The Treblinka Holocaust
ARNULF NEUMAIER"The memory of the Holocaust is central to the New World Order."
Ian J. Kagedan (1)
1. Introduction
1.1 Is There a Holocaust Religion?
Legislation and the justice system make it a criminal offense in the Federal Republic of Germany for a citizen to 'deny' the Holocaust, the 'immolation of the Jews'. The term 'Holocaust Religion', on the other hand, has not yet drawn judicial displeasure.It is permissible today to deny to the Jews that Jesus, whom they nailed to the cross, was the son of God, even though his alleged divine existence has been the basis of a world religion for almost 2000 years. Not too long ago, denying or doubting the divinity of Jesus was punishable by death. Jesus, the founder of a religion, and his mother Mary, both of them from the tribe of David, ascended to Heaven without leaving any tangible traces for posterity, and according to the Holocaust Religion 6 million Jews burned up without a trace left on Earth, while the clouds of smoke vanished heavenward.
One of the fundamental characteristics of religions is the unprovable and irrational nature of doctrine and the inexorable drive to annihilate people of different faith, or opponents of the faith. This behavior is understandable when one considers that what is at stake for the 'apostles' is their credibility and hence their pre-eminence and power.
When the Roman Catholic power cartel perceived the danger posed to one of the pillars of its faith by the scientific, heliocentric view of the world, the Holy Inquisition - its apparatus of terror and force - went into action. Since the heliocentric world view could not be disproved, the Revisionists ie. those attempting to revise the geocentric, incorrect world view had to be extirpated. The methods used today are the same.
Thus every faith has two prerequisites: on the one hand, the power of the advocates of untruth or at least of unproven or unprovable claims, and on the other hand, the lethargy of the masses, to whom applies Friedrich Nietzsche's aphorism:
The happy circumstances in which the citizens of the Federal Republic of Germany find themselves today are demonstrated by the fact that, in accordance with a May 1993 verdict of the Munich District Court, Judge F. Schenk conceded one accused the right to doubt the Holocaust; unlike denying the mass murder of Jews, this is permissible, he said.(3)
The expositions presented in this chapter are intended neither to doubt nor to dispute the Treblinka Holocaust, but only to give facts and some reflections on these. Everything else will follow logically on its own.
2. The Demjanjuk Trial and Treblinka
2.1 Background of the Demjanjuk Trial
In the days of the Soviet Union, the American immigrants from Ukraine were split into two factions, one of which was favorably disposed towards Moscow. At the time this group published a weekly paper titled News from Ukraine. Michael Hanusiak, one of the participants in this publishing venture, made no bones about his close ties to Soviet authorities in Moscow. H. P. Rullmann believes that one of the foremost tasks of this group was the defamation of the anti-Communist, nationalist Ukrainians in exile, whom they charged with collaboration with the 'German Fascists' during the Second World War.(4) This approach had already been practised in other cases, which not only resulted in the creation of internal strife amongst these Ukrainians-in-exile but also detracted from their collective public reputation.(5) This Soviet method of combating opponents by means of disinformation and falsified or completely fabricated evidence is well-known. In the mid-1980s even the Federal Department of the Interior issued a warning regarding this practice.(6) It is all the more astonishing that the American authorities were taken in by the Communist Ukrainians-in-exile in the case of Demjanjuk in the mid-1970s.In 1975, after allegedly in-depth research in Soviet archives, Michael Hanusiak submitted to the US Department of Immigration and Naturalization in New York, a list with 70 names of presumed National Socialist collaborators of Ukrainian origin; this list also included the name of John Demjanjuk, who until 1981 was an American citizen living in Cleveland, Ohio, where he worked as auto mechanic. In the case of Demjanjuk Hanusiak came up with an incriminating statement by one H. Daniltschenko, according to whom Demjanjuk had served in the concentration camps Sobibor and Flossenbürg.(7) This, along with a picture of an ID card allegedly documenting Demjanjuk's employment in these two camps, prompted the American Immigration and Naturalization Office to take up the case of John Demjanjuk.(8) The role which pro-Communist Hanusiak played in building Demjanjuk up to be Ivan the Terrible can hardly be misinterpreted. The true instigators of what was in effect a new Eichmann Trial are not difficult to discern behind the scenes. After the News from Ukraine urged the American authorities in 1976 to take steps against Demjanjuk, the American Department of Justice requested that Demjanjuk be stripped of his citizenship due to false claims made in his immigration papers. Meanwhile, witnesses were found in Israel who identified John Demjanjuk on photographs as being Ivan the Terrible of Treblinka. Investigations regarding Sobibor as well as Treblinka followed. In 1979 the case was officially taken up by the OSI (Office of Special Investigations), the American Nazi-hunting office set up under President Carter.
However, the Trawniki ID card No. 1393, issued to the name Demjanjuk, which had been reprinted in the News from Ukraine and later became the only piece of documentary evidence used in the trial, exists in two variations: the second card numbered 1393 and bearing the name Demjanjuk belongs to the papers of the concentration camp Flossenbürg, which are held in the Federal Archives in Koblenz. Similar names are very common in the Ukraine. But timewise the number does not correspond to Demjanjuk's stay in Trawniki. - Furthermore, ID numbers were only ever used once.
The "original ID card" was not available for the pre-trial investigations in Jerusalem. This central piece of evidence was clearly not officially available from the Soviet Union, for which reason Armand Hammer, the American billionaire of Jewish extraction, was called in. Hammer had already enjoyed an extremely good business relationship with Soviet circles in Lenin's time.(9) In any case the Trawniki ID card did not get to Jerusalem through official channels, but personally via Armand Hammer. If the ID card were officially released, appropriate papers would be present both in Moscow and in Israel.
Dieter Lehner, the expert from the Demjanjuk defense team, has exposed the ID card as a total fabrication,(10) a finding which matches those of the Federal Criminal Police Office. Even though the Israeli authorities were already apprised of this fact by the Federal Criminal Police as early as 1987, the Court suppressed this information. Chief Prosecutor Michael Shadek commented merely:
"As far as I am concerned Demjanjuk did commit murders - whether in Treblinka, in Sobibor or elsewhere, that's secondary."And in response to the objection that the Federal Criminal Police Office had proven the SS ID card to be fake:
"We are relying on our own expert reports and consider them no less convincing than before."(11)But German authorities also played a strange game where the forged Trawniki ID card was concerned. For example, the Münchner Merkur reported that the Federal Chancellery itself saw to it that the Demjanjuk defense team did not learn of the German expert reports by Lehner and the Federal Criminal Police Office [Bundeskriminalamt, BKA], and that the latter was ordered from higher-up to keep silent about its findings. And what is more: the expert witness from the BKA who did ultimately take the stand in the Jerusalem Court after all had been instructed by the German authorities to draw up a partial report for this trial, dealing exclusively with certain similarities between the retouched ID card photo and John Demjanjuk's real-life features. In this way the impression was evoked in the Jerusalem Trial that the ID card was genuine. The partial report was submitted by BKA expert Dr. Altmann. In a memo he drew up at that time, BKA Department Chief Dr. Werner described these actions of the German authorities thus:
"Clearly, factual doubts had to be subordinate to the political considerations."(12)It has turned out that the photograph on the ID card is an old photo of Demjanjuk from 1947 which was taken from his American immigration file(!) and retouched for the ID card.
When the first doubts were raised about the authenticity of the heretofore unknown ID card, the Jerusalem Court suddenly had several other specimens of identical make on hand; the origin of these cards, which were also fabrications, could not be determined to date.(10)
The supposition that the KGB might have officially fabricated the ID card is largely refuted by the poor quality of the fabrication and by the ignorance, shown by the card, of the administrative structure of that branch of the police that was responsible for issuing this kind of ID card, as expert Lehner was able to demonstrate.(10) This does not, however, rule out that a certain circle within the KGB contributed to the fabrication of the card, a circle which must also have had connections to the American immigration authorities, where the photo originated. These circles are in all probability identical to those who worked from the start to set Demjanjuk up as Ivan the Terrible in order to revitalize the Holocaust Religion.
The proceedings to expatriate Demjanjuk began in 1981 before the Cleveland District Court. Naturally, five survivors of Treblinka recognized Demjanjuk as Ivan the Terrible, and the Court's copies of the Trawniki ID card No. 1393 became the chief piece of evidence on whose basis Judge Battisti stripped Demjanjuk of his American citizenship.(13)
On the request of Israel, deportation proceedings began in 1984, and the deportation itself followed in February 1986, in violation of all traditions of international law, as the alleged site of the crime (Treblinka) was located in Poland, and at a time when the state of Israel did not yet even exist. How very important this Trawniki ID card was to the OSI in this trial is demonstrated by the fact that the OSI, together with Israeli authorities, attempted to persuade a number of witnesses to confirm the authenticity of this fabricated card against their better knowledge.(14)
2.2 The Demjanjuk Trial in Jerusalem
With the start of the Demjanjuk Trial in Jerusalem on February 16, 1987, the Treblinka Holocaust was restored to the active memory of the world public. According to the testimony of Jewish witnesses, Treblinka had been a World War Two extermination camp where vast numbers of Jews were killed - between 700,000 and 3 million, depending on the source consulted.(15) The Jerusalem Court decided to set the number of victims at 875,000.(16)The intended linchpin in this revival of the Treblinka Holocaust was the Ukrainian John Demjanjuk. This man was declared to be 'Ivan the Terrible' of Treblinka where he was said to have committed every means of killing, cruelties and perversions imaginable. Not enough that he allegedly drove the Jews into the gas chambers personally, armed with iron canes and a sword, and cut off women's breasts with the bayonet - no, he also operated the diesel engines whose exhaust gas was piped into the gas chambers, there to kill the Jews. The fact that these claims contradicted the sole alleged documentary proof, which indicated that Demjanjuk had been employed in the camps Sobibor and Flossenbürg (and only in those camps) - this fact was generously overlooked.
The chief witness for the prosecution in the Jerusalem Trial, Eliahu Rosenberg, had stated in Vienna on December 24, 1947, in a 'fact report' whose twelve pages he had each initialled personally, that the Ukrainian Ivan had been clubbed to death in his sleep.(17) When Demjanjuk's defense attorney Dov Eitan pointed out to Rosenberg during the Jerusalem Trial that John Demjanjuk, present there in the courtroom, could not be Ivan the Terrible, since according to his - Rosenberg's - own testimony Ivan was already dead since 1943, Rosenberg said that this had been a misunderstanding on the part of the secretary recording his report at the time, and that he had had only third-hand knowledge of the death of Ivan the Terrible. The secretary in question, T. Friedman, refused to testify on this issue, since Jewish sources had threatened him with death in the event that he were to confirm that Rosenberg had really reported the death of Ivan the Terrible as his own personal experience at the time in question.(18) Clearly, therefore, Rosenberg had really affirmed Ivan's death under oath.
So had Ivan the Terrible been resurrected?
It is characteristic of the psyche and the mental state of this kind of witness to substantiate alleged mistakes with the wish for a specific reality; the truth is subordinated to intentions and wishes. Regarding the motives prompting the state of Israel to hold this trial, Jewish publisher A. Melzer wrote that in the mid-1980s the collective Israeli awareness of the Holocaust was on the wane. It had become little more than one chapter among many. Further, the view taken of the Jews by the world public at that time was becoming increasingly shaped by the actions of the Israelis towards the Palestinians, which began to be likened to those of Himmler's SS. This was probably the reason why the proceedings in the Jerusalem District Court dealt less with the case of John Demjanjuk than, essentially, with the total destruction of the Jews in Europe. The 'Auschwitz Cudgel' was in need of exercising.(19)
Ever since the mid-1970s, Ivan the Terrible, personified by John Demjanjuk, was systematically built up to be a symbol of the Treblinka Holocaust. The circumstance that the Monster of Treblinka had to be a Ukrainian probably has historical roots in the time when the Cossacks liberated the western part of the Ukraine from Jewish oppressors and tax-collectors.(20) Oaths of vengeance and instinctive hatred à la the Old Testament survive for centuries.
