (DGG) 37(3)
(1989): 1-4.
6J.-C. Pressac, Jour J, December 12, 1988, pp. I-X; also in: S.
Z. Shapiro (ed.), Truth Prevails: Demolishing Holocaust Denial:
The End of the Leuchter Report, New York: Beate Klarsfeld
Foundation, 1990.
7J.-C. Pressac, Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas
Chambers, New York: Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, 1989.
8H. Auerbach, Institut für Zeitgeschichte, letter to the
Bundesprüfstelle, Munich, Oct. 30, 1989; H. Auerbach, November
1989, published resp. in: U. Walendy, Historische Tatsachen (HT)
No. 42, Vlotho: Verlag für Volkstum und Zeitgeschichtsforschung,
1990, pp. 32 and 34.
9J. Markiewicz, W. Gubala, J. Labedz, B. Trzcinska, Gutachten,
Prof. Dr. Jan Sehn Institute for Court Expert Reports, Dep't. of
Forensic Toxicology, Cracow, Sept. 24, 1990; published without
the sampling protocol in: DGG 39(2) (1991): 18f.; also: J.
Markiewicz, W. Gubala, J. Labedz, Z Zagadnien Nauk Sadowych, Z.
XXX (1994): 17-27; and the critique: G. Rudolf, DGG 43(1) (1995):
22-26; J. Markiewicz, W. Gubala, J. Labedz, G. Rudolf:
correspondence, in: Sleipnir (Verlag der Freunde, Postfach 35 02
64, D-10211 Berlin) 1(3) (1995): 29-33.
10W. Wegner, in: U. Backes, E. Jesse, R. Zitelmann (eds.), Die
Schatten der Vergangenheit, Frankfurt/Main: Propyläen, 1990, pp.
450ff.
11Critiques of Jean-Claude Pressac, op. cit. (Note 7), by: M.
Weber, JHR 10(2) (1990): 231-237; C. Mattogno, JHR 10(4) (1990):
461-485; R. Faurisson, Revue d'Histoire Révisionniste 3 (1990):
65-154; Eng.: JHR 11(1) (1991): 25-66; JHR 11(2) (1991): 133-175;
E. Aynat, JHR 11(2) (1991): 177-206; A. R. Butz, JHR 13(3)
(1993): 23-37; W. Häberle, DGG 39(2) (1991): 9-13; W. Schuster,
ibid., pp. 13-17; U. Walendy, HT No. 50, Vlotho: Verlag für
Volkstum und Zeitgeschichtsforschung, 1991; Walendy, HT No. 52,
ibid., 1992; Walendy, HT No. 60, ibid., 1993.
12J. Bailer, in: Dokumentationszentrum des "sterreichischen
Widerstandes, Bundesministerium für Unterricht und Kultur (ed.),
Amoklauf gegen die Wirklichkeit, Vienna, 1991, pp. 47-52.
13G. Wellers, Dachauer Hefte 7(7) (1991): 230.
14M. Weber, JHR 12(4) (1992-93): 421ff.; P. Grubach, ibid., pp.
445ff.
15E. Gauss, DGG 41(2) (1993): 16; Gauss, Vorlesungen über
Zeitgeschichte, Tübingen: Grabert, 1993.
16R. Kammerer, A. Solms, Das Rudolf-Gutachten, London: Cromwell,
1993.
17Aside from S. Z. Shapiro (ed.), op. cit. (Note 6), other mostly
polemical accounts of Revisionist arguments have been published
by the Establishment: D. Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust: The
Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, New York: Free Press, 1993;
K. S. Stern, Holocaust Denial, New York: American Jewish
Committee, 1993; A. M. Schwartz, Hitler's Apologists: The
Antisemitic Propaganda of Holocaust 'Revisionism', New York: The
Anti-Defamation-League, 1993; re. the latter three titles, cf. T.
J. O'Keefe, JHR 13(6) (1993): 28-36.
18J.-C. Pressac, Les Crématoires d'Auschwitz, la Machinerie du
meurtre de masse, Paris: CNRS, 1993; German: Die Krematorien von
Auschwitz: Die Technik des Massenmordes, Munich: Piper, 1994.
19Critiques of Pressac, op. cit. (Note 18): A.N.E.C., R.
