From holman@elo.helsinki.fi Wed Apr 11 04:14:55 EDT 2001
Article: 881705 of alt.revisionism
From: Eugene Holman 
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Re: Himmler grabs Aryan look-alikes
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In article <3ACDFCBA.92B3E0D5@earthlink.net>, Richard G. Phillips
 wrote:



> =======================================
> Phillips
> 
> I didn't feel it called for a speech. For a self-professed "Germanophile' you
> seem
> to miss no opportunity to call attention either to their depravity or their
> ineptitude.
> 
> ============================================

Being a Germanophile does not make one a Naziphile.

Regards,
Eugene Holman


From holman@elo.helsinki.fi Wed Apr 11 04:14:56 EDT 2001
Article: 881732 of alt.revisionism
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From: Eugene Holman 
Newsgroups: uk.politics.misc,alt.beograd,alt.politics.british,alt.politics.europe,nz.politics,alt.politics.usa,alt.revisionism
Subject: Re: Where has Irvings Website Gone?
Date: Sat, 07 Apr 2001 12:54:23 +0300
Organization: University of Helsinki
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In article <3ACE2AE5.6EF26392@earthlink.net>, Richard G. Phillips
 wrote:


> ====================================================
> Phillips
> 
> I could be wrong but my recollection is this: on the stand he stated that
> depth of
> penetration could depand on several factors.  After the trial (when he
> realized he had
> unwittingly stepped nto a hornet's nest and was all-get-out to join in
> discredting
> Leuchter) he stated that HCN penetrates to a depth of one micron (or
> whatever) -
> period. Not quite the same stories.
> =======================================

During the trial he was working under the assumpion that his test had
been to determine whether there were cyanide traces resulting from an
industrial accident in the samples, and, if so, to determine the
amounts.

After the trial, when it was made clear that this was supposed to be a
test determining _relative cyanide buildups from samples taken from
several different types of locations_, it became clear that determining
presence and giving rough independent measurements (qualitative
analysis), as opposed to performing relative comparisons (quantitative
analysis), were two fundamentally different tasks. 

We have no difficulty accepting the fact that Leuchter found far
greater concentrations in the delousing chamber than in the execution
chamber. The point that we are making is that the type of conclusions
that are being asked for - relative comparisions - cannot be based upon
core samples, the preparation of which involves mixing any cyanide
present, which would be on the surface, with the material taken from
the interior of the wall, thus polluting the samples. A relative
comparison should also take the different histories of the two places
being compared into account. You can't draw scientifically valid
conclusions by simply comparing the readings for a place that has been
exposed to the elements since 1944 with those obtained for a place that
has been protected from the elements for the same time. HCN is soluble
in water, and information about the weather conditions, as well as
about the fact that the walls of Krema II are sometimes submerged in
water for several weeks a year, has to be taken into account if the
report is to be scientifically valid.

Leuchter's other blunders include:
a. picking the wrong type of control sample;
b. making an unjustified conclusion about a single gassing in
conjunction with a typhus "once long ago" for a place which was not yet
even built when the typhus epidemic took place.

Thus, Leuchter's results as results are not at all disturbing to the
"Holocaust community" and support abundant other evidence that there
were gassings in the gas chamber of Krema II. As pure numbers they are
what one would expect: the readings for the delousing chambers should,
all things considered, be several orders of magnitude greater than the
readings for the gas chambers. Despite this, the fact that the wrong
tests were carried out, that allowances were not made for the different
histories of the structures, the wrong type of control was used, and
unfounded speculation was made that could have been avoided if Leuchter
had spent some time reading the architectural history of the camp,
makes the entire report scientifically invalid. Correct conclusions can
be drawn from false premises and invalid reasoning processes; in the
philosophy of science this is called abductive reasoning.

It is worth noting here that the Soviet military historians that came
up with the 4M figure as the number of Auschwitz deaths were guilty of
the same type of fault and produced results which, while not precisely
wrong, are nevertheless unacceptable in the light of what we know
today. They did not have the opportunity to study the history of the
different structures at Auschwitz-Birkenau, and they thus assumed that
they had all been in place and were working at full capacity for the
entire life of the camp, thus producing figures which, although
accurate with respect to the order of magnitude and the relation of the
mantissa to 5, are still invalid in the light of out present knowledge
of the camp, its background, and its functional record. This
information was simply not available to the Soviet military historians
in early 1945.


> ============================================
> Phillips
>

>
> The Holocaust-believers' problem is to account for the enormous difference
> between the
> concentrations obtained from the walls of the fumigation chamber vs those
> obtained of
> the walls of the alleged execution chamber. If you claim that this is the
> result of
> the different concentrations of HCN used, then you are admitting that it
> cannot in any
> way be attributed to errors in Leuchter's method.
> 
> ==========================================

Leuchter's figures are not a problem. The delousing chambers, exposed
constantly to concentrations of up to 16,000 ppm for 20 hours and
protected from the elements since last used in January, 1945 would have
to have much higher traces of HCN compounds on their walls than the
execution chambers, exposed intermittently to concentrations of 300 ppm
for periods of 30 minutes, hosed down, and then exposed to the elements
since November 1944.

The problems are:
1. the fact that the figures were obtained using the wrong methodology;
2. the fact that the different architectural, archeological, and
meteorological histories of the sources of the samples was ignored;
3. the fact that the control was invalid;
4. the fact that the physical chemistry of HCN compound formation,
including the highly relevant matter of the way in which the process
interacts with water in the short term (periodic hosing downs
immediately after use of cyanide) and the longer term (exposure to the
elements for more than 40 years,including intermittent submersion in
water), was ignored;
5. the fact that Leuchter's knowledge of toxicology was so limited that
he did not understand that it takes a far higher concentration of HCN
sustained over a much longer timeframe to kill vermin than it does to
kill humans.
6. the fact that Leuchter's knowledge of the history of the Auschwitz
camp complex was so limited that he attributed the traces of HCN
compounds that he found in Krema II to a fumigation that took place
during a typhus epidemic that took place a year before the building had
been constructed.

Any one of these six points would suffice to compromise its scientific
validity and reveal the incompetence of the person who compiled it. The
fact that the report is marred by all six is why it was, literally,
laughed out of court and regarded as scientifically worthless today.

Regards,
Eugene Holman


From holman@elo.helsinki.fi Wed Apr 11 04:14:56 EDT 2001
Article: 881733 of alt.revisionism
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From: Eugene Holman 
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Re: Himmler grabs Aryan look-alikes
Date: Sat, 07 Apr 2001 13:14:07 +0300
Organization: University of Helsinki
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In article <3ACE5572.8BF48720@mindspring.com>, Buck Turgidson
 wrote:

> david_michael wrote:
> 
> > Just checked with the wife. The 'scz' letter combination certainly does
> > occur in Polish, although not very often -- for example in words like
> > 'sczepiac'. (Can't do the accents.)

However, when the combination scz- occurs, there is a _morpheme
boundary_ between the prefixal s- and the root-initial sound [tS],
spelled cz-, cf. Russian chitat' (= Polish czytac´) "to read", schitat'
(= Polish sczytac´) 'to consider (R)/to collate (P)'. 

Regards,
Eugene Holman


From holman@elo.helsinki.fi Wed Apr 11 04:14:56 EDT 2001
Article: 881744 of alt.revisionism
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From: Eugene Holman 
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Re: Phillips to Holman: Gas chambers: in Germany and outside of it
Supersedes: <070420011512218685%holman@elo.helsinki.fi>
Date: Sat, 07 Apr 2001 15:18:43 +0300
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In article <3ACE6ED3.CEA0D481@earthlink.net>, Richard G. Phillips
 posted the following article:




>               Institute for Historical
>                            Review
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The 'Problem of the Gas Chambers'
> 
> by Robert Faurisson

Mr. Faurisson is not an historian, but a thoroughly discredited
"deconstructionist" former professor of literature.

> 
>     The Tribunal shall not be bound by technical rules of evidence.
> 
>                  Article 19 of the Statutes of the International
> Military Tribunal
>                     (in reality: the Inter-allied Military Tribunal) at
> Nuremberg
> 
>     The Tribunal shall not require proof of facts of common knowledge,
> but
>     shall take judicial notice thereof.
> 
>                                                Article 21 of the
> Statutes

As sinister as this sounds, it was reasonable in 1945 when events were
still fresh in memory, and films, photographs,a nd eyewitnesses
abounded. We do not need proof of the fact of common knowledge that
Germany attacked the USSR on June 22, 1941.


> What is disputed by numerous French, British, American, and
> German authors 

By certain "authors", perhaps, by historians, hardly.

> is
> the existence of "extermination camps." This expression is used by
> historiographers to
> refer to those camps that were supposed to have been equipped with "gas
> chambers."

Incorrect. the expression "extermination camps" is used by
historiographers to refer to those camps that:
a. were dedicated extermination facilities, i.e. Belzec, Chelmno,
Sobibor, Treblinka;
b. had dedication extermination divisions that were used on a massive
(> 50,000 victims), long-term (= several months), and continuous basis,
e.g. Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek.

There were other camps, not regarded as extermination camps, where gas
chambers were used to kill a small number of victims on an occasional,
intermittent, or experimental basis: Auschwitz-Stammlager, Mauthausen,
Neuengamme, Ravensbrück, Sachsenhausen, Stutthof.

> Allegedly, these "gas chambers" were different from American gas
> chambers in that they
> were used to kill hundreds of men, women, and children at a time.

They were also different in being minimalist and low-tech. American gas
chambers use concentration of HCN as high as 8,000 ppm; Nazi gas
chambers got along with 300 ppm.

> Because the victims
> were chosen because of their race or religion, this is referred to as
> "genocide." 

This is only partially true. Victims for Nazi gas chambers were also
chosen on the basis of their no longer being able to work as slave
laborers or because they were Soviet POWs. The term "genocidal" is both
too general and too specific. "Homicidal" is more accurate.

> The
> poison employed in this "genocide" is said to have been Zyklon B (a
> pesticide based
> upon prussic or hydrocyanic acid).

Once again, a partial truth. The gas chambers at the earliest camp,
Chelmno, at the three Project Reinhard camps, Belzic, Sobibor,
Treblinka, used exhaust gases from internal combustion engines. The gas
chamber at Mauthausen used compressed CO. One of the gas chambers at
Majdanek was equipped to take either compressed Co or Zyklon B. Zyklon
B eventually replaced CO at Belzec (Source: R. Hilberg, _The
Destruction of the European Jews_, 1985, pg. 219 ff. "Killing Center
Operations" and the sources cited therein).

> 
> Those who contest the "genocide" claim and the existence of the "gas
> chambers" are
> called Revisionists. Their argument runs approximately as follows:

Both claims are imprecisely stated and, as such, straw men.

>     It suffices for both of these problems ("genocide" and "gas
> chambers") to
>     apply the customary methods of historical criticism, to see that one
> is
>     confronted here by two myths that are inseparable. The criminal
> intentions that
>     are attributed to Hitler have never been proven. 

The criminal methods are attributed to the Nazi state, not directly to
Hitler, even if there is abundant evidence that he was the ultimate
source of the order. Hitler stated as early as 1925 that if he were
ever to attain power, disposing of the Jews would be his highest
priority. The harassing of Jews in Nazi Germany which began immediately
after the Nazi assumption of power, the passage of the Nuremberg Laws
in 1935, Kristallnacht, the behavior of the Einsatzgruppen in the USSR
between June 22 1941 and January 31, 1942, the definition of the
continent-wide scope of the  'Final Solution' stated in the Wannsee
Conference Protocol in January, 1942, and the treatment of Jews in both
Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe, coordinated and implemented in large
part on the basis of orders and directives issued from Heydrichs's and
then Eichmann's division in the RSHA in Berlin, show such a high degree
of systematicity and coordination that even in the lack of a written
document, it would be impossible for such a massive, generously
budgeted, and finely coordinated program not to have been based on some
order, on some government-sanctioned planning.

It is a fact that the Nazi state was a dictatorship, and that many
orders were issued and passed down orally. The deliberate manner and
similarities of the killing procedures that were followed in Eastern
Europe, from Estonia in the north to the Crimean Peninsula in the south
indicate that a common plan existed, not only a simple "wish", as
mentioned by Höss in his memoirs, but a concrete blueprint and a
generous budget and large bureaucracy to finance and coordinate its
implementation. Despite the secret nature of the Führerbefehl, the
accumulated references, no matter how indirectly stated in themselves,
testify that the actions of the Einsatzgruppen and the designing,
construction, budgeting, and maintenance of the continent-wide network
of concentration and extermination camps were consequences of an order
issued from the highest source. In the Einsatzgruppen trial, Martin
Sandberger, the highest Einsatzgruppen A functionary tried and
convicted, testified about his understanding of the "order". 

In his testimony at the Einsatzgruppen trial, Sandberger made several
references to the Führerbefehl:

"I myself was present during the discussions in the Palais Prinz
Albrecht in Berlin and during the speech by Streckenbach...when the
well-known Führer order was announced.

"Streckenbach personally informed me about the Führer order, which said
that, in order to secure the Eastern territory permanently; all Jews,
Gypsies, and communist functionaries were to be eliminated, together
with all other elements who might endanger security....He [Stahlecker]
emphasized energetically that this was a Füihrer order, that it could
not be changed and could not be discussed." [Einsatzgruppen Case,
1947-1948. vol. 6, pp. 2143-2176.

> As far as the
> weapon for this
>     crime is concerned, no one has actually seen it. 

Incorrect. A functional CO gas chamber survives at Majdanek, gas
chambers in various states of disrepair survive at Natzweiler,
majdanek, and Mauthausen, ruins of gas chambers survive at
Auschwitz-Birkenau, a partial reconstruction of a decommissioned gas
chamber survives at Auschwitz-Stammlager. Forensic examinations carried
out on the ruins of the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau since 1945
indicate that cyanide gas was used there in concentrations that would
have been lethal to people trapped inside.

> Here one is
> confronted by an
>     extraordinarily successful war and hate propaganda campaign. History
> is full
>     of frauds of this kind, beginning with their religious fables of
> sorcery and
>     witchcraft. What distinguishes our times from earlier epochs is the
> frightening
>     power of the media and the propaganda ad nauseam which is made for
> what
>     must be called "the hoax of the twentieth century." Let him beware
> who, after
>     30 years, gets the idea to expose this hoax. He will learn depending
> upon the
>     situation through imprisonment, fines, assaults and insults. His
> career can be
>     shattered or endangered. He will be denounced as a Nazi. Either his
> thesis
>     will be ignored, or else it will be distorted. No country will be
> more
>     unrelentingly ruthless toward him than Germany. 1

There is abundant evidence in the form of testimonies of perpetrators,
Sonderkommando members, and escapees, architectural diagrams, and slips
in military correspondence that evaded censors that Nazi gas chambers
did exist.

 
> Today however, the silence is about to be broken about those men who
> have dared to
> write responsibly that Hitler's "gas chambers" (including those of
> Auschwitz and
> Majdanek) are only a historical lie. That is a great advance.

If they are lies, where do the gas chambers, both functional and ruins
come from? Why did so many people who were there and in a position to
know testify that the existed? How are we to account for the
architectural diagrams and camp records indicated gas chamber
existence? And what happened to the approximately 3,000,000 Jews and
others sent to places where Nazi gas chambers were said to have existed
and who have never been seen or heard from sicne?




> 
> I call their attention to a paradox. Although the "gas chambers" are, in
> the view of the
> official historians, absolutely central to a picture of the Nazi
> concentration camp system
> (and furthermore, as proof for the totally perverse and devilish
> character of the German
> concentration camps in comparison to all previous and more recent
> concentration camps
> it ought to be meticulously shown how the Nazis proceeded to invent,
> construct, and
> operate these fearsome human slaughterhouses), 

They are not "absolutely central". They produced the greatest number of
victims, but they were arguably not as horrible or inhumane as the
public predations of the Einsatzgrupopen, the years of forced labor and
mistreatment, or the death marches that many innocent civilians were
forced to endure because of their ethnicity or beliefs.

As to their invention, construction, and operation, they represent
minor improvements in technologies which the Germans had already
mastered in conjunction with their T-4 euthanasia program and their
efforts to disinfect clothing. _German homicidal gas chambers require
absolutely nothing that was not already included in one of these two
technologies_.


> one must be thoroughly
> astonished that
> in the impressive bibliography of the concentration camp literature
> there is not a single
> book, not a single brochure, not a single article, on the "gas chambers"
> themselves.

Factually incorrect: 

1. Y. Gutman and M. Berenbaum, _Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp_,
Indiana University Press, 1994.
2. J. Sehn, "Concentration and Extermination Camp Oswiecim
(Auschwitz-Birkenau," in Central Comission for the Investigation of
German crimes in Poland, _German Crimes in Poland_, 2 vols. (Warsaw:
Central Commission, 1946-47), 1:27f.
3. Wojciech Barcz, "Die erste Vergasung," in H. G. Adler, H. Langbein,
and Ella Lingens-Reiner, eds. Auschwitz: Zeugnisse und Berichte_,
Frankfurt, 1988, pg. 17f.
4. J-C. Pressac with R. van Pelt, "The Maschinery of Mass Murder at
Auschwitz," in Gutman and Berenbaum, eds. 1994.
5. J-C.Pressac, _Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas
Chambers, New York, 1989.
6. R. Green, "The Chemnistry of Auschwitz,",
http://www.holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/chemistry/



> 
> One must wait until page 541 of the thesis by Olga Wormser-Migot on the
> system of Nazi
> concentration camps, before one finds a passage about the "gas
> chambers." However, for
> the reader there are still three other surprises:
> 
>   1.The passage in question covers only three pages.
>   2.It carries the title: "The Problem of the Gas Chambers."
>   3.The "problem" consists of trying to determine whether the "gas
> chambers" at
>     Ravensbrück (Germany) and Mauthausen (Austria) really existed; the
> author comes
>     to the conclusion that they did not exist; however she does not
> examine here the
>     "problem" of the "gas chambers" of Auschwitz or any of the other
> camps, probably
>     because in her mind they do not present a "problem." [on page 157 of
> her book she
>     says that Auschwitz I had no gas chamber.]

Other. more knowledgeable sources, e.g. Pressac, Höss himself, and
Franciszek Piper at the Auschwitz Memorial Museum disagree.


> At this point, the reader probably wants to know why an analysis that
> concludes that "gas
> chambers" did not exist in certain camps is suddenly discontinued as
> soon as, for
> example, Auschwitz is discussed. Why, on one hand, is the critical
> spirit awakened, and
> then, on the other hand, is it allowed to collapse into lethargy? After
> all, as far as the
> "gas chamber" of Ravensbrück is concerned, we have many points of
> "evidence" and
> "undeniable eyewitness accounts," beginning with repeated and extensive
> eyewitness
> accounts by Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier or Germaine Tillion.
> 
> It gets even better. Several years after the war, before both British
> and French tribunals,
> the camp officials of Ravensbrück (Suhren, Schwarzhuber and Treite)
> repeatedly
> confessed to the existence of a "gas chamber" in their camp. They even
> vaguely
> described its operation. Eventually, those who did not commit suicide
> were executed
> because of this alleged "gas chamber." The same "confessions" were given
> prior to their
> deaths by Ziereis for Mauthausen (Austria) and by Kramer for
> Struthof-Natzweiler
> (Alsace).
> 

How are these independent testimonie to be explained? Mass hysteria?

> Today, one can see the alleged "gas chamber" of Struthof-Natzweiler and
> in the same
> place one can also read the unbelievable "confession" of Kramer. This
> "gas chamber,"
> which is designated as an "historical monument," is a complete fraud.

It is in a state of disrepair. The anatomical samples it produced for
Dr. Hirt of the University of Strasburg, on the other hand, exist.

> The slightest
> amount of critical spirit will be sufficient to convince oneself that a
> gassing in this small
> room, without any sealing whatsoever, would have been a catastrophe for
> the
> executioner as well as for the people in the vicinity. 

Nobody claims that the structure today is in the condition it was when
gassings were performed more than 50 years ago. The Natzweiler gas
chamber was used only a few times and for the specific purpose of
providing anatomical samples. The total number of victims was less than
400.


> In order to make
> this "gas chamber"
> (which is guaranteed to be "in its original condition") believable,
> someone has gone so
> for as to clumsily knock a hole into the thin wall with a chisel, and
> thereby break four
> tiles. The hole was so arranged that Josef Kramer would have dumped
> through it the
> mysterious "salts" (about which he could give no further details and
> which, when mixed
> with a little water, killed within one minute!). How could salts and
> water make such a
> gas? How could Kramer have prevented the gas from coming back out the
> hole? How
> could he see his victims from a hole which would have let him see no
> more than half the
> room? How did he ventilate the room before opening the rudimentary door,
> made from
> rough-cut lumber? Perhaps one must ask the civil engineering firm in
> Saint-Michel
> sur-Meurthe (Vosges), which after the war altered the place which today
> is presented to
> visitors "in its original condition"?

If it is known that the structure was altered after the war, it is
extremely stupid to claim that it is "in its original condition".


> 
> Even long after the war, prelates, university professors, and some
> ordinary citizens gave
> eyewitness descriptions regarding the terrible reality of the "gas
> chambers" of
> Buchenwald and Dachau. With regard to Buchenwald, the "gas chamber"
> gradually
> disappeared from the minds of the people who had previously maintained
> that there was
> one in this camp.
> 
> Dachau
> 
> With regard to Dachau, the situation is different. After it had been
> firmly established for
> example by His Eminence Bishop Piguet, the bishop of Clermont-Ferrand
> that the "gas
> chamber" had been especially useful in gassing Polish priests,3
> eventually the following
> official explanation came to pass:
> 
>     This gas chamber, whose construction had been started in 1942, was
> still not
>     completed in 1945 when the camp was liberated. No one could have
> been
>     gassed in it.

There is evidence that a few experimental gassings were conducted at
Dachau, see Gunther Kimmel, _The Concentration Camp Dachau. A study
of the Nazi crimes of violence in Bavaria in the NS-time II_, edited by
Martin Broszat and Elke Froehlich, Munich, R. Oldenburg Press, 1979,
pg. 391.




> The title was quite
> misleading and
> restrictive: Keine Vergasung in Dachau (No Gassing at Dachau) instead of
> Keine
> Massenvergasung im Altreich (No Mass Gassing in the Old Reich).4 In
> order to support
> this contention, Dr. Broszat provided not the slightest piece of
> evidence. Today [1978],
> eighteen years after his letter, neither he nor any of his colleagues
> has provided the
> slightest explanation for this affirmation. It would be highly
> interesting to learn:

"Keine Massenvergasung" is not the same as "Keine Vergasung". the
number of people alleged to have been gassed in the Old Reich in
concentration camp gas chambers is less than 30,000. If the number
gassed in conjunction with the euthanasia program is added, the figure
increases by more than 10,000. Compared to what was going on in Poland,
this is small potatoes, but it is an understatement, a misleading
understatement, to characterize it as "Keine Massenvergasung". Killing
people in the E4 can only be regarded as not indicative of
"Massenvergasung" in comparision with figures in the E6 range.




>

I have to go now, but I shall address Faurisson's claims in a
subsequent posting. They are easilt demonstrated to be as incorrect and
tendentious as the first part.

Regards,
Eugene Holman


From holman@elo.helsinki.fi Wed Apr 11 04:14:57 EDT 2001
Article: 881836 of alt.revisionism
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From: Eugene Holman 
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Re: Where has Irvings Website Gone?
Date: Sat, 07 Apr 2001 21:47:45 +0300
Organization: University of Helsinki
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In article <3ACEB0D7.61A5D71F@earthlink.net>, Richard G. Phillips
 wrote:



> ===============================================
> Phillips
> 
> Fumes, possibly, but I don't think that, after working their way through the
> wall,
> they would have been lethal ones. Besides, do we know for a certainty that
> none of
> the oeprating personnel ever suffered from headache or an upset stomach?
> 
> ===================================

Cyanide gas does not "work its way" through concrete or tiled walls.
That is why nothing sealed more elaborately than a normally built
shower room or sturdy concrete room, equipped with gas-proof doors and
windows, of course, is needed to contain it. In the hypothetical case
that the gas emitted by the Zyklon-B pellets could "work its way"
through such walls in a concentration strong enough to form cyanide
deposits, it would, by definition, still be cyanide and thus lethal.

Regards,
Eugene Holman


From holman@elo.helsinki.fi Wed Apr 11 04:14:58 EDT 2001
Article: 881848 of alt.revisionism
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From: Eugene Holman 
Newsgroups: uk.politics.misc,alt.beograd,alt.politics.british,alt.politics.europe,nz.politics,alt.politics.usa,alt.revisionism
Subject: Re: Where has Irvings Website Gone?
Date: Sat, 07 Apr 2001 22:18:16 +0300
Organization: University of Helsinki
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In article <3ACEB2FA.229C91E@earthlink.net>, Richard G. Phillips
 wrote:


> ================================================
> Phillips
> 
> It is claimed that, sometime in 1917, The Zionists made a deal with the
> British
> Foreign Office:   give us Palestine and we guarantee to bring America into
> the war
> on the Allied side.   

I seem to remember that the sinking of the S.S. Lusitania on the high
seas with many prominent Americans aboard, the German invasion of
neutral Belgium, and German diplomatic efforts to involve Mexico in an
alliance with Germany (the Zimmermann Note) all did as much as anything
to galvanize American public opinion against Germany.

> ================================================
> Phillips
> 
> That may sound like an extravagent claim but it was not
> beyond possibility. UP to that time Jews had, if anything, been pro-German.

German Jews remained pro-German. German Jews were German citizens, and
even the Nazis had to admit that many of them fought bravely in the
German army during WW I.

Not even the Jews in the Bolshevik movement in Russia would have been
happy about Palestine. They were also fighting to establish a
revolutionary homeland, but on a class basis rather than a religious or
ethnic basis. The Bolsheviks eventually became the sworn enemies of
Zionism, any argument about "the Jews" doing this or that is, at best,
an argument based on a _pars pro toto_ fallacy. Decency prohibits me
>from saying what it is at its most probable worst.

> ================================================
> Phillips
> 
> The story goes on to relate that they manipulated Wilson in a way that came
> close
> to blackmail. Wilson was being threatened with a breach-of-promise suit to the
> tune of $40K, a sum entirely beyond his means. The Jews paid the woman off.
> 
> ===========================================

President Woodrow Wilson, was born in 1856, long married, and over 60
years old when the US enterd WW I. 

Tell us more about the source of your story, why it should be granted
any credibility, and why, even if it is true in any way, shape, or
form, all the world's Jews should be blamed for the actions, which
surely would have been welcomed by the WASP Wilson family, of a small
subset of Jews.

Regards,
Eugene Holman


From holman@elo.helsinki.fi Wed Apr 11 04:14:58 EDT 2001
Article: 881850 of alt.revisionism
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From: Eugene Holman 
Newsgroups: alt.politics.white-power,alt.revisionism
Subject: Re: Phillips bats 0 for 4 (was: Re: Holman to Phillips on responsibility)
Date: Sat, 07 Apr 2001 22:27:54 +0300
Organization: University of Helsinki
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In article , Jeffrey G.
Brown  wrote:

>

> 
> Mr. Holman just made a fool of you on the lampshade question.
> 
> What's the only tactic you can think of in response?
> 
> Oh, yeah...
> 
>    "This is the classical Jewish ploy of attempting to impute a 
>    character defect to people who say things they don't like 
>    hearing."
> 
>            -- Message-ID: <3862D8AE.2D080F8C@mediaone.net>
>            -- From: Richard Phillips 
>            -- Subject: Re: Ani-Semiticism...
>            -- Date: Thu, 23 Dec 1999 21:21:34 -0500
> 
> I guess you just proved that you are the same sort of "classical Jew" you claim 
> to despise, aincha, idiot?
> 

Touché, Jeffrey!

Regards,
Eugene Holman


From holman@elo.helsinki.fi Wed Apr 11 04:14:59 EDT 2001
Article: 881856 of alt.revisionism
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From: Eugene Holman 
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Re: Where has Irvings Website Gone?
Date: Sat, 07 Apr 2001 22:55:41 +0300
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In article <986672358.6719.0.nnrp-09.9e986cfe@news.demon.co.uk>, Paris
 wrote:

>
> Ah Eichmann.
> Irving is in posession of some rather interesting papers by Eichmann.

Yes. And in these papers Eichmann describes in great detail (according
to Irving "verisimilitude") a mass murder of Jews at Minsk in which he
got his leather greatcoat smeared with fragments of flying baby Jewish
brain, as well as some gassings in mobile vans at Chelmno. Irving does
not deny the factuality of the mobile gas chambers or of "experimental
gassings" utlizing them, even if he regards the technique as
"impractical" for reasons which he does not explain. Not even Irving,
for all his faults, has the chutzpah to deny the factuality of gassing
as methodology used by the Nazis to kill Jews.

Regards,
Eugene Holman


From holman@elo.helsinki.fi Wed Apr 11 04:15:00 EDT 2001
Article: 881857 of alt.revisionism
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From: Eugene Holman 
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Re: Phillips to Holman: Gas chambers: in Germany and outside of it
Supersedes: <070420012248586141%holman@elo.helsinki.fi>
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In article <3ACEFDA6.EE2332A@earthlink.net>, Richard G. Phillips
 wrote:

> Eugene Holman wrote:


> ============================================
> Phillips
> 
> Revisionists take the position that a programme of the claimed magnitude and
> scope could not have taken place without an order from Hitler and that no such
> order hs been produced.
> 
> Holman takes the position that the programme DID take place; therefore there
> must have been an order for it.
> 
> ===========================================

I take the position that the programme did take place and that an
orally given order was given and passed down the relevant chain of
command. How else do you account for:
a. the precision and coordination which marked the first six months of
the program all over Eastern Europe;
b. the fact that public mass-shootings suddenly stopped when the first
extermination camps opened at the interface between 1941 and 1942;
c. the fact that 10,000 concentration camps were designed, built,
staffed, budgeted, and maintained, making the Nazi government Europe's
largest hotelier, restauranteur, employer, enslaver, and mass murderer,
d. the fact that the whole thing was run from two offices in Berlin:
Obergruppenführer Oswald Pohl's SS Economic-Administration Main Office
and SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann of RSHA, division IV-B-4. 

We have relatively little information, other than oral testimony, about
how that order worked its way _down_ the chain of command. We have an
abundance of information, including military reports, speeches by
Himmler, records of property confiscated from the Jews, correspondence
concerning the relative effectiveness of Zyklon-B as opposed to
compressed CO as a lethal agent, photographs and films of mass murder
in Eastern Europe, deportation records and other incriminating evidence
in the archives of the Deutsche Reichsbahn, testimony of concentration
camp inmates, staff, and escapees, diplomatic correspondence between
Germany and the governments of Denmark, Finland, Hungary, and Bulgaria
concerning both the treatment of their Jewish citizens and requests,
often quite brusque, to hand them over to Germany for "Special
Treatment", and the ruins of gas chambers with tell-tale traces of
cyanide traces on the walls, about how information concerning
implementation of the Führer order worked its way back _up_ the chain
of command to the RSHA, the SS Economic-Administration Main Office, the
officials responsible for the German state budget, and, tangentally, to
the world at large.


Pohl's office supplied and maintained the camps, Eichmann's office
drew up the timetables and supplied the transportation once
the operations were brought inside closed walls. Before that the
Einsatzkommandos, in coordination with an agreement drawn up by
SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhardt Heydrich and the RSHA and the Supreme
Army Command, had been in charge of finding, concentrating, and killing
Jews. Personnel trained in gassing and the design and construction of
mass gas chambers were taken from the T-4 Euthanasia program to the
Action Reinhard camps, which were also run and supplied by Pohl's and
Eichmann's offices.

The offices and their records have been preserved. Details about their
functioning and budgeting were revealed at Pohl's and Eichmann's
post-war trials. No government could or would run two large
bureaucracies with criss-crossing responsibilities, a
multibillion-Reichsmark budget, yearly plans and objectives, more than
10,000 places of operations, and more than 14,000,000 people being
involved in some way or another, without some plan.

Phillips is claiming that lack of a written order means that all of
these things, including the multi-Riechsmark budget, just happened to
arise by accident, coincidence, and serendipity, a claim that can only
be characterized as preposterous.  I am saying that lack of a written
order does not make a program of this evident magnitude and duration
impossible. Information spread through the Nazi hierarchy via many
different channels, a written order was not a _sine qua non_
in a dictatorial system of government where the top leadership 
consisted of old pals and comrades in arms.

> > It is a fact that the Nazi state was a dictatorship, and that many
> > orders were issued and passed down orally. The deliberate manner and
> > similarities of the killing procedures that were followed in Eastern
> > Europe, from Estonia in the north to the Crimean Peninsula in the south
> > indicate that a common plan existed, not only a simple "wish", as
> > mentioned by Höss in his memoirs, but a concrete blueprint and a
> > generous budget and large bureaucracy to finance and coordinate its
> > implementation.
> 
> ===========================================
> Phillips
> 
> All this done by means of nudge and wink, or perhaps by thought transmission.
> 
> =================================

Straw man!

It was done by specific orally given orders filtering down different
hierarchies of command, and documented by the massive paper trail that
filtered its way back up. You will not, I presume, claim that the
concentration camps at Salaspils in Latvia, Natzweiler in France, Vugt
in the Netherlands, Buchenwald in Germany, Mauthausen now in Austria
but then in the Reich, Auschwitz in the General Gouvernement, and
Theresienstadt in the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and
thousands more in many other places did not exist or were not primarily
funded by the German state budget just because no specific written
order has ever been found to design, construct, staff, and maintain
a Europe-wide network of concentration camps?


> > As to their invention, construction, and operation, they represent
> > minor improvements in technologies which the Germans had already
> > mastered in conjunction with their T-4 euthanasia program and their
> > efforts to disinfect clothing.
> 
> ===================================
> Phillips
> 
> Regarding which, I remain completely unconvinced. I don't like being directed
> to websites for which everything is promised and yet which yield nothing.
> 
> ===============================

That's your problem. I directed you to a website that gave
bibliographical information about research that has been done
concerning the Mauthausen camp in general and its gas chamber in
particular. If you are too lazy to go to a good reference library and
check some of the sources out, there is nothing I can do.

You do, of course, have the option of contacting the Mauthausen
Foundation and telling them that you are in possession of information
which indicates that the information they are posting on the internet
about the camp and its gas chamber is mistaken. The e-mail address of
the webmaster of the Mauthausen website is mikey@ping.at. Please keep
us abreast of any correspondence between you two.

The historical record provides abundant evidence confirming that:
a. mass gassing as an exterminational technique using CO and other
gasses had been perfected in conjunction with the T-4 euthanasia
program, 
b. people trained within this program to use this methodology, such as
Kriminalkommissar Christian Wirth and Franz Stangl, later wound up
designing and directing extermination camps,
d. the Nazis had also mastered the use of Zyklon-B to fumigate clothing
in sealed rooms,
e. the manufacturers of Zyklon-B had trained camp personnel in how to
use the substance to fumigate clothing in sealed rooms,
f. mastery of the technique of fumigating clothing with Zyklon-B in
sealed rooms, which uses concentration of HCN as high as 16,000 ppm of
HCN sustained over 20 hours, logically and methodologically implies
mastery of the much simpler and far less dangerous technique (300 ppm
of HCN sustained over 15 minutes) of  killing groups of people in
closed rooms using Zyklon-B,
g. as dangerous as fumigating clothing using Zyklon-B was, disinfection
rooms were located in the ground floor of barracks that also housed
inmates, they were ventilated into the ambient air, and the personnel
operating them had no difficulty removing the clothing, mattresses, and
other articles being fumigated providing the appropriate safety
precautions were taken,
g. that these two methodologies merged within the framework of the
Final Solution: the oldest gas chambers (Chelmno, Sobibor, etc.) used
CO, the preferred gas of the T-4 program; the next generation used
Zyklon-B, which had been shown to be an effective and cheaper
substitute within the fraemwork of an experimental gassing carried out
on the initiative of Lagerführer Karl Fritsch on a group of Soviet POWs
n September 3, 1941 (cf. Wojciech Barcz, "Die erste Vergasung," in H.
G. Adler. H. Langbein, and Ella Linbgens-Reiner, eds. _Auschwitz:
Zeugnisse und Berichte_, Frankfurt, 1988, pg. 17 ff.).
h. that building and running the camps, purchasing the concentrated CO
and Zyklon-B, training personnel in their proper use, and transferring
gas chamber knowhow from the T-4 program to the bureaucracies
responsible for the concentration camps could not have been done
without government knowledge, budgeting, and participation, all of
which would imply the existence of a plan or order, whether issued
orally or in writing.

Regards,
Eugene Holman


From holman@elo.helsinki.fi Wed Apr 11 04:15:01 EDT 2001
Article: 882139 of alt.revisionism
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From: Eugene Holman 
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Re: Phillips to Holman on America's 'debt' to the Negro
Date: Mon, 02 Apr 2001 23:11:51 +0300
Organization: University of Helsinki
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In article <3AC8C195.262A2E41@earthlink.net>, Richard G. Phillips
 wrote:

> Eugene Holman wrote:
> 
>

> 
> =========================================
> Phillips
> 
> I cannot accept the parallel you have erected between slave owners and
> prisonmasters.
> 
> ====================================================

Objection sustained. The people forced to interact with a prisonmaster
knew that they had been convicted of a crime and that, in most cases,
they had a chance of eventually being released.   The people forced to
interact with a slavemaster had not committed any crime and they
usually had no possibility of release.


> > > ==========================================
> > > Phillips
> > >
> > > Sellling? That was hardly an option in the case of a slave past his/her
> > > productive years.
> >
> > Certainly it was. You had paid $1,000 for a slave who had, all told,
> > generated $100,000 in profits during his working life. You sold him for
> > $50 to someone who needed a reliable house slave to do light housework
> > and change diapers.
> 
> =============================
> Phillips
> 
> $50 for $1000. Not what I'd call an advantageous transaction. Rather than
> reallize that
> measley $50, 

Don't be obtuse. I said a) initial outlay $1,000, b) profit generated
$100,000, c) trade-in-kickback $50. I quick calculation will show you
that the net profit was (-1000) + 100000 + 50 or $99,950. It's the same
with cars and computers. 

> =============================
> Phillips
>
> I would have kept the person rather than sell an incur the
> demoralizing effects
> on his/her loved ones.
> 
> ====================================

So, congratualations, you have a heart after all. Many slave owners
didn't. You know the expressions "sold up/down the river"?

>
> > If we are going to discuss economic history of American society, we
> > have to take the entire kit and kaboodle into consideration.
> 
> ==========================================
> Phillips
> 
> No.
> 
> We are discussing one question and one question only: Do I owe some sort of
> 'debt' to present
> day American blacks. I do not accept any guilt for centuries-old iniquities
> commited by
> people with whom I have no connection wahtever.
> 
> ================================

Not only do you have a connection, it is a connection you have
willfully sought out and cultivated. You are the one who
self-identifies with the descendants of the slave-owning Founding
Fathers, gets his feathers ruffled when a black school district
complains that George Washington, a slave owner, just might not be the
name they want on their school house, and distances himself from the
Jewish minority which is your real identity when the Phillips is
scratched off and the Filipenko emerges.



> > >
> > > ==================================
> >
> > Have real wages really fallen? Whenever I visit the USA I am astonished
> > at the number of people with two cars, five TV sets, two PC's, three
> > bathroom houses, etc., etc. And I'm talking about the lower and
> > middle-middle class people in the predomiantly African-American where
> > my parents live (Hollis/St. Albans, Queens, NYC). People live
> > infinitely better there now than they did twenty or even ten years ago.
> 
> ========================================
> Phillips
> 
> Rubbish.
> 
> ====================

That is what I see when I visit my old neighborhood. That is what I see
when I meet old acquaintances and observe their opulent lifestyle. I
don't know how it is with the people you know, but people I know who
were still marginalized minority group members a generation ago, have
children who are attorneys, physicians, college professors,and 
researchers. They themselves might not have gained substantially, but
their children are solidly upper middle class, something they could not
have dremed of back in the 1960s.



> >
> > I never said that you owe a debt. I said that your grandparents sat
> > down to a feast offered by a host who thought he didn't need to pay
> > some of his workers.
> 
> =====================================
> Phillips
> 
> Feast? YOu're talking nonsense. There was no feast. They had to claw for
> their vry existence.
> 
> ======================================

It was a feast compared to what they had in Odessa. How many times did
they have to suffer a pogrom once they had moved to the US?

> 
> > If you are comfortable with your grandparents
> > having enjoyed a feast that was partially stolen property, and think
> > that the people from whom it was stolen don't have a legitimate
> > complaint, well, that's your right.
> 
> ============================================
> Phillips
> 
> I am perfectly comfortable because
> 
> (a) There was no feast. They had to claw for their very existence.
> 
> (b) There was no stolen property
> 
> (c) No one has a legitimate complaint against them.
> 
> =============================

(a) There was a feast. They had the chance to start a new life in a
society much more affluent than they one they had lfet without having
to fear pogroms.

(b) Some of that affluence and safety was the product of slave labor.

(c) They did not understand what they were getting into, so there is no
legitimate complaint against them. You, who are in a better position to
understand, just _might_ feel somewhat differently about the moral
questions involved.


> > > =====================================================
> >
> > No, but I do not think that pale-skinned Irishmen or Brits would have
> > been able to labor as effectively in the hot sun as people of primarily
> > West African descent could.
> 
> =======================================
> Phillips
> 
> If you mean that having only white people to do the hard work would have forced owners to
> provide more humane conditions, you are probably right and I see nothing wrong with that.
> 
> ==============================

Here there is a legitimate issue of racial differences. Dark-skinned,
sturdily built West African blacks were better suited for doing
physical work in the southern sun than scrawnily built pale-skinned
Brits or red-haeded Irishmen. It would have been much more difficult to
conquer the American Southeast without the availability of people who
were physically fit to labor in sub-tropical conditions. Even today,
white farmers in the American South have to wear protective clothing,
become "rednecks" nevertheless, and retire to their air-conditioned
homes to sip gallons of Kool-Aid as soon as possible.

You can't force the sun to shine less brightly. The US South is
subtropical, and the basic work of making it economically viable was
most efficiently done by people of sub-tropical genetic heritage.

Regards,
Eugene Holman


From holman@elo.helsinki.fi Wed Apr 11 04:15:01 EDT 2001
Article: 882203 of alt.revisionism
From: Eugene Holman 
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Re: Phillips to Holman: Gas chambers: in Germany and outside of it
Date: Sun, 08 Apr 2001 14:32:22 +0300
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In article <3ACE6ED3.CEA0D481@earthlink.net>, Richard G. Phillips
 posyed the article:

> 
> The 'Problem of the Gas Chambers'
> 
> by Robert Faurisson
> 

[I dealt with the first part of this article by a former professor of
French literature, generally regarded as a deconstructionist crackpot,
in a posting yesterday. This commentary deals only with his depiction
of the evidence relating to the Belzec camp and its gas chambers. It
suffices to demosntrate that reality, even at the time the article was
written, does not correspond to Faurisson's claims.]


> 
> German Camps in Occupied Poland
> 
> Let us now examine the "gas chambers" in Poland.
> 
> For proof that the "gas chambers" in Belzec or Treblinka really existed,
> one is asked to
> rely essentially upon the statement of Kurt Gerstein.  This document 
> from a member of the SS, who allegedly committed suicide in 1945 in 
> the prison of Cherche-Midi in Paris, abounds with so many absurdities 
> that in the eyes of historians it has for a long time
> already been thoroughly discredited.6 Furthermore, this statement 
> has never been made public, not even in the documents of the Nuremberg 
> tribunal, except in an unusable form (with truncations, falsifications, 
> and rewritings). 

TheGerstein statement is included in the following:

Surce: http://www.kimel.net/belzec.html

There are many survivors of Auschwitz, some from Treblinka and Sobibor,
but only one known survivor of Belzec. The only information available
about the operations of those camps are coming from Kurt Gerstein a
German chemical engineer, an Anti-Nazi who joined the SS with the hope
of sabotaging the Nazi extermination operations from within. As an
chemical expert he visited the Belzec Camp. He tried to alert the world
about the atrocities; he sent notes to the Swedish Government, tried to
contact the Papal Nuncio in Berlin, to no avail, nobody wanted to get
involved. After the war, while imprisoned by the French, he furnished
the following eyewitness account: 


In January 1942 I was named chief of the Waffen -SS technical
disinfection services, including section for the extremely toxic gases.
On June 8, 1942, SS Sturmfuhrer Gunther of the RSHA came to see me. He
was dresses in civilian clothing. I had never met him before. He
ordered me to get him prussic acid and to bring for him immediately 100
kilograms of prussic acid and to bring it to a place known only to the
truck driver. He said he needed the acid for a top secret mission . . .
As soon as the truck was loaded we left for Lublin. There, SS
Gruppenfuhrer (Globocnik) was waiting for us . . . "This is one of the
top secret matters there are, even the most secret. Anyone who talks
will be shot immediately. Only yesterday two who talked were shot "
Globocnik explained to us. " You will have to disinfect large piles of
clothing coming from the Jews, Poles Czechs, etc. Your other duty will
be to improve the workings of our gas chambers, which operate on the
exhaust from a Diesel engine. We need a more toxic and faster working
gas, something like the prussic acid. The Fuhrer and Himmler -they were
here the day before yesterday, August 15- and ordered me to accompany
anybody who has to see the installation." Professor Pfannenstiel asked
him," but what does the Fuhrer say? Globocnik answered": Fuhrer has
ordered more speed. Dr. Herbert Lidner, who was here yesterday, asked
him, 'Wouldn't it be more prudent to burn the bodies instead of burying
them? Another generation make take a different view of these things.' I
answered: 'Gentlemen, if there is ever a generation after us so
cowardly, so soft, that it would not understand our work as good and
necessary, then gentlemen, National Socialism will have been for
nothing. On the contrary, we should bury bronze tablets saying that it
was we, who had the courage to carry out this gigantic task!" Then the
Fuhrer said: "Yes, my brave Globocnik, you are quite right.'" 

The next day we left for Belzec. Globocnik introduced me to the SS man
who took me around the plant. We saw no dead bodies that day, but a
pestilential odor hung over the whole area. Alongside the station there
was a "dressing hut" with window for "valuables." Further on, a room
with a hundred chairs- the Barber room. Then a corridor 150 meter long
in the open air, barbed wire on both sides, with signs: "To the baths
and inhalants." In front of us a building like a bath house; to the
left and right, large concrete pots of geraniums or other flowers. On
the roof, the Star of David. On the building a sign: "Heckenholts
Foundation." 

The following morning, a little before seven there was announcement:
"The first train will arrive in ten minutes!" A few minutes later a
train arrived from Lemberg (Lwow): 45 cars with more than 6,000 people.
Two hundred Ukrainians assigned to this work flung open the doors and
drove the Jews out of the cars with leather whips. A loud speaker gave
instructions: Strip, even artificial limbs and glasses. Hand all money
and valuables in at the 'valuables window'. Women and young girls are
to have their hair cut in the `barbers hut'. 

Then the march began. Barbed wire on both sides, in the rear two dozen
Ukrainians with riffles. They drew near, Wirth and I found ourselves in
front of the death chambers. Stark naked men, women, children, and
cripples passed by. A tall SS man in the corner called to the
unfortunates in a loud minister's voice: "Nothing is going to hurt you!
Just breathe deep and it will strengthen your lungs. It's a way to
prevent contagious diseases. It's a good disinfectant! "They asked him
what was going to happen and he answered": The men will have to work,
build houses and streets, The women wont have to do that, they will be
busy with the housework and the kitchen. " This was the last hope for
some of these poor people, enough to make them march toward the death
chambers without resistance. The majority knew everything; the smell
betrayed it! They climbed the little wooden stairs and entered the gas
chambers, most of them silently, pushed by those behind them. A Jewess
of about forty with eyes like fire cursed the murderer's; she
disappeared into the gas chamber after being struck several times by
Captain Wirth's whip. Many prayed . . . SS men pushed the men into the
chambers. "Fill it up," Wirth ordered; 700-800 people in 93 square
meters. The door closed. Then I understood the reason for the
"Heckenholt" sign. Heckenholt was the driver of the Diesel, whose
exhaust was to kill these poor unfortunates. SS Undersharfuhrer
Heckenholt tried to start the motor. It wouldn't start! ...My stopwatch
clocked it all: 50 minutes, 70 minutes and the Diesel still would not
start. The men were waiting in the gas chambers. You could hear them
weeping "as though in a synagogue" said Professor Pfannenstiel, his
eyes glued to the window in the wooden door. Captain Whirt, furious,
struck with his whip the Ukrainian who helped Heckenholt. The Diesel
started after two hours and 49 minutes, by my stopwatch. Twenty minutes
later passed. You could see through the window that many were already
dead after thirty minutes! Jewish workers on the other side opened the
wooden doors. They had been promised their lives in return for doing
this horrible job, plus as small percentage of the money and valuables
collected. The men were still standing, like columns of stones, with no
room to fall or to lean. Even in the death you could tell the families,
all holding hands. It was difficult to separate them while emptying the
rooms for the next batch. The bodies were tossed out, bluer, wet with
sweat and urine, the legs smeared with excrement and menstrual blood.
Two dozen workers were busy checking mouths which they opened with iron
hooks. "Gold to the left, no gold to the right." Others checked anus
and genitals, looking for money, diamonds, gold, etc. Dentists knocked
out gold teeth, bridges, and crowns, with hammers. 

Captain Wirth stood in the middle of them. He was in his element, and
showing me a big gem box filled with teeth, said. "See the weight of
the gold? Just from yesterday and the day before! You can't imagine
what we find everyday, dollars, diamonds, gold! You'll see!" He took me
over to a jeweler responsible for the all the valuables. They also
pointed to me one of the heads of the big Berlin store Kaufhaus des
Westen, and the little man whom they forced to play the violin, the
chief of the Jewish workers' commandos. "He is a captain of the
Imperial Austrian Army, Chevalier of the German Iron cross" Wirth told
me. 

The bodies were thrown into big ditches near the gas chamber, about 100
by 20 by 12 meters. After a few days the bodies swelled and the whole
mass rose up 2-3 yards because of the gas in the bodies. When the
swelling went down several days later, the bodies matted down again.
They told me that later they poured Diesel oil over the bodies and
burned them on railroad ties to make them disappear. 

But even the improved version of gas chamber could not kill the
millions of victims, in the short time allotted, and the Germans built
Auschwitz. 

Testimony of Kurt Gersten, Nuremberg Tribunal PS 1553.



Gersten's testimony is not the only evidence available cocnerning
Belzec and its gas chambers.

Source:
http://history1900s.about.com/homework/history1900s/gi/dynamic/offsite.h
tm?site=http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/orgs/israeli/yad%2Dvashem/yvs16%2D06.
html
 

Operation Reinhard
The Extermination Camps
of
Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka 

Belzec -- from March 17 till June 1942 
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Organized mass extermination began with the deportation of the Jews of
Lublin on March 17,1942. This date marks the actual onset of Operation
Reinhard. 

When the train entered Belzec station, its 40-60 freight cars were
rearranged into several separate transports because the reception
capacity inside the camp was 20 cars at the most. Only after a set of
cars had been unloaded and sent back empty was another section of the
transport driven into the camp. The accompanying security guards as
well as the German and Polish railroad personnel were forbidden to
enter the camp. (See note 6 ) 

The train was brought into the camp by a specially selected and
reliable team of railroad workers. According to the concept of the
extermination process, the procedure was as follows: 

The camp looked "peaceful." The victims were unable to discern either
graves, ditches or gas chambers. They were led to believe that they had
arrived at a transit camp. An SS-man strengthened this belief by
announcing that they were to undress and go to the baths in order to
wash and be disinfected. They were also told that afterwards they would
receive clean clothes and be sent on to a work camp. 

