The latest effort to combat “Denial” -- PART III - VI
The latest effort to combat “Denial”, i.e., Holocaust Revisionism. (Part III)
By Wilfried Heink
The second study in chapter one is by Dr. Moshe Zimmermann, Prof. for contemporary history and head of the Richard Koebner Minerva Center for German History at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The essay is titled “Massenmord durch Giftgas in der Wahrnehmung der Überlebenden” (How survivors perceive the mass murder by poisonous gas).
Before we go into this, the book this article is part of is about new studies on killing with poisonous gas by the Nazis, and the denial by Revisionists of said killings. The first article by Mr. Evans contributed nothing to the issue supposedly under discussion, the title of the second seems to follow that trend. One has to wonder why we need to know how the alleged murder by poisonous gas was perceived by the, ahem, survivors. But let’s not judge a book by its cover and see what Mr. Zimmermann has to say.
He starts out by informing us that he will concentrate on how Jewish survivors perceived this mass murder, specifically Israelis, even though only a small percentage of actual survivors live in that country. But, so Zimmermann, the whole of Israeli society, starting with the “Survivors of the second generation”, consider themselves to be a society of survivors. And in their opinion they represent the whole of Jewish society (Doch die gesamte israelische Gesellschaft, mit den „Überlebenden der zweiten Generation“ beginnend, betrachtet sich als eine Gesellschaft von Überlebenden. Darüber hinaus geht diese Gesellschaft davon aus, dass sie die gesamte jüdische Gemeinschaft repräsentiert).[1]
Comments: The last part makes it clear that “surviving the Holocaust” has turned into a social exercise and has nothing to do with actual numbers. But the part about percentages is interesting, because one needs to ask: A percentage of what? In a Ha’aretz article of December 29, 2005, we read: “As of 2005, of the nearly 400,000 Holocaust survivors residing in Israel, 40% live below the poverty line…”. This article has since disappeared, all I have is the printout of a portion of it. Some of it is still available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aftermath_of_the_Holocaust
— look under “Survivors welfare in Israel” (footnote 7 refers to the disappeared Ha’aretz
article). And this article talks about cancer/colon cancer as a result
of starvation — clearly just about actual survivors. Thus, if 400 000 is
a small percentage of the total of survivors, how many did “survive”?
Why do we have no exact figures when they surely must exist because
Germany is paying retribution to each of the survivors? I have seen
numbers as high as 4 million [2], but it is said that some of those were
double claims. Possibly so, but why the big secret?
Fact is, no historian ever concerned himself with the issue of how many survived, and many did survive the war.[3] In this essay, links are provided to works by Messrs. Kulischer and Scheidl, among others, with the latter demonstrating that the numbers we are given – of Jews allegedly murdered by the Germans – are not based on solid research. We also know now that up to 20,000 camps, i.e., detention facilities existed instead of the 5,000 to 7,000 believed to have existed. Mr. Thomas Kues mentions this in his article.[4] So, why is the issue of how many survived seemingly unimportant? It should not be, for only if we know how many Jews were able to flee or make it through the war somehow can we begin to look for those missing.
According to Jewish customs, Zimmermann continues, at the funeral of a diseased, and the anniversary of that day, the “Jahrzeit”, a special prayer is offered: El male Rachamim (merciful God), the merciful God is asked to give eternal peace to the souls of the diseased. On the 10th day of the Jewish month Tevet, the day of the of remembrance of the Shoah, special versions of El male Rachamin are offered for the six million Jewish victims of the European Shoah. One version inserts the following into the original prayer: “that were killed, butchered, burned and became martyrs through the German Nazi murderers and their helpers” (die getötet, geschlachtet, verbrannt und Märtyrer wurden, durch die deutschen Nazi-Mörder und deren Helfern aus anderen Völkern). The other version adds: „that were killed, butchered, suffocated, burned and buried alive by the German Nazis and their helpers”(die getötet, geschlachtet, erstickt, verbrannt und bei lebendigem Leibe begraben wurden, durch die deutschen Nazis und ihre Helfer). Thus, in this prayer death by gassing is grouped in (zugeordnet) with suffocation, a known punishment in ancient Judaism.
This makes two things clear: the word “gassing” does not exist in the Hebrew language to this day, and second, that burning is implanted more firmly in the collective Jewish conscience than gassings and has become synonymous with the mass murder of Jews during the Shoah. To wit: in one of the prayers the word “suffocating”, as a substitute for gassing, is missing. Thus as monstrous as the killing by poisonous gas was, in the end the expressions “oven” and “burning” have become better known as the word “Gas chamber”.
Comments: This is of some importance, for it is true that in some eyewitness accounts only burnings are mentioned, E. Wiesel for instance never mentions gas chambers – only burnings in ditches. This of course puts the veracity of their testimony in doubt, for Jewish tradition and language are one thing but surely a Jew could never forget the gas chambers in which millions of his compatriots were allegedly killed.
Zimmermann now goes into detail as to why burnings are burned, pardon, implanted into the Jewish subconscious, and tells us that there are various reasons for this. In the descriptions of the persecution of Jews in the middle ages, and beyond that in Jewish historiography — which accentuates (unterstreicht) the difference between the subdued “bent down” (gebückten) Jew of the Diaspora and the proud, allegedly new Jew of Israel – burning pyres (Scheiterhaufen) play a central role. When religious Jews understand the Third Reich as a return to the middle ages, then the killing by fire seems to be (scheint) what connects those killings to the Jewish martyrdom of the middle ages. When looking at pictures which portray the mass murder of Jews in iconographic language (ikonografischer Sprache), we find that ovens are not just used for burning of corpses but become a murder weapon of their own, and this even though burning of live people was the exception. Zimmermann then quotes H. Heine, as a nice touch: “Dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen“ (Where books are burned, humans will follow)
Death by suffocation was one form of execution in ancient Judaism, as punishment for patricide for instance, but for obvious reasons one cannot find anything about gassings in the ancient Jewish catalogue of punishments. In fact, gassing, in its implementation, reminds more of the punishment by burning practiced in old Judaism, because it depicts the blocking of the air ways with glowing lead (glühendem Blei), instead of burning on pyres (this makes no sense in German either). This is why the burning facilities, the crematoria (“Misrafot”), as well as the smoking chimney’s (“Arubot”) are mentioned, instead of the gas chambers (“Ta’ei Gisim”) when talking of the Shoah.
And even without going back to the middle ages it would have been possible for flames as icons to displace the invisible gas, for in Palestine hardly any gas pipelines existed before the establishment of Israel. Then, in early summer of 1942, when the news of mass murder methods reached the country, Ha’aretz reported on 30 June 1943: “In November and December of 1941 the Nazis have began to murder Jews with poisonous vapor (Dunst, the word poisonous gas did not exist). They did this in the city Chelm[no[ […] Following this, those poisoned were burned in the forest”. And at a meeting of the Jewish Agency of 22 November 1942 it was reported: “They are destroyed (vernichtet) with gas. Three ovens exist in Oswiezim,[…] in which Jews are burned”. (Als im Frühsommer 1942 dann die ersten Nachrichten über die neue Mordmethode das Land erreichten, meldete die hebräische Tageszeitung Haaretz dies am 30. Juni 1942 mit den Worten: „Im November und Dezember [1941] begannen die Nazis Juden mit Giftdunst [das Wort Giftgas stand damals überhaupt nicht im Wörterbuch] zu ermorden. Sie taten dies in der Stadt Chelm[no],[...]. Danach hat man die Vergifteten in den Wäldern verbrannt.” Und bei einer Sitzung des Direktoriums der Jewish Agency am 22. November 1942 wurde berichtet: „Man vernichtet sie mit Gas. In Oswiezim gibt es drei Öfen, [...] in denen man Juden verbrennt.”2 (2 Dina Porat/Yehiam Weitz, Between the Star of David and the Yellow Star. The Jewish Community in Palestine and the Holocaust 1939-1945, Tel Aviv 2002, S. 106.)[5]
Comments: One might want to ask what all of this old Jewish history has to do with evidence for the alleged killing of Jews by poisonous gas. Well, nothing, and yet… Zimmermann makes a good case here for how the story came to be. Burning and suffocating, not the gassing, is what is implanted in the Jewish psyche. We must remember here the first reports from the camps, and I’ll start with Treblinka, the area around it conquered by the Red Army in the middle of August 1944:
“The Military Examining Judge of the Military Office of Prosecution First Lieutenant of Justice Jurowski went to work immediately, supported by other officers – Major Kononjuk, Major V.S. Apresjan, First Lieutenant F.A. Rodionov, Major M.E. Golovan, and Lieutenant N.V. Kadalo – and carried out investigations between August 15 and 23 on the grounds of the camps Treblinka I and Treblinka II. He furthermore questioned witnesses: Samuel Rajzman, Lucjan Puchała, Marianna Kobus, Stanisław Zdonek, Barbara Zemkiewicz, Józef Pukaszek, Stanisław Kon, Mieczysław Anyszkiewicz, Tadeusz Kann, Franciszek Wesolowski, Max Lewit, and Kazimierz Skarzyński (GARF, 7021-115-11, pp. 15-43.)[...]
The ‘bath’ was a house, which consisted of 12 cabins, each 6 × 6 m in size. 400 to 500 people were driven at a time into one cabin. It had two doors, which could be sealed hermetically. In the corner, between ceiling and wall, were two openings connected with hoses. Behind the ‘bath’ stood a machine. It pumped the air out of the room. The people suffocated within 6 to 10 minutes. The second door was opened and the dead were brought on wheelbarrows to the special ovens[…]
The oven – this was a large trench 250-300 m in length, 20-25 m in width and 5-6 m deep, excavated by an excavator. Driven into the bottom of the ditch were three rows of reinforced concrete posts, one-and-a-half meters in height each. The posts were connected to one another by cross-beams. On these cross-beams rails were placed at intervals of 5 to 7 cm. That was a gigantic oven grill. A narrow-gage spur track led down to the edge of the trench. (Witness testimony of Abe Kon, Hejnoch Brenner, Samuel Rajzman,
and the content of the book ‘One Year in Treblinka’).[…]
On the basis of the preliminary facts, the cremation of people has been determined with no doubt. The extent of the extermination of people was monstrous: about three million.”[6]
And here we have it all, suffocation – followed by burning. However, the alleged suffocating in vacuum chambers has since been changed to gassings by diesel exhaust, at first, and now to gassings by gasoline engine exhaust. Also, it is no longer claimed that the “ovens” were 5-6m deep ditches. One has to wonder why that has been changed, since the first eyewitnesses surely must have remembered how it was allegedly done, especially the witnesses Samuel Rajzmann and Yankiel Wiernik, who claim to have been in Treblinka during its operation and both participated in the revolt, even though neither mentions the other. The three million cremated has also been downsized somewhat, but no agreement has been reached on a number, Yad Vashem has it as 880,000.
And now to the first report of Oswiezim, or Auschwitz as it is better known. As we know, Auschwitz was ‘liberated’ by the Red Army on 27 January 1945. On 2 February an article appeared in “Pravda”, a Soviet daily, in which the author, Boris Polevoi, writes about what eyewitnesses had told him:
The name of the town “Auschwitz” has long been a synonym for bloody German atrocities in the lexicon of the peoples of the world. Few of its prisoners escaped the fires of its notorious “ovens.” [2]
[…]Last year, when the Red Army revealed to the world the terrible and
abominable secrets of Majdanek, the Germans in Auschwitz began to wipe
out the traces of their crimes. They leveled the mounds of the so-called
“old” [3] graves in the Eastern [4]
part of the camp, tore up and destroyed the traces of the electric
conveyor belt, on which hundreds of people were simultaneously
electrocuted, their bodies falling onto the slow moving conveyor belt
which carried them to the top of the blast furnace [5]
where they fell in, were completely burned, their bones converted to
meal in the rolling mills, and then sent to the surrounding fields.[7]
Ok, no suffocation, but we have this: “Few of its prisoners escaped the fires of its notorious “ovens”. And: “…their bodies falling onto the slow moving conveyor belt which carried them to the top of the blast furnace”. The electrocution, as well as the blast furnaces have also not survived, even though attested to by eyewitnesses. But what we see here is the story in the making, the suffocating in Treblinka and the burnings in both camps, although “details” had to be worked out yet, and were.
As for the persecution of Jews in the middle ages, mentioned by Zimmermann, here is what Bernard Lazare, a Jew himself, had to say about his contemporaries:
“If this hostility, even aversion, had only been shown toward the Jews at one period and in one country, it would be easy to unravel the limited causes of this anger, but this race has been on the contrary an object of hatred to all the peoples among whom it has established itself. It must be therefore, since the enemies of the Jews belonged to the most diverse races, since they lived in countries very distant from each other,
since’ they were ruled by very different laws, governed by opposite principles, since they had neither the same morals, nor the same customs, since they were animated by unlike dispositions which did not permit them to judge of anything in the same way, it must be therefore that the general cause of Anti-Semitism has always resided in Israel itself and not in those who have fought against Israel.[8]
Dr. Theodor Herzl sounds much the same in his “Der Judenstaat”, it is therefore incorrect to refer to Jewish persecution, a fact, and not mention the “why”.
To the News (Nachrichten) about Chelmno. First, we must recall what was said in the introduction to this book: that only after the war had ended did the world as a whole find out what had happened in the concentration camps – were people informed about the mass murder (Völkermord).[9] So, how could Ha’aretz have known about the murder of Jews in Chelmno with poisonous vapor already in 1942? Then the times given, “November and December”. In the same book, on p.153 we read:
“[I]n Chelmno wurde am 8. Dezember 1941, und damit am frühesten, die systematische Ermordung von Juden in einem Vernichtungslager aufgenommen”.(On 8 December the systematic murder of Jews in Chelmno started).
And in “Nationalsozialistische Massentötung durch Giftgas”, by Kogon et al, we read on p.120, a Jozef Czuprynski testifying:
“Während der gesamten Kriegsdauer wohnte ich im Dorf Zawadki, arbeitete jedoch in Powiercie. Am 5. Dezember 1941 kamen die ersten Autotransporte mit Juden aus Kolo nach Chelmno”. (During the whole of the war I lived in Zawadki, and on 5 December 1941 the first transports of Jews arrived in Chelmno).
If, what Ha’aretz reported, is fact based, how could they then talk about gassings in November when the alleged gassings did not start until December? This report was based on rumors, just like any other “report” peddled at that time. Pierre Blet writes about the rumors of Jews killed that reached the Vatican, all dismissed by the Pope because they could not be substantiated.[10]
Other iconographic images, Zimmermann continues, the manufacturing of soap from human fat for instance, are also associated with burnings, not gassings, that particular image has now been largely dropped (aus dem Diskurs verdrängt). Of course the history of the Shoah, the gassings as killing method, is well known to historians and lay persons alike. Therefore it is not possible to separate the gas chamber from the crematoria, but in Israels’ iconography both are depicted as killing devices. For example: The heavy burden of that icon of extermination, the crematoria, played a role in public discussions in Israel. According to the rules of the Jewish “Halacha”, deceased can only be buried, not cremated and by burning Jewish bodies the National Socialists committed sacrilege (Zimmermann continues by talking about a crematorium existing in Israel).
Comments: Ye old soap canard again, and Zimmermann does not dismiss it as a tall tale, oh no, it is just not mentioned as often anymore, according to him. The repeated reference to “iconography” and “Iconic imagery” is also of interest. “The Holocaust” in pictures? Yes indeed, just look at the drawings by David Olère, most of them demonstrate that what is told is untrue. And we must remember that hardly any photographs exist, an abnormality since camps like Treblinka were only fenced off with barbed wire and the alleged Totenlager (killing site) situated on a rise in the camp. We should have albums of pictures, showing the digging of graves, the hauling away of the soil from diggings (we need to remember that at least seven graves were allegedly dug, measuring 50m x 25 x 10m deep) the burnings, etc., etc.
But staying with iconography, we have here also the other meaning of the word ‘icon”, Webster’s defines it as: “3: an object of uncritical devotion”. So when Zimmermann refers to that “icon of extermination” (Ikone der Vernichtung), the crematoria, he refers to it as a religious symbol, an icon, “an object of uncritical devotion”. In fact, by now “The Holocaust” has turned into a quasi religion, as is acknowledged by many.[11]
In the memory of survivors, death by gas and cremation are one and the same (unzertrennbar), understandably so – for there were no survivors of gassings. And if someone survived a camp, he did not survive the gas chamber. Only in films, as in “Schindlers List” could people survive, the twenty children who survived by being asked to help unload potatoes – as mentioned in the Eichmann trial – an exception.
And the few surviving members of the “Sonderkommando” were responsible only for getting rid of the bodies of the gassed by burning them in the ovens. One of my colleagues, the Holocaust survivor and Holocaust historian Otto Dov Kulka, remembers the fire flaming from the crematoria (das Feuer das aus den Krematorien emporflammte) as the crucial point of his remembrance.[12]
Comments: There are accounts of gas chamber survivors, but that is hardly the issue here. Also, flames coming out of crematory chimneys, as in one of the Olère drawings — rubbish.
Ever since the Baby Yar massacre of 1941 has become a symbol of the Shoah, beside the gas chambers, the mass shootings are now also in competition with the image of the gas chamber. The questions asked: Who is holding the rifle? How does a Jew react, does he willingly go to get butchered (Schlachtbank), or does he resist? Thus the image of a Jew, shovelling his own grave, is perhaps more powerful than all other images when considering the necessity of establishing the state of Israel. But at the close, the story of Babi Yar (die Geschichte von Babi Yar) also ends with the burning of bodies.
Comments: Babi Yar has absolutely nothing to do with the subject matter, the Jews of Kiev allegedly shot, so why mention it here, when alleged killings by poisonous gas is the issue? But yes, lately the shootings have moved more and more to the front, because they are harder to dispute. As for the defenceless Jew who never resists, this has been a problem with the story right from the start. In a meeting of 7 February 1961, between Hessian Attorney General Fritz Bauer and American Consul Wayland B. Wuters (Waters?), regarding the Eichmann trial, the latter wrote in his report:
“Bauer did not think that Israel would be in any sort of hurry with the Eichmann trial, on the contrary; nor did he think the trial would be particularly sensational. He seems to feel all parties involved would ‘behave wisely’ and that Ben Gurion’s main aim would be to secure ‘historical light’ for internal educational purposes within Israel. (“Ben Gurion thinks the new generation in Israel is as unbelieving of Jewish passivity in the face of mass murder as the new Generation in Germany is unbelieving of mass German guilt”, Bauer said)
The reporting officer suspects, though he can in no way document his supposition, that Bauer may well be connected in some high-ranking capacity with the Israeli Intelligence Service in West Germany”.[13]
One has to read this slowly to grasp the meaning. First, Ben Gurion only wanted to make “history (historical) light”, why? Was the evidence for “The Holocaust” not convincing enough at that time? And then we have the part about Jews not believing that millions of their compatriots could be murdered without any sign of resistance, and that remains unbelievable to this day. As for Germans not believing the story, this is why the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials had to be conducted from 1963 to 1965, school classes invited to witness the proceedings, with the prosecutor calling the accused “murderers”, reminiscent of the Stalinist trials. And even though no substantial evidence was submitted at that trial, the judges admitting to this in the verdict, the publicity and baseless horror stories told did what it was supposed to do: establish “The Holocaust” in the minds of Germans.
And of course we must never forget that the State of Israel rests on “The Holocaust”.
Zimmermann then writes about Israeli school books (curriculum), and that the Holocaust is, since 1977, a compulsory course. The books of the 1980s concern themselves more with the shooting by the Einsatzgruppen (EG, task forces) — with issues like the Jewish councils(Judenräte) in the ghettos and the Warsaw uprising in the foreground — the gas chambers mentioned only in passing, ditto for the newer books. In one of the books from 1999 a connection is made between the T4 actions and the killings with gas during the “Endlösung”, this based on newer research, the historian Shulamit Volkov contributed to the book. The only photo in the book, however, is that of a mass shooting, and thus it actually distracts from the T4 story (Geschichte). The selection of photos serves more as corroboration to our actual perception.[14] Zimmermann published the only school book in 1981 which featured a picture of a gas chamber.[15] In a book written for graduates, published in 1999, the change over from mass shootings to extermination camps is addressed, but murder by gas is marginalized, the book sharply criticized for lack of patriotism. The photo shown in the book that of a crematoria in Dachau.[16]
Comments: It always strikes me as odd when I read that “The Holocaust” still needs to be taught in school, not only in Israel but throughout most of the western world. Not only is it taught, but special guidelines for teaching the subject needed to be issued: “Guidelines for Teaching about the Holocaust”.[17] Why is that? By now, the facts should speak for themselves, in fact, there should be no need to publish this book under discussion. So why the continued Holocaust “education”. Because what is presented as evidence is just not convincing. Now to the issues of photos, i.e., the lack of same. Zimmermann tries to induce that photos only serve to convince us of what we already know, he does so in vain (the wording of what he wrote is a little strange, this is why the German original is provided). We know that at least one camera had been smuggled into Auschwitz [18], the pictures leaving much to be desired. Also, the Auschwitz resistance had excellent connections to the outside [19], the question that needs to be asked then: Why not more pictures? And to dismiss the evidentiary value of photos is not convincing in the least, with all the opportunities that no doubt presented themselves, we should have piles of them, if what is alleged really happened.
Zimmermann writes that in the school book he published in 1981, a picture of a Gaskammer is shown, the only book to do so, here is what he wrote in German:
“Das einzige Schulbuch, in dem ein Foto einer Gaskammer gezeigt wird, habe ich bereits im Jahre 1981 herausgegeben”.[20]
No details about which gas chamber he featured, and the book he is referring to (footnote 15) seems to have disappeared. I searched for it in every on-line book store, from ABAA to Zentrales V.A.B., nothing. Why is this important? Well, in the newspaper write up to the Berlin conference of 2008 — attended by 200 scientists from around the world to discuss “the historical significance, the technical development and revisionists denial of the Holocaust”, the book under discussion based on the findings of said scientists — we read that the description of gas chambers is fictional (fictive Darstellung), no pictures exist, all we have is eyewitness testimony. But now we learn that Mr. Zimmermann provided a picture of a gas chamber already in 1981, why not show that picture? Or is it also a picture of a genuine shower room, as shown by Henryk Mandelbaum, and claimed to be the gas chamber of Auschwitz?[21]
Zimmermann then talks more about the cremations, and also about films, “Witness to Murder” a 1954 Hollywood production is mentioned, as is “I want to live”, produced four years later, that film about state sanctioned killings in gas chambers in the USA. But, no connection is made between American and German gas chambers.
We then learn about the distribution of poisonous baby food “Made in Germany” in Israel, some babies died. It turned out that vitamin B1 was missing, not by accident according to a Member of the Knesset. Then, the gas pipeline from Egypt was put into operation, in April 2008, on the day when the Shoah is commemorated in Israel. But the climax of the association with “gas” and Germany was reached in 1991, when Saddam had conquered Kuwait. The discussion in Israel centred around the association between the German chemical industry and Saddam, the fear that the latter would use chemical weapons, built with German expertise, against Israel. The Soviet Scud rockets a modernized version of the German V-2. There was even talk about gassings in Iraq with Zyklon B, but this rumor was discarded.[22]
Comment: Typical Jewish paranoia.
But then, five years later and three years following the gassings of his own Kurdish people, Zimmermann continues, the Iraqi chemical weapons arsenal seems to have (schien) threatened Israel. This brought back the memories of gassings of Jews during the Shoah — Saddam Hussein a Hitler copy and Israel’s worst enemy — and chemical weapons “Made in Germany”, an explosive combination. Michael Bar Zohar gave a detailed speech concerning the participation of German companies and the export of poisonous gas to Iraq. He spoke of: “a devilish formula which goes: Jews – Germans – Gas”. Yitzchak Levi added: “There are things that are implanted in the pedigree (Wurzeln) of a people”, referring to the inclination of Germans – the modern Amaleks — to use poisonous gas against Jews. Two weeks after the start of that war Knesset Member Gershon Shafat summarized: “The father delivers Zyklon B for the extermination of Jews, the son the gas to Iraq so it can be used against Israel”.[23]
Comments: Zimmermann goes on and on, and even though this could be considered a “tongue in cheek” account, one has to ask: What has all of this to do with the subject? Why fill almost four pages with what amounts to Jewish paranoia? Or is it just paranoia? Most likely not, for “The Holocaust” is used by Israelis to justify just about anything, starting with the crimes committed against Palestinians, or to convince the “Coalition of the Willing” that a war against Hussein was necessary to save the world, although some in that coalition did not need much coaxing.
And now, toward the end of his essay, Zimmermann tells us that the attitude in Israel re. the Shoah is not as sacrilegious as before (with this again adding the religious undertone), even though we still have the new addition of Yad Vashem, the yearly “Marches of the Living”, and the ritualizing of the Holocaust Memorial Day. But, on the other side, the number of survivors is dwindling, and voices are heard criticizing the use of the Holocaust for political gains. Even Shoah jokes are told, originating in Germany of 30 years ago. Why this is so — the psychological aspect of this — Zimmermann does not wish to address. But in the jokes burning also plays a major role: “Question: “What do we call a survivor?’ Answer: ‘Schnizolim’ (Schnitzel)”. Hebrew for survivors being “Nizolim”. Be that as it may, even now tear gas is not used against Jewish, right-wing demonstrators because the right immediately points towards the Shoah. Tear gas is used against Arabs, however, and against the left in Israel, no concern here that the Shoah will be evoked.
There is no interest in discussions about facts, the Leuchter Report almost ignored by the media. The naming of an institute for theoretical chemicals (Institutes für theoretische Chemie) as “Fritz Haber” also of no interest. Advertising by Hoover for their vacuum cleaner “Zyklon” was allowed. This shows that the poisonous gas theme can only be brought into the conscience in certain connections, and then used for political purposes. The fight against Shoah deniers is seen as a fight for existence, but in this framework attention is not focused on gassings alone, and that rightly so.
Final comments: Zimmermann convinces us that in the Jewish psyche burnings are what makes the Shoah, not the gassings, unless “Germany” and “Gas” are mentioned in the same context. He, aside from a few deviations into the world of paranoia, addresses the issue, the heading of his essay “How survivors perceive the mass murder by poisonous gas”. But, the question has to be asked again: What has all of this to do with proving that Jews were mass murdered with poisonous gas? This is after all what the title of the book promises, to provide new evidence for said gassings. One could dismiss this article, as well as that of Evans, as irrelevant, but it is not. The intent here is to get the reader conditioned, to soften him/her up to later accept all that is presented without question. And sadly, this tactic will work, most readers having never concerned themselves with details about “The Holocaust”. Zimmermann alludes to this in the last part of his essay in regards to Israel, but the same may be said for most people in the rest of the world.
To be continued…
Sources:
-----------------------------------------The second study in chapter one is by Dr. Moshe Zimmermann, Prof. for contemporary history and head of the Richard Koebner Minerva Center for German History at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The essay is titled “Massenmord durch Giftgas in der Wahrnehmung der Überlebenden” (How survivors perceive the mass murder by poisonous gas).
Before we go into this, the book this article is part of is about new studies on killing with poisonous gas by the Nazis, and the denial by Revisionists of said killings. The first article by Mr. Evans contributed nothing to the issue supposedly under discussion, the title of the second seems to follow that trend. One has to wonder why we need to know how the alleged murder by poisonous gas was perceived by the, ahem, survivors. But let’s not judge a book by its cover and see what Mr. Zimmermann has to say.