Two revealing circumstances may aid in the further assessment of the events and connections relating to the Trawniki ID card.
One rather strange event took place in Jerusalem on November 29, 1988. On November 20, 1988, Demjanjuk's attorney, Dov Eitan, had received a comprehensive report from the subject expert for the defense, a report which proved conclusively that the chief piece of evidence against Demjanjuk, the Trawniki ID card, was a fabrication. For the December 4, 1988 appeal date Eitan had announced a surprise for the Jerusalem Court, but mysteriously fell out of a 15th story window of the Eilon Hotel on November 29, 1988.(21) Dov Eitan's (un?)timely death was never solved. At his funeral, the second defense attorney was attacked by someone who threw acid in his face.(22)
Incidentally, the ID card no longer played a significant part in the verdict that was handed down against Demjanjuk in April 1988, whereas it had been a vital element in his extradition to Israel. The Jerusalem Court pointed out that it had been the witnesses, first and foremost, who had proven Demjanjuk's guilt beyond a doubt. But the testimony of those witnesses was of far more questionable evidential value, as Dr. Elisabeth Loftus, Jewish-American expert on eyewitness testimony, noted; Loftus had previously all but proven the unbelievable nature of witness testimony in hundreds of trials.(23) Many of the witnesses against Demjanjuk contradicted not only themselves or at least their earlier statements, but also usually recounted utterly incredible, even downright grotesquely unrealistic scenarios. The decisive factor for Dr. Loftus was that some of the witnesses, due to their advanced age, could barely recall the names of their own children, or how they had only just arrived in the courtroom, while professing to be perfectly capable of identifying John Demjanjuk and to remember all the details of the events in the Treblinka camp or elsewhere. Even though Dr. Loftus realized that the media hullaballoo about John Demjanjuk, about the Treblinka camp and about the eyewitness testimony given in the past few decades rendered impartial, uninfluenced, probative testimony impossible, she refused to make her services as expert witness available to the defense, since she wanted to be on Israel's and the Jews' side in this trial even though she was aware that in doing so she was deliberately opposing justice and truth. Her acknowledgement of the error she thus committed is devastating and well worth reading.
Aside from the manipulation of witnesses already mentioned, H. P. Rullmann tells of the many and varied insults, suspicions and threats hurled at witnesses for the defense, going as far as the arrests of those witnesses;(24) of orders issued by the Court to "go easy" on the witnesses for the prosecution, in other words, not to analyze or cross-examine their testimony;(25) of unchecked applause etc. by court spectators when witnesses for the prosecution made incredible and grotesque, incriminating statements;(25) of the live television broadcasting of the trial in Israeli schools as well as the worldwide broadcasting of trial highlights;(26) of the interpretation of Demjanjuk's profession of innocence as stubborn denial motivated by a lack of remorse.(27) The ultimate high point of the trial was the verdict, which had been based exclusively on eyewitness testimony: it sentenced Demjanjuk to death by hanging and prompted joyful dancing in the courtrooom. Of course Demjanjuk's defense appealed this sentence. The public statements of Elisabeth Loftus, one of the best-known experts on eyewitness testimony anywhere, already sufficed to discomfit the Jerusalem court responsible for Demjanjuk's appeal, since it had to expect that appeal proceedings would not only expose the SS ID card as fake, but also that the witnesses would be shown up to be perjured liars, and by a Jewish expert, no less! But by the early 1990s the case had taken on even far more interesting and, for Israel, more unpleasant aspects. In view of the fact that Demjanjuk's expatriation and extradition had been obtained by fraud, by means of a faked ID card, an increasingly powerful lobby group in the United States began to speak out for the reversal of the Jerusalem verdict as well as for Demjanjuk's return and repatriation to the States, since Israel was obviously not willing or able to conduct a lawful trial against a former American citizen. The American Member of Congress, James V. Traficante, and Patrick Buchanan, one of the best-known American journalists, and assistant to President Reagan, numbered among the most active of these lobbyists. As early as 1986 Buchanan had called the trial of Demjanjuk a new Dreyfus Affair.(28) But in early 1990 Buchanan went a considerable step farther when, regarding Demjanjuk's alleged mass murders in Treblinka, he wrote in The Washington Post and The New York Times:
"The problem is: diesel engines do not emit enough carbon monoxide to kill anybody. The Environmental Protection Agency never requires emission inspections of diesel cars or trucks. In 1988, ninety-seven youths, trapped 400 feet underground in a D.C. tunnel, while two locomotives spewed diesel exhaust into the car, emerged unharmed after forty-five minutes. Demjanjuk's weapon of mass murder cannot kill."(29)In 1991 Pat Buchanan was George Bush's strongest Republican rival in the primaries for the American presidency. He did not deviate from his conviction even during these election campaigns. On television he even supplemented his previous statements by saying that Treblinka had no doubt been a terrible place where hundreds of thousands of Jews had been taken and where thousands had died - in other words, not hundreds of thousands, as was alleged!(30) So Israel saw itself faced with a powerful current in American politics and journalism which was not only close to providing the next President of the United States but which also disputed that Treblinka had been an extermination camp.
At the same time as these developments, several eastern European émigré groups drew up reports in defense of John Demjanjuk, and conclude on the basis of substantial evidence that no mass murder can have taken place in Treblinka and that even for this reason alone, John Demjanjuk must be innocent, as must any other accused.(31)
Only someone who was unaware of these events could have been surprised when the Jerusalem Appeal Court announced Demjanjuk's acquittal in the summer of 1993.32 Demjanjuk was acquitted for lack of precisely that so-called evidence that had resulted in his death sentence before. Strangely enough, most of the American and all of the European media then proceeded to laud Israel as a state truly under the rule of law - even though the administration of justice in the Demjanjuk Trial had not measured up even remotely to any such standard. The gulf between a death sentence and an acquittal is too great. But if perchance the Court had realized that it was the false statements of the witnesses that had resulted in a miscarriage of justice, then the witnesses ought now to have been charged. But this was not done. For a time it was even debated in Israel whether one should not perhaps charge Demjanjuk for crimes he may have committed in the camps Sobibor and Flossenbürg, but eventually this option was rejected.(33) The iron had grown too hot for Israel, since any further trial could have resulted in other aspects of the Holocaust being drawn into undesirably controversial discussion. It is also possible that the collapse of the Soviet Union gave rise to factors - such as easier access to archives and to the supposed sites of the crimes - which made it more advisable to send Demjanjuk back to the United States in September 1993, acquitted (but handcuffed nevertheless during his trip home - unlawfully!). The United States are currently considering deporting him to the Ukraine so that he may potentially be charged with war crimes there.(34)
Will the trial of John Demjanjuk become, in a sense, the writing on the wall? Will it bring a turning point in the Treblinka Holocaust, in the 'immolation of the Jews' as a whole? As the Prophet Daniel put it in Daniel 5: "mene, tekel, u-pharsin" - or, in English, "weighed in the balances, and found wanting".
3. The Camps in the Treblinka Area
In an analysis of the eyewitness testimony and accounts existing with regard to the Treblinka group of camps, the first thing one notices is that they are completely contradictory of each other. The witness claims diverge so widely - not only where the numbers of victims are concerned, but also with respect to the alleged methods of killing, about the way the bodies and evidence were eliminated, and about the location, size, form and equipment of the alleged extermination camp - that it is impossible to cull a plausible overall account from this material.(35) Udo Walendy has drawn up a detailed study of these contradictions and inconsistencies, to which readers interested in specifics are referred.(36) We shall touch on only the grossest discrepancies here and will then focus on the scenario on which the Holocaust-dogmatists have agreed after a 50-year process of evolution and selection from among the 'usable eyewitness testimony', even though such a practice by the mainstream historians is devoid of any scientific value due to the selectivity with which the sources are treated.3.1 The Malkinia Camp
Among the confused and mostly contradictory descriptions of the camp Treblinka II (ie. B) and the corresponding sketches of this camp,(37) which were also used in the Treblinka Trials of 1950-51, 1964-65 and 1969-70,(38) there is not one which clearly establishes that aside from the camp Treblinka I (A) and II (B), there was another camp, Malkinia, 3.7 miles north of Treblinka. This was a transit and delousing camp approximately 740' x 820' (607,000 sq.ft.) in size.In prison, more than 15 years after the fact, Kurt Franz - the main defendant in the Treblinka Trial of 1965 - drew a sketch, from memory, of the camp where he had been employed as of November 1942.(39) This sketch could perforce not be correct in every detail, considering the many years of constant influencing that had gone by, but it differed entirely and not only in its external form from Treblinka II (B) as it is shown on an official Polish layout.(40) As we know today, the camp as described by the witnesses is a mixture of conditions and elements from the camps Treblinka II and Malkinia. A stunning confirmation of Franz's camp sketch was found on an aerial photograph of May 13, 1944, which is held in the National Archives.(41) This camp is also the source of the terms 'lower' and 'upper' camp, as Franz had already marked on his sketch. The smaller 'upper camp' was separated from the 'lower camp' by a road. Franz was able to label the buildings in the camp and to mark his sketch with a large number of the surnames of the personnel in Malkinia, including his own surname, Franz, in relation to certain areas of the camp. The fact that many eyewitnesses describe this camp casts a rather dubious light on these witness statements, as the transit camp Malkinia has never been suspected of harboring an extermination center.
3.2 The Treblinka II (B) Camp
Treblinka II has gone down in Holocaust history as an extermination camp, whereas the camp Treblinka I, closely associated with a gravel pit, has hardly figured in subject literature at all. Since it is beyond the scope of this study to analyze all the accounts that have been advanced with respect to Treblinka II, and since it is only our intent to consider the necessary prerequisites and consequences of the mass extermination alleged by the witnesses, we shall confine the following to the most striking points.In a brochure from 1943 the World Jewish Congress reported that construction of a 'slaughter house' for Jews from Poland and other European nations had begun in March 1942 in an area 12,350 acres in size.(42) It is hard to imagine that even people largely lacking in grey matter could seriously propose a camp almost 20 square miles in size, yet this figure nevertheless found its way into a prosecution document with the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg.(43) This fact alone suffices to reveal the producer-directors of the extermination scenario of Treblinka II in a telling light.
This author has in his possession a copy of an official-looking plan of the camp Treblinka II (cf. Illustration 1, next page), showing an archive number, two rubber stamps and a legend, but apparently no date. The scale of 1:2,000 is wrong, as this would result in only half the camp dimensions given. A camp sketch in a brochure of the Treblinka Museum shows the same shape as that on the official-looking plan, but gives a scale of 1:4,000. All camp sketches known to date exhibit more or less considerable deviations in detail. In terms of the points of the compass, the various maps agree with each other but not with the air photos of John C. Ball.(44)
Illustration 1: Official Polish plan of Treblinka II.
