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AUSCHWITZ:
Technique
and Operation
of
the Gas Chambers © | |
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Page 429 |
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PART TWO
CHAPTER 8
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"ONE PROOF ... ONE
SINGLE PROOF":
THIRTY-NINE CRIMINAL
TRACES |
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| A complete list of the “criminal traces”
or “slips” found in the archives of the Auschwitz State Museum and
the Warsaw Central Commission concerning the homicidal gas chambers
in Birkenau Krematorien II, III, IV and V, presented together with
original documents and two recapitulatory drawings by the
author. |
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| “ONE PROOF... ONE SINGLE
PROOF” |
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[Request formulated by Robert Faurisson in an article
on page 13 of the newspaper “Le Monde” of 16th January
1979, then used as a title for his letter of 29th February 1979
addressed in right of reply to the same newspaper, which refused to
publish it. and which its author nevertheless published in his
“Mémoire en défense” [statement for the defence], La
Vieille Taupe, 1980, pages 96 to 100.]
Faurisson asked
for “one proof... one single proof” of the existence of homicidal
gas chambers. The “traditional” historians provided him with an
“abundance of proofs” which were virtually all based on human
testimony, from SS and surviving former prisoners and Sonderkommando
men. But human testimony is fallible. It is unreliable and Faurisson
wanted a CONCRETE historical proof, that is proof based on
incontestable and irrefutable documents. Four types of historical
document would meet these stringent criteria: |
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photographs and
films made between 1942 and the
end of 1944 in KL Auschwitz.
German letters and documents,
original drawings concerned with the camp. |
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So far as we know at present, no film was made
recording the extermination of a transport. On the other hand, there
is no lack of photographs of Krematorien under construction or
completed (in the “Bauleitung Album” not yet
published) and of the arrival of four convoys of Hungarian Jews and
selections of two of them (in “L’Album d’Auschwitz” by
S. Klarsfeld and Seuil). The main obstacle to using these last
photographs as evidence is that, except for three of them, they
present only views of “peaceful country scenes” against a background
of barbed wire. The SS photographers did actually go inside some of
the Krematorien, but they did not record the final act,
extermination in gas chambers. Some members of the Sonderkommando,
according to the deposition by one of them, Henryk Tauber, took
photographs showing corpses in the gas chambers, but after being
buried near Krematorien II and III, these vital photographs have
never been found, and if by chance they should be discovered now,
they will be irretrievably damaged after over 40 years in the
ground. We also have the three photographs known as the “Polish
Resistance” photographs recording the incineration of bodies in a
ditch behind Krematorium V in the summer of 1944 and of naked women
with their backs to this same Krematorium. They are certainly of
exemplary value, but are difficult to use in view of their small
number and, like those of the “L’Album d’Auschwitz”,
cannot be presented as definitive proof.
As for the
technical drawings of the Krematorien, cited in legal actions and
described as proving that they were planned for large scale
assassination by gas (which is in fact incorrect). NOT ONE
explicitly mentions in so many words anything like: Blausaüre
(prussic acid) Vergasungs- or Gaskammer or -keller [gassing or gas
chamber or cellar]. This is not because the drawings were
“camouflaged” in any way, but is simply because the buildings
concerned were converted from their original function, cremation
pure and simple, and transformed for criminal use, so that the
compromising words could not have been written on the original
drawings of Krematorien II and III, and were probably left out on
those of IV and V.
In the final analysis, there remain only
the various items of correspondence and offical documents of German
origin. Through the “slips” that can be found in them, they form a
convincing body of presumptive evidence and clearly indicate the
presence in the four Birkenau Krematorien (II, III, IV and V) of gas
chambers using a prussic acid disinfestation agent sold under the
name of “Zyklon-B”. In 1979-80, it was impossible to go any further
than this, i.e. to demonstrate with the aid of “concrete” documents
that these gas chambers had been used to execute human beings. At
the end of the “Faurisson trial”, nobody had yet managed to produce
“one proof ... one single proof” of the existence of
“homicidal gas chambers” in Auschwitz-Birkenau.
In the
absence of any “direct”, i.e. palpable, indisputable and evident
proof (lacking so far as we know at present) such as a photograph of
people killed by a toxic gas in an enclosed space that can be
perfectly located and identified, or of a label on a Krematorium
drawing of a “Gaskammer um Juden zu vergiften / gas chamber for
poisoning Jews” an “indirect” proof may suffice and be valid. By
“ndirect”, proof, I mean a German document that does not state in
black and white that a gas chamber is for HOMICIDAL purposes, but
one containing evidence that logically it is impossible for it to be
anything else.
The first document [Document A]
presented here is an inventory of equipment installed in Krematorium
III and formed part of the file of documents compiled for the
official handover of the new building to the camp
administration.