Separation of the sexes, undressing, and even the cropping of the
women's hair could not but reinforce the impression that they were on
their way to the baths. First the men were led into the gas chambers,
before they were able to guess what was going on; then it was the turn
of the women and children. (StA Munich 1, AZ. 22 Js 68/61, pp. 2625 f.)


The gas chambers resembled baths. A group of young and strong Jews, a
few dozen, occasionally even a hundred, was usually selected during the
unloading of a transport. Most of them were taken to Camp II. They were
forced to drag the corpses from the gas chambers and to carry them to
the open ditches. Several prisoners were employed in collecting the
victims' clothes and belongings and carrying them to the sorting point.
Others had to remove from the train those who had died during the
transport and to take those unable to walk to th editches in Camp II.
These Jews were organized into work teams with their own Capos. They
did this work for a few days or weeks. Each day some of them were
killed and replaced by new arrivals. 

SS-man Karl Alfred Schluch, a former "Euthanasia" worker, who spent ca.
sixteen months in Belzec from the very beginning, described what else
happened to the transports inside the camp: 


The unloading of the freight cars was carried out by a Jewish work
commando, headed by a Capo. Two to three members of the German camp
personnel supervised it. It was one of my duties to supervise here.
After the unloading, those Jews able to walk had to make their way to
the assembly site. During the unloading the Jews were told that they
had come for resettlement but that first they had to be bathed and
disinfected. The address was given by Wirth, and also by his
interpreter, a Jewish Capo. Immediately after this, the Jews were led
to the undressing huts. In one hut the men had to undress and in the
other the women and children. After they had stripped, the Jews, the
men having been separated from the women and children, were led through
the tube. I cannot recall with certainty who supervised the undressing
huts... Since I was never on duty there I am unable to provide precise
details about the stripping process. I just seem to remember that in
the undressing hut some articles of clothing had to be left in one
place, others in a different one, and in a third place valuables had to
be handed over... 

My location in the tube was in the immediate vicinity of the undressing
hut. Wirth had stationed me there because he thought me capable of
having a calming effect on the Jews. After the Jews left the undressing
hut I had to direct them to the gas chamber. I believe that I eased the
way there for the Jews because they must have been convinced by my
words or gestures that they really were going to be bathed. After the
Jews had entered the gas chambers the doors were securely locked by
Hackenholt himself or by the Ukrainians assigned to him. Thereupon
Hackenholt started the engine with which the gassing was carried out.
After 5 - 7 minutes -- and I merely estimate this interval of time --
someone looked through a peephole into the gas chamber to ascertain
whether death had overtaken them all. Only then were the outside gates
opened and the gas chambers aired. Who did the checking, that is to
say, who looked through the peephole? I can no longer say with any
certainty... In my view, probably everyone had occasion to look through
the peephole. After the gas chambers had been aired, a Jewish work
commando headed by a Capo, arrived and removed the corpses.
Occasionally, I also had to supervise in this place. I can therefore
give an exact description of what happened, because I myself witnessed
and experienced it all. The Jews had been very tightly squeezed into
the gas chambers. For this reason the corpses did not lie on the floor
but were caught this way and that, one bent forward, another one
backward, one lay on his side another kneeled, all depending on the
space. At least some of the corpses were soiled with feces and urine,
others partly with saliva. I could see that the lips and tips of the
noses of some of the corpses had taken on a bluish tint. Some had their
eyes closed, with others the eyes were turned up. The corpses were
pulled out of the chambers and immediately examined by a dentist. The
dentist removed rings and extracted gold teeth when there were any. He
threw the objects of value obtained in this manner into a cardboard box
which stood there. After this procedure the corpses were thrown into
the large graves there. (See note 6 ) 

It is difficult to establish exactly how many of the gas chambers were
in operation during the first three months of the mass extermination in
Belzec. At times not all three gas chambers functioned because of
technical problems or actual defects. 

Problems also arose with the burial of the victims. When a ditch was
filled with corpses, it was covered with a thin layer of soil. As a
result of the heat, the decomposition process, and sometimes also
because water seeped into the ditches, the bodies swelled up and the
thin layer of soil burst open. 

Those no longer able to walk were led directly to the ditch where they
were shot. Robert Juhrs, an SS-man who started his service in Belzec in
the summer of 1942, described how such shootings were conducted: 


At the beginning of the autumn of 1942, upon the arrival of a largish
transport, I was assigned to the unloading site. 

On this transport the freight cars had been seriously overcrowded, and
many Jews were unable to walk. It is Possible that in the confusion a
number of Jews had been pushed onto the floor and trampled on. In any
case, there were Jews who could not possibly have walked via the
undressing huts. As usual, Hering also turned up here for the
unloading. He ordered me to shoot these Jews... 

The Jews in question were taken to the gate by the Jewish work commando
and from there conveyed to the ditch by other working Jews. As I
recall, there were seven Jews, both men and women, who were laid inside
the ditch. 

At this point I should like to stress that the victims concerned were
those persons who had suffered most severely from the transport. I
would say that they were more dead than alive. It is hard to describe
the condition of these people after the long journey in the
indescribably overcrowded freight cars. I looked upon killing these
people in that manner as a kindness and a release. (See note 6 ) 

The first large Jewish community taken to Belzec for extermination came
>from Lublin. Within four weeks, from March 17 to April 14, close to
30,000 of the 37,000 inhabitants of the ghetto were deported to Belzec.
Within the same period of time an additional 18,000 - 20,000 Jews from
the Lublin Bezirk were sent to Belzec. 

The first Jewish transport from the Lvov Bezirk came from Zolkiew, a
town 50 km. southwest of Belzec. This transport consisted of
approximately 700 Jews and reached Belzec on March 25 or 26,1942.
Subsequently, within the two weeks up to April 6, 1942, some 30,000
other Jews from the Lvov Bezirk arrived in Belzec. 

After 80,000 Jews had been murdered in a major operation, which lasted
about four weeks, the transports were discontinued. Toward the end of
April or the beginning of May 1942, Wirth and his SS-men left the camp.


At the beginning of May 1942 SS-Oberführer Brack from Berlin visited
Globocnik in Lublin. Globocnik requested the return of Wirth and his
staff, and also asked for additional personnel from the "Euthanasia"
program. 

In mid-May 1942 Wirth returned to Belzec. Until the end of June more
transports arrived from the Lublin and Krakow districts with about
22,000 Jews. 

With the onset of the deportations from the Bezirks of Cracow, Lvov,
and Lublin, Wirth realized that the wooden gas chambers could not cope
with the arrival of the increasing number of victirns. Deportations to
Belzec therefore ceased in mid-June 1942, while new gas chambers were
being built there. This concluded the first period of the operation in
Belzec. 


> This document from
> a member of the
> SS, who allegedly committed suicide in 1945 in the prison of
> Cherche-Midi in Paris,
> abounds with so many absurdities that in the eyes of historians it has
> for a long time
> already been thoroughly discredited.6 Furthermore, this statement has
> never been made
> public, not even in the documents of the Nuremberg tribunal, except in
> an unusable form
> (with truncations, falsifications, and rewritings). The actual document
> has never been
> available with its absurd appendices (French "draft" or the
> "supplements" in German).

There is a large body of evidence indicating criminal activities at
Belzec.

It includes:
1. Enough documentary and other evidence to recapitulate the history
and varied functions of the camp, e.g.
http://history1900s.about.com/homework/history1900s/gi/dynamic/offsite.h
tm?site=http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/text/x03/xm0307.html


The Camp Opens
Extermination Camp in Poland. On November 1, 1941, as part of Aktion
Reinhard, the Germans began construction of a camp near the Belzec
railway siding. The first commandant of Belzec was Christian Wirth, who
was succeeded by Gottlieb Hering, in August 1942. The staff included
twenty to thirty German SS men and between ninety and one hundred
twenty Ukrainian men from the Trawniki camp. Each side of the camp
measured 886 feet (270 m), and it was enclosed by a barbed - wire fence
and camouflaged. The camp was divided into two sections; it was in the
second section that the Jews were killed. In its first stage Belzec had
three Gas Chambers. At the end of February, 1942 the gas chambers were
tested on several groups of Jews, using carbon monoxide, generated by a
250 - horsepower diesel engine. On March 17, 1942 the extermination
program was launched in full.


The Murder Process
>From March 17, 1942 until mid - April 1942, 80,000 Jews were murdered
in Belzec, over half from Lublin and Lvov. A train consisting of forty
to sixty freight cars would arrive at the station after a trip lasting
several hours - sometimes several days - under horrible conditions;
many died on route. Twenty cars with over 2,000 Jews were detached from
the train and pulled into the camp. The Jews were ordered out of the
cars, told they were in a transit camp, and they would be disinfected
and a washed. They also were told to hand over their valuables. The men
were separated from the others, and both groups were ordered to strip.
With the Germans and Ukrainians shouting and beating them, they were
rushed into the "showers" - that is the gas chambers. At first this
process took three or four hours, but later was cut sixty to ninety
minutes.


Murdering Faster.
In mid - April 1942 the camp ceased operating, beginning again in mid -
May with transports from Krakow and the Krakow district. In mid - June
transports were again discontinued for a month to enlarge the gas
chambers. The transports were renewed in the second week of July and
kept arriving on a regular schedule until early December, when the SS
stopped them because most of the Jews of the Generalgouvernement had
already been killed. In this period 130,000 Jews were brought from the
Krak"w district and 225,000 from the Lvov area; other Jews also arrived
>from parts of the Lublin and Radom districts. In all 600,000 people,
virtually all Jews with a few hundred Gypsies, were killed in Belzec.


Forced Labor
During the first weeks of the camp's operation, some of the fit young
males were selected for a few days of labor. Later on, seven hundred to
one thousand laborers were kept alive for longer periods. A work team
was used to clean the freight cars, to take down those Jews who could
not get down on their own, and to remove the corpses of Jews who had
not survived the trip. Another team processed the victim's property for
German use, eventually including women's hair which was shorn. Several
hundred Jewish prisoners removed the corpses from the gas chambers and
buried them in pits, and "the dentists" extracted gold teeth from the
corpses' mouths. At all times the prisoners were subjected to the
cruelty of the staff and to periodic Selektionen.


Closing the Camp
Between December 1942 and spring 1943 the mass graves were opened and
the corpses exhumed and cremated, as part of Aktion 1005. When this was
finished, the camp was dismantled, and the six hundred remaining Jewish
prisoners were sent to Sobibor. The Germans converted the camp area
into a farm and gave it to a Ukrainian guard. Today the camp is a
Polish national shrine. Only a few individuals succeeded in escaping
>from Belzec, and only one survived to tell the gruesome tale - Rudolf
Reder. 



Courtesy of:
"Encyclopedia of the Holocaust"
©1990 Macmillan Publishing Company
New York, NY 10022



2. Deportation records of the counties and town systematically combed
for the Jews sent to Belzec and never seen or heard from again, e.g.
http://history1900s.about.com/homework/history1900s/gi/dynamic/offsite.h
tm?site=http://holocaust%2Dinfo.dk/operation%5Freinhard/belzec%5Fdeporta
tions.htm

A sample, source ibid:

Table 1 Deportations to Belzec
Arad, pp. 383-389

A. District of Lublin
------------------------------------------------------------------------


County
   Town
   Date of deportation
   Number of deportees
------------------------------------------------------------------------


Lublin
   Lublin
   March 17-April 14, 1942
   30,000
  
   Piaski
   March (end)
   3,400
  
   Lubartow
   April 9-10
   800
------------------------------------------------------------------------


Krasnystaw
   Izbica
   March 24
   2,200
  
   Siennica Rozana
   March (end) - April
   272
------------------------------------------------------------------------


Zamosc
   Zamosc
   April 11
   3,000
  
   Cieszanow
   April-May
   1,300
  
   Tyszowce
   May 22
   580-800
  
   Komarow
   May 23
   1,000
  
   Laszczow
   May 27
   350
------------------------------------------------------------------------


Janow
   Krasnik
   April 11-12
   2,500
  
   Zaklikow
   November 3
   2,000
  
   Janow Lubelski
(via. Zaklikow)
   November
   300
  
   Annapol
(via Krasnik)
   October-November
   1,900
  
   Modliborzyce
(via. Krasnik)
   October-November
   1,300
  
   Ulanow
   October
   1,100
  
   Zakrzowek
(via Krasnik)
   October-November
   1,100
------------------------------------------------------------------------


Bilgoraj
   Bilgoraj
   November 9
November 3
   5000
  
   Frampol
   November 2
   2,000
  
   Goraj
   September 21
   700
  
   Josefow
   November 2
   1,800
  
   Krzeszow
   November 2
   500
     
   November 20
   2,000
  
   Szczbrzeszyn
   May
   280
     
   July 9
   400
     
   November 20
   2,000
  
   Tarnogrod
   August 9
November 3
   2,500

**********************************************************

3. Recent archeological digs of the mass graves:
Source:

http://history1900s.about.com/homework/history1900s/gi/dynamic/offsite.h
tm?site=http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/camps/aktion.reinhard/belzec/Arche
ological%5FReport/Tregenza%5FConclusions.98


"* The two main phases of the camp's gassing operations may be
identified by the arrangement of the mass graves and camp
structures between the graves. Thus, the apparent proliferation of
small wooden structures between the graves of the first phase may
have been temporary barracks for the Jews of the 'death brigade'
employed in digging the mass graves, and shelters for the guards.
Three of the smallest wooden structures arranged at intervals
around the W and S part of the grave field from the first period
suggest watchtowers overlooking the grave digging work. The
structures in the S half of the camp area doubtless date from the
second period. (Fig 8).

"* Graves 12 and 14-20, ranged along the N fence, correspond to
witnesses' statements as [2] being the first to be utilized during
the period February-May 1942. They undoubtedly contain the remains
of the Jews from the Lublin ghetto, deported to Belzec camp
between mid-March - mid-April 1942, and the remains of early
transports from the Lvov ghetto and the transit ghettos at lzbica
and Piaski. In these grave also lie the remains of German Jews
deported from the Reich in April-May to lzbica and Piaski, and
thence to Belzec.

"* Graves 10, 25, 27, 28, 32 and 33, which contain a layer of lime
covering still decomposing human remains, date from the spring of
1942 when the local German civil authorities complained about the
health hazard caused by decomposing corpses in open graves.
Chloride of lime was spread over the six still open mass graves
identified above in an effort to avoid epidemics breaking out.

"* Evidence of the subsequent failed attempt at cremating corpses
in graves may be found in the small graves near the N fence,
Nos. 27, 28 and 32, in which a layer of burnt human remains and
pieces of carbonized wood. The bottom of each of these graves is
lined with a layer of human fat.

"* With the exception of grave 14, the comparatively small size of
the other graves clustered around it near the N corner of the camp
is indicative of the smaller transports of this period which
carried on average 1,500 victims each.[3]

"* Some of the smallest graves (e.g. Nos.: 13, 27, 28, 32 and 33)
could be the execution pits in which the old, sick and infirm Jews
were shot during the first phase, while graves 2, 21 and 23 could
be the execution pits from the second phase. Such small graves
correspond

     "Footnotes
     
     "[1] Sketches and written descriptions of the camp layout
     during the second phase (July-December 1942) by members of
     the former SS-garrison in: ZStL, file No.: AR-Z 252159: The
     Case against Josef Oberhauser et al., pp. 1287-1288: Heinrich
     Gley, 10 May 1961/Munster; pp. 1340-1341: Heinrich Unverhau,
     10 July 1961/Konigslutter; pp. 1360-1361: Hans Girtzig, 18
     July 1961/Berlin; p. 1412: Kurt Frariz, 14 September
     1961/Duesseldorf; pp. 1464-1465: Robert Jiffirs, 11 October
     1961/Frankfurt-am-Main; p. 1507: Karl Schluch, 11 November
     1961/Kleve.
     
     "[2] According to witnesses, the first and largest mass grave
     (No. 14) was dug by members of the Soviet guard unit while
     the camp was under construction. It took six weeks to
     complete the task. OKBZ, file No.: Ds. 1604/45 -- Zamosc.
     Statements by Belzec villagers 1945-46.
     
     "[3] The early transports consisted of 8-15 wagons with an
     average of 100 Jews with their luggage per wagon.

                                                         [Page 27]

"with descriptions given in testimony by former members of the SS-
garrison at their trial in Munich 1963-64.[4]

"* At least a dozen graves still contain today unburnt, partially
mummified or decomposing corpses. Exactly why the SS did not empty
all the graves and destroy their contents is not known; they were
in no hurry to leave the area as the entire SS-garrison was
redistributed to other camps in the Lublin District for at least
five months after the liquidation of Belzec. However, that all the
corpses were not disinterred and destroyed may be due to the
following:

     "a) six of the graves not emptied date from the first phase
     and contain decomposing corpses under a layer of lime; the
     corpses would have been in such an appalling state of
     disintegration that even the SS were reluctant to attempt
     disinterrment;
     
     "b) three of the graves not completely emptied date from the
     second phase and are among the largest in the camp (with the
     exception of grave 14); removal of their entire decomposing
     contents presented a daunting task.

"* Perhaps after five months of supervising day and night the
gruesome work of exhuming and cremating the hundreds of thousands
of rotting remains the SS had simply had enough, and against
orders, abandoned the task.[5] The opened and partly emptied
graves were refilled with the fragments of burnt human bones and
pieces of carbonized wood from the bone mill, mixed with sand.

"* From the wealth of evidence uncovered by the 1997-98
investigations it is obvious that the camp SS did not by any means
erase all traces of the extermination camp, as hitherto believed.
The majority of the wooden barracks were burnt down and the
carbonized wood broken up into fragments; solid structures were
demolished and the bricks, stones and concrete or cement broken
into pieces and buried. Solidly constructed cellars beneath
certain buildings were used as refuse pits into which were thrown
items of glass and metal which could not be completely destroyed
by fire. The cellars were then simply filled in with soil. Other
articles of glass and metal were buried among the remains of burnt
down wooden barracks. At the Ramp, the wooden support posts and
planks retaining the sandy soil of the two platforms -- the
negative images of which were uncovered during the 1997
investigation -- were also removed and most likely burnt.

"* It has long been thought that only one railway siding existed at
the Ramp and that it was later extended further into the camp to
accommodate the longer transports of the second phase. However,
the construction of such an extension would not have been possible
due to the forested and uneven terrain at the SW end of the camp.
Luftwaffe aerial photographs of Belzec taken in 1940 and 1944
clearly show that two parallel tracks existed on the camp area.
Witnesses also mention the existence of two tracks during the
second phase. [6] It is

     "Footnotes
     
     "[4] For descriptions of an execution pit and method of
     shooting see: ZStL, file No.: AR-Z 252/59: The Case Against
     Josef Oberhauser et al., p. 1554: Heinrich Gley, 24 November
     1961/Muenster; p. 1484: Robert Juehrs, 12 October
     1961/Frankfurt-am-Main. Both Gley and ldhrs were assigned to
     execution duty. It is not conceivable that only one such
     execution pit existed in the camp, as these witnesses state.
     
     "[5] SS-Oberscharfuehrer Heinrich Gley, who supervised the
     daytime shift at the cremation pyres, has testified about the
     cremations: 'The whole procedure during the burning of the
     exhumed corpses was so inhuman, so unaesthetic, and the
     stench so horrifying that people today who are used to living
     everyday lives cannot possibly stretch their imaginations far
     enough to recreate these horrors'. ZStL, file No.: AR-Z
     252159: The Case Against Josef Oberhauser et al., p. 1699:
     Heinrich Gley, 7 January 1963/Munich.
     
     "[6] Air Photo Library, National Archives, Washington DC, USA.
     Film Roll No.: TU GX 933 F7 SK, exposure 089, dated 26 May
     1940; film roll No.: GX 8095 33 SK, exposure 155, dated 15
     May 1944. ZStL, file No.: AR- Z 252/59: The Case Against
     Josef Oberhauser et al., p. 1681: Josef Oberhauser, 12
     December 1961/Munich. Diary of Wilhelm Cornides, entry on 31
     August 1942 in: Vierteljahreshefte fuer Zeitgeschichte No. 7,
     pp. 333-336, Munich 1959. Cornides was a Wehrmacht NCO who
     travelled through Belzec on a passenger train on 31 August
     1942.


                                                         [Page 28]

"also apparent from the large amounts of engine oil and grease
found on the trackbeds in 1997 that locomotives entered the camp
and did not always remain outside the camp gate -- having shunted
the wagons from behind -- as stated by many witnesses.

"* The number of watchtowers around the camp perimeter was probably
larger than claimed by witnesses. The original number of three
towers at the corners (with the exception of the NW corner by the
main gate) and one in the camp itself, must have been increased
during the reorganization/rebuilding of the camp in June-July
1942, prior to the increased extermination activity which began on
1 August, and the employment of 1,000 'work Jews' in the camp.
Evidence of three small wooden structures at 55 m. intervals along
the E fence indicate the probable position of such additional
watchtowers.

"* In the autumn of 1942 there was increased partisan activity in
the Belzec area which necessitated extra security precautions by
the camp SS and Soviet guard unit. 7 One such measure was the
construction of a concrete bunker at the SE corner of the camp, on
the highest point of the terrain. It would also have been logical
and effective to have had a watchtower above the bunker, affording
a clear all-round view and field of fire over the entire camp area
and its environs.

"* A comparison of Figs. 7 and 8 confirm that during its first
phase Belzec was a temporary, experimental camp where the
procedures and logistics of mass extermination by gas and the
burial of corpses were tried and tested, initially on the Jews of
the Lublin ghetto, before being applied at the Sobibor and
Treblinka extermination camps. It can also be seen that the
original camp structures and mass graves of the first phase were
concentrated along the N fence, leaving the majority of the camp
area empty and unused but ready for utilization and expansion at a
later date. The primitive, experimental gassing barrack and
undressing barracks were also temporary structures, replaced later
by bigger and more solidly constructed buildings to accommodate
the increased number of victims."(Tregenza, pp 26-28)

                             Work Cited

Tregenza, Michael. Report on the Archeological Investigation at the
   Site of the Former NAZI Extermination Camp in Belzec, Poland,
1997-98.
   Lublin, 1998


From holman@elo.helsinki.fi Wed Apr 11 04:15:02 EDT 2001
Article: 884649 of alt.revisionism
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From: Eugene Holman 
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Re: Faurisson's article is outdated, inaccurate, and silly (was Re: Phillips to Holman: Gas chambersŠetc.)
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In article <3ACE6ED3.CEA0D481@earthlink.net>, Richard G. Phillips
 wrote:

> 
> The 'Problem of the Gas Chambers'
> 
> by Robert Faurisson
> 

Richard doesn't bother to tell us that this article, written around
1975 - it refers to the end of WW II in terms of an interval of "30
years" - is, in addition to abounding in obvious faults, distortions,
and inaccuracies, hopelessly outdated as well as written from the
perspective of a man generally regarded as a crackpot even within his
own field of expertise, literature.

Faurisson:
> What is disputed by numerous French, British, American, and
> German authors is the existence of "extermination camps." This 
> expression is used by historiographers to refer to those camps that were 
> supposed to have been equipped with "gas chambers."

This is untrue. The expression "extermination camp" (or "death camp",
Vernichtungslager in German) is used for camps whose sole purpose was
the rapid, systematic, industrial extermination of the people who were
shipped there, i.e. Chelmno, and the three Aktion Reinhard camps
Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, or for those camps who had dedicated,
regularly used extermination divisions (Auschwitz [specifically
Auschwitz-Birkenau], Majdanek). Other concentration camps such as
Auschwitz-Stammlager, Natzweiler, Mauthausen, Neuengamme, Ravensbrück,
Sachsenhausen, Stuttfhof, and Dachau, which had small gas chambers or
other makeshift or improvised gassing facilities where at most a few
thousand inmates were gassed, are _not_ referred to as extermination
camps by historiographers.

Faurisson:
> Allegedly, these "gas chambers" were different from American gas
> chambers in that they were used to kill hundreds of men, women, 
> and children at a time.

Faurisson focuses on _quantitative_ differences, but does not consider
the problem of _qualitative_ differences.

Faurisson:
> Because the victims were chosen because of their race or religion, this 
> is referred to as "genocide."

Not all victims of Nazi gassing were chosen because of their race or
religion, not all accessible members of specific races and religions
were gassed. Gassing, although certainly characterized by
exterminational and genocidal attributes, was also motivated by
considerations dictated by the war economy. Jews, Gypsies, and others
arriving at various Nazi concentration camps all had a specific
economic potential from the standpoint of the German war effort. In
certain contexts this economic potential was best exploited by using
them as forced labor, in other contexts it was best served by gassing
them as rapidly as possible since they were otherwise superfluous
mouths to feed. Towards the end of the war Heinrich Himmler and Adolf
Eichmann saw this potential best srrtved by using them as potential
bargaining chips to obtain vehicles, fuel, or to cut a deal that might
save their skins after the war.

Faurisson:
> The poison employed in this "genocide" is said to have been Zyklon B (a
> pesticide based upon prussic or hydrocyanic acid).

It has never been claimed, except by deniers unfamiliar with the
evidence, that all Holocaust gas chambers used Zyklon B. Exhaust from
internal combustion engines and compressed CO were also used.


In addition to these (and numerous other) glaring and simply refuted
inaccuracies of historical fact, Faurission works on the assumption,
visible already in the above, that Nazi gas chambers and American gas
chambers are necesarily technically similar variants of the same
archetype, the primary differences being limited to size and capacity.

Faurisson:
> "[I]t ought to be meticulously shown how the Nazis proceeded to invent,
> construct, and operate these fearsome human slaughterhouses)"

Faurisson implies that some complex technology was needed, when, in
fact, the Zyklon-B gas chamber, the final stage in the evolution of
Nazi gas chambers, reveals itself to be nothing more than the merging
of the techniques and methodologies developed for the mass gassing of
invalids within the framework of the T-4 euthanasia program, and for
the disinfection of clothing and bedding within the context of standard
concentration camp procedures. The gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau
were larger than the CO-using mass gas chamber at a Euthanasia center
such as Hadamar, but they used the same psychological technique:
confusion, pandemoinium, and deception to get the unsuspecting victims
inside the structure. Methodologically they used a greatly simplified
and much less hazardous version of the methodology used in the
facilities at concentration camps for clothing disinfestation and were
far less efficient at killing people than they were at killing vermin:
various sources note that many of the victims died of suffocation or
crushing rather than of actual cyanide poisoning.

Faurisson's fundamental problem, one that has also mesmerized Richard
Phillips, is his inability to understand that the most effective gas
chamber for mass murder when you intend to kill millions of people is
not going to be a technological wonder which has to be invented,
constructed, and operated by a trained staff using manuals and complex
electronics, but rather a simple structure requiring a minimum of
technology and looking like anything else but a gas chamber to the
unsuspecting victims. Faurisson's problem understanding what a gas
chamber is and is not is stated clearly in his foreword to the Leuchter
Report:

Source: http://www.lebensraum.org/english/leuchter/report1/foreword.html


I think I was the first to point out that all studies of the alleged
German execution gas chambers using Zyklon B should commence with a
study of the American execution gas chambers. As early as 1977, with
the help of an American friend, Eugene C. Brugger, a lawyer in New York
City, I began an inquiry into this area. During this research, I
obtained information from six American penitentiaries, those of San
Quentin, California; Jefferson City, Missouri; Santa Fe, New Mexico;
Raleigh, North Carolina; Baltimore, Maryland; and Florence, Arizona. I
was forced to conclude at that time that only an expert in American gas
chamber technology could finally determine whether the alleged German
execution gas chambers were capable of having been used as described in
Holocaust literature.

During the next several years, my articles on German gas chambers
always referred to the American gas chambers. These articles included
"the Rumor of Auschwitz or the Gas Chamber Problem", published on the
29th of December, 1978 in a French daily newspaper, Le Monde, and a
long interview published in August, 1979 in the Italian periodical
Storia Illustrata. I visited the gas chamber in Baltimore, Maryland in
September, 1979 and obtained eight photographs of the chamber and
additional documentation. Then, during a meeting held in New York City
under the chairmanship of Fritz Berg, I showed the Gas Chamber
Procedure Check Sheet of the Baltimore penitentiary and discussed its
implications. In 1980, in the first issue of the newly-created Journal
of Historical review, I published an article entitled "The Mechanics of
Gassing", in which I described in some detail the gas chamber
procedures used in the United States. 


Leuchter burdens himself with the same cultural baggage:
Source:
http://www.lebensraum.org/english/leuchter/report1/execution.html


DESIGN CRITERIA FOR AN EXECUTION GAS CHAMBER

Many of the same requirements for the fumigation facility apply to an
execution facility. Generally, however, the execution facility will be
smaller and more efficient. Zyklon B is not recommended for use in an
execution gas chamber generally because of the time it takes to drive
the gas from the inert carrier. Up until now, the only efficient method
has been to generate the gas on-site by chemical reaction of sodium
cyanide and 18% sulfuric acid. Recently, a design for a gas generator
has been completed which will be utilized in the two (2) man gas
chamber at the Missouri State Penitentiary, Jefferson City, Missouri.
The author is the design consultant for this execution gas chamber.
This generator employs an electrically heated water jacket to pre-boil
HCN in a cylindrical vessel. At the time of use, the HCN is already
vaporized and is released through valves into the chamber. A nitrogen
burst system clears the plumbing after use. The total time of the
execution is less than four minutes. The chamber is evacuated at a rate
of once every two minutes for a 15 minute time period, providing some
seven (7) complete air changes.

The chamber may be of welded steel construction or of plastic PVC. The
doors and windows should be of standard marine watertight construction.
The door is gasketed with a single handle pressure seal. All lighting
and electrical hardware is explosion-proof. The chamber contains the
gas distribution plumbing, the gas generator with the bottle of liquid
HCN, electronic heart monitoring equipment, two (2) seats for the
condemned and a gas detector reading externally, electronically to 10
ppm.

Because the chamber contains so lethal a gas, it is operated at a
negative pressure to guarantee that any leak would be inward. The
chamber pressure is controlled by a vacurizer system which should hold
the chamber at a partial vacuum of 10 pounds per square inch (psi)
(operational: 8 psi plus 2 psi of HCN). The negative pressure is
maintained utilizing the outward ambient as a standard. This system is
controlled electrically and supported by a 17.7 cfm displacement vacuum
pump. Additionally, a pressure switch is set to trigger emergency
systems if the chamber pressure reaches 12 psi, 3 psi above the
operational limit.

The inlet and exhaust system is designed for an air change every two
(2) minutes. The air is supplied by a 2000+ cfm fan on the inlet side
of the chamber and exhausted through the top of the chamber. The inlet
and exhaust valves are both of the inwardly closing type to prevent
vacuum loss and are timed to electrically open in sequence, the exhaust
valve first. This is evacuated through a 40 foot high 13 inch diameter
PVC pipe where the wind disperses the gas harmlessly. The intake air
should have preheat capability to guarantee that no HCN will condense
and thereby escape evacuation.

Gas detectors are utilized for safety. First, in the chamber where it
will electrically prohibit the door from opening until the chamber is
safe, second, outside the chamber in the witness and personnel areas
where they sound alarms and initiate an air exhaust and intake system
to protect the witnesses, as well as, abort the execution and evacuate
the chamber. The safety systems contain warning bells, horns, and
lights, as well.

Further, emergency breathing apparatus (air tanks) is available in the
chamber area, as well as, special HCN first aid kits, emergency medical
equipment for HCN and a resuscitator in an adjacent area for medical
personnel.

Execution gas chamber design requires the consideration of many
complicated problems. A mistake in any area may, and probably will,
cause death or injury to witnesses or technicians.



What Leuchter writes is _only_ relevant if the victims are to be
executed in as rapid and humane a manner as possible, with attendant
witnesses and considerations given to constitutional guarantees against
"cruel and unusual punishment", something which is admittedly important
with respect to an American type execution gas chamber, but not to a
Nazi-run homicidal one.

He correctly points out that Zyklon B, given some other alternative, is
not the best lethal agent for an execution, because there are faster
and more efficient means available. That does not mean that Zyklon B
_cannot_ be used, or that maximimum efficiency and speed are
necessarily the most important criteria a potential executionar will
have in mind. He fails to consider that the Nazis has personnel trained
in the safe use of Zyklon B in the disinfestation of clothes, and that
it was cheap and readily available, considerations not necessarily true
for other possible lethal agents including the exhaust fumes and
pressurized CO which were gradually abandoned as too expensive, too
exotic, or too unreliable for Zyklon B at several camps.

The type of structure Leuchter discusses, with welded steel and
plexiglass components, heart monitoring equipment, and explosion proof
electronics, gas detectors, and other bells and whistles are arguably
important when working at the high concentrations - 8,000 ppm used in
American gas execution gas chambers, even if cyanide only explodes at
concentrations that are considerable higher, 55,000 ppm - and under the
legal constraints that define acceptable gas chamber use within the
context of an American legal execution. They are far less important or
irrelevant at the 300 ppm concentrations the Nazis were using in their
homicidal gas chambers. Lethal gas accidents, primarily involving CO,
take place every year in the rooms of normal dwelling premises and in
garages without adjacent rooms or enclosures necessarily being
subjected to a lethal hazard, this demonsrating that it is possible to
gas people using far less elaborate equipment. The problem for the
Nazis, then, was not to construct something like an American execution
gas chamber with its emphasis on technology, efficiency, overkill,
humaneness, and contitutional proterction, but rather simply to produce
a facility where a situation analogous to a lethal domestic gassing
accident could be replicated and controlled.

Leuchter's inability to understand this is made clear in the following,
rather incredible, statement regarding Kremas II to V at Auschwitz:

Source:
http://www.lebensraum.org/english/leuchter/report1/procedures.html

 None of these chambers were constructed in accordance with the known
and proven designs of facilities operational in the United States at
that time. It seems unusual that the presumed designers of these
alleged gas chambers never consulted or considered the United States
technology; the only country then executing prisoners with gas.


Leuchter thinks it "unusual" that the Nazis, preparing to gas millions
of people in industrial fashion and with the experience of having
stealthily gassed more than 10,000 people within the framework of the
T-4 euthanasia program, did not turn to the United States, which had
gassed at most a few hundred prisoners in technically elaborate
"overkill" gas chambers, for advice on gas chamber design!

Faurisson, Leuchter, and Phillips, I'm afraid, are all looking for
something that was not there and should not have been there: an
American-type execution gas chamber. They are unable to grasp the fact,
known to any police force or medical rescue team, that even a simple
living room with a smouldering fireplace, tightly shut windows, closed
doors, and inadequate ventilation can serve as a gas chamber for the
unsuspecting people caught in it. The ability to replicate and then
neutralize the conditions of such a room in a given premise is all that
is necessary in order to have a structure with the basic functional
attributes making it a homicidal gas chamber in which the people
trapped inside of it will die relatively quickly. 

Examination of the extant evidence relevant to Nazi gas chambers
reveals them to have been far ahead of their American counterparts with
respect to gas chamber functionality and design, one important
advantage being their technical simplicity: tempt people into a
sturdily built room with a gas-proof door and no windows with promises
of a shower and a warm meal, lock the door, introduce the lethal agent
through a flue in the wall or ceiling, wait for a concentration of gas
double the lethal one to build up inside, wait another fifteen minutes,
ventilate, open the door, don gas masks, remove the bodies, hose down
the room, go back to beginning and start again.

Regards,
Eugene Holman


From holman@elo.helsinki.fi Wed Apr 11 04:15:03 EDT 2001
Article: 884671 of alt.revisionism
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In article <3AD0842F.D22F78AE@earthlink.net>, Richard G. Phillips
 wrote:

>

> ===================================
> Phillips
> 
> I meant 12 years subsequently to the Leuchter Report. 2001 - 1994 = 7
> years since the Krakow Report has been extant. If it proves your case,
> why aren't you quoting it.
> 
> ========================================


Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Polish Report on Cyanide compounds, Auschwitz-Birkenau
From: The Nizkor Project 
Summary: The 1994 report from the Cracow Institute for Forensic 
         Research on the chemical analysis of cyanide compounds at 
         Auschwitz-Birkenau

Archive/File: 
pub/orgs/polish/institute-for-forensic-research/post-leuchter.report
Last-Modified: 1996/01/12
[typos mine. knm]

A STUDY OF THE CYANIDE COMPOUNDS CONTENT IN THE WALLS OF THE
      GAS CHAMBERS IN THE FORMER AUSCHWITZ AND BIRKENAU
                     CONCENTRATION CAMPS

JAN MARKIEWICZ, WOJCIECH GUBALA, JERZY LABEDZ
Institute  of Forensic Research, Cracow


ABSTRACT: In a widespread campaign to deny the existence  of
extermination  camps  with gas chambers  the  "revisionsits"
have  recently started using the results of the examiantions
of  fragments  of ruins of former crematoria. These  results
(Leuchter, Rudolf) allegedly prove that the materials  under
examination had not been in contact with cyanide, unlike the
wall   fragments  of  delousing  buildings  in   which   the
revisionists  discovered  considerable  amount  of   cyanide
compounds.  Systematic  research, involving  most  sensitive
analytical  methods,  undertaken by the Institute  confirmed
the  presence  of  cyanide compounds in  all  kinds  of  gas
chamber  ruins,  even  in  the  basement  of  Block  11   in
Auschwitz,  where first, experimental gassing of victims  by
means  of  Zyklon  B had been carried out. The  analysis  of
control  samples,  taken from other places (especially  from
living quarters) yielded unequivocally negative results. For
the  sake  of  interpretation several laboratory experiments
have been carried out.

KEYWORDS: Gas chambers; Auschwitz; Cyanide compounds;
Revisionism.

Z Zagadnien Sqdowych, z. XXX, 1994, 17-27
Received 8 March 1994; accepted 30 May 1994

As  early as the first years after the end of World  War  II
single  publications began to appear in  which  the  authors
attempted  to "whitewash" the Hitlerite regime and  to  call
various signs of its cruelties into question. But it was not
till   the  fifties  that  the  trend  may  be  defined   as
"historical  revisionism" arose and started developing;  its
supporters  claim that the history of the World War  II  has
been  fabricated for the purposes of anti-German propaganda.
According to their statements there was no Holocaust, i.  e.
no mass extermination of Jews and in that case the Auschwitz-
Birkenau   Concentration  Camp  could  not  have   been   an
extermination  camp - it was only a "common"  forced  labour
camp and no gas chambers existed in it.

Historical  revisionism is now put  forward  by  members  of
various  nations,  who  already have  their  own  scientific
circles,  own publications and also use the mass  media  for
their  purposes.  Up  to  1988 the ,"revisionists''<1>  most
frequently  manipulated historical sources or simply  denied
the  facts.  Then,  after the appearance  of  the  so-called
Leuchter  Report (2), their tactics changed distinctly.  The
above-mentioned Report, worked out on the basis of  a  study
of  the ruins and remains of the crematoria and gas chambers
at  Auschwitz-Birkenau, has been considered by  them  to  be
specific  evidence  in  support  of  their  allegations  and
evidence  of  judicial  validity  at  that,  since  it   was
commissioned  by  the court of law in Toronto  (Canada).  F.
Leuchter,  living  in  Boston,  worked  on  the  design  and
construction  of gas chambers still in use  to  execute  the
death  penalty in some States of the USA. This is considered
to  give him authority to take the role of expert as regards
gas  chamber  issues. In this connection  Leuchter  came  to
Poland  on  25  February 1988 and stayed here  for  5  days,
visiting the camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau and at Majdanek. In
his report based on this inspection he states that "he found
no  evidence  that  any of the facilities that  are  usually
alleged  to  have  been gas chambers were actually  used  as
such". Moreover, he claims that these facilities "could  not
be  used  as gas chambers for killing people" (Item 4000  of
the Report).

Leuchter tried to confirm his conclusions with the  help  of
chemical  analysis.  For this purpose  he  took  samples  of
material fragments from the chamber ruins to subject them to
an analysis for hydrogen cyanide, the essential component of
Zyklon B, used - acc. to the testimony of witnesses - to gas
the victims. He took 30 samples altogether from all the five
structures  used  formerly as gas  chambers.  At  laboratory
analyses  performed in the USA the presence of cyanide  ions
at  concentrations of 1.1 to 7.9 mg/kg of material  examined
was  found in 14 samples. He also took one sample  from  the
delousing  building  at  Birkenau, which  he  treated  as  a
"control  sample", and in which cyanides were  found  to  be
present  at  a concentration of 1060 mg kg of material.  The
positive results of the analyses of samples from the  former
gas  chambers are explained by Leuchter by the fact that all
the  camp  facilities were subjected to  a  fumigation  with
hydrogen cyanide in connection with a typhoid epidemic which
really broke out in the camp in 1942.

A  later  investigation, carried out by  a  G.  Rudolf  (4),
confirmed  the high concentrations of cyanogen compounds  in
the facilities for clothes disinsectization. This may be  so
since, being undamaged, these facilities were not exposed to
the  action  of  weather  conditions,  especially  rainfall.
Moreover,  it is known that the duration of disinsectization
was  relatively  long,  about 24 hours  for  each  batch  of
clothes  (probably even longer), whereas the execution  with
Zyklon  B  in  the  gas  chambers  took,  according  to  the
statement  of the Auschwitz Camp Commander Rudolf  Hoess (7)
and  the  data presented by Sehn (6), only about 20 minutes.
It  should  also  be  emphasized that  the  ruins  of  these
chambers  have  been constantly exposed  to  the  action  of
precipitation and it can be estimated, on the basis  of  the
climatological records, that in these last 45  years  or  so
they have been rinsed rather thoroughly by a column of water
at least 35 m in height (!).

In  our  correspondence with the Management of the Auschwitz
Museum  in  1989, not knowing the Leuchter Report  then,  we
expressed  our  anxiety as to the chances  of  detection  of
cyanogen  compounds in the chamber ruins;  nevertheless,  we
offered  to carry out an appropriate study. At the beginning
of  1990  two workers of the Institute of Forensic  Research
arrived  on the premises of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Camp  and
took  samples for screening analysis: 10 samples of  plaster
>from  the  delousing chamber (Block No 3 at  Auschwitz),  10
samples  from gas chamber ruins and, in addition, 2  control
samples  from  the buildings which, as living quarters,  had
not  been  in contact with hydrogen cyanide. Out of  the  10
samples from the delousing chamber, seven contained cyanogen
compounds  at concentrations from 9 to  147 ug in conversion
to  potassium  cyanide  (which was  used  to  construct  the
calibration  curve) and 100 g of material.  As  far  as  the
ruins   are   concerned,  the  presence   of   cyanide   was
demonstrated   only  in  the  sample  from  the   ruins   of
Crematorium  Chamber  No  II at  Birkenau.  Neither  of  the
control samples contained cyanides.

When  the dispute on the Leuchter Report arose, we undertook
a  closer  study  of the problem, availing ourselves,  among
other  publications, of J. C. Pressac's  comprehensive  work
(5).  In consequence, we decided to start considerably  more
extensive and conscientiously planned reaserches.  To  carry
them  out,  the Management of the Auschwitz Museum appointed
their  competent workers, Dr F. Piper (custodian) and Mr  W.
Smrek  (engineer) to join the commission, in which they  co-
worked  with  the authors of the present paper, representing
the Institute of Forensic Research. Under this collaboration
the  Museum  workers  were providing us  on  the  spot  with
exhaustive  information  concerning  the  facilities  to  be
examined  and - as regards the ruins - a detailed topography
of the gas chambers we were concerned with. And so they made
it  possible for us to take proper samples for analysis.  We
tried to take samples - if at all possible - from the places
best  sheltered and least exposed to rainfall, includingalso
as  far  as possible - fragments of the upper parts  of  the
chambers (hydrogen cyanide is lighter than air) and also  of
the  concrete  floors, with which the gas from  the  spilled
Zyklon B came into contract at rather high concentrations.

Samples,  about  1-2  g in weight, were  taken  by  chipping
pieces   from   bricks  and  concrete  or   scrapping   off,
particularly  in  the case of plaster and also  mortar.  The
materials  taken  were secured in plastic containers  marked
with serial numbers. All these activities were recorded  and
documented with photographs. Work connected with  them  took
the  commission  two days. The laboratory  analysis  of  the
material   collected  was  conducted  -   to   ensure   full
objectivity  -  by another group of Institute workers.  They
started  with  preliminary work: samples were comminuted  by
grinding  them  by  hand in an agate mortar,  their  pH  was
determined at 6 to 7 in nearly all samples. Next the samples
were subjected to preliminary spectrophotometric analysis in
infrared  region,  using a Digilab FTS-16 spectrophotometer.
It  was  found that the bands of cyanide groups occurred  in
the  region  of  2000-2200 cm-1 in the spectra  of  a  dozen
samples  or  so.  However, the method did not  prove  to  be
sensitive   enough   and  was  given  up   in   quantitative
determinations.    It    was    determined,    using     the
spectrographical method, that the main elements  which  made
up  the samples were: calcium, silicon, magnesium, aluminium
and  iron.  Moreover,  titanium was found  present  in  many
samples. From among other metals in some samples there  were
also  barium,  zinc, sodium, manganese and  from  non-metals
boron.

The  undertaking of chemical analysis had to be preceded  by
careful  consideration.  The  revisionists  focussed   their
attention almost exclusively on Prussian blue, which  is  of
intense  dark-blue colour and characterized  by  exceptional
fastness. This dye occurs, especially in the form of stains,
on the outer bricks of the walls of the former bathdelousing
house  in  the  area of the Birkenau camp.  It  is  hard  to
imagine the chemical reactions and physicochemical processes
that  could  have led to the formation of Prussian  blue  in
that  place.  Brick, unlike other building  materials,  very
feebly absorbs hydrogen cyanide, it sometimes does not  even
absorb  it at all. Besides, iron occurring in it is  at  the
third  oxidation  state,  whereas  bivalent  iron  ions  are
indispensable  for  the formation of  the  [Fe(Cn)6]-4  ion,
which  is  the  precursor of Prussian  blue.  This  ion  is,
besides, sensitive to the sunlight.

J.  Bailer (1) writes in the collective work "Amoklauf gegen
die  Wirklichkeit" that the formation of  Prussian  blue  in
bricks   is  simply  improbable;  however,  he  takes   into
consideration  the  possibility  that  the  walls   of   the
delousing  room  were coated with this dye as  a  paint.  It
should be added that this blue coloration does not appear on
the walls of all the delousing rooms.

We  decided therefore to determine the cyanide ions using  a
method  that  does not induce the breakdown of the  composed
ferrum  cyanide complex (this is the blue under  discussion)
and  which  fact  we  had tested before  on  an  appropriate
standard  sample.  To  isolate cyanide  compounds  from  the
materials examined in the form of hydrogen cyanide  we  used
the  techniques  of  microdiffusion in  special  Conway-type
chambers.  The  sample under examination was placed  in  the
internal  part  of the chamber and next acidified  with  10%
sulfuric  acid  solution  and  allowed  to  remain  at  room
temperature (about 20oC) for 24 hrs. The separated  hydrogen
cyanide  underwent  a  quantitative absorption  by  the  lye
solution present in the outer part of the chamber. When  the
diffusion  was brought to an end, a sample of  lye  solution
was  taken and-the pyridine-pyrazolone reaction carried  out
by  Epstein's  method (3). The intensity of the  polymethene
dye  obtained  was  measured  spectrophotometrically  at   a
wavelength  equal  to  630  nm. The  calibration  curve  was
constructed  previously  and  standards  with  a  known  CN-
content  were  introduced into each series of determinations
to  check  the  curve and the course of determination.  Each
sample  of  materials examined was analysed three times.  If
the  result  obtained  was  positive,  it  was  verified  by
repeating the analysis. Having applied this method for  many
years,  we  have opportunities to find its high sensitivity,
specificity  and  precision. Under present circumstances  we
established  the lower limit of determinability  of  cyanide
ions at a level of 3-4 ,ug CN- in 1 kg of the sample.

The  results of analyses are presented in Tables I-IV.  They
unequivocally show that the cyanide compounds occur  in  all
the  facilities that, according to the source data, were  in
contact  with them. On the other hand, they do not occur  in
dwelling accomodations, which was shown by means of  control
samples.  The  concentrations of cyanide  compounds  in  the
samples  collected from one and the same  room  or  building
show  great  differences. This indicates that the conditions
that favour the formation of stable compounds as a result of
the  reaction of hydrogen cyanide with the components of the
walls,  occur locally. In this connection it takes  quite  a
large number of samples from a given facility to give  us  a
chance  to  come  upon  this sort of local  accumulation  of
cyanide compounds.

To complete this research on the cyanide compound content in
various  camp  facilities, we decided to carry  out  several
pilotage   experiments.  The  renovation  of  the  Institute
building,  just in progress, provided us with materials  for
this  investigation. We divided particular  constituents  of
these  materials (bricks, cement, mortar and  plaster)  into
several  3-4 gram pieces and placed them to glass  chambers,
in which we generated hydrogen cyanide by reacting potassium
cyanide  and sulphuric acid. We used high concentrations  of
this  gas  (about  2%) and wetted some of the  samples  with
water.  Fumigation took 48 hours at a temperature  of  about
20oC  (Table V). Another series of samples were treated with
hydrogen cyanide as well, but now in the presence of  carbon
dioxide. According to calculations, in the chambers in which
people  had been gassed the carbon dioxide content  produced
in  the breathing process of the victims was rather high and
in  relation to hydrogen cyanide may have been even as  high
as  10:1. In our experiment we applied these two gases  (CO2
and HCN) in the 5:1 ratio. Having been subjected to gassing,
the  samples were aired in the open air at a temperature  of
about  10-15oC.  The first analysis was conducted  48  hours
after the beginning of airing.

This  series  of  tests  allows the  statement  that  mortar
absorbs and/or binds hydrogen cyanide best and also that wet
materials show a noticeable tendency to accumulate  hydrogen
cyanide  whereas brick, especially old brick, poorly absorbs
and/or binds this compound.


TABLE I.  CONCENTRATION OF CYANIDE IONS IN CONTROL SAMPLES
TAKEN FROM        DWELLING ACCOMODATIONS, WHICH WERE
PROBABLY FUMIGATED WITH ZYKLON B  ONLY ONCE (IN CONNECTION
WITH TYPHOID EPIDEMIC IN 1942)

Site       Block No      Sample No       Concentration of
                                         CN- in ug/kg
------------------------------------------------------------
Auschwitz    3            9             0
                         10       0
------------------------------------------------------------
             8           11       0
                         12       0
------------------------------------------------------------
Birkenau     3           60       0
                         61       0
                         62       0
                         63       0
------------------------------------------------------------

Note: In screening tests of 1990 two control samples also
produced 0 results.

TABLE II. CONCENTRATION OF CYANIDE IONS IN SAMPLES TAKEN IN 
          THE CELLARS IN  WHICH THE FIRST GASSINGS OF CAMP 
          PRISONERS TOOK PLACE ON NOVEMBER 3rd, 1941

Site       Place        Sample No       Concentration of
                        CN- in ug/kg
------------------------------------------------------------
Auschwitz    cellars of Block 11
                        13       28, 24, 24
                        14       20, 16, 16
                        15       0
------------------------------------------------------------

Note: The CN- content in a sample of diatomaceous earth - a
component of Zyklon B (material  from the Museum, sample No
24) - was 1360 ug/kg, 1320 ug/kg and 1400 ug/kg.

TABLE III. CONCENTRATIONS OF CYANIDE IONS IN SAMPLES TAKEN
           FROM THE CREMATORIUM CHAMBERS (OR THEIR RUINS)
      IN WHICH THE VICTIMS WERE GASSED.

A - Sample No;
B - Concentration of CN~ (ug/kg).