He starts out by informing us that he will concentrate on how Jewish survivors perceived this mass murder, specifically Israelis, even though only a small percentage of actual survivors live in that country. But, so Zimmermann, the whole of Israeli society, starting with the “Survivors of the second generation”, consider themselves to be a society of survivors. And in their opinion they represent the whole of Jewish society (Doch die gesamte israelische Gesellschaft, mit den „Überlebenden der zweiten Generation“ beginnend, betrachtet sich als eine Gesellschaft von Überlebenden. Darüber hinaus geht diese Gesellschaft davon aus, dass sie die gesamte jüdische Gemeinschaft repräsentiert).[1]
Comments: The last part makes it clear that “surviving the Holocaust” has turned into a social exercise and has nothing to do with actual numbers. But the part about percentages is interesting, because one needs to ask: A percentage of what? In a Ha’aretz article of December 29, 2005, we read: “As of 2005, of the nearly 400,000 Holocaust survivors residing in Israel, 40% live below the poverty line…”. This article has since disappeared, all I have is the printout of a portion of it. Some of it is still available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aftermath_of_the_Holocaust
— look under “Survivors welfare in Israel” (footnote 7 refers to the disappeared Ha’aretz
article). And this article talks about cancer/colon cancer as a result
of starvation — clearly just about actual survivors. Thus, if 400 000 is
a small percentage of the total of survivors, how many did “survive”?
Why do we have no exact figures when they surely must exist because
Germany is paying retribution to each of the survivors? I have seen
numbers as high as 4 million [2], but it is said that some of those were
double claims. Possibly so, but why the big secret?Fact is, no historian ever concerned himself with the issue of how many survived, and many did survive the war.[3] In this essay, links are provided to works by Messrs. Kulischer and Scheidl, among others, with the latter demonstrating that the numbers we are given – of Jews allegedly murdered by the Germans – are not based on solid research. We also know now that up to 20,000 camps, i.e., detention facilities existed instead of the 5,000 to 7,000 believed to have existed. Mr. Thomas Kues mentions this in his article.[4] So, why is the issue of how many survived seemingly unimportant? It should not be, for only if we know how many Jews were able to flee or make it through the war somehow can we begin to look for those missing.
According to Jewish customs, Zimmermann continues, at the funeral of a diseased, and the anniversary of that day, the “Jahrzeit”, a special prayer is offered: El male Rachamim (merciful God), the merciful God is asked to give eternal peace to the souls of the diseased. On the 10th day of the Jewish month Tevet, the day of the of remembrance of the Shoah, special versions of El male Rachamin are offered for the six million Jewish victims of the European Shoah. One version inserts the following into the original prayer: “that were killed, butchered, burned and became martyrs through the German Nazi murderers and their helpers” (die getötet, geschlachtet, verbrannt und Märtyrer wurden, durch die deutschen Nazi-Mörder und deren Helfern aus anderen Völkern). The other version adds: „that were killed, butchered, suffocated, burned and buried alive by the German Nazis and their helpers”(die getötet, geschlachtet, erstickt, verbrannt und bei lebendigem Leibe begraben wurden, durch die deutschen Nazis und ihre Helfer). Thus, in this prayer death by gassing is grouped in (zugeordnet) with suffocation, a known punishment in ancient Judaism.
This makes two things clear: the word “gassing” does not exist in the Hebrew language to this day, and second, that burning is implanted more firmly in the collective Jewish conscience than gassings and has become synonymous with the mass murder of Jews during the Shoah. To wit: in one of the prayers the word “suffocating”, as a substitute for gassing, is missing. Thus as monstrous as the killing by poisonous gas was, in the end the expressions “oven” and “burning” have become better known as the word “Gas chamber”.
Comments: This is of some importance, for it is true that in some eyewitness accounts only burnings are mentioned, E. Wiesel for instance never mentions gas chambers – only burnings in ditches. This of course puts the veracity of their testimony in doubt, for Jewish tradition and language are one thing but surely a Jew could never forget the gas chambers in which millions of his compatriots were allegedly killed.
Zimmermann now goes into detail as to why burnings are burned, pardon, implanted into the Jewish subconscious, and tells us that there are various reasons for this. In the descriptions of the persecution of Jews in the middle ages, and beyond that in Jewish historiography — which accentuates (unterstreicht) the difference between the subdued “bent down” (gebückten) Jew of the Diaspora and the proud, allegedly new Jew of Israel – burning pyres (Scheiterhaufen) play a central role. When religious Jews understand the Third Reich as a return to the middle ages, then the killing by fire seems to be (scheint) what connects those killings to the Jewish martyrdom of the middle ages. When looking at pictures which portray the mass murder of Jews in iconographic language (ikonografischer Sprache), we find that ovens are not just used for burning of corpses but become a murder weapon of their own, and this even though burning of live people was the exception. Zimmermann then quotes H. Heine, as a nice touch: “Dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen“ (Where books are burned, humans will follow)
Death by suffocation was one form of execution in ancient Judaism, as punishment for patricide for instance, but for obvious reasons one cannot find anything about gassings in the ancient Jewish catalogue of punishments. In fact, gassing, in its implementation, reminds more of the punishment by burning practiced in old Judaism, because it depicts the blocking of the air ways with glowing lead (glühendem Blei), instead of burning on pyres (this makes no sense in German either). This is why the burning facilities, the crematoria (“Misrafot”), as well as the smoking chimney’s (“Arubot”) are mentioned, instead of the gas chambers (“Ta’ei Gisim”) when talking of the Shoah.
And even without going back to the middle ages it would have been possible for flames as icons to displace the invisible gas, for in Palestine hardly any gas pipelines existed before the establishment of Israel. Then, in early summer of 1942, when the news of mass murder methods reached the country, Ha’aretz reported on 30 June 1943: “In November and December of 1941 the Nazis have began to murder Jews with poisonous vapor (Dunst, the word poisonous gas did not exist). They did this in the city Chelm[no[ […] Following this, those poisoned were burned in the forest”. And at a meeting of the Jewish Agency of 22 November 1942 it was reported: “They are destroyed (vernichtet) with gas. Three ovens exist in Oswiezim,[…] in which Jews are burned”. (Als im Frühsommer 1942 dann die ersten Nachrichten über die neue Mordmethode das Land erreichten, meldete die hebräische Tageszeitung Haaretz dies am 30. Juni 1942 mit den Worten: „Im November und Dezember [1941] begannen die Nazis Juden mit Giftdunst [das Wort Giftgas stand damals überhaupt nicht im Wörterbuch] zu ermorden. Sie taten dies in der Stadt Chelm[no],[...]. Danach hat man die Vergifteten in den Wäldern verbrannt.” Und bei einer Sitzung des Direktoriums der Jewish Agency am 22. November 1942 wurde berichtet: „Man vernichtet sie mit Gas. In Oswiezim gibt es drei Öfen, [...] in denen man Juden verbrennt.”2 (2 Dina Porat/Yehiam Weitz, Between the Star of David and the Yellow Star. The Jewish Community in Palestine and the Holocaust 1939-1945, Tel Aviv 2002, S. 106.)[5]
Comments: One might want to ask what all of this old Jewish history has to do with evidence for the alleged killing of Jews by poisonous gas. Well, nothing, and yet… Zimmermann makes a good case here for how the story came to be. Burning and suffocating, not the gassing, is what is implanted in the Jewish psyche. We must remember here the first reports from the camps, and I’ll start with Treblinka, the area around it conquered by the Red Army in the middle of August 1944:
“The Military Examining Judge of the Military Office of Prosecution First Lieutenant of Justice Jurowski went to work immediately, supported by other officers – Major Kononjuk, Major V.S. Apresjan, First Lieutenant F.A. Rodionov, Major M.E. Golovan, and Lieutenant N.V. Kadalo – and carried out investigations between August 15 and 23 on the grounds of the camps Treblinka I and Treblinka II. He furthermore questioned witnesses: Samuel Rajzman, Lucjan Puchała, Marianna Kobus, Stanisław Zdonek, Barbara Zemkiewicz, Józef Pukaszek, Stanisław Kon, Mieczysław Anyszkiewicz, Tadeusz Kann, Franciszek Wesolowski, Max Lewit, and Kazimierz Skarzyński (GARF, 7021-115-11, pp. 15-43.)[...]
The ‘bath’ was a house, which consisted of 12 cabins, each 6 × 6 m in size. 400 to 500 people were driven at a time into one cabin. It had two doors, which could be sealed hermetically. In the corner, between ceiling and wall, were two openings connected with hoses. Behind the ‘bath’ stood a machine. It pumped the air out of the room. The people suffocated within 6 to 10 minutes. The second door was opened and the dead were brought on wheelbarrows to the special ovens[…]
The oven – this was a large trench 250-300 m in length, 20-25 m in width and 5-6 m deep, excavated by an excavator. Driven into the bottom of the ditch were three rows of reinforced concrete posts, one-and-a-half meters in height each. The posts were connected to one another by cross-beams. On these cross-beams rails were placed at intervals of 5 to 7 cm. That was a gigantic oven grill. A narrow-gage spur track led down to the edge of the trench. (Witness testimony of Abe Kon, Hejnoch Brenner, Samuel Rajzman,
and the content of the book ‘One Year in Treblinka’).[…]
On the basis of the preliminary facts, the cremation of people has been determined with no doubt. The extent of the extermination of people was monstrous: about three million.”[6]
And here we have it all, suffocation – followed by burning. However, the alleged suffocating in vacuum chambers has since been changed to gassings by diesel exhaust, at first, and now to gassings by gasoline engine exhaust. Also, it is no longer claimed that the “ovens” were 5-6m deep ditches. One has to wonder why that has been changed, since the first eyewitnesses surely must have remembered how it was allegedly done, especially the witnesses Samuel Rajzmann and Yankiel Wiernik, who claim to have been in Treblinka during its operation and both participated in the revolt, even though neither mentions the other. The three million cremated has also been downsized somewhat, but no agreement has been reached on a number, Yad Vashem has it as 880,000.
And now to the first report of Oswiezim, or Auschwitz as it is better known. As we know, Auschwitz was ‘liberated’ by the Red Army on 27 January 1945. On 2 February an article appeared in “Pravda”, a Soviet daily, in which the author, Boris Polevoi, writes about what eyewitnesses had told him:
The name of the town “Auschwitz” has long been a synonym for bloody German atrocities in the lexicon of the peoples of the world. Few of its prisoners escaped the fires of its notorious “ovens.” [2]
[…]Last year, when the Red Army revealed to the world the terrible and
abominable secrets of Majdanek, the Germans in Auschwitz began to wipe
out the traces of their crimes. They leveled the mounds of the so-called
“old” [3] graves in the Eastern [4]
part of the camp, tore up and destroyed the traces of the electric
conveyor belt, on which hundreds of people were simultaneously
electrocuted, their bodies falling onto the slow moving conveyor belt
which carried them to the top of the blast furnace [5]
where they fell in, were completely burned, their bones converted to
meal in the rolling mills, and then sent to the surrounding fields.[7]Ok, no suffocation, but we have this: “Few of its prisoners escaped the fires of its notorious “ovens”. And: “…their bodies falling onto the slow moving conveyor belt which carried them to the top of the blast furnace”. The electrocution, as well as the blast furnaces have also not survived, even though attested to by eyewitnesses. But what we see here is the story in the making, the suffocating in Treblinka and the burnings in both camps, although “details” had to be worked out yet, and were.
As for the persecution of Jews in the middle ages, mentioned by Zimmermann, here is what Bernard Lazare, a Jew himself, had to say about his contemporaries:
“If this hostility, even aversion, had only been shown toward the Jews at one period and in one country, it would be easy to unravel the limited causes of this anger, but this race has been on the contrary an object of hatred to all the peoples among whom it has established itself. It must be therefore, since the enemies of the Jews belonged to the most diverse races, since they lived in countries very distant from each other,
since’ they were ruled by very different laws, governed by opposite principles, since they had neither the same morals, nor the same customs, since they were animated by unlike dispositions which did not permit them to judge of anything in the same way, it must be therefore that the general cause of Anti-Semitism has always resided in Israel itself and not in those who have fought against Israel.[8]
Dr. Theodor Herzl sounds much the same in his “Der Judenstaat”, it is therefore incorrect to refer to Jewish persecution, a fact, and not mention the “why”.
To the News (Nachrichten) about Chelmno. First, we must recall what was said in the introduction to this book: that only after the war had ended did the world as a whole find out what had happened in the concentration camps – were people informed about the mass murder (Völkermord).[9] So, how could Ha’aretz have known about the murder of Jews in Chelmno with poisonous vapor already in 1942? Then the times given, “November and December”. In the same book, on p.153 we read:
“[I]n Chelmno wurde am 8. Dezember 1941, und damit am frühesten, die systematische Ermordung von Juden in einem Vernichtungslager aufgenommen”.(On 8 December the systematic murder of Jews in Chelmno started).
And in “Nationalsozialistische Massentötung durch Giftgas”, by Kogon et al, we read on p.120, a Jozef Czuprynski testifying:
“Während der gesamten Kriegsdauer wohnte ich im Dorf Zawadki, arbeitete jedoch in Powiercie. Am 5. Dezember 1941 kamen die ersten Autotransporte mit Juden aus Kolo nach Chelmno”. (During the whole of the war I lived in Zawadki, and on 5 December 1941 the first transports of Jews arrived in Chelmno).
If, what Ha’aretz reported, is fact based, how could they then talk about gassings in November when the alleged gassings did not start until December? This report was based on rumors, just like any other “report” peddled at that time. Pierre Blet writes about the rumors of Jews killed that reached the Vatican, all dismissed by the Pope because they could not be substantiated.[10]
Other iconographic images, Zimmermann continues, the manufacturing of soap from human fat for instance, are also associated with burnings, not gassings, that particular image has now been largely dropped (aus dem Diskurs verdrängt). Of course the history of the Shoah, the gassings as killing method, is well known to historians and lay persons alike. Therefore it is not possible to separate the gas chamber from the crematoria, but in Israels’ iconography both are depicted as killing devices. For example: The heavy burden of that icon of extermination, the crematoria, played a role in public discussions in Israel. According to the rules of the Jewish “Halacha”, deceased can only be buried, not cremated and by burning Jewish bodies the National Socialists committed sacrilege (Zimmermann continues by talking about a crematorium existing in Israel).
Comments: Ye old soap canard again, and Zimmermann does not dismiss it as a tall tale, oh no, it is just not mentioned as often anymore, according to him. The repeated reference to “iconography” and “Iconic imagery” is also of interest. “The Holocaust” in pictures? Yes indeed, just look at the drawings by David Olère, most of them demonstrate that what is told is untrue. And we must remember that hardly any photographs exist, an abnormality since camps like Treblinka were only fenced off with barbed wire and the alleged Totenlager (killing site) situated on a rise in the camp. We should have albums of pictures, showing the digging of graves, the hauling away of the soil from diggings (we need to remember that at least seven graves were allegedly dug, measuring 50m x 25 x 10m deep) the burnings, etc., etc.
But staying with iconography, we have here also the other meaning of the word ‘icon”, Webster’s defines it as: “3: an object of uncritical devotion”. So when Zimmermann refers to that “icon of extermination” (Ikone der Vernichtung), the crematoria, he refers to it as a religious symbol, an icon, “an object of uncritical devotion”. In fact, by now “The Holocaust” has turned into a quasi religion, as is acknowledged by many.[11]
In the memory of survivors, death by gas and cremation are one and the same (unzertrennbar), understandably so – for there were no survivors of gassings. And if someone survived a camp, he did not survive the gas chamber. Only in films, as in “Schindlers List” could people survive, the twenty children who survived by being asked to help unload potatoes – as mentioned in the Eichmann trial – an exception.
And the few surviving members of the “Sonderkommando” were responsible only for getting rid of the bodies of the gassed by burning them in the ovens. One of my colleagues, the Holocaust survivor and Holocaust historian Otto Dov Kulka, remembers the fire flaming from the crematoria (das Feuer das aus den Krematorien emporflammte) as the crucial point of his remembrance.[12]
Comments: There are accounts of gas chamber survivors, but that is hardly the issue here. Also, flames coming out of crematory chimneys, as in one of the Olère drawings — rubbish.
Ever since the Baby Yar massacre of 1941 has become a symbol of the Shoah, beside the gas chambers, the mass shootings are now also in competition with the image of the gas chamber. The questions asked: Who is holding the rifle? How does a Jew react, does he willingly go to get butchered (Schlachtbank), or does he resist? Thus the image of a Jew, shovelling his own grave, is perhaps more powerful than all other images when considering the necessity of establishing the state of Israel. But at the close, the story of Babi Yar (die Geschichte von Babi Yar) also ends with the burning of bodies.
Comments: Babi Yar has absolutely nothing to do with the subject matter, the Jews of Kiev allegedly shot, so why mention it here, when alleged killings by poisonous gas is the issue? But yes, lately the shootings have moved more and more to the front, because they are harder to dispute. As for the defenceless Jew who never resists, this has been a problem with the story right from the start. In a meeting of 7 February 1961, between Hessian Attorney General Fritz Bauer and American Consul Wayland B. Wuters (Waters?), regarding the Eichmann trial, the latter wrote in his report:
“Bauer did not think that Israel would be in any sort of hurry with the Eichmann trial, on the contrary; nor did he think the trial would be particularly sensational. He seems to feel all parties involved would ‘behave wisely’ and that Ben Gurion’s main aim would be to secure ‘historical light’ for internal educational purposes within Israel. (“Ben Gurion thinks the new generation in Israel is as unbelieving of Jewish passivity in the face of mass murder as the new Generation in Germany is unbelieving of mass German guilt”, Bauer said)
The reporting officer suspects, though he can in no way document his supposition, that Bauer may well be connected in some high-ranking capacity with the Israeli Intelligence Service in West Germany”.[13]
One has to read this slowly to grasp the meaning. First, Ben Gurion only wanted to make “history (historical) light”, why? Was the evidence for “The Holocaust” not convincing enough at that time? And then we have the part about Jews not believing that millions of their compatriots could be murdered without any sign of resistance, and that remains unbelievable to this day. As for Germans not believing the story, this is why the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials had to be conducted from 1963 to 1965, school classes invited to witness the proceedings, with the prosecutor calling the accused “murderers”, reminiscent of the Stalinist trials. And even though no substantial evidence was submitted at that trial, the judges admitting to this in the verdict, the publicity and baseless horror stories told did what it was supposed to do: establish “The Holocaust” in the minds of Germans.
And of course we must never forget that the State of Israel rests on “The Holocaust”.
Zimmermann then writes about Israeli school books (curriculum), and that the Holocaust is, since 1977, a compulsory course. The books of the 1980s concern themselves more with the shooting by the Einsatzgruppen (EG, task forces) — with issues like the Jewish councils(Judenräte) in the ghettos and the Warsaw uprising in the foreground — the gas chambers mentioned only in passing, ditto for the newer books. In one of the books from 1999 a connection is made between the T4 actions and the killings with gas during the “Endlösung”, this based on newer research, the historian Shulamit Volkov contributed to the book. The only photo in the book, however, is that of a mass shooting, and thus it actually distracts from the T4 story (Geschichte). The selection of photos serves more as corroboration to our actual perception.[14] Zimmermann published the only school book in 1981 which featured a picture of a gas chamber.[15] In a book written for graduates, published in 1999, the change over from mass shootings to extermination camps is addressed, but murder by gas is marginalized, the book sharply criticized for lack of patriotism. The photo shown in the book that of a crematoria in Dachau.[16]
Comments: It always strikes me as odd when I read that “The Holocaust” still needs to be taught in school, not only in Israel but throughout most of the western world. Not only is it taught, but special guidelines for teaching the subject needed to be issued: “Guidelines for Teaching about the Holocaust”.[17] Why is that? By now, the facts should speak for themselves, in fact, there should be no need to publish this book under discussion. So why the continued Holocaust “education”. Because what is presented as evidence is just not convincing. Now to the issues of photos, i.e., the lack of same. Zimmermann tries to induce that photos only serve to convince us of what we already know, he does so in vain (the wording of what he wrote is a little strange, this is why the German original is provided). We know that at least one camera had been smuggled into Auschwitz [18], the pictures leaving much to be desired. Also, the Auschwitz resistance had excellent connections to the outside [19], the question that needs to be asked then: Why not more pictures? And to dismiss the evidentiary value of photos is not convincing in the least, with all the opportunities that no doubt presented themselves, we should have piles of them, if what is alleged really happened.
Zimmermann writes that in the school book he published in 1981, a picture of a Gaskammer is shown, the only book to do so, here is what he wrote in German:
“Das einzige Schulbuch, in dem ein Foto einer Gaskammer gezeigt wird, habe ich bereits im Jahre 1981 herausgegeben”.[20]
No details about which gas chamber he featured, and the book he is referring to (footnote 15) seems to have disappeared. I searched for it in every on-line book store, from ABAA to Zentrales V.A.B., nothing. Why is this important? Well, in the newspaper write up to the Berlin conference of 2008 — attended by 200 scientists from around the world to discuss “the historical significance, the technical development and revisionists denial of the Holocaust”, the book under discussion based on the findings of said scientists — we read that the description of gas chambers is fictional (fictive Darstellung), no pictures exist, all we have is eyewitness testimony. But now we learn that Mr. Zimmermann provided a picture of a gas chamber already in 1981, why not show that picture? Or is it also a picture of a genuine shower room, as shown by Henryk Mandelbaum, and claimed to be the gas chamber of Auschwitz?[21]
Zimmermann then talks more about the cremations, and also about films, “Witness to Murder” a 1954 Hollywood production is mentioned, as is “I want to live”, produced four years later, that film about state sanctioned killings in gas chambers in the USA. But, no connection is made between American and German gas chambers.
We then learn about the distribution of poisonous baby food “Made in Germany” in Israel, some babies died. It turned out that vitamin B1 was missing, not by accident according to a Member of the Knesset. Then, the gas pipeline from Egypt was put into operation, in April 2008, on the day when the Shoah is commemorated in Israel. But the climax of the association with “gas” and Germany was reached in 1991, when Saddam had conquered Kuwait. The discussion in Israel centred around the association between the German chemical industry and Saddam, the fear that the latter would use chemical weapons, built with German expertise, against Israel. The Soviet Scud rockets a modernized version of the German V-2. There was even talk about gassings in Iraq with Zyklon B, but this rumor was discarded.[22]
Comment: Typical Jewish paranoia.
But then, five years later and three years following the gassings of his own Kurdish people, Zimmermann continues, the Iraqi chemical weapons arsenal seems to have (schien) threatened Israel. This brought back the memories of gassings of Jews during the Shoah — Saddam Hussein a Hitler copy and Israel’s worst enemy — and chemical weapons “Made in Germany”, an explosive combination. Michael Bar Zohar gave a detailed speech concerning the participation of German companies and the export of poisonous gas to Iraq. He spoke of: “a devilish formula which goes: Jews – Germans – Gas”. Yitzchak Levi added: “There are things that are implanted in the pedigree (Wurzeln) of a people”, referring to the inclination of Germans – the modern Amaleks — to use poisonous gas against Jews. Two weeks after the start of that war Knesset Member Gershon Shafat summarized: “The father delivers Zyklon B for the extermination of Jews, the son the gas to Iraq so it can be used against Israel”.[23]
Comments: Zimmermann goes on and on, and even though this could be considered a “tongue in cheek” account, one has to ask: What has all of this to do with the subject? Why fill almost four pages with what amounts to Jewish paranoia? Or is it just paranoia? Most likely not, for “The Holocaust” is used by Israelis to justify just about anything, starting with the crimes committed against Palestinians, or to convince the “Coalition of the Willing” that a war against Hussein was necessary to save the world, although some in that coalition did not need much coaxing.
And now, toward the end of his essay, Zimmermann tells us that the attitude in Israel re. the Shoah is not as sacrilegious as before (with this again adding the religious undertone), even though we still have the new addition of Yad Vashem, the yearly “Marches of the Living”, and the ritualizing of the Holocaust Memorial Day. But, on the other side, the number of survivors is dwindling, and voices are heard criticizing the use of the Holocaust for political gains. Even Shoah jokes are told, originating in Germany of 30 years ago. Why this is so — the psychological aspect of this — Zimmermann does not wish to address. But in the jokes burning also plays a major role: “Question: “What do we call a survivor?’ Answer: ‘Schnizolim’ (Schnitzel)”. Hebrew for survivors being “Nizolim”. Be that as it may, even now tear gas is not used against Jewish, right-wing demonstrators because the right immediately points towards the Shoah. Tear gas is used against Arabs, however, and against the left in Israel, no concern here that the Shoah will be evoked.
There is no interest in discussions about facts, the Leuchter Report almost ignored by the media. The naming of an institute for theoretical chemicals (Institutes für theoretische Chemie) as “Fritz Haber” also of no interest. Advertising by Hoover for their vacuum cleaner “Zyklon” was allowed. This shows that the poisonous gas theme can only be brought into the conscience in certain connections, and then used for political purposes. The fight against Shoah deniers is seen as a fight for existence, but in this framework attention is not focused on gassings alone, and that rightly so.
Final comments: Zimmermann convinces us that in the Jewish psyche burnings are what makes the Shoah, not the gassings, unless “Germany” and “Gas” are mentioned in the same context. He, aside from a few deviations into the world of paranoia, addresses the issue, the heading of his essay “How survivors perceive the mass murder by poisonous gas”. But, the question has to be asked again: What has all of this to do with proving that Jews were mass murdered with poisonous gas? This is after all what the title of the book promises, to provide new evidence for said gassings. One could dismiss this article, as well as that of Evans, as irrelevant, but it is not. The intent here is to get the reader conditioned, to soften him/her up to later accept all that is presented without question. And sadly, this tactic will work, most readers having never concerned themselves with details about “The Holocaust”. Zimmermann alludes to this in the last part of his essay in regards to Israel, but the same may be said for most people in the rest of the world.
To be continued…
Sources:
- Günter Morsch und Bertrand Perz, Neue Studien zu Nationalsozialistischen Massentötungen durch Giftgas, Metropol Verlag Berlin 2011, p.11
- http://www.worldlingo.com/ma/enwiki/en/Wiedergutmachung
- http://www.revblog.codoh.com/2010/05/well-where-are-they-then/#more-931
- http://www.revblog.codoh.com/2011/02/facing-a-new-decade/#more-1416
- Neue Studien…, p.12
- Carlo Mattogno, Jürgen Graf, Treblinka. Extermination Camp of Transit Camp, Theses & Dissertations Press, PO Box 257768, Chicago, Illinois 60625 January 2004, pp.77-80
- http://www.fpp.co.uk/Auschwitz/docs/Pravda020245.html#Anchor3
- Vicomte Leon De Poncins, Freemasonry & Judaism. Secret Powers Behind Revolution, A&B Publishers Group. 1000 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklym New York (no publishing date given), p.183 (B. Lazare, L’Antisemitism, p.3)
- Neue Studien…, p. XI
- Pierre Blet, S.J, Pius XII and the Second War. According to the Archives of the Vatican, Paulist Press, New York, N.Y, Mahwah, N.J. 1997. English translation 1999
- http://www.stateofnature.org/holocaustReligion.html (this just one example)
- Neue Studien…, pp.13/14, footnote 4: “These Images of blue skies and columns of people in black swallowed into the confines of the crematoria and disappearing in clouds of smoke.” Zit. in Otto D. Kulka, In Search of History and Memory: Excerpts from „Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death”, in: Moshe Zimmermann (Hrsg.),On Germans and Jews under the Nazi Regime, Jerusalem 2006, S. 401-471, hier S. 411.”
- All I have is a printout of the document. Page 1 has this number printed on it: PL105-246 and on the bottom of each page a stamp reads “Decalassified, Authority NND 36822, By UB, NARA Date 2-7-05
- Neue Studien…, p.15: The German original: Die Auswahl der Fotos dient ohnehin als starkes Indiz für die eigentliche Wahrnehmung.