T. Skowron has also shed some light on the state of these camp sketches, which were drawn up on the basis of eyewitness accounts; to date he has located more than 40 different sketches.(45)
4. The Extermination Camp Treblinka
According to the current (1994) teachings of the Holocaust apologetics, a large part of the Polish Jews were deported to the extermination camp Treblinka as of the summer of 1942. Without first being registered in the camp, they were gassed in diesel gas chambers, and buried in mass graves until winter. As of spring 1943, it is said, the gassing victims were immediately incinerated without leaving a trace, as were the exhumed bodies.(46) Allegedly this was done in pits several meters deep and very long (formerly these pits were "mass graves"), on a grating of steel girders supported by concrete pillars. In autumn 1943 the camp was razed to the ground and all evidence was eliminated. According to recent reports some 870,000 to 1.2 million Jews fell victim to this scenario.(47) But before examining details of this account, we shall first present a general overview of the matter.4.1 Generalities on the Site of the Crime and the Murder Weapons
Under normal circumstances, solving a crime involves criminological investigations in order to obtain irrefutable evidence with which to convict the criminal. Since eyewitness statements are frequently very imprecise, it is the task of the courts to establish the true state of the matter on the basis of incontrovertible facts and evidence. Murder ranks among the most heinous of crimes, which is why it is particularly necessary in such cases to precisely establish the relevant facts. In such a crime, the scene of the crime, the murder weapon, the course of events, the cause of death, and the motive are generally investigated in order to ascertain the identity of the murderer/s. The whereabouts of the victims is also of central importance.If the victim of an alleged crime cannot be located, it is difficult if not downright impossible to prove that the crime took place. In murders with only one or at most a very few victims, the elimination of evidence may be possible, provided that the site of the crime and the method of eliminating the victims remain unknown. If, however, the number of victims is great, and if the site of their elimination is precisely documented cartographically and even recorded on aerial photographs, then given the standards of modern technology the crime can be established with absolute certainty. One need only recall, for example, that in the course of archaeological digs the discovery of ashes suffices to establish the presence of human settlements beyond any doubt even hundreds of thousands of years after the fact. To date forensic investigations of the Holocaust have been based almost exclusively on eyewitness testimony.(48) In only one single case is there a report of an excavation, which the Court of Siedlice had commissioned. This excavation was carried out in Treblinka II on November 9-13, 1945.(49) We shall touch on the results of this investigation a little later.
According to the expositions of the supporters of the Holocaust dogma, the deportation, internment and killing of the Jews during the Second World War was a systematic and methodical program for purposes of exterminating the European Jews. The supposedly methodical and systematic nature of this campaign requires that there was a plan providing for it. To date, however, the sources available to researchers have yielded no evidence for a plan or its systematic implementation - unless all orders and decrees that are supposed to have been issued with respect to the solution of the Jewish Question were in the form of a secret code. But even for this no evidence has been uncovered, for no source has yet been found which contained a definition of the codes comprising such a secret language; however, such a "Rosetta Stone" would have been indispensable to ensure a proper understanding between the issuers and the receivers of the orders. It was and remains a characteristic habit of the Germans to organize and document every measure taken right down to the smallest detail, and this practice was particularly evident among the authorities of the Third Reich. The Holocaust dogmatists' theory that the mass murder was guided by improvisation, coincidences and spontaneity, and even by a decision-making process based on mind-reading,(50) is utterly implausible and downright ludicrous, not only for Germany but on the whole.
According to concurrent publications on the Holocaust, the mass murder of Jews was committed in closed rooms, chiefly with various gases believed to have toxic effects. Various sources describe another variation on the methods for the alleged extermination camp Belzec where, it is claimed, the victims were killed with electric current, on an enormous platform that could be submerged in water; the victims were then immediately incinerated, using electricity.(51) This account shows a complete lack of technical and scientific understanding; the excessive powers of imagination it attests to render an ordinary person speechless. We shall therefore dispense with a serious evaluation of it here, even though this tale was even accorded a hearing before the IMT.(52)
The other publications, which are also based on eyewitness testimony, allege assembly-line executions, steam, vacuum, high-pressure air, chlorine gas, diesel engine exhaust gas, and hydrocyanic acid (Zyklon B) as the means of killing. The facilities in which the gassings are said to have taken place are described as gas vans or gas chambers. Depending on which eyewitness account is cited, the following methods of killing were used in Treblinka:
1. killing by means of assembly-line shooting in the neck, out-of-doors;
2. killing with chlorine gas;
3. killing with steam;
4. killing with exhaust gas from a diesel engine;
5. killing by means of pumping the air out of the rooms using large special pumps.
Variations 1, 3 and 5 are reported in the Black Book of 1946 (53) and are no doubt the epitome of perverted imagination. For example, in any attempt to pump the air out of a room, only a few tenths atm. below atmospheric pressure would suffice to make the entire building collapse. The alleged execution by means of steam appears in the same place in the Black Book, in the statement of A. Krzepicki,(54) and is repeated by a Polish source.(55) H. P. Rullmann states that the information given by the Black Book of 194351 is unreliable, since this source cites a nonexistent publication, the East London Observer.(56) Rückerl believes that this was a matter of rumors being circulated by witnesses who knew of the exterminations as a fact but were unable to find out precisely how they took place.(57) And finally, the steam version - which is generally rejected nowadays - was presented to the IMT as established method of killing.(43) Today there is a general consensus that the murders were committed using diesel exhaust gas - whose insufficient capacity to kill is demonstrated by F. P. Berg in the present volume.
According to the eyewitness testimony these various methods of killing overlapped timewise, which essentially rules out any planned and systematic killing from the start.
4.2 Site of the Crime: the Upper Death Camp
As already mentioned, the dubious witness statements and the lack of any definite identification of the murder site by courts or commissions, as well as the commensurate efforts at securing evidence, preclude any exact and reliable reconstruction of the so-called site of the crime. The very fact that there are sketches of the site which show a rectangular camp area and others that show oblique-angled outlines with variant measurements compels one to view the matter with some doubt. Therefore it would seem best to regard as the alleged site of the crime, that camp "Treblinka II" which is shown on an official looking ground plan and which appears on German aerial photographs from the year 1944.(41) According to the plan from the Treblinka Archives, the camp had an area of 1,447,200 sq.ft., as stated, and the so-called Extermination Area measured 193,700 sq.ft. Working from the air photos, the Extermination Area measured about 230 x 295 ft., corresponding to an area of 67,800 sq.ft. According to the accounts at hand, the Extermination Area included the two buildings housing a total of 13 hermetically sealed gas chambers, as follows:58 the first Death House, with three gas chambers of approximately 16 x 16 ft. each (other claims allege 13 x 13 ft.) and 8.5 ft. in height, was a concrete construct built in late summer and early autumn 1942. The second Death House, built a little later, had ten gas chambers and an area of 26 x 13 ft. (other claims are 23 x 23 ft.) per gas chamber, and was a stone building with a concrete foundation. Five gas chambers each flanked a 5 ft. wide corridor. The outer walls had gas-tight trap doors that could be pulled up to speed the emptying of the gas chambers. Adjoining the gable wall was the engine room, whence the diesel exhaust gas was piped into the chambers.Whereas the Black Book of 1946 speaks of 4,000 to 6,000 people being squeezed into the chambers at one time, most sources are content with fewer than 2,000. The mass graves for accommodation of the bodies are also part of the immediate site of the crime. According to Eliahu Rosenberg,(59) these mass graves, located near the gas chambers, measured 394 ft. x 49 ft. x 20 ft.,(60) but these dimensions vary from 164 ft. in length x 33 ft. in width x 16.4 ft. in depth to 492 ft. in length x 82 ft. in width x 33 ft. in depth, depending on the source. Later the site of the crime was functionally enhanced by the addition of gratings, or grilles, for burning the bodies.
Drawing on the accounts provided by witnesses and the subject literature, we shall examine a few aspects of this, with an eye to the technical prerequisites and their feasibility. These are elements that ought to have been realized long ago, and taken into consideration in the relevant trials. To illustrate the absence of critical faculties and the frightening incapacity for technical conceptualization on the part of judges and public prosecutors, the following example is taken from the book Nationalsozialistische Massentötungen durch Giftgas:
"The building was low, long and broad [...] it was of gray concrete, had a flat roof of roofing felt [!!!] [...] Three steps without banisters led into the building [...] The chambers were 5 ft. above ground level [...]"(61)This means that for each step the riser was an astonishing 1.6 ft. high, which would have been quite the obstacle in filling the gas chambers with the people to be gassed.
4.3 The Murder Weapon
In recent times no-one has given any more serious consideration to the alleged facilities for the production of high-temperature steam, of sub-atmospheric pressure, or of chlorine gas for mass killing; these claims have clearly been rejected for their absurdity. But it is inexplicable why witnesses, historians and the courts have agreed on diesel exhaust gas as the "murder weapon" for Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor. It is quite incomprehensible why those planning the extermination of incredibly great numbers of Jews should have resorted to the exhaust from diesel engines, since we know today from many environmental reports that the exhaust from gasoline-powered engines is a hundred times more poisonous than that from a diesel engine. A comparison of the various witness statements does not clarify just exactly how the gas affected those locked into the gas chambers. Any grave toxic effects of the exhaust from a diesel engine can be ruled out due to the low carbon monoxide content of said gas.(62) Pouring diesel exhaust gas into the gas chambers would amount to a reduced but still adequate supply of oxygen to the rooms in question.It is more than strange that the Black Book of 1943 (51) cites a CO content of 2 to 3% for diesel exhaust. It is not likely that this was printed in error, since the allegedly lethal nature of diesel exhaust is still a vital brick in the foundation of the Holocaust. The value of 2 to 3% CO given for diesel exhaust cannot be traced back to any witness statements. One may assume that the World Jewish Congress had subject experts at its disposal in this issue as well; the accompanying expositions of the biochemical effects of CO on hemoglobin would suggest this.
After escaping from the combustion chamber, the exhaust gases of internal combustion engines are channelled into exhaust pipes, whence they pass into the open air. If the gas escaping out the end of the exhaust pipe is stopped up, the pressure will increase until the engine stalls. The degree to which the pressure can rise varies with the type and construction of the engine.(63)
According to the witnesses, the engines used to supply the gas chambers with gas were heavy diesel engines taken from Soviet tanks, whose power ranged up to 550 PS. Since diesel engines have a high compression ratio (1:15), it may be assumed that they are still able to function even if the pressure of the exhaust increases by 0.5 atm. after exiting the cylinder.
Now if these exhaust gases are channelled into a hermetically sealed room, the pressure there can also increase by 0.5 atm. (corresponding to a weight of 500g/cm2, or 1,024 pounds per sq.ft.); this means that there would have been a force equivalent to the weight of 5 metric tons pushing outward against each square meter of surface area. This would have been the situation in any gassing as described by the witnesses for these allegedly hermetically sealed gas chambers. To illustrate the total force acting on the walls of the gas chamber, let us look at the dimensions of the chambers of Death House 2. Given the assumed height of 6.6 ft. and a room length of 26.25 ft., the wall surface area comes to about 173 sq.ft.; the force pushing outwards against the wall amounts to the equivalent of 80 metric tons. Imagine, if you will, three tractor-trailers of more than 25 tons each, simultaneously pushing against the wall!
The ceiling of this facility has a total surface area of 603 sq.ft. The force acting on it from below would be equivalent to the weight of 280 metric tons. The dead weight of such a ceiling is approximately 10 metric tons. If the ceiling did not actually lift off, it would at least snap in half upwards, since the steel reinforcement of reinforced ceilings is located in the lower third of the ceiling as seen in cross-section. Since according to Rückerl et.al. the floor of this gas chamber was 5 ft. above ground level, there must have been an empty space beneath it. Therefore the floor must have had a load-carrying capacity of more than 5 t/m2. Ceilings and floors of 6 t/m2 weight-bearing capacity would not have simply vanished into thin air after the War.
Similar considerations apply to the doors of the gas chambers. The aforementioned trap doors measured 8.2 ft. width x 6.6 ft. assumed height, ie. 54 sq.ft. The pressure brought to bear on them would thus have amounted to 25 tons pushing outward - and yet these doors still managed to remain airtight. No doubt such a door would be a prized museum exhibit.
