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AUSCHWITZ:
Technique
and Operation
of
the Gas Chambers © | |
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Page 548 |
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“ … they still have the effrontery to show us
the photograph [Photo 17] of one of these autoclaves at
Dachau, with before it an American soldier in uniform deciphering
... the gassing timetable!” |
It is quite obvious that, in 1945, American war correspondents
could easily be misled because of their lack of information. But
Faurisson, who does not lack information (200 kg), he who was so
quick to denounce the errors of others, was also led astray. What he
took to be autoclaves, were in fact simple disinfestation gas
chambers — they had neither temperature nor pressure gauges,
essential instruments for the proper operation of an autoclave, And
when he did come across real autoclaves, he though they were
disinfestation gas chambers (for example, the three autoclaves in
the Birkenau Zentral Sauna). Faurisson is a literary man, not a
scientist. What is so sad about this story is the correspondence
exchanged between him and the authorities of the Dachau Museum and
the Dachau International Committee in Bruxelles, in which he forces
them to admit that they have failed in their historical duty by not
being able to counter his arguments. Without a true technical
analysis, going as far as partial demolition of the walls, no
version is acceptable at present.
Faurisson’s method
of working is based on textual analysts and involves the detailed
criticism of documents concerned with the question studied. He is
the proponent of a rather special approach. In his view, it is
necessary to intervene rapidly and hit hard. A kind of
“commando” technique. As regards Auschwitz, where he had made
only one or two brief visits, he “understood” everything very
rapidly. To support this “new understanding” he had brought back
from Poland an abundant documentation to support his thesis, and in
the eyes of the uninitiated this appears true and convincing. My own
method of working is different. I worm my way into the subject
tenaciously, so my results to terms of “picking up” documents were
slow and not very fruitful in the short term. In the medium term my
tenacity began to pay off. And in the long term it has led to
unhoped for results. Taking photographs alone, Faurisson
probably has about 200, most of which I am acquainted with. As
regards Auschwitz, 7 photographs and 3 drawings. (from the PMO) were
published in “Vérité Historique…” by Serge Thion. Of
the 16 published in “Le mythe d'Auschwitz” by Wilhelm
Staglich (La Vieille Taupe 1986) under the title :
“Illustrations [comments by Faurisson]. Le mythe d'Auschwitz
en images. Une extermination… improbable… invrasiemblable…
impossible…fictive”, FIVE had already appeared in "Thion".
For my part, considering only the contemporary photographs
concerning the camp and the life of the prisoners and SS, Serge
Klarsfeld [and the PMO] provided me with 189 for the
publication of “L’Album d’Auschwitz” (Seuil
1983), and this does not include 63 unpublished photographs
from the original Album that did not concern the extermination of
the Hungarian Jews. The PMO gave me copies of the 52
photographs taken clandestinely and buried by the former prisoner
Lawin Ludwik and found after the Liberation. Then the Museum sent me
the 397 photographs of the “Bauleitung Album”
(unpublished: the original is held by the Yad Vashem) some of
which are identical with those “organized” by Ludwik, Then there are
the 4 Polish resistance photographs, only 3 of which are
usable, 3 from the SS garrison and 30 concerning
Himmler’s visit to Buna Monowitz on 17th July 1942. Regarding the
state of the camp at the Liberation, several hundred stills have
been taken from the Soviet film “Chronicles ... 1945”.
Of Polish source in the period 1945-46, an unknown number (several
dozen?) were takes by Stanislaw Lucwko. The Warsaw Central
Commission for the investigation of Hitlerite crimes in Poland sent
me 5 of the Lucwko series and 5 others from about thirty of unknown
origin. On these last there appears a Polish military
cameraman filming the ruins of Krematorium V in the process of being
cleared, which implies that a film (newsreel?) other than the 1945
Soviet film was shot at Birkenau just after the Liberation. And
there is no need to mention the innumerable “modern” photographs of
Auschwitz.