- Ibid: Moshe Zimmermann (publisher), Von Krieg zu Krieg 1918-1945, Jerusalem 1981, p.182
- Ibid: Dani Jakobi (publisher), Olam Schel Tmurot (Eine Welt voller wenden. Geschichte für die 9. Klasse [A world full of changes. History for the 9. grade]), Tel Aviv 1999, pp.134-140
- http://www.revblog.codoh.com/2009/12/guidelines-for-teaching-about-the-holocaust/
- Bruno Baum, Widerstand in Auschwitz, Kongress-Verlag Berlin 1961, p.88
- Ibid, p.89f
- Neue Studien…, p.15
- http://www.revblog.codoh.com/2011/02/the-latest-sonderkommando-testimony/
- Neue Studien…, pp.16/17
- Ibid, p.17
The latest effort to combat “Denial”, i.e., Holocaust Revisionism. (Part IV)
By Wilfried Heink
The second chapter in the book: “Neue Studien zu nationalsozialistischen Massentötungen durch Giftgas” is captioned: “Technische und pharmakologische Aspekte und der Stellenwert der Überreste” (Technical and pharmacological aspects and how remnands should be rated)
The first essay in this chapter is titled: “Die todbringenden Gase” (The deadly [death carrying] gasses), by Achim Trunk, Dr. phil., historiographer, with a degree in biology – biochemicals.[1]
Mr. Trunk starts out by telling us that mass murder with poisonous gas is a characteristic of the National Socialist policy of mass murder, and that his essay will address the methods used. The questions to be answered: What poisons were used, where did they come from, how were they administered (eingesetzt) and what were the effects? The answer to those questions will allow us to better understand the sufferings of the victims – even though it is impossible to find the words to describe the horror. This will furthermore help us to understand what motivated the perpetrators. And lastly, it will allow us to disparage the chemical and technical assertions put forth by those who relativize or deny the Shoah. The origin-, application and effects of the poisons will be described, as well as some of the counter arguments by Revisionists.
Comments: We are told that it is of relevance to know what type of poison was used, its origin, and effect and how it was all applied. True, some of it we need to know, for instance what type of poison was allegedly used, the origin of same irrelevant. We then have the referral to victims, absolutely irrelevant when establishing guilt is the objective. Only after it has been established without doubt that poisons had been used for mass murder, something the previous authors failed to do, can victims be mentioned. By talking about victim hood up front we again have this attempt to influence readers, to soften them up. One can only hope that Trunk will address the relevant issues first — by referring us to reports compiled by competent authorities, i.e., experts in the field of criminal investigations, to establish that gas chambers in whatever form could have been used as alleged — before going into the obvious effects of poisonous gasses. We are also told that Revisionist arguments will be addressed.
In the introduction Trunk refers us to a chapter in “Nationalsozialistische Massentötung durch Giftgas” by Kogon et al, an essay by George Wellers captioned “Die zwei Giftgase”[2] (The two poisonous gasses). Wellers writes that two gasses were used, carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrogen cyanide (HCN), detailing the molecular structure of the former first. He tells us that Höß was ordered by Himmler, in the summer of 1941, to organize the destruction of Jews to be undertaken at Auschwitz. We are then informed about the molecular structure of HCN and that exposure to either of the two is deadly, suffocation the consequence.
Comments: Well done, Mr. Wellers, but we know that those two gasses are poisonous, what we are interested in are the exact details as to how they were applied. Thus, Wellers only states the obvious, not a good start.
Trunk now provides an overview of murder methods used:
Comments: Why start out with the T4/14f13 actions, no Revisionist denies them as Trunk later points out. Therefore, when “deniers” are mentioned the reference is to “The Holocaust”, so, why not provide evidence for this alleged crime and let it stand on its own, if it can? By continually mentioning T4 the authors admit that they are unable to make a case for “The Holocaust”, that it is necessary for them to suggest to the reader that if one happened, the T4/14f13 actions, a fact, the other, “The Holocaust” must be a logical extension. Well, it isn’t, so why not get on with substantiating what this is all about: the alleged mass murder of Jews with poisonous gas.
Also, is it necessary to detail all the effects of the gasses allegedly used? No, it has nothing to do with proving that the gasses mentioned were used to kill people, i.e., Jews — so why bother? But Trunk tells us why he ‘bothered’ in the last part about the numbers, the intent again to condition the readers for them to accept uncritically what is to follow. And even though Trunk admits that the numbers he cites are not exact, he is however implying that they are horribly high nevertheless; and that without providing evidence that anyone was killed with poisonous gas!
In the following pages Trunk talks about the effects of poisonous gasses, that they paralyse breathing. We also learn that it has long been known that carbon monoxide will kill. He then goes into detail why that is so, hardly of any interest. Also, CO was picked as gas for T4 because it was a humane gas, allowing the patients to gently fall asleep (sanftes Einschlafen). Some witnesses testified to the patients gently falling asleep [5], but, so Trunk, this killing method had nothing to do with being humane when considering the circumstances.
He then informs us that as to the killing with bottled/pure CO, no objections are raised by deniers based on chemical analyses. Part of the reason for this might be the low numbers and that here we have a Führerbefehl, an order from Hitler. But it is also possible that Negationists are in agreement concerning the killing of life unworthy of life and furthermore the antisemitic background of denial does not exist, because the killed were mostly non-Jews.
Comments: Herr Trunk shows his true colors by asserting that a denier must be an antisemite. With this any pretence of objectivity goes out the window. Thank you for being honest, Herr Trunk.
But the part about the Hitler order is interesting: Trunk claims that it is impossible for deniers, he calls them also Negationists, to deny the T4/14f13 actions because a Hitler order exists, thereby admitting that nothing of the sort has ever been found regarding “The Holocaust”. He has obviously never concerned himself with Revisionism, has never read any of the literature produced by Revisionists. If he had he would know that the absence of a Hitler order, plan, or budget is only part of why Revisionism is alive and well. It is the absence of any substantial evidence that makes the story unbelievable; all is based on documents, some of them of dubious origin and of course witness tales and testimonies of accused perpetrators obtained under who knows what circumstances. And the stories told are not credible: we hear of crematories with ludicrous capacities, able to burn bodies with just a handful of coke, or bodies burning on their own; of never located burning pits where human fat was collected during the burning processes and used as additional fuel; on and on it goes. This is why Revisionists dispute the tale. Also, the T4 action was stopped because of public outcry, “The Holocaust” would also have been stopped had it happened. And the defenders of the story are aware of this, which is why we are told in the introductions that all became known only after the war, with this dismissing Hilberg and one of the newer studies re. the AA, in which it is claimed that officials of the foreign office were willing helpers who must therefore have known about the alleged mass killings of Jews. Another reason why this story comes across as untrue, for only a lie has many versions, the truth but one.
Trunk continues by writing about the T4 action in the annexed Polish territories, patients killed with bottled CO in so-called gas wagons, later with engine exhaust and he refers the reader to an article by Mathias Beer, to be discussed later. With this change of murder method, from pure CO to engine exhaust, the canard about ‘gently falling asleep’ was dropped, notifying the bereaved impossible anyway because of the dimensions, therefore it was just denied (nur noch eine schlichte Leugnung).
Comments: The T4 action again, then going over seamlessly into the alleged mass murder, which was however denied. How anyone can write nonsense as this is beyond me. If Trunk is talking about denial concerning the T4 patients, one has to wonder, for how is it possible to “deny” to a mom, for instance, that their sick child was killed. And if he is talking about the Jews, allegedly killed in gas wagons, this could never have been kept a secret either, and therefore impossible to “deny”.
And now it gets interesting, Trunk informs us that we have testimony about gasoline engines as murder weapon, but diesel engines are also talked about. He mentions the Gerstein testimonies, admitting that different versions exist. He then gets into details re. diesel exhaust, the subtitle: “Zur Giftigkeit von Dieselabgasen” (To the toxicity of diesel exhaust). It is not my intention to go into details here, beyond my knowledge anyway, and also Mr. Friedrich Berg has written about this subject extensively.[6]
Negationist critique centres on the question whether it is possible to produce high enough concentration of carbon monoxide with a diesel engine, they claim that it cannot be done, therefore mass killings in Belzec, Treblinka and Sobibor would not have been possible. This suggests that all reports about the Shoah are manufactured: the murder with diesel exhaust a “Myth within a Myth”. Trunk refers here to Mr. Berg.[7] But, he asserts, those arguments are folly, for, serious researchers are not claiming that diesel exhaust was used exclusively in the Aktion Reinhardt Camps (ARC),[8] therefore this argument is baseless. He admits however (p.32, footnote 28) that in older works diesel did play a role. Raul Hilberg, for instance,[8] writes that in Belzec and Treblinka diesel exhaust was used, gasoline engine exhaust in Sobibor. But nevertheless, the question about the toxicity should be addressed.
Comments: If anyone is confused by now, join the club. Trunk never goes into detail as to why earlier writings by Hilberg, or Martin, talk of diesel exhaust. In fact in the West German Treblinka Trial of 1965 killing by diesel exhaust was established, ditto for the Belzec Trial of the same year. Thus it is not just historians claiming diesel exhaust, judges also accepted that diesel exhaust, as murder weapon, was indeed used exclusively in those two camps. No plausible explanation has been offered to date why this has now been changed to gasoline engine exhaust, as Trunk suggest when he writes that “no serious researcher claims that diesel exhaust was used exclusively”. And whether it was used exclusively or just in some camps is also not the issue, the courts claims it was used, as did some historians. But to add to the confusion, Trunk then attempts to prove that diesel exhaust could indeed be deadly, when used under load (Please refer to the writings of Mr. Berg). So what is it? If diesel exhaust could have been used, in fact established in court proceedings, why not leave the diesel story intact, why make it sound as if “serious” historians — demoting Hilberg to the lower ranks with this — never considered diesel exhaust?
Trunk later tells us — after having tried to make a case for the toxicity of diesel exhaust — that it is most likely (naheliegend) that gasoline engines were used because of greater availability of them, and that they produced deadly gasses even when idling. He refers to Reder again who testified that the motor had been located in a small room next to the gas chamber and that it used 80 to 100 litres of gasoline daily.[10] For Sobibor we have precise testimony for gasoline engines, the only issue unclear whether they were of French or Russian origin. For Treblinka however, the last camp to be erected, research is assuming (geht davon aus) that diesel engines were used, raising the question why a changeover from a successful, uncomplicated method was made to one more complicated. It appears that a mix up could be possible: in every camp a diesel engine was used for generating electricity and that the gasoline engine, used for the killings, was installed right beside it. Trunk refers us to the testimony of SS Franz Hödl, who for a while operated the Sobibor death engine (Todesmotor) and stated: “That two engines were installed in the engine room, one a gasoline engine, possibly from a Russian tank, the other a diesel engine. The latter was never used”.[11] According to Kogon [12] a diesel engine was installed in a room adjacent to the gas chamber which produced poisonous gasses and next to it a generator for producing electricity.
Comments: More confused postulations. In the opinion of Trunk it was most likely that gasoline engines were used, he tries to support this supposition by claiming that they were more easily available and that they produce deadly gasses even when idling, a fact. That in contrast to diesel exhaust which is harmless when the engine is at idle and only toxic when the engine is under load and the injectors somehow manipulated, he refers to a test by Holtz/Elliot (p.33). Whenever machinery for digging, etc., is needed underground, for instance in the construction of underground parking facilities, equipment with diesel engines is used, those engines nearly always working at full throttle, i.e., under load, with the workers nearby complaining about the soot but showing no ill effects. This is why it is claimed that the engines were manipulated to produce deadly exhaust. More nonsense, for surely the Germans were aware of that and would not have even considered using diesel engines. And Trunk admits this in a roundabout way, he is however unable to explain away the diesel engines mentioned by others. Thus, he is forced to talk out of both sides of his mouth, not making any sense at all doing it. He also admits that changing from gasoline engines to diesel engines, as was supposedly the case for Treblinka, would have been remedial, a technical disadvantage, a fact. He tries to get around it by having us believe that in Sobibor, two engines were used, one a gasoline engine for killing – the other a diesel which was not used (testimony by Hödl, see above). And Kogon et al have it that one diesel engine produced the deadly gas, the other not, also for Sobibor. One has to be mentally unstable to even consider this nonsense, but Trunk, unable to settle the issue, is forced to resort to those mental gymnastics. Demonstrating again that what is told is just not true, and portraying Germans as babbling idiots who would resort to these kinds of shenanigans will just not cut it. Thus, the diesel/gasoline matter still needs to be settled, if we are to accept that Jews were murdered en masse with engine exhaust, and Trunk only confused the issue.
We then learn that reports about gas wagons explicitly talk of gasoline engines, which is not true but will be discussed later. Trunk then goes into detail about “Massenmorde mit Zyklon B”(Mass murder with Zyklon B), an issue addressed by Mr. Germar Rudolf in his “Das Rudolf Gutachten”(The Rudolf Report).[13] A few pages on Trunk makes an effort to debunk deniers (Leugner) and writes that one of the issues raised by deniers is temperature, that it would have been too cold in the gas chambers for the hydrogen cyanide to release fast enough from the carrier substance to kill Jews within the times testified to. The other issue is the absence of Prussian Blue in the ruins of the morgue of Crematoria II, the alleged gas chamber. Revisionists conclude that because no Prussian Blue stains are visible in the remnants of crematorium II, no gassings with Zyklon B could have taken place if this facility. They point to the delousing chambers where the Prussian Blue is clearly visible, penetrating in some cases right through the wall.[14] But, so Trunk, this conclusion is erroneous, for it has not been established that the blue stains in the delousing chambers are indeed Prussian Blue. For instance, those stains could be spots of paint, many paints of that time contained those pigments. Thus, the missing blue coloring could mean that only the walls of the delousing chambers were painted blue, not those of the gas chamber (Rudolf addresses this issue[15]). But even if one assumes that the blue stains in the walls are Prussian Blue, this does not necessarily mean that similar spots must also be visible on the walls of the gas chambers. For there are vast differences between the two: whereas in the delousing chambers the walls were exposed to hydrogen cyanide (Prussian Blue) for many hours — lice die slower than humans — those in the gas chambers were exposed to it for only a short time. And because of less exposure the chances for Prussian Blue to form in the walls diminish, and most important, the gas chambers were hosed down after each gassing, removing blood and excrements, thus removing most of the hydrogen cyanide remnants. In fact, traces of cyanide were found on the walls: using highly sensitive methods of analysis in the 1990s, it was proven that the walls of the gas chamber had been exposed to hydrogen cyanide, see “The Rudolf Report” on that, he explains why the test results were erroneous.[16]
Comments: First the temperature: Trunk claims that the bodies of the victims, standing close together, would have warmed the room sufficiently, but to claim that the body heat of people will warm up a room with concrete floor, walls and ceiling, in the middle of winter and just hosed down with cold water, is a real stretch. He writes that this is why the victims were left standing “a few minutes” (einige Minuten), as is attested to, referring us to “Massentötungen…” by Kogon et al.[17] We read in that book that ten minutes after the doors were closed, the temperature in the room was sufficient for the hydrogen cyanide to release from the carrier substance, but this is about the so-called “Bunkers”, not the morgues of crematoria II and III, thus useless here because of the different construction materials used. But, Trunk is quote mining here again, using only what fits. Höß, whose testimony is also only used when convenient, says nothing about any wait. We read: “The door would be screwed shut and the waiting disinfection squads would immediately pour the gas (crystals) into the vents in the ceiling of the gas chamber, down an air shaft which went to the floor”.[18] For the intended victims to heat a damp room with concrete walls – in the middle of winter – would only have been remotely possible if for every “gassing” the room would have been filled to capacity, and that is unlikely. This heat problem was considered earlier, the Polish judge Jan Sehn informs us: “…the gas chamber was being heated with portable braziers,”[19] The “Central Commission for Investigation of German Crimes in Poland’, repeated this in their report of 1946.[20] But, no mention of that by Trunk, why, when this had also been attested to? (The Polish report mentions interviewing witnesses). It is easy to see, however, why this has been dropped: heating the “gas chamber” with coke fired braziers would have filled the room with deadly fumes and if the room would have been vented with the existing ventilation system, the heat would have been sucked out – replaced by cold air from outside. But, it is altogether possible that braziers were used to keep the bodies in the morgue from becoming stiff, no pun intended, and thus harder to cremate. So, reality was mixed in with the story, but that part could not be maintained, and we are now to “body heat”, which is equally ridiculous.
Now to the Prussian Blue issue: No blue spots in the remnants of crema II, but if continued gassings had been undertaken in it, blue spots would be visible, that is the position of Revisionists. A logical conclusion when looking at the walls of the delousing chambers. At first, Trunk tells us that the blue in the delousing chambers could be paint, he refers us to a work by Bailer.[21] This is embarrassing, for I have yet to see paint penetrate a brick wall, right through that wall to make it visible on the other side (see footnote 14).
Trunk seems to realize this and moves on to plan B, i.e. the length of exposure to the cyanide gas. It is true that lice, especially their eggs, nits, are extremely hard to kill, this is why the producer/supplier of Zyklon B, DEGESCH, developed the circular system, i.e., Kreislaufsystem, F. Berg goes into detail about it.[22] Heated air is blown over the Zyklon B crystals, speeding up the release of cyanide from the carrier substance and also distributing the poisonous gasses throughout the room. But, this very simple system was never installed in any of the alleged gas chambers in which according to witness testimony hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed. What we have instead is this:
“Der Doseninhalt wurde in Auschwitz vom Mordpersonal, sogenannten Sanitätsdienstgraden (SDG) der SS, unter Aufsicht eines SS-Arztes über besondere Einfüllöffnungen in die Gaskammern hineingeschüttet. In den beiden Gaskammern, in denen die meisten Menschen vergiftet wurden – den als Keller angelegten Gaskammern der Krematorien II und III in Auschwitz-Birkenau – befanden sich je vier dieser Öffnungen auf ihrem begehbaren Dach. Das Granulat gelangte dann in aus Metallgitter gefertigte Schächte.57 Anschließend gaste die Blausäure im Innern der Kammer aus, was je nach Menge, Temperatur und Luftfeuchte unterschiedlich schnell erfolgte, und sie verteilte sich in ihr, was ebenfalls eine gewisse Zeit brauchte.“[23]
(Under the supervision of a SS Doctor the medical personnel poured the contents of the cans through special openings into the gas chambers. Four holes were present in each of the ceilings of the two chambers in which most of the people (Menschen) were poisoned – the gas chambers of the crematoria II and III, constructed as basements. The granules were delivered into shafts made from metal lattice.[24] The cyanide then outgassed inside the chamber, the time for this varied – depending on quantity, temperature and humidity, the gas dispersed as well, which also took time)
The blue staining issue has been discussed by Rudolf, I’ll just concern myself with the rest here, starting with the “shafts made from metal lattice”, here is one more view of them [25]. Trunk is not very clear on this, for good reason no doubt, for instance when referring to placing the pellets into the columns he writes “gelangte(n)”, why not say ‘poured into the basket’? This could be because we have different descriptions for those columns. The first question that needs to be asked, however, is this: Why would the Germans go to a system as this when they had the above mentioned circulation method already in use, successfully? The answer: They would not have, if mass murder was the intent they would have used the system used in the delousing chambers.
But, back to the columns, allegedly built by a Michal Kula, see footnote 25, here is what the authors of that article wrote:
“At Auschwitz-Birkenau, in the gas chambers of crematoria II and III, Zyklon-B was poured in through holes in the roof. After early experiments with this poison, the camp staff had learned that it was important to allow the pellets of Zyklon to be removed after the victims’ death, and also to spread them to increase the speed of outgassing.
The solution to these problems was a wire mesh column, which ran from the floor up through the roof. An SS man, wearing a gas mask and standing on the roof, would pour the pellets into the top of the column and place a wooden cover over it. The pellets fell into an inner wire mesh basket, which held them as they released their poison into the gas chamber.
After the mass murder was complete, the cover was opened, the basket was pulled up, and the Zyklon expelled the remainder of its poison harmlessly into the open air. Meanwhile, the ventilation of the gas chamber and the cremation of the corpses could begin[…]”
We are told that at first, the pellets were just poured into the room, no columns, leaving no Prussian Blue stains, but then it was “learned” to remove the pellets and also that the pellets needed to be spread. No wonder Trunk provides no details, for the above is rubbish. The pellets were allegedly in a basket, how then does this aid spreading? It doesn’t, pouring them on the heads of the people would have spread them, this method did not. In the verdict of the Auschwitz Trial the judges talk of a column made from perforated tin, with a spiral inside to help spread the pellets.[26] The “judges” believed the nonsense, lies, Filip Müller told them.[27] Just one more description of those columns, this one by Shaul Chazan, who tells us that the columns did not reach the floor, but left a gap so the pellets could be swept up.[28] Not one of those magical (imaginary?) columns has ever been found.
The drawings by Kula (footnote 24), or McCarthy/van Alstine (footnote 25) show that the columns, measuring 70cm x 70cm, went right through the roof, had to, the columns 3m long, the ceiling only 2.40m high (footnote 25). Therefore, holes measuring at least 70cm x 70cm must exist in the roof of the ruins of crema II, no sign of them.[29] Mr. Carlo Mattogno goes into detail about those cracks and blemishes in the roof [30], identified as “Die Löcher des Todes” (The holes of Death) [31], by Sven Felix Kellerhoff in: Die Welt, 23.08.2004. The biggest opening found is 45cm, not nearly enough to accommodate one of those columns. We are now told that only the inner core stuck through the roof, but that is just an attempt to deceive, no evidence exists to back this up. Thus, unless some sense can be made out of this, the columns must be dismissed as a hoax.
The only other part of interest re. what Trunk wrote above is the mention of how much Zyklon B was used — the reference to temperature and humidity. As for the first, he uses Höß as a reference, who stated that 5 to 7 one kilo cans were used for the murder of 1,500 people (Menschen), 2 to 3 cans more in cold and/or humid weather.[32] That per “gassing” and still no signs of Prussian Blue. As for removing the pellets before Prussian Blue can form, how would these people on the roof know when to pull the can up, considering what Trunk/Höß wrote/stated re. cold and humidity? As already pointed out, this column nonsense is rubbish, but impossible for Trunk et al to let go of this column tale for now.
In his conclusion Trunk tells us that both gasses allegedly used, CO and HCN, are very poisonous — continued breathing of either of them is deadly inside of minutes. Both poisons were easy to obtain/manufacture and easy to handle, which is why they were used because their toxicity was known to the perpetrators. The mass murder of over three million Jews (Jews this time, not people) historically verified with overwhelming evidence (durch erdrückende Beweise historisch gesichert). No need therefore to investigate the chemical or technical aspects of the mass murder to debunk Revisionists who question the Shoah, the above only meant as an addition to what is known. But, having experts analyse the historical sources helps to refute Revisionists’ arguments, if only as an aside. Thus, even the most far fetched arguments of Negationists can be disproved.
Final comments: Trunk tells us that both poisons were easy to obtain and use, not so. Zyklon B was in short supply and because of its toxicity dangerous to handle: Especially so when it was used as is alleged — pouring the pellets into baskets, raising them up, and letting them outgas in the open. That is just one example. Fact is the people handling this substance were specially trained. Then the repeated references to “historical” evidence/sources and the admission that there never was an experts involved in the investigation of crimes — a fact. As for overwhelming evidence — where? Trunk skips over this and only tells us that CO and HCN are highly poisonous, stating the obvious. But when it comes to how the Zyklon B was allegedly administered, all he can do is make a few general comments, later claiming that there is no need to look at the technical aspects, pretending that all has been proven.
He is wrong: for the purpose of this book is to fight Revisionism and stating that CO and HCN are poisonous will just not do, as the toxicity is not the issue. The technical and chemical aspects are, but Trunk feels those need not be addressed. A lot of pages filled with words, but nothing that will turn a doubter into a believer.
To be continued…
Sources:
-------------------------------------The second chapter in the book: “Neue Studien zu nationalsozialistischen Massentötungen durch Giftgas” is captioned: “Technische und pharmakologische Aspekte und der Stellenwert der Überreste” (Technical and pharmacological aspects and how remnands should be rated)
The first essay in this chapter is titled: “Die todbringenden Gase” (The deadly [death carrying] gasses), by Achim Trunk, Dr. phil., historiographer, with a degree in biology – biochemicals.[1]
Mr. Trunk starts out by telling us that mass murder with poisonous gas is a characteristic of the National Socialist policy of mass murder, and that his essay will address the methods used. The questions to be answered: What poisons were used, where did they come from, how were they administered (eingesetzt) and what were the effects? The answer to those questions will allow us to better understand the sufferings of the victims – even though it is impossible to find the words to describe the horror. This will furthermore help us to understand what motivated the perpetrators. And lastly, it will allow us to disparage the chemical and technical assertions put forth by those who relativize or deny the Shoah. The origin-, application and effects of the poisons will be described, as well as some of the counter arguments by Revisionists.
Comments: We are told that it is of relevance to know what type of poison was used, its origin, and effect and how it was all applied. True, some of it we need to know, for instance what type of poison was allegedly used, the origin of same irrelevant. We then have the referral to victims, absolutely irrelevant when establishing guilt is the objective. Only after it has been established without doubt that poisons had been used for mass murder, something the previous authors failed to do, can victims be mentioned. By talking about victim hood up front we again have this attempt to influence readers, to soften them up. One can only hope that Trunk will address the relevant issues first — by referring us to reports compiled by competent authorities, i.e., experts in the field of criminal investigations, to establish that gas chambers in whatever form could have been used as alleged — before going into the obvious effects of poisonous gasses. We are also told that Revisionist arguments will be addressed.
In the introduction Trunk refers us to a chapter in “Nationalsozialistische Massentötung durch Giftgas” by Kogon et al, an essay by George Wellers captioned “Die zwei Giftgase”[2] (The two poisonous gasses). Wellers writes that two gasses were used, carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrogen cyanide (HCN), detailing the molecular structure of the former first. He tells us that Höß was ordered by Himmler, in the summer of 1941, to organize the destruction of Jews to be undertaken at Auschwitz. We are then informed about the molecular structure of HCN and that exposure to either of the two is deadly, suffocation the consequence.
Comments: Well done, Mr. Wellers, but we know that those two gasses are poisonous, what we are interested in are the exact details as to how they were applied. Thus, Wellers only states the obvious, not a good start.
Trunk now provides an overview of murder methods used:
- In the T4 facilities bottled CO was used, the method also used at first in the Aktion 14f13 by “Sonderkommando Lange” in the first so-called (sogenannten) gas wagons. Cause of death: acute carbon monoxide poisoning.
- In the “Action Reinhardt” extermination camps engine exhaust was used as a murder weapon. Cause of death: carbon monoxide poisoning.
- Since 1941 the pesticide Zyklon B was used, mainly in Auschwitz but also in Mauthausen alongside killings with bottled CO, as well as in Ravensbrück. Cause of death: HCN poisoning.
- A different form of HCN (common name ‘Prussian acid’[3]) was used from 1943-1945 in Sachsenhausen, and a still different form used for killings in Ravensbrück in 1943. Cause of death: HCN poisoning.
Comments: Why start out with the T4/14f13 actions, no Revisionist denies them as Trunk later points out. Therefore, when “deniers” are mentioned the reference is to “The Holocaust”, so, why not provide evidence for this alleged crime and let it stand on its own, if it can? By continually mentioning T4 the authors admit that they are unable to make a case for “The Holocaust”, that it is necessary for them to suggest to the reader that if one happened, the T4/14f13 actions, a fact, the other, “The Holocaust” must be a logical extension. Well, it isn’t, so why not get on with substantiating what this is all about: the alleged mass murder of Jews with poisonous gas.
Also, is it necessary to detail all the effects of the gasses allegedly used? No, it has nothing to do with proving that the gasses mentioned were used to kill people, i.e., Jews — so why bother? But Trunk tells us why he ‘bothered’ in the last part about the numbers, the intent again to condition the readers for them to accept uncritically what is to follow. And even though Trunk admits that the numbers he cites are not exact, he is however implying that they are horribly high nevertheless; and that without providing evidence that anyone was killed with poisonous gas!
