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AUSCHWITZ:
Technique
and Operation
of
the Gas Chambers © | |
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Page 554 |
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While I was studying the BW 30/31 file, known
as the DAW (Deutsche Ausrüstungs Werke / German equipment works)
“Schlosserei / metalworking shop” file containing the
“Bestellscheine / orders” issued in 1943 by the “Zentral Bauleitung
der Waffen SS und Polizei, Auschwitz OS/Waffen SS and Police Central
Construction Management, Auschwitz, Upper Silesia”, for “Bauwerken /
work sites” 5a, 5b, 30, 30a, 30b, 30c and 32 [respectively the B.I
delousing installations, the four Birkenau Krematorien and the
Zentral Sauna], I discovered an order of 13/2/43 to make for KGL
Krematorien IV and V “12 Stück gasdichten Türen ca 30/40 cm/
12 gas tight doors approx 30x40 cm”, signed by the site overseer
Teichmann and countersigned by the head of the Bauleitung, SS Major
Bischoff. While the three known drawings of Krematorien IV and V did
not mention any gas tight openings, I had proof that shutters,
rather than doors in view of their size, of this type had been
ordered on 13th February 1943, made on 24th and 25th, and completed
on 26th, this being inscribed on the back of the order. Then, in
file BW 30/28, concerning work in Krematorien IV and V carried out
by the civilian firm Riedel & Son of Bielitz, I found in their
“Tagesleistungen / Daily timesheets”, two reports, one of 28th
February 1943 mentioning “Gassdichtenfenster versetzen / Fit gas
tight shutters” [Photo 27] and the other of 2nd March 1943,
containing the entry: “Fußboden betonieren im Gasskammer / Concrete
floor in gas chamber” [Photo 28]. Thus, on 2nd March 1943,
civilian workers formally designated a room [in the western part of]
“Einäscherungsanlage 4 / Cremation installation 4” [ Krematorium IV]
by the term “gas chamber”, BECAUSE two days earlier they had
installed “gas-tight shutters” in it [three of these are now kept in
the former coke store of the “Old Krematorium”].
I did
not immediately make the connection between the two files, and even
less did I realize the value of my “find”. Faurisson had just
published his “Mémoire en défense. Contre ceux qui m'accuse de
falsifier l'Histoire. La question des chambres à gaz”
[Statement for the defense. Against those who accuse me of
falsifying history. The question of the gas chambers] (La Vieille
Taupe, 1980). All the discussion was concerned with the famous
preface by Noam Chomsky. That Faurisson should have scored a victory
in having his book prefaced, in the name of sacrosanct freedom of
expression, by a most celebrated American Jew, who in fact knew
nothing about the demolition work the professor, was involved in,
was the least of my worries. Only Auschwitz mattered, and in
particular the documents that I had found but of which I did not
have copies. I resumed to France on 21st November and met Faurisson
at Guillaume’s home on 27th. I confronted him in the midst of
members of La Vieille Taupe who were coming and going and
occasionally gathered round us. I told him that then were far too
many traces of “Gas” in the Museum Archives for me to be able to go
on believing in the validity of his hypothesis.
He asked me
to change my mind, but since I had myself found unpublished
“criminal traces”, I could not possibly turn back. He asked me to
remain “neutral” until the trial. I promised that, and he then
inscribed a copy of “Mémoire en defense” with the
following text: |
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“To Jean Claude
PRESSAC |
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whom we call SCHLIEMANN because
he is one of that rare breed of seekers who actually find, I
dedicate this copy of my Mémoire, begging him to maintain the
attitude he has adopted hitherto, which consists of not taking sides
between exterminationists and revisionists in order to determine
coolly and impartially, what was the material and materialist
reality of Auschwitz. |
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With all my esteem
R
Faurisson |
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27th November 1980, at the home
of Pierre Guillaume" |
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His dedication left me free to continue my research
provided I did nothing to prejudice his legal defense. Confronted
with the new evidence, Faurisson and Guillaume had a moment of
indecision, seeing the possibility of throwing in the sponge and
officially declaring that it did appear that some homicidal gassings
had taken place at Birkenau. But they were too committed to negation
pure and simple to backtrack now, and the opposing party was hard on
their heels. Being given a free reign by Faurisson meant I was now
on my own, somewhat perplexed and only half-way through my quest.