Regarding the weight put on walls, ceilings and doors, we shall quote the Black Book of 1946,15 which states:
"The second method, the one that was most widely used, was pumping air out of the chambers with suction pumps until the victims were dead."Rachel Auerbach cites a modified version, according to which the air was pumped out before the diesel exhaust was piped in.(64) That even just the first half of this would have sufficed to kill the victims if the gas chamber had survived the process from a construction point of view is something which clearly does not occur to Ms. Auerbach. For these methods of killing, the forces acting on the building would have been reversed in comparison to the previous, ie. acting inwardly from without, and of even greater intensity up to twice the previously demonstrated values, since the difference in pressure between a normal room and one pumped to vacuum conditions is approximately 1 atm.). It must be stressed that even considerably smaller pressure differences between the gas chamber and the atmosphere would have demolished the building.
Let us briefly consider how long it would have taken to attain an excess pressure of 0.5 atm. in the gas chamber of 603 sq.ft. area x 6.6 ft. height, ie. 3,980 cu.ft. Of the aforementioned Soviet diesel engines, the W2 with 38 liter cubic capacity would be a possibility.(62) In a gassing situation the air volume in the gas chamber (volume of chamber minus volume of victims locked into it) would have been approximately 2,684 cu.ft. Assuming that the engine ran at 500 rpm, the volume of exhaust gas output would have been 335 cu.ft. per minute. The introduction of a total of 1,342 cu.ft. of exhaust gas would have increased the pressure in the gas chamber to 1.5 atm. within 4 minutes. Even running at full load and under the most unfavorable conditions, a diesel engine does not put out enough toxins in this short time to suffice to kill anyone - but the volume of exhaust certainly would suffice to blow up hermetically sealed brick-walled rooms.
How would a homicidal gassing process even be possible if, for example, the ten gas chambers of Death House 2 were simultaneously filled with 6,000 people, as the Black Book reports? The hallway leading to the gas chambers was allegedly 5 ft. wide. This is just wide enough to allow two people to enter it side by side. So if the victims-to-be are lined up outside the Death House, two abreast and each 2 ft. behind the person before them, we end up with a line-up almost [1.5 miles long.]
According to technical specifications for engineers, the oxygen requirement for people performing even non-strenuous work is _ liters per minute. Under the conditions given - being crowded together in a small room - this is the least amount required. This means that 600 persons under the specified conditions use up some 400 liters of oxygen per minute, so that as long as consumption remained steady, the available oxygen would already have been completely used up within 40 minutes; dead bodies would have been all that was left in the chamber, long before the start of any gassing. In fact, oxygen consumption decreases with the onset of death, so that it would have taken the victims about one hour to suffocate. Even the witnesses ought to have noticed that. These, however, report that death by suffocation took 24 or even 48 hours when the diesel engines failed to work; this account, therefore, must be rejected as being a sheer flight of fancy.(65)
If, however, the chambers were not hermetically sealed and were only enriched, so to speak, with diesel exhaust gas, then the 15-17% oxygen content of the exhaust would not have been fatal.(66)
Incidentally, it does not make sense that individual chambers should have been used for gassings, since one single large room would have been much more practical in terms of filling and emptying as described for the alleged scenario.
The divergent eyewitness testimony regarding the function of the diesel engines in the camps necessitates further observations. From time to time it is claimed that the engines used for gassing also supplied electrical power to the camps.(67) According to the claims for Treblinka II, the lower camp already existed before the upper one was constructed. If the diesel engine mentioned for the upper camp had been meant to supply the entire Treblinka II camp, then the lower camp would have had to obtain its electricity from elsewhere until the upper camp was built. But if the engine had been intended to supply only the upper camp, this would have been technical nonsense, since due to the nature of the facilities all that would have been required was at most 100 light bulbs @ 75 Watt - a total of 7.5 kW - for lighting purposes. The Soviet tank engines had a capacity of up to 550 PS, which is why no-one would have used them to generate 7.5 kW of electricity. At such a low level, one may assume that the composition of the diesel exhaust would have approximated that of an engine running idle. One must also bear in mind that it is highly unlikely that engines from captured Soviet vehicles would have been used to generate electrical power, since in the case of a break-down it would have been next to impossible during wartime to obtain replacement parts for these engines. Eyewitnesses even tell of such defects and break-downs, and claim that they caused repeated delays in the gassings.
The water supply (the camp had its own well) was also dependent on electrical power. Since witnesses have reported time and again that the gassing engines were turned on for the gassings, and were turned off again after the gassings were finished (after 5 to 45 minutes) (68), but the electrical and water supplies would have had to be present uninterrupted, one may consider it certain that the gassing engine in the upper camp cannot have served to generate electrical power for the lower camp. Treblinka II will thus have been connected to the power supply of the nearby town, and probably also had a separate emergency power back-up in the event of power failures.
Accounts of interruptions of the described gassings due to diesel engine failures are not restricted to Treblinka. For Belzec SS-Führer Gerstein reported such a failure of a diesel engine62 which was used solely for gassings, and would thus almost certainly have been run at idle - if Gerstein's report were correct, but this can almost definitely be ruled out.(69) Since according to Gerstein the people in the gas chambers remained alive for hours while the engine was out of service, a closed chamber must have been very well ventilated indeed.
Any serious plan to commit mass murder by means of exhaust gas would thus not only have provided for a different (non-diesel) kind of engine, it would also have had to provide for back-up facilities.
All the considerations and calculations presented here are quite simple on the whole, and it is therefore utterly incomprehensible that such technical analyses have not been commissioned and carried out long ago. Another point which the courts really ought to have noted is that so far not one single case is known of someone committing suicide with the exhaust gas from a diesel engine, whereas suicide by means of exhaust from a gasoline-powered engine is unfortunately not at all a rare occurrence. Thus the toxic effects of diesel exhaust falsely alleged by the Holocaust dogmatists have not found practical application outside a gas chamber.
The technical considerations set out in the foregoing show that the gas chambers as they are described would not have been physically able to serve as murder weapon as they are commonly believed to have done. The following investigation shall shed some light on the alleged removal of the bodies, which allegedly left no traces whatsoever.
5. Treblinka: Elimination of Corpses Without a Trace
5.1 Burial Pits
According to Eliahu Rosenberg,(17) after the trap doors of the gas chambers were opened, the corpses (some 850,000 altogether) were taken to pits measuring 394 ft. in length, 49 ft. in breadth and 20 ft. in depth. Based on Rosenberg's testimony, and assuming a likely gradient of 65° in the sandy and gravelly terrain of the Treblinka area and a 1.6 ft. soil layer to cover the mass grave, such a burial pit would have had a fillable volume of some 282,500 cu.ft.Some witnesses have stated that the bodies were layered into the pit and that each layer was covered with a layer of soil; others claim that the bodies were haphazardly thrown into the pit. Both situations would allow for approximately 8 bodies per cubic meter (10 per 44 cubic ft.), meaning that the pits described would have accommodated about 64,000 bodies each. Interestingly enough, none of the witnesses mention the considerable amount of excavated soil, which came to about 339,000 cubic ft. per pit, given a 20% loosening-up of the soil. The gradient of a pit dug in natural ground conditions is known to be much steeper than that of the pile of dug-up contents. If the surface area of the burial pit measured 19,300 sq.ft., as alleged, then given a gradient of approximately 30° for the excavated gravel or sand - and after subtracting approximately 35,300 cu.ft. for the material with which the corpses were covered - the area taken up by the dug-up material piled 20 ft. high along the pit would have been approximately 28,000 sq.ft.
According to the Slovenian historian Tone Ference,(70) the upper extermination area, which is said to have been within the camp area of Treblinka II, covered an area of about 172,000 sq.ft.; however, to forestall any objections on this score, we shall base our further considerations on the size of the extermination area indicated by the archival plan, namely about 193,700 sq.ft. This area held not only burial pits and the material dug up in the course of their excavation, but gas chambers and other buildings as well. If one accepts the 875,000 dead mentioned in the Jerusalem Trial of John Demjanjuk, then 14 burial pits à la Rosenberg and a total of some 4.6 million cu.ft. of excavated earth would have been involved in the accommodation of all these bodies. Since these 14 pits would have taken up an area of 271,150 sq.ft, they could not have fit into the extermination area measuring only 193,700 sq.ft. Further, the heaps of excavated material resulting from the 14 burial pits would have required an additional area of more than 392,000 sq.ft.
If, on the other hand, one proceeds on the assumption that the claims of 3 million victims are correct, then 47 burial pits covering some 910,000 sq.ft. would have been needed; these would have taken up almost two-thirds of the area of Treblinka II - not even including the excavated soil going with them.
Finally, some comments on the allegedly 20-ft.-deep burial pits. First off, it seems unlikely that the pits would have been dug that deep, as doing so would have required either complicated heavy machinery or increased expenses related to the construction of ramps. The excavators allegedly used in Treblinka would hardly have been adequate to this task.(71) At depths of 20 ft., it is also probable that ground water seepage occurs, which would have impeded or downright prevented the construction and use of pits of such depth. However, since the camp Treblinka I, with a large gravel pit, is said to have been located near Treblinka II, a ground water level lower than 20 ft. is certainly conceivable. If one proceeds on the assumption of a more realistic pit depth of approximately 10 ft., then a pit of the aforementioned surface area would have held some 35,000 bodies, and 25 pits would have been needed, covering a total of 484,200 sq.ft. excluding the area taken up by the excavated soil. The excavated material itself would have required an area of 570,300 sq.ft., making for a total of almost 1.1 million sq.ft. For the alleged 3 million victims, 86 pits covering 1.67 million sq.ft. would have been needed, plus the corresponding area for the excavated soil.
In the case of Auschwitz, quantitative considerations based on events "attested to" by witnesses, and on the technical and material consequences resulting from the alleged events, have brought about a constant and ongoing reduction in the number of victims.(72) Facts have ever been the enemy of religion.
5.2 Elimination of the Corpses, Not Quite Without a Trace
The elimination of victims without a trace is a vital link in the chain of evidence for the Holocaust in general. Elimination without a trace is the prerequisite for an arbitrary number of victims. This is how the numbers of victims alleged for Treblinka come to vary from 700,000 to 3 million - a phenomenon that also appears in other cases.(73) The casual treatment of such high numbers of victims seems questionable from the start, and ought to prompt those concerned with the topic to gather scientifically irrefutable facts so as to prevent the Holocaust from becoming a matter of faith. But smoke and mirrors and eyewitness testimony have been deemed good enough. The technically unrealistic claims regarding the mass murder of human beings are compounded by the utterly unbelievable accounts of the removal of bodies without any trace. Millions of dead cannot simply vanish into thin air. In this context the reader is referred to the case of Katyn, where the 4,500 Polish officers murdered by the Soviets in 1940 were discovered in 1943.(74)According to eyewitness testimony, Himmler ordered the incineration of bodies in the extermination camp Treblinka to eliminate any evidence of the killings; this order was allegedly given in March 1943.(75) This is said to have involved the exhumation and burning of the bodies that had already been buried. Various eyewitness accounts exist of this procedure in Treblinka, which allegedly went on from about March to August 1943.