In the following pages Trunk talks about the effects of poisonous gasses, that they paralyse breathing. We also learn that it has long been known that carbon monoxide will kill. He then goes into detail why that is so, hardly of any interest. Also, CO was picked as gas for T4 because it was a humane gas, allowing the patients to gently fall asleep (sanftes Einschlafen). Some witnesses testified to the patients gently falling asleep [5], but, so Trunk, this killing method had nothing to do with being humane when considering the circumstances.
He then informs us that as to the killing with bottled/pure CO, no objections are raised by deniers based on chemical analyses. Part of the reason for this might be the low numbers and that here we have a Führerbefehl, an order from Hitler. But it is also possible that Negationists are in agreement concerning the killing of life unworthy of life and furthermore the antisemitic background of denial does not exist, because the killed were mostly non-Jews.
Comments: Herr Trunk shows his true colors by asserting that a denier must be an antisemite. With this any pretence of objectivity goes out the window. Thank you for being honest, Herr Trunk.
But the part about the Hitler order is interesting: Trunk claims that it is impossible for deniers, he calls them also Negationists, to deny the T4/14f13 actions because a Hitler order exists, thereby admitting that nothing of the sort has ever been found regarding “The Holocaust”. He has obviously never concerned himself with Revisionism, has never read any of the literature produced by Revisionists. If he had he would know that the absence of a Hitler order, plan, or budget is only part of why Revisionism is alive and well. It is the absence of any substantial evidence that makes the story unbelievable; all is based on documents, some of them of dubious origin and of course witness tales and testimonies of accused perpetrators obtained under who knows what circumstances. And the stories told are not credible: we hear of crematories with ludicrous capacities, able to burn bodies with just a handful of coke, or bodies burning on their own; of never located burning pits where human fat was collected during the burning processes and used as additional fuel; on and on it goes. This is why Revisionists dispute the tale. Also, the T4 action was stopped because of public outcry, “The Holocaust” would also have been stopped had it happened. And the defenders of the story are aware of this, which is why we are told in the introductions that all became known only after the war, with this dismissing Hilberg and one of the newer studies re. the AA, in which it is claimed that officials of the foreign office were willing helpers who must therefore have known about the alleged mass killings of Jews. Another reason why this story comes across as untrue, for only a lie has many versions, the truth but one.
Trunk continues by writing about the T4 action in the annexed Polish territories, patients killed with bottled CO in so-called gas wagons, later with engine exhaust and he refers the reader to an article by Mathias Beer, to be discussed later. With this change of murder method, from pure CO to engine exhaust, the canard about ‘gently falling asleep’ was dropped, notifying the bereaved impossible anyway because of the dimensions, therefore it was just denied (nur noch eine schlichte Leugnung).
Comments: The T4 action again, then going over seamlessly into the alleged mass murder, which was however denied. How anyone can write nonsense as this is beyond me. If Trunk is talking about denial concerning the T4 patients, one has to wonder, for how is it possible to “deny” to a mom, for instance, that their sick child was killed. And if he is talking about the Jews, allegedly killed in gas wagons, this could never have been kept a secret either, and therefore impossible to “deny”.
And now it gets interesting, Trunk informs us that we have testimony about gasoline engines as murder weapon, but diesel engines are also talked about. He mentions the Gerstein testimonies, admitting that different versions exist. He then gets into details re. diesel exhaust, the subtitle: “Zur Giftigkeit von Dieselabgasen” (To the toxicity of diesel exhaust). It is not my intention to go into details here, beyond my knowledge anyway, and also Mr. Friedrich Berg has written about this subject extensively.[6]
Negationist critique centres on the question whether it is possible to produce high enough concentration of carbon monoxide with a diesel engine, they claim that it cannot be done, therefore mass killings in Belzec, Treblinka and Sobibor would not have been possible. This suggests that all reports about the Shoah are manufactured: the murder with diesel exhaust a “Myth within a Myth”. Trunk refers here to Mr. Berg.[7] But, he asserts, those arguments are folly, for, serious researchers are not claiming that diesel exhaust was used exclusively in the Aktion Reinhardt Camps (ARC),[8] therefore this argument is baseless. He admits however (p.32, footnote 28) that in older works diesel did play a role. Raul Hilberg, for instance,[8] writes that in Belzec and Treblinka diesel exhaust was used, gasoline engine exhaust in Sobibor. But nevertheless, the question about the toxicity should be addressed.
Comments: If anyone is confused by now, join the club. Trunk never goes into detail as to why earlier writings by Hilberg, or Martin, talk of diesel exhaust. In fact in the West German Treblinka Trial of 1965 killing by diesel exhaust was established, ditto for the Belzec Trial of the same year. Thus it is not just historians claiming diesel exhaust, judges also accepted that diesel exhaust, as murder weapon, was indeed used exclusively in those two camps. No plausible explanation has been offered to date why this has now been changed to gasoline engine exhaust, as Trunk suggest when he writes that “no serious researcher claims that diesel exhaust was used exclusively”. And whether it was used exclusively or just in some camps is also not the issue, the courts claims it was used, as did some historians. But to add to the confusion, Trunk then attempts to prove that diesel exhaust could indeed be deadly, when used under load (Please refer to the writings of Mr. Berg). So what is it? If diesel exhaust could have been used, in fact established in court proceedings, why not leave the diesel story intact, why make it sound as if “serious” historians — demoting Hilberg to the lower ranks with this — never considered diesel exhaust?
Trunk later tells us — after having tried to make a case for the toxicity of diesel exhaust — that it is most likely (naheliegend) that gasoline engines were used because of greater availability of them, and that they produced deadly gasses even when idling. He refers to Reder again who testified that the motor had been located in a small room next to the gas chamber and that it used 80 to 100 litres of gasoline daily.[10] For Sobibor we have precise testimony for gasoline engines, the only issue unclear whether they were of French or Russian origin. For Treblinka however, the last camp to be erected, research is assuming (geht davon aus) that diesel engines were used, raising the question why a changeover from a successful, uncomplicated method was made to one more complicated. It appears that a mix up could be possible: in every camp a diesel engine was used for generating electricity and that the gasoline engine, used for the killings, was installed right beside it. Trunk refers us to the testimony of SS Franz Hödl, who for a while operated the Sobibor death engine (Todesmotor) and stated: “That two engines were installed in the engine room, one a gasoline engine, possibly from a Russian tank, the other a diesel engine. The latter was never used”.[11] According to Kogon [12] a diesel engine was installed in a room adjacent to the gas chamber which produced poisonous gasses and next to it a generator for producing electricity.
Comments: More confused postulations. In the opinion of Trunk it was most likely that gasoline engines were used, he tries to support this supposition by claiming that they were more easily available and that they produce deadly gasses even when idling, a fact. That in contrast to diesel exhaust which is harmless when the engine is at idle and only toxic when the engine is under load and the injectors somehow manipulated, he refers to a test by Holtz/Elliot (p.33). Whenever machinery for digging, etc., is needed underground, for instance in the construction of underground parking facilities, equipment with diesel engines is used, those engines nearly always working at full throttle, i.e., under load, with the workers nearby complaining about the soot but showing no ill effects. This is why it is claimed that the engines were manipulated to produce deadly exhaust. More nonsense, for surely the Germans were aware of that and would not have even considered using diesel engines. And Trunk admits this in a roundabout way, he is however unable to explain away the diesel engines mentioned by others. Thus, he is forced to talk out of both sides of his mouth, not making any sense at all doing it. He also admits that changing from gasoline engines to diesel engines, as was supposedly the case for Treblinka, would have been remedial, a technical disadvantage, a fact. He tries to get around it by having us believe that in Sobibor, two engines were used, one a gasoline engine for killing – the other a diesel which was not used (testimony by Hödl, see above). And Kogon et al have it that one diesel engine produced the deadly gas, the other not, also for Sobibor. One has to be mentally unstable to even consider this nonsense, but Trunk, unable to settle the issue, is forced to resort to those mental gymnastics. Demonstrating again that what is told is just not true, and portraying Germans as babbling idiots who would resort to these kinds of shenanigans will just not cut it. Thus, the diesel/gasoline matter still needs to be settled, if we are to accept that Jews were murdered en masse with engine exhaust, and Trunk only confused the issue.
We then learn that reports about gas wagons explicitly talk of gasoline engines, which is not true but will be discussed later. Trunk then goes into detail about “Massenmorde mit Zyklon B”(Mass murder with Zyklon B), an issue addressed by Mr. Germar Rudolf in his “Das Rudolf Gutachten”(The Rudolf Report).[13] A few pages on Trunk makes an effort to debunk deniers (Leugner) and writes that one of the issues raised by deniers is temperature, that it would have been too cold in the gas chambers for the hydrogen cyanide to release fast enough from the carrier substance to kill Jews within the times testified to. The other issue is the absence of Prussian Blue in the ruins of the morgue of Crematoria II, the alleged gas chamber. Revisionists conclude that because no Prussian Blue stains are visible in the remnants of crematorium II, no gassings with Zyklon B could have taken place if this facility. They point to the delousing chambers where the Prussian Blue is clearly visible, penetrating in some cases right through the wall.[14] But, so Trunk, this conclusion is erroneous, for it has not been established that the blue stains in the delousing chambers are indeed Prussian Blue. For instance, those stains could be spots of paint, many paints of that time contained those pigments. Thus, the missing blue coloring could mean that only the walls of the delousing chambers were painted blue, not those of the gas chamber (Rudolf addresses this issue[15]). But even if one assumes that the blue stains in the walls are Prussian Blue, this does not necessarily mean that similar spots must also be visible on the walls of the gas chambers. For there are vast differences between the two: whereas in the delousing chambers the walls were exposed to hydrogen cyanide (Prussian Blue) for many hours — lice die slower than humans — those in the gas chambers were exposed to it for only a short time. And because of less exposure the chances for Prussian Blue to form in the walls diminish, and most important, the gas chambers were hosed down after each gassing, removing blood and excrements, thus removing most of the hydrogen cyanide remnants. In fact, traces of cyanide were found on the walls: using highly sensitive methods of analysis in the 1990s, it was proven that the walls of the gas chamber had been exposed to hydrogen cyanide, see “The Rudolf Report” on that, he explains why the test results were erroneous.[16]
Comments: First the temperature: Trunk claims that the bodies of the victims, standing close together, would have warmed the room sufficiently, but to claim that the body heat of people will warm up a room with concrete floor, walls and ceiling, in the middle of winter and just hosed down with cold water, is a real stretch. He writes that this is why the victims were left standing “a few minutes” (einige Minuten), as is attested to, referring us to “Massentötungen…” by Kogon et al.[17] We read in that book that ten minutes after the doors were closed, the temperature in the room was sufficient for the hydrogen cyanide to release from the carrier substance, but this is about the so-called “Bunkers”, not the morgues of crematoria II and III, thus useless here because of the different construction materials used. But, Trunk is quote mining here again, using only what fits. Höß, whose testimony is also only used when convenient, says nothing about any wait. We read: “The door would be screwed shut and the waiting disinfection squads would immediately pour the gas (crystals) into the vents in the ceiling of the gas chamber, down an air shaft which went to the floor”.[18] For the intended victims to heat a damp room with concrete walls – in the middle of winter – would only have been remotely possible if for every “gassing” the room would have been filled to capacity, and that is unlikely. This heat problem was considered earlier, the Polish judge Jan Sehn informs us: “…the gas chamber was being heated with portable braziers,”[19] The “Central Commission for Investigation of German Crimes in Poland’, repeated this in their report of 1946.[20] But, no mention of that by Trunk, why, when this had also been attested to? (The Polish report mentions interviewing witnesses). It is easy to see, however, why this has been dropped: heating the “gas chamber” with coke fired braziers would have filled the room with deadly fumes and if the room would have been vented with the existing ventilation system, the heat would have been sucked out – replaced by cold air from outside. But, it is altogether possible that braziers were used to keep the bodies in the morgue from becoming stiff, no pun intended, and thus harder to cremate. So, reality was mixed in with the story, but that part could not be maintained, and we are now to “body heat”, which is equally ridiculous.
Now to the Prussian Blue issue: No blue spots in the remnants of crema II, but if continued gassings had been undertaken in it, blue spots would be visible, that is the position of Revisionists. A logical conclusion when looking at the walls of the delousing chambers. At first, Trunk tells us that the blue in the delousing chambers could be paint, he refers us to a work by Bailer.[21] This is embarrassing, for I have yet to see paint penetrate a brick wall, right through that wall to make it visible on the other side (see footnote 14).
Trunk seems to realize this and moves on to plan B, i.e. the length of exposure to the cyanide gas. It is true that lice, especially their eggs, nits, are extremely hard to kill, this is why the producer/supplier of Zyklon B, DEGESCH, developed the circular system, i.e., Kreislaufsystem, F. Berg goes into detail about it.[22] Heated air is blown over the Zyklon B crystals, speeding up the release of cyanide from the carrier substance and also distributing the poisonous gasses throughout the room. But, this very simple system was never installed in any of the alleged gas chambers in which according to witness testimony hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed. What we have instead is this:
“Der Doseninhalt wurde in Auschwitz vom Mordpersonal, sogenannten Sanitätsdienstgraden (SDG) der SS, unter Aufsicht eines SS-Arztes über besondere Einfüllöffnungen in die Gaskammern hineingeschüttet. In den beiden Gaskammern, in denen die meisten Menschen vergiftet wurden – den als Keller angelegten Gaskammern der Krematorien II und III in Auschwitz-Birkenau – befanden sich je vier dieser Öffnungen auf ihrem begehbaren Dach. Das Granulat gelangte dann in aus Metallgitter gefertigte Schächte.57 Anschließend gaste die Blausäure im Innern der Kammer aus, was je nach Menge, Temperatur und Luftfeuchte unterschiedlich schnell erfolgte, und sie verteilte sich in ihr, was ebenfalls eine gewisse Zeit brauchte.“[23]
(Under the supervision of a SS Doctor the medical personnel poured the contents of the cans through special openings into the gas chambers. Four holes were present in each of the ceilings of the two chambers in which most of the people (Menschen) were poisoned – the gas chambers of the crematoria II and III, constructed as basements. The granules were delivered into shafts made from metal lattice.[24] The cyanide then outgassed inside the chamber, the time for this varied – depending on quantity, temperature and humidity, the gas dispersed as well, which also took time)
The blue staining issue has been discussed by Rudolf, I’ll just concern myself with the rest here, starting with the “shafts made from metal lattice”, here is one more view of them [25]. Trunk is not very clear on this, for good reason no doubt, for instance when referring to placing the pellets into the columns he writes “gelangte(n)”, why not say ‘poured into the basket’? This could be because we have different descriptions for those columns. The first question that needs to be asked, however, is this: Why would the Germans go to a system as this when they had the above mentioned circulation method already in use, successfully? The answer: They would not have, if mass murder was the intent they would have used the system used in the delousing chambers.
But, back to the columns, allegedly built by a Michal Kula, see footnote 25, here is what the authors of that article wrote:
“At Auschwitz-Birkenau, in the gas chambers of crematoria II and III, Zyklon-B was poured in through holes in the roof. After early experiments with this poison, the camp staff had learned that it was important to allow the pellets of Zyklon to be removed after the victims’ death, and also to spread them to increase the speed of outgassing.
The solution to these problems was a wire mesh column, which ran from the floor up through the roof. An SS man, wearing a gas mask and standing on the roof, would pour the pellets into the top of the column and place a wooden cover over it. The pellets fell into an inner wire mesh basket, which held them as they released their poison into the gas chamber.
After the mass murder was complete, the cover was opened, the basket was pulled up, and the Zyklon expelled the remainder of its poison harmlessly into the open air. Meanwhile, the ventilation of the gas chamber and the cremation of the corpses could begin[…]”
We are told that at first, the pellets were just poured into the room, no columns, leaving no Prussian Blue stains, but then it was “learned” to remove the pellets and also that the pellets needed to be spread. No wonder Trunk provides no details, for the above is rubbish. The pellets were allegedly in a basket, how then does this aid spreading? It doesn’t, pouring them on the heads of the people would have spread them, this method did not. In the verdict of the Auschwitz Trial the judges talk of a column made from perforated tin, with a spiral inside to help spread the pellets.[26] The “judges” believed the nonsense, lies, Filip Müller told them.[27] Just one more description of those columns, this one by Shaul Chazan, who tells us that the columns did not reach the floor, but left a gap so the pellets could be swept up.[28] Not one of those magical (imaginary?) columns has ever been found.
The drawings by Kula (footnote 24), or McCarthy/van Alstine (footnote 25) show that the columns, measuring 70cm x 70cm, went right through the roof, had to, the columns 3m long, the ceiling only 2.40m high (footnote 25). Therefore, holes measuring at least 70cm x 70cm must exist in the roof of the ruins of crema II, no sign of them.[29] Mr. Carlo Mattogno goes into detail about those cracks and blemishes in the roof [30], identified as “Die Löcher des Todes” (The holes of Death) [31], by Sven Felix Kellerhoff in: Die Welt, 23.08.2004. The biggest opening found is 45cm, not nearly enough to accommodate one of those columns. We are now told that only the inner core stuck through the roof, but that is just an attempt to deceive, no evidence exists to back this up. Thus, unless some sense can be made out of this, the columns must be dismissed as a hoax.
The only other part of interest re. what Trunk wrote above is the mention of how much Zyklon B was used — the reference to temperature and humidity. As for the first, he uses Höß as a reference, who stated that 5 to 7 one kilo cans were used for the murder of 1,500 people (Menschen), 2 to 3 cans more in cold and/or humid weather.[32] That per “gassing” and still no signs of Prussian Blue. As for removing the pellets before Prussian Blue can form, how would these people on the roof know when to pull the can up, considering what Trunk/Höß wrote/stated re. cold and humidity? As already pointed out, this column nonsense is rubbish, but impossible for Trunk et al to let go of this column tale for now.
In his conclusion Trunk tells us that both gasses allegedly used, CO and HCN, are very poisonous — continued breathing of either of them is deadly inside of minutes. Both poisons were easy to obtain/manufacture and easy to handle, which is why they were used because their toxicity was known to the perpetrators. The mass murder of over three million Jews (Jews this time, not people) historically verified with overwhelming evidence (durch erdrückende Beweise historisch gesichert). No need therefore to investigate the chemical or technical aspects of the mass murder to debunk Revisionists who question the Shoah, the above only meant as an addition to what is known. But, having experts analyse the historical sources helps to refute Revisionists’ arguments, if only as an aside. Thus, even the most far fetched arguments of Negationists can be disproved.
Final comments: Trunk tells us that both poisons were easy to obtain and use, not so. Zyklon B was in short supply and because of its toxicity dangerous to handle: Especially so when it was used as is alleged — pouring the pellets into baskets, raising them up, and letting them outgas in the open. That is just one example. Fact is the people handling this substance were specially trained. Then the repeated references to “historical” evidence/sources and the admission that there never was an experts involved in the investigation of crimes — a fact. As for overwhelming evidence — where? Trunk skips over this and only tells us that CO and HCN are highly poisonous, stating the obvious. But when it comes to how the Zyklon B was allegedly administered, all he can do is make a few general comments, later claiming that there is no need to look at the technical aspects, pretending that all has been proven.
He is wrong: for the purpose of this book is to fight Revisionism and stating that CO and HCN are poisonous will just not do, as the toxicity is not the issue. The technical and chemical aspects are, but Trunk feels those need not be addressed. A lot of pages filled with words, but nothing that will turn a doubter into a believer.
To be continued…
Sources:
- Günter Morsch, Bertrand Perz, Neue Studien zu nationalsozialistischen Massentötungen durch Giftgas, Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2011, pp.23-49
- Eugen Kogon, Hermann Langbein, Adalbert Rückerl, et al, Nationalsozialistische Massentötung durch Giftgas, S. Fischer Verlag GmbH, Frankfurt am Main 1983, pp.281-287
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_cyanide
- Neue Studien…, pp.23-25
- Kogon et al, Nationalsozialistische Massentötung…, pp.48f
- http://www.nazigassings.com/dieselgaschamber.html
- http://www.codoh.com/gcgv/gcdiesel.html
- Neue Studien…, p.32, the German wording: “…da die seriöse Forschung überhaupt nicht davon ausgeht, dass in den Vernichtungslagern der „Aktion Reinhardt“ durchgängig mit Dieselmotoren gemordet wurde“.
- Raul Hilberg, Die Vernichtung der Europäischen Juden, Frankfurt a. M. 1992, p.941
- Morsch et al, Neue Studien…, p.31, footnote 35: Rudolf Reder, Belzec, Krakow 1946, p.44
- Ibid, p.35, quote from: Jules Schelvis, Vernichtungslager Sobibor, Münster/Hamburg 2003, p.118
- Kogon et al, Massentötungen…, p.163
- Germar Rudolf, The Rudolf Report, http://www.vho.org/GB/Books/trr/
- Rudolf, The Rudolf Report, http://www.vho.org/GB/Books/trr/6.html#6.7.4.
- http://www.vho.org/GB/Books/trr/8.html#8.4.
- http://www.vho.org/GB/Books/trr/8.html#8.4.
- Kogon et al, Nationalsozialistische Massentötungen…, p.211
- Rudolf Höss, Death Dealer: The Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at Auschwitz, Prometheus Books, Amherst New York 1992. Edited by Steven Paskuly and translated by Andrew Pollinger, p.43
- http://www.codoh.com/review/revsehn.html
- http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/gcpol11.htm#Gas-chambers
- Josef Bailer, Die “Revisionisten” und die Chemie, in: Brigitte Bailer-Galanda/Wolfgang Benz/Wolfgang Neubauer (publishers), Die Auschwitzleugener. “Revisionistische” Geschichtslüge und historische Wahrheit, Berlin 1996, p.146; pp.142-149
- http://www.nazigassings.com/zyklondelousing.html
- Morsch et al, Neue Studien…, p.39
- Morsch et al, Neue Studien…, p.39; reference to: Jean-Claude Pressac, Auschwitz, Technique and Operation of the Gas chambers, p. 487 http://www.mazal.org/pressac/Pressac0487.htm
- http://www.holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/intro-columns/
- Zur Tarnung der in der Decke befindlichen Öffnungen, durch die das Zyklon B von aussen hineingeschüttet wurde, hatte man aus durchlöchertem Blech bestehende hohle Säulen installiert, die vom Boden bis zur Decke reichten und die Öffnungen verdeckten. In den Säulen befanden sich Spiralen, die das gekörnte Zyklon B nach dem Einschütten verteilten. (The site this was taken from, IDGR, has since disappeared, all I have is the printout)
- http://vho.org/GB/c/CM/noholes.html
- http://vho.org/dl/vffg/3_04.pdf ; Die Einfüllöffnungen für Zyklon B – Teil 2., p. 31
- The Ruins of the Gas Chambers: A Forensic Investigation of
Crematoriums at Auschwitz I and Auschwitz-Birkenau, Daniel Keren,
Jamie McCarthy, and Harry W. Mazal, http://www.holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/holes-report/holes.shtml
- http://vho.org/GB/c/CM/noholes.html
- file:///D:/IDGR%20-%20Die%20L%C3%B6cher%20des%20Todes.htm
- Morsch et al, Neue Studien…, p.39; Höß affidavit of 20 May 1946, IMT document NI-034, p.2
The latest effort to combat “denial”, i.e., Holocaust Revisionism (part V)
By Wilfried Heink
The second essay in chapter two is titled, “Technische Aspekte des Massenmordes durch Giftgas als Argument vor Gericht”(Technical aspects of mass murder by poisonous gas as presented in court). It is written by two authors, Volker Bieler, Judge at the court in Landau, Palatine – up to 31 August 2010 also department head of the Central Agency for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes in Ludwigsburg and Kurt Schrimm, head prosecutor and head of the Ludwigsburg Central Agency for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes.
The authors start out by informing us that, when the NS regime had come to an end, mass murder by poisonous gas was the subject of numerous German courts cases (Trials conducted in the DDR are not considered). This contribution will show, by citing examples, how this specific system of murder had been legally evaluated (strafrechtlich bewertet). Paragraph (§) 211 will be discussed, as well as other relevant legalities.
Starting with the planning- and executing NS-authorities, right up to the guard who supervised the burning of the corpses, co-ordination was a characteristic of the mass murder. How this co-ordination, i.e., perpetrator and assistant, played a role in courts’ decisions of determining sentences will also be discussed. To put it all into perspective, we will let the verdicts speak for themselves. How the courts judged the substantial as well as the historical facts is laid out in the other essays contained in this summarizing volume (Sammelband). We will therefore only refer to the findings re. historical events (Historische Vorgänge) – contained in the verdicts – as is necessary for understanding the legal arguments of the courts.
Comments: The authors refer to “historical” events, “historical” facts, the historical significance irrelevant when guilt/innocence of the accused is to be determined. Some generalities concerning legal systems up front first, the differences no doubt known to many but perhaps not all, and since I am no expert just a rough outlay.
The Continental legal system differs from that of England and the US, insofar as in Continental jurisprudence, and I am only somewhat familiar with the German system, a series of laws exist, identified by so-called paragraphs “§”. In the Anglo-American system common law is practiced, judges verdicts become law and is referred to in similar cases. The authors discuss § 211, issued on 4 September 1941, at a time when lawlessness was the norm in Germany, as is claimed. This paragraph, among other issues, defines that person as a murderer who “insidiously or cruelly” (heimtückisch oder grausam) kills another person. A person acts insidiously when taking advantage of another person’s unwariness and defenselessness (Arg- und Wehrlosigkeit). Killing cruelly is when out of malice the victim is made to suffer unnecessarily.
This is an abbreviation of the legal terms as defined by the authors, but it needs to be mentioned to show how the courts wasted time in definitions and were forced to do so because of lack of evidence. Thus, to make all of it appear as legal proceedings, and to be able to convict without any substantial evidence, they had to resort to legal shenanigans. In the verdicts that I have seen, and the authors of this essay confirm this, no mention is ever made of a court ordered investigation of the alleged crime scene, no court ordered investigation of the alleged murder weapons, nothing. In the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials verdict the judges refer to the NSdAP party program, Dr. Broszat and Dr. Krausnick elaborating, the Hitler speech of 30 January 1939, the Wannsee Conference, etc. As for the alleged killings, they state that in the bunkers Jews were killed with gas with no details provided. And concerning the alleged gassings in crematoria II & III they stated:
“Zur Tarnung der in der Decke befindlichen Öffnungen, durch die das Zyklon B von aussen hineingeschüttet wurde, hatte man aus durchlöchertem Blech bestehende hohle Säulen installiert, die vom Boden bis zur Decke reichten und die Öffnungen verdeckten. In den Säulen befanden sich Spiralen, die das gekörnte Zyklon B nach dem Einschütten verteilten.“
(To camouflage the openings in the ceiling, through which the Zyklon B was poured from the outside, columns made from perforated sheet metal were installed, reaching from floor to ceiling and thus covered the openings. Inside the columns were spirals which distributed the Zyklon B granules.)
According to this, the columns were installed to hide the holes in the ceiling and the spiral inside the columns – made from perforated sheet metal – helped to distribute the pellets. None of that nonsense has survived, we now have columns made from wire mesh with a can on a string inside, the latest in German technical ingenuity and know how, equally as ridiculous as pointed out in part IV. The judges admit that no evidence existed when they stated:
“Bei der Feststellung der individuellen Beteiligung der Angeklagten an den in dem Konzentrationslager Auschwitz begangenen Mordtaten, sei es an Massenmorden, sei es an Einzeltötungen, sah sich das Schwurgericht vor ausserordentlich schwierige Aufgaben gestellt. Die Angeklagten selbst trugen zur Aufklärung nur sehr wenig bei. Soweit sie eine Beteiligung zugaben, schwächten sie diese ab, stellten sie verzerrt dar oder hatten stets eine Reihe von Ausreden zur Hand.
Die wenigen zur Verfügung stehenden Urkunden dienten im wesentlichen nur der Aufklärung allgemeiner Dinge, konnten jedoch über die individuelle Schuld der Angeklagten kaum Aufschluss geben.