Faurisson, S. Thion, P. Costa, Nouvelle Vision 31 (1993): 11-79;
cf. R. Faurisson, JHR 14(1) (1994): 23f.; R. Faurisson,
"Réponse ... Jean-Claude Pressac", R.H.R., BoOEte
Postale 122, 92704 Colombes Cedex, 1994; H. Verbeke (ed.),
Auschwitz: Nackte Fakten, Vrij Historisch Onderzoek, Postbus 60,
B-2600 Berchem 2, 1995.
20Dr. J. Bailer, in: B. Bailer-Galanda, W. Benz, W. Neugebauer
(eds.), Wahrheit und Auschwitzlüge, Vienna: Deuticke, 1995, pp.
111-118; cf. G. Rudolf, Zur Kritik an "Wahrheit und
Auschwitzlüge", in: Vrij Historisch Onderzoek (ed.),
Standpunkte eines Aufrechten, B-2600 Berchem 2, 1996.
6 Re. critique of J. Bailer (Note 20), cf. G. Rudolf, in: Vrij
Historisch Onderzoek (ed.), Zur Kritik an >Wahrheit und
Auschwitzlüge<, Postbus 60, D-2600 Berchem, 1996.
7 cf. J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (Notes 7 & 18), R. Faurisson
(Note 11), H. Verbeke (Note 19), as well as the chapter by C.
Mattogno and F. Deana, this volume.
8 Blueprints of Buildings 5a/b: J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (Note 7),
pp. 55-8; photos of the exterior, pp. 59f.; in 1943 Building 5a
was renovated to serve as hot-air delousing facility. Cf. E.
Gauss, Vorlesungen, op. cit. (Note 15), pp. 124f.
9 J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (Note 7), p. 53.
10 ibid., p. 123.
11 ibid., pp. 126-128; Pressac, op. cit. (Note 18), p. 2.
12 ibid., pp. 34f.
13 First discussed by D. Felderer, JHR 1(3) (1980): 255-266.
14 J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (Note 7), pp. 151ff.
15 ibid., pp. 131f.
16 ibid., p. 156.
17 J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (Note 18), p. 39.
18 J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (Note 7), p. 159.
19 ibid., p. 133; J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (Note 18), p. 34.
20 F. Piper, in an interview with D. Cole, B. Smith, Visalia, CA,
1992; cf. JHR 14(2) (1993): 11ff.
21 J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (Note 18), pp. 18, 60f.
22 ibid., p. 18. Broad's report has been published in, for ex.,
B. Naumann, Auschwitz, Frankfurt/Main: Athenäum, 1968, pp.
200ff.
23 J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (Note 7), pp. 126ff.
24 For a comparison, consider the construction of modern
crematoria: H.-K. Boehlke, Friedhofsbauten, Munich: Callwey
Verlag, 1974, p. 117; E. Neufert, Bauentwurfslehre, Frankfurt:
Ullstein Fachverlag, 1962, pp. 423f.
25 cf. also Lüftl's critique of the Jagschitz Report in the
chapter by W. Rademacher, this volume.
26 J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (Note 7), pp. 319-329. Building plans
for Crematoria II and III.
27 For the most graphic description, cf. the testimony of
Schultze, engineer with the firm Topf & S"hne, in a KGB
interrogation; cf. G. Fleming in The New York Times, July 18,
1993, p. E19; Der Spiegel 40/1993, p. 154.
28 Oddly enough, in the basement of Crematorium II, in the
vestibule leading to the mortuaries, one finds a good number of
gardening tools (shovels, spades etc.) partly covered by rubble.
One would expect that in an orderly evacuation and subsequent
demolition of the building the Germans would have taken these
tools with them.
29 J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (Note 7), pp. 365f.
30 ibid., p. 354. It is significant that in his new book, op.
cit. (Note 18), Pressac simply ignores the problem of the Zyklon
B input hatches and the indispensable, but missing, holes in the
concrete ceiling.
31 J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (Note 7), pp. 338f. In his new book,
op. cit. (Note 18), Pressac reproduces a large photo showing an
outside view of the ceiling of Mortuary I of Crematorium II,
taken in winter 1943 (Document 27) - without any trace of an
input hole.
47Kurier, Aug. 30, 1992, p. 20: "Wenn Felsen fallen".
