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AUSCHWITZ:
Technique
and Operation
of
the Gas Chambers © | |
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Page 544 |
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[The following account is based on notes written in
May 1980 and annotated during the first half of 1981, adapted by
removing certain outrageous remarks and irrelevant parts and
supplemented as required for this postface]
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I started on the action in Birkenau. A great deal of work and
reflection. Chapter well under way, almost finished. My only
possibility as regards parallel history was to increase the
magnitude of the massacre, the Germans being victorious, and find
another extermination mechanism. Resolved [I had taken over and
“improved” the claims of the civilian guard I had met at the
entrance to Birkenau, which as I have said were only the imaginings
of the Soviet journalist Boris Polevoi in Pravda in February 1945].
And then ... and then I began to have doubts. My trip dated from
thirteen years back. The atmosphere I had felt turned out to be
excellent, but the paucity of the historical material available to
me and the fact that it ranged from the inconsistent to the vague,
and even contradicted itself, led me suddenly to doubt the very
existence of the Krematorien (and not the gas chambers!). A
regrettable lack of detailed information about this subject, which
had meanwhile come back into the news with the broadcasting of the
mediocre telefilm “Holocaust”, was blocking my progress. Obsessed by
this question, my back to the wall, I decided to make a flying visit
of five days to Poland at the end of October 1979 to remove this
barrier that was preventing me from writing, from
finishing.
I arrived at Auschwitz at 10 a.m. My
memories were of no use to me. Everything had to be rediscovered. By
11 o’clock I had made my inquiries and presented myself at the
Museum Archives. To work. Straightaway I ran into a sizeable
barrier. “Take your own photographs ? Prohibited” they told me at
the outset. “The museum will photograph the documents you want and
send the prints on to you.” Disappointed, with the camera and all
those films ready and waiting in my bag [I should have made
inquiries beforehand. This is the rule in many museums in the West
as well as in the East. What had misled me was that I had been
allowed to photograph — the formalities being reduced to the minimum
— twenty or so posters dating from 1940-44 in the Vincennes War
Museum]. Too bad. The main thing was to get down to work. I would
worry about the rest later.
I had no idea wnat the Auschwitz
State Museum (PANSTWOWE MUZEUM OSWIECIM or PMO) might contain. I
wanted to have a clear understanding of the layout of buildings and
the fittings in the premises where the extermination was carried
out. Having the impression, from what I had read, that the Polish
resistance had succeeded in providing a great deal of information, I
asked to see the photographs. They were pointed out to me on a
table. THREE PHOTOGRAPHS. Just three! 1 had expected at very least
ten times as many. But no, three of undoubted authenticity, two of
them taken through a door showing men dragging corpses before a pall
of smoke, and the third showing naked women apparently running in a
forest [at the end of 1983, the archivist lent me the originals, a
great concession, so that I could find the position of the
clandestine photographer in the ruins of Krematorium V. The first
two were taken from the north gas chamber of Kr V on a
southeast/northwest line, looking towards a cremation pit dug
between the northern barbed wire fence and the Krematorium. The
third was taken outdoors, with the photographer about twenty meters
from the east wall of the Krematorium, holding the camera in his
hand with his arm by his side, shooting blind on a
northeast/southwest line in the direction of the naked women moving
from west to east along the south wall of the crematorium,
paradoxically with their backs to it. This was a considerable
embarrassment to mc. Going all that way to study three photographs
was absolute madness.
They reassured me and brought some
other photographs, of German origin this time [subsequently
published in the “Album d’Auschwitz”]. At least some
certain facts began to emerge. The Krematorien were clearly visible.