Crematorium I
------------------------------------------------------------
A  17 17 18 19 20 21 22
------------------------------------------------------------
B  28 76 0  0  288   0  80
   28 80 0  0  292   0  80
   26 80 0  0  288   0  80
------------------------------------------------------------
Crematorium II
------------------------------------------------------------
A  25 26 27 28 29 30 31
------------------------------------------------------------
B  640   28 0  8  20 168   296
   592   28 0  8  16 156   288
   620   28 0  8  16 168   292
------------------------------------------------------------
Crematorium III
------------------------------------------------------------
A  32 33 34 35 36 37 38
------------------------------------------------------------
B  68 12 12 16 12 16 56
   68 8  12 12 8  16 52
   68 8  8  16 8  16 56
------------------------------------------------------------
Crematorium IV
------------------------------------------------------------
A  39 40 41 42    43 -  -
------------------------------------------------------------
B  40 36 500   trace 16
   44 32 496   0  12
   44 36 496   0  12 
------------------------------------------------------------
Crematorium V
------------------------------------------------------------
A  46 47 48 49 50 51 52
------------------------------------------------------------
B  244   36 92 12 116   56 0
   248   28 96 12 120   60 0
   232   32 96 12 116   60 0
------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------

Notes: 

Crematorium I at Auschwitz - building preserved but
reconstructed several times 
Crematorium II-V[*] at Birkenau - ruins. ONly the ceiling of the
chamber of Crematorium[*] II is in part fairly well preserved.

* Transcription Note: My copy of this document has two
corrections made, in ballpoint pen, concerning the crematorium
numbers. The first instance could have read "II-IV" in the
original, and the second could have read "III" on the
original, but the ink obscures the original text. knm.


TABLE IV. CONCENTRATIONS OF CYANIDE IONS IN SAMPLES COLLECTED
   IN THE FACILITIES FOR THE FUMIGATION OF PRISONERS'
   CLOTHES 
------------------------------------------------------------
Site     Place Sample No   Concentration of
               CN~ in ug/kg
------------------------------------------------------------
Auschwitz   Block No.1 (1) 
         1     4,4,4
         2     0
         3, iron hook   0
         4, piece of 0
         wood from a door  
      Block No.3 (2)
         5     0
         6     900,840,880
         7     0
         8     16,12,16
         Two series of 
         determinations    I.  70,30,74,142,422
         were made in   II. 118,52,80,60,214
         block No 3 in 1990
------------------------------------------------------------
Birkenau Bath-house
      Camp B1-A
         53  (3)     24, 20, 24
         53a (3)     224, 248, 228
         54  (3)     36, 28, 32  
         55  (3)     736, 740 ,640
         56  (4)     4, 0, 0
         57  (5)     840, 792, 840
         58  (5)     348, 324, 348
         59  (6)     28, 28, 28
------------------------------------------------------------
Notes:
(1)   Dwelling quarters next to cobbler workshop and
   disinfection chambers.
(2)   Disinfection facilities
(3)   Materials taken from the outer side of the building
   wall
(4)   Mortar taken from the outer side of the building wall
(5)   Plaster taken from dark-blue stains on the inner side
   of the building wall
(6)   Plaster from white walls inside the building

TABLE V. CONCENTRATIONS OF HYDROGEN CYANIDE AND/OR ITS 
         COMBINATIONS IN MATERIALS SAMPLED 48 HOURS AFTER 
         FUMIGATION

---------+-------------+--------------+--------------+-------------
          |Fresh plaster| Old mortar   | New brick    |  Old brick
---------+----+--------+-----+--------+-----+--------+-----+-------
Sort of  |dry | wetted | dry | wetted | dry | wetted | dry | wetted
material |    |        |     |        |     |        |     | 
---------+----+--------+-----+--------+-----+--------+-----+-------
Concentration |        |     |        |     |        |     |
of CN~ in     |        |     |        |     |        |     | 
ug/kg    | 24 |   480  | 176 |  2700  |  4  |   52   |  20 | 0
---------+----+--------+-----+--------+-----+--------+-----+-------

After  a  lapse of one month the concentration  of  hydrogen
cyanide  and  its  combinations in  the  materials  examined
decreased  on  the  average by 56% (from  28%  to  86%).  An
apparent  rise in the concentration occurred only in  single
samples. That is so because the samples used for examination
were not always the same. When they had been used up in  the
first run, they had to be replaced by new samples taken from
the  same bigger lumps of material. This supports the thesis
on the local binding of hydrogen cyanide.

The results obtained in the next series of tests, in which
the materials were subjected to gassing with a mixture of
HCN + CO2 are presented in Table VI.

TABLE VI. CONCENTRATIONS OF HYDROGEN CYANIDE AND ITS 
   COMBINATIONS IN MATERIALS SAMPLED AFTER FUMIGATION 
   WITH HCN+C02

---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+
          |Fresh    |Old      |Fresh    |New      |Old
         |plaster  |mortar   |mortar   |brick    |brick  
---------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
Sort of  |dry |wet | dry| wet| dry| wet| dry| wet| dry| wet 
material |    |ted |    | ted|    | ted|    | ted|    | ted 
---------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+
Concentration |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |     
of CN~ in     |    |1000|    |    |    |    |    |    |      
ug/kg    |5920|12800    | 244| 492| 388| 52 | 36 | 24 | 60   
---------+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+----+

In  this case the CN~ content in mortar (old and fresh)  and
in  new  brick  was for the most part lower  in  the  wetted
materials  than  in  the dry ones.  It  seems  that  here  a
tendency  is  revealed  towards the  competitive  action  of
carbon dioxide, which dissolves in water. In this series  of
tests fresh plaster showed an exceptionally high affinity to
hydrogen cyanide.

After  an  interval of a month the mean decrease of hydrogen
cyanide  content  in this material was 73%  and  so  it  was
markedly greater than in the run with hydrogen cyanide only.
In as many as four samples that loss ranged from 97% to 100%
and  then  airing  was nearly complete.  This  statement  is
significant   in   as  much  as  in  their   reasoning   the
revisionists   did  not  take  into  consideration   certain
circumstances, namely, the simultaneous action  of  cyanides
and  carbon dioxide on the chamber walls. In the air exhaled
by  man carbon dioxide constitutes 3.5% by volume. Breathing
for 1 minute, he takes in and next exhales 15-20 dm3 of air,
comprising  on  the average 950 cm3 CO2; consequently,  1000
people  breathe out about 950 dm3 of carbon dioxide. And  so
it  can  be  estimated that, if the victims  stayed  in  the
chamber for 5 minutes before they died, they exhaled 4.75 m3
of carbon dioxide during that period. This is at least about
1%  of the capacity, e. g. of the gas chamber of Crematorium
II  at  Birkenau, the capacity of which was  about  500  m3,
whereas the concentration of hydrogen cyanide virtually  did
not  exceed 0.1% by volume (death occurs soon at as low  HCN
concentrations   as   0.03%  by  volume).   Therefore,   the
conditions  for the preservation of HCN in the gas  chambers
were not better than in the delousing chambers, despite what
the   revisionists  claim.  Besides,  as  has  already  been
mentioned, the chamber ruins have been thoroughly washed  by
rainfall.

The  following experiment illustrated to what  extent  water
elutes   cyanide   ions.  Two  0.5-gram   plaster   samples,
previously  subjected to a fumigation with hydrogen  cyanide
(after  the determination of cyanide combinations  in  them)
were  placed on filter paper in glass funnels and either  of
them  was  flushed  with 1 l of clean,  deionized  distilled
water. The results of the test are presented in Table VII.

TABLE VII. RESULTS OF EXAMINATION CONCERNING THE EFFECT OF
WATER UPON THE CONCENTRATION OF CYANIDE IONS IN PLASTER

----------------------------------------------------------------
Sample  Initial concentration Concentration after 
                              flushing with water
        (CN~ in ug/kg)        (CN~ in ug/kg)    Loss, in %
----------------------------------------------------------------
 I      160                   28                82.5
II      1200                  112               90.7 
----------------------------------------------------------------

Consequently, water elutes cyanide compounds in considerable
measure.  The fact that they have survived so  long  in  the
chamber  ruins is probably due to the possible formation  of
cyanide combinations in the walls of those chambers  at  the
time  of  their utilization from about mid-1943 to the  last
weeks of 1944 (except for Crematorium IV, which was blown up
earlier).  The  significance of rainfall in the  process  of
elution  of  these  combinations out of the  ruin  walls  is
exemplified by Crematorium II in the Birkenau camp, where we
have  found  the  highest (mean) eoncentrations  of  cyanide
compounds, because many fragments of the gas chamber were to
a great degree protected from precipitation.

Final Remarks

The  present study shows that in spite of the passage  of  a
considerable period of time (over 45 years) in the walls  of
the  facilities  which  once were in contact  with  hydrogen
cyanide  the vestigial amounts of the combinations  of  this
constituent  of Zyklon B have been preserved. This  is  also
true  of  the ruins of the former gas chambers. The  cyanide
compounds  occur in the building materials only locally,  in
the  places  where the conditions arose for their  formation
and persistence for such a long time.

In  his  reasoning  Leuchter (2) claims that  the  vestigial
amounts  of  cyanide combinations detected  by  him  in  the
materials  from  the chamber ruins are residues  left  after
fumigations  carried out in the Camp "once,  long  ago"(Item
14.004  of  the  Report). This is refuted  by  the  negative
results  of  the  examination of the  control  samples  from
living quarters, which are said to have been subjected to  a
single  gassing,  and  the  fact  that  in  the  period   of
fumigation of the Camp in connection with a typhoid epidemic
in  mid-1942 there were still no crematoria in the  Birkenau
Camp. The first crematorium (Crematorium II) was put to  use
as  late  as  15  March 1943 and the others  several  months
later.

Footnotes:

1. The terms "historical revisionism" and "revisionists" in
the sense used there have been introduced into the
literature of the field under discussion.


References

1. Amoklauf gegen die Wirklichkeit. Praca zbiorowa (B. Gallanda, 
J. Bailer, F. Freund, T. Geisler, W. Lasek, N. Neugebauer, 
G. Spenn, W. Wegner). Bundesministerium fuer Unterricht und 
Kultur Wien 1991.

2. Der erste Leuchter Report, Toronto 1988, Samisdat
Publishers Ltd., Toronto 1988.

3. Epstein J., Estimation of Microquantities of
Cyanide, Analytical Chemistry 1947, Vol. 19, p. 272.

4. Gauss  E., Vorlesungen ueber Zeitgeschichte, Grabert
Vlg. Tuebingen 1993.

5. Pressac J. C., Auschwitz: Technique and Operation
of the Gas Chambers, B. Klarsfield Foundation, New York
1989.

6. Sehn J., Ob6z Koncentracyjny Oswiecim-Brzezinka.
Wydawnictwo Prawnicze, Warszawa 1960.

7. Wspomnienia Rudolf . Hoessa, komendanta obozu
oswiecimskiego. G16wna Komisja Badania Zbrodni Hitlerowskich
w Polsce. Wydawnistwo Prawnicze, Warszawa 1956.

The study was performed and funded by the Committee for
Scientific Research under the scheme of Research Project 
No 2 P 30 3088 04. Leader of the Project Prof. Jan Markiewicz.



> ===================================
> Phillips
> 
> There may have been quite a few things he didn't know. So? It is the
> very rare experimenter who begins his work knowing *everything* we may
> think he should have known. Science proceeds, occasionally in leaps but
> more often in steps. Newton knew nothing of relativity which, some 200
> years later, showed that his laws of motion failed in certain
> situations. And yet, Newton's laws of motion still stand today as the
> bedrock of 99% of all mechanical engineering.
> 
> The Holocaustniks point out to us that whereas a 300 ppm concentration
> of HCN is sufficient to kill humans, something like 16,000 is needed for
> lice. They quote these figures and follow them with a roar of triumph:
> "You see, Leuchter is a fraud, Leuchter is an incompetent, Leuchter is a
> %^$%#@@@#."

You forget the timeframe: 300 ppm sustained over 15 minutes for humans,
16,000 ppm sustained over 20 hours for vermin. When killing humans, the
facility has to be hosed down after the bodies are removed because
sphincters relax upon death and body fluids are emitted. Although the
same might also be true for lice, the amount of body fluids they emit
upon expiration does not require a delousing room to be hosed down.
Hosing down has an effect on the dynamics of cyanide compound
formation, since cyanide compounds are water soluble.

Leuchter's report as well as his now famous quip at the trial "Well,
I've never done calculations for beetles" reveal that he did not
understand this fundamental difference concerning the manner in which
cyanide interacts with cold-blooded as opposed to warm-blooded
creatures. His report and mindset make it clear that he thinks that
since people are more massive, it would take more gas to kill people
than vermin. That makes him a fraud and an incompetent.




> ===================================
> Phillips
>  
> Is it necessary to take account of those figures: certainly yes.
> Do they prove Leuchter a fraud: no.

They prove that he is a fraud because he was entrusted to make a report
about the possible use of cyanide in different types of facilities, but
showed that he lacked even the most basic understanding of the
interaction of cyanide with warm and cold-blooded or of the dynamics of
cyanide compound formation. He did not take the different archeological
histories of the disinfection rooms, protected from the elements since
1945, and the gas chamber ruins, exposed to the elements and sometimes
submerged in water, since November, 1944.

This makes him totally incompetent. Since he palmed himself off as an
engineer who could perform toxicological tests, but revealed himself to
know nothing about the toxic element he was studying, he is a fraud, a
charlatan, a man passing himself off for something that he isn't.

> 
> (1) We are told that it needs only 300 ppm to kill humans. Well,
> assuming there WERE lethal gassings, just how are we to know  WHAT
> concentrations were used. Why should we suppose they would use only a
> minimum. Wouldn't it make more sense that they would use quite a bit
> more than that to assure that the job would be done expeditiously.

The obvious answer is that we know the volume of the Zyklon B cans and
can this calculate the amount of gas generated by a can of the stuff.

Leuchter says that American execution technology, which uses
concentrations of HCN as high as 8,000 ppm, ensures that the condemned
person is dead in five minutes. The Germans, who were working in
wartime conditions in which even Zyklon B was a scare resource that had
to be obtianed from suppliers, used concentrations approximately 1/25
that much and achieved the same result in fifteen minutes. 

After the victims were dead, the bodies had to be removed and disposed
of. This was arduous and time-consuming work. Saving ten minutes by
using 20 times more Zyklon-B would have been a wasteful extravagance.


> 
> (2) The 300 ppm figure is based upon the case of a person being in a
> room by himself with no one else "competing" for the available HCN (if
> you will excuse the use of the word in this macabre context). To kill a
> person requires a certain number of *grammes* of the HCN. Now suppose
> your victims are packed in like sardines (and this pretty much was the
> case), then you are going to have them in effect "competing" with one
> another for the available HCN. So, even though you have an overall 300
> ppm concentration, there may not be enough grammes of the stuff to kill
> everybody.

Nonsense. 300 ppm is the concentration in the ambient air.

> 
> Now I will admit that in a situation like this your victims probably
> would have died anyway - from suffocation if from nothing else. I bring
> it up to make a case that the Nazis would not have been content to use
> only the theoretical minimum concentration requied.

They didn't. The theoretical minimum is 150 ppm which usually ensures
death within half an hour.

> 
> The fundamental issue here is the enormous discrepancy between traces
> found on the walls of the fumigation chamber (call these fum) vs traces
> found on the walls of the alleged execution chamber (call these exec).
> NOw had Leuchter reported that exec were about one half of fum, THAT
> would have been very bad news for Zuendel. Had he reported they were
> only one-tenth as large, even THAT would have been bad news. But he did
> not report either of those things. He reported that the ratio of exec to
> fum was of the order of 0.1% -- WHEN the exec were even at or above
> detection level which sometims they were not.
> 
> Now I want you to place this in juxtaposition with the fact (courtesy of
> Eugene Holman) that the relationship of detectable traces to exposure is
> not linear but logarithmic. What this means is that if you double the
> exposure, the resulting change in the amount of trace will not be double
> but something considerably less than that, becaue a logarithmic curve
> exhibits a flattening as you go out.
> 
> It comes to this. In effect you are asking me to believe that it would
> have been possible to lethally gas huge batches of people day after day
> for a period of many months --even years-- and yet end up with wall
> traces barely at detection level. That is what you are asking me to
> believe and I'm just not going to believe it.
> ===========================================

You are purposefully neglecting many important facts and issues.

1. The Auschwitz exec chambers were not used on a daily basis until
April 1944, when the action against Hungarian Jews started. Before that
they were used for a few gassings a day. The Final Solution was drawn
up so carefully that trains were arriving according to a fixed and
rigid timetable carrying Jews from as far away as Greece, Belgium,
France, and Norway. A train arrived, a selection was made, the
unfortunates selected for gassing were sent to Birkenau for 'a shower'.


2. The fum chambers were used on a continuous basis.

3. The realities of exec chamber use means that they had to be hosed
down after each use for sanitary and esthetic reasons to remove
physical traces in the form of body fluids and waste from the previous
gassing, thus inhibiting cyanide compound formation and washing some
already formed compounds away. The fum chambers did not have to hosed
down after each use.

4. Better prerequisites existed for the formation of HCN compounds in
the fum chambers, where concentratioons of HCN could reach 16,000 and
were sustained over 20 hours, than in exec chambers where concentration
were in the range of 300 ppm and sustained over 30 minute periods, with
the walls and floors subsequently hosed down after every gassing, thus
derailing the compound formation process and washing some away.

5. The fum chambers have been protected from the elements since they
were last used in 1945, the exec chambers were partially or fully
demolished, with the ruins of Krema III exposed to the elements since
November, 1944, during which time some of them have been partially
submerged in water for weeks at a time, thus allowing some HCN
compounds to dissolve and be washed away.


All of these factors mean that the readings for the fumigation chambers
should have been markedly higher than the readings for the gas chamber
ruins. As the Polish team noted, given the archeological history of
Krema II, with its history of exposure to the elements and to
intermittent long-term submersion in water, it is surprising that
cyanide compounds are wtill as evident as they are.

As I have said numerous times, the figures that Leuchter presented are
relatively consistent with what could be deduced from other sources
concerning the use and subsequent history of the structures. It is his
methodology, not the figures themselves, that is problematic to the
point of being outrageous. As to the places in the former exec chambers
where he obtained zero readings, two explanations suggest themselves:

1. The compounds could have dissolved. The Polish carried out tests on
the ability of HCN compounds formed on various substances to withstand
water and showed that the compounds will eventually wash away
completely with time.

2. More likely, they were never there. Leuchter did not bother to
familiarize himself adequately with the floorplans of Krema II,
something he could have done if he had availed himself of the museum
archives and learned something about the history of the structures he
was investigating. Had he done this, he would have known that not the
entire subterranean floor, but only a relatively small part of it was
part of a gas chamber. It shuld be obvious that no HCN compounds are
going to be found in the places where dressing rooms, storage space,
and corridors once stood. The Krakow team understood this, and took
their samples only from where the gas chamber is known to have stood.

The fact that the figures for former fum chambers are consistently
higher than those for former exec chambers indicates that cyanide was
used in both places, but in different ways, thus corroborating other
evidence supporting the existence of both fum and exec chambers at
Auschwitz-Birkenau.


Regards,
Eugene Holman


From holman@elo.helsinki.fi Wed Apr 11 04:15:03 EDT 2001
Article: 884709 of alt.revisionism
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From: Eugene Holman 
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Re: Faurisson's article is outdated, inaccurate, and silly (was Re: Phillips to Holman: Gas chambersŠetc.)
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In article <3AD09DE8.B34782B6@earthlink.net>, Richard G. Phillips
 wrote:

> Eugene Holman wrote:

> ========================================
> Phillips
> 
> Outdated? If something was a true fact as of year 1975, does it cease to be
> such becuae we are now in year 2001? Unlike computer technology, the history
> of the Holocaust is not constantly evolving.

Of course it is. New documents come to light, old ones are
reinterpreted. New studies are published. Andrew Ezergailis's _The
Holocause in Latvia: 1941-1944_, published in 1996, was hailed as the
beginning of a new stage in Holocaust studies:

"Most important, howver, must be our recognition of the fact that
Ezergailis represents the next wave of Holocaust research: the indepth
exploration of a particular aspect or territory. In that sense, he is a
pioneer and his work serves as a model."

Raul Hilberg (quoted on the dustjacket)


>From a more general historiographical standpoint, Ezergailis's study
sheds light on the downward flow through the Nazi bureaucracy of the
general Hitler Order to exterminate Jews and the manner in which it was
received in various quarters. His discussion of Stahlecker's letter of
August 6, 1941 illustrates a conflict between the SD which was
implementing Hitler's order and the civilian structure - the Ministry
of the Ostland, which was unaware of it. When Hinrich Lohse, the
Reichskommissar of the Ostland, arrived in the Baltics, he issued his
own guidelines for the treatment of the Jews: they were to be
concentrated and used for labor. Stahlecker, whose Einsatzgruppe A had
been killing Jews in the Baltics since June 22, 1941, wrote an angry
letter attacking Lohse's guidelines as "misconceived and outdated",
ending the letter in a handwritten note" "I consider it desirable,
before issuing any basic statement, once more to discuss these
questions verbally, expecially since it is safer that way, and since it
concerns fundamental orders from higher authority to the Security
Police, ones that cannot be discussed in writing"
Source: Stahlecker's Answer to Lohse's Guidelines on Treatment of Jews
in Ostland, August 6, 1941, Latvian State Historical Archives, Riga,
P-1026-1-3, pp. 237-239. Reprinted in Ezergailis, op. cit. pg. 378 ff.

Faurisson's article also states, erroneously even in 1975, that there
had not been a single book, article, or brochure devoted to the Nazi
gas chambers, He overlooks such iimportasnt publications as M. Broszat
and Hans-Adolf Jacobsen "The Concentration Camps, 1933-45" in H.
Krausnick et al. _Anatomy of the SS State_, 1968, Shirer's _Berlin
Diary_, published in 1941, which contaiuns information obtained from a
firt-hand source about the euthanasia gassings, as well as Höss's
-memoirs_, which appeared in Polish in 1951 and in German in 1958.

There are still hundreds of thousands of Holocaust survivors, many of
them as much as ten years younger than yourself, around today, and no
more than two weeks ago a Gemran SS-man received a senetnbce for a
Holocaust-era crime. This history and historiography of the Holocaust,
as well as our understanding of them, continue to evolve.


> ========================================
> Phillips
> 
> Crackpot. Just who in the Revisionist camp has leveled that charge at him.
> 
> =============================================================

Nobody in the Revisionist camp, Robert Jan van Pelt in the
anti-revisionist camp. See his discussion of Faurisson's theory of
literary deconstruction in his expert opinion offered at the Irving
trial. 


On Faurisson's methodology and credibility:

Source: http://www.anti-rev.org/textes/Fresco81a/index.html

The rumors of the alleged genocide of the Jews that circulated in
Europe and the United States during the last years of the war
constituted the principal evidence in the case for the prosecution.
Nüremberg and the other war-crimes trials that have taken place since
then are, therefore, according to Faurisson, in every way akin to the
infamous witch trials of the Middle Ages. Once free of the so-called
evidence extorted from the vanquished, only that advanced by the
alleged victims remains. And it is unnecessary to say what one should
think of that. When one is committed to the method routinely used by
Faurisson, one sees quite easily what can be expected of the
depositions of such people. It is without a doubt for this reason that
Faurisson has, until now at least, neglected to examine the testimony
of the survivors. 

There are a great many things that Faurisson doesn't bother with. He
never mentions, for example, the depositions taken during the various
trials from the survivors of the Sonderkommandos (special commandos),
who were responsible for emptying the gas chambers, transporting the
corpses to the crematoria and burning them, and cleaning the gas
chambers for the next operation. A former member of the Auschwitz
Sonderkommando, among others, recounted how he had actually seen with
his own eyes a gas chamber. His name: Dov Paisikovic. But ( 1) he was
Jewish and thus had every interest in accusing the Nazis of imaginary
crimes; (2) after the war, he emigrated to Israel, the country par
excellence of the hoax of the 20th century; (3) he has since died and
Faurisson is thus unable to meet with him; (4) the detailed description
he gave of the functioning of the gas chambers was part of his
deposition of October 17, 1963 at the Auschwitz trial --and we know
what we should think of Nüremberg and subsequent trials.55 

The basic rule of revisionist argumentation is that all evidence of
extermination) is by definition inadmissible. A document dating from
the war is inadmissible because it dates from the war. A document
dating from immediately after the war is inadmissible because it dates
>from those years. The deposition of a Nazi at his trial is inadmissible
because it is a deposition from a trial. This is a principle applicable
to all the Nazis who were tried. If, as is the case, not one of them
denied the existence of gas chambers, it is not because the gas
chambers existed (a feeble exterminationist thought), but because the
witnesses believed that if they assisted the victors, the judges would
reward them with clemency. As for the testimonies and depositions of
some hundreds of Jews who pretended to be survivors of the genocide,
they are inadmissible because given by people who could only be
instigators or, at best, accomplices in the rumor that led to the
swindle from which they benefited. 





> > This is untrue. The expression "extermination camp" (or "death camp",
> > Vernichtungslager in German) is used for camps whose sole purpose was
> > the rapid, systematic, industrial extermination of the people who were
> > shipped there, i.e. Chelmno, and the three Aktion Reinhard camps
> > Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, or for those camps who had dedicated,
> > regularly used extermination divisions (Auschwitz [specifically
> > Auschwitz-Birkenau], Majdanek). Other concentration camps such as
> > Auschwitz-Stammlager, Natzweiler, Mauthausen, Neuengamme, Ravensbrück,
> > Sachsenhausen, Stuttfhof, and Dachau, which had small gas chambers or
> > other makeshift or improvised gassing facilities where at most a few
> > thousand inmates were gassed, are _not_ referred to as extermination
> > camps by historiographers.
> 
> =======================================
> Phillips
> 
> YOur word games become tiresome.

It's not a word game, Richard. Things have to be called by their proper
names. There were four extermination camps: Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor,
and Treblinka, as well as two addiitonal camps with dedicated
extermination divisions, Auschwitz (Birkenau) and Majdanek. None of
these were in Metropolitan Germany.

In addition to them there were camps with gas chambers where between a
handful and a few thousand people were gassed. These were in Poland
(Auschwitz-Stammlager), Germany (Dachau, Mauthausen, Neuengamme,
Ravensbrück, Sachsenhausen, and Stutthof), and France (Natzweiler).
None of these is ever referred to as a death camp in the Holocaust
literature since their primary purpose was detention and/or hard labor.

You cannot interpret Simon Wiesenthal's words properly, or accuse him
of duplicity, without understanding that he is working on the
assumption that his readership underdstands this fundamental
difference.


> =======================================
> Phillips
> 
> Is it the case or is it not the case that we are today disputing the existence
> or non-existence of camps created for the purpose of exterminating large
> numbers of people.
> 
> =======================================

Discussing, not disputing.

The term "exterminating large numbers of people" also requires
clarification. The historical record indicates that some 4,000 people
were exterminated at Mauthausen. From one perspective that is a large
number. The same record says that between 1.1 and 1.5 million people
were exterminated at Auschwitz. That is a much larger number. The
numbers at the death camps were all greater than 100,000, while no
other camp with a gas chamber has a number claimed to be anything
aproaching even 10,000. So, the relative definition of "large" here
involves two or even three orders of magnitude and is thus significant.


> >
> > Faurisson focuses on _quantitative_ differences, but does not consider
> > the problem of _qualitative_ differences.
> 
> =================================
> Phillips
> 
> What were those "qualitative" differences and why is it important we be aware
> of them?
> 
> =======================
> 
> > Faurisson:
> > > Because the victims were chosen because of their race or religion, this
> > > is referred to as "genocide."
> >
> > Not all victims of Nazi gassing were chosen because of their race or
> > religion, not all accessible members of specific races and religions
> > were gassed.
> 
> =================================================
> Phillips
> 
> So what?
> 
> ==============================

He is making an unsubstantiated claim. It is not really important from
the standpoint of this discussion, but it shows how he plays fast and
loose with words.


> > Gassing, although certainly characterized by
> > exterminational and genocidal attributes, was also motivated by
> > considerations dictated by the war economy. Jews, Gypsies, and others
> > arriving at various Nazi concentration camps all had a specific
> > economic potential from the standpoint of the German war effort. In
> > certain contexts this economic potential was best exploited by using
> > them as forced labor, in other contexts it was best served by gassing
> > them as rapidly as possible since they were otherwise superfluous
> > mouths to feed. Towards the end of the war Heinrich Himmler and Adolf
> > Eichmann saw this potential best srrtved by using them as potential
> > bargaining chips to obtain vehicles, fuel, or to cut a deal that might
> > save their skins after the war.
> 
> ======================================
> Phillips
> 
> You suffer from the occupational disease of the academic: trying to make a
> Dreyfus case out of misplaced commas.
> 
> ===============================================
> 

Not at all. What I am seeing is compeletly consistent with changes in
nazi genocidal policy towards Jews and others during the war.

During the first stage, they killed as many as they could get their
hands on, brutally and publicly in the East, more subtly in the West.

During the next stage, when they realized that they had bitten off more
than they could chew, they rationalized the system: those who could
make an economic contribution were spared, those who could not were
killed. bad vibes generated by the first pahse caused them to move mass
killing operations indoors and perform them behind closed doors rather
than in public as had been the case from June 22, 1941 up until
January, 1942.

During the final stange, when they realized that German could not win
the war, attempts were made by Himmler and Eichmann to swap the Jews
they had under their control for vehicles, fuel, and political favor.

There is no pedantry in this, these policies are natural consequences
of the Nazis' understanding that they were wasting valuable time, 
manpower, and resources rounding up Jews, many with sorely needed
skills, just to kill them.

> > Faurisson:
> > > The poison employed in this "genocide" is said to have been Zyklon B (a
> > > pesticide based upon prussic or hydrocyanic acid).
> >
> > It has never been claimed, except by deniers unfamiliar with the
> > evidence, that all Holocaust gas chambers used Zyklon B. Exhaust from
> > internal combustion engines and compressed CO were also used.
> 
> ============================================
> Phillips
> 
> WAS Zyklon B used or was it not used.
> 
> =============================

It was used, but its use involves an evolutionary step from the use of
CO, the lethal agent used in the euthanasia gas chambers as well as in
the earliest death camps, Chelmno and Belzec. 

> ==================================
> Phillips
> 
> Inaccuracies? Excuse me but, up to this point and apart from pedant-picked
> nits, I have not seen any.
> 
> ============================================

Then you need to work on your reading comprehension.

> 
> > Faurission works on the assumption,
> > visible already in the above, that Nazi gas chambers and American gas
> > chambers are necesarily technically similar variants of the same
> > archetype, the primary differences being limited to size and capacity.
> 
> ==============================================
> Phillips
> 
> American execution chambers are the outgrowth of decades of experience of how
> to construct and run such a thing  with minimal danger to the operating
> personnel. ASSUMING that the Nazis ever constructed and ran such artifacts, is
> it so wild an assumption that there would be certain similarities between the
> two.
> 
> =============================

Yes there is. Their function was totally different.

> > Faurisson:
> > > "[I]t ought to be meticulously shown how the Nazis proceeded to invent,
> > > construct, and operate these fearsome human slaughterhouses)"
> >
> > Faurisson implies that some complex technology was needed,
> 
> ========================================
> Phillips
> 
> Where does he imply that the technology would be any more complex than that of
> an American execution chamber.
> 
> =========================================

The above statement about inventing, constructing, and operating these
fearsome human slaughterhouses.

Every winter hundreds of people die in CO accidents in their own homes.
A gas chamber need do nothing more complex that replicate such
circumstances in an enclosure constructed to be little more complex
than a room in an ordinary dwelling.


> > when, in
> > fact, the Zyklon-B gas chamber, the final stage in the evolution of
> > Nazi gas chambers, reveals itself to be nothing more than the merging
> > of the techniques and methodologies developed for the mass gassing of
> > invalids within the framework of the T-4 euthanasia program,
> 
> ===================================
> Phillips
> 
> You have not presented any evidence for this. You pointed to a website and the
> website mentioned a book. Have YOU read that book? Can YOU point to certain
> passages which would lend strong credence to your notion of gas chambers
> having been used in the T4 programme. Or am I expected to tkae a week of my
> own time and devote it to the purpose of proving your case. The world doesn't
> run that way.
> 
> ========================================

I've read books on Nazi medicine and the euthanasia project. I don't
have them here now, but the fact that gas chambers were used in the T4
has been general knowledge since the publication of W. Shirer's _Berlin
Diary_ in 1940, as has been the fact that T4-trained personnel such as
Christian Wirth and Franz Stangl went on to design and administer death
camps.


> ======================================
> Phillips
> 
> I fail to see that pandemonium would be an inducement to get people to enter a
> death chamber.
> 
> ==============================================

Disorder, noise, dogs barking, guards shouting; they don't pay
attention to where they are going until they are inside.


> 
> ===========================================
> Phillips
> 
> I have nver claimed that the thing would have been especially complex; neither
> has Faurisson. I do state that: IF such things ever existed, they were NOT put
> together with a hacksaw and a welding torch. The Germans just were not in the
> habit of doing things that way and they most CERTAINLY would not have done it
> that way when the safety of their own operating personnel was involved. SS men
> were highly valued.
> 
> =======================================

This is not an argument. People are not usually endangered when
somebody forgets to open the flue and dies of a CO accident in the
apartment next door.

> 
> ==================================
> Phillips
> 
> I repeat a passage used above.
> 
> American execution chambers are the outgrowth of decades of experience of how
> to construct and run such a thing  with minimal danger to the operating
> personnel. ASSUMING that the Nazis ever constructed and ran such artifacts, is
> it so wild an assumption that there would be certain similarities between the
> two.
> 
> ===================================

Yes, it is. Killing one pr two persons at a time as part of a legal
procedure with witnesses and medical personnel attending, and using a
concentration of gas more than 50 higher than the lethal limit is quite
a different approach to the problem than killing a thousand people at a
time, in a facility disguised to look like something it is not, using a
concentration of gas only twice the lethal limit. It is an entirely
different problem and necessitates a radically different solution.


> ==============================================
> Phillips
> 
> Has it occurred to you that if the Nazis did not turn to the USA for expertise
> on gas chambers, it may have been because they never intended to build any.
> 
> ===================================

No. Because the Nazis were the unchallenged world leaders in gas
chamber technology. The Americans had executed a few hundred prisoners
using gas in an extravangant, wasteful, and dangerous manner. The Nazis
had exterminated thousands of people who didn't even know they were
about to be killed using minimal amounts of gas in much more closely
controlled and appropriate conditions. The Nazis, not the Americans,
were the experts in this branch.

Regards,
Eugene Holman


From holman@elo.helsinki.fi Wed Apr 11 04:15:03 EDT 2001
Article: 884899 of alt.revisionism
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From: Eugene Holman 
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism,soc.history,alt.politics.usa.republican,soc.culture.usa,alt.fan.rush-limbaugh
Subject: Re: On the Bronstein Question: Pragmatic Ethnicity in Trotsky's Rise to Power (Bolshevik - Bolshevism) REPOST..
Date: Tue, 03 Apr 2001 17:05:15 +0300
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In article <3AC4B1BC.9DC06CFB@earthlink.net>, Richard G. Phillips
 wrote:


> 
> ============================================
> PHillips
> 
> I think what he is trying to say here is that Trotsky and the others went to
> consdierable lengths to play down the fact of their being Jewish. Just how
> important this was to Trotsky, I have no way of knowing.
> 
> ===========================================================
> 

Kind of like you, right? According to your logic, if your national
socialist state were ever to come into being, and you were to be
entrusted with some position of leadership, or even to be revered as
one who propagated its advantages and kept the fire going, historians
could also point to its "Jewishness", right?

Regards,
Eugene Holman


From holman@elo.helsinki.fi Wed Apr 11 04:15:04 EDT 2001
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From: Eugene Holman 
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Re: Faurisson's article is outdated, inaccurate, and silly (was Re: Phillips to Holman: Gas chambersŠetc.)
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In article <3AD0C054.52C48386@earthlink.net>, Richard G. Phillips
 wrote:

> Eugene Holman wrote:


> >
> > > ========================================
> > > Phillips
> > >
> > > Crackpot. Just who in the Revisionist camp has leveled that charge at him.
> > >
> > > =============================================================
> >
> > Nobody in the Revisionist camp, Robert Jan van Pelt in the
> > anti-revisionist camp. See his discussion of Faurisson's theory of
> > literary deconstruction in his expert opinion offered at the Irving
> > trial.
> 
> =================================
> Phillips
> 
> That Van Pelt would do such a thing is perfectly understandable and proves
> nothing.
> But you said that someone in Faurisson's   OWN camp leveled the accusation.
> NOw how
> about it?
> 
> =====================================

Richard, you have to work on that reading comprehension. What I wrote
was:

Source: <080420012006033596%holman@elo.helsinki.fi>


Richard doesn't bother to tell us that this article, written around
1975ŠisŠwritten from the perspective of a man generally regarded as a
crackpot even within his own field of expertise, literature.


I didn't say that the revisionist camp, which regards Faurisson as at
least a demigod, regards hims as a crackpot. I stated that people
_within his own field of expertise, literature_, regard him as a
crackpot. The theory of textual deconstruction and decontextualized
interpretation of lexical items which Faurisson represents and which is
the basis of his understanding of the Holocaust is regarded as verging
on insanity among literary scholars:

Source: http://www.anti-rev.org/textes/Fresco81a/index.html

Nadine Fresco: The Denial of the Dead - On the Faurisson Affair"


The fundamental rule of revisionist argumentation is very simple: any
evidence of massive extermination of the Jews in the gas chambers is
unacceptable. First with respect to the Nazis. Faurisson announced some
time ago what was to constitute the credo of his doctrine: "Hitler
never ordered (nor permitted) that someone be killed because of race or
religion."48 If this incontestably audacious claim seems not to bother
either American, English, or German revisionists, it did provoke
grumblings among some of Faurisson's defenders in France. Pierre
Guillaume, head of La Vieille Taupe Publishers, in a letter sent to the
newspaper Libération and not printed --but, fortunately, included in
Thion's book-- discusses the torments that he as well as his friends
experienced because of Faurisson's famous statement. 

I met Professor Faurisson at the end of November. I found a man
desperate and on the verge of withdrawing into a paranoid delirium --a
reaction that was, however, altogether understandable. I also found a
man who thoroughly knew his subject (200 kilos of documents,
representing the analysis of several tons of texts) and whose works
were of the same general persuasion as, but went much further than,
those of La Vieille Taupe.... As my own character was not strong enough
for the task (I myself was on the verge of breaking)-- it became vital
for the development of the situation to gain support and, thus, to
obtain everyone's agreement on a unified statement, with neither
concessions nor second thoughts. This statement had, therefore, to
integrate the famous sentence that seemed to render Faurisson
indefensible: "Hitler never ordered the execution of a single Jew
solely because of the fact that he was a Jew." [I would have the future
archivists of revisionism note that the formulation, as Guillaume puts
it, differs from the original credo; it specifically lacks the words
"or permitted," which Faurisson seemed to insist upon.] The statement
held that Faurisson's claim was, strictly speaking, true even though
Hitler could not have cared less about what actually happened to the
Jews. This done, I proved in practice that I was ready to follow
Faurisson to the end.... Feeling thus supported, Faurisson began to eat
normally and his paranoid symptoms disappeared completely.49 



Faurisson, who has understood the Nazi mentality as well as that of the
pseudo-victims, does not believe that the Germans felt any need to
camouflage their language and has decided that for the Nazis, as for
him, a spade is a spade. He certainly does not think that the
expression "sent farther East" could be a euphemism of the Amtssprache,
the administrative language used by the Nazis in their direction of the
Final Solution. But what does Faurisson understand the exact meaning of
"the Final Solution" to be? He most assuredly has a precise idea about
this place "farther East" where the Jews disappeared. Armed with the
"simple good sense" that he shares with Thion, Faurisson takes the
texts "for what they are" and the Nazis at their very word. He knows
that, different from Americans, Communists, Jews, etc., the Nazis did
not lie. How does he know this? Never mind.. The revisionists, who are
experts in distinguishing the true from the false, do not believe for a
moment that the Germans had recourse to an administrative language
intended to camouflage their enterprise of extermination. 





> ===========================================
> Phillips
> 
> Sonderkommandos. Worthless wretches who, according to you, assisted in the
> murdering
> of their own brethren to save their own worthless skins.
> 
> And you tell me we should believe them. Give me a break, please?
> 
> ========================================

Your unjustified contempt for people forced by a moral dilemma into an
objectionable job in order to live for a few more weeks has nothing
whatsoever to do with their credibility or lack thereof. They were
forced to do the job; you don't argue with an SS man holding a machine
gun when given the choice of joining the Sonderkommando as ordered, or
being gassed or shot down on the spot.

Manpower was in increasingly short supply as the war dragged on; the
Nazis would have been foolish not have forced Jews to do as much of the
dirty work as possible? And why do you regard with contempt people
forced to choose between immediate death and delayed death? Members of
the Sonderkommando showed their moral courage when, on October 7, 1944,
they revolted and destroyed Krema IV, even though they were mowed down,
as they knew they would be, by SS machine gun fire.


> ====================================
> Phillips
> 
> Considering the methods that were used to obtain "evidence" we would be a
> bunch of
> naifs if we did NOT scrutinize it with the greatest care.
> 
> There is certain evidernce we would consider valid.
> 
> (1) Autopsies of victims that proved they were gassed.

No autopsies need to be performed when you are killing on a medically
supervised industrial scale, nor did all the people stuffed into gas
chambers necessarily die of cyanide poisoning: some were crushed,
others suffocated. Performing autopsies and keeping written records of
them would have been a capital crime as well as time consuming and a
waste of valuable resources. The details of the Final Solution were, in
the words of Brigadeführer Walter Stahlecker, Head of Einsatzgruppe A, 
only to be discussed verbally, "especially since it is safer that
way, and since [they concern] fundamental orders from higher authority,
Šones that should not be discussed in writing." [Stahlecker's Answer to
Hinrich Lohse's Guidelines on the Treatment of Jews in the Ostland,
Einsatzgruppe A, Headquarters, Novoselsk, August 6, 1941, Latvian State
Archives, P-1026-1-3, pp. 237-239].

> (2) A still standing and operating gas chamber and a scientific report on it
> by
> competent, disinterested, and reputable authorities. Thiss to be matched
> against
> detailed construction drawings to verify it.

The gas CO gas chamber at Majdanek is still standing and could be made
functional in a few hours. It is a sturdily built, low-roofed room with
a large, wood-bunring oven adjacent to it. The CO fumes pumped from the
oven into the room through the exhaust pipe which feeds directly into
the gas chamber would cause the death by CO poisoning of anyone trapped
inside. Anybody who knows anything about CO can see that this facility
is sufficient to kill anyone unfortunate enough to be trapped inside;
no detailed construction drawings or scientific analysis are necessary
to see this.

It's like an open window on the twentieth floor. I don't need detailed
drawings or scientific analysis to prove that a person pushed out would
die upon contact with the street below.

You are arguing that if the Nazis had successfully destroyed all of
their gas chambers, it would be possible to prove that any existed.
Anyone with the leat understanding of criminology knows that this is an
invalid argument. As its stands, gas chambers in various states of
disrepair survived at Natzweiler, Mauthausen, and Majdanek, ruins of
structures that once housed gas chambers survived at
Auschwitz-Birkenau, structures which were once improvised to serve as
gas chambers as well as a structure which was once a gas chamber, was
converted to an air-raid shelter, and subsequently partially
museumified to the form it was in when serving as a gas chamber survive
at Auschwitz-Stammlager. Floor plans and architectural cross sections
have survived for the gas chamber at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Krema II. The
Auschwitz-Birkenau gas chambers are known to have been designed by
Walther Dejaco [Archive of the State Museum, Auschwitz-Birkenau, file
BW (B) 30/12].



> 
> (3) A signed order from AH.

AH got caught with his pants down when he signed the euthanasia order.
He was smart enough not to do something so stupid again. There is
abundant evidence that a general order to exterminate Jews was issued
by Hitler orally to Heydrich and Himmler, and that this order passed
_down_ the hierarchy to the Security Police, producing the all too well
known results and paper trail documenting them which passed _up_ the
hierarchy back to belrin and Hitler. The Nazi hierarchy had been
devised as a complex network of overlapping functions, thus making the
responsibility for the source of orders implemented difficult to
pinpoint. This specific administrative feature enabled some of the
Nazis tired at Nuremberg to successfully pin responsibility for the
charges brought against them on people who were not there, such  as
Hitler, Eichmann, and Heydrich.

It is a well known fact that implementation of Hitler's general order
to kill Jews resulted in friction between the Security Police, that had
been killing Jews with enthusiasm ever since the invasion of the USSR
on June 22, 1941, and the civilian administration in eastern Europe,
which wanted to exploit Jews fior much needed forced labor, this
conflict exemplifying the unclear and overlapping chains of command and
policy that were characteristic of Nazi rule. It wasn't "nudge, wink",
but there were many conflicts, sometimes severe ones with important
consequences for the people and resources involved, resulting from the
lack of specific written, traceable orders.

Source: Ezergailis, _The Holocaust in Latvia: 1941-1944_, pg. 337:


  The conflict that arose between Lohse's civilian government and the
security Police was unavoidable, because the authority of the two
administrative structures overlapped. Lohse's assignment was to
administer the territory [Ostland, EH] and generate wealth from it­to
help in the war effort and enrich the German nation. The Security
Police were acting under the mandate of the fundamental orders. Even if
Lohse knew of the Führerbefehl, it was not incumbent on him to carry it
out. As Hitler had conceived it, it was the unique mission of the
Security Police to kill the Jews, so that everyone did not need to
dirty his hands. Even if Lohse had agreed with the spirit of the
fundamental orders he was free of it, as Hitler had intended him to be.
There was no reason why Lohse should have to take on his shoulders the
enormity of a crime that was not his responsibility. One can argue that
Hitler used Lohse as a cover for the SD crimes - that the guidelines
were nothing other than a disguise.
  The plausible deniability that Hitler wanted the administarive
management of the Ostland to have did not quite work for the
Reichskommissar, as we shall see. Before Lohse fully comprehended it,
he was drawn into a situation beyond his control. Whatever ultimate
plans he had for the Jews, he was not allowed to carry them out, but he
became an accomplice in the murderous SD plan. Although he made slight
complaints about the killing of the Jews, tens of thousands of Jews
would have survived the Holocaust had his plans been followed. There is
a consistency to Lohse's position. From the time of the "Guidelines on
the Solution of the Jewish Question" that he issued in July 1941 to the
end in 1944, Lohse defended the use of the Jews for labor. He
complained time and time again about the consequences of the
Führerbefehl: occasionally he and some of his Gebeitkomissars did issue
mild protests against mindless killings. Specifically, he protested
about the killings in Liepaja, and although he did not stop them there
was a slowdown there in comparison to other places in Latvia. In spite
of the fact that time after time he was embroiled directly and
indirectly in the killing of the Jews, a certain modicum, if not or
marality, then of practicality or international concern, still adhered
to him. The resistance of the Ostland civilian administration to the SD
plan is a matter of record. Their position, however, was undermined by
their superiors at Rosenberg's ministry in Berlin. At a time when
support from those quarters might have been useful, Dr. Otto Brütigam
wrote his admission to Lohse on November 15: "When solving the problem
[Jewish question] economic considerations are to be ignored. You are
asked, furthermore, to settle any future question with the HSSPFD
leader. [Nuremberg: IMT - Trial of Major War Criminals, - documents USA
826 and USA 822.]

> 
> (4) A little consistency in the number of reported deaths. When the range al
> the way
> from 9M to 600K we get suspicious.

There is little that can be done about this. The number of people
killed in the firebombing of Dresden shows anneve greater range: 350K
to 18K. That does not mean that the firebombing never took place

> 
> (5) We might be less suspicious if the Russians, while occupying POland, had
> allowed
> Western experts to come in and inspect.  That they did not convinces us they
> had
> something to hide.

That's hardly a real issue. The Auschwitz camp was crawling with
diplomatic personnel and Red Cross officials immediately after its
liberation in 1945, and the Polish authorities also performed the first
forensic analysis of the gas chamber ruins back then, providing
evidence that cyanide had been used there as alleged. The outlines of
what we know about Auschwitz were known by mid 1945, long before a
communist government was proclaimed in Poland which was, by the way,
never "occupied by the Russians".

The Mauthausen gas chamber, the gas distribution system of which was
dismantled and removed by the Americans in 1945, was always in the
West.
 
> (6) We further find it odd that the memoirs of both Eisenhower and Churchill
> make no
> mention of gas chambers.

Why? They had other things on their minds. The gas chambers were one,
rather peripheral, part of WW II. Eisenhower was writing from the
standpoint of the Commander of the Western Allied Forces, in whose zone
the gas chambers at various concentation camps killed a few thousand
people. Churchill was writing from the standpoint of the victorious
United Kingdom, a country that had been involved in WW II all over the
globe and in whose zone of wartime operations gas chambers did not even
exist except a single few small one at the Neuengamme concentration
camp in the area of Germany invaded by British forces.

> 
> (7) We further find it odd that gas chambers were only one of at least half a
> dozen
> claimed modalities of murder. It was only after some time that they finally
> "settled" on gas chambers.
> 
> YOU say it's impossible to find the sort of evidence we require. Tough.
> 
> ==============================

There are many ways to kill people, and the Zyklon-B gas chambers
represent the final stage of an evolutionary process that includes
stationary and mobile CO gas chambers, lethal injections, hanging,
mass-shooting, pseudo-medical experiments, death marches, and other
modalities.

Why is it so hard to grasp that more than one mode of muder was used to
kill the approximately 11,000,000 civilians purposely dispossessed and
killed by the Nazis in widely differing circumstances in more than
fifteen countries during WW II?

Gas chambers, by the way, do not represent any final "settlement". The
last modality of Nazi mass murder was death marches from outlying to
more centrally located camps during the last weks of the war. These
were abundantly documented first hand _in flagrante delicto_ by the US
Army, among others.

> > > =============================
> >
> > Yes there is. Their function was totally different.
> 
> ==========================================
> Phillipsd
> 
> Oh, I thought both were used to kill people.
> 
> ===========================

In the most general sense, yes. But American gas chambers were used to
carry out judicial executions, usually involving a single individual,
in a ceremonious, humane, and semi-public manner. Nazi gas chambers
were used to carry out industrial-scale mass murder in a stealthy and
concealed manner, with no consideration given to such matters as the
possible pain and suffering undergone by the victims.

> > > =========================================
> >
> > The above statement about inventing, constructing, and operating these
> > fearsome human slaughterhouses.
> 
> ==============================
> Phillips
> 
> That is a measure of their scale, not of their technical complexity.
> 
> ===================================

Technical cmplexity is implied by the words "inventing, constructing,
and operating". Anybody who has ever read a report of a CO accident
knows that no invention, construction, or operating expertise is needed
to kill somebody using a concentration of poison gas slightly above the
lethal limit.

> >
> > Every winter hundreds of people die in CO accidents in their own homes.
> > A gas chamber need do nothing more complex that replicate such
> > circumstances in an enclosure constructed to be little more complex
> > than a room in an ordinary dwelling.
> 
> ==================================
> Phillips
> 
> There is the little matter of the safety of the operating personnel which I
> hope you
> have not overlooked.
> 
> ==============================

That's why the Nazi gas chambers had gas detectors, and the personnel
had gas masks available. Once again, the concentrations of gas used
were
only slightly above the lethal limit. In Kremas IV and V the gas could
be dissipated simply by cross ventilating.