[Auschwitz State Museum Archives reference BW
30/43, page 24. This document, held in the “October
Revolution” Central State Archives in Moscow was sent by
this body in 1964-65 to the Warsaw Central Commission for the
investigation of Hitlerite crimes in Poland, which sent it under a
covering letter of 30th October 1968 to the Vienna assize court to
be part of the evidence in the trial of the Auschwitz Krematorium
“architects”, former SS officers Walter DEJACO and Fritz ERTL. This
trial was held from 18th January to 10th March 1972 and ended with
the acquittal of the accused. The documents sent by the Poles to the
Austrians were scarcely used by the “experts”, which explains the
astonishing verdict of not guilty, in particular for Dejaco.]
This inventory indicates that the equipment installed for
“Leichenkeller 1 / Corpse cellar [morgue] 1” included: |
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· “1 gasdichte Tür
/ 1 gas-tight door,”
AND
· “14 Brausen / 14
showers”, |
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| two items that are strictly INCOMPATIBLE with one
another. This incompatibility constitutes the fundamental proof, for
it is clear that: |
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| Proposition A: |
A gas-tight door can be intended
only for a gas chamber. |
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| Question A: |
Why does a gas chamber have
showers in it? |
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| Reply A: |
Incomprehensible. Proposition A
must be formulated differently for a logical reply. |
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| Proposition B: |
A room fitted with showers is a
place where people wash themselves. |
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| Question B: |
Why does the only entrance to
the shower room have a gas-tight door? |
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| Reply B: |
Incomprehensible, Proposition B
must be formulated differently for a logical reply. |
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| Which sends us back to proposition A, question A,
reply A, proposition B, etc. The reasoning is in a vicious circle
which cannot be broken. The only way to escape the illogicality is
to bring complementary proof demonstrating that one of the
propositions IS INCORRECT. This can he done by means of the
following arguments: |
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The average area covered by a
shower head, calculated on the basis of the drawings for the two
shower installations at the Stammlager, the reception building (BW
160) and Block 26. and for those at Birkenau, BW 5a, 5b. and the
Zentral Sauna (BW 32), works out at 1.83m² |
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On this basis. Leichenkeller 1
of Krematorium III, with a floor area of 210m2, should have 115
shower heads. |
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In fact only 14 were planned and
we know that they were FITTED, because seven wooden bases to which
similar shower heads were fitted are still visible in the ruins of
the ceiling of L-keller 1 of Krema II. |
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On one of the copies of the
Krematorium II/III inventory drawing 2197, that from the Soviet
“October Revolution” central state archives, water
pipes are shown supplying the 3 taps of Leichenkeller 1 and the 5 of
Leichenkeller 2, but none are connected to the “showers”, This is
paradoxical because on this version of drawing 2197 even the lamps
are drawn and on various other drawings showing shower installations
the shower heads are necessarily shown and the associated pipework
usually appears also. |
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It can only be concluded that
these are DUMMY SHOWERS, made of wood or other materialls, and
painted, as stated by several former memhers of the Sonderkommando
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This inventory is absolute and irrefutable proof of
the existence of a gas chamber fitted with dummy showers in
Krematorium III.
These dummy showers were not placed there
by chance, or for purposes of decoration, but with a very precise
purpose: to mislead the people entering Leichenkeller 1 / gas
chamber l, a misrepresentation implying the deliberate intention to
cause them to die by inhaling a deadly gas.
These
Krematorium inventories. drawn up when the buildings were completed,
also provide an almost incredible supplementary proof:
mention of the device for introducing Zyklon-B into a
Leichenkeller. The second document [Documents B and B']
[Auschwitz State Museum Archive reference BW 30/43, page 12, also
from a Soviet source] contains a flagrant error on the part of the
SS man who filled in the form.
The first line indicates that
in the basement of Krematorium II, "Raum I, Leichenkeller / Room I,
corpse cellar" was fitted with: |
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“16 Lamp o. Kug, u. Tel. Feuchtsicher / 16 lamps other than
globes, waterproof” and |
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“5 Zapfhühne / 5 taps”. |
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| The second line shows that “Raum 2 / room 2”, idem.
[Leichenkeller] was fitted with: |
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“10 Lamp o. Kug. u. Tel. Feuchtsicher / 10 lamps other than
globes. waterproof” |
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“3 Zapfhühne / 3 taps”, |
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“4 Drahtnetzeinschiebvorrichtung / 4 wire mesh introduction
devices” and |
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“4 Holzblenden / 4 wooden covers.”
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AUSCHWITZ:
Technique
and operation
of the gas chambers
Jean-Claude Pressac
© 1989, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation |
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