Das Gericht war somit bei der Aufklärung der von den Angeklagten begangenen Verbrechen fast ausschliesslich auf Zeugenaussagen angewiesen[…]”[1]
(Trying to determine participation of the accused in the mass murder the court was faced with enormous difficulties. The accused refused to assist, if they admitted to participation they distorted what happened and had excuses at the ready.
The few available documents were only useful in clearing up general matters, but were of no help in determining guilt of the accused.
The courts had to therefore depend almost exclusively on the testimony of witnesses)
The verdicts of the Belzec and Sobibor trials are similar: no sign of an attempt to substantiate the charges with investigation reports compiled by experts in the field of crime investigations. In fact, recent trials in Germany, vs. Messrs. Zündel and Rudolf for instance, follow much the same pattern — no evidence is submitted and when the defense tries to submit evidence of its own, it is refused. The authors of this essay are no doubt aware of this, which is why they needed to resort to legal definitions. For, if evidence existed, proving without doubt that the crimes had been committed as alleged, that evidence would have been presented. And to refer to the contributions by others will also not cut it — the authors are legal experts and this essay should be where they make their case, if it can be made then.
The authors then provide excerpts from some of the verdicts, taken from “Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, Sammlung deutscher Strafurteile wegen nationalsozialistischen Tötungsverbrechen 1945-1999“, Amsterdam 1968 ff, by Christian F. Rüter and Dick W. de Mildt, publishers (Justice and NS crimes, A summary of verdicts of NS crimes as submitted 1945-1999). They start out with the gas wagons and a verdict of 23 July 1965 from the Bonn trial. Just a sample:
“Bei den Gaswagen handelte es sich um große, grau angestrichene Lastkraftwagen[...]mit geschlossenem Kastenaufbau[...]Das Innere war mit verzinktem Eisenblech ausgeschlagen. Auf dem Boden lagen Holzroste, unter denen sich Rohre befanden. An die Öffnung der Rohre war unter dem Wagenboden ein Schlauch angeschlossen, der eine konisch zulaufende Spitze besaß. Das Schlauchende konnte in das Auspuffrohr eingeführt und mit einer Überwurfmutter fest verschraubt werden”.[2]
Comments: Gaps are in the original. What this says is that the gas wagons were big trucks, painted grey with a closed-in box at the back. That box was lined with zinc coated sheet metal, at the floor wooden grills under which pipes were placed. A hose was connected to those pipes, the other end of the hose connected to the exhaust pipe. Thus, we have a grey box, no details as to what material this box was made of. And that is important, for it had to withstand pressure, this will be discussed later. Then this: a hose was connected to the exhaust. The German word used is “Schlauch” and at that time no doubt made of rubber or some rubber compound. The exhaust pipe gets scorching hot, any rubber or related material would melt in seconds. And no, Schlauch has no other meaning in German, if a pipe was meant or a hose made from flex material it would have said so. Also, I doubt any material available at that time, other than exhaust pipe related material, would have withstood the heat. All of this evidence that no experts had been consulted, the court relying on witness testimony.
In the verdict of the Düsseldorf Treblinka trial of 3 September 1965 we read:
“Der Boden der Gaskammern war gekachelt[…]An denDecken…befanden sich einige Rohrleitungen und Brauseköpfe. Dadurch sollten die Gaskammern den Eindruck von Duschräumen hervorrufen. Tatsächlich dienten die Rohrleitungen aber zum Einführen der von den Dieselmotoren im Maschinenraum erzeugten Gase[…]”[3]
(The floor of the gas chamber was tiled[…](gap in the original)Pipes with shower heads were fastened to the ceiling, supposed to create the impression that this was a shower room. But in fact the pipes were used to introduce the exhaust gas from the diesel engine, located in the machine room, into the chamber.)
Comments: And here we go again, diesel exhaust. The previous author, Achim Trunk, tried hard to convince us that diesel could have been used, maybe, and that with enough effort it could perhaps even be poisonous, but concludes, sort of, that “serious”, ahem, historians do not assume that diesel exhaust was used exclusively, except for Treblinka. So here we have confirmation, diesel exhaust was allegedly used in Treblinka. But the excerpt of the verdict says nothing about special settings for the diesel engine to make the exhaust poisonous enough to be suitable for mass murder, if this is at all possible, evidence again that the judges did not rely on expert analysis, that the proceedings were mere show trials. And why would the Germans, who had numerous gases at their disposal, among them the highly poisonous and cheaply produced Holzgas (producer gas) even consider diesel? All this is confirmation that what is alleged never happened.
The authors continue to write about the measures taken to fool the alleged victims into thinking that nothing sinister was about to happen, and all of them fell for it, or so we are ordered to believe. We then learn that out of the 70,000 mentally challenged, only a few of those killed in the T4 action were serious enough cases (Endzustände). Again the reference to the T4 action, unable to make a case for the Shoah, as it is referred to throughout the book, on its own. The number is of some importance, however, to be addressed later. They then go into more detail about definitions, i.e., who was considered a perpetrator (Täter) and who an assistant (Gehilfe), followed by how punishment was meted out.
Nothing that helps to prove that “The Shoah” is standing on solid ground, thus of no real benefit.
Sources:
1. The site, IDGR, I copied this from has since disappeared, all I have is the printout.
2 Günter Morsch et al, Neue Studien zu Nationalsozialistischen Massentötungen durch Giftgas, p.51
3 Ibid, p.53
The third and last essay of chapter II is titled:
“Gewalt und Tod in Konzentrations- und Vernichtungslagern. Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der Archäologie“. (Violence and death in the concentration and extermination camps. Possibilities and limits of archeology). The essay is by Dr. Claudia Theune, University professor, institution head of the Institute for Ancient and Early History at the Vienna University. This sounds promising, although by now I would have expected an expert on crime investigations to join in, instead of a professor on ancient/early history. But again, no judging the book by its cover; let’s see what Dr. Theune writes.
In the introduction she informs us that archeology is the science which allows us, by investigating the traces left behind, to learn about the history and culture of peoples of times past. Over time different disciplines have emerged which concentrate on specific time periods. Before, the middle ages, as well as contemporary history, were not considered, it was believed that for that time enough documentation exists. This changed when the bombed out cities were reconstructed, thus in the 1950s archeology of the Middle Ages emerged, as did archeology of contemporary history in the 1980s. An international agreement was reached in 1964, the Charta of Venice, to be followed by the Malta Convention of 1992 and since then memorials are protected – this to include memorials from the time of National Socialism – and are part of archaeological research. Thus we now have four sources to fall back on: documents, photos, archaeological sources and written as well as oral witness testimonies. All of those, taken into context will give us an insight into the history of the former concentration camps and the violence and killings that took place in them. Theune further tells us that archaeology is only able to document the history of building traces found, i.e., basements or building foundations. Buildings that were demolished are lost for research, it is at best possible to determine what a building was used for by analogy.[1]
Comments: Good, we learn what archaeology can and cannot do. Pointing out that conclusions can sometimes only be reached when applying analogy, i.e. “inference that if two or more things agree with one another in some respects they will prob. agree in others” (Webster’s), is a little troubling. For, Webster’s states “prob.”, probably and if all we have are eyewitness tales, as in most cases, that and the “probable” is not solid evidence to determine guilt or innocence. But most important, Theune lists evidence provided in the order of importance: 1. documents, 2. photos, 3. archaeology and 4. eyewitness testimony. No sign here of any mention of reports compiled by experts in the field of crime investigations, unless she included them in the archaeological sources (archäologische Quellen), or in documentary sources (schriftliche Quellen), but that is uncertain. It is however more likely that she is aware of the fact that no such reports exist and she thus ignored them. But, she did put witness testimony at the end, and as we have been told in the new release following the 2008 Berlin Conference, the “gas chambers” rest solely on eyewitness testimonies (see part one), the least reliable source. But, lets keep an open mind and see, perhaps Dr. Theune did find traces of a gas chamber.
The next sub-chapter is titled: Archäologie in ehemaligen Konzentrationslagern (archaeology in the former concentration camps). Archaeological excavations in the former camps have been undertaken for the past 15 years, so Theune. The reason being: construction in the camps, changes made re. the appearance of the camps, as in Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, etc. Or, historical interest was the reason, as was the case in Flossenbürg and Witten-Annen, finding artefacts another possible motive. A few investigations were undertaken in Poland, in the former camp Belzec and Sobibor, as well as in the area around crematoria II in Auschwitz.[2] Archaeological research in the camps is of special importance, for in most cases other sources are not available. Based on those diggings the functions of the camps could be determined.
Theune continues by pointing out that we must perceive archaeological research re. violence and killings in the gas chambers differently (Die archäologischen Erkenntnisse zu Gewalt und Tod durch Tötung in Gaskammern sind jedoch differenziert zu betrachten). In many cases the technical facilities of the gas chambers (technischen Anlagen der Gaskammern) were destroyed by the National Socialists in the last days of the war. Or the structures were changed by the Soviets, as was the case in Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald, which were Soviet special camps, or buildings changed when the camps were turned into memorials. The technical equipment from the Sachsenhausen gas chamber was found in a shed, the blastings of the 1950s destroyed additional evidence. Mauthausen also changed, but the analysis of the walls in the room adjacent to the gas chambers resulted in a discovery: it turned out that tiles were replaced, one of the reasons to cover a round hole, probably the opening where the gas line came through the wall.
Many utensils were found, spoons and the like made from aluminum probably used by the inmates, whereas utensils made from more expensive material was used by the perpetrators. Human ashes were also found, as were teeth. Objects found in refuse sites are of little evidentiary value, as they are instead a telltale sign (deutliche Hinweise). Some comments about Hartheim which has also been altered.
Comments: For the Belzec investigations by Andrzej Kola see “Belzec”, by Carlo Mattogno.[3] For Sobibor see “The Akte Sobibor”, by Jürgen Graf, Thomas Kues and Carlo Mattogno.[4] Some of the controversies re. the recent Sobibor investigations are addressed by Thomas Kues.[5] It is strange, however, that Theune never mentions Treblinka, the camp in witch 880,000 Jews were killed, according to Yad Vashem. Also, witnesses testified that in Belzec and Treblinka the bodies were first buried in huge mass graves, then exhumed and burned. The outlines of those mass graves must still be clearly visible, the graves themselves must of course also still exist, impossible to destroy huge holes. All of this should assist archaeologists in their investigations, but we have nothing, no pictures taken from a plane showing the outlines of the graves, no mention of any of this by Dr. Theune.
Then there is the issue of the investigations themselves. Theune tells us that they only started some 15 years ago, the reason for those investigations not really to substantiate what is alleged but to turn the sites into memorials, and artefacts are found while doing so. But then again she tells us about the hole in the wall in one of the Mauthausen rooms, a small room just ahead of the alleged gas chamber, she calls it “Gaszelle” (gas cell) and assumes that this is the hole where the gas pipe went through the wall. Some time was spent on this investigation; Theune tells us that the tiles were checked as to their origin, as was the plaster, etc., etc. But re. the hole she jumps to a conclusion, she is convinced that this must be the hole through which the gas pipe was routed. How can a hole tell us that? It can’t, but when approaching an investigation with the intend to prove what is alleged, this is the outcome and the inherent problem with all of those so-called investigations. The same approach was/is taken when investigating events depicted in the Old Testament. Julius Wellhausen was one of those taking a closer look and had this to say about some of the researchers: “Für die Deutung werden die Thatsachen vorausgesetzt und aus der Deutung werden sie bewiesen…“(For the interpretation facts are established up front and confirmed by using the interpretation)[6] But the detailed hole in the wall investigations prove that evidence is being looked for, just nothing of substance has ever been found.
The camp Sachsenhausen, forgotten for decades, has, since German unification, come to the fore. In the introduction to the book under discussion here, we learned that Martin Broszat of the Munich Institute for Contemporary History (IfZ) published a letter on 19 August 1960 in which he stated that no gas chambers had existed in Germany proper. This has now been revised, the Institute (IfZ) explained in a publication of 27 June 2001 that recent research has shown that gas chambers did exist inside Germany proper. No additional research is being referred to, only the book “Nationalsozialistische Massentötungen durch Giftgas” by Kogon et al cited as source(pp.240-280).[7] Kogon et al base their conclusions in part on the testimony of Anton Kaindl, former camp commandant, at his trial of 23 October – 1 November 1947 before a Soviet court. The court case not part of this discussion, only to note that it is strange that Broszat was not aware of this. But, in a publication in “Stars and Stripes” of 24 January 1993, Simon Wiesenthal wrote:
“It is true that there were no extermination camps on German soil and thus no mass gassings such as those that took place at Auschwitz, Treblinka and other camps[…]”[8]
Prof. Dr. Yehuda Bauer, of Yad Vashem, confirmed this in a letter of 4 July 2000 in which he wrote that to his knowledge gassings were undertaken in Ravensbrück, and elsewhere in the borders of 1937, on a small scale[9], but no mention of Sachsenhausen et al. This is now interpreted to mean that gassings did take place in most camps, but not mass gassings. Spin everything until it fits. It is however alleged that mass gassings did take place in Sachsenhausen.
Prof. Maser (Fälschung, Dichtung und Wahrheit über Hitler und Stalin) lists the contradicting testimonies re. this gas chamber and at the end refers to an affidavit by Gerhard Schirmer in which the latter states that a replica of a gas chamber had been constructed by him, and several others, on order of the Soviets at about the middle of October 1945.[10] This affidavit was eventually seized by German authorities.[11]
After the war, the Soviets used Sachsenhausen as one of their special camps, scores of Germans were killed there or just died, many interned in the camp just for being at the wrong place at the wrong time. But no building marked “gas chamber” appeared on any of the camp sketches made public by either the Soviets or East German authorities. And even though “Fascist crimes” were referred to daily by the Soviets, no mention of any gas chamber in any of the reports by vice SMAD chief Serov (SMAD=Soviet Military Administration in Germany).[12] [13] And it gets even more peculiar: In 1950, the newly created East German army, at first referred to as “Kasernierte Volks-Polizei” KVP (police housed in barracks), took over the site (later all pretences were dropped and the army called an army, the Nationale Volksarmee [NVA], National peoples Army). An excerpt from the Sachsenhausen Memorial site regarding the gas chamber:
“In 1952/3, without reference to the historical importance of the site, the KVP blew up ‘Station Z’ – the crematorium and killing areas, to make room for a shooting gallery and the local population used the remaining materials of the barracks for building and heating. The Nationale Volksarmee (NVA) were also involved in the destruction of the site[…]”[14]
We are to believe that the Soviets allowed the Germans to destroy a perfectly good gas chamber, and that even though Smirnov stated at the IMT that: “…840,000 Russian prisoners of war in Sachsenhausen were annihilated at one time.”[15] This number has now shrunk somewhat, in the Sachsenhausen memorial write up we read of 12,000 Soviet POW’s.[16] Still, why not preserve the building to commemorate “Fascist crimes”? We must remember that at about the same time, the Soviets were busy re-building the morgue of crematoria I in Auschwitz, to make it appear as a gas chamber! Why then not preserve the alleged Sachsenhausen gas chamber? Because no gas chamber ever existed, except perhaps for the replica built by Schirmer et al.
In addition to this, Theune tells us that the gassing equipment was found in a shed, we don’t know what exactly has been found, but we are asked to believe that the Soviets had the Germans move said equipment out of the room before they started blasting. Anyone interested in a bridge in New York, very reasonably priced? Today all that is shown are some concrete footings of some building, with the proper write-ups of course – more information available at the memorial site, footnotes 14 & 16.
Theune then provides some details about the Sachsenhausen investigations, writing that the ground is saturated with human ashes, evidence that mass murder had been committed, by whom she does not say. Excavations were undertaken when the memorial was erected, but she never again mentions the fact that the Germans had been allowed to blow all of this up in the 1950s! She does get around later to suggest that some ditches filled with human ashes were of Soviet doing.
We are then told that the majority of camp inmates, by far, were Jews and that when digging Jewish burial laws need to be respected. 600,000 Jews were murdered in Belzec, only a few survived, we have hardly any pictures and only two maps drawn from memory. Drillings were done throughout the camp, which allowed the investigators to estimate the size of the mass graves. 33 mass graves were located, some as deep as 5m, with a volume of 21,000 cubic meters. Some building remnants were found, but the function of them remains unclear. The gas chamber, which had to be situated in the extermination camp (die in dem Vernichtungslager gestanden haben muss), could not be located by archaeological methods. The researchers assumed that it must be building G, the gas chamber positioned in the middle of the camp according to eyewitnesses.
Comments: For details about those investigations, please refer to the book by C. Mattogno, mentioned above, see footnote 3. As for the 33 graves allegedly located, here is what Mattogno writes:
“The official map of the camp was drawn by the investigative commission of the German crimes in Poland and appeared in the article “The Belzec extermination camp” by Eugeniusz Szrojt, a member of this group.228 There, the area of the graves is represented by a rectangle placed near the northeastern border of the camp.
In conclusion, we can see that the location given by Kola for the majority of the graves is in disagreement both with Rudolf Reder’s testimony and with the findings of the Polish investigative commission[…]”
( 228 E. Szrojt, “Obóz zaglady w Belzcu,” in Biuletyn Glównej Komisji Badania Zbrodni Niemieckich w Polsce, vol. III, Poznan 1947, insert without page number. A. Kola has also shown this map without any commentary; cf. document 7 in the Appendix.)[17]
The graves were backfilled with the ashes of the corpses cremated, so we are told. It is impossible to compact the backfill to keep it from settling, thus, the outlines of the graves should still be clearly visible, if any graves existed. Also, the “gas chamber” has never been found, Theune writes that it must have existed, well…., yes. But since nothing that really fits has been found, it is assumed that one of the buildings must have been it, not very convincing at all, but then, impossible to find what never existed.
Sobibor is next, and we learn that an estimated 250,000 people (Menschen) were killed there. Because a museum is planned, efforts are made to locate the gas chamber, a number of mass graves have also been found. Here too it has been determined that the bodies were buried first, lime poured over them, and later cremated. In a corner hundreds of bullets were found, an indications that people might have been shot there (anscheinend Menschen erschossen worden). None of the technical equipment of the gas chamber was recovered, removed when the camp was shut down.
Comments: For Sobibor, please refer to the works cited in footnotes 4 & 5. The part about the lime is interesting, however I have not seen it mentioned anywhere else. As for mass graves located, Messrs. Graf, Kues and Mattogno provide details.[18]
The next sub-chapter is titled: “Archäologische Spuren von Gewalt und Tod in ehemaligen Erschießungsstätten“(archaeological traces of violence and death in former shooting locations). Theune writes about excavations in Hebertshausen near Dachau, but most important were the archaeological investigations in Katyn, Miednoje (Russia) and Kharkiv in Ukraine, places where Soviet units murdered Polish citizens. She then writes about the shooting of Soviet POWs in Hebertshausen, irrelevant even if true, but then returns to Katyn. The mass graves were identified by using photos taken from planes (Luftbilder), and drillings were undertaken to determine the size of the graves. It is estimated that some 16,000 were killed in Katyn, et al. The investigation also revealed the efforts made by the National Socialists of 1943, and also that the Soviet secret service had opened the graves.
Comments: This is important, for Theune admits here that it is possible to identify graves by using airplane surveillance photos. Why is that not possible in Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor? Why only drillings in the latter two, with no investigation in Treblinka to locate the huge mass graves alleged to exist? There can only be one plausible explanation: no mass graves exist in those camps, for if they did exist, air surveillance photos would have pinpointed their location.
For Belzec it is now no longer possible to do this, the site having been totally worked over, the same is planned for Sobibor. Treblinka has masses of artifacts cluttering the site, making it almost impossible to investigate. Why is this, what is being hidden? Not the graves, for if they would have been located we would have been able to look at them on one TV channel or another over the years. Jewish burial laws/concerns? Not true either: In 2010 a whole area of the former Sachsenhausen sub-camp Lieberose near Jamlitz was dug up, looking for the graves of 753 Jews allegedly murdered there. A Rabbi was present, giving his blessings to the excavations. The whole site was turned upside-down, no regards for any burial laws, but nothing found.[19] This shows that when it is expected that the diggings will be successful, graves found, Jewish laws are bypassed, the law only enforced in places were it is known that no graves exist.
In her summary, Theune tells us that archaeological research has shown that death was ever present in the camps, it is however not possible to determine how many were killed. It is also possible to prove that violent shootings took place (Gewalt kann besonders bei den Erschiessungsanlagen…belegt werden). However, since the gas chamber equipment has been removed, archaeological research is limited. But, in Mauthausen the location of the gas pipe has been revealed, thus proving that equipment for the gassing of inmates had been installed, even though said equipment is no longer in place.
Final comments: Theune is displaying her stiff upper lip, trying to turn a disaster into success, and fails miserably. What have the investigations by archaeologists revealed, to prove without doubt that Jews were killed with poisonous gas? Nothing! She harps on about this Mauthausen hole in the wall, assuming that this is where the gas pipe entered the room, embarrassing, for she provides no solid evidence. She talks about the Belzec and Sobibor investigations by archaeologists, failures, but never mentions the missing Treblinka graves. Sachsenhausen has been dug up and dusted off, but since the Soviets used the camp to murder Germans and remodeled it, Maser writes about it, it is almost impossible to tell who did what. Unless of course archaeologists approach the subject with the conviction that the stories told about the “Nazis” are true, and that is obviously the case. But “investigations” of that kind do not deserve the term, they are missions undertaken to prove that what is told is fact, efforts to substantiate witness testimonies, tales of impossibilities.
Dr. Theune can thus also be dismissed as someone who contributed nothing to proving that Jews were murdered with poisonous gasses.
To be continued…
Sources:
-----------------------------------The second essay in chapter two is titled, “Technische Aspekte des Massenmordes durch Giftgas als Argument vor Gericht”(Technical aspects of mass murder by poisonous gas as presented in court). It is written by two authors, Volker Bieler, Judge at the court in Landau, Palatine – up to 31 August 2010 also department head of the Central Agency for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes in Ludwigsburg and Kurt Schrimm, head prosecutor and head of the Ludwigsburg Central Agency for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes.
The authors start out by informing us that, when the NS regime had come to an end, mass murder by poisonous gas was the subject of numerous German courts cases (Trials conducted in the DDR are not considered). This contribution will show, by citing examples, how this specific system of murder had been legally evaluated (strafrechtlich bewertet). Paragraph (§) 211 will be discussed, as well as other relevant legalities.
Starting with the planning- and executing NS-authorities, right up to the guard who supervised the burning of the corpses, co-ordination was a characteristic of the mass murder. How this co-ordination, i.e., perpetrator and assistant, played a role in courts’ decisions of determining sentences will also be discussed. To put it all into perspective, we will let the verdicts speak for themselves. How the courts judged the substantial as well as the historical facts is laid out in the other essays contained in this summarizing volume (Sammelband). We will therefore only refer to the findings re. historical events (Historische Vorgänge) – contained in the verdicts – as is necessary for understanding the legal arguments of the courts.
Comments: The authors refer to “historical” events, “historical” facts, the historical significance irrelevant when guilt/innocence of the accused is to be determined. Some generalities concerning legal systems up front first, the differences no doubt known to many but perhaps not all, and since I am no expert just a rough outlay.
The Continental legal system differs from that of England and the US, insofar as in Continental jurisprudence, and I am only somewhat familiar with the German system, a series of laws exist, identified by so-called paragraphs “§”. In the Anglo-American system common law is practiced, judges verdicts become law and is referred to in similar cases. The authors discuss § 211, issued on 4 September 1941, at a time when lawlessness was the norm in Germany, as is claimed. This paragraph, among other issues, defines that person as a murderer who “insidiously or cruelly” (heimtückisch oder grausam) kills another person. A person acts insidiously when taking advantage of another person’s unwariness and defenselessness (Arg- und Wehrlosigkeit). Killing cruelly is when out of malice the victim is made to suffer unnecessarily.
This is an abbreviation of the legal terms as defined by the authors, but it needs to be mentioned to show how the courts wasted time in definitions and were forced to do so because of lack of evidence. Thus, to make all of it appear as legal proceedings, and to be able to convict without any substantial evidence, they had to resort to legal shenanigans. In the verdicts that I have seen, and the authors of this essay confirm this, no mention is ever made of a court ordered investigation of the alleged crime scene, no court ordered investigation of the alleged murder weapons, nothing. In the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials verdict the judges refer to the NSdAP party program, Dr. Broszat and Dr. Krausnick elaborating, the Hitler speech of 30 January 1939, the Wannsee Conference, etc. As for the alleged killings, they state that in the bunkers Jews were killed with gas with no details provided. And concerning the alleged gassings in crematoria II & III they stated:
“Zur Tarnung der in der Decke befindlichen Öffnungen, durch die das Zyklon B von aussen hineingeschüttet wurde, hatte man aus durchlöchertem Blech bestehende hohle Säulen installiert, die vom Boden bis zur Decke reichten und die Öffnungen verdeckten. In den Säulen befanden sich Spiralen, die das gekörnte Zyklon B nach dem Einschütten verteilten.“
(To camouflage the openings in the ceiling, through which the Zyklon B was poured from the outside, columns made from perforated sheet metal were installed, reaching from floor to ceiling and thus covered the openings. Inside the columns were spirals which distributed the Zyklon B granules.)
According to this, the columns were installed to hide the holes in the ceiling and the spiral inside the columns – made from perforated sheet metal – helped to distribute the pellets. None of that nonsense has survived, we now have columns made from wire mesh with a can on a string inside, the latest in German technical ingenuity and know how, equally as ridiculous as pointed out in part IV. The judges admit that no evidence existed when they stated:
“Bei der Feststellung der individuellen Beteiligung der Angeklagten an den in dem Konzentrationslager Auschwitz begangenen Mordtaten, sei es an Massenmorden, sei es an Einzeltötungen, sah sich das Schwurgericht vor ausserordentlich schwierige Aufgaben gestellt. Die Angeklagten selbst trugen zur Aufklärung nur sehr wenig bei. Soweit sie eine Beteiligung zugaben, schwächten sie diese ab, stellten sie verzerrt dar oder hatten stets eine Reihe von Ausreden zur Hand.
Die wenigen zur Verfügung stehenden Urkunden dienten im wesentlichen nur der Aufklärung allgemeiner Dinge, konnten jedoch über die individuelle Schuld der Angeklagten kaum Aufschluss geben.
Das Gericht war somit bei der Aufklärung der von den Angeklagten begangenen Verbrechen fast ausschliesslich auf Zeugenaussagen angewiesen[…]”[1]
(Trying to determine participation of the accused in the mass murder the court was faced with enormous difficulties. The accused refused to assist, if they admitted to participation they distorted what happened and had excuses at the ready.
The few available documents were only useful in clearing up general matters, but were of no help in determining guilt of the accused.
The courts had to therefore depend almost exclusively on the testimony of witnesses)
The verdicts of the Belzec and Sobibor trials are similar: no sign of an attempt to substantiate the charges with investigation reports compiled by experts in the field of crime investigations. In fact, recent trials in Germany, vs. Messrs. Zündel and Rudolf for instance, follow much the same pattern — no evidence is submitted and when the defense tries to submit evidence of its own, it is refused. The authors of this essay are no doubt aware of this, which is why they needed to resort to legal definitions. For, if evidence existed, proving without doubt that the crimes had been committed as alleged, that evidence would have been presented. And to refer to the contributions by others will also not cut it — the authors are legal experts and this essay should be where they make their case, if it can be made then.