32 J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (Note 7), p. 436.
49We would like to thank Carlo Mattogno for providing this photo.
33 Currently funds are being raised for intended conservation
work to be performed on the buildings of the concentration camp
Auschwitz: "Neue Inschrift im KZ Auschwitz, 60 Millionen
für die Erhaltung", Allgemeine Jüdische Wochenzeitung,
June 6, 1992, p. 1. If this project should really be carried out,
it would represent a destruction of evidence before any extensive
international forensic investigations of the site have ever been
carried out.
34 For blueprints of these facilities, see E. Gauss, Vorlesungen,
op. cit. (Note 15), p. 120.
35 J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (Note 7), pp. 379ff., section about
Crematoria IV and V.
36 J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (Note 18), pp. 89f.
37 J. C. Ball, Air Photo Evidence, Delta, B.C., Canada: Ball
Resource Services Ltd., 1992, pp. 69ff.
38 J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (Note 18), pp. 67, 89.
39 J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (Note 7), p. 386.
40 Alleged ruins of the foundations of Farm House II are the only
traces remaining today, J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (Note 7), p. 176.
41 ibid., pp. 161ff.
42 See the chapter by J. C. Ball, this volume.
43 J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (Note 18), pp. 41f.
44 G. Peters, E. Wüstinger, "Entlausung mit Zyklon
Blausäure in Kreislauf-Begasungsanlagen", Zeitschrift für
hygienische Zoologie und Schädlingsbekämpfung 10/11 (1941).
45 More specifically: the cyanide. To avoid confusing the reader
with specialized terminology we shall use the term
"hydrocyanic acid" wherever possible in the following,
and ask the experts to kindly pardon the generalization.
46 W. Wirth, C. Gloxhuber, Toxikologie, Stuttgart: Georg Thieme
Verlag, 1985, pp. 159f.; W. Forth, D. Henschler, W. Rummel,
Allgemeine und spezielle Pharmakologie und Toxikologie, Mannheim:
Wissenschaftsverlag, 1987, pp. 751f.; S. Moeschlin, Klinik und
Therapie der Vergiftung, Stuttgart: Georg Thieme Verlag, 1986, p.
300; H.-H. Wellh"ner, Allgemeine und systematische
Pharmakologie und Toxikologie, Berlin: Springer Verlag, 1988, pp.
445f.
47 F. Flury, F. Zernik, Schädliche Gase, Dämpfe, Nebel, Rauch-
und Staubarten, Berlin, 1931, p. 405.
48 Robert F. Schmidt, Biomaschine Mensch, Munich: Piper, 1979, p.
124.
49
50 Known among toxicologists as the lethal dose for 100% of the
victims, LD100.
51
52 F. A. Leuchter, Boston, April 20, 1992 fax message to H.
Herrmann, as well as verbal communication by Mr. Leuchter.
53
54 M. Daunderer, op. cit. (Note ), p. 15.
55 Aside from Peters, op. cit. (Note ), cf. also F. Puntigam, H.
Breymesser, E. Bernfus, Blausäuregaskammern zur
Fleckfieberabwehr, Berlin: Sonderver"ffentlichung des
Reichsarbeitsblattes, 1943, pp. 35ff.; O. Hecht,
"Blausäuredurchgasungen zur Schädlingsbekämpfung",
Die Naturwissenschaften 16(2) (1928): 17-23; G. Peters,
Blausäure zur Schädlingsbekämpfung, Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke
Verlag, 1933; G. Peters, W. Ganter, "Zur Frage der
Abt"tung des Kornkäfers mit Blausäure", Zeitschrift
für angewandte Entomologie 21(4) (1935): 547-559; F. E. Haag,
Lagerhygiene, Taschenbuch des Truppenarztes, v. VI, Munich: F.