> > > ========================================
> >
> > I've read books on Nazi medicine and the euthanasia project. I don't
> > have them here now, but the fact that gas chambers were used in the T4
> > has been general knowledge since the publication of W. Shirer's _Berlin
> > Diary_ in 1940
> 
> ==================================
> Phillips
> 
> HOw would he have known other than by virtue of having been told.
> 
> =============================

The use of poison gas, which was written up as pseudo-scientific
reports, photographed, and filmed, in the euthanasia project was public
knowledge in 1941. The question being debated was not "Is it true?" but
"Why?".

Source: D. Dwork and Robert Jan van Pelt, _Auschwitz: 1270 to the
Present_, New York and London, 1996, pg. 124 ff.


...Hitler instructed Bouhler's department to organize the murder of
adults unfit for life. [Christopher Browning, _Fateful Months: Essays
on the Emergence of the Final Solution_, rev. ed., New York & London,
1991, pg. 58ff.] After consultation with Albert Widmann, the chief of
the Chemical Department of the Criminal Technical institute, Bouler's
deputy, Viktor Brack, recommended the use of bottled carbon monoxide
produced by BASF. At a meeting attended by, among others, Professor
Werner Heyde,  well-known psychiatrist, a friend of Himmler's, and the
leader of the operation; Professor Hermann Paul Nitsche, also a
psychiatrist and the director of the Sonnenstein asylum near Dresden; a
police officer, paul Werner; and chaired by Brack, the decision was
taken to kill between 65,000 and 75,000 asylum inamtes by carbon
monoxide poisoning.
  The first experimnental gassing was conducted by Widmann in an unused
prison in the town of Brandenburg eight weeks later. Christian Wirth, a
police officer from Stuttgart, had built the gas chamber, instaleld the
gas cylinders, and designed the fake showers. One of Widman's
collaborators recealled after the war that he gas chamber was "similar
to a shower room which was approximately 3 metres by 5 metres and 3
metres high and tiled. There were benches around the room and a water
pipe aropund 1"" in diameter ran along the wall about 10 cm off te
floor. There were small holes in this pipe from which the carbon
monixide gas poured out. The gas cylinders stood outside this room.
[Noakes and Pridham, _Nazism 1919-1945_, pg. 1019. Between eighteen and
twenty patients were brought into the anteroom, undressed, and led into
the gas chamber. The door was locked. Widmann turned the valve, and the
patients died within minutes. Their bodies were cremated in two mobile
incinerators brought for the occasion.
  The operation, code-named T4 for the operations headquarters at
Tiergarten 4, began a few weeks later with the gassing of a first
transport of inmates to the Grafeneck asylum (west of Ulm). Brandenburg
came into operation in February, followed by hartheim (near Linz), and
Sonnenstein (near Dresden) in May, Bernburg (south of Magdeburg) in
September, and Hadamar (north of Frankfurt), in January 1941. [Klee,
_"Euthanasie" im NS-Staat: die Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens_,
Frankfurt 1983, pg. 207.


On the degree to which gassing became public knowledge in Germany
during 1941.


Source: http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/alexrep5.htm
Restricted

Public Mental Health Practices in Germany

Sterilization and Execution of Patients Suffering from Nervous or
Mental Diesase

Reported by
Leo Alexander, Major, M.C., AUS
CIOS Item 24
Medical
Combined Intelligence Objectives Sub-Committee
Part V



The killing at the children¹s station was carried out by Berlin nurses.
They used mostly luminal. At the killing centers in Grafeneck and
Hadamar in 1940 and 1941, gas and electricity were used for the
killings. There were other killing centers in Brandenburg and in
Vienna, and some patients who were sent from Wiesloch to one of the
nearly (sic) killing centers were sometimes later sent to Brandenburg
or Vienna.Dr. Möckel added: "I never wanted to hear about what they did
at Grafeneck. It always nauseated me". "Later I could not stand it any
longer. Whenever a transport was to leave at night, I usually left the
institution at noon and did not come back until the next day."

At first the patients did not know where they were being taken, but
later it became known among the patients, and there were frightful
scenes when patients did not want to be taken away. Finally a storm of
protest arose among the population because of the stereotyped death
notices which they received from Grafeneck, Hadamar, Brandenburg and
Vienna. At some time during that period Sprauer held a meeting and said
that patients who had been transferred would no longer be "put away",
but 8 or 14 days later another flock of death notices went out. Because
of the wave of public protest, the mass killing of patients in special
killing centers was discontinued in the middle of 1941, and a policy of
extermination by starvation in the state institutions themselves,
without transfer to a special killing center, was substituted. The
policy of starvation had the advantage that the deaths were more spread
out and masses of patients did not die on the same day. However, the
former killing centers were partly maintained in that a relatively
large number of starvation wards were instituted there, and transfers
were still made to those starvation wards. Thus 600 cases from Wiesloch
were transferred to Hadamar for starvation up to June 1944, when the
last of these transports was carried out. These are not included in the
previously given figure of 800 who were transferred to Grafeneck and
Hadamar for mass killing between January 1940 and June 1941. Dr. Möckel
transferred patients for starvation also to other institutions, namely
to Eichberg and to various Bavarian institutions, especially
Kaufbeuren. 150 cases, 60 men and 90 women, constituted the last
transport to Kaufbeuren on 4 June 1944. A starvation center fancifully
named "research house" was also taken over and staffed by Professor
Carl Schneider on Dr. Möckel¹s own hospital grounds, where it was
operated through 1942 and 1943. Dr. Möckel claimed that he did not know
how many patients were were killed there, and he stated tht he did not
know until recently that any patients were killed there at all. Dr.
Schneider had his own personnel there which was separate from the
Personnel of the State Hospital at Wiesloch. "Our personnel was
indignant over the way these people lived. They received wine and beer
by the car-load directly from Berlin."

The killing by gas and electricity had been objected to by legal
experts of the government. They held that unless a "law for
annihilation of valueless lives" ("Gesetz zur Vernichtung
lebensunwürdigen Lebens") was promulgated, these killings were illegal
because a law against killing was still on the statute books of
Germany, which provided that whoever killed somebody else with
premeditation should be punished by death. Also the theologians
objected to the killings. The Bishop of Münster, Count Galen, declared
publicly from his pulpit: "Who has knowledge of a murder and does not
announce it becomes punishable himself. I have personal knowledge of
300 murders which have been committed, and I herewith proclaim and
denounce them publicly".

>
> ======================================
> Phillips
> 
> Oh? I seem to have heard from other Holocaustnik quarters that the object was
> to
> somehow calm them down.
> 
> ==============

It depended on the camp and the crowd. Höss says that Jews speaking the
language of the victims were there to calm them and assist them to
undress. Other people speak of dogs barking and whips snapping. There
is nothing to exclude the possibility that different crowds at
different camps required different means to get them into the death
chambers. By mid 1944 at Auschwitz-Birkenau, when the Hungarian Jews
were being killed and people knew what was in store for them we can
assume that panic reigned. Earlier, when things were not so hectic and
the victims did not have as clear a picture of what was going to happen
to them, relative calm would have prevailed.



> 
> =====================================
> Phillips
> 
> Good Christ, man. We are talking about introducing into a clsoed chamber an
> amount
> of HCN sufficient to kill 2000 people.  

Not an amount, a concentration. If the stuff is properly distributed,
the concentration will still be a low 300 ppm.

> =====================================
> Phillips
>
> And you seem to think that opening
> the doors
> will not pose any danger to operating personnel. Perhaps it would not have
> killed
> them but have you thought about their being exposed to this several times a
> day
> several days a week, several weeks a month. 

You fail to understand the difference between amount and concentration.
You fail to understand that, with the exception of mid 1944, the gas
chambers at Auschwitz were not being used on a round-the-clock, daily
basis. You fail to understand that gas detectors and gas masks were
used, even after the gas chambers had been ventilated. You fail to
understand that the people entering the chambers to clear out the
bodies were members of the _Sonderkommando_ whose lives were worth
little more to the Nazis than those of the people that had just been
gassed.


Source: Source: D. Dwork and Robert Jan van Pelt, _Auschwitz: 1270 to
the Present_, New York and London, 1996, pg. 342 ff.

At no other time was Auschwitz moe efficient as a killing center. In
May and June the number of people murdered exceeded the official
incineration capacity of 132,000 corpses per month. Moll's pits were
useful, too. The frenetic gassing and burning continued through July.
In two months one-third opf the total number of people murdered at
Auschwitz were killed, and between one-half and two-thirds of all the
600,000 Jews the Germans killed in 1944. In the thirty-two months that
Auschwitz operated a s a designated extermination center, from March
1942 to November 1944, between 1 million and 1.1 million people were
killed or an averga eof 32,000 to 34,000 a month. During the Hungarian
action the Germans, with dispatch and efficiency, icnreased that
average five- to sixfold.


> =====================================
> Phillips
>
> YOu are prepared to rule out all
> possible sub-lethal symptms, like nausea, severe headache, severe upset
> stomach.
> Maybe you'd like to have the job; I wouldn't.
> 
> ====================================

The members of the Sonderkommando did not like that job, but it
afforded them a few extra days or weeks of life, days or weeks during
which they might be able to sabotage operations. Such an opportunity
eventually arose on October 7, 1944, when a revolt by the
Sonderkommando resulted in the complete destruction of Krema IV as well
as in the machine gunning of the Sonderkommando.


> > > ==================================
> > > Phillips
> > >
> > > I repeat a passage used above.
> > >
> > > American execution chambers are the outgrowth of decades of experience of
> > > how
> > > to construct and run such a thing  with minimal danger to the operating
> > > personnel. ASSUMING that the Nazis ever constructed and ran such
> > > artifacts, is
> > > it so wild an assumption that there would be certain similarities between
> > > the
> > > two.
> > >
> > > ===================================
> >
> > Yes, it is. Killing one pr two persons at a time as part of a legal
> > procedure with witnesses and medical personnel attending, and using a
> > concentration of gas more than 50 higher than the lethal limit is quite
> > a different approach to the problem than killing a thousand people at a
> > time, in a facility disguised to look like something it is not, using a
> > concentration of gas only twice the lethal limit. It is an entirely
> > different problem and necessitates a radically different solution.
> 
> =====================================
> Phillips
> 
> Not radically different. In both cases, you introduce a lethal agent into a
> closed
> chamber. The only important difference is one of scale.
> 
> =============================

No. There are two other differences.

Firstly, in the American gas chamber you are using extravagant
concentrations of poison gas, more than 25 times the lethal
concentration. An unncessarily hazardous situation is being created,
and numerous technical checks and balances have to be in place to
ensure that the situation remains under control. The Nazi gas chambers
used concentrations that were only twice the lethal limit. A much more
controlled and easily managed situation was created, thus obviating the
need for any but the most primitive mechanical checks and balances,
i.e. gas masks and simple gas detectors.

Secondly, an American gas chamber kills people as part of a ritual. It
has to look fearsome and official because its function is partially
symbolic. The condemned and the witnesses have to be aware of the fact
that it is an organ of state power. A Nazi gas chamber killed people as
part of an industrialized process of mass-murder in the same way as a
slaughter house kills pigs or cows. In neither case is there any reason
to focus the victims' attention on what they are in for.



> > > ===================================
> >
> > No. Because the Nazis were the unchallenged world leaders in gas
> > chamber technology. The Americans had executed a few hundred prisoners
> > using gas in an extravangant, wasteful, and dangerous manner. The Nazis
> > had exterminated thousands of people who didn't even know they were
> > about to be killed
> 
> ===================================
> Phillips
> 
> so you claim.
> 
> If you can point to convincing evidence that your T4 programme used gassing, you
> will have taken a step forward.
> 
> =========================
>

The first thing to do is to consider some of the general and specific
evidence given below.

Source: http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/mord.htm


"Life Unworthy of Life" and other Medical Killing Programmes

Introduction
Source Materials
Other Relevant Pages

During the Third Reich a minority of medical practitioners and public
health officials in positions of authority, following an authorization
decreed by Adolf Hitler in August 1939,directly  implemented a policy
of extermination respecting segments of the population who were
diagnosed as suffering from severe mental and/or physical dysfunction. 
A much larger percentage of these groups were complicit directly or
indirectly in the programme.  Scholars habitually refer to this as the
'Euthanasia' programme, the term appearing with some regularity in the
titles of academic treatises on this thrust of Nazi demographic policy.
Two examples are Michael Burleigh's Death and Deliverance, subtitled
'Euthanasia' in Germany 1900-1945 (Cambridge University Press, 1994),
and Dick de Mildt's more recent In the Name of the People...  which
carries the sub-subtitle The 'Euthanasia' and `Aktion Reinhard' Trial
Cases (Martinus Nijhoff, 1996)

Although both Burleigh and Mildt  necessarily refer to killings and
extermination, the consistent use of the term 'euthanasia' in this
context is somewhat misleading.  The Chambers Dictionary includes in
its definitions "the act or practice of putting painlessly to death,
esp in cases of incurable suffering." The Shorter Oxford Dictionary
refers to "a quiet and easy death," and the "action of inducing" the
same.  However, the "incurable suffering" that the underlying ideology
that rationalised the killings referred to was not that of the
patient-victims, but that of the policy originators, their willing
bureaucratic assistants, and those who directly handled the victims,
whether transporting them, channeling them into gas chambers, injecting
them with morphine-scopolamine, or managing their slow and agonising
starvation; an efficient synergy of those Lifton referred to as the
"killing professionals" and the "professional killers". Their demise
was not painless, quiet or easy. Many were not suffering from any
mental or physical dysfunction aside from the physical consequences
arising from having fallen into Nazi hands, as was the case with
respect to those Poles and Russians who were exterminated in some of
the same institutions used for eliminating those with mental or
physical handicap.  The dying rituals and procedures applied under the
auspices of this "programme" were invariably identical to those that
obtained in the extermination camps. The underlying objective was the
same-the eradication of unwanted segments of the populace. In both
instances no term other than murder is congruent with the
circumstances. Nazi legal experts had held that:

unless a "law for annihilation of valueless lives" "("Gesetz zur
Vernichtung lebensunwürdigen Lebens") was promulgated, these killings
were illegal because a law against killing was still on the statute
books of Germany, which provided that whoever killed somebody else with
premeditation should be punished by death." (Alexander, p.34-see below)

The fact that the enveloping conceptual framework was
medico-demographic rather than xenophobic-racist, as it was respecting
the Jews, should not obscure the fact that both derived sustenance from
the same source, a desire to be rid of unacceptable others, a socially
induced drive that was given free reign in a political framework that
placed no limitations on goal attainment, and where those classified as
being outside the framework of moral consideration were considered
unworthy of being treated as anything other than expendable and
replaceable objects. This same environment permitted medical
experiments on individuals with no consideration as to the impact that
these might have on their wellbeing or longevity. 

Acknowledging some situational and ideological commonalities underlying
the diverse killing projects undertaken by the leadership corps of the
Third Reich, does not amount to identity.  As Katz has recently noted,
a distinction needs to be drawn between those programs designed "to
protect the health of the Aryan race" [those covered by the Law for the
Prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases, amendments to the
criminal code relating to sexual dysfunctions and the extermination of
the mentall and physically afflicted], and those programs designed to
protect  the Aryan "bloodstock" against the external threat of racial
poisoning:

The threat that [inferior racial groups represent] is not that of a
"diseased gene" within the otherwise "healthy" Aryan body, but rather
that of a racial admixing that will-if enacted-eventuate in the
disappearance of a "pure" Aryan biological community, with all the
sociopolitical and normative consequences that such racial "pollution"
would produce." (The Holocaust: A Very Particular Racism. Steven T
Katz. In M Berenbaum and A J Peck (eds.) The Holocaust and History: The
Known, the Unknown, the Disputed, and the Reexamined. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1998, p.59)



Depositions concerning killing operations at Hadamar:

Source: http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/alexrep6.htm#Derived


7. Information Derived from a Visit to the Killing Center for Patients
Suffering from Nervous and Mental Diseases in Hadamar, Near Limburg an
der Lahn, Hessen-Nassau, Germany 

a. Information received from Dr. William Altvater, who had taken over
the direction of the institution five weeks previously, after its
former director - who had administered the killing center - was
arrested by the Americans. 

Dr. Altvater had been called back from retirement because the former
director, Dr. Wahlmann and his associates, had been implicated in the
killings of the patients. Dr. Altvater stated that a pre-Nazi director,
Dr. Henkel, had been pensioned in 1937 because he could not stand the
inhumane policies which were then inforced, which consisted mainly in
neglect and under-feeding of the patients. He was succeeded by a Dr.
Masorski, who held a commission as Oberstabsarzt in the Naval reserve
and who left the institution when he went on active duty in 1939. Then
Dr. Wahlmann, who had been formerly director of the institution in
Eichberg but who had been retired before the Nazis came to power, was
recalled from retirement and made director of the institution in
Hadamar. After Dr. Wahlmann took over, the institution was emptied of
patients, and remained empty for a year until it was converted into a
killing center.  This conversion was carried out mainly by rebuilding
the cellar and by building an approach from the garage directly into
the cellar. The principal expert in the health office at Wiesbaden in
charge of mental institutions, Mr. Bernotat, supervised the conversion
and ran the show after it was converted. The institution served as
annihilation center through 1940 and 1941. The patients were killed by
gas in the cellar. The institution was one of the main seats of the
Gemeinnützige Krankentransport G.m.b.H. 

At present 440 patients are in the institution. They are all civilians.
Dr. Alvater stated that he himself had not been a direct witness to the
extermination activities, but that the head nurse, Miss Irmgard Huber,
who had served in the institution since 1932, knew the facts through
observations of her own. I expressed a desire to talk to Miss Huber and
she was called and interviewed in Dr. Alvater¹s presence.

b. Information received from Miss Irmgard Huber, head nurse of the
State Hospital for the mentally ill in Hadamar 

Miss Huber stated that in 1939 part of the institution was transformed
into a military hospital, and a large section into a hospital for
prisoners of war, for the most part British and French. Only 200 of the
former mental patients were selected to remain because they were
agricultural workers and kept the farm running. At the end of 1940, the
military hospital, as well as the hospital for prisoners of war, were
discontinued and 100 of the mental patients were transferred to other
institutions. The remaining 100 patients were all housed at the farm
(Hofgut) in Schnepfenausen, which is the farm catering to the needs of
the institution at Hadamar. At the same time, the institution itself
was converted into a killing center. New administrative officials were
brought in. A group of new doctors, clerks and drivers came from
Berlin. Most of them wore civilian clothes, some of them SS uniform.
Transports of 40-70 patients arrived daily. These patients were taken
to a special wing of the cellar and were killed immediately on arrival,
either on the same day or at the latest during the night following
arrival. They were gassed. In July 1941 this whole set-up suddenly
disappeared. Then the institution was empty for more than one year
until September 1942, apart from some paper work that was being done
the personnel which had been running the killing center. But even then,
as before, while it was being run as a killing center, nobody was
allowed to peek at what these people were doing. In September 1942, the
institution was reopened but now the patients were no longer gassed in
large numbers, but they were killed at the rate of 3-16 per day by
morphine-scopolamine injections.

For the past half year there were only a few mental patients, but
instead large numbers of normal Russians and Poles were brought for
killing. These people were weak and emaciated, and were supposed to be
suffering from tuberculosis, but did not cough. The killing of the
Russians and Poles was done by a male nurse by name of Willig, who was
arrested by the Americans. The male head nurse, Ruoff, who was in
charge of the killing of the mental patients but helped with the
killing of the others, was transferred by the SS shortly before the end
of the war, and Miss Huber did not know whether he was arrested or not.

The mental patients brought for killing by morphine-scopolamine
injections since September 1942, came mostly from Eichberg, Weilmünster
and Andernach, but they had all been through three or four other
institutions before they were sent to the killing center. The mental
patients were killed singly in small private rooms. The normal Russians
and Poles were killed in semi-private rooms in the women¹s wing,
usually 3-16 per day as they were brought in by the trains. The last
group of mental normal Russians and Poles was killed 8 days before the
Americans arrived in Hadamar.

There was no special starvation department in the institution, but all
patients were practically starved. Only the working patients had
supplementary rations. The food for the patients was "grim". It
consisted of soup without fat; the supplementary rations for the
working patients consisted of bread with butter.
c. Inspection of the site of the executions 

The courtyard contained a large wooden garage, of a size sufficient to
hold a number of large buses. From this garage a covered walk led
directly into the cellar under one of the main buildings of the
institution, so that the patients saw nothing of the outdoors. The site
of the killings in the cellar had been covered up at the time when the
mass killings were discontinued late in 1941, but traces of the
crematorium chimney were still recognizable from the shape of the
outlet covered with new masonry. The killing chambers themselves were
found closed by masonry. There was an autopsy room in the adjacent open
chamber in the same part of the cellar.

Miss Huber and Dr. Altvater then led me to the site where the Russians
and Poles were killed in a series of semi-private rooms in the women¹s
wing, each of which contained 3-4 beds.


Regards,
Eugene Holman


From holman@elo.helsinki.fi Wed Apr 11 04:15:04 EDT 2001
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From: Eugene Holman 
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Subject: Auschwitz gas chambers: the evidence for and against
Date: Mon, 09 Apr 2001 17:32:44 +0300
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This is a summary of the evidence for and against the existence of gas
chambers at Auschwitz as presented at the Irving vs. Lipstadt/Penguin
Books trial.

"7.11 In the course of the trial Irving modified his position: he was
prepared to concede that gassing of human beings had taken place at
Auschwitz but on a limited scale."


Source: http://www.holocaustdenialontrial.com/sec_vii.asp


VII. AUSCHWITZ160 

7.1   Description of the camp and overview of the principal issue 160 

7.6   The case for the Defendants in summary 162 

7.8   Irving's case in summary 162 

7.15   The evidence relied on by the Defendants as demonstrating that
gas chambers were constructed at Auschwitz and operated there to kill a
vast number of Jews: 164 

7.16   Early reports 164 

7.18   Evidence gathered by the investigation under the aegis of the
Soviet State Extraordinary Commission 165 

7.22   Evidence gathered by the Polish Central Commission for
Investigation of German Crimes in Poland 1945-7 166 

7.23   The Olere drawings 166 

7.28   Eye-witness evidence from camp officials and employees 167 

7.34   Eye-witness evidence from inmates at Auschwitz  

7.47   Evidence from the Nuremberg trial 174 

7.50   Evidence from the Eichmann trial 174 

7.52   Evidence from other trials (Kremer; Mulka and others; Dejaco and
Ertl) 175 

7.58   Documentary evidence relating to the design and construction of
the chambers 176 

7.70   Photographic evidence 180 

7.73   Material evidence found at Auschwitz 181 

7.75   Conclusions to be drawn from the evidence, according to The
Defendants' experts 182 

7.77   Irving's reasons for rejecting the evidence relied on by the
Defendants as to the existence at Auschwitz of gas chambers for killing
Jews: 182 

7.77   Irving as expert witness at the trial of Zundel 182 

7.79   The impact of the Leuchter Report 183 

7.90   Replication of Leuchter's findings 186 

7.91   The absence of chimneys protruding through of morgue 1 of
crematorium 2 186 

7.95   The reason for the alterations to crematorium 2: fumigation or
alternatively air-raid shelter 188 

7.98   The purpose of the supplies of Zyklon-B 189 

7.100   The logistical impossibility of extermination on the scale
contended for by the Defendants 189 

7.102   Irving's investigation of the documentary evidence 190 

7.109   Irving's response to the eye-witness evidence 192 

7.113   The Defendants' arguments in rebuttal: 194 

7.113   The Defendants' critique of the Leuchter Report 194 

7.118   The Defendants' case as to the absence of signs of chimneys in
the roof of Leichenkeller 1 195 

7.121   The redesign of crematorium 2 196 

7.123   The quantity of Zyklon-B required 197 

7.124   The Defendants' response to Irving's logistical argument 197 

7.127   The Defendants' response to Irving's argument in relation to
the documentary evidence 198 




   VII. AUSCHWITZ  

   top 


   Description of the camp and overview of the principal issue  

   top 


7.1 Auschwitz is a small town in the region of Upper Silesia in Poland,
which was annexed by the Third Reich when Poland fell in 1940. Hitler
entrusted Reichsfuhrer-SS Himmler with the task of "Germanising" the
annexed territories. His original plan to repopulate with Germans
places such as Auschwitz, deporting Poles and Jews to the eastern
sector of the General Government to make way for the Germans, proved
not to be feasible. So the decision was taken to set up a concentration
camp in a suburb of the town. 

7.2 The Auschwitz camp area was located in a fork between the River
Vistula in the west and the River Sola in the east. Part of the camp
area also extended across the River Sola on its eastern bank.
Surrounding the camp was an agricultural area which was originally
designated to be worked by ethnic German farmers. Within the fork
between the two rivers was a zone which extended to some fifteen square
miles. All civilians had been deported from this area which was now
controlled by the SS. This zone and its surrounding area served many
purposes and forms of activity, including an experimental farm, a
forced labour pool for the chemical company plant which IG Farben was
planning to construct nearby at Monowitz and other industrial concerns.
The town of Auschwitz was outside the concentration camp area. It is
located on the eastern side of the River Sola. To the east of the town
was the IG Farben Buna Factory beside which was the labour camp. The
whole area and system of camps is collectively referred to as
'Auschwitz'. 

7.3 Within the overall camp was a smaller security area which was
surrounded by guard posts. This area contained the two main camps that
formed part of Auschwitz. To the eastern side of the River Vistula
there was Birkenau (also known as Auschwitz II). This was the principal
camp where most of the extermination occurred. Approximately two
kilometres to the east of Birkenau, separated from it by a railway
corridor, was the smaller 

 

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camp known variously as Auschwitz, Auschwitz I or the Stammlager. The
headquarters of the camp were situated here. Located at a point along
the railway line between Auschwitz and Birkenau was the ramp at which
trains transporting Jews would halted. Later a spur was built, linking
Birkenau to the railway and providing a further terminus. 

7.4 Auschwitz fell within the jurisdiction of Himmler, who was in
overall charge of the establishment and running of concentration camps.
Heydrich, Chief of the Security Police and the SD and Head of the RSHA,
reported directly to Himmler. Eichmann, who worked within the RSHA,
also reported to Himmler, was entrusted in 1941 with responsibility for
the carrying out and co-ordinating of the Final Solution. SS
Obergruppenfuhrer Oswald Pohl was Head of the Economic and
Administrative Office of the SS which had executive responsibility for
the running of the labour camps. SS Hauptsturmbannfuhrer Rudolf Hoss
was installed as Camp Commandant of Auschwitz in May 1941 and continued
in a leading capacity throughout the period when, on the Defendants'
case most of the gassings took place (with the exception of a period in
1943-4 when he was posted to Berlin to work in the Concentration Camp
Inspectorate). The camp was manned by the SS. But the assistance of
Jewish inmates was enlisted to perform some of the more grisly tasks in
the crematoria. They were called Sonderkommando. About 200 worked in
each cremaorium. They were housed either in the crematoria where they
worked or in special barracks. At periodic intervals, many of the
Sonderkommando were themselves gassed and replaced by other inmates. 

7.5 It is common ground that from the autumn of 1941 large numbers of
Jews were deported to Auschwitz from Germany and from the eleven other
countries which had been occupied or formed part of Nazi controlled
Europe. The overall question which I have to decide is whether the
available evidence, considered in its totality, would convince any
objective and reasonable historian that Auschwitz was not merely one of
the many concentration or labour camps established by the Nazi regime
but that it also served as a death or extermination camp, where
hundreds of thousands of Jews were systematically put to death in gas
chambers over the period from late 1941 until 1944. 

 

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   The case for the Defendants in summary  

   top 


7.6 Auschwitz was not, on the Defendants' case, either the first or by
any means the only extermination camp where gas chambers were employed
to kill Jews. However, according to the Defendants, the evidence
establishes that more more deaths occurred at Auschwitz than in all the
other extermination camps put together. The case advanced by the
Defendants can by simply summarised: they contend that there is a
substantial body of evidence, from a variety of different sources,
which should demonstrate to any fair-minded objective commentator that
gas chambers were constructed at Auschwitz and that they were used to
extermination Jews on a massive scale. This case rests upon what the
Defendants contend is abundant evidence, both contemporaneous and more
recent, which amounts to convincing proof that Auschwitz played a
pivotal role in the Nazi scheme to exterminate European Jewry. It is
the Defendants' case that in the period from late 1941 to 1944, when
the gas chambers were dismantled, approximately one million Jews were
murdered by the use of gas at the camp. 

7.7 The Defendants allege that, if Irving had approached the evidence
in a detached and objective manner, he could not have failed to
appreciate that the evidence is overwhelming that the gas chambers at
Auschwitz were systematically used to kill Jews. In arriving at an
answer to this question, the Defendants submit that it is relevant to
bear in mind the concessions that Irving has already made as to the
fact, scale and systematic nature of, firstly, the killing of the Jews
in the East by shooting and, secondly, the gassing of Jews from Poland
and from Europe in the Reinhard death camps. The Defendants maintain
that Irving's denial of the genocidal use of the gas chambers, often
expressed in the most intemperate language, flies in the face of the
evidence and is explicable only on the basis that Irving is driven by
his own extremist ideological views. Moreover the Defendants point out
that Irving's denial appears to have been prompted, almost overnight,
by his reading the Leuchter report, which, say the Defendants, is
deeply flawed from both a scientific and an historical point of view. 

   Irving's case in summary  

   top 


7.8 As it was originally formulated, the case advanced by Irving was
that no convincing evidence exists that gas chambers were at the
material time in existence at Auschwitz and that there is no evidence
that such chambers 

 

163

 
were commissioned. Further, said Irving, there is no convincing
evidence that any Jew at Auschwitz lost his or her life as a result of
being gassed (though he conceded from the outset that many died as a
result of the epidemics which, due to the appalling lack of hygiene,
regularly swept the camp). 

7.9 The reason why Irving originally adopted that stance was that he
was enormously impressed by a report compiled in 1988 by a Mr Fred
Leuchter, described by Irving as a professional consultant who
routinely advised penitentiaries on electric chair and gas-chamber
execution procedures. His report entitled "An Engineering Report on the
Alleged Execution Gas Chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek
Poland" concluded that no gas chambers operated at Auschwitz. Irving
regarded that report as an important historical document and he adopted
its major conclusions. He contended that subsequent tests had
replicated the results obtained by Leuchter. 

7.10 At this trial Irving appeared to place less reliance on the
Leuchter report than he had done in his written statement of case. He
advanced a variety of arguments for discrediting the evidence relied on
by the Defendants. He relied heavily on the argument that the roof of
morgue 1 at crematorium 2 (which is where on the Defendants' case in
excess of 500,000 Jews were gassed to death) shows no sign of the
wire-mesh columns through which the Defendants maintain that the gas
was introduced into the chamber below. 

7.11 In the course of the trial Irving modified his position: he was
prepared to concede that gassing of human beings had taken place at
Auschwitz but on a limited scale. However, he continued to assert that
it was not a death factory (totesfabrik). He maintained that there is
certainly no question of 500,000 Jews having perished in morgue 1 of
crematorium 2 as the Defendants contend. 

7.12 In support of his modified denial that Jews were put to death in
the gas chambers on any significant scale, Irving relied on the fact
that in all the surviving contemporaneous archival and other
documentary records of the Third Reich, there is no reference to the
commissioning, construction or operation of the gas chambers. He
emphasised that amongst the voluminous documentary material relating to
Auschwitz, there is only one document which contains what might be
regarded as a reference to the genocidal use of the crematoria. Irving
argues that the lack of (as he put it) incriminating 

 

164

 

documents is extraordinary, if indeed gas chambers were in operation on
the scale alleged by the Defendants. 

7.13 Amongst the arguments advanced by Irving in support of his case
that killing by gas took place at the camp on no more than a limited
scale was the fact that the top-secret daily reports sent from the camp
to Berlin in cypher, which purport to record the numbers of inmates,
arrivals and 'departures by any means', including deaths, make no
mention of any inmate having been gassed, although they contain many
references to deaths from illness, by shootings and hangings. The
number of deaths recorded in these reports is far smaller than the
number of those who, on the Defendants' case, lost their lives in the
gas chambers. Moreover, asked Irving, if so many were led to their
deaths in the gas chambers, what has become of the cadavers. Why,
Irving continued, should Eichmann, whose diaries were remarkably frank
in regard to the killing of Jews, omit to mention gas chambers when
recording his visit to Auschwitz in early 1942. 


7.14 According to Irving the evidence simply fails to establish that
Jews were killed in gas chambers at Auschwitz on anything approaching
the scale claimed by the Defendants. 

   The evidence relied on by the Defendants as demonstrating that gas
chambers were constructed at Auschwitz and operated there to kill a
vast number of Jews  

   top 


7.15 It is therefore necessary to consider with care what is the nature
of the evidence relied on by the Defendants. It is contained
principally in the expert report prepared by van Pelt. Longerich and
Evans also deal in their reports with certain aspects of this topic.
The evidence comes, as I have said, from a variety of sources. Since it
is the case for the Defendants that it is the totality of that evidence
which amounts to convincing proof of the mass extermination of Jews by
gas, it is necessary for me to attempt to summarise it by category. 

   Early reports  

   top 


7.16 As early as November 1941 reports had begun to emerge of a violent
camp at Oswiecim (that is, Auschwitz) and another camp nearby where
poison gas was being used on an experimental basis. But for the most
part the early reports mentioned Belzec, Treblinka and Sobibor rather
than Auschwitz. However, in March 1943 a radio message to London from
Polish 

 

165

 

resistance sources reported the gassing of more than 500,000 at
Oswiecim. There were other reports in the course of 1944 to similar
effect. But none of them attracted much attention at the time. Other
reports mentioned Birkenau but its connection with Auschwitz does not
appear to have been appreciated. Cypher reports from Auschwitz (and
other camps) to Berlin were being intercepted by British intelligence
at Bletchley but (as will be seen) these made no mention of deaths by
gassing. 

7.17 In mid-1944 two young Slovak Jews, named Rudolf Vrba and Alfred
Wetzlar, who had escaped from Auschwitz, gave accounts of the
systematic extermination of Jews at Birkenau (ie Auschwitz II),
commencing in the summer of 1942 and involving the use of
specially-constructed gas chambers and crematoria. This account was
circulated to London and Washington. Another corroborative account,
>from a Polish gentile, Jerzy Tabeau, who had also escaped from the
camp, also appeared. In June and July 1944 there was publicity in the
New York Times about the mass killing of Jews by gassing at Auschwitz. 

   Evidence gathered by the investigation under the aegis of the Soviet
State Extraordinary Commission  

   top 


7.18 The early reports referred to above tallied with the findings of a
joint Polish-Soviet commission set up to investigate events at
Majdanek, another extermination camp at Lublin in the General
Government which had fallen into Russian hands in July 1944. Auschwitz
itself was liberated on 27th January 1945 by the advancing Russian
army. The Russians found a total of 7,500 inmates. Some 60,000 inmates
had been forced to march west a week earlier. Large quantities of
shoes, suits, clothes, toothbrushes, glasses, false teeth, hair and
other personal effects were found in storage barracks. 

7.19 A Soviet State Extraordinary Commission was set up to investigate
what had occurred at the camp. On 6 May 1945 it issued its findings. It
concluded, on the basis of evidence from inmates, Nazi documents found
at the camp and an inspection of the remains of the crematoria, that
more than four million people had been annihilated at the camp. The
Commission concluded that gas chambers had been used to kill people at
the camp and their remains had been incinerated in crematoria. The
Commission also reported that the zinc covers used in connection with
the ventilation system had been tested in a forensic laboratory.
Hydrocyanide was found to be present. 

 

166

 

7.20 Although the archive of the camp Kommandantur had been destroyed
by the Nazis, the archive of the Central Construction Office survived,
apparently by an oversight, and was recovered by the Russians. Basing
himself on the blueprints for the construction and adaptation of the
crematoria and morgues and on visits made to the site, a Polish
specialist in combustion technology named Davidowski compiled a report
on the technology of mass extermination employed at Auschwitz. He noted
that terms such as Spezialeinrichtungen (special installations) were
used in the documents to describe the crematoria and that there was a
reference to a Vergasungskeller (gassing cellar). 

7.21 In his evidence van Pelt did, however, concede that the evidential
value of the Russian report is limited. 


   Evidence gathered by the Polish Central Commission for Investigation
of German Crimes in Poland 1945-7  

   top 


7.22 In 1945 the forensic laboratory in Cracow carried out an analysis
of, firstly, zinc covers removed from the alleged gas chambers at
Birkenau and, secondly, 25.5kg of human hair recovered from the camp.
Both were found to contain traces of cyanide. The Defendants point to
this as further evidence of the use of the chambers to kill Jews. 

   The Olere drawings  

   top 


7.23 David Olere was a painter, who was born in Warsaw and later moved
to Paris, where he was arrested and deported to Auschwitz in March
1943. He worked in the Sonderkommando for Crematorium 3. He lived in
the attic of Crematorium 3 and observed the building and related
activity. After his liberation he returned to Paris where he began to
draw and record his memories. He produced over fifty sketches in
1945-46. 

7.24 Among the sketches Olere produced were architectural drawings of
Crematorium 3 which show the basement level with the underground
dressing room and the gas chamber, and the ground floor with the
incineration room the ovens and the chimney. Arrows indicate the
functional relationship of the rooms. They show how people were
directed to the gas chamber; how bodies were moved to the corpse
elevator; how they were taken to the incineration room and how coke was
brought to the ovens in the incineration room. 

7.25 In his drawings of Crematorium 3 and its environs Olere depicted
people filing into the compound from the road and moving into the
dressing 

 

167

 

room. A sketch from 1946 shows the dressing room, the benches and the
hooks for clothes. Another sketch shows the Sonderkommandos collecting
gold teeth and hair from the women. One of the wire mesh columns is
visible in the background. Van Pelt commented that the information in
these drawings is corroborated by the testimony of Tauber (see below).
He also pointed out that none of the drawings could have been made on
the basis of published material as there was not any available at the
time. 

7.26 Other sketches by Olere show Bunker 2, which was a peasant cottage
converted into a gas chamber. Van Pelt noted that the undressing
barrack is correctly positioned vis-à-vis the cottage. He pointed out
the small window with the heavy wooden shutter through which Zyklon-B
was introduced. Another sketch portrays the murder of women and
children with Crematorium 5 in the background. Van Pelt claimed the
representation of the crematorium to be architecturally correct save
for minor inaccuracies which can be ascribed to the fact it was drawn
>from memory. 

7.27 Van Pelt noted that Olere's sketches are corroborated by plans
that the Russians found in the Central Construction Office, save that
Olere depicts vertical wire mesh columns in the gas chamber (through
which the Defendants allege that Zyklon-B was inserted) which are not
to be found in the original architectural plans for the site. Olere's
arrangement has the mesh columns attached to the west side of the first
and fifth structural columns and on the east side of the third and
seventh structural columns in the gas chamber. 

   top 


   Eye-witness evidence from camp officials and employees
7.28 In his report van Pelt identified a number of those employed at
Auschwitz in various capacities who have given accounts of the use of
gas at the camp. 

7.29 The principal of these Rudolf Hoss, the Auschwitz Kommandant, was
captured by the British on 11th March 1946. In the course of his
interrogation at Nuremberg Hoss produced a detailed list of the numbers
of people transported to Auschwitz from various countries in Europe.
The list totalled well over one million. When asked how so large a
number could be accommodated at the camp, given that Hoss had said that
there were facilities for only 130,000 at the camp, Hoss answered that
most of those transported to the camp were taken there to be
exterminated. Hoss later swore an affidavit in which he admitted that
he had overseen the extermination, by gassing and burning, of at least
two and a half million 

 

168

 

people. He stated that Zyklon-B was dropped into the death chamber
through a small opening. It took from 3 to 15 minutes to kill those in
the chamber. After half an hour the bodies were removed.
Sonderkommandos or Special commandos removed their rings and extracted
the gold from their teeth. Hoss described the process by which those to
be gassed were selected. He stated that attempts were made to deceive
the victims that they were going to be deloused. He said that the gas
chambers were capable of accommodating 2,000 people at one time. Dr
Gustav Gilbert, the Nuremberg prison psychologist, recorded in his
diary an account of a conversation with Hoss in which he confirmed that
two and a half million people had been exterminated under his
direction. 

7.30 Dr Johann Paul Kremer worked as a physician at Auschwitz from
August to November 1942. He kept a diary in which he recorded evidence
of activities of what had taken place at Auschwitz. He recorded being
present at a "special action" by comparison with which "Dante's inferno
seems almost a comedy". The diary contains an entry that Auschwitz is
justly called an extermination camp. Prior to his trial before the
Supreme National Tribunal in Cracow in November and December 1947
Kremer was interrogated. He admitted that he had taken part in gassing
people on several occasions in September and October 1942. He too
described the selection process, after which the selected victims were
required to undress before being lead into the gas chamber. He
described how an SS man threw the contents of a Zyklon tin through a
side opening. He mentioned an occasion when about 1,600 Dutch people
were gassed. 

7.31 Pery Broad was an officer in the Auschwitz Political Department.
He voluntarily wrote a report of his activities whilst working for the
British as a translator in a prisoner-of-war camp after the war.
Broad's report corroborates Dragon's account of the extermination
installations and of the burning of the corpses. He described how the
area surrounding the crematorium was kept closed. The Jews arrived in
columns. They were told they were going to be disinfected. After they
entered the chamber, the door was bolted. The contents of tins of
Zyklon-B were thrown into the chamber through six holes in the roof.
The screaming of the victims quickly ceased and was followed by
complete silence. Broad gave evidence of how bodies were removed and
burnt after they had been gassed. In addition Broad reported that the
reason for building the four new crematoria in Birkenau was that the
Nazis were finding it difficult to keep the killings at Bunkers 1 and 2
a secret. In the two underground gas chambers 4,000 people could be 

 

169

 

killed at a time. He described the layout of the new installation,
including the ovens, each of which he said was equipped to hold four or
five corpses. 

7.32 SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer (Captain) Hans Aumeier became the Lagerfuhrer
(Camp Leader) of Auschwitz in 1942 and was responsible for the inmate
compound of the concentration camp. He remained in that job until the
end of the year and so, according to van Pelt, was present during the
transformation of Auschwitz into an extermination camp. Arrested
shortly after the end of the war, he claimed that during his time at
the camp 3,000-3,500 prisoners died there. Initially he denied the
existence of gas chambers. But later, in the summer of 1945, he
admitted that gas chambers had been in operation in Auschwitz and that
on many occasions they had been used for killing Jews. He stated that
everyone was sworn to secrecy. (In a later statement he added that
there was a Reichsfuhrer-SS order which banned written reports, counts
and statistics of the activities). He described the initial gas
chambers in Bunkers 1 and 2 at Birkenau, where, he said, each chamber
accommodated 50-150 people. He gave a further account of the
construction of crematorium 2 and crematorium 3 and their gas chambers
which had a much larger capacity and began operating in April and May
1943 respectively. 

7.33 Dr Ada Bimko, a Polish-Jewish physician, arrived at Auschwitz in
August 1943 with 5,000 other Jews. According to her account, of these
4,500, including her close relatives, were sent straight to the
crematoria. She later described to a British Military Tribunal the
methods of selecting those who were to be gassed. She said that she had
worked as a doctor in the hospital at the camp. She gave evidence that
she was present at several selections of those who were to be
exterminated. She stated that the condemned women were ordered to
undress. She had not witnessed the victims enter the buildings. But she
stated that she had seen one of the gas chambers when she was sent to
recover hospital blankets used by those about to be killed. She
described in some detail the chamber which had rows of sprays all over
the ceiling but no drains. 

 

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   Eye-witness evidence from inmates at Auschwitz  

   top 


7.34 Over the years a large number of Jews who were, or at least
claimed that they were, imprisoned at Auschwitz have given accounts of
their experiences. The quality of their evidence is variable. Van Pelt
explained that he placed greater reliance on those eye-witnesses who
provided their accounts of what transpired at Auschwitz shortly after
the war ended. Later accounts were vulnerable to the charge that the
witness had become confused by the passage of time or had been
influenced by what others had claimed. The witnesses upon whose
accounts van Pelt was inclined to place reliance included the
following. 

7.35 Vrba, as already stated above escaped from Auschwitz and was one
of the first to provide an account of the mass killing at the camp. On
that account he is regarded by van Pelt as a significant witness. Vrba
did not himself enter any of the gas chambers; he passed on what others
had told him. But, as administrator of the sick barrack, he knew about
the selection process. He described how those selected were loaded onto
trucks and claimed that they were taken away to be gassed. He gave an
account of the inauguration at Birkenau at the end of February 1943 of
a new crematorium and gassing plant. He stated that there were four
crematoria in operation. He described in some detail (albeit, as van
Pelt accepted, at second hand) the layout of the interior. 

7.36 Sonderkommando Salmen Gradowski kept a diary of his experiences at
the camp which he buried in an aluminium can. Schlomo Dragon remembered
where it was buried. Remarkably the can and its contents were found
intact and dug up after the liberation of the camp. The can contained a
notebook and a letter dated 6th September 1944. In the letter Gradowski
explained that it was his aim to preserve a written account of what had
happened at Auschwitz. He wrote that this task became even more
important once the Nazis started to burn the bodies of those they had
killed and to dispose of the ashes in the River Vistula. He said that
he and fellow Sonderkommandos had scattered the teeth of the dead over
a wide area so that they might be found by subsequent generations.
Gradowski claimed that the Jewish nation had been destroyed in the
camps. He recorded that he and fellow camp workers had planned a
mutiny. (The uprising took place in October 1944. It failed and
Gradowski was tortured and killed). In his notebook Gradowski described
his journey by train to the camp and the selection process on arrival.
He gave an account of the living conditions for 

 

171

 

those deemed fit for work. That notebook did not contain descriptions
of the work of the Sonderkommandos. 

7.37 On 10 April 1945 Radio Luxembourg broadcast the account of an
unnamed survivor of Auschwitz, who had subsequently been evacuated to
Buchenwald. In the interview this witness stated that Auschwitz was an
extermination camp which killed between 12,000 and 20,000 people a day.
He described how the transports arrived, how the selection took place,
and how those who were chosen to die were killed instantly and
cremated. 

7.38 Stanislaw Jankowksi gave evidence to the Polish Central Commission
in 1946. He was the first Sonderkommando to testify before the
Commission. He said that he worked in Crematorium 1 from November 1942
at which time it was only used sporadically for killing people. He
described an occasion in November or December 1942 when a large number
of inmates from Birkenau arrived under escort. He and the other
Sonderkommandos were ordered to leave. When they returned they found
only clothing. He was put to work carrying the corpses to the
crematorium for burning. In July 1943 Jankowski was transferred to
Birkenau and worked at Crematorium 5. He described how large number of
Jews of various nationalities arrived at the camp. About half of them
were selected for gassing, including the old and infirm and the
pregnant and children. He stated that those who were to be gassed were
not given camp numbers or registered at the camp. His evidence was that
the killing reached its zenith with the Hungarian Jews in about July
1944 when, he claimed, 18,000 were being killed per day. Jankowski
reckoned that Crematoria 2 and 3 had a daily incineration capacity of
2,500 corpses while Crematoria 4 and 5 could incinerate 1,500. 

7.39 Schlomo Dragon, another Sonderkommando, gave evidence on 10 May
1945 to the Polish Central Commission. Dragon had worked at bunker 2
and crematoria 4 and 5. Van Pelt commented that, while Dragon was
precise when he talked about what he has witnessed in person, he was
less accurate when it came to estimating the number of people killed in
Auschwitz, which he put at four million. 

7.40 Sonderkommando Henry Tauber worked initially in crematorium 1 and
later at crematoria 2 and 4. He also gave evidence to the Polish
Central Commission. He gave a detailed account of the undressing rooms
at the gas chamber, the signs which hung on the walls, the glass
peep-hole in the door 

 

172

 

and how the doors were hermetically sealed. Further, he described the
ventilation systems; how the floor of a gas chamber was to be washed
and how the chamber in crematorium 2 was split into two in late 1943 by
a dividing wall. He gave an exceedingly detailed account of the
operation of crematoria, making it clear what he accepted on the basis
of his own observations and what he accepted as hearsay. He described
dragging gassed corpses from the gas chamber and loading them five at a
time onto trucks which ran on rails to the furnaces where they were
off-loaded. He described the three, two-muffle furnaces and said that
each muffle would take five corpses. The incineration took up to one
and a half hours. He explained that thin people burned more slowly than
fat people. In summary his description of crematoria 2, both below and
above ground corresponded very closely with the outline given in the
blueprints. Van Pelt considered that Tauber's testimony is almost
wholly corroborated by the German blueprints of the buildings and that
it corroborates the accounts given by Jankowski and Dragon. Tauber
estimated that the number of people who were gassed during his time at
Auschwitz, between February 1943 and October 1944, was two million
people from which figure he extrapolated that the total number gassed
at Auschwitz amounted to four million. 


7.41 Michael Kula was another former inmate of the camp who gave
evidence to the Polish Commission. He had lived near Auschwitz before
his incarceration. Kula gave evidence that, a year after his arrival at
the camp in 1940, he observed the Nazis beginning to experiment with
Zyklon B. He observed that the corpses turned greenish after exposure
to the gas. Kula worked in the metal workshop at the camp and forged
many of the metal pieces required for the crematoria. He also took part
in the construction of trucks for conveying corpses into the ovens.
Kula testified that four wire mesh columns were made for the gas
chambers in crematoria 2 and 3: these columns were described by Kula as
"structures of ever finer mesh", which contained a removable can within
the innermost column which was used to extract, after the gassing, the
Zyklon "crystals" or pellets that had absorbed the hydrocyanide. 

7.42 Marie Claude Vaillant-Couturier (to whom I have referred at
section V(xviii) above in connection with the Defendants' criticisms of
Irving's historiography) gave evidence to the International Military
Tribunal of the conditions in the women's camp at Birkenau, including
the sterilisation of women and the killing of babies of women who had
arrived pregnant. She claimed that most of the Jewish women who had
come from the same part of 

 

173

 

France as herself had been gassed immediately upon arrival at
Auschwitz. Valliant-Couturier testified that the trains stopped close
to the gas chamber; that the vast majority of the arriving Jews,
including the old, mothers and children) would be selected for gassing;
that they were made to undress and then taken to a room like a shower
room into which gas capsules were thrown through an opening in the
ceiling. 

7.43 Severina Shmaglevskaya, a Polish inmate at Auschwitz, gave
evidence she had seen many children brought to the camp. She had seen
selections undertaken on some occasions by doctors and on others by SS
men. She recalled that children were separated from their parents and
taken off separately to the gas chambers. She stated that, at the time
when the greatest number of Jews were being exterminated in the gas
chambers, children were thrown alive into crematory ovens or ditches.
She said that few of the children were registered, tattooed or counted.
They were exterminated on arrival. As a consequence it was very
difficult to know how many of the children were put to death. 

7.44 Filip Muller, a Sonderkommando, gave an account in the 1970s of
the process used to insert corpses into the ovens at crematorium 1. He
described how trucks were used to transport the bodies to the ovens,
how corpses were put into the ovens and the technical details involved
in problems that arose during the process. Van Pelt pointed out that
Muller's account accords with those of Jankowski, Tauber and Dragon. He
considered that it is highly unlikely that Muller's memoirs were
inspired by Tauber's testimony. 

7.45 Janda Weiss, aged only fifteen years, was interviewed in 1945 by
representatives of the Psychological Warfare Division of the Supreme
Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces. She told them that she had
been deported to Birkenau along with 1,500 Jews from Theresienstadt.
She described how she was among the stronger ones who were selected to
work in the camp. The rest of her family were taken off to be gassed.
Weiss recalled her conversations with those who worked in the camps.
She knew of the arrival of the Hungarian transports in 1944. She
claimed that when transports arrived most of the Jews were selected to
be gassed immediately. Having been told they were to have a shower, the
victims undressed and went into the gas chamber. She recalled that when
the room was full, small children were thrown into the chamber through
the window. After the gassing Sonderkommandos pulled the corpses out
took their rings off, cut off their hair, and took them to the ovens to
cremate them. 