The authors then provide excerpts from some of the verdicts, taken from “Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, Sammlung deutscher Strafurteile wegen nationalsozialistischen Tötungsverbrechen 1945-1999“, Amsterdam 1968 ff, by Christian F. Rüter and Dick W. de Mildt, publishers (Justice and NS crimes, A summary of verdicts of NS crimes as submitted 1945-1999). They start out with the gas wagons and a verdict of 23 July 1965 from the Bonn trial. Just a sample:
“Bei den Gaswagen handelte es sich um große, grau angestrichene Lastkraftwagen[...]mit geschlossenem Kastenaufbau[...]Das Innere war mit verzinktem Eisenblech ausgeschlagen. Auf dem Boden lagen Holzroste, unter denen sich Rohre befanden. An die Öffnung der Rohre war unter dem Wagenboden ein Schlauch angeschlossen, der eine konisch zulaufende Spitze besaß. Das Schlauchende konnte in das Auspuffrohr eingeführt und mit einer Überwurfmutter fest verschraubt werden”.[2]
Comments: Gaps are in the original. What this says is that the gas wagons were big trucks, painted grey with a closed-in box at the back. That box was lined with zinc coated sheet metal, at the floor wooden grills under which pipes were placed. A hose was connected to those pipes, the other end of the hose connected to the exhaust pipe. Thus, we have a grey box, no details as to what material this box was made of. And that is important, for it had to withstand pressure, this will be discussed later. Then this: a hose was connected to the exhaust. The German word used is “Schlauch” and at that time no doubt made of rubber or some rubber compound. The exhaust pipe gets scorching hot, any rubber or related material would melt in seconds. And no, Schlauch has no other meaning in German, if a pipe was meant or a hose made from flex material it would have said so. Also, I doubt any material available at that time, other than exhaust pipe related material, would have withstood the heat. All of this evidence that no experts had been consulted, the court relying on witness testimony.
In the verdict of the Düsseldorf Treblinka trial of 3 September 1965 we read:
“Der Boden der Gaskammern war gekachelt[…]An denDecken…befanden sich einige Rohrleitungen und Brauseköpfe. Dadurch sollten die Gaskammern den Eindruck von Duschräumen hervorrufen. Tatsächlich dienten die Rohrleitungen aber zum Einführen der von den Dieselmotoren im Maschinenraum erzeugten Gase[…]”[3]
(The floor of the gas chamber was tiled[…](gap in the original)Pipes with shower heads were fastened to the ceiling, supposed to create the impression that this was a shower room. But in fact the pipes were used to introduce the exhaust gas from the diesel engine, located in the machine room, into the chamber.)
Comments: And here we go again, diesel exhaust. The previous author, Achim Trunk, tried hard to convince us that diesel could have been used, maybe, and that with enough effort it could perhaps even be poisonous, but concludes, sort of, that “serious”, ahem, historians do not assume that diesel exhaust was used exclusively, except for Treblinka. So here we have confirmation, diesel exhaust was allegedly used in Treblinka. But the excerpt of the verdict says nothing about special settings for the diesel engine to make the exhaust poisonous enough to be suitable for mass murder, if this is at all possible, evidence again that the judges did not rely on expert analysis, that the proceedings were mere show trials. And why would the Germans, who had numerous gases at their disposal, among them the highly poisonous and cheaply produced Holzgas (producer gas) even consider diesel? All this is confirmation that what is alleged never happened.
The authors continue to write about the measures taken to fool the alleged victims into thinking that nothing sinister was about to happen, and all of them fell for it, or so we are ordered to believe. We then learn that out of the 70,000 mentally challenged, only a few of those killed in the T4 action were serious enough cases (Endzustände). Again the reference to the T4 action, unable to make a case for the Shoah, as it is referred to throughout the book, on its own. The number is of some importance, however, to be addressed later. They then go into more detail about definitions, i.e., who was considered a perpetrator (Täter) and who an assistant (Gehilfe), followed by how punishment was meted out.
Nothing that helps to prove that “The Shoah” is standing on solid ground, thus of no real benefit.
Sources:
1. The site, IDGR, I copied this from has since disappeared, all I have is the printout.
2 Günter Morsch et al, Neue Studien zu Nationalsozialistischen Massentötungen durch Giftgas, p.51
3 Ibid, p.53
The third and last essay of chapter II is titled:
“Gewalt und Tod in Konzentrations- und Vernichtungslagern. Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der Archäologie“. (Violence and death in the concentration and extermination camps. Possibilities and limits of archeology). The essay is by Dr. Claudia Theune, University professor, institution head of the Institute for Ancient and Early History at the Vienna University. This sounds promising, although by now I would have expected an expert on crime investigations to join in, instead of a professor on ancient/early history. But again, no judging the book by its cover; let’s see what Dr. Theune writes.
In the introduction she informs us that archeology is the science which allows us, by investigating the traces left behind, to learn about the history and culture of peoples of times past. Over time different disciplines have emerged which concentrate on specific time periods. Before, the middle ages, as well as contemporary history, were not considered, it was believed that for that time enough documentation exists. This changed when the bombed out cities were reconstructed, thus in the 1950s archeology of the Middle Ages emerged, as did archeology of contemporary history in the 1980s. An international agreement was reached in 1964, the Charta of Venice, to be followed by the Malta Convention of 1992 and since then memorials are protected – this to include memorials from the time of National Socialism – and are part of archaeological research. Thus we now have four sources to fall back on: documents, photos, archaeological sources and written as well as oral witness testimonies. All of those, taken into context will give us an insight into the history of the former concentration camps and the violence and killings that took place in them. Theune further tells us that archaeology is only able to document the history of building traces found, i.e., basements or building foundations. Buildings that were demolished are lost for research, it is at best possible to determine what a building was used for by analogy.[1]
Comments: Good, we learn what archaeology can and cannot do. Pointing out that conclusions can sometimes only be reached when applying analogy, i.e. “inference that if two or more things agree with one another in some respects they will prob. agree in others” (Webster’s), is a little troubling. For, Webster’s states “prob.”, probably and if all we have are eyewitness tales, as in most cases, that and the “probable” is not solid evidence to determine guilt or innocence. But most important, Theune lists evidence provided in the order of importance: 1. documents, 2. photos, 3. archaeology and 4. eyewitness testimony. No sign here of any mention of reports compiled by experts in the field of crime investigations, unless she included them in the archaeological sources (archäologische Quellen), or in documentary sources (schriftliche Quellen), but that is uncertain. It is however more likely that she is aware of the fact that no such reports exist and she thus ignored them. But, she did put witness testimony at the end, and as we have been told in the new release following the 2008 Berlin Conference, the “gas chambers” rest solely on eyewitness testimonies (see part one), the least reliable source. But, lets keep an open mind and see, perhaps Dr. Theune did find traces of a gas chamber.
The next sub-chapter is titled: Archäologie in ehemaligen Konzentrationslagern (archaeology in the former concentration camps). Archaeological excavations in the former camps have been undertaken for the past 15 years, so Theune. The reason being: construction in the camps, changes made re. the appearance of the camps, as in Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, etc. Or, historical interest was the reason, as was the case in Flossenbürg and Witten-Annen, finding artefacts another possible motive. A few investigations were undertaken in Poland, in the former camp Belzec and Sobibor, as well as in the area around crematoria II in Auschwitz.[2] Archaeological research in the camps is of special importance, for in most cases other sources are not available. Based on those diggings the functions of the camps could be determined.
Theune continues by pointing out that we must perceive archaeological research re. violence and killings in the gas chambers differently (Die archäologischen Erkenntnisse zu Gewalt und Tod durch Tötung in Gaskammern sind jedoch differenziert zu betrachten). In many cases the technical facilities of the gas chambers (technischen Anlagen der Gaskammern) were destroyed by the National Socialists in the last days of the war. Or the structures were changed by the Soviets, as was the case in Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald, which were Soviet special camps, or buildings changed when the camps were turned into memorials. The technical equipment from the Sachsenhausen gas chamber was found in a shed, the blastings of the 1950s destroyed additional evidence. Mauthausen also changed, but the analysis of the walls in the room adjacent to the gas chambers resulted in a discovery: it turned out that tiles were replaced, one of the reasons to cover a round hole, probably the opening where the gas line came through the wall.
Many utensils were found, spoons and the like made from aluminum probably used by the inmates, whereas utensils made from more expensive material was used by the perpetrators. Human ashes were also found, as were teeth. Objects found in refuse sites are of little evidentiary value, as they are instead a telltale sign (deutliche Hinweise). Some comments about Hartheim which has also been altered.
Comments: For the Belzec investigations by Andrzej Kola see “Belzec”, by Carlo Mattogno.[3] For Sobibor see “The Akte Sobibor”, by Jürgen Graf, Thomas Kues and Carlo Mattogno.[4] Some of the controversies re. the recent Sobibor investigations are addressed by Thomas Kues.[5] It is strange, however, that Theune never mentions Treblinka, the camp in witch 880,000 Jews were killed, according to Yad Vashem. Also, witnesses testified that in Belzec and Treblinka the bodies were first buried in huge mass graves, then exhumed and burned. The outlines of those mass graves must still be clearly visible, the graves themselves must of course also still exist, impossible to destroy huge holes. All of this should assist archaeologists in their investigations, but we have nothing, no pictures taken from a plane showing the outlines of the graves, no mention of any of this by Dr. Theune.
Then there is the issue of the investigations themselves. Theune tells us that they only started some 15 years ago, the reason for those investigations not really to substantiate what is alleged but to turn the sites into memorials, and artefacts are found while doing so. But then again she tells us about the hole in the wall in one of the Mauthausen rooms, a small room just ahead of the alleged gas chamber, she calls it “Gaszelle” (gas cell) and assumes that this is the hole where the gas pipe went through the wall. Some time was spent on this investigation; Theune tells us that the tiles were checked as to their origin, as was the plaster, etc., etc. But re. the hole she jumps to a conclusion, she is convinced that this must be the hole through which the gas pipe was routed. How can a hole tell us that? It can’t, but when approaching an investigation with the intend to prove what is alleged, this is the outcome and the inherent problem with all of those so-called investigations. The same approach was/is taken when investigating events depicted in the Old Testament. Julius Wellhausen was one of those taking a closer look and had this to say about some of the researchers: “Für die Deutung werden die Thatsachen vorausgesetzt und aus der Deutung werden sie bewiesen…“(For the interpretation facts are established up front and confirmed by using the interpretation)[6] But the detailed hole in the wall investigations prove that evidence is being looked for, just nothing of substance has ever been found.
The camp Sachsenhausen, forgotten for decades, has, since German unification, come to the fore. In the introduction to the book under discussion here, we learned that Martin Broszat of the Munich Institute for Contemporary History (IfZ) published a letter on 19 August 1960 in which he stated that no gas chambers had existed in Germany proper. This has now been revised, the Institute (IfZ) explained in a publication of 27 June 2001 that recent research has shown that gas chambers did exist inside Germany proper. No additional research is being referred to, only the book “Nationalsozialistische Massentötungen durch Giftgas” by Kogon et al cited as source(pp.240-280).[7] Kogon et al base their conclusions in part on the testimony of Anton Kaindl, former camp commandant, at his trial of 23 October – 1 November 1947 before a Soviet court. The court case not part of this discussion, only to note that it is strange that Broszat was not aware of this. But, in a publication in “Stars and Stripes” of 24 January 1993, Simon Wiesenthal wrote:
“It is true that there were no extermination camps on German soil and thus no mass gassings such as those that took place at Auschwitz, Treblinka and other camps[…]”[8]
Prof. Dr. Yehuda Bauer, of Yad Vashem, confirmed this in a letter of 4 July 2000 in which he wrote that to his knowledge gassings were undertaken in Ravensbrück, and elsewhere in the borders of 1937, on a small scale[9], but no mention of Sachsenhausen et al. This is now interpreted to mean that gassings did take place in most camps, but not mass gassings. Spin everything until it fits. It is however alleged that mass gassings did take place in Sachsenhausen.
Prof. Maser (Fälschung, Dichtung und Wahrheit über Hitler und Stalin) lists the contradicting testimonies re. this gas chamber and at the end refers to an affidavit by Gerhard Schirmer in which the latter states that a replica of a gas chamber had been constructed by him, and several others, on order of the Soviets at about the middle of October 1945.[10] This affidavit was eventually seized by German authorities.[11]
After the war, the Soviets used Sachsenhausen as one of their special camps, scores of Germans were killed there or just died, many interned in the camp just for being at the wrong place at the wrong time. But no building marked “gas chamber” appeared on any of the camp sketches made public by either the Soviets or East German authorities. And even though “Fascist crimes” were referred to daily by the Soviets, no mention of any gas chamber in any of the reports by vice SMAD chief Serov (SMAD=Soviet Military Administration in Germany).[12] [13] And it gets even more peculiar: In 1950, the newly created East German army, at first referred to as “Kasernierte Volks-Polizei” KVP (police housed in barracks), took over the site (later all pretences were dropped and the army called an army, the Nationale Volksarmee [NVA], National peoples Army). An excerpt from the Sachsenhausen Memorial site regarding the gas chamber:
“In 1952/3, without reference to the historical importance of the site, the KVP blew up ‘Station Z’ – the crematorium and killing areas, to make room for a shooting gallery and the local population used the remaining materials of the barracks for building and heating. The Nationale Volksarmee (NVA) were also involved in the destruction of the site[…]”[14]
We are to believe that the Soviets allowed the Germans to destroy a perfectly good gas chamber, and that even though Smirnov stated at the IMT that: “…840,000 Russian prisoners of war in Sachsenhausen were annihilated at one time.”[15] This number has now shrunk somewhat, in the Sachsenhausen memorial write up we read of 12,000 Soviet POW’s.[16] Still, why not preserve the building to commemorate “Fascist crimes”? We must remember that at about the same time, the Soviets were busy re-building the morgue of crematoria I in Auschwitz, to make it appear as a gas chamber! Why then not preserve the alleged Sachsenhausen gas chamber? Because no gas chamber ever existed, except perhaps for the replica built by Schirmer et al.
In addition to this, Theune tells us that the gassing equipment was found in a shed, we don’t know what exactly has been found, but we are asked to believe that the Soviets had the Germans move said equipment out of the room before they started blasting. Anyone interested in a bridge in New York, very reasonably priced? Today all that is shown are some concrete footings of some building, with the proper write-ups of course – more information available at the memorial site, footnotes 14 & 16.
Theune then provides some details about the Sachsenhausen investigations, writing that the ground is saturated with human ashes, evidence that mass murder had been committed, by whom she does not say. Excavations were undertaken when the memorial was erected, but she never again mentions the fact that the Germans had been allowed to blow all of this up in the 1950s! She does get around later to suggest that some ditches filled with human ashes were of Soviet doing.
We are then told that the majority of camp inmates, by far, were Jews and that when digging Jewish burial laws need to be respected. 600,000 Jews were murdered in Belzec, only a few survived, we have hardly any pictures and only two maps drawn from memory. Drillings were done throughout the camp, which allowed the investigators to estimate the size of the mass graves. 33 mass graves were located, some as deep as 5m, with a volume of 21,000 cubic meters. Some building remnants were found, but the function of them remains unclear. The gas chamber, which had to be situated in the extermination camp (die in dem Vernichtungslager gestanden haben muss), could not be located by archaeological methods. The researchers assumed that it must be building G, the gas chamber positioned in the middle of the camp according to eyewitnesses.
Comments: For details about those investigations, please refer to the book by C. Mattogno, mentioned above, see footnote 3. As for the 33 graves allegedly located, here is what Mattogno writes:
“The official map of the camp was drawn by the investigative commission of the German crimes in Poland and appeared in the article “The Belzec extermination camp” by Eugeniusz Szrojt, a member of this group.228 There, the area of the graves is represented by a rectangle placed near the northeastern border of the camp.
In conclusion, we can see that the location given by Kola for the majority of the graves is in disagreement both with Rudolf Reder’s testimony and with the findings of the Polish investigative commission[…]”
( 228 E. Szrojt, “Obóz zaglady w Belzcu,” in Biuletyn Glównej Komisji Badania Zbrodni Niemieckich w Polsce, vol. III, Poznan 1947, insert without page number. A. Kola has also shown this map without any commentary; cf. document 7 in the Appendix.)[17]
The graves were backfilled with the ashes of the corpses cremated, so we are told. It is impossible to compact the backfill to keep it from settling, thus, the outlines of the graves should still be clearly visible, if any graves existed. Also, the “gas chamber” has never been found, Theune writes that it must have existed, well…., yes. But since nothing that really fits has been found, it is assumed that one of the buildings must have been it, not very convincing at all, but then, impossible to find what never existed.
Sobibor is next, and we learn that an estimated 250,000 people (Menschen) were killed there. Because a museum is planned, efforts are made to locate the gas chamber, a number of mass graves have also been found. Here too it has been determined that the bodies were buried first, lime poured over them, and later cremated. In a corner hundreds of bullets were found, an indications that people might have been shot there (anscheinend Menschen erschossen worden). None of the technical equipment of the gas chamber was recovered, removed when the camp was shut down.
Comments: For Sobibor, please refer to the works cited in footnotes 4 & 5. The part about the lime is interesting, however I have not seen it mentioned anywhere else. As for mass graves located, Messrs. Graf, Kues and Mattogno provide details.[18]
The next sub-chapter is titled: “Archäologische Spuren von Gewalt und Tod in ehemaligen Erschießungsstätten“(archaeological traces of violence and death in former shooting locations). Theune writes about excavations in Hebertshausen near Dachau, but most important were the archaeological investigations in Katyn, Miednoje (Russia) and Kharkiv in Ukraine, places where Soviet units murdered Polish citizens. She then writes about the shooting of Soviet POWs in Hebertshausen, irrelevant even if true, but then returns to Katyn. The mass graves were identified by using photos taken from planes (Luftbilder), and drillings were undertaken to determine the size of the graves. It is estimated that some 16,000 were killed in Katyn, et al. The investigation also revealed the efforts made by the National Socialists of 1943, and also that the Soviet secret service had opened the graves.
Comments: This is important, for Theune admits here that it is possible to identify graves by using airplane surveillance photos. Why is that not possible in Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor? Why only drillings in the latter two, with no investigation in Treblinka to locate the huge mass graves alleged to exist? There can only be one plausible explanation: no mass graves exist in those camps, for if they did exist, air surveillance photos would have pinpointed their location.
For Belzec it is now no longer possible to do this, the site having been totally worked over, the same is planned for Sobibor. Treblinka has masses of artifacts cluttering the site, making it almost impossible to investigate. Why is this, what is being hidden? Not the graves, for if they would have been located we would have been able to look at them on one TV channel or another over the years. Jewish burial laws/concerns? Not true either: In 2010 a whole area of the former Sachsenhausen sub-camp Lieberose near Jamlitz was dug up, looking for the graves of 753 Jews allegedly murdered there. A Rabbi was present, giving his blessings to the excavations. The whole site was turned upside-down, no regards for any burial laws, but nothing found.[19] This shows that when it is expected that the diggings will be successful, graves found, Jewish laws are bypassed, the law only enforced in places were it is known that no graves exist.
In her summary, Theune tells us that archaeological research has shown that death was ever present in the camps, it is however not possible to determine how many were killed. It is also possible to prove that violent shootings took place (Gewalt kann besonders bei den Erschiessungsanlagen…belegt werden). However, since the gas chamber equipment has been removed, archaeological research is limited. But, in Mauthausen the location of the gas pipe has been revealed, thus proving that equipment for the gassing of inmates had been installed, even though said equipment is no longer in place.
Final comments: Theune is displaying her stiff upper lip, trying to turn a disaster into success, and fails miserably. What have the investigations by archaeologists revealed, to prove without doubt that Jews were killed with poisonous gas? Nothing! She harps on about this Mauthausen hole in the wall, assuming that this is where the gas pipe entered the room, embarrassing, for she provides no solid evidence. She talks about the Belzec and Sobibor investigations by archaeologists, failures, but never mentions the missing Treblinka graves. Sachsenhausen has been dug up and dusted off, but since the Soviets used the camp to murder Germans and remodeled it, Maser writes about it, it is almost impossible to tell who did what. Unless of course archaeologists approach the subject with the conviction that the stories told about the “Nazis” are true, and that is obviously the case. But “investigations” of that kind do not deserve the term, they are missions undertaken to prove that what is told is fact, efforts to substantiate witness testimonies, tales of impossibilities.
Dr. Theune can thus also be dismissed as someone who contributed nothing to proving that Jews were murdered with poisonous gasses.
To be continued…
Sources:
- Günter Morsch et al, Neue Studien zu Nationalsozialistischen Massentötungen durch Giftgas, pp.64/65
- Ibid, pp.65/66, footnotes 9 & 10: 9 Andrzej Kola, Belzec, The Nazi Camp for Jewish in the Light of Archaeological Sources, Excavations 1997-1999, Warsaw/Washington 2000; http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ar/modern/archreview.html (Februar 2009). Zu den archäologischen Forschungen in Polen siehe auch: Anders Otte Stensager, Holocaustarkaeologie – en arkaeologisk funktionsanalysea f udryddelseslejrene in Polen 1941-1945. Magisterarbeit Universität Kobenhavn 2007; http://www.diis.dk/graphics/CVerPersonlige_CVer/Holocaust_and_Genocide/Publikationer/specialer/Holocaustark%E6ologi-Hoveddel.pdf (Januar 2010). 10 http://www.hartford.edu/greenberg/events/sobibor.asp (Februar 2009); Tuwiah Friedman (Hrsg.)Sobibór. Ein NS-Vernichtungslager im Rahmen der Aktion Reinhard. Eine dokumentarische Sammlung, Haifa 1998. No source for Auschwitz.
- http://vho.org/D/b/
- http://juergen-graf.vho.org/pdf/graf-kues-mattogno-die-akte-sobibor.pdf
- http://www.revblog.codoh.com/2009/05/kolas-building-e-at-sobibor-addenda/
- Julius Wellhausen, Die Pharisäer und dir Sadducäer, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht in Göttingen, 1967 (first edition Verlag Bamberg, Greifswald 1874), p.66
- Werner Maser, Fälschung, Dichtung und Wahrheit über Hitler und Stalin, Olzog Verlag GmbH, München 2004, p.354
- http://vho.org/dl/vffg/4_01.pdf
- http://vho.org/dl/vffg/4_01.pdf
- Ibid, pp.256/57
- Personal letter of 23 August 2005 by Maser to the me.
- Maser, Fälschung, Dichtung…, pp.358-361
- About the machinations of Ivan Serov, see Marschall Schukow, Lebensweg über Leichen, by Victor Suvorov, Pour le Mérite-Verlag für Militärgeschichte, Selent 2002, pp.257-271
- http://www.stiftung-bg.de/gums/en/index.htm
- http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/02-19-46.asp, p.586
- http://www.stiftung-bg.de/gums/en/index.htm
- Mattogno, Belzec, p.76
- http://juergen-graf.vho.org/pdf/graf-kues-mattogno-die-akte-sobibor.pdf
- http://www.mi.brandenburg.de/cms/detail.php/bb1.c.216164.de
The latest effort to combat “denial”, i.e., Holocaust Revisionism (part VI)
By Wilfried Heink
The third chapter in the book “Neue Studien zu nationalsozialistischen Massentötungen durch Giftgas” (New studies on National Socialist mass murder by poisonous gas) is titled: “Die Tötungsanstalten der ‘Aktion T4’” (The T4 killing facilities).
As the title suggests, this is about the T4 action in six of the facilities, with a sort of foreword “Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens” im Nationalsozialismus: Die “Aktion T4” (Extermination of life unworthy of life under National Socialism. The Action T4), by Brigitte Kepplinger, Dr. Mag., Soziologin und Historikerin, wissenschftliche Beamtin am Institute für Gesellschafts- und Sozialpolitik der Johannes Kepler-Universität Linz.
Since Revisionists do not deny that terminally ill and severely mentally challenged patients were put to death, there is no need to spend much time on this chapter. Kepplinger writes about the early stages of this action: that it was initiated by Hitler who instructed health minister Leonardo Conti to submit a plan. Later, Philipp Bouhler of the chancellery was able to push Conti out, an action typical of the politics of rivalry (Polikratie) in the Third Reich, according to Kepplinger.
Here is what Prof. Dr. Franz Seidler has to say about what took place before the doctors’ trial in which the T4 action played a major role:
– Dr. Conti, who was supposed to be one of the accused, committed suicide in his Nürnberg jail cell;
– The substitute head of the Reich Doctors Association (Reichärztekammer), Prof. Dr. Kurt Blome, who was to be charged in his stead, had to be acquitted because he could prove German doctors refused to participate in experiments on humans without consent of the proband. He stated however that tests are necessary and the Americans in 1951 invited him to participate in experiments re. chemical warfare;
– SS Obergruppenführer Prof. Dr. Ernst Robert Grawitz, CEO of the German Red Cross, committed suicide with his family in April 1945;
– Prof. Dr. August Hirt, head of the institute of military science in Straßburg committed suicide on 2 June 1945;
– Philipp Bouhler, head of the euthanasia program, captured by the Americans but committed suicide before being brought to Dachau;
– A whole group of doctors could not be found, some of them later turned up and were taken to the US to participate in research in their field of expertise, i.e., they continued were they left off just under a differed administration. [1]
This is an unusually high number of “suicides,” with some of the doctors not found for the trial but later invited to come to America to do exactly what they had done in the Third Reich, only now it was deemed “legal.” Prof. Dr. Karl Brandt, until the end of the war head health care official, was the most prominent of the accused. He weighed 44kg (97 pounds) when brought to Nürnberg, a consequence of hardships and torture inflicted on him by the British. The main charge against him was the T4 program, with Dr. Eugene Kogon (Nationalsozialistische Massentötungen…) the chief witness, but Kogon had to admit later that what he told was hearsay. The shenanigans continued, as documents of dubious origin were submitted, but too late for the defense to refute anything. Defense lawyer Dr. Servatuis charged that this program was a domestic (internal) program that foreigners were not competent to judge. He further questioned the affidavits because they contained words like “might have been”, “possibly”, “might be”, etc., and demanded that witnesses be produced for cross-examination. But the prosecution would not allow it for fear that the charges could not be sustained; again, because of phrases in the protocols like “I believe”, I assume”, “as far as I can remember” and “possibly”. It was also pointed out that the British engaged in human experiments – this was published in a medical journal. Dr. Brandt stated that whoever showed mercy for the incurable can never be a murderer, but to no avail — he was hanged on 2 June 1948.[2]
This proves that the illegality of the program was only “established” in a show trial. In fact, discussions about the legality of euthanasia were initiated as early as 1933. During the rearranging (Neugsataltung) of German penal law, the Prussian minister of justice, Hanns Kerrl, published a memorandum entitled “Nationalsozialistische Srafrecht” in 1933 in which he argued that euthanasia cannot be illegal if an incurable person is asking for it, or if that person is unable to do so has relatives ask on his/her stead. No person shall be prosecuted if a doctor determines that the patient cannot be cured, as confirmed by another medical doctor. The memo then mentions the mentally challenged:
„Sollte der Staat etwa bei unheilbar Geisteskranken ihre Ausschaltung aus dem Leben durch amtliche Organe gesetzmäßig anordnen, so liegt in der Ausführung solcher Maßnahmen nur die Durchführung einer staatlichen Anordnung … Wohl bleibt zu betonen, daß die Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens durch eine nichtamtliche Person stets eine strafbare Handlung darstellt.“[3]
(Should the state pass a decree legalizing the ending of the life of an insane (mentally challenged) person by state officials, participation in this would only be the execution of a state order…It must be stressed however that this action, if performed by anyone other than a state official, is punishable)
This was based on an essay by the expert on penal law (Strafrechtslehrer), Prof. Karl Binding, and psychiatrist Alfred Hoche, published in Leipzig 1920 and titled “Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens – Ihr Maß und ihre Form” (The release for extermination of unworthy life – the limits and form). According to the authors, the killing of incurables and insane (Blödsinniger) should be allowed if asked for by relatives, following a thorough examination by two doctors and a legal expert. Economic reasons were given because the persons, who care for these unproductive beings (Ballastexistenzen), are not available for the greater good.[4]
The above essay was published in 1920 – a time in which starvation as a result of the criminal British blockade was still fresh in mind. Only someone who experienced anything like that can dare judge, for the world looks friendlier with a full stomach.