Lehmanns Verlag, 1943; W. D"tzer, "Entkeimung,
Entwesung und Entseuchung", in: J. Mrugowsky (ed.),
Arbeitsanweisungen für Klinik und Laboratorium des
Hygiene-Instituts der Waffen-SS, issue 3, Berlin: Urban &
Schwarzenberg, 1944; F. Puntigam, "Die Durchgangslager der
Arbeitseinsatzverwaltung als Einrichtungen der
Gesundheitsvorsorge", Gesundheitsingenieur 67(2) (1944):
47-56; O. von Schjerning, Handbuch der ärztlichen Erfahrungen im
Weltkrieg 1914/1918, v. VII, Hygiene, Leipzig: J. A. Barth, 1922,
esp. pp. 266ff: "Sanierungsanstalten an der
Reichsgrenze"; R. Wohlrab, "Flecktyphusbekämpfung im
Generalgouvernement", Münchner Medizinische Wochenschrift
89(22) (1942): 483-488; W. Hagen, "Krieg, Hunger und
Pestilenz in Warschau 1939-1943", Gesundheitswesen und
Desinfektion 65(8) (1973): 115-127; ibid., 65(9) (1973): 129-143;
G. Peters, Die hochwirksamen Gase und Dämpfe in der
Schädlingsbekämpfung, Stuttgart: F. Enke Verlag, 1942; DEGESCH,
Acht Vorträge aus dem Arbeitsgebiet der DEGESCH, 1942, p. 47;
Document NI-9098, Nuremberg Trial, a table of properties of the
gaseous insecticides / rotticides used by the DEGESCH; H. Kruse,
Leitfaden für die Ausbildung in der Desinfektion und
Schädlingsbekämpfung, G"ttingen: Muster-Schmidt, 1948; H.
Kliewe, Leitfaden der Entseuchung und Entwesung, Stuttgart: F.
Enke Verlag, 1951; more recent discussions of the topic: F. P.
Berg, "The German Delousing Chambers", JHR 7(1) (1986):
73-94; F. P. Berg, "Typhus and the Jews", JHR 8(4)
(1988): 433-481; R. C. Lang, "Zur Frage der
Fleckfieberepidemien im Zweiten Weltkrieg", DGG 36 (2,3)
(1988): 7-10, 8-13.
56 See the illustrations in: J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (Note 7), p.
17, and F. A. Leuchter, op. cit. (Note ), p. 148, each taken from
product information issued by DEGESCH (Deutsche Gesellschaft für
Schädlingsbekämpfung), as well as: A. Moog, W. Kapp, letter
from Detia Freyberg GmbH to the author (Laudenbach, Sept. 11,
1991.)
74ibid.; also letter from the firm ARED GmbH to G. Rudolf, Linz,
Ref. 1991-12-30/Mag.AS-hj.
57 Iron berlinate is the DIN name for ferrous cyanide blue
pigments of various compositions which are also known as: Berlin
Blue, Turnbull's Blue, Prussian Blue, Vossen Blueu, Milori Blue,
Parisian Blue, French Blue, China Blue, Bronze Blue, Steel Blue,
Ink Blue, etc.
58 Cyanides (CN--compounds) are hydrocyanic acid (hydrogen
cyanide, HCN) salts. In this case, specifically:
ferro(III)-ferri(II)-cyanide.
59 Cf. eg. K. Wesche, Baustoffe für tragende Bauteile, 2 vols.,
Wiesbaden: Bauverlag, 1977, esp. v. 1 p. 37, v. 2 pp. 51f.
60 L. Schwarz, W. Deckert, Zeitschrift für Hygiene und
Infektionskrankheiten 107 (1927): 798-813; ibid., 109 (1929):
201-212.
61 We shall spare the reader a discussion of the minor effects of
other properties of the brick on cyanide accumulation and the
speed of chemical conversion, and refer instead to: Gauss, op.
cit. (Note 15), and Rudolf, op. cit. (Note 16).
62 The literature frequently gives only the rather unsatisfactory
term "insoluble". For more details see the Rudolf
Report: R. Kammerer, A. Solms, op. cit. (Note 16), pp. 45ff.
63 Iron berlinate is considered an acid-resistant pigment; cf.
eg. B. J. A. Sistino, in: Pigment Handbook, v. 1, New York:
Wiley, 1974, pp. 401-407; no appreciable decomposition occurs
until the pH drops below 1. The pH of iron berlinate suspensions,
for ex., is around 4-5; H. Ferch, H. Schäfer, Schriftenreihe
Pigmente, 77, Frankfurt: Degussa AG, 1990.