The documents proved to me that gas chambers had been installed in
the Krematorien, but this conviction in no way solved the problem of
how these installations actually worked. My meetings with the others
became less frequent and contact was virtually broken off. I had to
reconstitute for myself the documentation that Faurisson had and
that I had been working on. The Museum filled the gaps easily, for
in fact Faurisson possessed relatively little valuable material on
Auschwitz. In order to make some use of the work I had done on the
delousing installations, which totally negated Faurisson’s
affirmations that using hydrocyanic acid was a complex business
requiring sophisticated gas chambers, I decided to write a paper on
these Auschwitz-Birkenau disinfestation installations. And Faurisson
lent a hand during our last few meetings, partly to keep my
attention away from the “supposedly homicidal” gas chambers and also
in the hope that he would be able to confuse the issue in the
unlikely event that an unexpected “negativist” result should be
discovered by a “neutral” third party. The same procedure was to be
found in the work of Henri Roques “Les confessions de Kurt
Gerstein. Etudes comparatives des differentes versions”,
June 1985. Faced with a fire coming head on, one method of
combatting it is to light independent lateral fires. Faurisson was
and still is behind Roques. I systematically studied the sanitary
installations of Birkenau, comprising sewage treatment stations I
and II, and the projected III, the numerous provisional decantation
basins, the Zentral Sauna, Blocks BW 5a and 5b, and all the
disinfestation gas chambers that had existed in the camp. Some of
the results obtained are presented at the beginning of this book, in
particular everything relating to the gas chambers. On the other
hand, the material collected on the sewage treatment stations has
been little exploited
My regular visits to Oswiecim led
to Iwaszko’s gradually coming to have confidence in me, even though
he was aware of my reticence regarding the “official” genesis of the
Krematorien. In return, I offered to act as postman between France
and Poland for anything concerning the PMO Archives. That was how I
came to meet Jacques Zylbermine, one of the youngest surviving
French deportees to Auschwitz. Of his family of six people, the only
survivors in 1945 were himself and his elder brother. His father,
mother and two sisters had perished at Auschwitz. He received me
very courteously when I announced that I was sent by Iwaszko, whom
he knew. But he soon saw that the young man sitting opposite him
held not very orthodox opinions and seemed to him disorientated. He
could have thrown me out, considering what I had to say and in view
of his own past. but he did not do so, believing it to be better
psychology to leave me free to act as I wished, and going so far as
to offer his aid. As he told me later, he wanted to know to whom he
and his comrades could entrust the “key” of their memory when they
died. He taught me the bare essentials required for understanding
the Jewish community. Then we became friends. It was impossible for
me to be his friend and at the same time to maintain contact, even
sporadic, with Faurisson, for whom Zylbermine’s family had merely
been “scattered”. I broke completely with Faurisson in March or
April 1981. During the period during which he honored me with his
friendship while knowing that I had worked for Faurisson, Mr.
Zylbermine did not mention me to any of his entourage, which he
might well have done. I also learned that he knew Georges Wellers
and a former member of the Sonderkommando, Alter Fajnzylberg, whom I
was unfortunately never able to meet. In June, he went with me to
various sessions of the Faurisson trial.
Among these
sessions, I must mention the afternoon of 1st Jun 1981, for it was
exceptional. Maitre Bernard Jouanneau was speaking At that time I
was unaware that he had personally been to Poland to find documents
on the gas chambers, as counsel for the LICRA, honestly asking
himself whether the “...genocide took place as it has bee described
and on the scale that has been claimed”. I listened to a great
advocate pleading admirably for three or four hours, bringing to
life before the Court the demential picture of one of the most
somber periods in man's history. Absolutely rigorous, the content of
his pleading prefigured the book “Les chambres a gaz, secret
d’Etat” published by Editions de Minuit in 1984. The
implacable enumeration of testimonies and known documents proving
the existence of homicidal gas chambers, literally floored me.
Faurisson was not present, of course. Listening to Maitre Jouanneau,
he would perhaps have realized that one cannot trample with impunity
on the memory of millions of victims. Despite the rigid framework of
the court, Maitre Jouanneau made me live an afternoon of poignant
reflection, because for the first time he presented an overall
picture of the question. I reacted so strongly to his words because,
as I realized afterwards, I was still very much impregnated with
Faurisson’s ideas. But the emotion that I felt did not prevent me
from noticing certain inexactitudes in Maitre Jouanneau’s implacable
indictment of Faurisson’s fallacious arguments.