 

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7.46 Walter Bliss, a German Jew, was also interviewed. He too described
the selection process which took place not only on arrival at the camp
but also at regular intervals thereafter. He gave an account of a
typical selection process: those selected for death were transferred to
gassing barracks where might be kept for up to two or three days often
without food as they were going to die anyway. He claimed that 40% of
the men in the camp and 60-70% of the women were murdered in January
1944. 

   Evidence from the Nuremberg trial  

   top 


7.47 By an accord signed on the 8th August 1945 the Allies established
the International Military Tribunal (at Nuremberg) to prosecute war
criminals. Twenty two leaders of the Third Reich were charged. One of
them was Kaltenbrunner, who was chief of the agency charged with
carrying out the Final Solution. Others who gave evidence at Nuremberg
have already been referred above, including Vaillant-Couturier,
Shmaglevskaya and Hoss. The Defendants rely in addition on the evidence
of the following. 

7.48 In January 1946 Dieter Wisliceny, who had been an aide to
Eichmann, gave evidence in which he accepted his involvement in
preparations for the transport to Auschwitz of some 50,000 Saloniki
Jews who, he agreed, were destined for the 'so-called final solution'.
He also gave evidence that he had been involved in the deportation of
450,000 Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz. In respect of the latter Wisliceny
stated that they were all killed with the exception of those used for
labour purposes. 

7.49 SS-Standartenfuhrer Kurt Becher swore an affidavit which was
submitted in March 1946 at Nuremberg. He described how people were
exterminated by methods including gas at Majdanek. He deposed that,
within days of an English newspaper report being received at Hitler's
headquarters about gas chambers being used at Majdanek, Himmler ordered
the cessation of gassing in Auschwitz and the dismantling of the
extermination installations in the crematoria. 

   Evidence from the Eichmann trial  

   top 


7.50 One of the witnesses at the trial of Eichmann was Hoss, to whom I
have already made reference. 

7.51 Another was Yehuda Bakon, an Israeli artist, who at Auschwitz had
been employed to take papers to the crematoria for burning.
Consequently he had entered the crematoria and had seen the gas
chamber. In the summer 

 

175

 

of 1945 he drew illustrations of Auschwitz which he produced in the
course of his evidence. The drawings depicted the inside of gas
chambers, including the dummy shower heads and the mesh columns used to
insert the Zyklon-B into the gas chamber. He also described how the gas
chambers were ventilated after the gassings. Bakon's evidence included
a description of how the corpses were put on to a lift which raised
them up to the incinerators. Van Pelt relied on the evidence of Bakon
that, when it was cold the head of the Sonderkommando would let them
warm up in the gas chambers and undressing rooms when they were not in
use. He argues that this evidence refute Leuchter's contention that the
temperature in the gas chambers was so low that there would have been
condensed liquid hydrogen cyanide on the walls had it been used. 

   Evidence from other trials (Kremer; Mulka and others; Dejaco and
Ertl)  

   top 

7.52 Josef Kramer was a defendant in Belsen trial of the SS personnel
who operated Bergen-Belsen. He had also served as Lagerfuhrer of
Birkenau during the time that Hungarians were being transported to
Auschwitz. Like many camp personnel on trial Kramer had worked at
Auschwitz before being transferred to Belsen. At the trial he admitted
to his involvement in the operation and use of gas chambers at
Auschwitz. He stated that Hoss was in charge of the gas chambers and
that he received his orders from Berlin. Mrs Rosina Kramer also
testified on behalf of her husband. She states that everyone in
Auschwitz knew about the gas chambers. 

7.53 At Kramer's trial Bimko, the Polish-Jewish physician, gave the
evidence to which I have already alluded. 

7.54 Dr Charles Bendel, a Rumanian Jewish physician who had been living
in Paris before he was deported to Auschwitz, gave evidence that he had
been detailed to work as a sonderkommando and in that capacity observed
the gas chambers and crematoria in action. He testified that on
occasion the Nazis would burn corpses in pits because the ovens could
not cope with the number of people who had been killed. 

7.55 Defendants at the Belsen trial inlcluded Dr Fritz Klein, an ethnic
German from Rumania, who was a member of the SS. As a physician he
admitted having taken part in many of the selections of those who were
to be gassed. He claimed that he was acting on orders which were always
given verbally. Another defendant at the Belsen trial was Franz
Hoessler, who had been Lagerfuhrer at Auschwitz. In his evidence he
admitted that gas chambers operated there. He stated that the selection
of prisoners who were 

 

176

 

to be killed was undertaken by the doctors in the camp. He testified
that the camp was inspected once a year by Himmler, who had given the
order for people to be gassed. 

7.56 Mulka, a member of Hess's staff, and others stood trial at
Frankfurt in 1963-5. Hans Stark, a former SS officer, gave evidence
that he had been employed in the Auschwitz Political Department. He
described the role of the Department in relation to executions by
gassing. He admitted to participation in gassings including on occasion
pouring the Zyklon B in himself. 

7.57 Walther Dejaco and Fritz Ertl were architects at Auschwitz. They
were tried in Vienna in 1972. Ertl gave evidence that he had been
employed at the Auschwitz Central Construction Office until 1943. He
testified that new crematoria had been needed for "special actions". He
confirmed that he knew the significance of that term. He said he had
been told by Bischoff that no reference should be made to gassing. 

   Documentary evidence relating to the design and construction of the
chambers  

   top 


7.58 The Defendants assert that there exist contemporaneous documentary
records which, on detailed examination, evidence the construction of
gas chambers at Auschwitz. The most important Auschwitz archive that
survived the war was that of the Central Construction Office at
Auschwitz. The main archives of the camp Kommandantur had been
destroyed by the Germans before they evacuated the camp in January
1945. The Construction Office was 300 yards away and through an
oversight was left intact. 

7.59 The first and most significant body of such evidence is the blue
print material, which consists of a series of architectural drawings
which depict the adaptation of crematoria 2 and 3 and the construction
of crematoria 4 and 5. None of these drawings refers overtly to any
part of the buildings being designed or intended to serve as gas
chambers whether for fumigation or extermination purposes. In
particular the drawings for Leichenkeller (morgue) 1 in crematorium 2
make no provision for ducts or chimneys by means of which Zyklon-B
pellets might be inserted through the roof. However, van Pelt sought to
illustrate by means of detailed analyses of certain features of the
drawings that it reasonable to infer that certain chambers were
designed to function as gas chambers. 

 

177

 

7.60 The principal feature identified by van Pelt is the redesign of
the double door to the supposed gas chamber in crematorium 2. When in
1942 the drawings were executed for the adaptation of this crematorium,
this door in common with others in the same building was designed to
open inwards. Careful scrutiny of the drawings reveals, however, that
the drawing of the inward- opening door has been scratched out. A fresh
drawing dated 19 December 1942 was made by Jakob, the chief of the
drawing office, who rarely undertook drawings himself. It provides for
the door to the supposed gas chamber to open outwards. There is no
apparent reason for this. To van Pelt the obvious explanation is that
the chamber was to be used as a gas chamber. If the door opened
inwards, it would be impossible to open it after the administration of
the gas because of the crush of corpses against the inside or the door
of those who struggled to get out when they realised what was happening
to them. 

7.61 The next feature identified by van Pelt relates to the entrance to
crematorium 2 and the means of which access was gained to the morgue
below. In its original design, the entrance was situated to one side of
the building. Inside the entrance there was a slide down which corpses
would be tipped to reach the level of the morgue. But the drawing shows
that this design was changed in late 1942 so as to move the entrance to
the crematorium to the street side of the building. At the same time a
new stairway to the morgue was designed to replace the pre-existing
slide. Van Pelt pointed out that the original design apparently
contemplated that only corpses would need to be transported down to the
morgue. The new design on the other hand is consistent with a wish to
enable people transported to Auschwitz to proceed from the railway
station through the new entrance, then to walk downstairs into what is
alleged to have been the undressing room and thence into the supposed
gas chamber. The stairway has been redesigned in such a way that it
would be extremely awkward to carry corpses down to the morgue on
stretchers. Van Pelt concludes that the object of the redesign of the
stairway was to enable living people to walk downstairs rather than for
corpses to be carried down. 

7.62 The drawings further provide for the ventilation of the supposed
gas chamber in crematorium 2. Van Pelt infers that the purpose of the
system for extracting air was to extract poisonous air and so speed up
the removal of the corpses to the incinerators. 

 

178

 

7.63 Crematoria 4 and 5 were new buildings. The initial drawings are
dated August 1942, not long after the visit paid to the camp by
Himmler, which the Defendants say marks the inception of the
accelerated extermination programme. According to van Pelt the design
of these crematoria incorporated undressing rooms (although not so
designated on the drawings) and morgues which were to serve as gas
chambers. The drawings of the morgues make provision for several
windows measuring 30 x 40cms. The size of these windows corresponds
with the size of windows referred to elsewhere in construction
documents as being required to be gas proof. The windows were to be
above eye level. Van Pelt draws the inference that the purpose of these
windows was to enable Zyklon-B pellets to be inserted through them into
the building (a process which was observed by Sonderkommando Dragon, as
mentioned above). 

7.64 Van Pelt agreed that the drawings for crematoria 4 and 5 show a
drainage system which appears to link up with the camp sewage system.
He disagreed with Irving's suggestion that this would have been highly
dangerous because large quantities of liquid cyanide would have found
their way into the sewage system. Van Pelt claims that the gas would
evaporate rather than turn into liquid. 

7.65 In addition to the architectural drawings, there are other
documents which, according to the Defendants, lend support to their
contention that there were gas chambers at the camp which were used for
genocidal purposes. I shall not itemise all the documents identified by
the Defendants as belonging in this category. They include a patent
application for multi-muffle ovens made by Topf. Although the patent
application does not in fact relate to the ovens supplied to Auschwitz
in 1942/3, it is said that the principle is the same. The two features
of the application on which the Defendants focus are, firstly, the
method of employing fat corpses to speed promote the rate at which
corpses can be burned and, secondly, the claim that no fuel is required
after the initial two day pre-heating period, no more fuel will be
required because of the amount of heat generated by the burning
corpses. Van Pelt noted that both these features are reflected in the
account given by Tauber of the way in which the corpses were
incinerated. 

7.66 Another allegedly incriminating document is the record of a
meeting held on 19 August 1942 between members of the Auschwitz
construction office and a representative of the engineers Topf to
discuss the construction of four crematoria. The note of the meeting
refers to the construction of 

 

179

 

triple oven incinerators near the "Badenanstalten fur Sonderaktionen"
("bath-houses for special actions": the words are in quotations in the
original). 

7.67 In a different category is a report dated 16 December 1942 made by
a corporal named Kinna, which made reference to an order that, in order
to releive the camp, limited people, idiots, cripples and sick people
must be removed from the same by liquidation. Kinna stated that the
implementation of this order was difficult because the Poles, unlike
the Jews, must die a natural death. 

7.68 The Defendants relies on a letter dated 29 January 1943 from
Bischoff, Chief of Central Construction Managemnent at the camp, to SS
Brigadefuhrer Kammler in which there is reference to a Vergasungskammer
(gas chamber or cellar). There are also documents from February 1943
referring to the provision of gastight doors and windows. In a letter
dated 31 March 1943 Bischoff presses for the delivery of a gastight
door with a spyhole of 8mm glass, with a rubber seal and metal fitting.
There is a timesheet of a construction worker which makes reference to
fitting gastight windows to crematorium 4. Van Pelt pointed to a letter
dated 6 March 1943 from Auschwitz to the Topf company which
contemplated the use of hot air from the ventilators for the
incinerators to pre-heat the Leichenkeller 1. Why, he asked, heat a
morgue, which should be kept cool. Answering his own question, he
claimed that Zyklon-B evaporates more quickly in high temperatures, so
the killing process would be speeded up. (Irving answered that there is
nothing sinister about heating the morgue: it was a requirement of good
building practice in relation to civilian morgues). 

7.69 Finally under this head the Defendants rely on a letter dated 28
June 1943 from Bischoff to Kammler (the authenticity of which Irving
challenges) setting figures for the incineration capacity of the five
crematoria, according to which their total capacity is 4756 people in
every 24 hours. The Defendants' case is that this capacity was at that
time deemed to be necessary to burn the bodies of the Jews who were to
be brought to Auschwitz to be gassed. Basing themselves on the evidence
of sonderkommandos such as Tauber, the Defendants say further that the
rate of incineration was broadly in line with the estimate in the
letter of 28 June 1943. The Defendants suggest that the apparent
urgency of the installation of the ovens, together with their huge
capacity which, according to van Pelt, was far in excess of what could
possibly have been required to cope with 

 

180

 

future typhus epidemics, reflects the policy adopted following
Himmler's visit to the camp in July 1942. 

   Photographic evidence  

   top 


7.70 In support of his contention that there were chimneys through
which it is alleged that Zyklon-B would have been poured into morgue 1
at crematorium 2, van Pelt relied on a photograph taken by a camp
official in February 1942. According to van Pelt in this photograph,
when greatly enlarged, it is possible to detect smudges which he
maintained represent the chimneys protruding through the morgue roof.
Furthermore van Pelt remarked on the similarity in the alignment of the
supposed chimneys in the photograph with the alignment of the chimneys
in one of Olere's drawings. Van Pelt further relied on an aerial
photograph which was taken in the summer of 1944 (to which I have
referred earlier) on which, when greatly enlarged, spots are visible
above the morgues of crematoria 2 and 3. He claims that these spots are
the protruding chimneys, reduced in size because of the dirt laid onto
the roof since the earlier photograph was taken. Irving gave reasons
why he suspected that the 1944 photograph relied on by van Pelt had
been tampered with. 

7.71 Irving disputed van Pelt's interpretation of the photographs and
suggested that tampering may have taken place. He produced a photograph
showing the roof of morgue 1 in the background on which there is no
sign of any protruding chimney. Van Pelt responded that this photograph
(in which the construction of the roof of the crematorium can be seen
to be incomplete) was probably taken in December 1942 at which date the
chimneys would not have been installed. Van Pelt explained that the
reason why no protruding chimneys are visible in another photograph
produced by Irving is that it was taken after the Nazis had dismantled
the gas chambers. 

7.72 The Defendants also place reliance on a photograph taken at a time
when Hungarian Jews were arriving at the camp in 1944. One such
photograph depicts a column of women and children walking from the
railway spur towards Auschwitz. Instead of proceeding into the camp
through the entrance leading to the women and children's camp, the
column can be seen to walking towards crematorium 2 (from which there
is no access into the women and children's section). 

 

181

 

   Material evidence found at Auschwitz  

   top 


7.73 The Leuchter report, which I have mentioned already and to which I
will return in greater detail when I come to summarise the evidence
relied on by Irving in connection with Auschwitz, claimed that forensic
analysis revealed no trace of in the surviving ruins of the gas
chambers at Auschwitz. Prompted by the publicity given to the Leuchter
report, the director of the Auschwitz museum enlisted the expert
assistance of Professor Markiewicz, Director of the Forensic Institute
of Cracow, who arranged in February 1990 for further samples to be
taken from Auschwitz for analysis. 

7.74 Markiewicz decided that the so-called Prussian blue test was
unreliable because its formation depended on the acidity of the
environment which was particularly low in the alleged gas chambers.
Markiewicz and his team therefore adopted microdiffusion techniques to
test for cyanide samples from the crematoria, from the delousing
chambers and a control sample taken from elsewhere within Auschwitz.
The latter was tested because claims had been made that the cyanide
traces in the gas chambers were explained by the fact that a single
fumigation of the whole camp had taken place during the typhus
epidemic. The control sample tested negative, refuting those claims. As
to the tests on the crematoria and the delousing chambers, the
conclusion arrived at by Markiewicz was that cyanide compounds are
still to be found in all the facilities (that is, in both the delousing
chambers and in the various supposed gas chambers) that, according to
the source data, were in contact with cyanide. The concentration of
cyanide compounds in the various samples varies greatly, even in the
case of different samples taken from the same chamber or building. This
indicated that the conditions producing the cyanide compounds varied
locally. According to van Pelt, the Markiewicz report demonstrated
positively that Zyklon-B had been introduced into the supposed gas
chambers, albeit that the test results varied greatly. Van Pelt
considered that the results for crematoria 4 and 5 were unreliable
because they had been demolished at the end of the war with the result
that it is difficult to know which brick came from where. 


   Conclusions to be drawn from the evidence, according to the
Defendants' experts  

   top 


7.75 The Defendants contend that the evidence, to any dispassionate
mind, is overwhelming that the Nazis systematically murdered hundreds
of thousands of Jews , mainly by the use of Zyklon-B pellets. The
Defendants recognise that not all of the evidence which I have sought
to summarise above is altogether reliable. This applies with particular
force to the evidence of the 

 

182

 

eye-witnesses. It is also accepted by the Defendants that in certain
respects the documentary evidence, including the photographic evidence,
is capable of more than one interpretation. Nevertheless the Defendants
argue that the different strands of evidence "converge". For example
the eye-witness evidence is corroborated by the drawings and
vice-versa. There is a striking similarity in the accounts of the
eye-witnesses. The similarities in their recollections vastly outweigh
the discrepancies. In the main, say the Defendants, their testimony is
reliable. The documentary is not overtly incriminating for the obvious
reason that the Nazis wanted to keep the gas chambers secret. But it
too lends support to there having been gas chambers in operation at the
camp. 

7.76 The overwhelming strength of the totality of the evidence may be
the reason, suggest the Defendants, why in his cross-examination of van
Pelt Irving chose to ignore most of it. 

   Irving's reasons for rejecting the evidence relied on by the
Defendants as to the existence at Auschwitz of gas chambers for killing
Jews  

   top 


   Irving as expert witness at the trial of Zundel  

   top 


7.77 In his evidence Irving reiterated on a number of occasions that he
is primarily a literary historian and that, at least until the present
proceedings were commenced , he did not regard himself as an expert on
the Holocaust. Accordingly until April 1988 he believed what he had
been told about the killing of Jews in Auschwitz and the other death
camps. The 1977 edition of Hitler's War contains several references to
the gassing of Jews. 

7.78 In April 1988 Irving went to Toronto in order to give expert
evidence on behalf of Hans Zundel, a publisher, who was being
prosecuted for infringing a Canadian law, since repealed, which made it
a criminal offence to disseminate false information. Zundel had
published a pamphlet entitled "Did Six Million Really Die?" which
questioned fundamental aspects of the Holocaust. Irving agreed to
assist Zundel in his defence by giving evidence as an historian as to
Hitler's role in the extermination of the Jews. He was not instructed
to address the issue of gassing at Auschwitz or indeed at any other
alleged death camp. 

   The impact of the Leuchter Report  

   top 


7.79 Irving testified that on arrival in Toronto he was presented with
a copy of a report compiled by Mr Fred Leuchter. It was what Irving
read in 

 

183

 

Leuchter's report which convinced him that there is no truth in the
claim that Jews met their death in gas chambers at Auschwitz. Irving
made clear in his evidence that it was the Leuchter report and in
particular the result of the chemical analysis of the samples taken
>from the fabric of the alleged gas chambers which had a profound impact
on his thinking. 

7.80 Leuchter had been retained by Zundel because he was a consultant
retained by several penitentiaries to give advice about execution
procedures including execution by means of the administration of gas.
He had no formal professional qualifications. Zundel intended to use
Leuchter's report to establish that no Jews, and certainly not six
million Jews, died in gas chambers, so that he could not be said to
have been spreading false information about the Holocaust. (As it
turned out Leuchter did not give evidence at Zundel's trial). 

7.81 In order to prepare his report, Leuchter visited Auschwitz in
February 1988 to inspect the site. He removed 31 samples of brickwork
and plaster from various crematoria and one control sample from a
delousing chamber where cyanide was known to have been used and was
visible in the form of blue staining. On his return to the US Leuchter
had these samples analysed by a reputable laboratory in Massachussets.
The object of the test was to discover whether the residual cyanide
content of the samples was consistent with their having been exposed to
high levels of cyanide over a prolonged period of time. 

7.82 Chemical analysis of the control sample revealed a very heavy
concentration of cyanide content, namely 1050mg/kg. By contrast the
analysis of the other samples, taken from the alleged gas chambers,
resulted in either negative findings or findings of very low
concentration levels ranging from 1mg/g to 9 mg/kg. From this Leuchter
concluded: 

" [this] supports the evidence that these facilities were not execution
gas chambers. The small quantities detected would indicate that some
point these buildings were deloused with Zyklon-BV - as were all the
buildings at these facilities. Additionally the areas of blue staining
show a high iron content, indicating ferric-ferro-cyanide, no longer
hydrogen cyanide. 

One would have expected higher cyanide detection in the samples taken
>from the alleged gas chambers (because of the greater amount of gas
allegedly used there) than that found in the control sample.

 

184

 

Since the contrary is true, one must conclude that these facilities
were not execution gas chambers, when coupled with all other evidence
gained on inspection".

7.83 Apart from that conclusion, upon which Irving has focussed his
attention, Leuchter in his report had a number of other observations to
make. He expressed the opinion that crematoria 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 have an
extremely poor and dangerous design if they were to have served as
execution gas chambers. There is no provision for gasketed doors,
windows or vents; the structures are not coated with tar or other
sealant to prevent leakage or absorption of gas. The adjacent
crematories create the potential for an explosion. The exposed porous
brick and mortar would accumulate any hydrogen cyanide and render the
facilities dangerous to humans for several years. 

7.84 Crematorium 1 is adjacent to the SS hospital and has floor drains
connected to the main sewer of the camp, which, according to Leuchter,
would have resulted in liquid cyanide being carried into every building
at the facility. There were no exhaust systems to vent the gas after
usage and no mechanism could be found for the Zyklon-B pellets to be
introduced or evaporated.. If indeed the Zyklon B pellets were fed into
the chamber through roof vents or windows, there were no means of
ensuring the even distribution of the gas. The facilities are always
damp and unheated, which conditions are unsuited to the use of
Zyklon-B. 

7.85 Leuchter considered the chambers to be too small physically to
contain the number of occupants claimed. The doors open inwards, which
would inhibit the removal of bodies. With the gas chambers fully packed
with occupants, the hydrogen cyanide would not circulate within the
room. If the gas did eventually fill the chamber, anyone feeding the
pellets into the vents on the roof would die from exposure to the
poisonous gas. 

7.86 Of the crematoria Leuchter, having reviewed modern practices,
calculated that their combined theoretical daily incineration capacity
was 353.6 but that in practice the maximum number of corpses which
could have been burned was 156. He thus arrived at the conclusion that
over the period when the incinerators were being operated, the total
number of cremations would have been 193,576 in theory but no more than
85,092 in practice. 

 

185

 

7.87 Leuchter's evaluation of the crematory facilities produced,
according to his report, conclusive evidence that contradicts the
alleged volume of corpses having been cremated within the generally
alleged time frame. His "best engineering opinion" was that none of the
facilities examined were ever utilised for the execution of human
beings and that the crematories could not have supported the work load
attributed to them. 

7.88 Irving was convinced by the conclusion at which Leuchter arrived
on the basis of the chemical analysis of the fabric of the supposed gas
chambers. So convinced was he by Leuchter's reasoning, he decided to
publish under his own imprint Focal Publications Limited, the text of
the report with a foreword written by Irving. The Foreword accepts that
there were methodological flaws in the report but it endorses
Leuchter's findings, ending with the words "Forensic chemistry is, I
repeat, an exact science". 

7.89 It was put to Irving in cross-examination that the fallacy in the
Leuchter report was his assumption that a far higher concentration of
cyanide, in the region of 3,200 parts per million ("ppm"), would be
required to kill people in the gas chambers than would be required for
the purpose of delousing clothing. In truth, it was suggested to him,
it is the other way round: high levels of cyanide are required for
delousing purposes whereas in the region of 300 ppm will suffice for
the purpose of killing human beings. Irving responded by saying that
this criticism of the Leuchter report has to be "taken on board" and
that "probably concessions have to be made at both ends of this scale".
Irving observed that the report had the desirable consequence of
promoting public debate. He remained adamant that, whatever its flaws,
the crucial conclusion of the Leuchter report, based on the chemical
analysis, was correct. He argued that the chambers were freshly
constructed out of concrete and so would have absorbed the hydrogen
cyanide producing permanent chemical changes to the fabric of the walls
and ceiling. Irving accepted that, if the concentration of cyanide
required for delousing clothes is far higher than the level required to
kill humans, one is more likely to find 40 years residual traces of the
cyanide in the fabric of the delousing chamber than in the fabric of
the supposed gas chambers. But he argued that one would still expect to
find far more traces in the alleged gas chambers than those recorded in
the Leuchter report. 

   Replication of Leuchter's findings  

   top 


7.90 Irving contended that the results of the chemical test conducted
on behalf of Leuchter had been replicated by amongst others Gelmar
Rudolf, a 

 

186

 

chemist at the Max Planck Institute. Van Pelt knew little of his report
but agreed that Rudolf's findings broadly corresponded with those of
Leuchter. Irving produced a letter from the Institute for Historical
Review which claimed that others had arrived at similar conclusions. He
also claimed (and van Pelt accepted) that in about 1989 the Auschwitz
authorities carried out tests which also found high cyanide traces in
the delousing chambers and much lower quantities in crematoria 2 and 3.
The results of these tests were not published. Subsequently further
tests were conducted and the results were published in the so-called
Markievicz report (the conclusions of which I have already summarised).


   The absence of chimneys protruding through of morgue 1 of
crematorium 2  

   top 


7.91 As the trial progressed, it appeared that one of the main
arguments advanced by Irving for denying the existence of homicidal gas
chambers at Auschwitz, if not his main argument, is that the remains of
the roof of morgue 1 at crematorium 2 show no sign of the chimneys
which, according to the Defendants' case penetrated through the roof so
as to enable Zyklon-B pellets to be tipped down into the morgue below.
It will be recalled van Pelt claimed that crematorium 2 was the most
lethal building of Auschwitz. In excess of 500,000 Jews lost their
lives there, more than in any other place on the planet. It is the
Defendants' case that the Zyklon-B pellets were fed into the chamber by
means of wire mesh column which ran upwards through the roof of the
chamber with the chimney protruding above roof level. The roof was made
of reinforced concrete about 18-20cm in thickness with reinforcing bars
within the concrete. If the chimney passed through the roof, argued
Irving, the roof would to this day have five holes in it where the
chimneys passed through the roof. 

7.92 It is common ground that the roof of Leichenkeller 1 was supported
by seven concrete pillars. The Defendants allege that adjacent to four
of these pillars there ran hollow ducts or chimneys made of heavy wire
mesh which protruded through holes in the roof where the pellets were
poured into them and ran down into the chamber below. These ducts were
70 square centimetres in size but tapered at the top where they passed
through the roof. It is Irving's case that these ducts never existed.
He made that assertion because, he said, there is no trace in what
remains of the roof of any holes through it. Furthermore the chimneys
do not appear in the blue prints for the construction of the
crematoria. Part of the roof of Leichenkeller 1 is intact, although it
has pancaked down on to the floor. Irving produced a photograph which
appears to show no sign of any hole in the roof. Van Pelt conceded in 

 

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one of his supplementary reports that there is no sign of the holes. It
would be impossible for chimneys of the size described by Tauber and
Kula to have disappeared. Irving contended that, if the holes exist, it
would be a simple matter to uncover the roof so as to find out if they
are there. But no one has attempted this task and he wondered why not. 

7.93 As for such evidence as there is of the existence of the ducts,
most of it comes from some of the eye-witnesses. But, claimed Irving,
they give varying accounts of the manner in which the pellets were
introduced into the gas chamber and most of them (including Bimko and
Bendel) have turned out to be liars. Irving claimed to have destroyed
the credibility of all of them in his cross-examination of van Pelt.
Olere's drawings were probably influenced by what he was told by others
and in any event he was a fantasist. The photograph taken in 1942 and
relied on van Pelt does not show the chimneys. The smudges on which van
Pelt relies were probably barrels of tar parked on the roof during
building operations. No such smudges were visible on aerial photographs
taken in 1944. 

7.94 At one stage in his evidence Irving appeared to concede that
Leichenkeller 1 of crematorium 2 was a gas chamber but that it was used
solely for delousing purposes. In the end, however, it was his position
that he had not seen any evidence that there were any gas chambers at
all there whether for delousing or extermination purposes. In his
evidence he went so far as to say that, if anyone detected holes in the
roof, he would abandon his libel action. As he graphically put it in
his closing submission, Irving argued that "[the Defendants'] entire
case on Krema 2 - the untruth that it was used as a factory of death,
with SS guards tipping canisters of cyanide-soaked pellets into the
building through those four (non-existent) holes ... had caved in, as
surely as has that roof". 

 

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   The reason for the alterations to crematorium 2: fumigation or
alternatively air-raid shelter  

   top 


7.95 One explanation put forward by Irving for the adaptation work to
morgue 1 and crematorium 2 is that the chamber was being adapted to
serve the purpose of fumigating clothes (and perhaps other objects). He
relied on a document called an Aufstellung sent by Topf to the
construction office at the camp in which reference is made
Entwesungsofen (disinfestation ovens), which according to Irving proves
that such was their true purpose. (Van Pelt countered that these ovens
may well have been for disinfecting the clothing of the Sonderkommando
or alternatively for a delousing chamber which is known to have been
under construction in 1943 between crematoria 2 and 3. But he added
that, if it was only clothing which was to be subjected to the gas
treatment it was difficult to understand the need for a peephole to be
fitted in the door). 

7.96 Another thesis advanced by Irving is that the adaptation of
crematorium 2 was undertaken in order to convert the building to an air
raid shelter rather than to a gas chamber. He claimed that there was,
at the time when the reconstruction work was undertaken, concern at
Auschwitz about bombing raids. He claimed that this explains why the
entrance to building was moved and why the staircase was altered to
enable pedestrian access to Leichenkeller 1, which was to serve as the
shelter. 

7.97 Irving contended that it was standard practice at that time to fit
gas tight doors on all air raid shelters in case of Allied poison gas
attacks. Irving drew attention to the reference by an eye-witness named
Hans Stark to the door of a chamber being luftschutzer which, as van
Pelt accepted, signified proof against air raid. (Stark did, however,
make that reference in the context of an account of 200 people being
gassed). It was, according to Irving, also standard practice for the
doors to have peep-holes (although he was uncertain why there should be
a metal grill fitted protecting the inside of the peep-hole). Irving
was scornful of the claim made by van Pelt that the doors to the
chamber were redesigned to open outwards because of the difficulty of
pushing the doors open if dead bodies were piled against the inside of
the door. Irving claimed that it was standard practice at the time that
air raid shelters should have doors which opened outwards. Van Pelt
was, however, doubtful if the architectural drawing relied on by Irving
to support his contention did indeed provide for doors which opened
outwards. 

 

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   The purpose of the supplies of Zyklon-B  

   top 


7.98 It is common ground that quantities of Zyklon-B were delivered by
truck from Dessau to Auschwitz. Irving contended that these deliveries
were for the purpose of fumigating the camp and the clothes of the
inmates. A large quantity of the cyanide was needed to combat the
typhus outbreak in the summer of 1942. In reliance on figures provided
by Mulka, an adjutant at Auschwitz with responsibility for the
deliveries, as well as upon the quantity supplied to the camp at
Oranienberg, Irving argues that the quantity of Zyklon-B delivered is
consistent with it having been used for the purpose of fumigation and
no other. 

7.99 Irving pointed to a document recording permission being given for
such a delivery which stated in terms that the purpose for which the
Zyklon-B was required was to carry out fumigation. He relied also on an
invoice which made reference to an Entwesungsabteilung (disinfestation
department). Herr Tesch of the company which supplied Zyklon-B to the
camp testified at his trial that the material was for disinfestation.
If cyanide had been used in the alleged gas chambers on the scale
claimed by the Defendants to kill Jews, there was, according to Irving,
a real danger that the poison might have found its way into the water
supply for the camp. 

   The logistical impossibility of extermination on the scale contended
for by the Defendants  

   top 


7.100 Irving produced an enlarged photograph depicting what he claimed
to be the Auschwitz coke bunker. He argued that it is far too small to
have been capable of accommodating the huge amount of coke which would
have been needed for the incineration of thousands of bodies. (Van Pelt
pointed out that each crematorium had its own coke storage bunker).
Irving advanced the further related argument that it would have
required 35kg of coke to incinerate a single body. He based that
argument on evidence that at another camp at Gussen that that was the
weight of coke required. On that premise he contended that it was
logistically impossible for sufficient coke to have been supplied and
stored at Auschwitz to burn bodies at the rate envisaged in a letter of
28 June 1943 written by Bischoff, the Chief of the Central Construction
Management at Auschwitz. Irving disputed the authenticity of that
document for reasons which I set out at paragraph 7.105. Alternatively
he contended that in any event it can be explained by the urgent need
for 

 

190

 

capacity to incinerate the bodies of those who succumbed during the
typhus epidemic which raged through Auschwitz in the summer of 1942. 

7.101 Irving asserted that the only way of transporting corpses from
the morgue up to the incinerators was by lift. He maintained that the
lift was incapable of supplying the incinerators with bodies at rates
which would have enabled the incinerators to burn the number of Jews
claimed by the Defendants to have been gassed at the camp. In other
words, the lift was a bottleneck which demonstrated the Defendants'
figures for the numbers killed and incinerated to be flawed. In
addition, since the incinerators would not have reduced the corpses to
ash, Irving questioned how the bones and other unburned parts of so
many bodies could have been disposed of. 

   Irving's investigation of the documentary evidence  

   top 


7.102 The Leuchter report having acted as a catalyst, Irving testified
that he spent some months in the period following its publication going
round the archives with an open mind looking for evidence that
Auschwitz was an extermination camp. Although that was the claim that
he made in 1988, in his evidence he described the difficulties
confronting him in regard to any such investigation. Auschwitz itself
was still behind the Iron Curtain (although Irving agreed he made no
attempt to gain access to the site). The Soviet archives (where most of
the Auschwitz documents and in particular the construction documents
had been consigned) remained closed to Westerners until 1990. So on his
own account Irving's investigation was confined to the German Federal
Archives (until he was finally banned from visiting Germany in late
1993), the national archives in Washington and libraries such as the
Hoover library in California. 

7.103 Hampered though he was in his attempt to investigate the issue,
Irving relied strongly on the extreme paucity of the documentary
evidence for the existence of genocidal gas chambers. He pointed out
that there is no reference to the Russians having discovered gas
chambers when they liberated the camp in January 1945. Irving relied
further on the absence of any reference in the reports sent in cypher
>from Auschwitz to Berlin (which were intercepted and decoded at
Bletchley and commented upon by Professor Himsley) to the death of any
inmate in a gas chamber at the camp. Deaths from typhus and other
causes, including shooting, are faithfully recorded but there is never
any reference to killing by gas. Since the reports were secret, argued
Irving, there would have been no need to omit deaths by gassing. Evans
considered it to be unsurprising that there should have been 

 

191

 

no reference to the deaths in the gas chambers of registered inmates of
the camp given the high level of secrecy which surrounded the policy of
extermination by that method. As for those who were not registered as
inmates, they would not have featured in the reports in any event. 

7.104 Irving relied on the camp registers which have recently been
released by the Russians. According to his argument, these registers
demonstrate that the number of those registered as having been admitted
to Auschwitz is wholly irreconcilable with the number of Jews said by
the Defendants to have perished in the gas chambers there. The response
of the Defendants to this argument is that there is clear evidence that
the camp registers did not include those who were killed immediately on
arrival at Auschwitz. In this connection the Defendants relied on the
evidence to that effect of General Pohl, the economic director of the
Nazi concentration camps, as well as upon the evidence of certain of
the eye-witnesses (including for example Pery Broad) to which I have
already made reference. 

7.105 Those documents apart, Irving drew attention to the fact of the
thousands of documents studied by historians over the years, hardly any
have surfaced which lend real support for the case for the existence of
the gas chambers being used for extermination purposes. Irving in his
evidence at the Zundel trial dismissed as tendentious the translation
of Vergasungskeller in Bischoff's letter of 29 January 1943 word as
'gas chamber'. It signified no more than a room where gassing apparatus
would be installed without the connotation that the gas would be used
to kill human beings. The word Vergasungskeller would not be used by a
German to refer to a gas chamber: he would use Gasungskeller. Similarly
the Vergasungsapparate mentioned in Wetzel's letter of 25 October 1941
were required for fumigation and not genocidal purposes. Irving
produced an invoice to the Auschwitz Construction office which refers
to an Entwesungsanlage (disinfection chamber) in support of his
contention that such a facility existed at the camp. 

7.106 Irving dismissed several of the allegedly incriminating documents
as unauthentic if not downright forgeries. One particular target for an
attack of this kind was mounted upon Bischoff's estimate of the
capacity of the incinerators in his letter of 28 June 1943 (to which I
have already made reference). Irving relied, amongst other things, on
the absence of a reference to Auschwitz in the heading of the letter;
on the allegedly unusual, if not unique, way in which the reference is
typed at the head of the letter; on the way the date is typed; on the
initials of the secretary who typed the letter 

 

192

 


being the wrong initials for Bischoff's secretary; on the inaccurate
designation of the rank of the addressee of the letter, General
Kammler, which omitted the distinctive symbol used by the Nazis for
members of the SS. Irving also pointed out that, at the date when the
letter was written, one of the incinerators referred to in the letter
had been taken out of commission and another was under repair, so that
it would have been inappropriate and unlikely that Bischoff would have
included them in his assessment of the overall incineration capacity of
the camp. 

7.107 Another argument advanced by Irving for doubting the genocidal
use of gas chambers at Auschwitz was based upon an instruction
circulated on 26 October 1943 by Pohl, chief of all concentration
camps, to each camp commandant instructing him to implement measures to
reduce the number of deaths amongst the inmates by the provision of
better food and clothing and the like. Irving also produced a letter to
doctors at the camps requiring them to make extra efforts to ensure the
effectiveness of the labour force by improving their health and
mortality. Irving also produced a table signed by Pohl which records a
reduction in the level of mortality in camps generally from 10% in
December 1942 to about 8% in January 1943 as a result of hygiene
measures which had been taken. In the same vein Irving relied on the
note of a conference in June 1942 presided over by Dannecker,
Eichmann's subordinate, which made reference to orders issued by
Himmler to increase the workforce at Auschwitz. Irving relied on the
note as evidence that Auschwitz was essentially a work camp. But
Longerich pointed out that Himmler had made provision that 10% of those
deported did not need to be fit for work. Longerich inferred that they
were to be killed on arrival. Irving contended that the 10% provision
was for wives and children. Such documents are, Irving argued, wholly
inconsistent with the Nazis having been engaged at the same time upon a
programme of exterminating Jews in gas chambers at Auschwitz. 

7.108 In the light of such research as he has been able to undertake
since 1989, Irving deploys other arguments and contentions (many of
them advanced in the course of his cross-examination of van Pelt) which
he claims bear out Leuchter's conclusions and which afford further
reasons for doubting the existence of killing by gas at Auschwitz. 

   Irving's response to the eye-witness evidence  

   top 


7.109 As to the Defendants' reliance on the evidence of eye-witnesses,
Irving asserted that, since as many as 6,000 have survived the camp,
the 

 

193

 

proportion of witnesses confirming the existence of gas chambers is
remarkably small. The vast majority have not claimed that there were
gas chambers at the camp. 

7.110 In any case Irving contended that generically the eye-witnesses,
whilst they are not to be discounted altogether, are not reliable or
credible. Some can be shown to be inaccurate in their claims (eg Dr
Bimko) or inconsistent (eg Hoss). Others gave evidence through fear or
in order to curry favour with their captors (eg Aumeier). The evidence
of many of them was the result of "cross-pollination" with the
recollection of other supposed eye-witnesses or was influenced by their
having been shown the blueprints for the alleged gas chambers (eg
Tauber). The evidence of a number of such witnesses (eg Kramer) can be
explained by the fact that they were describing chambers which were
used for fumigation purposes rather then killing. Irving gives as a
reason for doubting the reliability of Olere's sketches that he made
the absurd claim to the historian Pressac that the SS made sausages in
the crematoria. Another reasons for doubting Olere's reliability,
according to Irving, is that flame as well as smoke can be seen in one
sketch emerging from the top of the main chimney. Van Pelt agreed that
no flame would have been visible since the chimney was 90 feet tall.
Irving suggested that Olere's drawings may have been based on post-war
reports, adding the gratuitous comment that he appears to have taken a
prurient interest in naked women. 

7.111 Irving also relied on the figures for the numbers of deaths of
inmates through illness or from overwork in support of an argument that
the purpose, or at least the principal purpose, which the crematoria at
Auschwitz served was to incinerate the corpses of those who had died in
this way. So, Irving's argument proceeded, the eyewitness evidence of
the Sonderkommandos and others of the operation of the crematoria and
the stripping of gold from the mouths of the corpses can be explained
on the basis that these were the corpses of those who had died from
disease or overwork rather than those who had been murdered in the gas
chambers. 

7.112 For all these reasons, some positive and some negative but all
pointing in the same direction, Irving concluded that his initial
reaction to the Leuchter report was correct: the evidence does not bear
out the claim that gas chambers were operated to liquidate hundreds of
thousands of Jews. The evidence relied on by the Defendants is riddled
with inconsistencies and remains unpersuasive. He accepted that the
cellar at Leichenkeller 1 was used as a gassing cellar but only to
fumigate "objects or cadavers". As to the 

 

194

 

use of gas to kill humans, the most he was prepared to concede was that
there were gassings "on some scale" at Auschwitz. 

   The Defendants' arguments in rebuttal  

   top 


   The Defendants' critique of the Leuchter Report 

   top 


7.113 The Defendants are highly critical of Irving for having attached
any credence to the Leuchter report. Van Pelt included in his report a
detailed critique of Leuchter, his methodology and his conclusions. His
criticisms echo those contained in a reasoned rebuttal sent to Irving
late in 1989 by a Mr Colin Beer (which at that time Irving acknowledged
had some force). 

7.114 According to both van Pelt and Beer, the fundamental flaw in the
report was Leuchter's assumption that the concentration of cyanide in
the killing chambers would have needed to be greater than the
concentration in the delousing chamber, that is, in the region of 3,200
ppm or higher. According to them that assumption is simply wrong.
Moreover it demolished or at least undermined a number of the reasons
advanced by Leuchter for denying the existence of the killing chambers.
Basing himself on the high concentration of cyanide which he assumed
would have been needed to gas humans, Leuchter had argued that the
ventilation system of the chambers would have been wholly inadequate.
But, say the Defendants, if the concentration required was much lower,
it would follow that the ventilation requirements would be
correspondingly reduced. Irving accepted that this was a logical
conclusion. Similarly Leuchter's argument that the high concentration
of cyanide required to kill humans would have created a high risk of
toxic contamination of the sewers is invalidated if the concentration
required was a fraction of that assumed by Leuchter. Irving again
agreed that this is a logical conclusion. He also agrees that the need
for elaborate safety precautions, also relied on by Leuchter, would be
radically reduced. 

7.115 The Defendants relied on the content of an interview of Dr Roth,
the scientist at the Massachusetts laboratory which carried out the
tests on Leuchter's samples. According to Dr Roth, cyanide produces a
surface reaction which will penetrate no further than one tenth of the
breadth of human hair. The samples with which he was provided by
Leuchter ranged in size between a human thumb and a fist, so they had
to be broken down with a hammer before analysis. Roth asserts that the
resulting dilution of any cyanide traces effectively invalidates the
test results. 

 

195

 

7.116 Apart from what the Defendants regard as the fundamentally flawed
assumption by Leuchter about the concentration of cyanide required for
killing purposes, they identified numerous errors of fact in his
report. He wrongly stated that there was no provision for gas-fitted
(that is, sealed) doors and windows in the gas chambers. Tthe walls of
the Leichenkeller were, contrary to what Leuchter claimed, sealed with
a coating of plaster. Leuchter wrongly assumed that there was a mains
sewer. He wrongly stated that there was no exhaust or ventilation
system and that the facilities were damp and unheated. He asserted
unjustifiably that there would have been a risk of death to those
inserting Zyklon-B pellets into the roof vents. Irving accepted the
validity of most of these criticisms of the Leuchter report. 

7.117 Basing himself on the arguments which I have rehearsed in
abbreviated form, van Pelt, not mincing his words, dismissed the
Leuchter report as "scientific garbage". 

   The Defendants' case as to the absence of signs of chimneys in the
roof of Leichenkeller 1 

   top 


7.118 The Defendants accept that the physical evidence remaining at the
site of Auschwitz provides little evidence to support the claim that
gas chambers were operated there for genocidal purposes. The
explanation, according to the Defendants, is that, after the
revelations in the Allied media concerning the gas chambers at the camp
at Majdanek in late 1944, Himmler ordered the dismantling of the
extermination installations in the crematoria at Auschwitz. In late
1944 the Nazis duly dynamited the crematoria and destroyed the camp
archives (or so they intended: as has been observed above, documents
>from the Central Construction Office accidentally survived). 

7.119 Van Pelt addressed in his evidence the argument that chimneys for
inserting Zyklon-B pellets into Leichenkeller I cannot have existed
because there is no trace of any holes in the roof of the chamber. He
agreed that the blueprints for the design of the gas chamber in
crematoria 2 did not provide for metal chimneys or ducts. They are not
included in the drawings because, according to van Pelt, the drawings
were prepared before the decision was taken to use Leichenkeller 1 as a
gas chamber. 

7.120 As to Irving's claim that the pancaked roof shows no sign of the
chimneys, the Defendants point out that this is a new argument which
Irving appears first to have lighted on in November 1998. Its relevance
to the 

 

196

 

criticisms of Irving as an historian is therefore open to doubt. In
response to Irving's claim van Pelt maintained, firstly, that the roof
is in such a mess and most of it is so inaccessible that it is
impossible to verify whether or not the holes existed. In any case he
claimed that it is likely that, when the gas chambers were dismantled
in 1944, the chimneys would have been removed and the holes cemented
over so as to remove incriminating evidence. (Irving regards this as
highly implausible since the Russians were by then poised on the
eastern side of the Vistula). Moreover, van Pelt repeated that there
exists powerful evidence for the existence of chimneys, namely the
photographic and eye-witness evidence (including Olere's drawings which
I have summarised above). 

   The redesign of crematorium 2  

   top 


7.121 The Defendants dismiss as nonsensical the claim that the reason
for the redesign of crematorium was to facilitate the fumigation of
"objects and corpses". Contemporaneous documents identified by the
Defendants show that the new design incorporated a undressing room
(Auskleiderkeller). Irving was unable to explain in cross-examination
what need there would have been for an undressing room if the facility
was to be used only for the fumigating of dead bodies and inanimate
objects. Irving's theory is in any case untenable, argued van Pelt,
because the redesign was clearly intended to enable live people to walk
downstairs (see paragraph 7.61 above). Moreover, there would have been
no need for a metal-protected, reinforced spy-hole if only corpses and
metal objects were to be gassed (see paragraph 7.68 above). 

7.122 Van Pelt rejected Irving's argument that the reconstruction work
at crematorium 2 was carried out in order to convert it to use as an
air raid shelter. In the first place he pointed out that Crematorium 2
is some 1.5 miles away from the SS barracks, that is, too far away for
members of the SS to reach in the event of a raid. The shelter would in
any event have been too small to accommodate more than a fraction of
the SS personnel and obviously wholly inadequate for the camp inmates
(even if the Nazis had wanted to protect them). Van Pelt did not accept
that, if the chamber was to become a shelter, it would have needed to
have a gas-tight door with a peep-hole protected on the inside by a
metal grill. He also disputed that, at the time of construction, there
was any reason to fear air raids. However, Irving was able to produce a
document dated 6 August 1942 setting out detailed guidelines as to the
precautions against air raids to be taken in the military area of the
General Government. 

 

197

 

   The quantity of Zyklon-B required  

   top 


7.123 In relation to Irving's argument that the quantity of Zyklon-B
delivered to the camp could be explained as being needed for fumigation
purposes, Van Pelt produced a supplementary report in which he noted
that the amount of Zyklon-B delivered to Auschwitz vastly exceeded the
quantity delivered to other camps. He made a detailed calculation,
based on delivery documents and on stated assumptions about the
frequency of fumigations, that of the total amount of Zyklon-B
delivered to Auschwitz in 1943 (1,200 kilos) not more than 9,000 kilos
would have been required for fumigation. That would leave unaccounted
for 3,000 kilos, which van Pelt contended would have been more than
enough to kill the 250,000 Jews estimated to have been gassed to death
that year. 

   The Defendants' response to Irving's logistical argument  

   top 


7.124 Van Pelt dismissed the suggestion made by Irving that if cyanide
had been used to gas Jews in the chambers, there would have been a risk
of the entire water supply at the camp becoming contaminated. The gas
was evacuated from the chambers by means of the ventilation system
through a chimney and not through the floor into a drain. 

7.125 Likewise van Pelt rejected the argument that the quantity of coke
delivered to Auschwitz was insufficient to fuel the incineration of the
corpses in the numbers which the Defendants claim were killed at the
camp. He challenged the premise of Irving's argument which was that as
much as 35kg of coke would have been required for each body
incinerated: basing himself on a contemporaneous calculation and
assuming bodies were burned together at the rate contemplated in the
Bischoff's letter of 28 June 1943, he maintained that the quantity of
coke required per corpse would have been no more than 3.5kg) 

7.126 Van Pelt calculated that the capacity of the incinerators vastly
exceeded what would have been required, even on a worst case scenario,
to deal with deaths from typhus. He did not accept that the carrying
capacity of the lift would have significantly limited that rate at
which corpses could have been incinerated. As to the disposal of those
parts of the bodies which were not reduced to ash in the ovens, van
Pelt explained that the evidence is that the remains were pulverised by
the Sonderkommandos and then buried in pits or dumped in the river
Vistula. 

 

198

 

   The Defendants' response to Irving's argument in relation to the
documentary evidence  

   top 


7.127 The Defendants accept that there are few overt references to gas
chambers at Auschwitz in contemporaneous documents but suggest that the
absence is readily understandable. I have already alluded to the
evidence of Ertl, the architect employed at the Auschwitz Central
Construction Office, that he was told by Bischoff that no reference
should be made to gassing and that such terms as "special action" or
special measure" should be used instead. The Defendants contend that it
was standard procedure to disguise the existence of genocidal gas
chambers either by the use of such innocuous terms or referring to
their having a delousing function. 

7.128 In answer to Irving's claim that documents exist which are
irreconcilable with a programme of mass extermination at Auschwitz (for
example urging that measures be taken to reduce the mortality rate),
Longerich asserted that these documents have no bearing whatsoever on
the treatment of those who were gassed on arrival at Auschwitz without
becoming registered as inmates of the camps. The documents simply
reflect a degree of caution in carrying out the policy of extermination
by slave labour which had been proceeding in parallel with the gassing.
The Nazis were becoming concerned at the rate at which the supply of
labour was being reduced by death from typhus. Longerich further
pointed out that the figures contained in the documents relied on by
Irving were apt to mislead because they relate to both Jews and
non-Jews: if the figures were confined to Jews, the picture would be
very different. 

7.129 But the Defendants contend that there are in the contemporaneous
documents incriminating references. I have already made reference to
some of them. Invited to comment on the catalogue of reasons given by
Irving for denying the authenticity of Bischoff's letter of 28 June
1943 (see paragraph 7.106 above), van Pelt testified that the letter is
in the Moscow archive. It first surfaced in the 1950s, that is, before
any issue had been raised about the incineration capacity of the ovens,
so that at the time there was no reason to have forged it. Van Pelt
produced another version of the document which came from the Domburg
archive. He suggested that no forger would have inserted the forged
document into two different archives. Moreover, van Pelt would not
accept that what Irving perceived to be oddities about the document
suggesting it is a forgery were in truth anything of the kind. He
assembled a clip of Auschwitz documents which display most of the odd
features upon which Irving founded his argument that the letter is not 

 

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genuine. He was unable, however, to produce another example of an error
in the designation of the rank of an SS officer. In addition he agreed
he had not come across another document which had the abbreviation "Ne"
for the name of the secretary who typed it. Van Pelt concludes that
there was no standard format for documents at the camp. His overall
conlusion was that he had no doubt about its authenticity. 