Regarding the burning of the corpses, Eliahu Rosenberg has stated:
"After Himmler inspected the camp he ordered the burning of all the bodies lying in the pit [...] For this purpose, two iron rails were placed on the ground parallel to each other, and the bodies that were dug out of the pit with excavators were stacked on top of each other like fire logs. It frequently happened that the corpses, especially those just freshly killed, didn't burn well, and so we had to pour gasoline over them [...] At that time we had only one burning site, and of course that wasn't enough, since we couldn't burn more than a hundred bodies a day. An SS-Oberscharführer, Herbert Floss by name, was brought in from the neighboring camp [...] He set up five or six burning sites and also introduced a new way to layer the bodies [...]"(76)In his testimony in Jerusalem, at the Demjanjuk trial, he also persisted in his convictions:
"In Treblinka we learned that little children burn better than grown men. All it takes is a match to light them. That's why the Germans, damn them, ordered us to put the children in the pit first."(77)The witness Szyja Waszawski, who came to Treblinka in July 1942, told of gassings with chlorine and of at least 10,000 victims a day, and stated with respect to cremation:
"[...] Usually the bodies were put into pits 33 ft. deep and wide and many times as long. In January 1943 [...] five to six gratings were set up on the ground. The grates, which consisted of iron rails, were supported by cement posts about two feet above the ground. A grate like that was 33 ft. long and 13 ft. wide. A fire was started underneath. Bodies were layered on the burning grate with an excavator machine. Once the bodies caught fire they would continue burning by themselves. Mass cremation began in late February 1943. The ashes that remained after the burning were thrown back into the pits where the bodies had been dug out earlier. Sweet-peas were sown over top and trees brought over from the forest were planted to camouflage the site [...] For some pits only the top layer of bodies was dug out. The rest of the bodies were covered over with soil, and the site was camouflaged as well [...]."(78)Without going into detail about the strange and contradictory claims in these statements, we shall add some excerpts from Wassily Grossmann's book Die Hölle von Treblinka, where the cremations are described as follows:
"At first the cremation of the bodies just wouldn't work - the bodies did not catch fire properly [sic!]; it was observed however, that female bodies burned easier. Vast quantities of expensive gasoline and oil were wasted on kindling [sic!] the bodies, but the results were pathetic [...] An expert [...] came from Germany, from the SS. What multitalented experts the Hitler regime gave rise to! [...] A specialist for digging up and burning millions of human corpses was also found.J. Wiernik, who is the only one of the witnesses to claim that he participated directly in the cremation for a longer period of time, writes:
"Under his direction the construction of furnaces began. It was a very special kind, a cross between a pyre and a furnace [...] The excavator dug a boiler trench 820 to 980 ft. long, 65 to about 80 ft. wide and 16 ft. deep. Reinforced concrete pillars sticking about 40 to 50 inches out of the ground were evenly spaced in three rows on the bottom, along the entire length of the trench. These pillars supported steel joists running the entire length of the trench. Across these joists rails were placed 2 to 3 inches apart. In this way the grating of an enormous oven was formed [...] Soon a second and then a third oven of the same size was constructed. Each grating was loaded with 3,500 to 4,000 bodies at a time.
"[...] People who participated in the cremation of the bodies recount that the ovens resembled gigantic volcanoes. [...] Dense, black, fat columns of smoke rose heavenward [...] Even twenty to twenty-five miles away, the people saw [...] these flames at night, rising up beyond the treetops of the spruce forests surrounding the camp. The entire area was polluted with the stench of burning human flesh [...] The traces are indelible."(79)
"It turned out that bodies of women burned more easily than those of men. Accordingly, the bodies of women were used for kindling the fires."(80)R. Glazar comments succinctly:
"The human body does not burn particularly well, quite the opposite."(81)R. Auerbach has compiled various witness statements and summarized them thus:
"Polish people still talk about the way soap was manufactured from the bodies of Jews.... The discovery of Professor Spanner's soap factory in Langfuhr proved that their suspicions had been well founded. Witnesses tell us that when the corpses were burned on pyres, pans would be placed beneath the racks to catch the fat as it ran off, but this has not been confirmed. But even if the Germans in Treblinka or at any of the other death factories failed to do this, and allowed so many tons of precious fat to go to waste, it could only have been an oversight on their part."(82)Y. Arad, trying to sound scientific, reports:
"In Treblinka, as in other such places, significant advances were made in the science of annihilation, such as the highly original discovery that the bodies of women burned better than those of men.
"'Men won't burn without women.' [...] [T]he bodies of women were used to kindle, or, more accurately put, to build the fires among the piles of corpses [...] Blood, too, was found to be first-class combustion material. [...] Young corpses burn up quicker than old ones. [...] [W]ith the help of gasoline and the bodies of the fatter females, the pile of corpses finally burst into flames."(83)
"[T]he corpses... [were] arranged [...] in layers on the roaster to a height of 2 meters. [...] When all was ready, dry wood and branches, which had been laid under the roaster, were ignited. The entire construction, with the bodies, was quickly engulfed in fire [...] and the flames would reach a height of up to 10 meters. [...] [T]he SS men in charge of the cremation became convinced that the corpses burned well enough without extra fuel. Yechiel Reichman, a member of the 'burning group', writes: 'The SS "expert" on bodyburning ordered us to put women, particularly fat women, on the first layer of the grill, face down. The second layer could consist of whatever was brought - men, women, or children - and so on, layer on top of layer [....]"(84)But something does seem to have struck one of our Holocausters as odd. J.-F. Steiner vividly describes the problem resulting from the actual, enormous wood (fuel) requirements involved in cremation:
"These [fresh] bodies did not burn as well as those removed from the ditches [ie. the graves] and had to be sprayed with fuel before they would burn."(85)
"The prime costs proved to be prohibitive: aside from the vast quantities of gasoline, just as many logs were needed as there were bodies. It was not a viable undertaking, for even if all the forests of Poland might still have been felled as a last resort, the gasoline supply would nevertheless run short. Stalingrad had fallen, and with that, the rich petroleum fields of the Caucasus had shimmered away into nothingness like a mirage."(86)But J.-F. Steiner, who also compiled many eyewitness statements, manages to find a way out of this predicament; he too came across the bodies that burn of their own accord:
"There were fire-resistant [bodies] as well as such that caught fire easily. The trick was to use the good ones to burn the bad. According to his [Herbert Floss's] research - which evidently had been far advanced - old bodies burned better than new ones, fat ones better than skinny ones, women better than men, and children not as well as women but better than men. From this it followed that old corpses of fat women were the ideal kind."(87)Some witness statements do in fact indicate that there were units in the camp whose task it was to supply firewood. While A. Krzepicki and S. Willenberg can only tell of a unit that tore branches off trees in order to decorate the fence surrounding the extermination camp with them, for camouflage purposes,(88) Y. Arad reports that a "wood commando" which initially had to provide only the wood required for construction and firewood later also had to procure the wood needed for cremation.(89) However, there is a consensus among the witnesses and Holocaust believers that the wood was only lit as a sort of camp fire underneath the mountains of corpses, until these had caught fire and burned on their own. R. Glazar is the only one to be able to provide details of this "wood commando": it consisted of 25 men, whose efforts yielded so few twigs and branches that a "camouflage commando" of 25 men had to climb unfelled trees in order to break off additional branches, which were woven into the camp fences to keep outsiders from looking in.(90)
These accounts speak for themselves.
Incidentally, Steven Spielberg has shown himself quick to learn from the aforementioned 'witnesses': in one scene of his movie Schindler's List he shows a gigantic conveyor belt continually heaping bodies onto an enormous pile of corpses magically burning on by themselves.(91)
5.3 Cremation of Bodies, or Fire Victims?
Even though they are contradictory, the many eyewitness accounts do offer numerous details of the extermination activities in Treblinka II; on the other hand, the issue of the fuel necessary for the elimination of the bodies - that is, for their incineration - is ignored, glossed over, or dismissed with unacceptable claims. This consistent approach suggests that the issue, not being resolvable, is repressed either consciously or unconsciously. Szyja Warszawski came up with what is no doubt the easiest solution to the fuel problem when he declared,"[...] Once the bodies caught fire they would continue burning by themselves",and Grossmann also took a turn in this direction when he stated,
"[...] the bodies did not catch fire properly,"and,
"[...] kindling the bodies".Bodies are not fuel.
The witnesses appear to agree on the opinion that female corpses burn by themselves particularly well, and can thus serve to ignite and burn other corpses. These claims imply that mere kindling suffices to set corpses on fire.
However, this easy way out does not suffice to truly solve the problem of the cremation of corpses, for the worldwide presence and use of oil-, natural gas- or coal-fired crematoria refutes it conclusively, as do all the laws of nature. Some 65% of the human body is unburnable water.
When a major earthquake struck India in September 1993, claiming some 20,000 lives, it was feared that epidemics would break out if the fuel (wood) needed for the cremation of the bodies could not be procured in time. In India, where the cremation of bodies has been the rule rather than the exception for a long time, self-burning corpses have yet to be discovered, even though the country suffers from fuel shortage in this context.
Psychologists ought to investigate the patently false witness claims, since there is no scientific or literary precedent for any similar event which might have found its way into the witnesses' subconscious mind in the form of a literary experience. An event somewhat similar to the claims of the witnesses may be found in the well-known children's picture-book Der Struwwelpeter, where the dreadful fate of Pauline, a girl playing with matches, is described in order to deter children from doing the same. All that remains of Pauline is a pile of ashes and the girl's shoes.
Ill. 2: The sad tale of the matches, from Der Struwwelpeter by Dr.Heinrich Hoffmann
If the story of Pauline, who burned up all by herself, and of the remaining little pile of ashes were the psychological key to the claims of Warszawski and the others, then Pauline's shoes, which failed to burn, might also be the key to Gerstein's story about Belzec, where a 5-year-old child allegedly had to take the shoes of the Jews who were to be gassed to a 40-ft.-high(!) pile of shoes.(69) Possibly these oddly similar statements even lead back to another as yet unknown common source reflecting a key childhood experience. The author of the storybook is Dr. Heinrich Hoffmann; however, the Stars of David located in the original edition near the passage in question do not allow for any further conclusions.
If the eyewitness testimony quoted previously with regard to the cremation grating are already utterly unbelievable, the claims made by W. Grossmann in his book also reveal a very sick imagination. His term "boiler trench", which is neither known from other contexts nor makes any intrinsic sense, should suffice to bring psychologists into play. The purpose of such a neologism is probably to convince the amateur audience of the speaker's authority, to impose and to reinforce ignorance, to create a guilty conscience, and thus to render the lie believable.
Moving on, Grossmann describes the oven grating and states that three supports of reinforced concrete posts(!!!) and steel joists some 40 inches high were set up along the length of the trench, across which rails were placed 2 to 3 inches apart.(92) In this way there are about 5 rails per running meter, which - assuming a rail length of only 40 ft., although the trench is said to have been as much as 82 ft. in width - results in a total rail length of just over 11 miles. To allow for the burning of the alleged millions of bodies, Grossmann reports two further boiler trenches, making for a total rail length of 33.5 miles. Where on earth did all these rails come from? According to Grossmann the grates were loaded with 3,500 to 4,000 corpses at a time. How were the bodies counted, and who distributed them on the grating, and how?
From the dimensions given, the surface area of one grating may be calculated as 38,700 sq.ft.; this means that for the three boiler trenches the total surface area was 116,100 sq.ft., in other words, roughly the same area as the entire death camp. The total volume of soil excavated - 2.86 million cu.ft. - was even greater than that for the mass graves. Whereas Warszawski's much smaller grating held veritable mountains of dead bodies, Grossmann is content with about one body per square yard of grating surface. Assuming that, in the case of Grossmann, cremation could be finished in 5 hours (without the ashing of the bones), it is difficult to understand why cremation was carried on 'round the clock; in any case it will have been necessary to extinguish the fires every now and then in order to remove the ashes and to add more fuel. But who knows, perhaps the corpses available to Grossmann were not only self-burning, but also burned without leaving any residue - he doesn't say. At any rate he makes no mention of the fuel.