Churches protested, as did the medical profession and as a consequence the new penal law of 1935 did not sanction euthanasia. Later efforts to legalize euthanasia failed, but Hitler claimed that “the well being of the German populace (Volk) is above any paragraph”.[5] And as has been shown in part II of this series, Hitler issued a decree on 1 September 1939, allowing: “…that patients considered incurable according to the best available human judgment [menschlichem Ermessen] of their state of health, can be granted a mercy death [Gnadentod].”[6]
This was not a license to kill. Doctors had to determine if the affected were indeed incurable or mentally challenged beyond hope. Abuses probably happened, but the intent was to end the lives of those who were a burden on society, especially in wartime. But above all, Hitler, as the undisputed head of state, could pass laws, i.e. issue decrees that became de facto laws. And here we have the issue of “consciousness of doing wrong”, as August von Knieriem words it.[7]
Von Knieriem starts out with:
“Under the national legal system concerned, the majority of acts judged at Nuremberg would not have been punishable at all…”.[8]
And that is precisely the issue. A Hitler order – or decree of any kind – was law, period. The doctors examined the patients and found them to be incurable, thus by the decree Hitler had issued they followed the law and were not conscious of wrong doing. Von Knieriem puts it thus:
“This problem is generally designated as that of the “consciousness of unlawfulness” or of doing wrong, and can be expressed in the following terms: Can the guilty intent be imputed to an actor who was not conscious of doing wrong? As the act must first be unlawful for the problem of the actor’s guilt to be raised at all, the question may also be expressed in the following way: Can anybody be punished for being guilty of intent if he was mistaken about the lawfulness of his act? This is why the problem of the consciousness of doing wrong is generally designated as that of error of law or, since unlawfulness means that the act is prohibited, as the “error of prohibition.” Irrespective of the manner in which the question is formulated, its meaning is always the same; it refers to the determination of the extent, if any, to which the actor was conscious of doing wrong.”[9]
And moral consideration, if even present, cannot make an act unlawful. Also, Dr. Brandt had stated at his trial that showing mercy to the incurable can never be considered murder. These doctors and whoever else that participated in the program were not murderers, but used their judgment to end the sufferings of those who at that time could not be cured. It is therefore folly to refer to the T4 program to make a case for alleged mass killings of Jews with poisonous gas, since the illegality of T4 has never been proven.
Just briefly to the numbers of the T4 action, and we seem to have the same “discrepancies” here as with Shoah numbers. Kogon et al claim 70,273 killed, based on some accounting sheets found.[10] The Kogon book was published in 1983, but only in the years following German unification were a number of the pertinent documents discovered in East German archives. But, the discovery raised more questions as were answered, according to Peter Sandner.[11] Sandner then tells us that for a long time it was assumed that 70,000 had been killed; this number was based on the so-called “Hartheim-Dokument”.[12] But newer research has shown that at most (allenfalls) 25,000 to 30,000 files are on hand, about a third of the total. The questions are, so Sandner: where are the rest of the files, and how did those files end up in the DDR (East Germany)?[13] Sandner then tells us that most of the Hartheim files have been destroyed; he doesn’t say how we know that. In an IfZ essay of 2003, we learn that 30,000 files have since been located, but that the rest were destroyed.[14] And even though it seems that only 30,000 deaths can be confirmed, Sandner hangs on to the 70,000 number, admitting only that the files found in East Germany must be evaluated and that this is happening now.[15]
In conclusion, the illegality of the T4 action was never established and there seem to be some other questions – i.e., the numbers. The many authors of the book under discussion are unable to make a case for mass gassings, and therefore need to try to make their case via T4: quite the admittance. Therefore there’s no need to waste time on this chapter, which offers no evidence at all for the alleged Shoah.
Sources:
Chapter four is titled “Giftgas als Mittel zum Völkermord in Gaswagen und Vernichtungslager” (Poisonous gas as means to commit mass murder in gas wagons and extermination camps).
With this we finally seem to be getting to the nitty-gritty of the subject, and we are almost half-way through the book. The first essay is by Mathias Beer, “Gaswagen. Von der “Euthanasie” zum Genozid” (Gas wagons. From euthanasia to genocide). Dr. phil. Mathias Beer is a historian, the head of research into contemporary history and head of the Donau-Swabian institute of history in Tübingen.
Most, if not all, authors place the word “euthanasia” in quotation marks, suggesting that this is the wrong term and that mass murder would be the correct definition. This is then additional evidence that the reader must be conditioned and that a solid Shoah case cannot be made.
Before I address the article by Mr. Beer, allow me to state a few generalities. It appears that gas wagons did exist; called Black Ravens [1]. They were the invention of Isaj Davidovich Berg, a Jew, and were used by the Soviets.[2]
Voslensky writes that the inventor of the gas vans was a certain (gewisser) Berg, the exhaust gasses were routed through the interior of the box (Wagenkasten) and that the vans were already in use in 1936.[3] Solzhenitsyn provides a few more details: Berg had been manager of the economic administration (AchO) of the NKVD in the Moscow district and was ordered to put into practice the decisions made by the “Troika”, a semi judicial body. He did so by having the condemned transported to the place where they were shot (Er transportierte Leute zu Erschiessungen). But with three “Troikas” operating at the same time, the shooting commandos could not handle the load and Berg invented the gas vans. The victims were undressed and thrown into a closed truck, camouflaged as a bread delivery truck. The exhaust gasses were rerouted through the box and by the time the truck arrived at the place of execution, the victims had been dealt with (erledigt). Berg himself was shot in 1939, but not because of that crime. In 1956 he was rehabilitated, and that even though his invention, the gas vans, are recorded in his file and remained there until discovered by journalists.[4]
Now to the German gas vans alleged to have existed. In the summer of 1942, the Germans found evidence of the Katyn massacre, the killing of 27,500 Polish citizens in Katyn and the surrounding area.[5] On 2 November 1942, the Soviets announced the creation of the “Extraordinary State Commission” (ESC)[6] and on 19 April 1943 issued a decree. Mr. Alexander Victor Prusin [7] provides some details:
“The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet signed a decree stipulating public execution or heavy prison sentences for Axis personnel and their accomplices found guilty of crimes [End Page 3] against civilians and POWs. The decree provided no legal definition of war crimes—it used the all-encompassing terms “atrocities” or “evil deeds” (zverstva or zlodeianiia)—but it stated that while the Axis powers and their accomplices had committed horrible crimes against Soviet citizens, “to date the punishment meted out to these criminals and their local hirelings is clearly inadequate to the crimes they have committed.”[…] While some scholars have suggested that the decree was a direct Soviet response to the German discovery of the mass graves of Polish POWs in the Katyn Forest in April 1943, the fact that [End Page 4] the Soviets never published the decree confirms that it was intended for internal purposes[…]”[8]
The Germans had actually discovered the Katyn crime scene in the summer of 1942 [9], but the investigations were not undertaken ‘till the spring of 1943, for obvious reasons — a war was on. Try as Mr. Prusin might, the issuing of the above Soviet decree and the discovery by the Germans of the Katyn crime are just too closely related to dismiss them as coincidence. Also, publishing decisions made by Soviet officials was not common practice, Voslensky goes into detail, see footnote 2. Consequently, and this gets us back to the gas vans, the Krasnodar/Kharkov show trials were conducted by the Soviets in July/December 1943.[10] Gas vans play a large role in those trials, not surprisingly since the Soviets seemed to have been experts on how they worked. As for how the evidence was collected by the Soviets, see the Prusin article. What is of interest is that the experts in both trials established that the vans were diesel powered. From the Krasnodar trial:
“On the basis of the thorough medical, chemical and spectroscopic investigation which was carried out, a Committee of Experts consisting of Dr. V. I. Prozorovsky, Chief Medico-Legal Export of the Commissariat of Public Health of the U.S.S.R.; V. M. Smolyaninov, Chief Medico-Legal Export of the People’s Commissariat of Public Health of the R.S.F.S.R.; Professor M. I. Avdeyev, D. M. Sc., Chief Medico-Legal Expert of the Red Army; Dr. P. S. Semenovsky, Consulting Physician of the Moscow City Medico-Legal Department; and S. M. Sokolov, court chemist, arrived at the conclusion that the cause of death in 523 of the cases examined was carbon monoxide poisoning, and that in 100 cases death was due to firearm wounds inflicted, in the majority of cases, in the head.
In their report the Committee of Experts stated that the carbon monoxide could undoubtedly have had lethal effect if the waste gases from the diesel engine penetrated the closed van”.[11]
And from the Kharkov trial:
“As established by the investigation similar “gas lorries,” which were nicknamed “murder vans,” were used by the Germans for murdering peaceful Soviet citizens not only in Krasnodar but also in Kharkov.
These vans, as testified by the German defendants in the present case and also by witnesses who witnessed the crimes committed by the Germans, are large closed trucks of dark grey colour, driven by diesel engines.
The vans are lined inside with galvanized iron and have air-tight folding doors at the back. The floor is equipped with a wooden grating under which passes a pipe with apertures. This pipe is connected to the exhaust pipe of the engine. The exhaust gases of the diesel engine, containing highly concentrated carbon monoxide, enter the body of the van, causing rapid poisoning and asphyxiation of the people locked up in the van.”[12]
Thus, Achim Trunk is wrong when he writes that reports about murder by gas vans talk of gasoline engines explicitly.[13] Also, in a letter of 16. 5. 42, Walter Rauff (details about him later) is informed that the Saurer truck, allegedly one of the gas vans, had brake problems during the transfer from Simferopol to Taganrog. Now, Taganrog is a little over 200km north of Krasnodar and the Soviets had determined that in Krasnodar the trucks were powered by diesel engines. This then suggests that some Saurer trucks were diesel powered, adding to the confusion. Beer of course never mentions any of this, he starts out by referring to a letter by Greiser to Himmler in which the former praises the Sonderkommando Lange who had served well in Kulmhof (Chelmno). It is not my intention to concentrate on specific camps or locations in which gas vans were allegedly used, as others have done that (for Chelmno see the essay by Ingrid Weckert)[14]; I understand that Carlo Mattogno will publish a book on Chelmno.[15] Also, Ingrid Weckert and Friedrich Berg published a study on the gas vans dealing with most of the issues.[16] I will therefore just make a few general comments on the vans themselves: what is known about them; do we have a precise description of them; could they have been used as testified, etc. – on this too we only have eyewitness testimony. Not one of those vans has ever been found, though we have a picture of a Magirus truck alleged to be a gas van, but the Magirus factory in Ulm only produced trucks with diesel engines.
Back to Herr Beer, who of course ignores Weckert and Berg, and begins with T4 instead, the title of his first sub-chapter: “Kaisers Kaffee Geschäft”: Töten auf Rädern mit reinem CO im Rahmen der „Euthanasie“(Kaisers coffee shop. Killing with pure CO during “euthanasia”) (Beer had already published an essay on the gas vans for the Institute für Zeitgeschichte [Institute for contemporary history] in 1987).[17] Beer writes that the criminological-technical institute of the security police (KTI) had been told to look for a quick and painless method for killing the mentally challenged. It was decided that killing with CO would be the most humane way and some successful tests in the “euthanasia” facility in Brandenburg an der Havel were undertaken, with Dr. Widmann opening the valve and controlling the gas amount. Then some gassings were tried in the concentration camp Fort VII Posen: Untersturmführer Herbert Lange was in charge and the latter were the first killings of persons deemed unfit (unwertes Leben) in the territories of west and north Poland annexed by the Reich. From this two methods evolved: the stationary gas chambers for the T4 action, and the second a prototype of a gas van built with “Sonderkommando Lange” in control. And even though it is not possible to prove the genesis of this killing method for lack of sources, we know that the SS and Police (HSSPF), the RSHA, the KTI, as well as Widmann, were involved.
This first gas van, Beer continues, operated under the same principal as the gas chambers in the “euthanasia” facilities, except that it was a mobile gas chamber. The deadly gasses were routed into an air-tight trailer pulled by a vehicle; thus, the victims did not have to be transported to the killing facilities. As camouflage the trailers had “Kaiser’s Kaffee Geschäft” painted on their sides and from January 1940 to July 1941 the “Sonderkommando Lange” killed several thousand patients in the Warthegau. This was so successful that the gas vans were lent to East Prussia on 21 May to 8 June 1940, and in the transit camp Soldau alone 1,500 were killed by the “Sonderkommando Lange” and their “Kaiser’s Kaffee Geschäft” wagons. This then was the first generation of gas vans: the systematic murder of persons unfit to live, which was later expanded in late fall of 194 to Jewish genocide.[18]
Comments: The “Kaiser Kaffee” story stretches credulity to the breaking point. We are to believe that the “Nazis” first took the patients for a scenic tour, then unloaded their corpses in a room close to a crematoria instead of simply killing them right there? Beer admits that nothing has been found linking the Kaiser Kaffee Company to the gas trailers and provides no real evidence for the existence of those trailers. In his 1987 publication (see footnote 17), Beer tells us that eyewitnesses testified that in 1939/1940 trailers were used in Poland for the transportation of mentally challenged. The trailers had the inscription “Kaisers-Kaffee-Geschäft” painted on their sides and it is alleged that in those trailers the sick were killed with CO (Im Anhänger sollen Kranke mit aus Stahlflaschen eingeleitetem reinen Kohlenmonoxid (CO) getötet worden sein). This does not prevent Beer from repeating this story in this newest publication, needing it to confabulate a link to the killings of the mentally ill to the alleged killing of Jews. Such is the “evidence” for the Shoah.
Beer then continues with the coffee wagon story, writing that the Sonderkommando Lange used them in the Warthegau, and that Lange was very busy. Then, Arthur Nebe, chief of Einsatzgruppe(EG) B, had Dr. Widmann from the KTI meet him to discuss killing methods. Widmann was to bring 400kg of explosives as well as some metal hoses. As a first test some mentally ill were locked into a bunker and the bunker was blown up with explosives, but that didn’t work too well. Then the Widmann metal hoses were put to use, connected to the exhaust of a car or truck with the exhaust directed via the hose into a closed room filled with patients. From this experiment it was learned that killing with exhaust would be the solution, but since the EG did not have buildings at the ready, the killing facilities had to be mobile.
Thus, on instructions from Heydrich, Walter Rauff of group II D 3 (technical matters) ordered that “closed in vehicles” (geschlossenen Kraftfahrzeuge) were to be put at the disposal of the EG. They were to be 3.5 ton vehicles at minimum, powered by gasoline engines and fitted with an airtight box. The exhaust was to be routed via a metal hose into that box.
Comments: First a little about Arthur Nebe. Already in 1938 he was a member of a group of traitors: Canaris, von Witzleben, Gisevius and Count Helldorf: influential people with excellent contacts abroad.[19] Nebe was later shot because of his involvement in the assassination attempt of Hitler in 1944. The traitors were desperately looking for something to discredit Hitler, to turn the German population against him. Why did Nebe not provide Gisevius – or Canaris who was head of military intelligence – with details of the gas vans and all the killings allegedly happening? Why did the gas van story only emerge after the war?
Now to Walter Rauff, the inventor of the “gas vans”.
“In the late 1940s, Walther (Walter) Rauff, an SS officer who was responsible for the murder of at least 100,000 people and was wanted by the Allies as a war criminal, was employed by the Israeli secret service. Instead of bringing him to justice it paid him for his services and helped him escape to South America… compared to Rauff, who was a criminal on the same scale as Eichmann… Klarsfeld wrote in an e-mail. “I doubt that it could have been possible, because Rauff was well-known in the Jewish world for his role in the gassing program by trucks[…]”[20]
Jews knew about Rauff, but the Mossad hired and paid him, and in 1984 he died of cancer in Chile. In the documentary “Nazi Hunters. The Real Story” it is claimed that Chile refused to extradite Rauff. If so, what prevented the Mossad from kidnapping him as they had done to Eichmann? This story also lacks credibility, leaving one to suspect that the gas van story was concocted later. In fact, the documents presented to support the gas van story suggest just that.
As for Widmann and the experiments, this reads like a Keystone Cops operation. First, the Germans, who were so far advanced in weapons technology that to this day the victors are looking for links as to why this was so[21], but these same Germans then had to experiment with killing methods by sticking people into a bunker and blowing it up to see if it worked? Heaven help us! The rest of the story is not much better; surely the Germans were aware of the fact that carbon monoxide is a dangerous killer.
Also, gasoline engines are not explicitly mentioned, only some eyewitnesses refer to them.
Beer continues to insult our intelligence, but there’s no need to suffer any further; thus, to the gas vans. First, what do we know about them, i.e., how were they described? Beer tells us that they were 3.5 ton trucks with an airtight box in which a group of people were loaded and killed with the exhaust produced by a petrol powered engine, the exhaust led into the box via metal hoses. The judges in the Bonn Chelmno trial of 1965 tell us that the trucks were big, painted grey, of foreign manufacture and had a closed-in box in the back. The double doors in the back of the box were sealed with rubber gaskets and the exhaust entered the box via a hose, which could be attached to the exhaust pipe.[22] The judges of the 1966 Hannover trial have it as a special truck with a high, air-tight, box in the back in which 40 – 50 persons could be killed within 10 to 15 minutes.
There’s nothing really of substance and all other descriptions are much the same. Pierre Marais writes that it would be relatively easy to construct a gas van, but that it is strange that no detailed plans have survived, given the Germans penchant for exactness and paperwork. Also, the box needs to be constructed to withstand pressure. A square box was not ideal for that purpose: the pressure issue a “conditio sine qua non” – without which it could not be.[23] Any type of container which has to withstand pressure from within has rounded corners, cylindrical in shape. A square box as described would have been ill-suited to handle the pressure even if vents were provided to allow the air in the box to escape when the exhaust entered, thus allowing the exhaust to vent during operation. If the vents were too small, either the engine would stall or the box would explode. But we have no mention of any calculations concerning this issue, and the square boxes are evidence to the contrary — i.e. they are proof that no pressure could have been applied.
What we have is the letter of June 5 (the date handwritten) 1942, which starts with:
“Seit Dezember 1941 wurden beispielsweise so mit 3 eingesetzten Wagen 97,000 verarbeitet”.
(For instance, since December 1941, 97,000 were processed in this manner)
This is nonsense, for no German starts a letter with “for instance” when no context is provided referring to what instance is meant. The letter then states that to prevent the possible build-up of excess pressure, two slots of 10 x 1 cm are to be added to the back of the box, covered with tin plates on hinges. More nonsense because excess pressure is a certainty, not a possibility, and those two slots, amounting to a 4 inch cut with a saw blade and covered with hinged tin, would not have prevented this. Also, how were the 97,000 “processed” without those slots? In the next letter of 23 June 1942 (handwritten) we learn that the openings in the back door, covered by sliders, were to be eliminated and replaced by the slots: No mention of how big those openings were, but having replaced them with those saw cuts is ridiculous. In both letters the date is added by hand, curious to say the least. Also, the first letter has “Einzigste Ausfertigung” at the top, but “Einzigste” is not a German word.
Back to those openings in the back. Pradl, in his testimony at the Hannover trial stated that a hole of 58-60mm diameter, the size of the exhaust pipe, was drilled into the floor.[24] Thus we have an intake opening of 28 square cm and outflow openings of 20 square cm in total, smaller by almost one third: no go, as the pressure would have built up and blown the box apart or stalled the engine. Then we have the exhaust temperature, not mentioned by any of the witnesses. Marais writes that exhaust exits the engine at 600 to 800 degrees Celsius. He continues by saying that even if we allow for the exhaust to cool down to 200 degrees C by the time it enters the box — unlikely that it would have cooled down that much — the temperature added to the pressure would surely have blown the box apart.[25] At the end of May 1942 an explosion occurred at Chelmno, and it is alleged that this was as a result of excess pressure in a gas van and that consequently the problem was dealt with. Not so. The explosion occurred in the basement of the castle and circumstances remain unknown. [26] And even if this explosion was truck related, as suggested in the letter of 5 June, the 4 inch slots would not have fixed the problem. Also, we have nothing about Jews being cooked; not one witness I am aware of mentions death via temperature.
Final comments: The aforementioned letters contain many oddities, Ingrid Weckert addresses them in her essay (footnote 16). Marais contacted Beer to ask him about the pressure, Beer wrote back that the authorities were aware of it and solved the problem by adding the two 10cm x 1cm slots in the back, which is not so. No gas van has ever been found, although Beer wrote back to Marais that one has survived, displayed at Konin, Poland. Not so, the city authorities wrote back that no such van exists.[27] Smirnov submitted what he deemed to be gas van evidence at the IMT:
“On the floor of the van, under the grating, were two metal pipes. These pipes were connected with a transverse pipe of equal diameter… These pipes had frequent holes a half centimeter in width. From the transverse pipe down through a hole in the galvanized iron floor went a rubber hose with a hexagonal screw at the end, threaded so as to fit the thread on the end of the engine exhaust pipe…which says that in the Stavropol region the murder vans were used for the killing of 660 people who were ill in the local hospital. Further I draw the attention of the Tribunal to the report of the Extraordinary State Commission regarding the Crimes of the German fascist criminals in Krasnodar[…]”[28]
No diameter of the exhaust pipe given, but we learn that a rubber hose was attached to the exhaust pipe: complete nonsense, as the rubber would have gone up in flames. We also have the reference to the Krasnodar trial, and there it was determined that the trucks were powered by diesel engines. Also, the gas vans only came into prominence at the IMT, but partisans were everywhere. A page in an East German atlas shows the location of partisan operations in the east. Some areas around Minsk, for instance, where gas vans were allegedly in operation were controlled by partisans for periods of time. The same is true for Kharkov and other areas[29], and with that many partisans around, why don’t we have any pictures of those gas vans?
Did trucks of this kind even exist? More than likely, but they could not have been used to gas people as described, and all we have are witness testimonies: no genuine shop drawings; just letter that only confuses the issue. Rauff was questioned in Chile, but the whole Rauff story presents more questions than answers. The West German trials established nothing; they never asked for any details as to how the gas vans were operated; no experts were called; just witness testimony was submitted. In an “Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung” article of 29 April 1966, we read, concerning the trial vs. Pradl and Wentritt, that classical witnesses are not available (Es fehlt an klassischen Zeugen). One of the witnesses, name withheld, a member of EG B from June 1941 to June 1942, stated that they had no gas vans and that he never heard of them. Another witness testified that he saw a gas van, but when asked what he was told about it he stated that it was to be used for delousing.[30] And it matters not if alleged perpetrators admitted to anything. Without expert testimony to prove that the vans could have been used to gas people as described, the testimony is worthless.
Beer provides no solid evidence. His “Kaffee-Wagen” story is amusing, but in general he just believes they existed. Once again we are no further along in proving that Jews were killed with poisonous gas of any kind.
Sources:
-----------------------------The third chapter in the book “Neue Studien zu nationalsozialistischen Massentötungen durch Giftgas” (New studies on National Socialist mass murder by poisonous gas) is titled: “Die Tötungsanstalten der ‘Aktion T4’” (The T4 killing facilities).
As the title suggests, this is about the T4 action in six of the facilities, with a sort of foreword “Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens” im Nationalsozialismus: Die “Aktion T4” (Extermination of life unworthy of life under National Socialism. The Action T4), by Brigitte Kepplinger, Dr. Mag., Soziologin und Historikerin, wissenschftliche Beamtin am Institute für Gesellschafts- und Sozialpolitik der Johannes Kepler-Universität Linz.
Since Revisionists do not deny that terminally ill and severely mentally challenged patients were put to death, there is no need to spend much time on this chapter. Kepplinger writes about the early stages of this action: that it was initiated by Hitler who instructed health minister Leonardo Conti to submit a plan. Later, Philipp Bouhler of the chancellery was able to push Conti out, an action typical of the politics of rivalry (Polikratie) in the Third Reich, according to Kepplinger.
Here is what Prof. Dr. Franz Seidler has to say about what took place before the doctors’ trial in which the T4 action played a major role:
– Dr. Conti, who was supposed to be one of the accused, committed suicide in his Nürnberg jail cell;
– The substitute head of the Reich Doctors Association (Reichärztekammer), Prof. Dr. Kurt Blome, who was to be charged in his stead, had to be acquitted because he could prove German doctors refused to participate in experiments on humans without consent of the proband. He stated however that tests are necessary and the Americans in 1951 invited him to participate in experiments re. chemical warfare;
– SS Obergruppenführer Prof. Dr. Ernst Robert Grawitz, CEO of the German Red Cross, committed suicide with his family in April 1945;
– Prof. Dr. August Hirt, head of the institute of military science in Straßburg committed suicide on 2 June 1945;
– Philipp Bouhler, head of the euthanasia program, captured by the Americans but committed suicide before being brought to Dachau;
– A whole group of doctors could not be found, some of them later turned up and were taken to the US to participate in research in their field of expertise, i.e., they continued were they left off just under a differed administration. [1]
This is an unusually high number of “suicides,” with some of the doctors not found for the trial but later invited to come to America to do exactly what they had done in the Third Reich, only now it was deemed “legal.” Prof. Dr. Karl Brandt, until the end of the war head health care official, was the most prominent of the accused. He weighed 44kg (97 pounds) when brought to Nürnberg, a consequence of hardships and torture inflicted on him by the British. The main charge against him was the T4 program, with Dr. Eugene Kogon (Nationalsozialistische Massentötungen…) the chief witness, but Kogon had to admit later that what he told was hearsay. The shenanigans continued, as documents of dubious origin were submitted, but too late for the defense to refute anything. Defense lawyer Dr. Servatuis charged that this program was a domestic (internal) program that foreigners were not competent to judge. He further questioned the affidavits because they contained words like “might have been”, “possibly”, “might be”, etc., and demanded that witnesses be produced for cross-examination. But the prosecution would not allow it for fear that the charges could not be sustained; again, because of phrases in the protocols like “I believe”, I assume”, “as far as I can remember” and “possibly”. It was also pointed out that the British engaged in human experiments – this was published in a medical journal. Dr. Brandt stated that whoever showed mercy for the incurable can never be a murderer, but to no avail — he was hanged on 2 June 1948.[2]
This proves that the illegality of the program was only “established” in a show trial. In fact, discussions about the legality of euthanasia were initiated as early as 1933. During the rearranging (Neugsataltung) of German penal law, the Prussian minister of justice, Hanns Kerrl, published a memorandum entitled “Nationalsozialistische Srafrecht” in 1933 in which he argued that euthanasia cannot be illegal if an incurable person is asking for it, or if that person is unable to do so has relatives ask on his/her stead. No person shall be prosecuted if a doctor determines that the patient cannot be cured, as confirmed by another medical doctor. The memo then mentions the mentally challenged:
„Sollte der Staat etwa bei unheilbar Geisteskranken ihre Ausschaltung aus dem Leben durch amtliche Organe gesetzmäßig anordnen, so liegt in der Ausführung solcher Maßnahmen nur die Durchführung einer staatlichen Anordnung … Wohl bleibt zu betonen, daß die Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens durch eine nichtamtliche Person stets eine strafbare Handlung darstellt.“[3]
(Should the state pass a decree legalizing the ending of the life of an insane (mentally challenged) person by state officials, participation in this would only be the execution of a state order…It must be stressed however that this action, if performed by anyone other than a state official, is punishable)
This was based on an essay by the expert on penal law (Strafrechtslehrer), Prof. Karl Binding, and psychiatrist Alfred Hoche, published in Leipzig 1920 and titled “Die Freigabe der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens – Ihr Maß und ihre Form” (The release for extermination of unworthy life – the limits and form). According to the authors, the killing of incurables and insane (Blödsinniger) should be allowed if asked for by relatives, following a thorough examination by two doctors and a legal expert. Economic reasons were given because the persons, who care for these unproductive beings (Ballastexistenzen), are not available for the greater good.[4]
The above essay was published in 1920 – a time in which starvation as a result of the criminal British blockade was still fresh in mind. Only someone who experienced anything like that can dare judge, for the world looks friendlier with a full stomach.