The difference between the results of Faurisson’s
commando raids and my own slow and patient research in Poland speak
for themselves. Let there be no misunderstanding about one of us
wanting to possess more than the other — this is no schoolboy game
of marbles. These photographs are important historical material and
some of them are vital for our understanding. Sometimes a testimony
can be confirmed or rejected thanks to one or more photographs [the
War Refugee Board report of November 1944 was authenticated in this
way, despite some bizarre features in it]. It may be thought that
there must be many other photographs taken at Auschwitz between 1940
and 1946. This is no doubt true, but those listed are the only ones
we know about. I know ALL of them [about 700 contemporary pictures,
or a thousand or more including the Liberation] and I am able to
situate most of them on the ground and date many of them more or
less accurately, One day at the PMO in the service responsible for
the “reserve stocks” [various objects found in the camp], I came
upon a photograph of an SS man, in regulation uniform and wearing a
gas mask, pouring a can of Zyklon-B into a kind of chimney about 40
cm high. He appeared to be on the roof of a Krematorium II or III
gas chamber, but the arrangement of the panes of one of the windows
of the crematorium visible behind him did not correspond to any of
the drawings or photographs. I kept on questioning the person in
charge of this service until he told me the truth: it was a still
taken from the film “La Passagère” by Andrzej Munk, a
work that remained unfinished because of the death of its maker in a
car accident on 20th September 1961. I had seen it in France when I
was very young and did not remember all the sequences, but the study
of this photograph in comparison with others had proved to me that
it was not authentic, despite its appearance and the fact that it
was presented as such.
Faurisson was, and still is,
incapable of carrying out this kind of study. Furthermore he is
totally incapable of reading a drawing. It was fortunate for him
that he came across an amateur like me. After our first contact in
February 1980, there followed a long series of joint working
sessions where I learned all the bases of the revisionist argument
beginning, of course, with the compulsory reading of Paul
Rassinier’s books. This author had doubts, but they were relatively
slight because he lacked the documentation now available. His timid
remarks were those of student compared with the “ex cathedra”
demonstrations of Professor Doctor Robert Faurisson. The latter
DENIES ONLY THE HOMICIDAL GAS CHAMBERS, not the rest: the
deportation, concentration camps, suffering, malnutrition, slave
labor, ill treatment. sickness, epidemics, crematoriums. NO, THE GAS
CHAMBERS ONLY. The stratagem is that if the gas chambers are
demolished, all the rest will follow and be denounced. He very
quickly saw that I had a gift for reading end explaining drawings.
To obtain “positive” results, those to help his cause, he was
obliged to open his flies to me and have me work on them. And that
is what I did. My collaboration with Faurisson involved only the
documents he had collected. His surprising hypothesis had literally
seduced me. But stimulating as the idea was, it turned out to be
negative. I tested it on out on my entourage. Those who were not
Jews saw it as just one more bluff in the daily flood of them, Those
who were Jews did not even react violently, They were disarming and
made me understand that there were limits that could not be
transgressed. My arguments were taken into account, my good faith
recognized, but that did not restore their father, mother, brother
and sisters, the entire families annihilated. Faurisson has in fact
never given a real answer on this point, never explained what
happened to a million people, whom, according to him, it was
technically impossible to have exterminated. Guillaume declared,
acting as his master’s voice, that “they were transferred at Kosel
station, 120 km from Auschwitz”.
[This indication of the
distance is typical of the “Faurisson method”, a mixture of truth
and lies, in order to be always right. Saying that Kosel or Kozle is
120 km from Auschwitz is true and false AT THE SAME TIME. Kosel is
82 km from Auschwitz as. the crow flies, 97 km by the northern route
passing through Gliwice, Mikolow and Tychy. and 120 km by the
southern route via Raciborz, Rybnik, Zory, Pszczyna and Brzeszcze.
Faurisson omits to say that this miraculous station lies to the west
of Auschwitz. Any reasonable motorist wishing to go from Kozle to
Oswiecim would take the northern route, but he would be wrong. The
shortest route is not the best one, and the only true route in the
southern one, indicated by the master. ALL Faurisson’s references,
remarks, explanations and arguments are “loaded” to this way. His
truth is the plausible interpretation of facts that have never
existed.]
In the gospel according to Saint Faurisson,
950,000 people vanished into the countryside from Kozle station and
spread to the four corners of the earth. Nobody has since been able
to find them.
I did not know that on 15th February 1979
Faurisson had received a summons to appear before the court to
answer charges brought by the LICRA (Ligue Internationale
Contre le Racisme et l’Antisémitisme]. Other organizations had
joined the plaintiff, such as ANFROMF, UNADIF,
FNDIR, CAR, l’Amicale des deportes d’Auschwitz et
des camps en Haute Silésie, MRAP, les Fils et Filles
des Déportés Juifs de France, and the UNDIVG was also to
appear. I only gradually discovered the legal shackles that hampered
him. His immediate concern was to defend himself. As regards his
trial, the immediate problem was that of the Struthof gas chamber. I
was given a crash course, and accompanied him to consult the
archives of the Struthof trial at the Palais de Justice in Paris.