64 Ullmanns Encyklopädie der technischen Chemie, v. 13, Munich:
Urban & Schwarzenberg, 1962, p. 794; ibid., v. 18, Weinheim:
Verlag Chemie, 1979, pp. 623ff.; L. Müller-Focken, Farbe und
Lack 84 (1987): 489-492.
65 J. M. Kape, E. C. Mills, Transactions of the Institute of
Metal Finishing 35 (1958): 353-384; ibid., 59 (1981): 35-39.
66 D. Maier, K. Czurda, G. Gudehus, Das Gas- und Wasserfach, Gas
Erdgas 130 (1989): 474-484.
67 cf. Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Welt, Stuttgarter Zeitung, and
Südwest Presse, all of March 29, 1994.
68 cf. W. Schlesinger, Der Fall Rudolf, Cromwell, 20 Madeira
Place, Brighton/Sussex BN2 1TN, England, 1994; G. Rudolf, DGG
42(2) (1994): 25f.
69 Quantities always refer to the net HCN content of the
substance.
70 Office of Chief of Counsel for War Crimes, affidavit of A.
Zaun, Hamburg, Oct. 24, 1945, Document No. NI-11,396, quoted
according to U. Walendy, Auschwitz im IG-Farben-Prozeá, Vlotho:
Verlag für Volkstum und Zeitgeschichtsforschung, 1981, p. 62.
71 According to J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (Note 7), p. 550, there
were a total of 25 chambers in the camp in which material objects
were deloused with Zyklon B, but no doubt not already in 1942.
72 The documentary and witness accounts of such fumigations are
numerous, eg. the order issued on Aug. 12, 1942 by Camp
Commandant H"á re. accidents during the fumigation of
barracks; J.-C. Pressac, ibid., p. 201.
73 ibid., pp. 15, 188.
74 Office of Chief of Counsel for War Crimes, British Military
Court, trial of B. Tesch et.al., Hamburg, March 1-8, 1946,
Document No. NI-12,207, quoted according to: U. Walendy, op. cit.
(Note ), p. 83.
75 J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (Note 7), pp. 124f., 162, 174, 177,
181, 229, 239, 379f., 459-502; more succinctly in: J.-C. Pressac,
op. cit. (Note 18); cf. the critiques by H. Verbeke, op. cit.
(Note 19) and A.N.E.C., op. cit. (Note 19).
76 2,000 according to C. S. Bendel, 3,000 according to M.
Nyiszli, cf. J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (Note 7), pp. 469ff.
77 cf. eg. Jüdische Allgemeine Wochenzeitung, July 26, 1990;
Hamburger Abendblatt, July 25, 1990; Hannoversche Allgemeine
Zeitung, July 18, 1990; Der Spiegel 30/91, p. 111; Süddeutsche
Zeitung, Sept. 21, 1990; Die Tageszeitung, July 18 and 19, 1990;
Vorarlberger Nachrichten, Aug. 22 and 29, 1990.
78 D. Czech, Auschwitz Chronicle, 1939-1945, New York: Henry
Holt, 1989.
79 J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (Note 7), p. 125.
80 ibid., pp. 131f.; J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (Note 18), pp. 34f.
81 J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (Note 7), p. 253.
82 ibid., p. 183. Since in his latest work he assumes some
500,000 victims of the gas chambers (op. cit., Note 18, German
ed. p. 202), the corresponding figures for the individual
facilities ought to be reduced further.
83 J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (Note 7), pp. 384-390.
84 ibid., pp. 16, 18, 253; J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (Note 18), p.
71; cf. also J. Buszko (ed.), Auschwitz, Nazi Extermination Camp,
Warsaw: Interpress Pub., 1985, p. 118, who mentions 6 to 12 kg.
85 A compilation of many witness statements on this point may be
found in E. Gauss, Vorlesungen, op. cit. (Note 15), pp. 221,
295f., according to which the time required would be less than 10
mins. Cf. also: testimony of C. Vaillant-Couturier, Trial of the
Major War Criminals (IMT), v. VI, p. 216 (5-7 mins.); M. Nyiszli,
in: G. Schoenberger (ed.), Wir haben es gesehen, Wiesbaden:
Fourier, 1981, p. 250 (5 mins.); C. S. Bendel in: H. Langbein,
Menschen in Auschwitz, Vienna: Europaverlag, 1987, p. 221
(victims stopped screaming after 2 mins.); P. Broad in: B.