Churches protested, as did the medical profession and as a consequence the new penal law of 1935 did not sanction euthanasia. Later efforts to legalize euthanasia failed, but Hitler claimed that “the well being of the German populace (Volk) is above any paragraph”.[5] And as has been shown in part II of this series, Hitler issued a decree on 1 September 1939, allowing: “…that patients considered incurable according to the best available human judgment [menschlichem Ermessen] of their state of health, can be granted a mercy death [Gnadentod].”[6]
This was not a license to kill. Doctors had to determine if the affected were indeed incurable or mentally challenged beyond hope. Abuses probably happened, but the intent was to end the lives of those who were a burden on society, especially in wartime. But above all, Hitler, as the undisputed head of state, could pass laws, i.e. issue decrees that became de facto laws. And here we have the issue of “consciousness of doing wrong”, as August von Knieriem words it.[7]
Von Knieriem starts out with:
“Under the national legal system concerned, the majority of acts judged at Nuremberg would not have been punishable at all…”.[8]
And that is precisely the issue. A Hitler order – or decree of any kind – was law, period. The doctors examined the patients and found them to be incurable, thus by the decree Hitler had issued they followed the law and were not conscious of wrong doing. Von Knieriem puts it thus:
“This problem is generally designated as that of the “consciousness of unlawfulness” or of doing wrong, and can be expressed in the following terms: Can the guilty intent be imputed to an actor who was not conscious of doing wrong? As the act must first be unlawful for the problem of the actor’s guilt to be raised at all, the question may also be expressed in the following way: Can anybody be punished for being guilty of intent if he was mistaken about the lawfulness of his act? This is why the problem of the consciousness of doing wrong is generally designated as that of error of law or, since unlawfulness means that the act is prohibited, as the “error of prohibition.” Irrespective of the manner in which the question is formulated, its meaning is always the same; it refers to the determination of the extent, if any, to which the actor was conscious of doing wrong.”[9]
And moral consideration, if even present, cannot make an act unlawful. Also, Dr. Brandt had stated at his trial that showing mercy to the incurable can never be considered murder. These doctors and whoever else that participated in the program were not murderers, but used their judgment to end the sufferings of those who at that time could not be cured. It is therefore folly to refer to the T4 program to make a case for alleged mass killings of Jews with poisonous gas, since the illegality of T4 has never been proven.
Just briefly to the numbers of the T4 action, and we seem to have the same “discrepancies” here as with Shoah numbers. Kogon et al claim 70,273 killed, based on some accounting sheets found.[10] The Kogon book was published in 1983, but only in the years following German unification were a number of the pertinent documents discovered in East German archives. But, the discovery raised more questions as were answered, according to Peter Sandner.[11] Sandner then tells us that for a long time it was assumed that 70,000 had been killed; this number was based on the so-called “Hartheim-Dokument”.[12] But newer research has shown that at most (allenfalls) 25,000 to 30,000 files are on hand, about a third of the total. The questions are, so Sandner: where are the rest of the files, and how did those files end up in the DDR (East Germany)?[13] Sandner then tells us that most of the Hartheim files have been destroyed; he doesn’t say how we know that. In an IfZ essay of 2003, we learn that 30,000 files have since been located, but that the rest were destroyed.[14] And even though it seems that only 30,000 deaths can be confirmed, Sandner hangs on to the 70,000 number, admitting only that the files found in East Germany must be evaluated and that this is happening now.[15]
In conclusion, the illegality of the T4 action was never established and there seem to be some other questions – i.e., the numbers. The many authors of the book under discussion are unable to make a case for mass gassings, and therefore need to try to make their case via T4: quite the admittance. Therefore there’s no need to waste time on this chapter, which offers no evidence at all for the alleged Shoah.
Sources:
- Franz W. Seidler, Das Recht in Siegerhand. Die 13 Nürnberger Prozesse 1945-1949, Pour le Mérite-Verlag für Militärgeschichte, Selen Austria 2007, pp.212/13
- Ibid, pp.213-217
- Lothar Gruchmann, Euthanasie und Justiz im Dritten Reich, IfZ Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 1972, Heft 3, p.235; (Nationalsozialistisches Strafrecht, Denkschrift des Preußischen Justizministers, Berlin 1933, pp.86/87)
- Ibid, pp.235/36
- Ibid, p.239
- Ibid, p.241
- August von Knieriem, The Nuremberg Trials, Henry Regnery Company, Chicago, Illinois 1959, pp.217ff
- Ibid, p.217
- Ibid, pp.218/19
- Eugen Kogon et al, Nationalsozialistische Massentötungen durch Giftgas, S. Fischer Verlag Frankfurt am Main 1983, pp. 60-62
- Peter Sander, Die “Euthanasie” Akten im Bundesarchiv, IfZ Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 1999, Heft 3, p.385
- Ibid, p.386. The document stored in the National Archives, Washington, with a film-copy in the Federal Archive, Koblenz.
- Ibid, pp.386/87
- Peter Sandner, Schlüsseldokumente zur Überlieferungsgeschichte der NS “Euthanasie” Akten gefunden, IfZ Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 2003, Heft 2, p.285
- Ibid. p.290
Chapter four is titled “Giftgas als Mittel zum Völkermord in Gaswagen und Vernichtungslager” (Poisonous gas as means to commit mass murder in gas wagons and extermination camps).
With this we finally seem to be getting to the nitty-gritty of the subject, and we are almost half-way through the book. The first essay is by Mathias Beer, “Gaswagen. Von der “Euthanasie” zum Genozid” (Gas wagons. From euthanasia to genocide). Dr. phil. Mathias Beer is a historian, the head of research into contemporary history and head of the Donau-Swabian institute of history in Tübingen.
Most, if not all, authors place the word “euthanasia” in quotation marks, suggesting that this is the wrong term and that mass murder would be the correct definition. This is then additional evidence that the reader must be conditioned and that a solid Shoah case cannot be made.
Before I address the article by Mr. Beer, allow me to state a few generalities. It appears that gas wagons did exist; called Black Ravens [1]. They were the invention of Isaj Davidovich Berg, a Jew, and were used by the Soviets.[2]
Voslensky writes that the inventor of the gas vans was a certain (gewisser) Berg, the exhaust gasses were routed through the interior of the box (Wagenkasten) and that the vans were already in use in 1936.[3] Solzhenitsyn provides a few more details: Berg had been manager of the economic administration (AchO) of the NKVD in the Moscow district and was ordered to put into practice the decisions made by the “Troika”, a semi judicial body. He did so by having the condemned transported to the place where they were shot (Er transportierte Leute zu Erschiessungen). But with three “Troikas” operating at the same time, the shooting commandos could not handle the load and Berg invented the gas vans. The victims were undressed and thrown into a closed truck, camouflaged as a bread delivery truck. The exhaust gasses were rerouted through the box and by the time the truck arrived at the place of execution, the victims had been dealt with (erledigt). Berg himself was shot in 1939, but not because of that crime. In 1956 he was rehabilitated, and that even though his invention, the gas vans, are recorded in his file and remained there until discovered by journalists.[4]
Now to the German gas vans alleged to have existed. In the summer of 1942, the Germans found evidence of the Katyn massacre, the killing of 27,500 Polish citizens in Katyn and the surrounding area.[5] On 2 November 1942, the Soviets announced the creation of the “Extraordinary State Commission” (ESC)[6] and on 19 April 1943 issued a decree. Mr. Alexander Victor Prusin [7] provides some details:
“The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet signed a decree stipulating public execution or heavy prison sentences for Axis personnel and their accomplices found guilty of crimes [End Page 3] against civilians and POWs. The decree provided no legal definition of war crimes—it used the all-encompassing terms “atrocities” or “evil deeds” (zverstva or zlodeianiia)—but it stated that while the Axis powers and their accomplices had committed horrible crimes against Soviet citizens, “to date the punishment meted out to these criminals and their local hirelings is clearly inadequate to the crimes they have committed.”[…] While some scholars have suggested that the decree was a direct Soviet response to the German discovery of the mass graves of Polish POWs in the Katyn Forest in April 1943, the fact that [End Page 4] the Soviets never published the decree confirms that it was intended for internal purposes[…]”[8]
The Germans had actually discovered the Katyn crime scene in the summer of 1942 [9], but the investigations were not undertaken ‘till the spring of 1943, for obvious reasons — a war was on. Try as Mr. Prusin might, the issuing of the above Soviet decree and the discovery by the Germans of the Katyn crime are just too closely related to dismiss them as coincidence. Also, publishing decisions made by Soviet officials was not common practice, Voslensky goes into detail, see footnote 2. Consequently, and this gets us back to the gas vans, the Krasnodar/Kharkov show trials were conducted by the Soviets in July/December 1943.[10] Gas vans play a large role in those trials, not surprisingly since the Soviets seemed to have been experts on how they worked. As for how the evidence was collected by the Soviets, see the Prusin article. What is of interest is that the experts in both trials established that the vans were diesel powered. From the Krasnodar trial:
“On the basis of the thorough medical, chemical and spectroscopic investigation which was carried out, a Committee of Experts consisting of Dr. V. I. Prozorovsky, Chief Medico-Legal Export of the Commissariat of Public Health of the U.S.S.R.; V. M. Smolyaninov, Chief Medico-Legal Export of the People’s Commissariat of Public Health of the R.S.F.S.R.; Professor M. I. Avdeyev, D. M. Sc., Chief Medico-Legal Expert of the Red Army; Dr. P. S. Semenovsky, Consulting Physician of the Moscow City Medico-Legal Department; and S. M. Sokolov, court chemist, arrived at the conclusion that the cause of death in 523 of the cases examined was carbon monoxide poisoning, and that in 100 cases death was due to firearm wounds inflicted, in the majority of cases, in the head.
In their report the Committee of Experts stated that the carbon monoxide could undoubtedly have had lethal effect if the waste gases from the diesel engine penetrated the closed van”.[11]
And from the Kharkov trial:
“As established by the investigation similar “gas lorries,” which were nicknamed “murder vans,” were used by the Germans for murdering peaceful Soviet citizens not only in Krasnodar but also in Kharkov.
These vans, as testified by the German defendants in the present case and also by witnesses who witnessed the crimes committed by the Germans, are large closed trucks of dark grey colour, driven by diesel engines.
The vans are lined inside with galvanized iron and have air-tight folding doors at the back. The floor is equipped with a wooden grating under which passes a pipe with apertures. This pipe is connected to the exhaust pipe of the engine. The exhaust gases of the diesel engine, containing highly concentrated carbon monoxide, enter the body of the van, causing rapid poisoning and asphyxiation of the people locked up in the van.”[12]
Thus, Achim Trunk is wrong when he writes that reports about murder by gas vans talk of gasoline engines explicitly.[13] Also, in a letter of 16. 5. 42, Walter Rauff (details about him later) is informed that the Saurer truck, allegedly one of the gas vans, had brake problems during the transfer from Simferopol to Taganrog. Now, Taganrog is a little over 200km north of Krasnodar and the Soviets had determined that in Krasnodar the trucks were powered by diesel engines. This then suggests that some Saurer trucks were diesel powered, adding to the confusion. Beer of course never mentions any of this, he starts out by referring to a letter by Greiser to Himmler in which the former praises the Sonderkommando Lange who had served well in Kulmhof (Chelmno). It is not my intention to concentrate on specific camps or locations in which gas vans were allegedly used, as others have done that (for Chelmno see the essay by Ingrid Weckert)[14]; I understand that Carlo Mattogno will publish a book on Chelmno.[15] Also, Ingrid Weckert and Friedrich Berg published a study on the gas vans dealing with most of the issues.[16] I will therefore just make a few general comments on the vans themselves: what is known about them; do we have a precise description of them; could they have been used as testified, etc. – on this too we only have eyewitness testimony. Not one of those vans has ever been found, though we have a picture of a Magirus truck alleged to be a gas van, but the Magirus factory in Ulm only produced trucks with diesel engines.
Back to Herr Beer, who of course ignores Weckert and Berg, and begins with T4 instead, the title of his first sub-chapter: “Kaisers Kaffee Geschäft”: Töten auf Rädern mit reinem CO im Rahmen der „Euthanasie“(Kaisers coffee shop. Killing with pure CO during “euthanasia”) (Beer had already published an essay on the gas vans for the Institute für Zeitgeschichte [Institute for contemporary history] in 1987).[17] Beer writes that the criminological-technical institute of the security police (KTI) had been told to look for a quick and painless method for killing the mentally challenged. It was decided that killing with CO would be the most humane way and some successful tests in the “euthanasia” facility in Brandenburg an der Havel were undertaken, with Dr. Widmann opening the valve and controlling the gas amount. Then some gassings were tried in the concentration camp Fort VII Posen: Untersturmführer Herbert Lange was in charge and the latter were the first killings of persons deemed unfit (unwertes Leben) in the territories of west and north Poland annexed by the Reich. From this two methods evolved: the stationary gas chambers for the T4 action, and the second a prototype of a gas van built with “Sonderkommando Lange” in control. And even though it is not possible to prove the genesis of this killing method for lack of sources, we know that the SS and Police (HSSPF), the RSHA, the KTI, as well as Widmann, were involved.
This first gas van, Beer continues, operated under the same principal as the gas chambers in the “euthanasia” facilities, except that it was a mobile gas chamber. The deadly gasses were routed into an air-tight trailer pulled by a vehicle; thus, the victims did not have to be transported to the killing facilities. As camouflage the trailers had “Kaiser’s Kaffee Geschäft” painted on their sides and from January 1940 to July 1941 the “Sonderkommando Lange” killed several thousand patients in the Warthegau. This was so successful that the gas vans were lent to East Prussia on 21 May to 8 June 1940, and in the transit camp Soldau alone 1,500 were killed by the “Sonderkommando Lange” and their “Kaiser’s Kaffee Geschäft” wagons. This then was the first generation of gas vans: the systematic murder of persons unfit to live, which was later expanded in late fall of 194 to Jewish genocide.[18]
Comments: The “Kaiser Kaffee” story stretches credulity to the breaking point. We are to believe that the “Nazis” first took the patients for a scenic tour, then unloaded their corpses in a room close to a crematoria instead of simply killing them right there? Beer admits that nothing has been found linking the Kaiser Kaffee Company to the gas trailers and provides no real evidence for the existence of those trailers. In his 1987 publication (see footnote 17), Beer tells us that eyewitnesses testified that in 1939/1940 trailers were used in Poland for the transportation of mentally challenged. The trailers had the inscription “Kaisers-Kaffee-Geschäft” painted on their sides and it is alleged that in those trailers the sick were killed with CO (Im Anhänger sollen Kranke mit aus Stahlflaschen eingeleitetem reinen Kohlenmonoxid (CO) getötet worden sein). This does not prevent Beer from repeating this story in this newest publication, needing it to confabulate a link to the killings of the mentally ill to the alleged killing of Jews. Such is the “evidence” for the Shoah.
Beer then continues with the coffee wagon story, writing that the Sonderkommando Lange used them in the Warthegau, and that Lange was very busy. Then, Arthur Nebe, chief of Einsatzgruppe(EG) B, had Dr. Widmann from the KTI meet him to discuss killing methods. Widmann was to bring 400kg of explosives as well as some metal hoses. As a first test some mentally ill were locked into a bunker and the bunker was blown up with explosives, but that didn’t work too well. Then the Widmann metal hoses were put to use, connected to the exhaust of a car or truck with the exhaust directed via the hose into a closed room filled with patients. From this experiment it was learned that killing with exhaust would be the solution, but since the EG did not have buildings at the ready, the killing facilities had to be mobile.
Thus, on instructions from Heydrich, Walter Rauff of group II D 3 (technical matters) ordered that “closed in vehicles” (geschlossenen Kraftfahrzeuge) were to be put at the disposal of the EG. They were to be 3.5 ton vehicles at minimum, powered by gasoline engines and fitted with an airtight box. The exhaust was to be routed via a metal hose into that box.
Comments: First a little about Arthur Nebe. Already in 1938 he was a member of a group of traitors: Canaris, von Witzleben, Gisevius and Count Helldorf: influential people with excellent contacts abroad.[19] Nebe was later shot because of his involvement in the assassination attempt of Hitler in 1944. The traitors were desperately looking for something to discredit Hitler, to turn the German population against him. Why did Nebe not provide Gisevius – or Canaris who was head of military intelligence – with details of the gas vans and all the killings allegedly happening? Why did the gas van story only emerge after the war?
Now to Walter Rauff, the inventor of the “gas vans”.
“In the late 1940s, Walther (Walter) Rauff, an SS officer who was responsible for the murder of at least 100,000 people and was wanted by the Allies as a war criminal, was employed by the Israeli secret service. Instead of bringing him to justice it paid him for his services and helped him escape to South America… compared to Rauff, who was a criminal on the same scale as Eichmann… Klarsfeld wrote in an e-mail. “I doubt that it could have been possible, because Rauff was well-known in the Jewish world for his role in the gassing program by trucks[…]”[20]
Jews knew about Rauff, but the Mossad hired and paid him, and in 1984 he died of cancer in Chile. In the documentary “Nazi Hunters. The Real Story” it is claimed that Chile refused to extradite Rauff. If so, what prevented the Mossad from kidnapping him as they had done to Eichmann? This story also lacks credibility, leaving one to suspect that the gas van story was concocted later. In fact, the documents presented to support the gas van story suggest just that.
As for Widmann and the experiments, this reads like a Keystone Cops operation. First, the Germans, who were so far advanced in weapons technology that to this day the victors are looking for links as to why this was so[21], but these same Germans then had to experiment with killing methods by sticking people into a bunker and blowing it up to see if it worked? Heaven help us! The rest of the story is not much better; surely the Germans were aware of the fact that carbon monoxide is a dangerous killer.
Also, gasoline engines are not explicitly mentioned, only some eyewitnesses refer to them.
Beer continues to insult our intelligence, but there’s no need to suffer any further; thus, to the gas vans. First, what do we know about them, i.e., how were they described? Beer tells us that they were 3.5 ton trucks with an airtight box in which a group of people were loaded and killed with the exhaust produced by a petrol powered engine, the exhaust led into the box via metal hoses. The judges in the Bonn Chelmno trial of 1965 tell us that the trucks were big, painted grey, of foreign manufacture and had a closed-in box in the back. The double doors in the back of the box were sealed with rubber gaskets and the exhaust entered the box via a hose, which could be attached to the exhaust pipe.[22] The judges of the 1966 Hannover trial have it as a special truck with a high, air-tight, box in the back in which 40 – 50 persons could be killed within 10 to 15 minutes.
There’s nothing really of substance and all other descriptions are much the same. Pierre Marais writes that it would be relatively easy to construct a gas van, but that it is strange that no detailed plans have survived, given the Germans penchant for exactness and paperwork. Also, the box needs to be constructed to withstand pressure. A square box was not ideal for that purpose: the pressure issue a “conditio sine qua non” – without which it could not be.[23] Any type of container which has to withstand pressure from within has rounded corners, cylindrical in shape. A square box as described would have been ill-suited to handle the pressure even if vents were provided to allow the air in the box to escape when the exhaust entered, thus allowing the exhaust to vent during operation. If the vents were too small, either the engine would stall or the box would explode. But we have no mention of any calculations concerning this issue, and the square boxes are evidence to the contrary — i.e. they are proof that no pressure could have been applied.
What we have is the letter of June 5 (the date handwritten) 1942, which starts with:
“Seit Dezember 1941 wurden beispielsweise so mit 3 eingesetzten Wagen 97,000 verarbeitet”.
(For instance, since December 1941, 97,000 were processed in this manner)
This is nonsense, for no German starts a letter with “for instance” when no context is provided referring to what instance is meant. The letter then states that to prevent the possible build-up of excess pressure, two slots of 10 x 1 cm are to be added to the back of the box, covered with tin plates on hinges. More nonsense because excess pressure is a certainty, not a possibility, and those two slots, amounting to a 4 inch cut with a saw blade and covered with hinged tin, would not have prevented this. Also, how were the 97,000 “processed” without those slots? In the next letter of 23 June 1942 (handwritten) we learn that the openings in the back door, covered by sliders, were to be eliminated and replaced by the slots: No mention of how big those openings were, but having replaced them with those saw cuts is ridiculous. In both letters the date is added by hand, curious to say the least. Also, the first letter has “Einzigste Ausfertigung” at the top, but “Einzigste” is not a German word.
Back to those openings in the back. Pradl, in his testimony at the Hannover trial stated that a hole of 58-60mm diameter, the size of the exhaust pipe, was drilled into the floor.[24] Thus we have an intake opening of 28 square cm and outflow openings of 20 square cm in total, smaller by almost one third: no go, as the pressure would have built up and blown the box apart or stalled the engine. Then we have the exhaust temperature, not mentioned by any of the witnesses. Marais writes that exhaust exits the engine at 600 to 800 degrees Celsius. He continues by saying that even if we allow for the exhaust to cool down to 200 degrees C by the time it enters the box — unlikely that it would have cooled down that much — the temperature added to the pressure would surely have blown the box apart.[25] At the end of May 1942 an explosion occurred at Chelmno, and it is alleged that this was as a result of excess pressure in a gas van and that consequently the problem was dealt with. Not so. The explosion occurred in the basement of the castle and circumstances remain unknown. [26] And even if this explosion was truck related, as suggested in the letter of 5 June, the 4 inch slots would not have fixed the problem. Also, we have nothing about Jews being cooked; not one witness I am aware of mentions death via temperature.
Final comments: The aforementioned letters contain many oddities, Ingrid Weckert addresses them in her essay (footnote 16). Marais contacted Beer to ask him about the pressure, Beer wrote back that the authorities were aware of it and solved the problem by adding the two 10cm x 1cm slots in the back, which is not so. No gas van has ever been found, although Beer wrote back to Marais that one has survived, displayed at Konin, Poland. Not so, the city authorities wrote back that no such van exists.[27] Smirnov submitted what he deemed to be gas van evidence at the IMT:
“On the floor of the van, under the grating, were two metal pipes. These pipes were connected with a transverse pipe of equal diameter… These pipes had frequent holes a half centimeter in width. From the transverse pipe down through a hole in the galvanized iron floor went a rubber hose with a hexagonal screw at the end, threaded so as to fit the thread on the end of the engine exhaust pipe…which says that in the Stavropol region the murder vans were used for the killing of 660 people who were ill in the local hospital. Further I draw the attention of the Tribunal to the report of the Extraordinary State Commission regarding the Crimes of the German fascist criminals in Krasnodar[…]”[28]
No diameter of the exhaust pipe given, but we learn that a rubber hose was attached to the exhaust pipe: complete nonsense, as the rubber would have gone up in flames. We also have the reference to the Krasnodar trial, and there it was determined that the trucks were powered by diesel engines. Also, the gas vans only came into prominence at the IMT, but partisans were everywhere. A page in an East German atlas shows the location of partisan operations in the east. Some areas around Minsk, for instance, where gas vans were allegedly in operation were controlled by partisans for periods of time. The same is true for Kharkov and other areas[29], and with that many partisans around, why don’t we have any pictures of those gas vans?
Did trucks of this kind even exist? More than likely, but they could not have been used to gas people as described, and all we have are witness testimonies: no genuine shop drawings; just letter that only confuses the issue. Rauff was questioned in Chile, but the whole Rauff story presents more questions than answers. The West German trials established nothing; they never asked for any details as to how the gas vans were operated; no experts were called; just witness testimony was submitted. In an “Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung” article of 29 April 1966, we read, concerning the trial vs. Pradl and Wentritt, that classical witnesses are not available (Es fehlt an klassischen Zeugen). One of the witnesses, name withheld, a member of EG B from June 1941 to June 1942, stated that they had no gas vans and that he never heard of them. Another witness testified that he saw a gas van, but when asked what he was told about it he stated that it was to be used for delousing.[30] And it matters not if alleged perpetrators admitted to anything. Without expert testimony to prove that the vans could have been used to gas people as described, the testimony is worthless.
Beer provides no solid evidence. His “Kaffee-Wagen” story is amusing, but in general he just believes they existed. Once again we are no further along in proving that Jews were killed with poisonous gas of any kind.
Sources:
- The Barnes Review, Volume XIV Number 5, September/October 2008, p.49; also Udo Walendy, Historische Tatsachen Nr.48, Verlag für Volkstum und Zeitgeschichtsforschung, Vlotho 1991, pp.35/36; Stéphane Courtois, Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis Panné, Andrzej Paczkowski, Karel Bartosek, Jean-Louis Margolin, The Black Book of Communism, Crimes, Terror, Repression, Harvard University Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, London, England 1999, picture section following p.202, seventh page
- Michael S. Voslensky, Das Geheimnis wird offenbar, Moskauer Archive erzählen 1917-1991, Langen Müller 1995, F.A. Herbig Verlagsbuchhandlung GmbH, München, pp.28/29; also Alexander Solschenizyn, Zweihundert Jahre zusammen, Die Juden in der Sowjetunion, F.A. Herbig Verlagsbuchhandlung GmbH, München 2007, pp.309/10
- Voslensky, Das Geheimnis…, pp.28/29 in “Argumenty i fakty”, Nr.17, 1993
- Solschenizyn, Zweihundert Jahre…, pp.309/10, in Komsomol’skaja Pravda of 28 October 1990, p.2
- Voslensky, Das Geheimnis…, pp.29ff
- For an evaluation of the reports issued by the ESC see: People
and Procedures. Toward a History of the Investigation of Nazi
Crimes in the USSR, by Marina Sorokina. The article is no longer
available on-line, reference to it here http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/kritika/v006/6.4sorokina.pdf
- Alexander Victor Prusin, “Fascist Criminals to the Gallows!”: The Holocaust and Soviet War Crimes Trials, December 1945-February 1946, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/holocaust_and_genocide_studies/v017/17.1prusin.html
- Ibid.
- http://www.revblog.codoh.com/2009/09/katyn/#more-408
- The People’s Verdict. A full Report of the Proceedings at the Krasnodar and Kharkov German Atrocity Trials, Hutchinson and Co., Ltd.; London, New York: 1944
- Ibid, p.14
- Ibid. p.50
- Günter Morsch et al, Neue Studien zu Nationalsozialistischen Massentötungen durch Giftgas, p.36
- http://vho.org/tr/2003/4/Weckert400-412.html
- http://www.revblog.codoh.com/2011/02/facing-a-new-decade/#more-1416
- http://vho.org/D/gzz/9.html
- Mathias Beer, Die Entwicklung der Gaswagen beim Mord an den Juden, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte (VfZ), 1987, Heft 3, pp.403-417
- Morsch et al, Neue Studien…, pp.155-158
- Annelies von Ribbentrop, Deutsch-Englische Geheimverbindungen, Verlag der Deutschen Hochschullehrer-Zeitung, 1967, p.130
- http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/magazine/in-the-service-of-the-jewish-state-1.216923.htm
- Edgar Mayer/Thomas Mehner, Die Lügen der Alliierten und die deutschen Wunderwaffen, Kopp Verlag 2010; Friedrich Georg, Verrat in der Normandie, Grabert-Verlag, Thüringen 2008
- Pierre Marais, “Die Gaswagen”, a translation by Jürgen Graf from the original “Les Camions à gaz en question. Polémiques”, Peter Hammer Verlag, Turin, 2008, p.220
- Ibid, pp.24/25
- Eugene Kogon et al, Nationalsozialistische Massentötungen durch Giftgas, S. Fischer Verlag GmbH, Frankfurt am Main 1983, p.83
- Marais, Die Gaswagen, pp.117/18
- Ibid, p.223
- Ibid, p.264
- http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/02-19-46.asp , pp.572/73
- Atlas zur geschichte, Band 2, VEB Hermann Haack, Geographisch-Kartographische Anstalt Gotha/Leipzig 1975, p.46
- A copy of this article is in my possession.
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