This led to an episode that made me see the “honest and meticulous”
professor in a more worrying light. 86 Jewish victims met their
death in the Struthof gas chamber (of 30 women and 57 men sent from
Auschwitz, one was shot and the rest were gassed). They had left
administrative traces. The weekly report on the numbers of prisoners
indicate the presence on on 14th August 1943 of 90 Jews, of whom 30
“left” deceased, and on 21st August 1943, among the 60 remaining,
there were 57 further deaths, The cause of death (even if uncertain)
was normally entered on the reverse side of the reports. But the
backs of the reports on these 87 Jews were blank. What is more, each
death in the camp was reported to and noted in the Natzweiler town
hall. No mention of these dead Jews. These two documents are damning
evidence. Faurisson, after checking all the weekly reports still
conserved, put forward the explanation that those of the 14th and
21st August 1943 were printed in gothic script while previous ones
had been in roman script. Confused by this change in the forms, the
SS made a mistake with the line and instead of inscribing the 87 on
the line marked “Entlassung / liberation”, mistakenly entered
them on the line marked “Todesfalle / deaths”. His poor
argument rang in my ears like a warning bell. The first warning
sound had come when I read the following passage in “Vérité
historique…” by Thion, page 314: |
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“I made one of the Auschwitz Museum officials. Mr Jan
Machkel, come to the place [in Krematorium I]. I showed him the
furnaces. I asked him: “Are they authentic?” He replied “Of
course!” I then passed my finger across the mouth of one of the
furnaces. I showed him that there was no soot [underlined by
J-C Pressac. Fancy expecting in find soot 35 years afterwards!].
With an embarrassed air [why?), he told me that these furnaces
were a "reconstitution” [the Museum’s own photographs prove it].
|
A professor’s reputation fades after such a remark.
Faurisson becoming more and more preoccupied by his trial,
it fell to me to continue the study of the “so called” gas chambers
at Auschwitz. I accepted on condition that I would be able to remain
anonymous. And indeed I was, right to the end. When I am able to
refute a historical inaccuracy, with certainty and the support of
solid proof, then I do not hesitate to do so if this correction does
not harm individual persons. If it does, then I seek advice first or
I abstain. In order to be able to work properly, I needed peace and
quiet, which was impossible in the atmosphere of the trials.
During April and May, I thoroughly studied my photographic
evidence. In the following months, working from the fragments
provided, I produced seventeen bound drawings, most of them in color
[3 of Krematorium I at Auschwitz, 4 of Krematorium IV at Birkenau
(and the Natzweiler crematorium). 2 of Krematorium III and 8 of
Krematorium II] in order to make it easier for him to read the
drawings and understand the architecture and arrangement of these
crematoriums, At the revisionist congress in Washington on 11th
August he wrote to me: “The few people to whom I have been able to
show your material were most impressed, They find it outstanding”.
Without false modesty, I had worked like a Trojan. As a “reward” I
was able to take with me to Ireland. where I was spending my
holidays, a photocopy of his manuscript “Vous avez dit
Kremer?” [Did you say Kremer?], which was later to become
“Mémoire en defense” [Statement for the defense],
which enabled to me follow the genesis and development of the
“Faurisson Affair” as well as his own explanations. I
carefully went through it all with a fine tooth comb. It very
quickly became apparent to me that his interpretation of
“Vergasungskeller / gassing cellar” as “gas-generating
cellar”, though perfect in its literary form, was technically
worthless [I later found that he had taken it from the work by
Arthur R Butz, “The hoax of the twentieth century”.
Butz, though a product of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
is as hopeless as Faurisson on technical matters]. As regards the
criticism of the diary of Johann Paul Kremer [reserve SS doctor
posted to KL Auschwitz from 30th August to 18th November 1942] I had
my doubts (again!) about the explanation of the word
“Zonderaktion / special action” and the expression “last
Bunker”, Faurisson’s arguments not being very convincing.
Despite these few clouds I was finding in the clear sky of the
revisionists, I began to sincerely believe that this “crazy
hypotheses” had a very good chance of turning out to be correct. As
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AUSCHWITZ:
Technique
and operation
of the gas chambers
Jean-Claude Pressac
© 1989, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation |
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