I went back thirty-five years and immersed myself in the atmosphere
of the time. Having looked through these albums, three others were
given to me. In fact these were stills from the Soviet film
“Chronicles of the Liberation of the Camp. 1945” shown
over and over again in the cinema at the entrance to the Museum, and
a faithful reflection of it as I realized afterwards. Among the
stills was a situation drawing with an enlargement of Krematorien II
and III [Photo 13] and a detailed drawing of one of them
[Bauleitung drawing 932 of the basement of Krematorium II]. At 1
p.m. I had to pack up as the Archives closed for the day. Then off
to Birkenau, a distance of about two kilometres. A survey of the
site, camera round my neck ready to shoot anything in this place of
criminal fame. But the shooting was limited to two rounds, sorry,
photos. What weather! In France I had thought we were still in late
summer, but here it was raining. What the camera could not record,
my eyes could still see. I visited everything, on foot. A fine but
soaking rain was falling. At the second sewage treatment station I
felt the same stupid aversion as thirteen years earlier on rereading
the notice on the watchtower. Arriving at the “Zentral Saunas” a
guard almost slammed the door in my face as he entered. But I
hammered on the door in vain, no response. I was beginning to feel
cold. I went on to Krematorium V, which I had great difficulty in
finding as it was overgrown with tall weeds. It gave the impression
of a miserable little hut like so many others. A concrete floor
enclosed by walls 50 to 100 cm high. I finished up at the lake of
ashes [this lake, marked on the drawings of Birkenau as a
fire-fighting reservoir, is east of Krematorium IV, not beyond V as
I imply here. I had backtracked]. A completely abandoned site. The
ashes had long since been absorbed into the bed. Return through an
unrelenting, driving rain. Half way back I took shelter in a
watchtower for awhile, I was so wet. Everything inside was damaged,
but I could still see that the workmanship was very good. The work
of a master. Beams and planking dowelled, and the wood treated,
hence the black colour. The interior was insulated with glass wool,
still visible here and there. A luxurious construction, but then
concentration camp labor was so cheap.
I ran back to the car
with my teeth chattering and got back to the main camp as fast as I
could. I continued by visiting Auschwitz I. Virtually alone. My
footsteps echoed on the concrete floors of the blocks. The electric
lighting was sparse. A thick mist was rising. By five o’clock it was
dark. A real nightmare atmosphere. Later, alone in my cell, I was
seized with panic. This visible, palpable confirmation had been a
profound shock. Krematorien there were, yes. Five in fact, numbered
one to five in roman numerals. Kr I a converted powder magazine [or
dry goods store]. II and III, mirror image twins, visible on
contemporary photographs and confirmed by their ruins. The same with
IV and V, except that the ruins of IV were reduced to a heap of
stones of one or two cubic metres [I was mistaken here, as the weeds
had hidden from me the walls barely 20 cm high marking the outline
of Krematorium IV. All I had seen was a pile of unused bricks, a
vestige of the partial reconstruction after the war]. The ambient
conditions were extremely depressing. A drastic change in
temperature: 12 degrees in Paris, 2 in Warsaw, below freezing in
Cracow. Auschwitz with its lugubrious landscape of barbed wire made
worse by a thick fog, dank, dissolving, miserable, cut through by a
cold, penetrating rain, and on top of all this my cold room, the
radiaitor scarcely luke warm. I was chilled to the bone. The idea of
death came to me, inexorably growing stronger as the evening went
on. I began to understand those who had chosen the electrified
barbed wire.
The next morning, the crisis of that night was
gone. I had a shock as I looked towards the window. There was a
light coating of white on the frame. It had snowed during the night.
Back to the Archives. There just remained one simple question of
detail: how did these installations work? Feeling I knew just about
everything there was to know on the subject, I enthusiastically
asked for the plans of the Krematorien to confirm what I learned
from my reading [based virtually exclusively on the information
provided by Robert Merle in “La mort est mom métier”,
which was in turn based on the account by Dr Miklos Nyiszli]. I
started directly with the main one, Krematorium II. The fact is that
I was given no choice, as this is the one that was brought me. |
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[A psychological and methodological error on the part
of the archivist, who produced the drawings one at a time, in
chronological order. But since a western researcher, usually there
only for a brief stay, does not know how many drawings exist and
has but little time, his ever arriving at the final drawings
becomes uncertain, if not impossible. This “presentation” may
explain certain “reservations” about the gassings at Auschwitz.
The projects are only projects. The archivist should have started
with the final inventory drawings. My doubts stemmed from there.]
