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AUSCHWITZ:
Technique
and Operation
of
the Gas Chambers © | |
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Page 446 |
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| 19. |
betonieren im
Gas[s]kammer [1st mention] / concrete in gas
chamber
[File BW 30/28, page 68] |
[Photos 24 and 25]
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On Tuesday 2nd March
1943, the Riedel foreman who, two days earlier had fitted the
gas-tight windows in rooms whose function was unspecified, was again
working there. and sensibly deduced that he was in a “gas chamber”.
His daily report mentions under point 5 (in the room with the
windows): “Fußboden Aufschüttung auffülen, stampfen und Fußboden
betonieren im Gasskammer / ground covered with hard fill, tamped
down and floor concreted in gas chamber”. Of all the timesheets and
reports filled in during the construction of Krematorien IV and V,
this is the only one containing this term. On following days, only
general terms were used, such as: “in beiden Kammern” or “im Zweiten
Kammern” [“in both chambers”, “in the second chamber”]. According to
the timesheets of 3rd, 4th and 5th March 1943, these two rooms were
located in the western part of Krematorium IV.
Until 1982. we had no material evidence of the
location of gas chambers in Krematorien IV and V. This “civilian
slip”, went unnoticed for 37 years and then, when it had at last
been found in the PMO Archives, it was revealed for the first time
in July 1982 at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales
during the Colloqium on “NAZI GERMANY AND THE JEWISH
GENOCIDE” [whose proceedings were not published until
November 1985] then published in my article “LES KREMATORIEN
IV et V de BIRKENAU” in the journal of the Centre de
Documentation Juive Contemporaine (“Le Monde juif") No
107 of July- September 1982. I then ensured that this document again
appeared in “L’ALBUM D’AUSCHWITZ” published by Seuil
in November 1983, page 218 and it was recently taken up again by G
Wellers in his chapter on Auschwitz in “Les chambres à gaz,
Secret d'Etat” published by Editions de Minuit in September
1984, page 200 and page XI of the illustrations and facsimiles. The
high initial value of the word “Gas[s]kammer”, which had not been
found before, and that others besides myself considered decisive, is
now reduced to being simply one more piece of historical evidence,
Document 19 in the recapitulatory list of known “criminal
traces” for the four Birkenau Krematorien. |
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Photo
24 |
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| Photo 25 |
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AUSCHWITZ:
Technique
and operation
of the gas chambers
Jean-Claude Pressac
© 1989, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation |
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