The sick imagination on which such an account is based is not as astonishing as the fact that millions of people believe it. What became of the enormous number of rails and of the reinforced concrete pillars, and who carried out the transports?
Occasionally, witnesses have mentioned that bodies were burned with liquid fuel in pits in Treblinka II; methyl alcohol and gasoline were allegedly used.(93) In such a case, as in all open-air incinerations, only a small percentage of the energy released by the fuel in fact acts on the object to be burned, in contrast to suitable furnaces where insulated walls concentrate the heat in a small space.
Intensive incineration, with high temperatures and corresponding energy density, requires a plentiful oxygen supply and a large fuel surface. This simple fact has found practical application in, for example, spirit stoves and blowtorches, where fuel and air nozzles are important. This effect is also commonly used in internal combustion vehicles, in the form of fuel injection and air turbulencing. Due to the insufficient oxygen supply in pits several yards deep, the cremation of corpses as described by the witnesses is not physically possible. The reader is referred to a type of fireplace used by the ancient Romans; even in those early days the Romans already knew to supply these fireplaces with air via underground pipes.
If one wanted to incinerate bodies in the open air and with liquid fuels, it would be necessary to prevent the fuel from seeping into the ground by placing metal pans underneath the burning grates. Because of the disadvantageous conditions, the quantity of energy required for cremation could not be less than that generated by solid fuels such as wood or coal. Regarding the cremation grates described, there would have been the additional problem of body parts falling into the gasoline-filled pans, thus being extinguished. Pouring liquid fuel over human bodies can result in their charring but not in their incineration.(94)
While the complete incineration of a body in the retort of a crematorium requires at least 66 lbs. of coke fuel,(95) then the equivalent incineration in the open air will require at least 16 gallons of gasoline, given a suitable set-up. Under the technical conditions described for Treblinka, the incineration of the 875,000 victims alleged in Jerusalem would have taken some 13.2 million gallons of gasoline. Given this daily requirement of fully 10 tank cars of gasoline - an overall total of no less than 2,000 - the train of tank cars would have been all of 9.3 miles long. And this at a time when every gallon of gasoline was badly needed for fighter planes and vehicles of all kinds!
According to a November 27, 1986 report of the New Delhi Shenectady Gazette, cremations and the consumption of wood involved therein (due to the lack of corpses that will burn by themselves) are a serious concern for the inhabitants of India, since entire forests have been cut down over time for just this purpose. According to this report, the daily incineration of 21,000 bodies requires 6,433 metric tons of wood, ie. 675 lbs. per body. In applying these conditions to Treblinka, we shall simplify the matter somewhat by ignoring the problems involved in the prior exhumation of the bodies; let it suffice to consider only one unreality, namely the incineration of the bodies.
To forestall objections of any kind, we shall reduce the consumption of wood for mass cremations from 675 lbs. to 440 lbs. per body. From various eyewitness accounts it follows that the cremation process lasted until early August, a total of about 185 days. This means that a minimum of 4,700 bodies had to be cremated every day, requiring 950 metric tons of dry wood daily. The engineering handbook Hütte indicates a volume of 74.15 cu.ft. per metric ton for spruce wood,(96) and of 109.5 cu.ft. per metric ton for spruce wood fire logs.(97) This means that the volume of the wood needed in Treblinka daily for incinerating the corpses would have been about 104,000 cu.ft. This volume is perhaps easier to grasp when visualized as a stack 3 ft. high, 3 ft. wide and about 1.75 miles long. Every day!
The cremation gratings, described by Warszawski as measuring 13 ft. x 33 ft. and with 1.5 ft. elevation above the ground, had a spatial volume of approximately 650 cu.ft. underneath the grating. To ensure that the firewood would receive enough draft (oxygen), a maximum of 530 cu.ft. could have been placed underneath. This quantity corresponds to a net weight of 10,600 lbs. and would have sufficed for cremating 24 (twenty-four!) bodies. If one assumes that, in this case, the complete incineration of the bodies took only 2 hours (which, however, is far too short to be realistic), then even cremating 'round-the-clock would have disposed of 288 bodies at most. The high piling-up of bodies on the grating, as it is described by witnesses, would have brought nothing but disadvantages, if only due to the inhibited access granted the flames. But if 4,700 bodies had to be burned every day, this would have required more than 16 gratings as described above, with a total surface area of 6,890 sq.ft.
Stoking the cremation sites with wood, and removing the ashes and skeletons, are elements which have been ignored to date. Given the heat of the fire under the gratings and the stench of the burning bodies, it would have been impossible to perform these necessary tasks while the fire was burning. It is thus safe to say that continuous cremation in the manner described, and using the burning sites described by the witnesses, would not have been possible. Burning the 4,700 bodies would have required at least twice the number of gratings.
With reference to the number of bodies to be incinerated, we still need to examine the source, processing and transportation of the needed quantities of firewood. The total cremation process in Treblinka would have required 430 million pounds, or 195,000 metric tons, of air-dried (seasoned) wood. Due to the short notice and brief time that Himmler allegedly allotted for this process, such a large quantity of air-dried wood would certainly have been impossible to get, which is why only fresh ("green") wood of lower calorific value would have been available. The calorific value of seasoned wood is 3,600 kcal/kg, whereas that of green wood is only 2,000 kcal/kg.(98) Therefore the total required quantity of wood would have increased to 351,000 metric tons, and the daily requirement of green wood was thus approximately 1,900 metric tons. Assuming medium-sized trees of 1 cord volume and 1,500 lbs., the total number of trees needed comes to roughly 515,000.
There were two options for obtaining the required quantity of wood: either there was a large forested area near the camp where the demand for firewood could be met, and whence the wood would then be transported to the camp with suitable vehicles, or the wood had to be brought in from other areas by rail.
Let us suppose for the moment that the wood supply was nearby. Assuming that a 15-ton truck can make 3 runs daily, allowing for loading and unloading of the truck, then 126 trips would need to be made daily, using some 42 trucks. None of the eyewitness statements indicate the presence of such a fleet of trucks. The same goes for the labor force required for the daily felling, limbing, sawing and splitting as well as loading and unloading of 2,800 trees. If, given the primitive conditions that prevailed, we assume that one man could have processed - that is, felled, limbed, sawed and split - one tree per day (an utter illusion), then the lumberjacks would clearly have had to number at least 2,800.
To give an idea of how large a forest would need to be in order to supply such vast quantities of wood, let us assume a yield of 325 cord per acre, which for 515,000 trees would require a forest of 1,590 acres, or just short of 2.5 square miles. To put it more graphically, such a forest would have been 2.5 miles long and 1 mile wide. Is it really conceivable that the witnesses and the local residents could have failed to notice such a large deforested area? The site would still be apparent today.
If one proceeds instead on the assumption that the quantity of wood needed would not have been available locally, then it would have had to be brought in from elsewhere, for example in the form of large fire logs, in rail wagons. If one performs the corresponding calculations for this scenario, then a freight train of 63 cars of 30 metric tons would have had to be unloaded in the camp every day - a total of 185 freight trains. In the end the total length of the trains would have reached 116 km, or 72 miles. This begs the question: where are the pertinent Reichsbahn (German Railway) documents about these enormous wood transports? The authorities and offices in question would hardly have dispensed with payment and not submitted their accounts.
Regarding the claim that the 875,000 corpses were eliminated completely with out any trace, we must consider the quantities of ashes that remain. The quantities of wood ashes are considerable, and vary with the type of wood. We shall postulate the low value of 6.6 lbs. per ton of dry wood.(97) The wood ashes remaining would then have weighed approximately 1,000 metric tons; the equivalent of the payload of 100 10-ton trucks.
The ash content of a human body makes up about 5.6% of the body's weight;(99) given a 132 lb. body, this comes to 7.3 lbs. The ashes from the 875,000 burned bodies would thus have weighed 6,387,500 lbs. The total quantity of ashes - wood ashes plus human ashes - would therefore have weighed almost 4,000 metric tons, or 8.6 million pounds, all of which (according to the witnesses) were then mixed with the soil and thrown back into the pits.(100) Even if this quantity of ash had been mixed with the roughly 3.53 million cubic feet of soil excavated from the burial pits, it would be easy to find evidence for human remains of the quantity alleged by the witnesses. It must also be noted that in the incineration of corpses under the conditions specified by the witnesses, the bones would not have turned to ash, but would have remained as bones.
The witnesses have described how the skeletal remains of the corpses were broken up, and screened and sifted over and over again to ensure that no evidence would remain. Given the primitive equipment described by the witnesses - wooden rollers and thin sheets of metal for crushing the bones - it might have been possible for a man to break up and sift two skeletons per hour in the manner specified. Thus, if one Jewish laborer had pulverized 20 skeletons per day, 240 Jewish laborers would have been needed for this task alone. Adding up the required personnel - 2,800 Jewish laborers for obtaining the wood, 240 for pulverizing the bones, and 150 to stoke the fire sites - fully 3,200 Jewish workers were needed to complete all the required tasks in a solid seven-day work week. Additionally, further hundreds of Jewish workers would have been needed to carry out various other tasks reported by witnesses: excavating and filling trenches, camouflage activities, sorting the valuables of the murdered Jews, cutting the hair and extracting the gold teeth of the victims, rendering services to the SS, administration, rations and supplies for the camp, etc. There would also have to have been reserve labor standing by at all times. Thus the camp would have had to have a permanent workforce of at least 5,000. This number stands in glaring contrast to the mere 700 Jewish laborers attested to for Treblinka.(101)
And finally, we must note that the teeth of the supposed victims could not have been destroyed by the primitive methods attested to.(102) Even if each of the alleged victims had only 20 of the usual 32 teeth left at the time he or she died, there would have been at least 17.5 million teeth to be disposed of at Treblinka. This means that we should still be able to find some 5 teeth per cubic foot of the 3.53 million cu.ft. of material excavated at the alleged site of the crime.
All these calculations are based on the number of victims (875,000) specified by the Jerusalem court. If, on the other hand, one were to postulate the 3 million Treblinka victims alleged by Grossmann and others, then the data ascertained in the previous must be multiplied by a factor of 3.5, meaning: 6,650 metric tons of wood daily to cremate the corpses; a total of approximately 1,200,000 tons of firewood, ie. almost two million trees, for whose transport trains totalling about 252 miles would have been required. The area of the forest thus required amounts to 9 square miles. There would have been roughly 13,700 tons of ashes to hide, containing at least 60 million teeth. And where on earth were the 20,000 Jewish laborers needed to do all the work involved?
5.4 What Really Happened in Treblinka?
Dispensing with any further expositions of our own, we shall quote part of the Amicus Curiae Brief of the Polish Historical Society (tendered in the defense of John Demjanjuk) which deals with, among other things, the results of investigations conducted in Treblinka by Polish authorities:"Through a combination of aerial photography and photographs of previous on-site digging, we were able to locate the site of a mass grave at Treblinka II and determine its dimensions. The foundations of large (30 x 15 meters) buildings which were said to have been the gas chamber were, however, not visible.
"The aerial photos [taken by German reconnaissance fliers in 1944] show that the surface of the only mass grave at Treblinka II is approximately 10% smaller than one of the Katyn Forest mass graves which contained 4,500 bodies. The same aerial photos also show 41 small mass graves approximately three kilometers distant at the Treblinka I camp site. The victims of the Treblinka I camp were never exhumed and cremated by the Nazis (Exhibit 83) [...] The size of the small mass graves at Treblinka I is identical with the Polish magistrate's 1945 determination through exhumation that they contained approximately 10,000 bodies. Exhibit 85. [...]