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| The first one I saw was Bauleitung drawing 932 of 23/1/42,
“Entwurf für das Krematorium. Grundriß vom Untergeschoß / Project
for the Krematorium. Plan of basement”. Unsheathing my magnifying
glass (made necessary by the writing used). I bent over it. And my
doubts returned with a vengeance. The premises seemed too small, in
particular the junction between Leichenkeller I (corpse cellar I,
later gas chamber) and Leichenkeller 2 (corpse cellar 2, later
undressing room). This passage was encumbered by a ramp in the form
of a chute in the middle of a stairway coming down from the outside
[The “Rutsche / corpse chute” is visible [photo 14] in the
ruins of Krematorium III. In the case of II its presence is doubtful
[photo 15]. It has disappeared in drawing 2003, but this is
contradicted by an order on the DAW metalworking shop for a
palissade to hide it. Shifting the rubble that has accumulated over
the place where it should be would resolve the question once and for
all]. So, was it really possible for 2000 people to pass rapidly
from the undressing room (Leichenkeller 2) to the gas chamber
(Leichenkeller 1). undergo the appropriate “treatment”, emerge dead,
evacuated by the Sonderkommando, be placed on one goods lift of
modest size |
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[in “Auschwitz: A doctor’s eyewitness
account”, Dr Miklos Nyiszli, after having lived for six
months IN Krematorium II and claims that his account is
“without the slightest exaggeration”, says that there were
“four good-sized elevators” (page 49). The reason why this
authentic witness should have accumulated so many gross
exaggerations is not yet known] |
| to be carried up to the furnace room and burned very rapidly to
achieve the enormous throughput [5000 cremations a day] attributed
to this installation? A death route that may he considered
“industrially” linear, but in which the corpses have to pass back
over the path of the living. Leichenkeller 1 is a technical
cul-de-sac. And then the role of the Sonderkommando, who need room
to move, also has to be taken into account. Fortunately. the doors
were large. Double doors about 2 metres wide. What? DOUBLE DOORS? A
ZYKLON-B GAS CHAMBER WITH DOUBLE DOORS? I do not know whether I was
technically justified, but t was greatly shocked by this detail, and
my surprised reaction was noticed. The young woman who was watching
me study the drawing, shiveringly squeezed against a radiator no
warmer than that in my hotel, went off to find the archivist
[Tadeusz Iwaszko] who was looking after me. He said nothing, but
disappeared briefly and brought back another drawing. On drawing 934
of 27/l/42, entitled “Entwurf fur das Krematorium. Schnitte /
Project for the Krematorium. Sections”, the sixteen meter
crematorium chimney with the forced-draught fans at its base, loomed
very large. Then came the crosssections of Leichenkeller 1 and 2.
Nothing special about 2, but L-K 1 was fitted with a splendid
ventilation system, with upper and lower ducts, “Belüftung,
Entlüftung / Ventilation. Air extraction.” “Why air extraction if
not to remove air poisoned by prussic acid gas given off by Zyklon-B
crystals?” demanded the archivist. I wavered before this argument.
It was obvious. My expression of discomfiture must have touched
Iwaszko, for from that moment on he brought up the big guns and
showed me everything unbidden. Aerial views of Birkenau.
Magnificently drawn plans for the expansion of the main camp. A joy
for anyone interested in architectural drawing. Fine work and in
colour. These SS certainly saw “kolossal”. For the greater glory of
the thousand year Reich there was an official architecture, rigid
and majestic, and a private architecture, intimate and delicate. And
on the side they built death factories to bum all the “labouring and
hardworking” Slav populations. Iwaszko’s leitmotif was: “Why such
big installations for such a small camp?” But unfortunately, on the
drawings of these “big cremation installations” there was nothing to
indicate the presence of gas chambers. This lack could but engender
doubt. Against this disturbing doubt: belief. This is what the
archivist said to me in so many words. |
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[In France before 1980, there was a complete absence
of concrete proof despite the apparent “mass” of “documents” on
the gassings. The history of these gassings was based virtually
exclusively on human testimony, and Faurisson lost no time in
pulling some of these testimonies to pieces. This situation
enabled him to score some fine successes at the beginning of his
“affair”, because the traditional historians had almost no
evidence with which to oppose him. Faurisson’s mistake was to
underestimate the importance of the Auschwitz Museum Archives,
which contained many documents not yet studied because nobody had
felt the need to do so.] |
| Unthinkable. The global, supreme explanation of the
extermination of the Jews cannot be reduced to the acceptance of or
refusal to believe what happened in Birkenau on twice 210 m² of
Polish soil, the area of the Leichenkeller 1 of Krematorien II and
III. Other project drawings of Krematorium II were brought to me one
at a time, parsimoniously. Each time I gave back a drawing I was
handed another and left to study it, with the young woman behind me.
But my concentration was no longer so great and what I saw merely
confirmed what the archivist had
said. | |
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AUSCHWITZ:
Technique
and operation
of the gas chambers
Jean-Claude Pressac
© 1989, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation |
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