Naumann, op. cit. (Note ), p. 217 (4 mins.); doors being opened
after 10-15 mins.: A. Rückerl, NS-Verbrechen vor Gericht,
Heidelberg: C. F. Müller, 1984, pp. 58f.; K. H"lbinger in:
H. Langbein, Der Auschwitz-Prozeá, Frankfurt/Main: Europäische
Verlagsanstalt, 1965, p. 73 (1 min.); R. B"ck, ibid., p. 74
(victims screamed for 10 mins. after door was closed, door was
then opened); H. Stark, ibid., p. 439 (victims screamed for 10-15
mins.); F. Müller, ibid., p. 463 (8-10 mins.); E. Pys, ibid., p.
748 (ventilator was turned on after a few mins.); K. Lill, ibid.,
p. 750 (a few seconds after Zyklon B was thrown in there was a
scream, a few minutes later smoke billowed from the chimney).
86 Transcript of the report by Prof. Dr. G. Jagschitz, days 3-5
of the trial of Honsik, April 29, April 30, May 4, 1992, Ref. 20e
Vr 14184 and Hv 5720/90, District Court Vienna; re. the
credibility of this testimony, cf. the chapter by W. Rademacher,
this volume.
87 Document 3868-PS, IMT v. XXXIII pp. 277ff., quoted according
to L. Rosenthal, 'Endl"sung der Judenfrage', Massenmord oder
'Gaskammerlüge'?, Darmstadt: Verlag Darmstädter Blätter, 1979.
88 30m x 7m x 2.3m (vol. of room) - 1,000 x 0.070m3 (vol. of
victims).
89 R. Kammerer, A. Solms, op. cit. (Note 16), pp. 68f.
90 J. Bailer, op. cit. (Note 12); G. Wellers, op. cit. (Note 13),
as well as M. Dragan and H. G. von Schnering, pers. comm.
91 According to the documents, Mortuaries I of Crematoria II and
III (approx. 480m3, or 16,950 cu.ft.) had a ventilator for
4,800m3 (169,500 cu.ft.) of air per hour at 40 cm water-column.
According to W. Zwerenz (Landshut: unpub., 1991) and identical
findings by W. Lüftl, the difference in pressure that was to be
overcome was considerably greater than 40 cm water-column. J.-C.
Pressac, op. cit. (Note 18), p. 38, claims that a much more
powerful ventilator with a capacity of 8,000 m3/h (282,500
cu.ft./h) had been installed. However, according to C. Mattogno
there is no evidence to support this claim, since Pressac's
source also cites the old capacity of 4,800m3/h.
92 Entseuchungs- und Entwesungsvorschrift für die Wehrmacht, H.
Dv. 194, M. Dv. 277, L. Dv. 416, Berlin: Reichsdruckerei, 1939;
Richtlinien für die Anwendung von Blausäure (Zyklon) zur
Ungeziefervertilgung (Entwesung), Prague: Gesundheitsanstalt des
Protektorats B"hmen und Mühren, n.d.; Doc. NI-9912 (1) in
the Nuremberg Trial; Technische Regeln für Gefahrstoffe, TRGS
512, Begasungen, BArbBl. No. 10/1989, 72, in: Köhn, Brett,
Merkblätter Gefährlicher Arbeitsstoffe, Landsberg: ecomed,
1990.
93 cf. the chapter by F. P. Berg, this volume.
94 Aside from the statements of J. Markiewicz et.al., op. cit.
(Note 9), cf. also J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (Note 7), p. 390.
95 We are deliberately ignoring the results of the Cracow Report,
op. cit. (Note 9), since improper analytical methodology renders
them useless; cf. the Rudolf Report, op. cit. (Note 16), pp.
82f., as well as G. Rudolf, op. cit. (Note 9).
96 J. C. Ball, The Ball Report, Ball Resource Services Ltd.,
Delta, BC, Canada, 1993.
97 R. Kammerer, A. Solms, op. cit. (Note 16), pp. 86f.
98 E. Gauss, Vorlesungen, op. cit. (Note 15), pp. 290ff.
99 A. Breitwieser, Head of the Inmate Clothing Depot in
Auschwitz, tells of round-the-clock fumigations at the German
supply depot, H. Langbein, Der Auschwitz-Prozeá, op. cit. (Note
), p. 786.