"We were also able to locate ground-level photographs taken sometime in August of 1944 of the only mass grave at the Treblinka II site which provides us with its exact width. Exhibit 86. In 1945 the District Court of Siedlce ordered a forensic excavation of the Treblinka II site and determined the depth of this single mass grave. Exhibit 87. This information, combined with the length provided by the aerial photos completes the three dimensions of the grave, and gives a fairly accurate idea of how many cadavers the grave could hold which is in the neighborhood of 2,000-4,000 dead. That figure is considerably less than the 900,000 alleged. Since there were nearly a million people processed through the Treblinka II camp in a year (Exhibit 88), and it took on average 3 days of grueling rail travel to get there, 2,000-4,000 deaths is consistent with the very high death rate of the inhabitants of the Warsaw ghetto.
"From information we have gathered, the corpses at Treblinka II were not exhumed and cremated to hide evidence, but rather, to prevent epidemics when river Bug rose. The approximately 10,000 corpses in the mass grave at Treblinka I were not exhumed and cremated because they were located above the rising water level.
"There were two post-liberation commissions of inquiry into the Treblinka camps, one in 1944 conducted by the Soviet-Jewish commission attached to the 65th Red Army, and one in 1945 conducted by the Polish magistrate of the district court in Siedlce. [...]
"On the other hand, this Soviet-Jewish commission performed a rather good examination of the mass graves at the Treblinka I camp, and prepared a thorough report. Exhibit 89A. The Treblinka I graves contained about 10,000 bodies, and their combined contents were at least three times larger than that of the Treblinka II mass grave. Exhibit 90.
"During November of 1945, in preparation for the Nuremberg (International Military Tribunal) trial, the Polish magistrate of the district court in Siedlce ordered an exploration of the former Treblinka II camp based on eyewitness testimony of the atrocities allegedly committed there. The Polish commission disbelieved the survivors' tales and the enormous 3,500,000 victim count invented by its Soviet predecessors. Exhibit 91. Consequently, it attempted in earnest to unearth physical proofs of the Nazi crimes. The forensic exploration and excavation were started in November of 1945 with help of over 30 laborers under the personal supervision of the Jewish Chairman of the Siedlce District Court, J. Szlebzak. Four ex-prisoners representing the 'Circle of Former Treblinka Inmates' were at hand: Messrs. S. Rajzman, T. Grinberg, S. Friedman and M. Mittelberg.[103] Their sole purpose was to point to the locations of the unforgettable installations which allegedly they had had a chance to observe daily for about a year, and which had been dismantled only about 24 months prior: the Lazaret where about 50,000 sick, elderly and children were purportedly shot; the gigantic mass graves; and the two masonry buildings housing the thirteen (10 + 3) gas chambers which were said to be lined with red terra cotta tile. Exhibit 92.
"The location of the Lazaret pit was quickly found. Survivors alleged that 50,000 people were executed by shooting in this pit. However, while the thorough forensic exploration revealed a number of small personal articles belonging to the deported Jews and semi-burned camp refuse admixed with a few dozen small foreign coins, it failed to discover any residue of human bones, any of the 50,000 (at least) reputed execution bullets, or any of the 50,000 spent cartridges. Exhibit 92A.
"The location of the Treblinka II gas chambers, the two largest masonry buildings in the district (one purportedly measuring about 30 x 15 meters), could not be recalled and agreed upon by the survivors. Since these buildings had to be located in the two-hectare-small 'Upper Camp', the commission cut a number of long and deep exploratory trenches running in a north-south direction. Not a single shard of red, nor any other color, terra cotta tile, was found during the thorough excavations. Exhibit 93. Neither was there a trace of a thick concrete slab which had to serve as a base for the ceramic tiled walls and floors of the gas chambers, nor any trace of concrete or masonry foundations capable of supporting such heavy structures in Treblinka's sandy soil (which was subject to deep frosts) was discovered. Exhibit 94."(104)
6. Summary
To summarize the most important points of the previous:1. Eyewitness testimony regarding the location, dimensions and internal structure of the supposed extermination camp Treblinka are utterly inconsistent and contradictory, and virtually impossible to reconcile with actual facts.
2. The alleged killing methods reveal an outlandish imagination. For this reason all the alleged killing methods other than the diesel technique have generally been consigned to the Memory Hole.
3. However, diesel exhaust gas is not suited to mass murder of human beings.
4. The introduction of exhaust gas from heavy diesel engines into a hermetically sealed, brick-walled room results in the destruction of the facility in question. The same goes for the removal of the air from such rooms.
5. Given the size of the rooms and the great numbers of victims hermetically locked up in them, as described by the witnesses, death by asphyxiation would have occurred within a relatively short time.
6. The burial pits and cremation sites described would have covered an area far greater than the entire so-called death camp.
7. Empirical knowledge as well as the laws of physics prove that corpses cannot burn by themselves.
8. The quantity of wood required for cremation of the victims would have been so great that there would most definitely be Reichsbahn papers documenting the transports, but no such papers have been found to date. There is also no evidence for the deforestation of large forested areas in the vicinity of Treblinka.
9. The witnesses make no mention of large quantities of fuel or of their transportation to the camp and the cremation sites.
10. Pulverizing more than 6.6 million pounds of bones with wooden rollers, sheets of metal, and sieves is not a method suitable for the elimination of evidence for human body parts.
11. The umpteen million teeth cannot be destroyed at all in this manner.
12. A minimum of 3,200 Jewish laborers would have been needed to manage all the work involved in the alleged elimination-without-a-trace of the bodies of the Treblinka gassing victims.
13. The existence of these great quantities of ashes and bones and the millions of teeth could still be conclusively proven even today.
14. An investigation that was ordered by a Polish court and included excavations in Treblinka yielded no proof for the claims of the witnesses. No large mass graves, no human ashes, and no signs of large-scale disturbances of the soil as entailed in the creation of mass graves or burning pits were found.
15. Analysis of German air photos has shown that no major invasions of the natural ground structure occurred within Treblinka II or in its vicinity.
16. It is also proven that after the camp was dismantled the Germans had engaged in no camouflage activities - such as planting lupine or trees, as witnesses have claimed.
17. According to the December 2, 1941 edition of the official Amtlicher Anzeiger of the German occupation forces, Treblinka was to become a labor camp.105 One might be surprised that the German occupation powers would officially announce the setting-up of the camp, but there simply wasn't anything secret about labor camps. The Malkinia camp was probably a transit camp for further transport to Eastern settlements.
In conclusion, it should be stressed once again that disputing ("denying") the Holocaust is still a criminal offense in the Federal Republic of Germany. The "self-evident nature" of the Treblinka Holocaust as proclaimed by the courts is based solely on --
1. Director of government relations for B'nai B'rith Canada, Toronto Star, Nov. 26, 1991, p. A17.
2. F. Nietzsche, Der Antichrist, para. 52.
3. Trial of E. B. Althans, Münchner Merkur, May 26, 1993; cf. The Journal of Historical Review (JHR) 13(5) (1993): 37.
4. H. P. Rullmann, Der Fall Demjanjuk, Struckum: Verlag für ganzheitliche Forschung und Kultur, 1987, p. 76.
5. cf. the cases of K. Linnas, F. Walus and F. Fedorenko: H. P. Rullmann, op. cit. (Note 4), pp. 87, 96ff., 164; U. Walendy, Historische Tatsachen (HT) no. 25, Vlotho: Verlag für Volkstum und Zeitgeschichtsforschung, 1985, p. 35 (Walus); U. Walendy, HT 34, ibid., 1988, p. 14 (Linnas).
6. Memo of the Federal Minister of the Interior, Innere Sicherheit no. 1, Bonn, March 20, 1985.
7. H. P. Rullmann, op. cit. (Note 4), p. 76f., from News from Ukraine.
8. cf. memo from H. E. Wagner, Deputy Director of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, New York, Jan. 29, 1976.
9. cf. A. Hammer's correspondence, in: H. P. Rullmann, op. cit. (Note 4), p. 87ff.
10. D. Lehner, Du sollst nicht falsch Zeugnis geben, Berg am See: Vowinckel, n.d.; cf. H. P. Rullmann, op. cit. (Note 4), p. 103ff.
11. stern, March 5, 1992, pp. 198ff.
12. For details cf. A. Melzer, "Iwan der Schreckliche oder John Demjanjuk, Justizirrtum? Justizskandal!", SemitTimes, spec. ed., Dreieich, March 1992, esp. pp. 3, 13; also Münchner Merkur, March 26, 1992. I am grateful to D. Lehner for further information, cf. op. cit. (Note 10).
13. Info. D. Lehner, July 26, 1993.
14. H. P. Rullmann, op. cit. (Note 4), pp. 118ff., 174ff.
15. 700,000 is the figure cited, for ex., by the Institut für Zeitgeschichte; cf. the chapter by G. Rudolf, this volume; the highest figure is given in: World Jewish Congress et.al. (eds.), The Black Book - The Nazi Crime against the Jewish People, New York, 1946, reprint: New York: Nexus Press, 1981, pp. 400ff.
16. Jerusalem District Court, Criminal Case 373/86.
17. E. Rosenberg, Tatsachenbericht, Jewish Historical Documentation, Dec. 24, 1947; pub. in: H. P. Rullmann, op. cit. (Note 4), pp. 133ff.
18. H. P. Rullmann, ibid., pp. 132, 145.
19. cf. A. Melzer, op. cit. (Note 12).
20. cf. S. T. Possony, "The Ukrainian-Jewish Problem: Historical Retrospective", Ukrainian Quarterly 2 (1975): 141ff.
21. United Press International, Nov. 30, 1988, p. 2; cf. Annales d'Histoire Révisionniste (AHR) 6 (1988/89): 167.
22. United Press International, Dec. 2, 1988, p. 2; cf. AHR 6 (1988/89): 167.
23. E. Loftus, K. Ketcham, Witness for the Defense, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991; cf. J. Cobden, JHR 11(2) (1991): 238-249.
24. H. P. Rullmann, op. cit. (Note 4), pp. 23, 100, 124, 145, 191.
25. ibid., p. 19.
26. ibid., pp. 17, 21.
27. ibid., p. 26.
28. The Plain Dealer (Cleveland/Ohio), Oct. 1, 1986; cf. H. P. Rullmann, op. cit. (Note 4), p. 26.
29. New York Times, March 17, 1990; The Washington Post, March 19, 1990; The New Republic, Oct. 22, 1990.
30. "The Week with David Brinkley", ABC Television, Sunday, Dec. 8, 1991.
31. T. Skowron, Amicus Curiae Brief, Polish Historical Society, Stamford, CT, 1992; similar efforts were undertaken by the Ukrainian Friends of Fairfield Association, ibid., which, however, is probably to some extent identical to the Polish Historical Society.
32. The daily press of July 30, 1993.
33. Die Welt, Aug. 2, 1993.
34. For the history of the Demjanjuk Trial, cf.: J. A. Brentar, JHR 13(6) (1993): 2-8; J. Sobran, JHR 13(6) (1993): 9f.
35. For the most important witness accounts, cf.: E. Klee, W. Dreßen, V. Rieß (eds.), "Schöne Zeiten". Judenmord aus der Sicht der Täter und Gaffer, Frankfurt/Main: S. Fischer, 1988; see also the works cited further on, as well as: World Jewish Congress (ed.), op. cit. (Note 15).
36. U. Walendy, Historische Tatsachen no. 12: "Das Recht, in dem wir leben", Vlotho: Verlag für Volkstum und Zeitgeschichtsforschung, 1982, pp. 28-35; and esp.: ibid., no. 44: "Der Fall Treblinka", 1990.