7.130 In answer to Irving's reliance on the absence of references to
deaths by gassing in either the decrypts or the camp "death books", the
Defendants contend (as already noted) that both relate to registered
inmates at the camp and not to those who were gassed on arrival. There
was moreover a natural concern to observe the greatest secrecy about
the gassing operations.


   top 

Go back VI. Justification: Evidence Of The Attitude Of Hitler Towards
The Jews And Of The Extent, If Any, Of His Knowledge Of And
Responsibility For The Evolving Policy Of Extermination      
Index      Next VIII. Justification: The Claim That Irving Is A
"Holocaust Denier" 



Regards,
Eugene Holman


From holman@elo.helsinki.fi Wed Apr 11 04:15:05 EDT 2001
Article: 885029 of alt.revisionism
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From: Eugene Holman 
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Re: reply to Jeffrey
Date: Mon, 09 Apr 2001 18:49:15 +0300
Organization: University of Helsinki
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In article <3AD0C12D.76F215B0@earthlink.net>, Richard G. Phillips
 wrote:



> 
> ======================================
> Phillips
> 
> I again point out to you that to kill a person with HCN requires a certain
> number of
> grammes of it. A certain number of grammes were introduced into the chamber. 
> The
> more persons in the chamber, the fewer grammes per person. Work it out.
> 
> ==============================
> 

A. An empty chamber - 0 ppm of HCN
B. People introduced, their bulk takes up, say, 75% of the volume of
the chamber.
C. Zyklon B introduced, giving off enough HCN to reach a volume of 300
ppm in the 25% of the volume that has ambient air.
D. The people breathe it, but the _pellets continue to give off HCN_,
maiuntaining the 300 ppm level.
E. The people die.
F. The pellets are disposed off, thus ensuring that no more HCN is
given off.
G. The place is ventilated and aerated
H. The level of HCN in the ambient air is reduced to below the lethal
level.
I. The bodies are removed, further increasing the air volume of the
chamber and diluting any residual HCN.
J. After the bodies are removed, the whole room is hosed down and
cleaned, and the level of HCN goes down to 0 ppm.
K. Back to (A).

Regards,
Eugene Holman


From holman@elo.helsinki.fi Wed Apr 11 04:15:05 EDT 2001
Article: 885052 of alt.revisionism
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From: Eugene Holman 
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Re: Auschwitz gas chambers: the evidence for and against
Supersedes: <090420012026313552%holman@elo.helsinki.fi>
Date: Mon, 09 Apr 2001 20:31:54 +0300
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In article <3AD1C978.BF67EAD6@earthlink.net>, Richard G. Phillips
 wrote:

> Eugene Holman wrote:
> 
> > This is a summary of the evidence for and against the existence of gas
> > chambers at Auschwitz as presented at the Irving vs. Lipstadt/Penguin
> > Books trial.
> >
> > "7.11 In the course of the trial Irving modified his position: he was
> > prepared to concede that gassing of human beings had taken place at
> > Auschwitz but on a limited scale."
> 
> ========================================
> phillips
> 
> PLease produce the text in which he made such an admission. No websites,
> please;  or, if you must produce one, please give with it the required
> sequence of choices to get at the meat and potatoes of your claim. I will
> not --repeat, NOT-- engage in a long treasure hunt to find the alleged
> pearls of wisdom which claim await me at the end.
> 
> ==============================================================

Source:
http://www.holocaustdenialontrial.com/transcripts/trans_03_15_00_day32.a
sp



< 1>IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE 
1996 I. No. 113
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
< 2>Royal Courts of Justice
< 3>Strand, London
< 4>Wednesday, 15th March 2000



P-180
(Irving speaking, EH)
< 9>Š Of course, I do accept that there were gassings on 
<10> a small scale at Auschwitz in the buildings identified as 
<11> bunkers I and II which were houses which have since been 
<12> torn down. 





Regards,
Eugene Holman


From holman@elo.helsinki.fi Wed Apr 11 04:15:06 EDT 2001
Article: 885240 of alt.revisionism
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From: Eugene Holman 
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Re: Auschwitz gas chambers: the evidence for and against
Supersedes: <100420010903385605%holman@elo.helsinki.fi>
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 09:33:14 +0300
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In article <3AD51A2C@MailAndNews.com>, Gustave Morgan
 wrote:



> 
>      So far, Irving's statement is the best evidence produced by the 
> Holocaust 
> promoters in their futile attempt to prove the existence of gas chambers.  

It is not evidence at all. It is a statement made in the face of
overwhelming evidence.


> Personally, I am not an admirer of Irving, so his statement doesn't mean a 
> thing.  We know there were no chambers found after the war; 

Wrong. The gas chambers at Mauthausen and Majdanek (2 of them) were
found intact. The ruins of the gas chamber in Krema II at
Auschwitz-Birkenau were in a condition allowing their forensic
examnation by the Polish authorities in 1945, as well as by Leuchter
and others since then. The experimental gas chamber improvised by
Lagerführer Fritsch in block 11 of Auschwitz-Stammlager on September 3,
1941 is also still there, and traces of cyanide use have been found
there in the forensic examinations performed at Auschwitz. Destroying
physical evidence does not mean destruction of all evidence of
existence.


> we know there were no plans or specifications found; 

Wrong. Walther Dejaco's floorplans, blueprints, and architectural
cross-sections with precise specifications are in the archives of the
Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. Many of them have been discussed in
Jean-Paul Pressac, _Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas
Chambers_, 1989, and in Jean-Paul Pressac and Robert-Jan van Pelt "The
Machinery of Mass Muder at Auschwitz," in Gutman and Berenbaum, eds.
_Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp_, pg. 209.

> and we know there were no documents found supporting the existence of 
gas chambers. 

Also wrong.

Source: Source: http://www.holocaustdenialontrial.com/sec_vii.asp


Documentary evidence relating to the design and construction of the
chambers  

   top 


7.58 The Defendants assert that there exist contemporaneous documentary
records which, on detailed examination, evidence the construction of
gas chambers at Auschwitz. The most important Auschwitz archive that
survived the war was that of the Central Construction Office at
Auschwitz. The main archives of the camp Kommandantur had been
destroyed by the Germans before they evacuated the camp in January
1945. The Construction Office was 300 yards away and through an
oversight was left intact. 

7.59 The first and most significant body of such evidence is the blue
print material, which consists of a series of architectural drawings
which depict the adaptation of crematoria 2 and 3 and the construction
of crematoria 4 and 5. None of these drawings refers overtly to any
part of the buildings being designed or intended to serve as gas
chambers whether for fumigation or extermination purposes. In
particular the drawings for Leichenkeller (morgue) 1 in crematorium 2
make no provision for ducts or chimneys by means of which Zyklon-B
pellets might be inserted through the roof. However, van Pelt sought to
illustrate by means of detailed analyses of certain features of the
drawings that it reasonable to infer that certain chambers were
designed to function as gas chambers. 

7.60 The principal feature identified by van Pelt is the redesign of
the double door to the supposed gas chamber in crematorium 2. When in
1942 the drawings were executed for the adaptation of this crematorium,
this door in common with others in the same building was designed to
open inwards. Careful scrutiny of the drawings reveals, however, that
the drawing of the inward- opening door has been scratched out. A fresh
drawing dated 19 December 1942 was made by Jakob, the chief of the
drawing office, who rarely undertook drawings himself. It provides for
the door to the supposed gas chamber to open outwards. There is no
apparent reason for this. To van Pelt the obvious explanation is that
the chamber was to be used as a gas chamber. If the door opened
inwards, it would be impossible to open it after the administration of
the gas because of the crush of corpses against the inside or the door
of those who struggled to get out when they realised what was happening
to them. 

7.61 The next feature identified by van Pelt relates to the entrance to
crematorium 2 and the means of which access was gained to the morgue
below. In its original design, the entrance was situated to one side of
the building. Inside the entrance there was a slide down which corpses
would be tipped to reach the level of the morgue. But the drawing shows
that this design was changed in late 1942 so as to move the entrance to
the crematorium to the street side of the building. At the same time a
new stairway to the morgue was designed to replace the pre-existing
slide. Van Pelt pointed out that the original design apparently
contemplated that only corpses would need to be transported down to the
morgue. The new design on the other hand is consistent with a wish to
enable people transported to Auschwitz to proceed from the railway
station through the new entrance, then to walk downstairs into what is
alleged to have been the undressing room and thence into the supposed
gas chamber. The stairway has been redesigned in such a way that it
would be extremely awkward to carry corpses down to the morgue on
stretchers. Van Pelt concludes that the object of the redesign of the
stairway was to enable living people to walk downstairs rather than for
corpses to be carried down. 

7.62 The drawings further provide for the ventilation of the supposed
gas chamber in crematorium 2. Van Pelt infers that the purpose of the
system for extracting air was to extract poisonous air and so speed up
the removal of the corpses to the incinerators. 

7.63 Crematoria 4 and 5 were new buildings. The initial drawings are
dated August 1942, not long after the visit paid to the camp by
Himmler, which the Defendants say marks the inception of the
accelerated extermination programme. According to van Pelt the design
of these crematoria incorporated undressing rooms (although not so
designated on the drawings) and morgues which were to serve as gas
chambers. The drawings of the morgues make provision for several
windows measuring 30 x 40cms. The size of these windows corresponds
with the size of windows referred to elsewhere in construction
documents as being required to be gas proof. The windows were to be
above eye level. Van Pelt draws the inference that the purpose of these
windows was to enable Zyklon-B pellets to be inserted through them into
the building (a process which was observed by Sonderkommando Dragon, as
mentioned above). 

7.64 Van Pelt agreed that the drawings for crematoria 4 and 5 show a
drainage system which appears to link up with the camp sewage system.
He disagreed with Irving's suggestion that this would have been highly
dangerous because large quantities of liquid cyanide would have found
their way into the sewage system. Van Pelt claims that the gas would
evaporate rather than turn into liquid. 

7.65 In addition to the architectural drawings, there are other
documents which, according to the Defendants, lend support to their
contention that there were gas chambers at the camp which were used for
genocidal purposes. I shall not itemise all the documents identified by
the Defendants as belonging in this category. They include a patent
application for multi-muffle ovens made by Topf. Although the patent
application does not in fact relate to the ovens supplied to Auschwitz
in 1942/3, it is said that the principle is the same. The two features
of the application on which the Defendants focus are, firstly, the
method of employing fat corpses to speed promote the rate at which
corpses can be burned and, secondly, the claim that no fuel is required
after the initial two day pre-heating period, no more fuel will be
required because of the amount of heat generated by the burning
corpses. Van Pelt noted that both these features are reflected in the
account given by Tauber of the way in which the corpses were
incinerated. 

7.66 Another allegedly incriminating document is the record of a
meeting held on 19 August 1942 between members of the Auschwitz
construction office and a representative of the engineers Topf to
discuss the construction of four crematoria. The note of the meeting
refers to the construction of triple oven incinerators near the
"Badenanstalten fur Sonderaktionen" ("bath-houses for special actions":
the words are in quotations in the original). 

7.67 In a different category is a report dated 16 December 1942 made by
a corporal named Kinna, which made reference to an order that, in order
to releive the camp, limited people, idiots, cripples and sick people
must be removed from the same by liquidation. Kinna stated that the
implementation of this order was difficult because the Poles, unlike
the Jews, must die a natural death. 

7.68 The Defendants relies on a letter dated 29 January 1943 from
Bischoff, Chief of Central Construction Managemnent at the camp, to SS
Brigadefuhrer Kammler in which there is reference to a Vergasungskammer
(gas chamber or cellar). There are also documents from February 1943
referring to the provision of gastight doors and windows. In a letter
dated 31 March 1943 Bischoff presses for the delivery of a gastight
door with a spyhole of 8mm glass, with a rubber seal and metal fitting.
There is a timesheet of a construction worker which makes reference to
fitting gastight windows to crematorium 4. Van Pelt pointed to a letter
dated 6 March 1943 from Auschwitz to the Topf company which
contemplated the use of hot air from the ventilators for the
incinerators to pre-heat the Leichenkeller 1. Why, he asked, heat a
morgue, which should be kept cool. Answering his own question, he
claimed that Zyklon-B evaporates more quickly in high temperatures, so
the killing process would be speeded up. (Irving answered that there is
nothing sinister about heating the morgue: it was a requirement of good
building practice in relation to civilian morgues). 

7.69 Finally under this head the Defendants rely on a letter dated 28
June 1943 from Bischoff to Kammler (the authenticity of which Irving
challenges) setting figures for the incineration capacity of the five
crematoria, according to which their total capacity is 4756 people in
every 24 hours. The Defendants' case is that this capacity was at that
time deemed to be necessary to burn the bodies of the Jews who were to
be brought to Auschwitz to be gassed. Basing themselves on the evidence
of sonderkommandos such as Tauber, the Defendants say further that the
rate of incineration was broadly in line with the estimate in the
letter of 28 June 1943. The Defendants suggest that the apparent
urgency of the installation of the ovens, together with their huge
capacity which, according to van Pelt, was far in excess of what could
possibly have been required to cope withfuture typhus epidemics,
reflects the policy adopted following Himmler's visit to the camp in
July 1942. 


********************

> No evidence--no gas chambers. period.

Since there's lots of evidence, then gas chambers. Period and full stop.

Regards,
Eugene Holman


From holman@elo.helsinki.fi Wed Apr 11 04:15:06 EDT 2001
Article: 885246 of alt.revisionism
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From: Eugene Holman 
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Re: reply to Jeffrey
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Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 10:11:26 +0300
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In article <3ad29b2e$0$193@news.impulse.net>, Waldo
 wrote:

> Eugene Holman  wrote in message
> news:090420011849152585%holman@elo.helsinki.fi...
> > In article <3AD0C12D.76F215B0@earthlink.net>, Richard G. Phillips
> >  wrote:
> >


> 
>  And all of this takes how long, do you suppose? After all, it's quite the
> involved process:
> 

Höss wrote that it took no longer than fifteen minutes for everyone
packed in the gas chamber to die, after which it was ventilated for
another fifteen minutes before opening the door.


> A) Load 'em up
> 
> B) Lock 'em in
> 
> C) Drop the pellets
> 
> D) Wait
> 
> E) Wait some more (and some more)

Fifteen minutes.

 
> F) Begin ventilation
> 
> G) Wait some more (and some more)

Fifteen more minutes.

> 
> H) Open the doors
> 
> I) Extract 'em
> 
> J) Wash the place down
> 
> and back to A.
> 
> Then, we supposedly have other processes (according to the Standard
> Holocaust Theory) which involve:
> 
> A) Cutting the hair of the deceased (which is covered in urine, feces and
> vomit due to the gassing, 

Probably not. Most accounts note that the chambers were packed so
tightly that the bodies were standing or intertwined. Body fluids etc.
fall downward, even when people are standing.

> and must then be washed, dried combed and sorted.

Thats what hoses are for. There was not great hurry; time constraints
were set by the cremation process.

> 
> B) Removing all valuables from the deceased (especially gold teeth) and
> 
> C) Either the cremation or burial of the victims.

This was the most time consuming process, and constraints were set by
crematory throughput capacity.

> 
> No wonder the Russians opted for their famous "bullet to the back of the
> head".

No, you've got it wrong. The Germans were doing that between June 22,
1941 and January 1942, and they decided that it was too time consuming
and labor intensive. Industrial-scale gassing in a building also
containing crematorium facilities was much more efficient than Soviet
style "bullet to the back of the head" liquidations.

Using a variant of single bullet method - Jeckeln style
"Sardinenpackung" - it took the Germans more than 12 hours to kill and
bury 12,000 Jews at Riga on November 30, 1941, and they eventually had
to exhume the graves and burn the evidence. Using the low concentration
HCN method they could kill 2000 within less than an hour and be sure
that the evidence would be destroyed once and for all within a day or
two.

If you are trying to destroy the evidence, the bullet in the back of
the head method still leaves you with the problem of body disposal and
some pretty revolting looking bodies. If you are using cyanide, the
bodies are nicer looking once they have been hosed down. With limited
crematory capacity there is no reason on earth to save ten minutes by
using twenty times more Zyklon-B.


> 
> And Germans were supposed to be obsessed with efficiency?
> 
> What's wrong with this picture, Eugene?
> 

Nothing. From the standpoint of the efficiency of the overall process
>from initial input to final output, using a concentration of HCN just
above the lethal limit makes the most sense. Removing, hosing down,
checking, moving, and burning bodies was time consuming and each of
these subprocesses is subject to various invariable time constraints.
Saving ten minutes by using twenty times more Zyklon-B than was
necessary to kill the people in the gas chamber would have been
wasteful to the extreme, nor would it have any noticeable affect on
expiditing the stages of the overall process following the killing.

Regards,
Eugene Holman


From holman@elo.helsinki.fi Wed Apr 11 04:15:06 EDT 2001
Article: 885262 of alt.revisionism
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From: Eugene Holman 
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Re: Phillips, Jeffrey, and the Krakow Report
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 12:47:43 +0300
Organization: University of Helsinki
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In article <3AD2331C.43E11C66@earthlink.net>, Richard G. Phillips
 wrote:

> Jason James wrote:
> 
> > "Richard G. Phillips"  wrote in message
> > news:3AD2107D.6BA3E3AE@earthlink.net...
> >
> > You cant see the wood for the trees. Did it ever occur to you that putting
> > humans in any space and introducing Zyclon to that space, is an irrational
> > act at best, which is not likely considering the perpetrators, or at worst
> > an act calculated to kill. which is likely given the same perps.
> 
> ===============================================
> Phillips
> 
> Mr. Jason James:
> 
> The mass execution of people by Zyklon B cannot be taken as a given because it
> is precisely the thing we are arguing about.
> 
> Brown (as well as others) tells us that Leuchter's findings are worthless
> because of the way he prepared his samples: crushed them rather than
> restricting himself to material at or very close to the surface.
> 
> I replied --not once but several times-- if you people are convinced of that,
> there is nothing stopping you from sending in your own team with instructions
> to do it your way and (hopefully for you) coming home with results more to
> your
> liking.
> 
> Brown replied --not once but at least twice-- that that had already been done
> been (alluding to the Krakow Report).
> 
> This would leave one to suppose that the Krakow Report obtained results which
> tend to negate Leuchter's findings, that is, much higher HCN cocentrations on
> the walls of the (alleged) execution chambers.

For the umpteenth time. There should have been much lower HCN
concentrations on the walls of the (alleged, if you will) execution
chambers.

1. The execution chambers were not used an a continuous basis, the
fumigation chambers were.

2. The execution chambers were hosed down after every operation, the
fumigation chambers were not.

3. The execution chambers were exposed to low (300 ppm) concentrations
of HCN sustained over 15 minutes, and then ventilates, aerated, and
hosed down; the fumigation chambers were exposed to high (16,000 ppm)
concentration sustained over 20 hours and then ventilated and aerated,
but not hosed down.

4. The execution chambers were demolished, and the structures that
remain have been exposed to the elements since November, 1944. The
fumigation chambers have been preserved intact, with their doors
usually locked.

5. HCN compounds are water soluble, and the dynamics of their formation
are disturbed by contact with water. Conditions for the formation as
well as the buildup of such compounds were thus far less optimal in the
execution chambers than in the fumigation chambers.

The issue is thus _not_ one of whether there were lower or higher HCN
concentrations in the execution chambers than in the fumigation
chambers, although we would expect _much higher_ concentrations in the
fumigation chambers, all other things being equal. The issue is whether
it is possible to ascertain significant differences in the presence of
cyanide compounds in places known never to have been subjected to
cyanide, places known to have been subjected to cyanide a single time,
and places known or suspected to have been subjected to cyanide
numerous times. Both the fumigation chambers, the areas of Krema II,
the best preserved of the large gas chamber/crematorium buildings, as
well as the detention cells of block 11 where a few experimental
gassings with what turned out to be excessive amounts of Zyklon-B took
place during the fall of 1941 all show the presence of cyanide
compounds consistent with more than a single instantiation of cyanide
use.

 
> So, I read the Krakow Report from stem to stern and found that, far from
> reporting HIGHER concentrations, they actually did not report any as HIGH as
> Leuchter had done.
> 
> Any comment?
> 
> =========================

They showed that there was a consistent and significant difference
between places where cyanide was said to have been used on a systematic
basis, and places where it was not used at all, or only on a single
occasion. Leuchter, who did not bother to familiarize himself with the
known history of the camp, attributed the traces of cyanide he found at
Krema II to a single fumigation with cyanide in conjunction with the
1942 typhus epidemic. There are two problems with this interpretation:

1. Krema II dates only from 1943, so it couldn't have been fumigated
during the 1942 typhus epidemic;

2. Places, even when protected from the environoment, that were
fumigated only once during the typhus epidemic no longer show traces of
cyanide compounds.


Regards,
Eugene Holman


From holman@elo.helsinki.fi Wed Apr 11 04:15:06 EDT 2001
Article: 885297 of alt.revisionism
Path: hub.org!hub.org!news.gv.tsc.tdk.com!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!ucberkeley!newsfeed.gamma.ru!Gamma.RU!news1.spb.su!newsfeed1.funet.fi!newsfeed2.funet.fi!newsfeeds.funet.fi!news.helsinki.fi!holman
From: Eugene Holman 
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Re: Auschwitz gas chambers: the evidence for and against
Supersedes: <100420011903018701%holman@elo.helsinki.fi>
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 19:34:07 +0300
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In article <3ADE0984@MailAndNews.com>, Gustave Morgan
 wrote:

> 
>        I quote directly from the very material you posted:

Not "directly", but "decontextualizingly".

> 
> 
> "None of these drawings refers overtly to any part of the buildings being 
> designed or intended to serve as gas chambers whether for fumigation or 
> extermination purposes. In particular the drawings for Leichenkeller 
> (morgue) 
> 1 in crematorium 2 make no provision for ducts or chimneys by means of which 
> Zyklon-B pellets might be inserted through the roof."
> 
> 
>        How can you claim those plans are evidence of gas chambers in the 
> face 
> of that clear and unambiguous statement to the contrary?

For two reasons:
Firstly, you obviously do not understand the difference between "overt"
and "covert". Secondly, you have removed this passage from its larger
context, particularly the sentence "However, van Pelt sought to
illustrate by means of detailed analyses of certain features of the
drawings that it reasonable to infer that certain chambers were
designed to function as gas chambers." Paragraph 7.60, which follows,
goes on to give further details of van Pelt's analysis. 



7.59 The first and most significant body of such evidence is the blue
print material, which consists of a series of architectural drawings
which depict the adaptation of crematoria 2 and 3 and the construction
of crematoria 4 and 5. None of these drawings refers overtly to any
part of the buildings being designed or intended to serve as gas
chambers whether for fumigation or extermination purposes. In
particular the drawings for Leichenkeller (morgue) 1 in crematorium 2
make no provision for ducts or chimneys by means of which Zyklon-B
pellets might be inserted through the roof. However, van Pelt sought to
illustrate by means of detailed analyses of certain features of the
drawings that it reasonable to infer that certain chambers were
designed to function as gas chambers. 

7.60 The principal feature identified by van Pelt is the redesign of
the double door to the supposed gas chamber in crematorium 2. When in
1942 the drawings were executed for the adaptation of this crematorium,
this door in common with others in the same building was designed to
open inwards. Careful scrutiny of the drawings reveals, however, that
the drawing of the inward- opening door has been scratched out. A fresh
drawing dated 19 December 1942 was made by Jakob, the chief of the
drawing office, who rarely undertook drawings himself. It provides for
the door to the supposed gas chamber to open outwards. There is no
apparent reason for this. To van Pelt the obvious explanation is that
the chamber was to be used as a gas chamber. If the door opened
inwards, it would be impossible to open it after the administration of
the gas because of the crush of corpses against the inside or the door
of those who struggled to get out when they realised what was happening
to them. 


Evidence for the Auschwitz gas chambers is _not_ going to come in the
form of a smoking gun: there will be never be a blueprint found with a
room labeled "Judenvergasungskammer". The Nazis went to considerable
lengths not to produce evidence of criminal use: discussion of the
"Final Solution" in writing was a capital crime, and most of the
documents as well as the structures used for this were systematically
destroyed to conceal or obliterate the most obvious evidence. The
blueprints were revised, as van Pelt points out, and some of these
revisions were deposited in a subsidiary archive at Auschwitz which the
Nazis neglected to destroy, thus providing evidence supporting the
conclusion that Kremas II, III, IV, and V were used to kill people.
This conclusion is consistent with the significant amount of cyanide
compounds found in the part of the ruins of Krema II known to have
housed the gas chamber and the independently given testimony of people
who were there as escapees, Sonderkommando workers, medical staff,
guards, or prisoners.


On the destruction of evidence of exterminational activity on Himmler's
orders, the evasion of responsibility on the Nazi hierarchy by orally
given orders and overlapping bureaucracies, and on the meaning of the
term "Special treatment" (=Sonderbehandlung):


The Nuremberg Trials, ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTH DAY Friday, 12 April 1946 

Morning Session 

Source: http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/proc/04-12-46.htm


Defendant, we will now read this document together: 

"I, Kurt Becher, former SS Standartenfuehrer, born 12 September 1909,
at Hamburg, declare the following under oath: 

"1. Between the middle of September and the middle of October 1944 I
caused the Reichsfuehrer SS Himmler to issue the following order, which
I received in two originals, one each for SS Obergruppenfuehrer
Kaltenbrunner and Pohl, and a copy for myself: 

" 'By this order, which becomes immediately effective, I forbid any
extermination of Jews and order that, on the contrary, care should be
given to weak and sick persons. I hold you'- and here Kaltenbrunner and
Pohl were meant-'personally responsible even if this order should not
be strictly adhered to by subordinate offices.' 

"I personally took Pohl's copy to him at his offices in Berlin and left
the copy for Kaltenbrunner at his office in Berlin. Therefore, in my
opinion Kaltenbrunner and Pohl bear the responsibility after this date
for any further killings of Jewish prisoners. 
 
"2. When visiting Mauthausen Concentration Camp on 27 April 1945 at
0900 hours, I was told in the strictest secrecy by the camp commandant,
SS Standartenfuehrer Ziereis, that 'Kaltenbrunner gave me the order
that at least a thousand persons would still have to die at Mauthausen
each day.' 

"The facts mentioned above are true. These statements are made by me
voluntarily and without any coercion. I have read them through, signed
them, and confirmed them with my oath." 

Is that true or false, Defendant? 

KALTENBRUNNER: In part it is correct and in part it is not. I shall
explain it sentence by sentence. 

COL. AMEN: No, suppose you simply tell us what you claim to be false,
because we must get on with this. 

KALTENBRUNNER: I quite believe that you want to save time, but this is
a question of establishing my guilt or my innocence and to do that I
must be given an opportunity to make a statement in detail. Otherwise
neither you nor the Tribunal would know the truth; and that is what we
want here, I hope. I am glad that this witness, Becher, was found and
that this statement is available, because it proves, first that in
September or October 1944 Himmler was forced to issue this order-that
same Himmler about whom it has been definitely established that since
1939 or 1940 he had become guilty of the crime of killing Jews on the
largest scale. 

And now we must find out why in September or October Himmler had given
such an order. Before I had seen this document I stated yesterday and
today that this order was issued by Hitler on my representations, and
obviously this order from Himmler is based on another order which he
received from Hitler. 

Secondly, it is clear to me that Himmler gave such an order to Pohl as
the person responsible for those concentration camps in which Jews were
kept; and thirdly, that he has informed me, Kaltenbrunner, of this as
the person who opposed Himmler. As to Becher, I have to go farther
back. 

Through this man Becher Himmler did the worst things which could
possibly be done and brought to light here. Through Becher and the
Joint Committee in Hungary and Switzerland he released Jews in
exchange, first, for war equipment, then secondly, for raw material,
and thirdly, for foreign currency. I heard about this through the
intelligence service and immediately attempted to stop this, not
through Himmler because I would have failed but through Hitler. At that
moment any personal credit of Himmler with Hitler was undermined, for
this action might have changed the reputation of the Reich abroad in
the most serious manner. 

At the same time my efforts in connection with Burckhardt had already
been going on, and now you understand why the witness Schellenberg
stated that Himmler had said to him, "I am alarmed; now Kaltenbrunner
has got me under his thumb." This means that Kaltenbrunner had
completely revealed all the things Himmler was doing in Hungary and had
told Hitler about it. 

By this order Himmler attempted to camouflage it and to get out of the
whole thing by pretending that the responsibility rested on
Kaltenbrunner and Pohl anyhow. Even according to this document the
responsibility rested on Himmler and Pohl, but Kaltenbrunner had to be
included and be told about it because otherwise he might bring the
subject up with Hitler any day. That is the sense of the document. 

This witness, Becher, is now in Nuremberg. I beg absolutely to be
confronted with him here. I am quite able to prove to the public with
the help of this witness how, starting with the transfer of the
so-called Weiss A.G. in Hungary up to that day, Himmler, with Pohl and
Becher and the two committees in Hungary and Switzerland were running
this business. And I can prove how I fought against it. 

There is yet another accusation in this document, that on 27 April I am
supposed to have given a strictly secret order to Ziereis that 1,000
Jews had to be exterminated in Mauthausen every day. I ask you to have
the witness Hottl, who is also here, called in immediately, so that I
may ask him on what day I dictated and sent by courier-officer to
Mauthausen the order that the entire camp with all its inmates be
surrendered to the enemy. This witness will confirm to you that this
order was given several days before 27 April and that I could not have
given orders to the contrary on 27 April. 

I ask you, sir, not to take me unawares and maneuver me into a position
where I might go to pieces. I shall not break down. I swear to you and
I have sworn that I want to help you establish the truth. 

COL. AMEN: Defendant, you have heard evidence at this Trial with
respect to the meaning of the phrase "special treatment," have you not?
Have you heard that in this courtroom? 

KALTENBRUNNER: The expression "special treatment" has been used by my
interrogators several times every day, yes. 

COL. AMEN: You know what it means? 

KALTENBRUNNER: It can only be assumed, although I cannot give an
accurate explanation, that this was a death sentence, not imposed by a
public court but by an order of Himmler's. 

COLT AMEN: Well, the Defendant Keitel testified that, I think, it was a
matter of common knowledge. Have you not at all times known what was
meant by "special treatment"? "Yes" or "no," please. 

KALTENBRUNNER: Yes. I have told you; an order from Himmler-I am
referring to Hitler's order of 1941, therefore also an order from
Hitler-that executions should be carried out without legal procedure. 



Regards,
Eugene Holman


From holman@elo.helsinki.fi Wed Apr 11 04:15:07 EDT 2001
Article: 885324 of alt.revisionism
From: Eugene Holman 
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Re: You Want Holocaust Pictures?
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 21:19:35 +0300
Organization: University of Helsinki
Lines: 67
Message-ID: <100420012119351585%holman@elo.helsinki.fi>
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Xref: hub.org alt.revisionism:885324

In article <3AD212E9.2F300D5@earthlink.net>, Richard G. Phillips
 wrote:

> Joe Bruno wrote:
> 
> > >Ask and Ye shall receive:
> >
> > http://www.parascope.com/gallery/galleryitems/holocaust/index.htm#executions
> >
> > Joe Bruno
> 
> =========================================
> Phillips
> 
> Joe: Is there something in your Chamber of Horrors that bears directly on the
> question of the existence and operation of mass execution gas chambers at
> Auschwitz and similar centres?
> 
> =================================================================

1. The thread says "Holocaust Pictures". The Holocaust is generally
defined as the measures taken by Nazi Germany to marginalize, remove,
and "cleanse" Germany and any territory it controlled of Jews, Gypsies,
communists, and other elements regarded as racially inferior,
politically suspect, or socially undesirable as defined by the Nazi
ideology. More specifically the term refers to the concrete measures
taken by various branches of the Nazi government against civilian
populations belonging to these targeted groups in Germany and territory
occupied by Germany to achieve these objectives within a timeframe
delimited by the outbreak of the war against Poland on September 1,
1939, and the formal surrender of all German forces on May 7, 1945.

2. The pictures of Nazi Einsatzkommandos mass-murdering civilians in
the "Chamber of Horrors" of horrors thus bear directly on the Holocaust
as defined both generally (policy) and specifically (implementation of
policy).

3. They also bear directly on the question of the existence and
operation of mass execution gas chambers at Auschwitz and similar
centres. The photographs are of mass executions being conducted
brutally, in public, and as labor-intensive piecework. The
justification for the construction of extermination centers and mass
execution gas chambers was to make mass executions more humane, more
private, and more industrial.

4. These gruesome and blatantly public scenes thus depict the types of
situations extermination centers equipped with industrial-scale
execution gas chambers were designed to concretely avoid, with their
functionally retained, but the implementation of this functionality
rendered more sanitary and more efficient. By late 1941 the Germans
were well aware of the logistical complexities of organizing public
open-air shootings involving tens of thousands of victims.

5. The photographs of these scenes that can be reliably located with
respect to time and place are from the Eastern Front between the summer
of 1941 and the spring of 1942. The first extermination camp, Chelmno,
opened for business on December 8, 1941, Systematic gassing of Jews
began at Auschwitz-Birkenau in March 1942, and Belzec received its
first shipment of Jews to be gassed on March 17, 1942. After this,
these scenes of public mass murder become much rarer. The chamber of
horrors continued, quite literally in a bechambered modality, but
concealed behind closed doors and a maze of obfuscating bureaucracy.

You asked. I answered.

Regards,
Eugene Holman


From holman@elo.helsinki.fi Wed Apr 11 04:15:07 EDT 2001
Article: 885339 of alt.revisionism
Path: hub.org!hub.org!nntp1.njy.teleglobe.net!teleglobe.net!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.icl.net!news.tele.dk!195.54.122.107!newsfeed1.bredband.com!bredband!newsfeed1.telenordia.se!algonet!newsfeed1.funet.fi!newsfeed2.funet.fi!newsfeeds.funet.fi!news.helsinki.fi!holman
From: Eugene Holman 
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Re: Auschwitz gas chambers: the evidence for and against
Supersedes: <100420012152330553%holman@elo.helsinki.fi>
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 22:02:26 +0300
Organization: University of Helsinki
Lines: 49
Message-ID: <100420012202266216%holman@elo.helsinki.fi>
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In article <3AE1E7DA@MailAndNews.com>, Gustave Morgan
 wrote:



> 
> 
>       I merely quote the part I want to emphasize, leaving the intelligent 
> reader to get the rest from the original post.  The part I quoted confirms 
> my 
> position:  no one has ever found plans for gas chambers at any of the camps. 
> The only evidence of gas chambers are the post-war testimony and expert 
> opinions.

Testimony by people who were there and expert opinions given by people
who are generally regarded as experts.



>       The statement says, "None of these drawings refers overtly to any part 
> of the buildings being  designed or intended to serve as gas chambers 
> whether 
> for
> fumigation or extermination purposes."  I don't see how anyone could say it 
> more clearly.  The "explanatory context" is nothing more than a summary of  
> someone's baseless opinion that some of the ordinary rooms could have been 
> employed as gas chambers despite the absence of any such reference in the 
> plans.


In other words, I cannot use my litchen as a dining room because the
blueprint of my apartment says "kitchen". If I can produce dozens of
people who testify that they have dined with me in my kitchen, a table
and chairs can be found in my kitchen suitable for dining, and a
forensic analysis of the floor under the table and the table itself
reveals minute food particles, no trace of food particles can be found
in other rooms of my dwelling, you are claiming thast none of this
evidence can be used in support of the allegation that I have used my
kitchen as a dining room.

You are implying that if I ever want to commit a murder, all I need do
is toss the murder weapon into the sea. Barring that, I should use
something like a baseball bat and argue in court that a baseball bat is
for hitting baseballs and for nothing else.

No criminologist or legal system would accept your argument.

Regards,
Eugene Holman


From holman@elo.helsinki.fi Wed Apr 11 04:15:08 EDT 2001
Article: 885342 of alt.revisionism
Path: hub.org!hub.org!nntp1.njy.teleglobe.net!teleglobe.net!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.icl.net!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!newsfeed.gamma.ru!Gamma.RU!news1.spb.su!newsfeed1.funet.fi!newsfeed2.funet.fi!newsfeeds.funet.fi!news.helsinki.fi!holman
From: Eugene Holman 
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Re: Auschwitz gas chambers: the evidence for and against
Supersedes: <100420012209583392%holman@elo.helsinki.fi>
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 22:15:40 +0300
Organization: University of Helsinki
Lines: 59
Message-ID: <100420012215403924%holman@elo.helsinki.fi>
References: <3AE1E7DA@MailAndNews.com>
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In article <3AE1E7DA@MailAndNews.com>, Gustave Morgan
 wrote:



> 
> 
>       I merely quote the part I want to emphasize, leaving the intelligent 
> reader to get the rest from the original post.  The part I quoted confirms 
> my 
> position:  no one has ever found plans for gas chambers at any of the camps. 
> The only evidence of gas chambers are the post-war testimony and expert 
> opinions.

Testimony by people who were there and expert opinions given by people
who are generally regarded as experts. You conveniently forget the
forensic evidence of traces of cyanide compounds in places and vents of
places alleged to have been gas chambers, as well as tell-tale details
such as oversized ventilation systems and the presence in inventory
lists of items for premises alleged to have been gas chambers concealed
as shower rooms such as false shower heads.


>       The statement says, "None of these drawings refers overtly to any part 
> of the buildings being  designed or intended to serve as gas chambers 
> whether 
> for
> fumigation or extermination purposes."  I don't see how anyone could say it 
> more clearly.  The "explanatory context" is nothing more than a summary of  
> someone's baseless opinion that some of the ordinary rooms could have been 
> employed as gas chambers despite the absence of any such reference in the 
> plans.


In other words, I cannot use my kitchen as a dining room because the
blueprint of my apartment says "kitchen". If I can produce dozens of
people who testify that they have dined with me in my kitchen, a table
and chairs can be found in my kitchen suitable for dining, and a
forensic analysis of the floor under the table and the table itself
reveals minute food particles, no trace of food particles can be found
in other rooms of my dwelling, you are claiming thast none of this
evidence can be used in support of the allegation that I have used my
kitchen as a dining room.

You are implying that if I ever want to commit a murder, all I need do
is toss the murder weapon into the sea. Barring that, I should use
something like a baseball bat and argue in court that a baseball bat is
for hitting baseballs and for nothing else. A functional gas chamber is
any room in which conditions can be created in which the people therein
can be exposed to a concentration of a lethal gas for a long enough
time for them to die of the consequences of this exposure. In this
functional sense, any room in a normal dwelling in which a lethal CO
accident takes place is a functional gas chamber, even if the
blueprints say "living room".

No criminologist or legal system would accept your argument.

Regards,
Eugene Holman


From holman@elo.helsinki.fi Wed Apr 11 04:15:09 EDT 2001
Article: 885478 of alt.revisionism
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From: Eugene Holman 
Newsgroups: soc.culture.nordic,alt.revisionism,alt.politics.white-power
Subject: Re: Perceptions of the Russians (was: 36 Lies of Wiesenthal)
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 09:36:35 +0300
Organization: University of Helsinki
Lines: 132
Message-ID: <110420010936351055%holman@elo.helsinki.fi>
References:  <9a21sr$179$1@taliesin.netcom.net.uk> <040420011314162206%holman@elo.helsinki.fi>  <040420012335486573%holman@elo.helsinki.fi>  <050420012305170841%holman@elo.helsinki.fi>  <3AD39429.13E28B0F@earthlink.net>
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In article <3AD39429.13E28B0F@earthlink.net>, Richard G. Phillips
 wrote:

> "Johan M. Olofsson" wrote:
> 
> > On 05 apr 2001, Eugene Holman wrote in alt.revisionism:
> >
> > [newsgroups line trimmed]
> >
> > >4. Although it would be oversimplifying to say that there is no
> > >animosity towards Russians in Estonia, most people there understand
> > >that it 1940-41 and 1944-1991 was a Soviet problem, not a Russian
> > >problem.
> 
> =======================================
> Phillips
> 
> Are you asking us to believe that the Estonians see a sharp distinction
> between
> the two.
> 
> ==============================================

Of course. The Estonians themselves were Soviets - citizens of the
Soviet Union - between 1940 and 1941, and again between 1944 and 1991.
A frequent visitor to Estonia, I know that many of the Soviet-era
migrants are Armenians, Georgians, Uzbeks, Latvians, Lithuanians, etc.,
people that quite obviously are not Russians in appearance or
mannerisms. The late Chechen leader Dzhokhar Dudayev who once was in
charge of a Soviet air force base in Tartu, Estonia, and refused to
obey orders from Moscow to fire on demonstrators, is probably the best
example of a Soviet that everyone in Estonia knows was not a Russian.

Estonia has an ex-Soviet minority and a Russian minority. The two do
not overlap. Before 1940 about 8% of the Estonian population was
Russians, many of them refugees from Bolshevik terror, some of them
Russian Jews. Many of these took Estonian names and assimilated into
the Estonian population during the extreme nationalism that
characterized the late 1930s. Some of these and others, most of them
Russian Jews, were sought out and killed by the Nazis as racially
undesirable elements during the German occupation of Estonia by the
Nazis between 1941 and 1944. When Estonia was taken over again by the
Soviets in 1944, the population was 98% ethnically Estonian.

After massive deportations in the late 1940s which saw about a tenth of
the ethnic Estonian population sent off to Siberia, a major influx of
immigrants from all parts of the Soviet Union was directed into
Estonia. By 1989, the year of the last Soviet census, Estonians made up
62% of the population, with the remaining 38% consisting of more than
100 different Soviet nationalities. Almost all of these immigrants used
Russian as their public language. About 70% of this minority population
consisted of ethnic Russians, another 5% Belarussians or Ukrainians,
and the remaining 25% of them of everything from Armenians and Azeris
to Tadzhiks and Uzbeks. The figures have changed somewhat during the
past 12 years, partially due to in and out migration, partially due to
people re-identifying themselves:

Source: http://www.vm.ee/eng/estoday/2000/minorities.htm


 
December 13, 2000 

Multiethnic Estonia 

Key Facts

*  Estonia`s population is about 1,4 million people.

*  More than 100 different nationalities live in Estonia. The largest
ethnic groups are (as % of the total population): 


Estonians      65.3% 
Russians       28  % 
Ukrainians      2.5% 
Belorussians    1.5% 
Finns           0.9% 
Tatars          0.2% 
Latvians        0.2% 
Poles           0.16% 
Jews            0.16% 


*  Altogether about 500 000 people, or 34.7% belong to various ethnic
groups other than Estonians.

*  Estonian people increasingly see Estonia as a multicultural and
multiethnic country. According to the Ethnic relations survey carried
out in March 2000, 75% of Estonians are of the opinion that different
nationalities and cultures enrich Estonian society and make it more
interesting.

*  86% of the Estonian people find that even very different
nationalities can live in the same country and have good relations. 



> >
> > During a recent visit to Tallin I couldn't help getting the impression that
> > "Russians" in the vocabulary of (at least some) local acquaintancies was
> > rather much of a synonym with "mafioso". "Russians" - as I understood them
> > - weren't them in Narva. The "Russians" were tourists from St Petersburg
> > with smart clothes or locals with guns and exclusive European cars.
> >
> > Don't know, though,  whether these acquaintancies were representative for
> > the Tallin-dwellers in general.
> >

Thus, some Estonian Russians lack a Soviet background, while a
substantial portion of the Soviet-era immigrants are not Rusisans.

"Russian" - "venelane" in Estonian, is a word that can be used in many
senses. In the widest but most inaccurate sense it means anybody that
speaks Russian. In another sense it is sometimes carelessly used as a
synonym for Soviet, or Soviet-origin. In its most precise and careful
sense it means someone of Russian ethnicity. 

Some of the Russians you see in Tallinn are local Russians of various
backgrounds, others are rich tourists from Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Some "Russians", however, are members of local criminal groupings that
may speak Russian as their working language but may just as well be run
by local Azeris, Uzbeks, or Georgians, or combinations thereof, as by
local Russians. A few years ago, for example, the war between Armenia
and Azerbaijan was reflected in the Tallinn streets by the bombing of
several Armenian-owned newspaper kiosks by criminal groupings with
strong Azeri connections. Estonia-resident Armenians and Azeris both
tend to prefer Russian as their public language, but no Estonian in his
or her right mind would regard members of either group as Russians.

Regards,
Eugene Holman


From holman@elo.helsinki.fi Wed Apr 11 04:15:10 EDT 2001
Article: 885484 of alt.revisionism
Path: hub.org!hub.org!newsfeed.mesh.ad.jp!enews.sgi.com!newsfeed1.funet.fi!newsfeed2.funet.fi!newsfeeds.funet.fi!news.helsinki.fi!holman
From: Eugene Holman 
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Re: Auschwitz gas chambers: the evidence for and against
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 10:03:11 +0300
Organization: University of Helsinki
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In article <3AD39635.6957D042@earthlink.net>, Richard G. Phillips
 wrote:

> Eugene Holman wrote:
> 
> ===========================================
> Phillips
> 
> Yeah. "Reasonable" to infer.
> 
> And all those who do not choose to be "reasonable" and infer that way are
> defined
> as Holocaust Deniers and therefore evil people.
> 
> ===================================================

You've got it wrong, Richard. I and others have said here many times
that nobody is concerned about your personal beliefs: "Die Gedanken
sind frei". What we object to is your referring to allegations that the
Nazis killed millions of people by poison gas or that, prior to that,
they rounded up and shot hundreds of thousands of people, most of them
Jews, or that the Nazis produced soap from human fat and lampshades
>from human skin, as "bald-faced lies". These allegations are not
fabrications made up on the spur of the moment: each of them can be
supported by a wide and complex network of historical facts and
informed inferences based on them.

You do not have to agree with the inferences and conclusions drawn by
historians on the basis of these facts, and you are certainly entitled
to retain, for example, the idea that Fred Leuchter's Report is the
important historical document that David Irving once claimed it to be
if you consider such a position justified. Just be ready to defend your
position when others try to show you that there are serious grounds for
reconsidering it.

Holocaust Deniers are not necessarily evil people. As our discussions
in this group have shown, many of them, particularly those of the
younger generation with little knowledge of history or geography, are
often sadly underinformed about the most basic definitions, concepts,
and terminology necessary to make informed conclusions in this field of
inquiry. Others have their thinking clouded by cultural baggage and
unjustified presuppositions. If a person sets out to deny the Holocaust
>from the premises that 6,000,000 German Jews could not have been gassed
at Auschwitz, as the Holocaust story supposedly claims, because there
never were 6,000,000 Jews in Germany to begin with, because no signed
order by Hitler to kill Jews has ever been found, and because nobody
has ever produced an operating manual for the Auschwitz gas chambers,
the adjective "evil" is certainly not the first one that would spring
to my mind to characterize him or her.

Regards,
Eugene Holman


From holman@elo.helsinki.fi Wed Apr 11 04:15:10 EDT 2001
Article: 885486 of alt.revisionism
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From: Eugene Holman 
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Re: Attn Eugene: Zyklon vs. Bullets
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 10:56:53 +0300
Organization: University of Helsinki
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In article <3ad3f06f$0$191@news.impulse.net>, Waldo
 wrote:



> Do you suppose that these dead bodies would obligingly remain standing until
> it was their turn to be dragged out of the room?
> 
> And what a mess! Choking and vomiting precedes death, and afterward
> sphincter muscles relax and if, as you asserted, the bodies are packed so
> tightly that they remain in an upright position, the effects of gravity and
> pressure on the abdomens. . . .
> 
> (My, this *is* an unpleasant subject, but it has a legitimate point)

Yes it is. One reason for abandoning shooting for gassing was that with
the former German soldiers and paramilitary groupings were forced to
deal with the mess, while with the latter Jewish Sonderkommandos could
be made to deal with it.

 
> The following link is to a plan of the gas chamber of Krema II in Auschwitz.
> 
> http://www.parascope.com/gallery/galleryitems/holocaust/holocaust44.htm
> 
> You'll notice that the structure is semi-subterranean. If gassings of humans
> took place therein, the bodies would have to be hauled *up* and out of the
> building, a slow, slippery, messy and inefficient task. Furthermore, if, as
> is claimed, the chamber was washed out after each episode, there is the
> problem of drainage. No drains are indicated on the drawing, (the line down
> the center is clearly a fold in the paper) and even if there were, the
> underground location presents problems, especially since the area is alleged
> to have a high water table.

Nevertheless, places with high water tables do have drains. You have
heard of pumps, dams, dikes, and swamp drainage?


> Then there is the problem of the door:
> 
> http://www.parascope.com/gallery/galleryitems/holocaust/holocaust46.htm
> 
> Apparently this door is no more than 4' wide, leaving room for only one
> party to pass at a time, particularly if it took two of the weakened
> prisoners to drag each body.

No problem with a 4' wide door. Bodies can be dragged with one prisoner
walking in fron holding the head, the other in back holding the feet.
Most of the people gassed were elderly people, women, children, and
babies, so a 4' wide should not have presented any insurmountable
problems.


> What was the capacity of the chamber? Approximately how long would it take
> to empty the chamber before they could *begin* washing it out with hoses?
> And what of the waste water? The washing would require large volumes of
> water, and the highly diluted byproduct would be *extremely* unsanitary.

No more so than what goes down a toilet. There are various kinds of
portable tanks with vacuum pumps that can be used to deal with these
problems. You can see them in action at large construction sites.


> ??  minutes to "load" the chamber,
> 
> 15 minutes for gassing (your figure)
> 
> 15 minutes for ventilation (again, your figure)
> 
> ?? minutes (hours) for unloading
> 
> ?? minutes (hours) for washing
> 
> As for the labor force, I hardly imagine that prisoners would be lining up
> for the job.

1. Sonderkommando were selected, they did not volunteer.
2. The alternative was to be shot or gassed immediately, or live a few
additional days or weeks, fueled by the hope that the killing had to
end sometime.


> It's a grisly and sickening scene to imagine. My only consolation is my
> confidence that it never actually occurred, at least not in *this* way.

Unfortunately, we have testimony from several surviving members of the
Sonderkommandos, as well as the important pictures by David Olère
(http://www.bxscience.edu/organizations/holocaust/olere/index.html),
that it did happen that way.

> 
> Compare the complexities of the above with lining up prisoners in front of a
> concrete lined trench, even if only twenty or thirty at a time, and either
> simply shooting them or using a controlled bolt powered by compressed air
> (similar to those used in cattle slaughter). The victim falls into the
> trench, and can be moved to the Krema as space allows.
> 
> This type of operation would involve far less complication, far less labor,
> far less mess, and could all be conducted indoors, away from public view.
> Add to this that your victims can be persuaded to move to the desired
> location under their own power.

This is a fine method if you are killing a few thousand people. Its
upper limits are reached when you have to deal with 15,000 to 20,000
people at a time. 

> Gassing makes sense - for lice. Not for killing people.

Gassing, which enables you to kill 2,000 people at a time in 15
minutes, makes sense of you are killing hundreds of thousands or
millions of people.


> This is another problem: Why use multiple individual low capacity Kremas
> when large incinerators would have been much more efficient and would likely
> have consumed less fuel?
> 
> The only reason to opt for the Kremas would be if one wanted to keep the
> individuals ashes segregated.

Not really. The Nazis were burning several people per retort. The
Kremas make sense if you want to keep the process manageable. When
cremation capacity was no longer sufficient the Nazi improvised
incinerators - the open pit burnings of the summer of 1944.