His case was
based mainly upon testimonies, but also presented some important
“material traces”. Practically ALL known witnesses were cited,
except for Henryk Tauber, who is now the best one after comparing
his deposition with the available historical material Admittedly the
testimonies cited were and remain authentic, but the precision of
the accounts and the date when the authors wrote them c had them
recorded considerably influence their degree of veracity What are we
to say of Filip Muller, who in “Trois ans dans une chambr a
gaz a Auschwitz” (Pygmalion, Gerard Watelet, 1980)
[Published in the United States in 1979 under the title
“Eyewitness Auschwitz” ] on page 15 of his account
describes the “round red-brick chimney” of Krematorium I, which he
can never have seen in this state because he arrived in the camp in
May 1942, whereas this chimney was already of square section as
shown by a drawing of Krematorium I dated September 1941. What can
we say other than that the book should have been annotated by a
competent historian [this error was pointed out to me by the
Auschwitz Museum. I had myself noticed others, but not this]. What
can we say of the declaration by Pery Broad, with its tone of
outrageous Polish nationalism and in which he places side by side
Bunkers 1 and 2 which were actually several hundred meters apart
other than that his testimony will not be really exploitable until
we know under what conditions and in whose company it was written.
What can we say of the book by Dr Miklos Nyiszli, “Auschwitz:
a doctors’ eyewitness account”, in which he multiplies on
average by a factor a four all the figures concerning Krematorium
II. where he lived for six months, except that I shall not rest
until I find the original manuscript and can understand what made
the author exaggerate so much. What can we say about Dr Bendel’s
allegations about Birkenau, in which the only acceptable truth is
his own, except that he was a poor witness. What can we say of the
multiple versions of the Belzec gassings by Kurt Gerstein except
that he was a polyglot, what to say of the figures he puts forward,
except that they reflect the excessive emotionalism of an unstable
man who had witnessed unbearable scenes. What can we say about the
deposition by Alter Fajnzylberg of 13th April 1945, in which he
states that twelve corpses at a time were charged in a single
cremation muffle in Krematorium I, except that it was physically
impossible. What can we say of his declarations of 29th September
1980 before Maitre Pierre Attal, a Paris notary, other than that,
because of his age and what he had suffered there remained only
vague pictures in his mind, difficult to describe. What can we say
of David Szmulewski who was attributed the merit of having
clandestinely photographed in August 1944, gassings and
incinerations in Krematorium V, and who, having claimed that he had
climbed on the roof of the Krematorium to operate, was deprived
during the 60s of the paternity of these photographs taken on the
ground, except that he was the sole survivor of this exploit. What
can we say about former Krematorium III Sonderkommando member David
Olère coolly telling me in 1981 that the SS made sausages of human
flesh [“ Kremawurst”], except that he was still living in the
nightmare that had been imposed on him and recounted anything that
came into his head, whereas I held in my hands his own drawings of
1945-47 which are masterpieces of authenticity. What can we say
about so many singular or fanciful testimonies, other that we must
not act like Henri Roques [read Faurisson] with the “confessions” of
Kurt Gerstein and conclude that the witness is not a true witness.
Instead we must try, as Georges Wellers did in his refutation of
Roques’ “thesis”, to assess the value of the testimony in the light
of known documents and try to explain any oddities, errors and even
lies it might contain as a function of the individual’s nature, what
he has suffered, what he has seen or not been able to see, the exact
place where he was, the date of his deportation and of his
deposition or his account. All this is important and should be given
due consideration in validating, confirming or rejecting a testimony
that can rightly be criticized. A good Auschwitz historian should
now be able, when confronted with a former prisoner or SS man, or
when reading the memoirs of one or the other, to detect immediately
whether he is an authentic witness and what are the strong and weak
points of his testimony [A few years ago “Paris-Match”
almost published the “Memoirs of Dr Mengele” I
read only one paragraph of the last page, not even concerned with
Auschwitz, and could see it was an obvious fake.] Maitre Jouanneau,
without necessarily adopting the reserved attitude of the historian,
was right to mention these essential witnesses, even though their
testimony should be qualified.
It was obvious to Maitre
Jouanneau that since the extermination had taken place in Poland it
was necessary to go there to find the “material proofs” that were
lacking in France. He formed his “intimate conviction” on the basis
of a physical trace in the Maidanek camp [Photo 29]: |
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There is one sign that for me personally appeared
particularly revealing. Here, and I wish to make no use of
trickery, here is a photograph of the gas chamber at Maidanek
[Photo 30], where 1 went. Look at this closed door, with
its metal bars, with its peep-hole. Do you think this peep-hole
was used to inspect hair as it was being disinfected? Look at
the bricks at the base of this wall, these red bricks have become
bluish because they breathed hydrocyanic
acid. | |
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AUSCHWITZ:
Technique
and operation
of the gas chambers
Jean-Claude Pressac
© 1989, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation |
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