37. Some examples: H. P. Rullmann, op. cit. (Note 4), p. 151; G. Sereny, Im Abgrund, Frankfurt/Main: Ullstein, 1980, p. 154; R. Glazar, Die Falle mit dem grünen Zaun, Frankfurt/Main: Fischer, 1992, p. 191; A. Donat (ed.), The Death Camp Treblinka, New York: Holocaust Library, 1979, pp. 259 and 318f.; Y. Arad, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Death Camps, Bloomington: University Press, 1987, p. 39; E. Kogon, H. Langbein, A. Rückerl et.al. (eds.), Nationalsozialistische Massentötungen durch Giftgas, Frankfurt/Main: Fischer, 1983, pp. 243f.; E. Jäckel, P. Longerich, H. J. Schoeps (eds.), Enzyklopädie des Holocaust, v. 3, Berlin: Aragon, 1993, p. 1431.
38. District Court Frankfurt, Ref. 14/53 Ks 1/50; District Court Düsseldorf, Ref. 8 I Ks 2/64; ibid., Ref. 8 Ks 1/69.
39. Sketch by K. Franz, in: U. Walendy, "Der Fall Treblinka", op. cit. (Note 36), p. 24; this also contains almost all the sketches mentioned in Note 37, as well as those by R. Ainszstein, Jewish Resistance in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe, London, 1974, pp. 716ff. (p. 26).
40. Camp sketch from the brochure Vernichtungslager Treblinka, Treblinka-Museum; U. Walendy, "Der Fall Treblinka", op. cit. (Note 36), p. 29.
41. Ref. No. GX 72 F-933 SK, exp. 139; cf. the chapter by J. C. Ball, this volume, as well as: J. C. Ball, Air Photo Evidence, Delta, BC: Ball Resource Service Ltd., 1992, p. 88.
42. World Jewish Congress (ed.), Lest we forget, New York: 1943.
43. International Military Tribunal, Trial of the Major War Criminals, Nuremberg: IMT, 1947, v. III, p. 567; Document PS-3311.
44. J. C. Ball, Air Photo Evidence, op. cit. (Note 41).
45. T. Skowron, op. cit. (Note 31), pp. 29ff.
46. Some witnesses claim that the cremations began in autumn of 1942; cf. R. Glazar, op. cit. (Note 37), p. 34.
47. E. Jäckel et.al. (eds.), op. cit. (Note 37), p. 1430: 0.87 million; W. Benz (ed.), Dimension des Völkermords, Munich: Oldenbourg, 1991, p. 468: 1.2 million.
48. The only exceptions are some more recent investigations, of Auschwitz in particular: F. A. Leuchter, An Engineering Report on the alleged Execution Gas Chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek, Poland, Toronto: Samisdat Publishers, 1988; Ger.: F. A. Leuchter, Der erste Leuchter Report, ibid.; R. Kammerer, A. Solms, Das Rudolf Gutachten, London: Cromwell Press, 1993; cf. the chapter by G. Rudolf and E. Gauss, this volume.
49. Zentralkommission zur Untersuchung der deutschen Verbrechen in Polen, German Crimes in Poland, New York, 1982; cf. U. Walendy, Historische Tatsachen no. 44: "Der Fall Treblinka", op. cit. (Note 36), p. 15. Walendy has recently reported about a hushed-up analysis of soil samples taken from the vicinity of the supposed mass cremations in Auschwitz, Historische Tatsachen no. 60: "Naturwissenschaft ergänzt Geschichtsforschung", Vlotho: Verlag für Volkstum und Zeitgeschichtsforschung, 1993, pp. 6ff.
50. e.g. cf. the statements of Jewish Holocaust expert Professor Dr. R. Hilberg, in Newsday, Feb. 23, 1983, part II/3: "an incredible meeting of minds, a consensus - mind-reading by a far-flung bureaucracy."
51. M. Tregenza, "Belzec Death Camp", The Wiener Library, 41-42 (1977): 16f.; Biuletyn Zydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego (Warsaw) 9-10 (1954): 307; Polish Fortnightly Review, Dec. 1, 1942, p. 4; New York Times, Jan. 20, 1942, p. 23, and Feb. 12, 1944, p. 6; Documents of the Foreign Office, FO 371-30917-5365 and 371-30924-5365; World Jewish Congress et.al. (eds.), The Black Book of Polish Jewry, New York: Roy Publishers, 1943, p. 131; A. Silberschein, Die Judenausrottung in Polen, Geneva, 1944, pp. 21f.; S. Szende, Der letzte Jude in Polen, Zurich: Europa-Verlag, 1945, pp. 291f.; cf. also C. Mattogno, AHR 1 (1987): 82ff.
52. IMT v. VII, pp. 576f.
53. World Jewish Congress et.al. (eds.), op. cit. (Note 15), pp. 398, 407ff.
54. A. Krzepicki, in: A. Donat, op. cit. (Note 37), p. 130.
55. Biuletyn Zydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego (Warsaw) 1 (1951): 96, 99.
56. H. P. Rullmann, op. cit. (Note 4), p. 130.
57. A. Rückerl, NS-Vernichtungslager im Spiegel deutscher Strafprozesse, Munich: dtv, 1978, pp. 39f., 43ff., re. Treblinka Trial, p. 14.
58. cf. the Düsseldorf verdict in the trial of K. Franz, District Court Düsseldorf, Ref. 8 I Ks 2/64, reprinted in: A. Donat, op. cit. (Note 37), pp. 296, esp. pp. 300f., also pp. 34, 157, 161; Y. Arad, op. cit. (Note 37), pp. 42f., 119.
59. E. Rosenberg, in: H. P. Rullmann, op. cit. (Note 4), p. 137.
60. cf. Y. Arad, op. cit. (Note 37), pp. 33, 42; A. Donat, op. cit. (Note 37), pp. 92, 153, 170f.
61. E. Kogon, H. Langbein, A. Rückerl, op. cit. (Note 37), p. 183.
62. cf. F. P. Berg's detailed chapter, this volume.
63. Exhaust-driven turbosuperchargers have a pressure requirement of 0.5 atm. and more.
64. R. Auerbach, in: A. Donat, op. cit. (Note 37), pp. 35, 50.
65. R. Auerbach, ibid., pp. 49f.; J. Wiernik, ibid., p. 172.
66. It should be mentioned here that CPR involves mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and that the life-restoring breath (exhaled by the person performing the resuscitation) contains about 15% oxygen.
67. J. Wiernik, in: A. Donat, op. cit. (Note 37), p. 157; verdict, Düsseldorf, ibid., p. 300; Y. Arad, op. cit. (Note 37), p. 42. However, these witnesses state that the engine used for generating electric power was an additional diesel engine used independently of the gassing engine. We are working on the assumption that the witnesses were mistaken and that the gassing engine and the generator engine were one and the same.
68. Y. Arad, op. cit. (Note 37), pp. 69, 71, 86; A. Donat, op. cit. (Note 37), pp. 36, 49, 159, 172, 311; R. Glazar, op. cit. (Note 37), p. 19; J.-F. Steiner, Treblinka, Oldenburg: Stalling, 1966, pp. 180, 213.
69. cf. H. Roques, Die 'Geständnisse' des Kurt Gerstein, Leoni: Druffel, 1986.
70. In U. Walendy, "Der Fall Treblinka", op. cit. (Note 36), p. 11.
71. cf. the pictures from K. Franz's photo album, in: G. Sereny, op. cit. (Note 37), p. 210; A. Donat, op. cit. (Note 37), p. 264; Y. Arad, op. cit. (Note 37), p. 95.
72. cf. G. Rudolf's chapter about the statistics of Holocaust victims, this volume.
73. For ex., cf. the chapters by H. Tiedemann about Babi Yar and by G. Rudolf and E. Gauss about Auschwitz and Majdanek, this volume.
74. F. Kadell, Die Katyn-Lüge, Munich: Herbig, 1991.
75. cf. Y. Arad, op. cit. (Note 37), p. 170.
76. E. Rosenberg, Tatsachenbericht, pp. 9f., in: H. P. Rullmann, op. cit. (Note 4), pp. 141f.
77. E. Rosenberg's testimony at the Demjanjuk Trial in Jerusalem, quoted from U. Walendy, HT no. 34, Vlotho: Verlag für Volkstum und Zeitgeschichtsforschung, 1988, p. 24.
78. S. Waszawski, Dokumente der Hauptkommission zur Erforschung der Naziverbrechen in Polen. The author has a German copy of the interrogation transcript.
79. W. Grossmann, Die Hölle von Treblinka, Moscow: Verlag für fremdsprachige Literatur, 1947.
80. J. Wiernik, in: A. Donat, op. cit. (Note 37), p. 170.
81. R. Glazar, op. cit. (Note 37), p. 34.
82. R. Auerbach, in: A. Donat, op. cit. (Note 37), pp. 32-33.
83. R. Auerbach, ibid., p. 38.
84. Y. Arad, op. cit. (Note 37), p. 175.
85. Y. Arad, ibid., p. 176.
86. J.-F. Steiner, op. cit. (Note 68), p. 294.
87. J.-F. Steiner, ibid., p. 295.
88. In: A. Donat, op. cit. (Note 37), pp. 124, 192.
89. Y. Arad, op. cit. (Note 37), p. 110.
90. R. Glazar, op. cit. (Note 37), pp. 59, 108, 116, 126ff., 134ff.
91. cf. the chapter by U. Walendy, this volume.
92. cf. Y. Arad, op. cit. (Note 37), p. 171, 174; A. Donat, op. cit. (Note 37), pp. 170f.
93. eg. B. A. Krzepicki, in: A. Donat, ibid., p. 92: he claims that old clothes, bags, and all kinds of garbage were used as fuel; cf. also J. Wiernik, in A. Donat, ibid., p. 181: after being lit, the bodies burned on their own.
94. This was determined by two reports which, being of Communist origin, are above suspicion of pro-Nazi bias. These reports were drawn up for the East German and Soviet military in order to determine whether it would be possible, in the event of mass deaths due to war, to dispose of bodies in the open air: J. Loscher, H. Schuhmann (eds.), Militärhygiene und Feldepidemiologie, Berlin: Militärverlag der DDR, 1987; F. G. Krotov, Die Erfahrungen der sowjetischen Medizin im Großen Vaterländischen Krieg 1941-1945, v. 33: "Säuberung des Gefechtsfeldes", Moscow, 1955, esp. pp. 236ff.; cf. also the chapter by C. Mattogno, this volume.
95. cf. the chapter by C. Mattogno, this volume.
96. Akademischer Verein Hütte, Hütte, v. 1, Berlin: Ernst & Sohn, 1955, p. 1037.
97. ibid., p. 1035.
98. ibid., p. 1243.
99. Schlag nach! Natur, Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut, 1952, p. 512.
100. cf. A. Donat, op. cit. (Note 37), p. 181; Y. Arad, op. cit. (Note 37), pp. 171, 176.
101. J. Wiernik, in: A. Donat, op. cit. (Note 37), p. 155.
102. cf. some relevant forensic studies, set out by A. Summers, T. Mangold, The File on the Tsar, London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1976; also C. Loos, "Où sont les traces de millions de brûlés?", Revue d'Histoire révisionniste 5 (1991): 136-142.
103. cf. also the theatrical but entirely worthless account of this event by R. Auerbach, in: A. Donat, op. cit. (Note 37), pp. 70f.
104. T. Skowron, op. cit. (Note 31), pp. 25ff.
105. cf. M. Weber, AHR 3 (1987): 127-142; M. Weber, A. Allen, JHR 12(2) (1992): 133-158.
106. cf. also the experiences of I. Weckert, described in her chapter in the present volume.
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