100 cf. the findings in the new edition of the Rudolf Report, in
preparation and on the Internet:
http://www.codoh.com/inter/inter.html.
101 Testimony of M. Nyiszli, op. cit. (Note ), p. 251; H.
Langbein, op. cit. (Note ), p. 93; F. Müller, Sonderbehandlung,
Munich: Steinhausen, 1979, p. 185.
102 cf. also eg. the findings of H. A. El-Sayed, Cement and
Concrete Research 11 (1981): 351-362.
103 eg. the testimony of M. Buki in the Frankfurt Auschwitz
Trial, H. Langbein, op. cit. (Note ), p. 96.
104 J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (Note ), p. 202.
105 pers. comm., I. Semyda, Greenwich, CT, USA.
106 Patent No. 438818 (D 41941 IV/451, Dec. 27, 1926), kindly
provided by C. Mattogno.
107 pers. comm. by H. Leipprand.
108 G. Peters, Blausäure zur Schädlingsbekämpfung, Stuttgart:
F. Enke, 1933, pp. 64f.
109 A hypothetical gassing scenario would proceed very
differently if it could actually involve something that is
occasionally alleged, namely that the Zyklon B was lowered into
the gas chambers of Crematoria II and III in nets, so that it
could be quickly removed again after the victims had expired.
This would have allowed for a more rapid ventilation of the
chamber. But since this theory founders on the nonexistence of
the Zyklon B input hatches, we shall ignore it.
110 Pers. comm., C. Mattogno, based on the fact that the
delousing chamber of Building 5b has a water faucet and drainage
grooves.
111 The essential construction and engineering information for
this section, including all pictures, were kindly provided by C.
Mattogno, whom we wish to thank for his assistance.
112 From Z. Pawlak, "Ich habe Überlebt...", Hamburg:
Hoffmann und Campe, 1979, p. 268.
113 op. cit. (Note ); cf. H. Lichtenstein, Majdanek, Reportage
eines Prozesses, Frankfurt/Main: Europäische Verlagsanstalt,
1979; cf. J. G. Burg, Zionnazi Zensur in der BRD, Munich: Ederer,
1980. In a trial pertaining to the Sobibor camp, the District
Court Berlin had determined that there had been no gassing
facilities in Majdanek (Ref. PKs 3/50); cf. C. F. Rüter, Justiz
und NS-Verbrechen, Amsterdam: University Press, 1971, p. 547.
114 J. Marszalek, Majdanek, Geschichte und Wirklichkeit eines
Vernichtungslagers, Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1982, p. 39; one of the
accused in the Majdanek Trial testified that the facilities were
not used for anything else either, and drew the wrath of the
Judge in the process: I. Müller-Münch, Die Frauen von Majdanek,
Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1982, pp. 107f.
115 J. Marszalek, op. cit. (Note ), pp. 39f.
116 VVN - Bund der Antifaschisten, Konzentrationslager der
Waffen-SS Majdanek, Frankfurt/Main: self-pub., n.d., p. 5; J.
Marszalek, op. cit. (Note ), p. 148.
117 Aside from the VVN, op. cit. (Note ), cf. also H.
Lichtenstein, op. cit. (Note ), p. 67.
118 cf. VVN, op. cit. (Note ). In his book Der SS-Staat,
Stuttgart: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1959, E. Kogon states 1.5
to 2 million; J. Marszalek, op. cit. (Note ), p. 149, states
360,000; A. Rückerl, op. cit. (Note ), p. 52, speaks of 250,000;
R. Henkys, Die NS-Gewaltverbrechen, Stuttgart: Kreuz, 1964, p.
111, mentions 200,000; W. Benz, Dimension des V"lkermords,
Munich: Oldenbourg, 1991, p. 17, speaks of 60,000 to 80,000
Jewish victims.
119 cf. the chapter by F. P. Berg, this volume.
120 J. Marszalek, op. cit. (Note ), p. 35.
121 The blower could also have been used for ventilation after
fumigation with the hydrocyanic acid.
122 cf. G. Peters, Die hochwirksamen Gase und Dämpfe in der
Schädlingsbekämpfung, op. cit. (Note ).