> > > B) Removing all valuables from the deceased (especially gold teeth) and
> > >
> > > C) Either the cremation or burial of the victims.
> >
> > This was the most time consuming process, and constraints were set by
> > crematory throughput capacity.
> 
> Exactly.
> 
> > >
> > > No wonder the Russians opted for their famous "bullet to the back of the
> > > head".
> >
> > No, you've got it wrong. The Germans were doing that between June 22,
> > 1941 and January 1942, and they decided that it was too time consuming
> > and labor intensive. Industrial-scale gassing in a building also
> > containing crematorium facilities was much more efficient than Soviet
> > style "bullet to the back of the head" liquidations.
> 
> Note: here you're saying that the bullet to the back of the head is too time
> consuming and labor intensive.

Correct.

> 
> > Using a variant of single bullet method - Jeckeln style
> > "Sardinenpackung" - it took the Germans more than 12 hours to kill and
> > bury 12,000 Jews at Riga on November 30, 1941, and they eventually had
> > to exhume the graves and burn the evidence. Using the low concentration
> > HCN method they could kill 2000 within less than an hour and be sure
> > that the evidence would be destroyed once and for all within a day or
> > two.
> 
> I feel I have shown above that *gassing* is much more labor intensive. As
> for time consuming, you stated above that there was no hurry, as time
> constraints "were set by crematory throughput capacity."

They are labor intensive in different ways. The Riga shootings on
November 30 and December 8, 1941 required 1,800 policemen employed for
two full days to keep order, as well as several dozen German marksmen
to do the shooting. Organizing it took more than two weeks of work in
advance. The result was 25,000 people killed in public, horrble PR for
the Nazis, and hundreds of bodies strewn by the roadside of people who
had tried to escape. A handful of people did manage to escape, some of
them because the Latvian police assigned to keep order purposely shot
to miss.

Killing the same number of people in a gas chamber accommodating 2,000
people at a time could be done within a much shorter timeframe, would
be much more controlled in terms of space and resource use, and most of
the work could be forced on the Jews.

> 
> If you can shoot faster than you can cremate, the time involved in shooting
> is not a factor. The victim moves under their own locomotion, less mess,
> less labor and less complication.

However, few people line up to be shot willingly. There is the problem
of crowd control. The Nazis needed more than 1,700 people to maintain
order and shoot 12,500 people on each of the two days at Riga. Some of
these people were disloyal and allowed victims to escape. If gas
chambers are used far fewer people are needed to keep order, all are
under control of guards, and no victims escape.

> > If you are trying to destroy the evidence, the bullet in the back of
> > the head method still leaves you with the problem of body disposal and
> > some pretty revolting looking bodies.
> 
> Is there some reason that bodies killed by gunshot could *not* be cremated
> as well as those killed by gas?

During 1941 mass shootings were conducted in relatively deep ditches
(the people were killed in layers) pre-dug in forested areas outside of
cities. In the form they were dug they were unsuitable for cremation.
When the order from Himmler came in 1943 to open the graves and cremate
the bodies, new, larger pits had to be dug. It was a mess that, for
Riga at least, polluted the air for weeks.

What's most important was that shootings took place outdoors in
variable circumstances. Gassings and cremations took place indoors
under one roof in circumstances which were more easilty managed by the
executioners.

 
> With limited crematory capacity, and all of the other drawbacks, there would
> be no logical reason to use gas at all.

If the killing is going to be done indoors, gassing is a better and
more humane (for the people doing the gassing) methodology than having
people wait their turn to be shot. Gassing was easy to disguise as a
showering event; shooting is not so easy to disguise.

There is also the question of responsibility. Shooting requires a
shooter, and few normal people could last a steady diet of shooting
people, even if mambers of a "hated, enemy race", particularly if many
of them are women, children, and babies. Gassing behind closed doors by
a team of people in gas masks pooring pellets down a shoot is much les
personal, it's far more difficult to single out any single individual
as the killer.

> 
> Gassing in general makes no sense.

The Nazis had tons of Zyklon-B available, and they needed the bullets
and the marksmen elsewhere. Gassing is cheaper than shooting, it gives
more bang to the buck.


> > Removing, hosing down,
> > checking, moving, and burning bodies was time consuming and each of
> > these subprocesses is subject to various invariable time constraints.
> > Saving ten minutes by using twenty times more Zyklon-B than was
> > necessary to kill the people in the gas chamber would have been
> > wasteful to the extreme, nor would it have any noticeable affect on
> > expiditing the stages of the overall process following the killing.
> 
> I agree Eugene. The only thing more senseless and inefficient that gassing
> in general would be using *more* gas than the job required, and I for one am
> convinced that if *any* gassing of humans took place, it was on a very small
> end experimental scale, and I find it far more likely that no gassings took
> place at all.
> 
>

You are entitiled to your viewpoint. As you see, aside from the fact
that many different kinds of historical evidence independently indicate
that mass gassings did indeed take place, there are sound
methodological and economic arguments suporting it. Gassing made
killing more impersonal, it spread responsibility so that no single
individual could be singled out as the killer. It was more manageable,
and, in the long run, cheaper and easier to conceal than mass shooting.
Unlike shooting, gassing also enabled the Nazis to force the Jews
themselves to participate in the extermination of Jews, something that
would have been almost impossible with shooting. Finally, killing 2,000
people as a group with a few tins of Zyklon-B was much cheaper in terms
of manpower and resource utilization than killing the same number of
people individually using marksmen and bullets.

Regards,
Eugene Holman


From holman@elo.helsinki.fi Wed Apr 11 11:04:43 EDT 2001
Article: 885489 of alt.revisionism
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From: Eugene Holman 
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Re: Attn Eugene: Zyklon vs. Bullets
Supersedes: <110420011105090653%holman@elo.helsinki.fi>
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 11:36:42 +0300
Organization: University of Helsinki
Lines: 283
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In article <3ad3f06f$0$191@news.impulse.net>, Waldo
 wrote:



> Do you suppose that these dead bodies would obligingly remain standing until
> it was their turn to be dragged out of the room?
> 
> And what a mess! Choking and vomiting precedes death, and afterward
> sphincter muscles relax and if, as you asserted, the bodies are packed so
> tightly that they remain in an upright position, the effects of gravity and
> pressure on the abdomens. . . .
> 
> (My, this *is* an unpleasant subject, but it has a legitimate point)

Yes it is. One reason for abandoning shooting for gassing was that with
the former German soldiers and paramilitary operatives were forced to
deal with the mess, while with the latter Jewish Sonderkommandos could
be made to deal with it.

 
> The following link is to a plan of the gas chamber of Krema II in Auschwitz.
> 
> http://www.parascope.com/gallery/galleryitems/holocaust/holocaust44.htm
> 
> You'll notice that the structure is semi-subterranean. If gassings of humans
> took place therein, the bodies would have to be hauled *up* and out of the
> building, a slow, slippery, messy and inefficient task. Furthermore, if, as
> is claimed, the chamber was washed out after each episode, there is the
> problem of drainage. No drains are indicated on the drawing, (the line down
> the center is clearly a fold in the paper) and even if there were, the
> underground location presents problems, especially since the area is alleged
> to have a high water table.

Nevertheless, places with high water tables do have drains. You have
heard of pumps, dams, dikes, and swamp drainage?


> Then there is the problem of the door:
> 
> http://www.parascope.com/gallery/galleryitems/holocaust/holocaust46.htm
> 
> Apparently this door is no more than 4' wide, leaving room for only one
> party to pass at a time, particularly if it took two of the weakened
> prisoners to drag each body.

No problem with a 4' wide door. Bodies can be dragged with one prisoner
walking in front holding the head, the other in back holding the feet.
Most of the people gassed were elderly people, women, children, and
babies, so a 4' wide should not have presented any insurmountable
problems.


> What was the capacity of the chamber? Approximately how long would it take
> to empty the chamber before they could *begin* washing it out with hoses?
> And what of the waste water? The washing would require large volumes of
> water, and the highly diluted byproduct would be *extremely* unsanitary.

No more so than what goes down an institutional toilet. There are
various kinds of portable tanks with vacuum pumps that can be used to
deal with these problems. You can see them in action at large
construction sites.


> ??  minutes to "load" the chamber,
> 
> 15 minutes for gassing (your figure)
> 
> 15 minutes for ventilation (again, your figure)
> 
> ?? minutes (hours) for unloading
> 
> ?? minutes (hours) for washing
> 
> As for the labor force, I hardly imagine that prisoners would be lining up
> for the job.

1. Sonderkommando were selected, they did not volunteer.
2. The alternative was to be shot or gassed immediately, or live a few
additional days or weeks, fueled by the hope that the killing had to
end sometime and you might survive.


> It's a grisly and sickening scene to imagine. My only consolation is my
> confidence that it never actually occurred, at least not in *this* way.

Unfortunately, we have testimony from several surviving members of the
Sonderkommandos, as well as the important pictures by David Olère
(http://www.bxscience.edu/organizations/holocaust/olere/index.html),
that it did happen that way.

> 
> Compare the complexities of the above with lining up prisoners in front of a
> concrete lined trench, even if only twenty or thirty at a time, and either
> simply shooting them or using a controlled bolt powered by compressed air
> (similar to those used in cattle slaughter). The victim falls into the
> trench, and can be moved to the Krema as space allows.
> 
> This type of operation would involve far less complication, far less labor,
> far less mess, and could all be conducted indoors, away from public view.
> Add to this that your victims can be persuaded to move to the desired
> location under their own power.

This is a fine method if you are killing a few thousand people. Its
upper limits are reached when you have to kill 15,000 to 20,000
people at a time. 

> Gassing makes sense - for lice. Not for killing people.

Gassing, which enables you to kill 2,000 people at a time in 15
minutes to half an bour, makes sense if you are killing hundreds of
thousands or millions of people on a regular basis. The Wannsee
Conference Protocol, drawn up almost two months after the first mass
gassing operations were initiated at Chelmno, envisioned the scope of
the 'Final Solution of the Jewish Prblem in Europe", as encompassing
more than 11,000,000 Jews.


> This is another problem: Why use multiple individual low capacity Kremas
> when large incinerators would have been much more efficient and would likely
> have consumed less fuel?
> 
> The only reason to opt for the Kremas would be if one wanted to keep the
> individuals ashes segregated.

Not really. The Nazis were burning several people per retort. The
Kremas make sense if you want to keep the process manageable. When
cremation capacity was no longer sufficient the Nazi improvised
incinerators - the well-documented open pit burnings at
Auschwitz-Birkenau of the summer of 1944.

> > > B) Removing all valuables from the deceased (especially gold teeth) and
> > >
> > > C) Either the cremation or burial of the victims.
> >
> > This was the most time consuming process, and constraints were set by
> > crematory throughput capacity.
> 
> Exactly.
> 
> > >
> > > No wonder the Russians opted for their famous "bullet to the back of the
> > > head".
> >
> > No, you've got it wrong. The Germans were doing that between June 22,
> > 1941 and January 1942, and they decided that it was too time consuming
> > and labor intensive. Industrial-scale gassing in a building also
> > containing crematorium facilities was much more efficient than Soviet
> > style "bullet to the back of the head" liquidations.
> 
> Note: here you're saying that the bullet to the back of the head is too time
> consuming and labor intensive.

Correct.

> 
> > Using a variant of single bullet method - Jeckeln style
> > "Sardinenpackung" - it took the Germans more than 12 hours to kill and
> > bury 12,000 Jews at Riga on November 30, 1941, and they eventually had
> > to exhume the graves and burn the evidence. Using the low concentration
> > HCN method they could kill 2000 within less than an hour and be sure
> > that the evidence would be destroyed once and for all within a day or
> > two.
> 
> I feel I have shown above that *gassing* is much more labor intensive. As
> for time consuming, you stated above that there was no hurry, as time
> constraints "were set by crematory throughput capacity."

Shooting and gassing are labor intensive in different ways. The Riga
shootings on November 30 and December 8, 1941 required 1,700 policemen
employed for two full days to keep order, as well as several dozen
German marksmen to do the shooting. Organizing it took more than two
weeks of work in advance. The result was 25,000 people killed in
public, horrible PR for the Nazis (compounded by the fact that news of
the shooting was broadcast on the BBC and Radio Moscow), and hundreds
of bodies strewn by the roadside of people who had been shot trying to
escape or when they could march no more. A handful of people also
managed to escape, some of them because the Latvian police assigned to
keep order purposely shot to miss when they bolted the line.

Killing the same number of people in a gas chamber accommodating 2,000
people at a time could be done within a much shorter timeframe, would
be much more controlled in terms of space and resource use, could be
completely concealed, and most of the work could be forced on the Jews.

> 
> If you can shoot faster than you can cremate, the time involved in shooting
> is not a factor. The victim moves under their own locomotion, less mess,
> less labor and less complication.

However, few people line up to be shot willingly. There is the problem
of crowd control. The Nazis needed more than 1,700 people to maintain
order and shoot 12,500 people on each of the two days at Riga. Some of
these people were disloyal and allowed victims to escape. If gas
chambers are used far fewer people are needed to keep order, all are
under control of guards, and no victims escape.

> > If you are trying to destroy the evidence, the bullet in the back of
> > the head method still leaves you with the problem of body disposal and
> > some pretty revolting looking bodies.
> 
> Is there some reason that bodies killed by gunshot could *not* be cremated
> as well as those killed by gas?

During 1941 mass shootings were conducted in relatively deep ditches
(the people were killed in layers) pre-dug in forested areas outside of
cities. In the form they were dug they were unsuitable for cremation.
When the order from Himmler came in 1943 to open the graves and cremate
the bodies, new, larger pits had to be dug. It was a mess that, for
Riga at least, polluted the air for weeks.

What's most important was that shootings took place outdoors in
variable circumstances. Gassings and cremations took place indoors
under one roof in circumstances which were more easily managed by the
executioners.

 
> With limited crematory capacity, and all of the other drawbacks, there would
> be no logical reason to use gas at all.

If the killing is going to be done indoors, gassing is a better and
more humane (for the people doing the gassing) methodology than having
people wait their turn to be shot. Gassing was easy to disguise as a
showering event; shooting, suspicious sounding even with a silencer in
a closed building, is not so easy to disguise.

There is also the question of responsibility. Shooting requires a
shooter, and few normal people could last a steady diet of shooting
other people, even if members of a "hated, enemy race", particularly if
many of them are women, children, and babies. Gassing behind closed
doors by a team of people in gas masks pouring pellets down a shoot is
much less personal, it's far more difficult to single out any single
individual as the killer.

> 
> Gassing in general makes no sense.

The Nazis had tons of Zyklon-B available, and they needed the bullets
and the marksmen elsewhere. Gassing is cheaper than shooting, it gives
more bang to the buck.


> > Removing, hosing down,
> > checking, moving, and burning bodies was time consuming and each of
> > these subprocesses is subject to various invariable time constraints.
> > Saving ten minutes by using twenty times more Zyklon-B than was
> > necessary to kill the people in the gas chamber would have been
> > wasteful to the extreme, nor would it have any noticeable affect on
> > expiditing the stages of the overall process following the killing.
> 
> I agree Eugene. The only thing more senseless and inefficient that gassing
> in general would be using *more* gas than the job required, and I for one am
> convinced that if *any* gassing of humans took place, it was on a very small
> end experimental scale, and I find it far more likely that no gassings took
> place at all.
> 
>

You are entitiled to your viewpoint, and some of the points you raise
are interesting. As you see, however, aside from the fact that many
different kinds of historical evidence independently indicate that mass
gassings did indeed take place, there are sound methodological and
economic arguments suporting it. 

a) Gassing made killing more impersonal, it spread and diluted
responsibility so that no single individual could be singled out as the
killer. 

b) Gassing was more manageable, and, in the long run, cheaper and
easier to conceal than mass shooting.

c) Unlike shooting, gassing also enabled the Nazis to force Jews
themselves to participate in the extermination of other Jews, something
that would have been almost impossible with shooting. 

d) Finally, killing 2,000 people as a group with a few tins of Zyklon-B
was much cheaper in terms of efficient manpower and resource
utilization than killing the same number of people individually using
marksmen and bullets. As the war dragged on, bullets became releatively
more expensive, while Zyklon-B became correspondingly cheaper.

Regards,
Eugene Holman


From holman@elo.helsinki.fi Wed Apr 11 11:04:43 EDT 2001
Article: 885492 of alt.revisionism
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From: Eugene Holman 
Newsgroups: soc.culture.nordic,alt.revisionism,alt.politics.white-power
Subject: Re: Perceptions of the Russians (was: 36 Lies of Wiesenthal)
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Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 11:51:19 +0300
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In article <3AD39429.13E28B0F@earthlink.net>, Richard G. Phillips
 wrote:

> "Johan M. Olofsson" wrote:
> 
> > On 05 apr 2001, Eugene Holman wrote in alt.revisionism:
> >
> > [newsgroups line trimmed]
> >
> > >4. Although it would be oversimplifying to say that there is no
> > >animosity towards Russians in Estonia, most people there understand
> > >that it 1940-41 and 1944-1991 was a Soviet problem, not a Russian
> > >problem.
> 
> =======================================
> Phillips
> 
> Are you asking us to believe that the Estonians see a sharp distinction
> between
> the two.
> 
> ==============================================

Of course. The Estonians themselves were Soviets - citizens of the
Soviet Union - between 1940 and 1941, and again between 1944 and 1991.
A frequent visitor to Estonia, I know that many of the Soviet-era
migrants are Armenians, Georgians, Uzbeks, Latvians, Lithuanians, etc.,
people that quite obviously are not Russians in appearance or
mannerisms. The late Chechen leader Dzhokhar Dudayev who once was in
charge of a Soviet air force base in Tartu, Estonia, and refused to
obey orders from Moscow to fire on demonstrators, is probably the best
example of a Soviet that everyone in Estonia knows was not a Russian.

Estonia has an ex-Soviet minority and a Russian minority. The two do
not overlap. Before 1940 about 8% of the Estonian population was
Russians, many of them refugees from Bolshevik terror, some of them
Russian Jews. Many of these took Estonian names and assimilated into
the Estonian population during the extreme nationalism that
characterized the late 1930s. Some of these and others, most of them
Russian Jews, were sought out and killed by the Nazis as racially
undesirable elements during the German occupation of Estonia between
1941 and 1944. When Estonia was taken over again by the
Soviets in 1944, the population was 98% ethnically Estonian.

After massive deportations in the late 1940s which saw about a tenth of
the ethnic Estonian population sent off to Siberia, a major influx of
immigrants from all parts of the Soviet Union was directed into
Estonia. By 1989, the year of the last Soviet census, Estonians made up
62% of the population, with the remaining 38% consisting of more than
100 different Soviet nationalities. Almost all of these immigrants used
Russian as their public language. About 70% of this minority population
consisted of ethnic Russians, another 5% Belarussians or Ukrainians,
and the remaining 25% of them of everything from Armenians and Azeris
to Tadzhiks and Uzbeks. The figures have changed somewhat during the
past 12 years, partially due to in and out migration, partially due to
people re-identifying themselves:

Source: http://www.vm.ee/eng/estoday/2000/minorities.htm


 
December 13, 2000 

Multiethnic Estonia 

Key Facts

*  Estonia`s population is about 1,4 million people.

*  More than 100 different nationalities live in Estonia. The largest
ethnic groups are (as % of the total population): 


Estonians      65.3% 
Russians       28  % 
Ukrainians      2.5% 
Belorussians    1.5% 
Finns           0.9% 
Tatars          0.2% 
Latvians        0.2% 
Poles           0.16% 
Jews            0.16% 


*  Altogether about 500 000 people, or 34.7% belong to various ethnic
groups other than Estonians.

*  Estonian people increasingly see Estonia as a multicultural and
multiethnic country. According to the Ethnic relations survey carried
out in March 2000, 75% of Estonians are of the opinion that different
nationalities and cultures enrich Estonian society and make it more
interesting.

*  86% of the Estonian people find that even very different
nationalities can live in the same country and have good relations. 



> >
> > During a recent visit to Tallin I couldn't help getting the impression that
> > "Russians" in the vocabulary of (at least some) local acquaintancies was
> > rather much of a synonym with "mafioso". "Russians" - as I understood them
> > - weren't them in Narva. The "Russians" were tourists from St Petersburg
> > with smart clothes or locals with guns and exclusive European cars.
> >
> > Don't know, though,  whether these acquaintancies were representative for
> > the Tallin-dwellers in general.
> >

Thus, some Estonian Russians lack a Soviet background, while a
substantial portion of the Soviet-era immigrants are not Rusisans.

"Russian" - "venelane" in Estonian, is a word that can be used in many
senses. In the widest but most inaccurate sense it means anybody that
speaks Russian. In another sense it is sometimes carelessly used as a
synonym for Soviet, or Soviet-origin. In its most precise and careful
sense it means someone of Russian ethnicity. 

Some of the Russians you see in Tallinn are local Russians of various
backgrounds, others are rich tourists from Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Some "Russians", however, are members of local criminal groupings that
may speak Russian as their working language but may just as well be run
by local Azeris, Uzbeks, or Georgians, or combinations thereof, as by
local Russians. A few years ago, for example, the war between Armenia
and Azerbaijan was reflected in the Tallinn streets by the bombing of
several Armenian-owned newspaper kiosks by criminal groupings with
suspected strong Azeri connections. Estonia-resident Armenians and
Azeris both tend to prefer Russian as their public language, but no
Estonian in his or her right mind would regard members of either group
as Russians.

Regards,
Eugene Holman


From holman@elo.helsinki.fi Wed Apr 11 11:04:44 EDT 2001
Article: 885536 of alt.revisionism
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From: Eugene Holman 
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Re: Auschwitz gas chambers: the evidence for and against
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 17:51:15 +0300
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In article <3ae86746.1539661262@news.pacificnet.net>, tom moran
 wrote:

> On Wed, 11 Apr 2001 04:19:09 GMT, Steven Mock 
> wrote:
> 


> Moran wonders:
> Can Mock show where Moran ever said the Cracow report doesn't exist?
> Mock? Anyway, Mock had said "all over" and that's not what the Cracow
> report claims. Cracow report would be scoffed at by MIT and like
> places.
> 
>               ======================================
> 
>

Would you provide your erudite assessment of how the folks at MIT would
view the Leuchter Report?

Regards,
Eugene Holman


From holman@elo.helsinki.fi Wed Apr 11 11:04:44 EDT 2001
Article: 885537 of alt.revisionism
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From: Eugene Holman 
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Re: Why Zyklon and not Bullets (was Re: Attn Eugene: Zyklon vs. Bullets)
Supersedes: <110420011733573699%holman@elo.helsinki.fi>
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In article <3ad3f06f$0$191@news.impulse.net>, Waldo
 wrote:

> Gassing makes sense - for lice. Not for killing people.

Gassing makes sense when the number of beings you have to kill exceeds 
20,000.

> Note: here you're saying that the bullet to the back of the head is too time
> consuming and labor intensive.

It is when you are working with numbers in excess of 20,000. The
Germans learned that during the fall of 1941 at Kiev, Odessa, and Riga,
among other places:

Originally posted to alt.revisionism, 2000-11-30 01:51:02 PST

Reposted with minor corrections and changes, and an additional section
on the methodological significance of Rumbula at the end, 2001-04-11. 

Search Result 1From: Eugene Holman (holman@elo.helsinki.fi)
Subject: Rumbula: a case study of a Holocaust atrocity 
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Date: 2000-11-30 01:51:02 PST 


The Rumbula massacre: a case study of a Holocaust atrocity.
By Eugene Holman (holman@elo.helsinki.fi)

I. Preface
Killing one person is easy and is easily concealed. So is killing ten
people. Killing a hundred or a thousand people during the course of a
single day takes planning and coordination, for which reason it will
necessarily have a public dimension. The degree to which it becomes
public to the degree of crossing the threshold of being international
news reported in real time only increases if a killing action involves
tens of thousands of people. Such was the Rumbula massacre, the first
implementational phase of which took place on November 30, 1941.

The massacre in the Rumbula forest outside of Riga in German-occupied
Latvia, resulted in the shooting outdoors and in full public view of
approximately 25,000 people on two days: November 30th and December
8th, 1941. Although the actual killing was restricted to two days, the
prerequisites for this action began to be put into place in August,
1941 when measures were taken to construct a ghetto in Riga and
ghettoize the city's Jews, while the clean-up afterwards, the first
phase of which, sorting and converting the property confiscated from
the killed Jews into money, took more than a week, and the second phase
of which, exhuming the buried bodies and burning them, took place
only during the summer of 1943. In this essay I am going to focus on the
different phases of the massacre, the type of evidence they generated,
and the signifigance of the Rumbula within the wider context of
changing Nazi policy towards the Jews of Eastern Europe in the light of
changing circumstances and opportunities. Readers of this essay who are
seriously interested in the manner in which the Holocaust unfolded in
the Nazi-occupied parts of the USSR in general, and in Latvia in
particular, as well as in the various methodological problems involved
in making a serious historical study of the Holocaust in Eastern
Europe, are advised to read the introduction to Andrew Ezergailis's
book _The Holocaust in Latvia: 1941-1944_, available on the
internet at http://www.vip.lv/LPRA/EZERG_intr.html.

II. Evidence for the massacre
There are three primary sources of evidence concerning the Rumbula
massacre:
1. The trial records of the various war crimes trials in Germany, the
United States, and the USSR.
2. Captured German documents, including the Stahlecker reports of
October 15, 1941 and January 31, 1942, and the Ereignismeldungen.
3. Records in Latvian archives. These records include:
  a. German documents captured by the Soviets
  b. the Reports of the Soviet extraordinary Commission
  c. the archives of the Riga Municipal and District Police
Reference will be made here to all three of these types of evidence.
Additionally I have included a surreptitiously recorded statement from a
German POW who was at Rumbula as a perpetrator, as well as an account
by a woman who miraculously survived the massacre.

III. The structure of the massacre
A series of events such as the Rumbula massacre has a complex
structure. This structure is not fortuitous, but rather the product of
planning and intention. This structure exists in space as the
administrative premises in which the planning and necessary
arrangements are made according to orders, as the place
where the people to be killed are gathered, at the killing site, as
well as to the various gathering points where the property taken from
the people killed was deposited, stored, classified, and disposed of.
It exists in time as the time-frame which begins with the setting up of
the office for managing the killing and ends when the perpetrators are
satisfied that all that was to be done has been completed. As this
structure interacts with its various environments, it generates various
kinds of evidence: orders for ammunition, orders to the local police to
supply manpower, piles of clothing, human remains in mass graves, and
the eyewitness accounts of perpetrators, witnesses, and survivors. Each
of these in its own way functions as evidence that enables us to
reconstruct the historical event.

A. The orders
When the German's invaded Latvia in June, 1941, they hoped that the
local population, after having lived the past year under communism,
which German propaganda equated with Jewishness, would rise against the
local Jews in "spontaneous" pogroms. Reinhard Heydrich, who at this
time was the Nazi official in charge of the killing of European Jews,
had issued orders on June 29, 1941 to Brigadeführer Walther Stahlecker,
head of Einsatzgruppe A, to provoke the Latvians to kill Jews [Arâjs
Trial Records, Landgericht Hamburg, 1975, pg. 57]. During the first few
weeks of the German occupation there were some seemingly spontaneous
pogroms and other violence against Latvian Jews. These included
shootings in the Bikemieku forest, at the head Riga police
station courtyard and basement, and in synagogues. The most notorious
incident of this kind was the burning of the Great Choral Synagogue,
the main one in Riga, on Gogol along with all the Jews, both Latvian
and refugees from Lithuania, that had sought refuge there. These
outbreaks of violence were uncoordinated, being carried out by local
criminal gangs and individuals seeking revenge against the Jews
collectively for recent injustices suffered by Latvians under a year of
communist rule, propagandized by the Nazis as being a modality of
Jewish ideology. These actions by Latvians were limited to
a timeframe of a few weeks, took place in a few random locations, and
resulted in the death of no more a few thousand Jews
[http://www.vip.lv/LPRA/fg_stahlecker.htm]. The organized, coordinated,
and systematic liquidation of the Jews in Latvia was a job that was to
be done by the Germans themselves:

"From the very beginning it was to be expected that pogroms alone would
not solve the Jewish problem in the Ostland...the goal of the cleansing
operation of the Sicherheitspolizei, in accordance with the fundamental
orders, was the most comprehensive elimination of the Jews as
possible."
- Walther Stahlecker, Report 15 October 1941. Nuremberg Document L-180

Hinrich Lohse, Reichskommissar for Ostland, issued a declaration of
policy on the Jewish question in the Baltics on July 27, 1941. These
guidelines contained specific instructions concerning who was to be
defined as a Jew. Overall, they followed the racially-based Nuremberg
Laws, but they contained a local addition according to which anyone
married to a Jew was also to be considered as a Jew. These guidelines
stipulated that Jews were to be registered, that they were to wear a
six-pointed yellow Jewish star in public, and that they were to be
subject to numerous restrictions such as not being allowed to use the
sidewalk, public transport, or motorized vehicles. Being Jewish was
made a criminal offense. All Jewish property except household
necessities was to be confiscated by the state. All Jews were to be
removed from their homes, which were also to be confiscated by the
state, and they were to be interned in ghettos or concentration camps
where they were to be exploited as slave labor [see S. Myllyniemi, _Die
Neuordnung der baltischen Länder, 1941-1944. Helsinki. 1973, pg. 78]. 

Preparations for the establishment of the Riga ghetto began in
mid-August, 1941. The ghetto had been fenced in by October 10, and the
deadline by which the approximately 25,000 Jews of Riga were to have
been transferred to it was October 25 [A. Ezergailis, _The Holocaust in
Latvia: 1941-1944_, pg. 343]. According to Reichskommisar Lohse, the
purpose of ghettoization was to remove the Jews from the mainstream of
life, to expropriate their property, and to exploit their labor. During
September and October this was the overt German policy towards Jews
living in the largest Baltic cities.

Covertly, German policy was more sinister. In retrospect, the events
that took place in Latvia provide evidence that what was going on there
- stripping Jews of their civil rights and property, killing them in
the countryside and ghettoizing them and exploiting their labor before
eventually killing them in mass-shooting operations in the cities,
disposing of their immovable property by auctioning it off, and of
their movable property by shipping it to Germany as war booty - was not
being decided solely on the local level, but rather was part of a
master plan, one that was not fully set, but rather which was
adapted to changing circumstances. 

The Sicherheitsdienst followed procedures for dealing with Jews which
had parallels in Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Byelorussia, and the
Ukraine. SS Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln, the Nazi mass-killing
specialist who had coordinated many of the massacres of Jews in the
Ukraine, and who went on to coordinate many more in Lithuania, was
assigned by Heinrich Himmler to organize and oversee the killing of
Riga's Jews on October 31, 1941. Himmler's appointment of Jeckeln to
deal with Riga's Jews, then, serves as evidence to show that policy
towards Jews in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe was not simply a
matter being decided on the local level, but rather was one being
comprehensibly coordinated from Berlin in accordance with orders being
issued at the highest level. According to Andrew Ezergailis: "The
deliberate manner and the similarities of the killing procedures that
were followed in Latvia and other territories indicate that a common
plan existed: not only a simple "wish," but a blueprint. Despite the
secrecy concerning the Führerbefehl, the accumulated references, no
matter how indirectly stated, in themselves testified that the EG [=
Einsatzgruppen, EH] acted in accordance with a Hitler order." [A.
Ezergailis, op. cit., pg. 204].

Critical consideration of what was going on in Latvia during the latter
half of 1941 indicates that the events there reflect a radical change
in German policy towards Jews in occupied territories on the
implementational level. This is most clearly evidenced in
administrative reactions towards Hinrich Lohse's policy on the Jewish
question in the Baltics referred to above. Lohse wrote his guidelines
when he was preparing to assume the function of highest civilian
administrator in the Baltics from the military. Accordingly, the
powers of Einsatzgruppe A were to pass over to the SD, from Stahlecker
to SS-Gruppenführer Hans-Adolf Prützmann. Stahlecker objected to
Lohse's
relatively benign policy towards the Jews in the Baltics, pointing out
that it ­ loss of civil rights, public humiliation, confiscation of
property, ghettoization, and exploitation ­ was in conflict with the
more robust policy the SD had been pursuing towards Jews since the
German attack on the USSR on June 22. Lohse's guidelines mentioned
nothing about _killing_ Jews, even though this had been reality in the
Baltic countryside and smaller cities since the invasion of the USSR.
In Stahlecker's Memorandum of August 6, 1941, he criticizes Lohse's
guidelines:

"The projected measures concerning the settling of the Jewish problem
are not in harmony with those orders concerning Jews in the Ostland
given by Einsatzgruppe A of the Security Police and the SD. Nor does
the project take into consideration the new possibilities of cleaning
up the Jewish question in the eastern regions [Ostraum]." [Source:
Stahlecker's Answer to Lohse's Guidelines on Treatment of Jews in
Ostland, Latvian State Historical Archives, LVVA, P-1026-1-3. pp.
237-239]

Stahlecker continues, criticizing Lohse for reintroducing outdated
principles, those used in Poland, to the new situation in the East. The
implication is that although the Jewish problem in Poland _could_ be
settled by separating the Jews from the Gentiles, the East represented
a fundamentally new situation in which more radical measures were
necessary. Stahlecker continues:

"The Reichskommissar appears to strive for a temporary settlement of the
Jewish question, one that applies to the situation in the
Generalgouvernement (Occupied Poland). On the other hand, he fails to
consider the altered situation that the war in the East introduced, and
on the other hand, he fails to examine the unique possibility of a
radical treatment of the Jewish question in the Ostraum...In the
Generalgouvernment there was no serious political danger in leaving the
Jews in their living quarters and work places. But in the Ostland, the
resident Jews or those brought in by the Red powers became the leading
supporters of the Bolshevik idea...Sabotage and acts of terror can be
expected not only from communists not caught in previous actions, but
precisely from Jews who will use every possibility to create disorder.
The pressing need to pacify the Ost area quickly makes it necessary
to eliminate all likely sources of disorder...Consider it desirable,
before issuing any basic statement, once more to discuss these
questions by word of mouth, especially since it is safer that way, and
since it concerns fundamental orders from higher authority to the
Security Police, ones that should not be discussed in writing."

This difference of opinion between the conservative Reichskommissar
Lohse and the more radical Stahlecker and his SD eventually became
known to Berlin, and the Reichssicherheitshauptamt office.
Brigadeführer Müller of the RSHA did his best to resolve the conflict
between them. Müller demoted Lohse to the status of Gebietskommissar
and ordered his men not to obey the orders he, Lohse, had given to stop
the mass murders of Jews and communists. On August 25, Müller wrote in
a letter to Einsatzgruppen A and B:

"As it has been reported to me, the newly appointed Gebietskommissar in
Ostland had approached some Einsatzkommandos to stop the carrying out of
communist and Jewish actions. Upon the order of the Security Police and
the SD commander, these approaches must be denied and immediately
reported to us."
[Latvian State Historical Archives, LVVA, P-1026-1-3. pg. 302]

The killing of the Jews in the Latvian countryside and in smaller
cities by the Einsatzkommandos continued without interruption. Lohse's
policy of ghettoizing Jews in large cities, although in conflict with
that policy, saved, in the short term, the lives of several thousand
Jews that would have been annihilated by the Einsatzkommandos, while,
in the longer term, providing a concentrated group of more than 20,000
Jews, a prerequisite without which the Rumbula massacre would not have
been possible or necessary.

>From the standpoint of the authorities in Berlin, Lohse's guidelines had
contributed to the tempo of killing of Jews in Latvia falling behind
that in Ukraine and Byelorussia.  By the end of September the
Einsatzkommandos had succeeded in killing approximately 30,000 Latvian
Jews in small towns, but the majority of Latvia's approximately 87,500
Jews lived in three large cities: Riga, Daugavpils, and Liepaja. The
failure to keep up with the robust pace of Jewish annihilation in the
South was blamed on SS-Gruppenführer Hans-Adolf Prützmann, the resident
HSSPF commander [Höhere SS und Polizeifürer, see
http://www.skalman.nu/third-reich/ss-hohere-ostland.htm] in the
Ostland:

"In the South, Jeckeln, Rasch, Ohlendorf, and subordinates like Blobel
had made great strides towards resolving the Jewish question...[in
Ukraine] Jeckeln had managed to get the military to cooperate, civil
authorities were not yet a problem, and the execution totals far
higher. So...Himmler decided to have Jeckeln replace Prützmann in the
Ostland." [R. Breitman, _The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the
Final Solution, New York, 1991,_, pg. 214.]


B. SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln

SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln, the Nazis' specialist in mass
killing operations, is the key figure in the Rumbula massacre. During
the summer and autumn of 1941 Jeckeln had commanded mobile killing
units which were responsible for some of the greatest mass-killing
operations in the Ukraine, including the reprisal killing of 300 Jewish
men and 139 Jewish women in Starokonstatinov, the shooting of 33,771
Jews at Babi Yar outside of Kiev, of 23,600 Jews in Kamenets-Podolsky,
of 1,303 Jews in Berdichev, of 15,000 Jews in Dnepropetrovsk, and of
another 15,000 Jews in Rovno [R. Hilberg, _The Destruction of the
European Jews_, New York and London, 1985, pg. 110 ff., see
also http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/babi_yar.htm]. During the course
of his work, Jeckeln had designed a highly efficient methodology for
mass execution called the 'Jeckeln method' or 'Sardinenpackung' -
sardine-packing. This involved marching the people to be killed to the
killing site where pre-dug grave pits awaited them. They were forced to
undress and lie face-down in the graves in layers, whereupon they were
shot in the back of the head. Then a new layer of victims was forced to
lie on top of the just killed lower layer and shot, with the process
being continued until the grave was full.

On October 31 Jeckeln was assigned to Riga by Himmler. On November 5th
his staff of about fifty men arrived in the city. Jeckeln himself had
been called to Berlin where, on November 12th, he was given the command
by Himmler to kill the inhabitants of the Riga ghetto [Landgericht
Hamburg: Urteil gegen Jahnke u. a. 1973, pg. 54, see also G. Fleming,
_Hitler and the Final Solution_, Berkeley, 1982, chapters 7 and 8]. As
a possible means for countermanding Lohse's more benign policy towards
the Jews under his control, Jeckeln was told by Himmler: "Tell Lohse
that it is my order, and that it is also the express wish of the
Führer.[H. Krausnick & H-H. Wilhelm, _ Die Truppe des
Weltanschauungskrieges: Die Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei und
des SD, 1938-1942_, Stuttgart, 1981. pg. 567]. According to Ezergailis,
Jeckeln, who regarded exterminating Jews as a top security issue, was
eager to carry out the assignment. He strenuously objected to the
practice of employing Jews as slave labor by the military, the
Sicherheitsdienst, and German civilians because he considered every
contact between Jews and non-Jews to offer increased opportunities for
sabotage [Ezergailis op. cit. pg. 240].
 
The Jeckeln plan for killing the more than 20,000 Jews of the Riga
ghetto is dissected in detail and supported by the relevant documents
presented at the 1973 Hamburg Landgericht trial of Lt. Friedrich
Jahnke.

Jeckeln's primary tasks included finding a suitable killing site,
timing the transfer of the ghetto inhabitants to the killing site so
that the operation could be done by daylight, a scarce commodity at
these latitudes in late November, ordering and making facilities for
storing the requisite amount of ammunition, and drawing up timetables
and defining the duties for the approximately 1,700 German and Latvian
soldiers, police officers, and civil guards that were needed to secure
order along the ten kilometer road from the ghetto to the killing site
and carry out the actual killings. Arrangements also had to be made for
collecting, classifying, storing, and disposing of the property and
valuables left behind by the Jews. Instructions and other information
had to be translated into and out of German, Latvian, Russian, and
Yiddish. 


C. Organizing the mass-killing

€ November 12. Jeckeln receives order from Himmler to kill the Jews in
the Riga ghetto.

€ November 14. Jeckeln arrives in Riga. He tells Lohse of the order from
Himmler, mentioning that this is Hitler's desire, thus making it
impossible to countermand.

€ November 18 or 19. Jeckeln has selected a suitable killing site in
the woods near the Rumbula train station.
After this date he begins detailed planning and the assignment of men
to their specific functions:
- SS-Unterstormenführer Ernst Hemicker is assigned to organize the
digging of pits for 25,000 bodies [Hemicker's testimony: Landgericht
Hamburg: indictment of Oberwinder et at., pgs. 133-136]. 

€ November 20 or 21. 300 Russian POWs, supervised by Germans or
Latvians, dig six pits, each ten meters by ten meters and 2 1/2 to 3
meters deep. The job was finished within three days. Jeckeln assigned
men from his bodyguard who had previously participated in such actions
to do the killing. These included soldiers  that are known only
by their surnames: Endl, Lüschen, and Wedekind. The leader of his
driver's commando, Oberführer Johannes Zingler, was also asked to
participate [See Landgericht Hamburg: indictment of Oberwinder et at.,
pg. 61]. No Latvians were entrusted with a shooting assignment.

Jeckeln also had to arrange for transportation. He himself had only a
dozen passenger cars and half a dozen motorcycles available. He ordered
Sturmbannführer Zimmermann and Riga Polizeihauptmneister Müller to find
the trucks and buses that would be needed to transport the more than
1,000 guards that were needed along the way to keep order and prevent
any escapes to their stations, and to pick up the bodies of anyone shot
during the march to the killing site.

Within his first three days in Riga, Jeckeln had consultations with the
Sicherheitsdienst (= SD) and the Ordnungspolizei commanders, including
Rudolf Lange, the highest Gestapo and SD officer in German-occupied
Latvia and Arnold Kirste, Lange's link to the Arâjs commando, a local
fascist grouping. Lange was able to make the entire 300-man Arâjs
commando available to Jeckeln, as well as half of the fifty-man Latvian
guard unit of the Reiersa St. SD headquarters, as well as about fifty
German SD men, the remnants of Einsatzkommando 2, in Riga. Lange was
able to provide Jeckeln with about 400 men who had SD backgrounds and
thus had prior experience in killing civilians. These men were assigned
to key positions inside and around the Riga ghetto and near the killing
pits at locations where the use of a weapon against Jews who refused to
allow themselves to be slaughtered was more likely to be needed. 

The Ordnungspolizei (= OP) was organizationally autonomous, but
functionally within the SD network. Before the Arâjs commando had been
trained, the 9th battalion of the OP had performed most of the killings
of civilians for Stahlecker. Several hundred members of the OP were
posted to assure order, that is to say, "obtain and maintain a German
character". The OP had two basic functions: 
1. to oversee Latvian precinct police
2. to oversee the ghettoization of Riga's Jews and, after October 25,
1941, to guard the ghetto. This means that members of the OP were going
to be involved in the liquidation of the ghetto.

The 2nd Company of the 22nd reserve Battalion of the OP, from Riga,
supplied Jeckeln with approx. 70 men, and the 3rd company of the same
battalion, from Jelgava, supplied another 70. The men of the 2nd
company were assigned the tasks of overseeing the clearing of Jewish
apartments, organizing the Jews into marching columns, and accompanying
the columns to the killing site. The men of the 3rd company were
assigned the task of guarding the periphery at Rumbula. The chief OP
activist was Major Karl Heise, and he was also evidently the liaison
person with the Latvian Schutzmannschaften [Landgericht Hamburg:
Urteil gegen Jahnke u. a. 1973, pg. 124]. According to Ezergailis,
Jeckeln also had another five regiments of the OP at his disposal, but
it is not known which, if any, he actually used [Ezergailis, op. cit.,
pg. 244]

€ November 27. Jeckeln called a meeting of the high Ordnungspolizei and
SD commanders at the headquarters of the Schutzpolizei. The purpose of
this meeting was to coordinate the activities of all of the
participating units:
1. Jeckeln's staff
2. the SDS
3. the OP
4. the Latvian Schutzmannschaften

Altogether, between 20 and 25 people were present [Landgericht Hamburg:
Urteil gegen Jahnke u. a. 1973, pg. 61]. Among the Latvians present
were Viktors Arâjs, Roberts Osis, and R. S^tiglics. The purpose of the
meeting was to finalize the schedule for the operation, to ensure the
timely and precise organization of the columns of Jews leaving the
ghetto, and to assign the tasks to the men in the gauntlet at the
killing site. 

€ November 28. A train carrying approximately 1,000 Berlin Jews left
Berlin for Latvia. It was parked at on a siding at the Skirotava
station, a few hundred meters from the Rumbula killing site, when it
arrived late in the night of November 29th.

€ November 29. Jeckeln convened a meeting at the Ritterhaus where he
delivered a talk about the upcoming liquidation of the Riga ghetto. In
the talk, he stressed that the operation was a patriotic obligation,
and that refusal to participate was equal to refusal to participate in
a war, desertion. He ordered that the HSSPF staff members who did not
have a specific assignment were to be present at the pits as observers
so that everybody would know and witness the event ("machte er zur
Pflicht, den Exekutionen als Zuschauer beizuwohnen, um niemanden
Mitwisserschaft und Mitzeugenschaft zu ersparen"; Landgericht Hamburg:
Urteil gegen Jahnke u. a. 1973, pg. 67-68).)

 On that evening at 7 PM a coordinating session took place at the Riga
headquarters of the Schutzpolizei. Major Karl Heise gave orders to his
men to be ready at 4.00 AM the next morning in the ghetto for the
resettlement of the Jews. He told them that the Jews were to be taken
over by others at the Rumbula train station. The  members of the
Schutzpolizei who were in charge of Latvian police precincts were told
to supervise the Latvians and ensure that the Jews were out of their
houses and organized in columns of 1,000. The action would take two
days and would begin in the westernmost part of the ghetto. Lieutenant
Hesfer and 12 Schutzpolizei. Members assigned the task of
organizing and supervising the clearing of Jews from their homes. The
Latvian and Jewish ghetto police were ordered to assist Hesfer and
assure that no panic arose. The Riga precinct police as well as the
Riga district police under the command of Jânis Veide were also ordered
to participate in the "resettlement" of the Jews in the ghetto to
another camp [Osvalds Elîte, _Ênas purvâ_, Riga 1989, pg. 27].


D. Implementing the massacre

Day 1: November 30th
€ 4:00 A.M. Precinct lieutenant Hesfer, a 12-man German Schutzpolizei
team, an unknown number of Arâjs men, and the 80-man internal Jewish
guard started awakening Jews beginning at the westernmost houses and
along Lacplesa and Jekabpils St. The Jews were told to be ready in half
an hour on Sadovnikova St. A crew of workers began cutting exit holes
in the fence to shorten the way out of the ghetto to Maskavas St. and
on to the road leading to Rumbula.
€ 4:30 A.M. The wake-up gang went back to the first houses to make sure
that no Jews remained. Jews who refused or were unable to go were shot
in their homes, in the stairwells, and on the streets. Other Jews tried
to run away or hide, many of them being shot. Organizing them into
columns was also difficult. According to contemporary sources, between
600 and 1,000 people lay dead in the ghetto by noon [I. Saburowa, Yad
Vashem Archive: "Bericht über Rigaer ghetto," deposition of Saburowa,
October 1954, o2/371].
€ 6:00 A.M. in the Riga ghetto. The first column, 1,000 people marching
five abreast, accompanied by 50 Latvian police officers and headed and
tailed by two Germans, started the ten kilometer march to the killing
site at Rumbula.

 "The control of the columns did not proceed as anticipated. With all
the shouting and shooting the pace could not be kept up. The columns
stretched out. The Germans at the head and the tail of the columns, not
seeing what was happening, lost control of the situation. The body
count along the road multiplied.
   In the stretch of road just past the Skirotava station lived the
Garkalns family. Their daughter, seven years old, remembered a column
of Jews driven past her house, which was about one hundred feet off the
road. Pandemonium had broken out. Some Jews had refused to continue,
there had been shouting, shoving, and beatings. The column had started
up again. A few paces down the road a disturbance had broken out anew.
There was shooting, and people were killed and left on the roadside.
The people panicked, wailing began. The girl's mother hung blankets
before the window, and the youngster was taken to the back room and
forbidden to look out again. 
   As the march progressed, many women with children and old people
could not keep up. Possessions were thrown away, littering the road and
the ditches. The strong and the healthy attempted to support their
exhausted relatives, who were falling by the wayside. They were picked
up and thrown onto the horse-drawn wagons following the columns. Many
were shot and corpses fell on the road. The order was to kill not only
those who attempted to flee, but also those who left the column to rest
at the roadside. No doubt many of the people were killed by the column
guards." [A. Ezergailis: _The Holocaust in Latvia:
1941 - 1944_, 1996, pg. 251.]
 
€ 6:00 A.M. at Rumbula. The trainload of Berlin Jews that had arrived
the previous night were marched to the killing site at Rumbula and shot
before the first column of ghetto Jews arrived.

€ 9:00 A.M. The first column of Jews reached the killing site. The
column was led in groups of fifty into a funnel-like gauntlet formed by
a gang of SD men, Ordnungspolizei, and Arâjs men. As the Jews, whipped,
kicked, and beaten progressed into the gauntlet, they were forced to
leave valuables in boxes, and then to remove their outer garments, then
to strip, some to the skin, others to their underwear. Coats, clothing,
and shoes went into separate piles, which were loaded into trucks and
taken to the city by Arâjs men. The Jews were led down a ramp into the
pit and made to lie face down on top of those who had already been
shot. They were killed with a single shot to the back of the head fired
>from a Russian automatic weapon set to fire single shots by a marksman
standing about two meters away.

Jeckeln oversaw the action along with many high SS, SD, and police
officials, including Reichskommissar of Ostland Lohse, from the top of
the embankment.

According to Ezergailis:

"Jeckeln ordered his own people to be at the shooting, to witness it,
and to share in the crime. He also called in police commanders from
Pskov and other cities in the region to witness the killings.
Stahlecker was called in from the Leningrad front to be present,
perhaps to point out that he had not finished the job and to show how
it must be done.� [op. cit. pg- 254.]

€ 12:00 noon. The last column of Jews is sent out of the ghetto. 

€ 1: 00 P.M. A final check is made of the western part of the ghetto.
About twenty bedridden Jews are taken to the ghetto hospital, from
which they are removed and shot in the head in front of the building
later that day [Hamburg Landgericht: Urteil gegen Jahnke u.a., pp.
75-76].

€ 2:00 P.M. Corpses along the street and in the ghetto are cleared and
taken to the Jewish cemetery by work Jews, where they are dumped into a
common grave without rites or prayer. Any Jews lying on the street who
show signs of life are shot dead by members of the Arâjs commando.
5:00 P.M. The systematic shooting stops, although sentries were posted
at the pits. Not everyone had been killed and the sentries were ordered
to shoot anyone in the pits that showed signs of life. A unit of the
Latvian Schutzmannschaft was assigned to guard the general area.

**************************************************************
Excursus: An eyewitness account of the events of November 30, 1941
Of interest here is the degree to which the ideas represented by the
exploiters (Lohse and his faction) and the exterminationists
(Stahlecker and his faction) dominate the text. Note also that Bruns
talks of an order subsequent to the Riga massacre to carry out mass
killings in a more discrete fashion in the future.
--------------------------------------------
Source: http://www.fpp.co.uk/Auschwitz/documents/BrunsCSDICb.html#Bruns 

>From David Irving's archive: 
A genuine eye-witness account of shootings of Jews on the Eastern Front 
 
GERMAN ARMY engineer-colonel Walter Bruns was stationed near Riga in
November 1941, when he witnessed a mass shooting of Jews, including a
thousand just arrived from Berlin.

In British captivity in April 1945, Bruns, by then a Major-General, was
overheard by hidden microphones [the verbatim transcripts are
accessible from our Index at right] whispering to fellow prisoners what
he had seen.


