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AUSCHWITZ:
Technique
and Operation
of
the Gas Chambers © | |
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Photo 33:
(Photo by the author)
David Olère in 1982 in
the kitchen of his house in Noisy le Grand, on one of his last
canvases entitled “By way of the Zyklon-B gas chamber to the
Nazi crematorium furnaces, Rabbis and Priests too”. This
painting is 131 by 162 cm. In the center are a rabbi and a priest
being beaten being beaten by an SS man. Upper left, Moll is firing
on naked women on the edge of the incineration pits near Krematorium
V. Upper right is Krematorium III in operation, with four prisoners
passing in front of it carrying the soup. The curator of the PMO, K
Smolen, confirmed to me that he had personally seen a similar
episode, where rabbis and priests were ill treated by the SS. |
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Photo 34:
(Donated by D Olère to the author) |
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“Gassing” . A canvas of 125 cm
by 190 cm composed of three scenes. Upper left is Bunker 2/V in
winter, upper right Krematorium III under construction; in the
center [according to David Olère] is the face of SS Georges,
deformed by the peephole as he watches a gassing. |
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The catalog of David Olère’s sketches and paintings was
published in 1989 by the Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, edited
by Serge Klarsfeld. |
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My own relations with David Olère were somewhat difficult, but
as time went on, he began to realize that I had a very good
knowledge of “his” universe. We were able to talk about it, and I
took every opportunity to do so. But it was not without difficulty.
Whenever I pointed out that what he was telling me was inexact, he
would get angry and accuse me of calling him a “liar”. He had a
cynical and acid humor, which was part of his defense against the
memories that obsessed him. Through his works, he unwittingly helped
me to understand the arrangement of the Krematorium and of Bunker
2/V.
Having no news from Georges Wellers, I expanded my
paper, which grew to 80 pages and received a different title:
“Auschwitz;, peaceful architecture…” and became the
first volume of a complete study of the Auschwitz Krematorien. On
13th March 1982, out of bravado and because I had cited him in my
dedications, I telephoned Faurisson to announce the completion of my
work on Krematorien IV and V. I was shocked and disgusted to find he
had reached rock bottom, dragging his family down with him. A human
wreck, hysterical, short of breath, panting, gasping out his
reproaches, describing his “martyrdom”. But it has to be said that
he had asked for it and well deserved it. Having sown the wind he
had reaped a real whirlwind. What disgusted me was that he used his
suffering to try and justify himself to me: “You can see that I was
right, for the Jews are persecuting me!”. Trying to pass off his
false coin wrapped in pity was the last trick of Herr Professor
Doktor Robert Faurisson. Heavens, how the mighty are fallen! His
last attempt to stop me from continuing my research was in vain. I
gave the manuscript to Georges Wellers, and again waited. No
reaction. He was sitting on my work, and it remained unexploited.
While the traditional historians had no documents on Krematorien IV
and V, I had brought him bucket loads. It was too novel. While they
spoke of camouflage, I said there had been none, and had photographs
to prove it. My work was too heretical. While they had only two
documents indicating the probability of gas chambers in Krematorien
II and III, I was giving them two documents from a civilian source
proving their existence in Krematorium IV. It was all too
revolutionary. While official history had established that the
Krematorien had been specially designed as extermination
instruments, I stated that they had been converted to this end. It
was too revisionist. As time passed, the criticisms rained down. I
lost patience. I contacted Professor Pierre Vidal-Naquet and said to
him: “You wanted a second memory of Auschwitz. Well, I've written
the first part”. At first he thought I was mad, then when I gave him
the manuscript he saw that my proposal was serious. When he had read
it, he considered that my demonstrations were valid and
soundly-based, but that the text was poorly organized and not
publishable in its present form. Which was quite true. But the
documents that I presented were too important to remain unknown. He
found a solution by arranging for me to take part in a Colloquium
organized by the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales on the
topic “Nazi Germany and the extermination of the
Jews”, held at the Sorbonne from 29th June to 2nd July 1982
and chaired by Raymond Aron and Francois Furet. I was accepted as an
“intervenant” rather than as a “participant” because of my very late
candidature. Only a week earlier, I had known absolutely nothing
about the venue or the people I was to speak before. Vidal-Naquet
succeeded in launching me. I went to the Sorbonne early in the
afternoon of 30th June. The speakers were respectively: Raul Hilberg
on “The bureaucracy of annihilation”, Prof Dr Wolfgang
Scheffler of Berlin on “Die Gaskammern” and Georges
Wellers on the number of Jewish victims of the “Final Solution”. W
Scheffler’s communication, from which the Colloquium expected much,
was not greatly appreciated by specialists on the topic, and they
even regretted having brought him from Berlin because of the small
amount of information he provided. He had not succeeded in properly
exploiting the documents he had obtained in Moscow. Appearing just
after Scheffler, I commented the projection of 36 slides showing the
genesis and evolution of Krematorium IV and V at Birkenau, speaking
for exactly eighteen minutes. I was the only speaker at the
Colloquium to present good contemporary photographs. They came from
the photograph album of the Auschwitz Bauleitung [Construction
Management] that I had consulted at the PMO in April 1982. A copy of
this album had just arrived at the Museum, sent by the Yad Vashem in
Jerusalem, who had bought it from a German from Berlin, who in turn
had obtained it shortly after the war from a Russian officer who had
spent some time in Auschwitz. I had had the great pleasure, the
album in my hands, of dictating to Tadeusz Iwaszko the captions of
the photographs for the part concerned with the Birkenau Krematorien
[Photo 38 is one example]. These unpublished photographs
ensured the success of my intervention. Pierre Vidal-Naquet was
delighted and called my exposé “clear and remarkable”.
After
the Colloquium, Georges Wellers considered that what had remained
unused for a year now absolutely must be published after the summer
holidays in the review of the CDJC “Le Monde Juif”.
But since he was not in agreement with my theories as I challenged
some of his, it was not easy to find common ground.
At the
end of August 1982, I went to the Struthof camp whose gas chamber
had caused much ink to flow. I was not an ordinary tourist, having
already studied the crematorium and the gas chamber thanks to the
documents in the French legal archives. After visiting the
crematorium and listening to the guide’s commentary, I emerged
furious, resolved to stop all my research and stop my publication
for “Le Monde Juif”. There I was, preening myself
about putting some order into Poland’s “crematorium” affairs, but
before going to make a clean sweep over there, it was necessary to
put our own little house in order. I was beside myself with rage
when I got to the gas chamber. We were hardly inside the building.
When I attacked the guide, telling him a few facts about the gas
chamber. Then he took the group round, keeping his eyes on me. Once
his long-winded patter was over and the visitors had gone out, he
closed the door and we remained alone. I then told him the whole
history of the complex. The poor man, whose parents had been
indirect witnesses of the gassings, did not know what to say, and
concluded as I left that “Nobody has ever explained all that to me
the way you have”.
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AUSCHWITZ:
Technique
and operation
of the gas chambers
Jean-Claude Pressac
© 1989, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation |
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