TOP SECRET

C. S. D. I. C. (U.K.)

G.G. REPORT

IF THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS REPORT IS REQUIRED FOR FURTHER
DISTRIBUTION. IT SHOULD BE PARAPHRASED SO THAT NO MENTION IS MADE OF THE
PRISONERS' NAMES, NOR OF THE METHODS BY WHICH THE INFORMATION HAS BEEN
OBTAINED
 
 
  S.R.G.G. 1158(C)
 
The following conversation took place between:

CS/1952 -- Generalmajor BRUNS (Heeres-Waffenmeisterschule I, BERLIN)
Captd GÖTTINGEN 8 Apr 45 and other Senior Officer PW whose voices could
not be identified. 

Information received: 25 Apr 45



TRANSLATION

BRUNS: As soon as I heard those Jews were to be shot on Friday I went
to a 21-year old boy and said that they had made themselves very useful
in the area under my command, besides which the Army MT park had
employed 1500 and the 'Heeresgruppe' 800 women to make underclothes of
the stores we captured in RIGA; besides which about 1200 women in the
neighbourhood of RIGA were turning millions of captured sheepskins into
articles we urgently required: ear-protectors, fur caps, fur
waistcoats, etc. Nothing had been provided, as of course the Russian
campaign was known to have come to a victorious end in October 1941! In
short, all those women were employed in a useful capacity. I tried to
save them. I told that fellow ALTENMEYER(?) whose name I shall always
remember and who will be added to the list of war criminals: "Listen to
me, they represent valuable man-power!" 'Do you call Jews valuable
human beings, sir?" I said: "Listen to me properly, I said valuable
man-power'. I didn't mention their value as human beings." He said:
"Well, they're to be shot in accordance with the FÜHRER's orders! I
said: "FÜHRER's orders?" "Yes", whereupon he showed me his orders. This
happened at SKIOTAWA(?), 8 km. from RIGA, between SIAULAI and JELGAVA,
where 5000 BERLIN Jews were suddenly taken off the train and shot. I
didn't see that myself, but what happened at SKIOTAWA(?) - to cut a
long story short, I argued with the fellow and telephoned to the
General at HQ, to JAKOBS and ABERGER(?), and to a Dr. SCHULTZ who was
attached to the Engineer General, on behalf of these people; I
told him: "Granting that the Jews have committed a crime against the
other peoples of the world, at least let them do the drudgery; send
them to throw earth on the roads to prevent our heavy lorries
skidding," "Then I'd have to feed them!" I said: "The little amount of
food they receive, let's assume 2 million Jews - they got 125 gr. of
bread a day - if we can't even manage that, the sooner we end the war
the better." Then I telephoned, thinking it would take some time. At
any rate on Sunday morning I heard that they had already started  on
it. The Ghetto was cleared and they were told: "You're being
transferred: take along your  essential things." Incidentally it was a
happy release for those people, as their life in the Ghetto was a
martyrdom. I wouldn't believe it and drove there, to have a look.   
?: Everyone abroad knew about it; only we Germans were kept in
ignorance.    

BRUNS:I'll tell you something: some of the details may have been
correct, but it was remarkable that the firing squad detailed that
morning - six men with tommy-guns were posted at each pit; the pits
were 24 m in length and 3 m in breadth - they had to lie down like
sardines in a tin, with their heads in the centre. Above there were six
men with tommy-guns who gave them the coup de grâce. When I arrived
those pits were so full that the living had to lie down on top of the
dead; then they were shot and, in order to save room, they had
to lie down neatly in layers. Before this, however, they were stripped
of everything at one of the stations - here at the edge of the wood
were the three pits they used that Sunday and here they stood in a
queue 1 1/2 km long which approached step by step - a queueing up for
death. As they drew nearer they saw what was going on. About here they
had to hand over their jewellery and suitcases. All good stuff was put
into the suit-cases and the remainder thrown on a heap. This was to
serve as clothing for our suffering population - and then a little
further on they had to undress and, 500 m in front of the wood, strip
completely; they were only permitted to keep on a chemise or
knickers. They were all women and small two year-old children. Then all
those cynical remarks! If only I had seen those tommy-gunners, who were
relieved every hour - because of over-exertion, carry out their task
with distaste, but no, nasty remarks like: "Here comes a Jewish
beauty!" I can still see it all in my memory: a pretty woman in a
flame-coloured chemise. Talk about keeping the race pure: at RIGA they
first slept with them and then shot them to prevent them from talking.
Then I sent two officers out there, one of whom is still alive, because
I wanted eye-witnesses. " I didn't tell them what was going on, but
said: "Go out to the forest of SKIOTAWA(?), see what's up there
and send me a report." I added a memorandum to their report and took it
to JAKOBS myself. He said: "I have already two complaints sent me by
Engineer 'Bataillone' from the UKRAINE." There they shot them on the
brink of large crevices and let them fall down into them; they nearly
had an epidemic of plague, at any rate a pestilential smell. They
thought they could break off the edges with picks, thus burying them.
That loess there was so hard that two Engineer 'Bataillone' were
required to dynamite the edges; those 'Battaillone' complained. JAKOBS
had received that complaint. He said: "We didn't quite know
how to tell the FÜHRER. We'd better do it through CANARIS." CANARIS had
the unsavoury task of waiting for the favourable moment to give the
FÜHRER certain gentle hints. A fortnight later I visited the
Oberbürgermeister or whatever he was called then, concerning some other
business. ALTENMEYER(?) triumphantly showed me: "Here is an order, just
issued, prohibiting mass-shootings on that scale from taking place in
future. They are to be carried out more discreetly." From warnings
given me recently I knew that I was receiving still more attentions
>from spies.   
?: A wonder you're still alive.   
BRUNS: At GÖTTINGEN, I expected to be arrested every day.   

----------------------------
Note: "Skiotawa" is Skirotava, the sorting station for Riga livestock
and the disembarking point for European Jews shipped to Latvia.
Additional eyewitness testimony of the events surrounding this
operation indicates that the ghetto Jews did not march willingly to the
killing site at Rumbula. 
 **************************************************************

December 8, 1941
The events of December 8 do not differ much from those of November 30.
Some deficiencies in the system were tightened, otherwise, the same
units that had participated in the first action participated in his one
as well. There was less disorder and only some 300 Jews were killed
within the ghetto. The marching was made easier by a deception: the
Jews were told to leave the 20 kilograms of possessions they would be
allowed to take with them at the ghetto, they would be sent later by
truck to their destination.

At least three people survived the second day. This is part of the
account of one of them, Frida Michelson, a dressmaker. She had been
driven out of the ghetto and was marching along Maskavas Road towards
the killing site:

"Our column started pouring into the forest. At the entrance stood a
large wooden box. An SS man armed with a club stood next to it and
shouted over and over: "Drop all your valuables and money in this
box....We were driven on. A bit further a Latvian policeman ordered:
"Take off your coat and throw it on top of the rest." There was already
a mountain of overcoats. My brain was working feverishly. the instinct
for survival took hold of me. No matter how small, how precarious the
chance, I was prepared to take it. I left my line and ran up to a
policeman, "Look, I am a  specialist dressmaker." I showed him
my document and various diplomas. "I can bring lots of benefits to
people. Look at my papers." "Go show your diplomas to Stalin!" the
policeman shouted, and hit my hand with his fist. My papers flew in all
directions­my treasured documents­the passport, diplomas, Ausweise. I
removed my overcoat and threw it on top of the rest. The policemen were
driving still harder. The shooting, the uninterrupted shooting, was
becoming louder. We were nearing the end. An indescribable fear took
hold of me, a fear that bordered on loss of mind. I started screaming
hysterically, tearing my hair, to drown out the sound of the
shooting. "Atrak! Atrak!" "Take off your clothes! Just leave on the
underclothes." Another mountain of clothes. I had on a white nightshirt
and three layers of underclothes. I fell down on the heap of clothes
and tried to hide in it. Right away I felt a sharp pain of the whip on
my back., "Get up immediately and take your clothes off." "I am already
undressed," I answered crying. "I have only a nightshirt on." "Then go
and no games!" I went. Still screaming and tearing my hair. A policeman
stopped me and shouted obscenities­why was I not undressed yet? In the
same moment another woman run up to the policeman: "My husband is
Latvian, see up there, that policeman knows my husband well. I should
not die with the rest of them." Using this moment while the attention
of the policeman was distracted by the woman, I threw myself on the
ground with my face in the snow feigning death. People were passing me,
some stepped on me­I did not move. A little later I heard
voices over me in Latvian: "Look, there is somebody here on the
ground." ..I lay there still as a rock. Then I heard the voices of the
policemen: "Atrak! Atrak!"...I was not fully conscious. A woman passing
by me was lamenting, "Ai, ai, ai..." Some object hit me on the back,
then another. More objects were falling on me, Finally I realized that
these were shoes, because they fell in pairs. I was being covered with
shoes galoshes, felt boots. This load was heavy, but I did not move a
muscle...More and more shoes were falling on me. I could hear people
crying bitterly, parting with each other­and run, run,,run... Finally
the cries and moaning ceased, the shooting stopped, I could
hear the shovels working not far away, probably to cover the bodies. I
heard Russian spoken. A mountain of footwear was pressing down on me.
My body was numb from cold and immobility. However, I was fully
conscious now. The snow under me had melted from the heat of my body. I
was lying in a puddle of water, -cold water...Quiet for a while. Then,
>from the direction of the trench a child's cry: "Mama! Mama! Mamaaa!" A
few shots. Quiet. Killed. [F. Michelson, _I Survived Rumbuli_. New
York, 1979, pp. 88-93]


E. How public was the Rumbula massacre?
The Rumbula massacre took place in Riga, a major port city, in full
public view over the course of two days. The killings at the ghetto and
its immediate surroundings, as well as the killing of stragglers and
would-be escapees along Maskavas Road were done in full view of any
passers by. The killing site at Rumbula was partially concealed by
trees, but the noise and pandemonium were audible from a considerable
distance. The stationmaster at the Rumbula station testified that he
could hear the whole operation from his house [Alberts Baranovskis
testimony of November 18, 1944, in H. Krausnick & H-H. Wilhelm, _
Die Truppe des Weltanschauungskrieges: Die Einsatzgruppen der
Sicherheitspolizei und der SD, 1938-1942_, Stuttgart, 1981. pg. 565].

The whole city of Riga knew of the massacre by the evening of November
30, and everyone was talking about it. Radio broadcasts, one a
German-language one from Moscow, the other a BBC broadcast from London,
announced the killings at Rumbula to the world at large.

The city of Riga was reminded of the Rumbula massacre in a most
unpleasant manner during the summer of 1943. Himmler issued a general
order that the bodies of massacre victims buried in mass graves were to
be exhumed and burned. Even though the burning was done in secrecy,
with the participants killed after the job was completed, both the
smoke and the stench and the fact that the Rumbula pits are less than
100 meters from a major train line, made it impossible to hide what was
going on from the inhabitants of Riga or from travelers to or from that
city. At the Arâjs Trial, Leopold Schlesigner, leader of the SD
Department III N, discusses this operation in his deposition,
pp. 1392-1407. He recalls that during the summer of 1943 a westerly
wind blew and "a horrible stench settled on the city." He asked his
Latvian co-workers the cause of the smell and they answered that he
should know that it came from the burning of Jewish corpses. Despite
this attempt to destroy the evidence, burned bones and other remains of
the massacre are still to be found at the site [cf. Mordecai Lapid,
"The Memorial at Rumbuli: A First Hand Account," _Jewish Frontier_,
June 1971, pgs. 10-19].


F. The numbers at Rumbula
The factuality of the Rumbula massacre is beyond dispute, there are,
however, differences of opinions concerning the number of people killed
in the operation. After the killings SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich
Jeckeln told his assistant, Paul Degenhart, that 22,000 rounds of
ammunition had been used at Rumbula itself. At his trial in Riga in
1946 Friedrich Jeckeln said that the number of victims was at least
20,000. On each of the two days more than 1,000 people were killed
either in the ghetto or along the road to Rumbula. To this
figure must be added the 1,000 Berlin Jews who were the first to be
shot at the Rumbula pits on the morning of November 30, 1941. The
entire operation can be estimated to have killed a total of
approximately 25,000 people.


IV. The significance of the Rumbula massacre

A. General significance

The Rumbula massacre was one of the largest, most public, and best
document massacres carried out by the Germans in Eastern Europe. For
this reason alone it serves as an excellent case study demonstrating
the degree to which German policy towards the Jews in Latvia and, by
analogy, elsewhere in Eastern Europe, was the product of a combination
of a master plan and local improvisation. It is certainly worthy of
note that the operation was directed from Berlin, that Reichsführer
Heinrich Himmler himself assigned the task to SS-Obergruppenführer
Friedrich Jeckeln, his mass-killing specialist, after becoming aware of
policy differences concerning the fate of Jews in the Soviet-occupied
Baltics. Equally important is the fact that Jeckeln and his
subordinates were convinced that they were acting on an orally given
command from Hitler himself, a command that originated in an
understanding of the radically changed relationship of Germany's policy
towards Jews resulting from the attack on the USSR, a country with a
Jewish population of more than 5,000,000 and led by an ideology which
Nazi propaganda identified with Judaism: destroying communism and
destroying Judaism were, in the vew of the Nazis, the same thing. 

As far as Latvia's Jews were concerned, the Rumbula massacre was a major
tragedy, but not the beginning or end of their tragic ordeal. Several
thousand Jews had been killed in Latvia by the Einsatzkommandos and
local operatives during the five months that preceded the Rumbula
massacre, and major massacres of Jews were carried out in other Latvian
cities as well as in the several dozen concentration camps operated by
the Nazis in Latvia afterwards. All in all, approximately 70,000 of the
approximately 86,500 Latvian Jews ­ four out of every five ­ were
killed in the Holocaust. To this number must be added hundreds of
Jewish refugees from neighboring Lithuania killed by the Germans
during the first weeks of the war, as well as the tens of thousands of
German, Hungarian, Czech and other Jews sent to Latvia as slave
laborers by the Nazis after most Latvian Jews had been killed who died
there as a consequence of abuse, starvation, disease, or were shot in
conjunction with the liquidation of the concentration camps when the
Germans withdrew from Latvia.


B. Methodological significance

As far as the evolution of killing methods is concerned, the second day
of the Rumbula massacre, December 8, 1941, coincides with the opening
of the first extermination camp at Chelmno near Lodz in Poland. The
Chelmno camp used the techniques of deception that had been developed
within the T4 euthanasia program. It is interesting to consider the
similarities and differences between Riga, one of the last mass
shootings, and Chelmno, the first site of mass gassings. 

At Chelmno the first victims were mainly Jews from the Lodz ghetto who
were told, like the Jews of Riga, that they were to be resettled. They
were transported to the camp, mostly in railway freight cars, taken to
a cellar changing room by guards posing as medical staff, told to
deposit their clothes for disinfection and their money and valuables
for safekeeping, and sent on in groups of fifty or sixty up an inclined
ramp following signs "To the bath". At the end was a large truck with
steel sides and roof. As Adolf Eichmann related in his own papers
concerning his trip to Chelmno, they were packed inside, the doors were
closed and locked, after which they were driven off into the woods.
There a group of work-Jews was waiting for them beside a trench grave
they had dug. The driver stopped at the edge of the grave and pushed a
button which diverted the exhaust gas from the truck's motor into the
sealed body of the truck. When the people inside the truck were dead,
the doors were opened, the bodies removed, checked for gold teeth and
hidden vakuables, and then thrown into the awaiting graves.

At Chelmno we see a merger of the type of killing used in Riga -
ghettoization, a cover story that the ghetto inhabitants are going to
be resettled, and their orderly transportation to a killing site. But
there, unlike the situation in Riga, the killing site is enclosed and
thus not dependent on weather and daylight, in addition to being
closed, nor did what was going to happen become apparent until it was
too late to escape. The method, CO administered stealthily in an
enclosure that is functionally a gas chamber, is derived from the T4
euthanasia program and requires a far smaller manpower-input than the
individual shots in the head administered at Riga. As we follow the
Holocaust into 1942, we see a rapid decrease in Riga type mass murders,
and a corresponding increase and methodological evolution in the number
of facilities like Chelmno, where the killing can take place in a more
orderly and industrial fashion. The main improvements wer:
a. omitting the trip from the camp to the mass graves by constructing
statonary gas chambers which fed into mass graves or crematory
facilities in the immediate vicinity;
b. increasing the size of the functional gas chambers from facilities
that could accommodate a few dozen victims at a time to facilities that
could accommodate hundreds or even a thousand or more victims at a
time;
c. improving the killing agent from CO to the cheaper and more lethal
Zyklon-B.

The protocol to the Wannsee Conference refers explicitly to the
practical experience gained solving the Jewish problem during the time
between the attack on the USSR on June 22, 1941 and the convening of
the conference on January 20, 1942 as having a direct bearing on the
form the Final Solution of the Jewish Question in Europe would assume,
a question which, the protocol notes, at that time encompassed the
estimated more than 11,000,000 racial Jews still living in Europe. 

The logistical complexity of the Rumbula massacre, as well as the
merger of the method of using a cover story about resettlement with the
ruse of concealed functional gas chambers developed within the
framework of the T4 program, provided the justification and
methodological framework for gradually abandoning mass shootings for
extermination centers like Chelmno, which had been functioning for more
than a month when the conference was convened. Riga and Chemno both
serve as examples of the instructive practical experience dealing with
the Jewish Question which is referred to in the notorious protocol. 


Regards,
Eugene Holman


From holman@elo.helsinki.fi Wed Apr 18 11:29:06 EDT 2001
Article: 885549 of alt.revisionism
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From: Eugene Holman 
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Re: Auschwitz gas chambers: the evidence for and against
Supersedes: <110420011850501187%holman@elo.helsinki.fi>
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 18:53:22 +0300
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In article <3AD3598A.67E973E8@nizkor.org>, Steven Mock
 wrote:

> Gustave Morgan wrote:

> >       With the sort of evidence you offer, anyone could prove that any
> > building in Chicago could have been used as a homicidal gas chamber.
> 
> In theory, any such building could be.  Though in the case of Auschwitz, the
> additional evidence of the disproportionately large ventillation system, the
> massive cremation capacity, the traces of cyanide residue found all over the
> facilities after the war, along with several other important indicators in the
> documentation (not to mention the corroborating eyewitness testimony,
> transportation records, etc.) certainly add to the plausibility of the theory.
> 

Every enclosed space in Chicago in which a gas accident could happen is
a potential gas chamber. The Chicago police and fire department could
produce figures on the number of people who die or commit suicide
annually by using gas in poorly ventilated premises, thus creating
lethal gas chambers for themselves. To have a minimally functional gas
chamber, all that is required is the ability to replicate, control, and
ventilate conditions analogous to those arising in a domestic gas
accident involving a concentration of lethal gas somewhat in excess of
the lethal limit. No high technology, double gasketing, stainless steel
doors, ocean-proof windows, or fancy bells or whistles are necessary.
If what is being done is not only criminal in intent but also expected
to be repeated on a regular basis, the perpetrator has all the more
reason to make his functional gas chamber blend into the background to
the degree possible.

If I were to tie you up in the room in which you are sitting now, close
and tape shut the windows and doors, and put an open tin of Zyklon-B
pellets in a place in the same room which you, tied up, could not
reach, you would be a goner in ten to fifteen minutes. The harder you
struggled to release yourself, the more deeply you would breathe, thus
expediting the killing process. Think about it.

Regards,
Eugene Holman


From holman@elo.helsinki.fi Wed Apr 18 11:29:06 EDT 2001
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From: Eugene Holman 
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Attn: Waldo: Why Zyklon and not Bullets (was Re: Attn Eugene: Zyklon vs. Bullets)
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In article <3ad3f06f$0$191@news.impulse.net>, Waldo
 wrote:

> Gassing makes sense - for lice. Not for killing people.

Gassing makes sense when the number of beings you have to kill exceeds 
20,000.

> Note: here you're saying that the bullet to the back of the head is too time
> consuming and labor intensive.

It is when you are working with numbers in excess of 20,000. The
Germans learned that during the fall of 1941 at Kiev, Odessa, and Riga,
among other places:

Originally posted to alt.revisionism, 2000-11-30 01:51:02 PST

Reposted with minor corrections and changes, and an additional section
on the methodological significance of Rumbula at the end, 2001-04-11. 

Search Result 1From: Eugene Holman (holman@elo.helsinki.fi)
Subject: Rumbula: a case study of a Holocaust atrocity 
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Date: 2000-11-30 01:51:02 PST 


The Rumbula massacre: a case study of a Holocaust atrocity.
By Eugene Holman (holman@elo.helsinki.fi)

I. Preface
Killing one person is easy and is easily concealed. So is killing ten
people. Killing a hundred or a thousand people during the course of a
single day takes planning and coordination, for which reason it will
necessarily have a public dimension. The degree to which it becomes
public to the degree of crossing the threshold of being international
news reported in real time only increases if a killing action involves
tens of thousands of people. Such was the Rumbula massacre, the first
implementational phase of which took place on November 30, 1941.

The massacre in the Rumbula forest outside of Riga in German-occupied
Latvia, resulted in the shooting outdoors and in full public view of
approximately 25,000 people on two days: November 30th and December
8th, 1941. Although the actual killing was restricted to these two
days, the prerequisites for this action began to be put into place in
August, 1941 when measures were taken to construct a ghetto in Riga and
ghettoize the city's Jews, while the clean-up afterwards, the first
phase of which, sorting and converting the property confiscated from
the killed Jews into money, took more than a week, and the second phase
of which, exhuming the buried bodies and burning them, took place
only during the summer of 1943. In this essay I am going to focus on the
different phases of the massacre, the type of evidence they generated,
and the signifigance of the Rumbula within the wider context of
changing Nazi policy towards the Jews of Eastern Europe in the light of
changing circumstances and opportunities. Readers of this essay who are
seriously interested in the manner in which the Holocaust unfolded in
the Nazi-occupied parts of the USSR in general, and in Latvia in
particular, as well as in the various methodological problems involved
in making a serious historical study of the Holocaust in Eastern
Europe, are advised to read the introduction to Andrew Ezergailis's
book _The Holocaust in Latvia: 1941-1944_, available on the
internet at http://www.vip.lv/LPRA/EZERG_intr.html.

II. Evidence for the massacre
There are three primary sources of evidence concerning the Rumbula
massacre:
1. The trial records of the various war crimes trials in Germany, the
United States, and the USSR.
2. Captured German documents, including the Stahlecker reports of
October 15, 1941 and January 31, 1942, and the Ereignismeldungen.
3. Records in Latvian archives. These records include:
  a. German documents captured by the Soviets
  b. the Reports of the Soviet extraordinary Commission
  c. the archives of the Riga Municipal and District Police
Reference will be made here to all three of these types of evidence.
Additionally I have included a surreptitiously recorded statement from a
German POW who was at Rumbula as a perpetrator, as well as an account
by a woman who miraculously survived the massacre.

III. The structure of the massacre
A series of events such as the Rumbula massacre has a complex
structure. This structure is not fortuitous, but rather the product of
planning and intention. This structure exists in space as the
administrative premises in which the planning and necessary
arrangements are made according to orders, as the place
where the people to be killed are gathered, at the killing site, as
well as to the various gathering points where the property taken from
the people killed was deposited, stored, classified, and disposed of.
It exists in time as the time-frame which begins with the setting up of
the office for managing the killing and ends when the perpetrators are
satisfied that all that was to be done has been completed. As this
structure interacts with its various environments, it generates various
kinds of evidence: orders for ammunition, orders to the local police to
supply manpower, piles of clothing, human remains in mass graves, and
the eyewitness accounts of perpetrators, witnesses, and survivors. Each
of these in its own way functions as evidence that enables us to
reconstruct the historical event.

A. The orders
When the German's invaded Latvia in June, 1941, they hoped that the
local population, after having lived the past year under communism,
which German propaganda equated with Jewishness, would rise against the
local Jews in "spontaneous" pogroms. Reinhard Heydrich, who at this
time was the Nazi official in charge of the killing of European Jews,
had issued orders on June 29, 1941 to Brigadeführer Walther Stahlecker,
head of Einsatzgruppe A, to provoke the Latvians to kill Jews [Arâjs
Trial Records, Landgericht Hamburg, 1975, pg. 57]. During the first few
weeks of the German occupation there were some seemingly spontaneous
pogroms and other violence against Latvian Jews. These included
shootings in the Bikemieku forest, at the head Riga police
station courtyard and basement, and in synagogues. The most notorious
incident of this kind was the burning of the Great Choral Synagogue,
the main one in Riga, on Gogol along with all the Jews, both Latvian
and refugees from Lithuania, that had sought refuge there. These
outbreaks of violence were uncoordinated, being carried out by local
criminal gangs and individuals seeking revenge against the Jews
collectively for recent injustices suffered by Latvians under a year of
communist rule, propagandized by the Nazis as being a modality of
Jewish ideology. These actions by Latvians were limited to
a timeframe of a few weeks, took place in a few random locations, and
resulted in the death of no more a few thousand Jews
[http://www.vip.lv/LPRA/fg_stahlecker.htm]. The organized, coordinated,
and systematic liquidation of the Jews in Latvia was a job that was to
be done by the Germans themselves:

"From the very beginning it was to be expected that pogroms alone would
not solve the Jewish problem in the Ostland...the goal of the cleansing
operation of the Sicherheitspolizei, in accordance with the fundamental
orders, was the most comprehensive elimination of the Jews as
possible."
- Walther Stahlecker, Report 15 October 1941. Nuremberg Document L-180

Hinrich Lohse, Reichskommissar for Ostland, issued a declaration of
policy on the Jewish question in the Baltics on July 27, 1941. These
guidelines contained specific instructions concerning who was to be
defined as a Jew. Overall, they followed the racially-based Nuremberg
Laws, but they contained a local addition according to which anyone
married to a Jew was also to be considered as a Jew. These guidelines
stipulated that Jews were to be registered, that they were to wear a
six-pointed yellow Jewish star in public, and that they were to be
subject to numerous restrictions such as not being allowed to use the
sidewalk, public transport, or motorized vehicles. Being Jewish was
made a criminal offense. All Jewish property except household
necessities was to be confiscated by the state. All Jews were to be
removed from their homes, which were also to be confiscated by the
state, and they were to be interned in ghettos or concentration camps
where they were to be exploited as slave labor [see S. Myllyniemi, _Die
Neuordnung der baltischen Länder, 1941-1944. Helsinki. 1973, pg. 78]. 

Preparations for the establishment of the Riga ghetto began in
mid-August, 1941. The ghetto had been fenced in by October 10, and the
deadline by which the approximately 25,000 Jews of Riga were to have
been transferred to it was October 25 [A. Ezergailis, _The Holocaust in
Latvia: 1941-1944_, pg. 343]. According to Reichskommisar Lohse, the
purpose of ghettoization was to remove the Jews from the mainstream of
life, to expropriate their property, and to exploit their labor. During
September and October this was the overt German policy towards Jews
living in the largest Baltic cities.

Covertly, German policy was more sinister. In retrospect, the events
that took place in Latvia provide evidence that what was going on there
- stripping Jews of their civil rights and property, killing them in
the countryside and ghettoizing them and exploiting their labor before
eventually killing them in mass-shooting operations in the cities,
disposing of their immovable property by auctioning it off, and of
their movable property by shipping it to Germany as war booty - was not
being decided solely on the local level, but rather was part of a
master plan, one that was not fully set, but rather which was
adapted to changing circumstances. 

The Sicherheitsdienst followed procedures for dealing with Jews which
had parallels in Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Byelorussia, and the
Ukraine. SS Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln, the Nazi mass-killing
specialist who had coordinated many of the massacres of Jews in the
Ukraine, and who went on to coordinate many more in Lithuania, was
assigned by Heinrich Himmler to organize and oversee the killing of
Riga's Jews on October 31, 1941. Himmler's appointment of Jeckeln to
deal with Riga's Jews, then, serves as evidence to show that policy
towards Jews in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe was not simply a
matter being decided on the local level, but rather was one being
comprehensibly coordinated from Berlin in accordance with orders being
issued at the highest level. According to Andrew Ezergailis: "The
deliberate manner and the similarities of the killing procedures that
were followed in Latvia and other territories indicate that a common
plan existed: not only a simple "wish," but a blueprint. Despite the
secrecy concerning the Führerbefehl, the accumulated references, no
matter how indirectly stated, in themselves testified that the EG [=
Einsatzgruppen, EH] acted in accordance with a Hitler order." [A.
Ezergailis, op. cit., pg. 204].

Critical consideration of what was going on in Latvia during the latter
half of 1941 indicates that the events there reflect a radical change
in German policy towards Jews in occupied territories on the
implementational level. This is most clearly evidenced in
administrative reactions towards Hinrich Lohse's policy on the Jewish
question in the Baltics referred to above. Lohse wrote his guidelines
when he was preparing to assume the function of highest civilian
administrator in the Baltics from the military. Accordingly, the
powers of Einsatzgruppe A were to pass over to the SD, from Stahlecker
to SS-Gruppenführer Hans-Adolf Prützmann. Stahlecker objected to
Lohse's relatively benign policy towards the Jews in the Baltics,
pointing out that it ­ loss of civil rights, public humiliation,
confiscation of property, ghettoization, and exploitation ­ was in
conflict with the more robust policy the SD had been pursuing towards
Jews since the German attack on the USSR on June 22. Lohse's guidelines
mentioned nothing about _killing_ Jews, even though this had been
reality in the Baltic countryside and smaller cities since the invasion
of the USSR. In Stahlecker's Memorandum of August 6, 1941, he
criticizes Lohse's guidelines:

"The projected measures concerning the settling of the Jewish problem
are not in harmony with those orders concerning Jews in the Ostland
given by Einsatzgruppe A of the Security Police and the SD. Nor does
the project take into consideration the new possibilities of cleaning
up the Jewish question in the eastern regions [Ostraum]." [Source:
Stahlecker's Answer to Lohse's Guidelines on Treatment of Jews in
Ostland, Latvian State Historical Archives, LVVA, P-1026-1-3. pp.
237-239]

Stahlecker continues, criticizing Lohse for reintroducing outdated
principles, those used in Poland, to the new situation in the East. The
implication is that although the Jewish problem in Poland _could_ be
settled by separating the Jews from the Gentiles, the East represented
a fundamentally new situation in which more radical measures were
necessary. Stahlecker continues:

"The Reichskommissar appears to strive for a temporary settlement of the
Jewish question, one that applies to the situation in the
Generalgouvernement (Occupied Poland). On the other hand, he fails to
consider the altered situation that the war in the East introduced, and
on the other hand, he fails to examine the unique possibility of a
radical treatment of the Jewish question in the Ostraum...In the
Generalgouvernment there was no serious political danger in leaving the
Jews in their living quarters and work places. But in the Ostland, the
resident Jews or those brought in by the Red powers became the leading
supporters of the Bolshevik idea...Sabotage and acts of terror can be
expected not only from communists not caught in previous actions, but
precisely from Jews who will use every possibility to create disorder.
The pressing need to pacify the Ost area quickly makes it necessary
to eliminate all likely sources of disorder...Consider it desirable,
before issuing any basic statement, once more to discuss these
questions by word of mouth, especially since it is safer that way, and
since it concerns fundamental orders from higher authority to the
Security Police, ones that should not be discussed in writing."

This difference of opinion between the conservative Reichskommissar
Lohse and the more radical Stahlecker and his SD eventually became
known to Berlin, and the Reichssicherheitshauptamt office.
Brigadeführer Müller of the RSHA did his best to resolve the conflict
between them. Müller demoted Lohse to the status of Gebietskommissar
and ordered his men not to obey the orders he, Lohse, had given to stop
the mass murders of Jews and communists. On August 25, Müller wrote in
a letter to Einsatzgruppen A and B:

"As it has been reported to me, the newly appointed Gebietskommissar in
Ostland had approached some Einsatzkommandos to stop the carrying out of
communist and Jewish actions. Upon the order of the Security Police and
the SD commander, these approaches must be denied and immediately
reported to us."
[Latvian State Historical Archives, LVVA, P-1026-1-3. pg. 302]

The killing of the Jews in the Latvian countryside and in smaller
cities by the Einsatzkommandos continued without interruption. Lohse's
policy of ghettoizing Jews in large cities, although in conflict with
that policy, saved, in the short term, the lives of several thousand
Jews that would have been annihilated by the Einsatzkommandos, while,
in the longer term, providing a concentrated group of more than 20,000
Jews, a prerequisite without which the Rumbula massacre would not have
been possible or necessary.

>From the standpoint of the authorities in Berlin, Lohse's guidelines had
contributed to the tempo of killing of Jews in Latvia falling behind
that in Ukraine and Byelorussia.  By the end of September the
Einsatzkommandos had succeeded in killing approximately 30,000 Latvian
Jews in small towns, but the majority of Latvia's approximately 87,500
Jews lived in three large cities: Riga, Daugavpils, and Liepaja. The
failure to keep up with the robust pace of Jewish annihilation in the
South was blamed on SS-Gruppenführer Hans-Adolf Prützmann, the resident
HSSPF commander [Höhere SS und Polizeifürer, see
http://www.skalman.nu/third-reich/ss-hohere-ostland.htm] in the
Ostland:

"In the South, Jeckeln, Rasch, Ohlendorf, and subordinates like Blobel
had made great strides towards resolving the Jewish question...[in
Ukraine] Jeckeln had managed to get the military to cooperate, civil
authorities were not yet a problem, and the execution totals far
higher. So...Himmler decided to have Jeckeln replace Prützmann in the
Ostland." [R. Breitman, _The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the
Final Solution, New York, 1991,_, pg. 214.]


B. SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln

SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln, the Nazis' specialist in mass
killing operations, is the key figure in the Rumbula massacre. During
the summer and autumn of 1941 Jeckeln had commanded mobile killing
units which were responsible for some of the greatest mass-killing
operations in the Ukraine, including the reprisal killing of 300 Jewish
men and 139 Jewish women in Starokonstatinov, the shooting of 33,771
Jews at Babi Yar outside of Kiev, of 23,600 Jews in Kamenets-Podolsky,
of 1,303 Jews in Berdichev, of 15,000 Jews in Dnepropetrovsk, and of
another 15,000 Jews in Rovno [R. Hilberg, _The Destruction of the
European Jews_, New York and London, 1985, pg. 110 ff., see
also http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/babi_yar.htm]. During the course
of his work, Jeckeln had designed a highly efficient methodology for
mass execution called the 'Jeckeln method' or 'Sardinenpackung' -
sardine-packing. This involved marching the people to be killed to the
killing site where pre-dug grave pits awaited them. They were forced to
undress and lie face-down in the graves in layers, whereupon they were
shot in the back of the head. Then a new layer of victims was forced to
lie on top of the just killed lower layer and shot, with the process
being continued until the grave was full.

On October 31 Jeckeln was assigned to Riga by Himmler. On November 5th
his staff of about fifty men arrived in the city. Jeckeln himself had
been called to Berlin where, on November 12th, he was given the command
by Himmler to kill the inhabitants of the Riga ghetto [Landgericht
Hamburg: Urteil gegen Jahnke u. a. 1973, pg. 54, see also G. Fleming,
_Hitler and the Final Solution_, Berkeley, 1982, chapters 7 and 8]. As
a possible means for countermanding Lohse's more benign policy towards
the Jews under his control, Jeckeln was told by Himmler: "Tell Lohse
that it is my order, and that it is also the express wish of the
Führer.[H. Krausnick & H-H. Wilhelm, _ Die Truppe des
Weltanschauungskrieges: Die Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei und
des SD, 1938-1942_, Stuttgart, 1981. pg. 567]. According to Ezergailis,
Jeckeln, who regarded exterminating Jews as a top security issue, was
eager to carry out the assignment. He strenuously objected to the
practice of employing Jews as slave labor by the military, the
Sicherheitsdienst, and German civilians because he considered every
contact between Jews and non-Jews to offer increased opportunities for
sabotage [Ezergailis op. cit. pg. 240].
 
The Jeckeln plan for killing the more than 20,000 Jews of the Riga
ghetto is dissected in detail and supported by the relevant documents
presented at the 1973 Hamburg Landgericht trial of Lt. Friedrich
Jahnke.

Jeckeln's primary tasks included finding a suitable killing site,
timing the transfer of the ghetto inhabitants to the killing site so
that the operation could be done by daylight, a scarce commodity at
these latitudes in late November, ordering and making facilities for
storing the requisite amount of ammunition, and drawing up timetables
and defining the duties for the approximately 1,700 German and Latvian
soldiers, police officers, and civil guards that were needed to secure
order along the ten kilometer road from the ghetto to the killing site
and carry out the actual killings. Arrangements also had to be made for
collecting, classifying, storing, and disposing of the property and
valuables left behind by the Jews. Instructions and other information
had to be translated into and out of German, Latvian, Russian, and
Yiddish. 


C. Organizing the mass-killing

€ November 12. Jeckeln receives order from Himmler to kill the Jews in
the Riga ghetto.

€ November 14. Jeckeln arrives in Riga. He tells Lohse of the order from
Himmler, mentioning that this is Hitler's desire, thus making it
impossible to countermand.

€ November 18 or 19. Jeckeln has selected a suitable killing site in
the woods near the Rumbula train station.
After this date he begins detailed planning and the assignment of men
to their specific functions:
- SS-Unterstormenführer Ernst Hemicker is assigned to organize the
digging of pits for 25,000 bodies [Hemicker's testimony: Landgericht
Hamburg: indictment of Oberwinder et at., pgs. 133-136]. 

€ November 20 or 21. 300 Russian POWs, supervised by Germans or
Latvians, dig six pits, each ten meters by ten meters and 2 1/2 to 3
meters deep. The job was finished within three days. Jeckeln assigned
men from his bodyguard who had previously participated in such actions
to do the killing. These included soldiers  that are known only
by their surnames: Endl, Lüschen, and Wedekind. The leader of his
driver's commando, Oberführer Johannes Zingler, was also asked to
participate [See Landgericht Hamburg: indictment of Oberwinder et at.,
pg. 61]. No Latvians were entrusted with a shooting assignment.

Jeckeln also had to arrange for transportation. He himself had only a
dozen passenger cars and half a dozen motorcycles available. He ordered
Sturmbannführer Zimmermann and Riga Polizeihauptmneister Müller to find
the trucks and buses that would be needed to transport the more than
1,000 guards that were needed along the way to keep order and prevent
any escapes to their stations, and to pick up the bodies of anyone shot
during the march to the killing site.

Within his first three days in Riga, Jeckeln had consultations with the
Sicherheitsdienst (= SD) and the Ordnungspolizei commanders, including
Rudolf Lange, the highest Gestapo and SD officer in German-occupied
Latvia and Arnold Kirste, Lange's link to the Arâjs commando, a local
fascist grouping. Lange was able to make the entire 300-man Arâjs
commando available to Jeckeln, as well as half of the fifty-man Latvian
guard unit of the Reiersa St. SD headquarters, as well as about fifty
German SD men, the remnants of Einsatzkommando 2, in Riga. Lange was
able to provide Jeckeln with about 400 men who had SD backgrounds and
thus had prior experience in killing civilians. These men were assigned
to key positions inside and around the Riga ghetto and near the killing
pits at locations where the use of a weapon against Jews who refused to
allow themselves to be slaughtered was more likely to be needed. 

The Ordnungspolizei (= OP) was organizationally autonomous, but
functionally within the SD network. Before the Arâjs commando had been
trained, the 9th battalion of the OP had performed most of the killings
of civilians for Stahlecker. Several hundred members of the OP were
posted to assure order, that is to say, "obtain and maintain a German
character". The OP had two basic functions: 
1. to oversee Latvian precinct police
2. to oversee the ghettoization of Riga's Jews and, after October 25,
1941, to guard the ghetto. This means that members of the OP were going
to be involved in the liquidation of the ghetto.

The 2nd Company of the 22nd reserve Battalion of the OP, from Riga,
supplied Jeckeln with approx. 70 men, and the 3rd company of the same
battalion, from Jelgava, supplied another 70. The men of the 2nd
company were assigned the tasks of overseeing the clearing of Jewish
apartments, organizing the Jews into marching columns, and accompanying
the columns to the killing site. The men of the 3rd company were
assigned the task of guarding the periphery at Rumbula. The chief OP
activist was Major Karl Heise, and he was also evidently the liaison
person with the Latvian Schutzmannschaften [Landgericht Hamburg:
Urteil gegen Jahnke u. a. 1973, pg. 124]. According to Ezergailis,
Jeckeln also had another five regiments of the OP at his disposal, but
it is not known which, if any, he actually used [Ezergailis, op. cit.,
pg. 244]

€ November 27. Jeckeln called a meeting of the high Ordnungspolizei and
SD commanders at the headquarters of the Schutzpolizei. The purpose of
this meeting was to coordinate the activities of all of the
participating units:
1. Jeckeln's staff
2. the SDS
3. the OP
4. the Latvian Schutzmannschaften

Altogether, between 20 and 25 people were present [Landgericht Hamburg:
Urteil gegen Jahnke u. a. 1973, pg. 61]. Among the Latvians present
were Viktors Arâjs, Roberts Osis, and R. S^tiglics. The purpose of the
meeting was to finalize the schedule for the operation, to ensure the
timely and precise organization of the columns of Jews leaving the
ghetto, and to assign the tasks to the men in the gauntlet at the
killing site. 

€ November 28. A train carrying approximately 1,000 Berlin Jews left
Berlin for Latvia. It was parked at on a siding at the Skirotava
station, a few hundred meters from the Rumbula killing site, when it
arrived late in the night of November 29th.

€ November 29. Jeckeln convened a meeting at the Ritterhaus where he
delivered a talk about the upcoming liquidation of the Riga ghetto. In
the talk, he stressed that the operation was a patriotic obligation,
and that refusal to participate was equal to refusal to participate in
a war, desertion. He ordered that the HSSPF staff members who did not
have a specific assignment were to be present at the pits as observers
so that everybody would know and witness the event ("machte er zur
Pflicht, den Exekutionen als Zuschauer beizuwohnen, um niemanden
Mitwisserschaft und Mitzeugenschaft zu ersparen"; Landgericht Hamburg:
Urteil gegen Jahnke u. a. 1973, pg. 67-68).)

 On that evening at 7 PM a coordinating session took place at the Riga
headquarters of the Schutzpolizei. Major Karl Heise gave orders to his
men to be ready at 4.00 AM the next morning in the ghetto for the
resettlement of the Jews. He told them that the Jews were to be taken
over by others at the Rumbula train station. The  members of the
Schutzpolizei who were in charge of Latvian police precincts were told
to supervise the Latvians and ensure that the Jews were out of their
houses and organized in columns of 1,000. The action would take two
days and would begin in the westernmost part of the ghetto. Lieutenant
Hesfer and 12 Schutzpolizei. Members assigned the task of
organizing and supervising the clearing of Jews from their homes. The
Latvian and Jewish ghetto police were ordered to assist Hesfer and
assure that no panic arose. The Riga precinct police as well as the
Riga district police under the command of Jânis Veide were also ordered
to participate in the "resettlement" of the Jews in the ghetto to
another camp [Osvalds Elîte, _Ênas purvâ_, Riga 1989, pg. 27].


D. Implementing the massacre

Day 1: November 30th
€ 4:00 A.M. Precinct lieutenant Hesfer, a 12-man German Schutzpolizei
team, an unknown number of Arâjs men, and the 80-man internal Jewish
guard started awakening Jews beginning at the westernmost houses and
along Lacplesa and Jekabpils St. The Jews were told to be ready in half
an hour on Sadovnikova St. A crew of workers began cutting exit holes
in the fence to shorten the way out of the ghetto to Maskavas St. and
on to the road leading to Rumbula.
€ 4:30 A.M. The wake-up gang went back to the first houses to make sure
that no Jews remained. Jews who refused or were unable to go were shot
in their homes, in the stairwells, and on the streets. Other Jews tried
to run away or hide, many of them being shot. Organizing them into
columns was also difficult. According to contemporary sources, between
600 and 1,000 people lay dead in the ghetto by noon [I. Saburowa, Yad
Vashem Archive: "Bericht über Rigaer ghetto," deposition of Saburowa,
October 1954, o2/371].
€ 6:00 A.M. in the Riga ghetto. The first column, 1,000 people marching
five abreast, accompanied by 50 Latvian police officers and headed and
tailed by two Germans, started the ten kilometer march to the killing
site at Rumbula.

 "The control of the columns did not proceed as anticipated. With all
the shouting and shooting the pace could not be kept up. The columns
stretched out. The Germans at the head and the tail of the columns, not
seeing what was happening, lost control of the situation. The body
count along the road multiplied.
   In the stretch of road just past the Skirotava station lived the
Garkalns family. Their daughter, seven years old, remembered a column
of Jews driven past her house, which was about one hundred feet off the
road. Pandemonium had broken out. Some Jews had refused to continue,
there had been shouting, shoving, and beatings. The column had started
up again. A few paces down the road a disturbance had broken out anew.
There was shooting, and people were killed and left on the roadside.
The people panicked, wailing began. The girl's mother hung blankets
before the window, and the youngster was taken to the back room and
forbidden to look out again. 
   As the march progressed, many women with children and old people
could not keep up. Possessions were thrown away, littering the road and
the ditches. The strong and the healthy attempted to support their
exhausted relatives, who were falling by the wayside. They were picked
up and thrown onto the horse-drawn wagons following the columns. Many
were shot and corpses fell on the road. The order was to kill not only
those who attempted to flee, but also those who left the column to rest
at the roadside. No doubt many of the people were killed by the column
guards." [A. Ezergailis: _The Holocaust in Latvia:
1941 - 1944_, 1996, pg. 251.]
 
€ 6:00 A.M. at Rumbula. The trainload of Berlin Jews that had arrived
the previous night were marched to the killing site at Rumbula and shot
before the first column of ghetto Jews arrived.

€ 9:00 A.M. The first column of Jews reached the killing site. The
column was led in groups of fifty into a funnel-like gauntlet formed by
a gang of SD men, Ordnungspolizei, and Arâjs men. As the Jews, whipped,
kicked, and beaten progressed into the gauntlet, they were forced to
leave valuables in boxes, and then to remove their outer garments, then
to strip, some to the skin, others to their underwear. Coats, clothing,
and shoes went into separate piles, which were loaded into trucks and
taken to the city by Arâjs men. The Jews were led down a ramp into the
pit and made to lie face down on top of those who had already been
shot. They were killed with a single shot to the back of the head fired
>from a Russian automatic weapon set to fire single shots by a marksman
standing about two meters away.

Jeckeln oversaw the action along with many high SS, SD, and police
officials, including Reichskommissar of Ostland Lohse, from the top of
the embankment.

According to Ezergailis:

"Jeckeln ordered his own people to be at the shooting, to witness it,
and to share in the crime. He also called in police commanders from
Pskov and other cities in the region to witness the killings.
Stahlecker was called in from the Leningrad front to be present,
perhaps to point out that he had not finished the job and to show how
it must be done.� [op. cit. pg- 254.]

€ 12:00 noon. The last column of Jews is sent out of the ghetto. 

€ 1: 00 P.M. A final check is made of the western part of the ghetto.
About twenty bedridden Jews are taken to the ghetto hospital, from
which they are removed and shot in the head in front of the building
later that day [Hamburg Landgericht: Urteil gegen Jahnke u.a., pp.
75-76].

€ 2:00 P.M. Corpses along the street and in the ghetto are cleared and
taken to the Jewish cemetery by work Jews, where they are dumped into a
common grave without rites or prayer. Any Jews lying on the street who
show signs of life are shot dead by members of the Arâjs commando.
5:00 P.M. The systematic shooting stops, although sentries were posted
at the pits. Not everyone had been killed and the sentries were ordered
to shoot anyone in the pits that showed signs of life. A unit of the
Latvian Schutzmannschaft was assigned to guard the general area.

**************************************************************
Excursus: An eyewitness account of the events of November 30, 1941
Of interest here is the degree to which the ideas represented by the
exploiters (Lohse and his faction) and the exterminationists
(Stahlecker and his faction) dominate the text. Note also that Bruns
talks of an order subsequent to the Riga massacre to carry out mass
killings in a more discrete fashion in the future.
--------------------------------------------
Source: http://www.fpp.co.uk/Auschwitz/documents/BrunsCSDICb.html#Bruns 

>From David Irving's archive: 
A genuine eye-witness account of shootings of Jews on the Eastern Front 
 
GERMAN ARMY engineer-colonel Walter Bruns was stationed near Riga in
November 1941, when he witnessed a mass shooting of Jews, including a
thousand just arrived from Berlin.

In British captivity in April 1945, Bruns, by then a Major-General, was
overheard by hidden microphones [the verbatim transcripts are
accessible from our Index at right] whispering to fellow prisoners what
he had seen.


TOP SECRET

C. S. D. I. C. (U.K.)

G.G. REPORT

IF THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS REPORT IS REQUIRED FOR FURTHER
DISTRIBUTION. IT SHOULD BE PARAPHRASED SO THAT NO MENTION IS MADE OF THE
PRISONERS' NAMES, NOR OF THE METHODS BY WHICH THE INFORMATION HAS BEEN
OBTAINED
 
 
  S.R.G.G. 1158(C)
 
The following conversation took place between:

CS/1952 -- Generalmajor BRUNS (Heeres-Waffenmeisterschule I, BERLIN)
Captd GÖTTINGEN 8 Apr 45 and other Senior Officer PW whose voices could
not be identified. 

Information received: 25 Apr 45



TRANSLATION

BRUNS: As soon as I heard those Jews were to be shot on Friday I went
to a 21-year old boy and said that they had made themselves very useful
in the area under my command, besides which the Army MT park had
employed 1500 and the 'Heeresgruppe' 800 women to make underclothes of
the stores we captured in RIGA; besides which about 1200 women in the
neighbourhood of RIGA were turning millions of captured sheepskins into
articles we urgently required: ear-protectors, fur caps, fur
waistcoats, etc. Nothing had been provided, as of course the Russian
campaign was known to have come to a victorious end in October 1941! In
short, all those women were employed in a useful capacity. I tried to
save them. I told that fellow ALTENMEYER(?) whose name I shall always
remember and who will be added to the list of war criminals: "Listen to
me, they represent valuable man-power!" 'Do you call Jews valuable
human beings, sir?" I said: "Listen to me properly, I said valuable
man-power'. I didn't mention their value as human beings." He said:
"Well, they're to be shot in accordance with the FÜHRER's orders! I
said: "FÜHRER's orders?" "Yes", whereupon he showed me his orders. This
happened at SKIOTAWA(?), 8 km. from RIGA, between SIAULAI and JELGAVA,
where 5000 BERLIN Jews were suddenly taken off the train and shot. I
didn't see that myself, but what happened at SKIOTAWA(?) - to cut a
long story short, I argued with the fellow and telephoned to the
General at HQ, to JAKOBS and ABERGER(?), and to a Dr. SCHULTZ who was
attached to the Engineer General, on behalf of these people; I
told him: "Granting that the Jews have committed a crime against the
other peoples of the world, at least let them do the drudgery; send
them to throw earth on the roads to prevent our heavy lorries
skidding," "Then I'd have to feed them!" I said: "The little amount of
food they receive, let's assume 2 million Jews - they got 125 gr. of
bread a day - if we can't even manage that, the sooner we end the war
the better." Then I telephoned, thinking it would take some time. At
any rate on Sunday morning I heard that they had already started  on
it. The Ghetto was cleared and they were told: "You're being
transferred: take along your  essential things." Incidentally it was a
happy release for those people, as their life in the Ghetto was a
martyrdom. I wouldn't believe it and drove there, to have a look.   
?: Everyone abroad knew about it; only we Germans were kept in
ignorance.    

BRUNS:I'll tell you something: some of the details may have been
correct, but it was remarkab