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AUSCHWITZ:
Technique
and Operation
of
the Gas Chambers © | |
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Page 559 |
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What had I had heard and discovered in the crematorium
[Photo 39]? That the shower room [Photo 40] was
regularly presented in publications as a homicidal gas chamber,
which did not prevent the guide from declaring that they were real
showers, reserved for the SS who washed SS who washed themselves
with water heated by the incineration by the prisoners. That the
urns had been transported to the room occupied by the prisoners
[internees] responsible for the running of the crematorium. The urn
room had become that where human that were shut up waiting for
“vivisection” in the dissecting room [!] The door of their “prison”
had been fitted with two heavy bolts and the window in the upper
part had been replaced by a wooden panel after the war. The
prisoners’ room had a wash basin, which is normal. The urn room did
not. It is now the other way round, and one wonders why the urns
need a wash basin, and why the room where thee prisoners lived did
not have one. Proof of this “switch” is to be found on the plan of
the premises drawn on 29th May 1945 by the French commandant of the
camp for the French Military Justice. [The camp, which was intact at
the time of the Liberation, was repopulated with imprisoned or
condemned collaborators.]
As for the gas chamber, the 86
unfortunate Jews and Jewesses gassed there to satisfy The impulse of
a collector of skeletons, Professor Hirt, had multiplied to the
point of reaching 10,000 to 20,000 victims.
These errors
have still not been rectified. I suggest the following modifications
to the management of the Struthof Museum: |
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| A — in the crematorium: |
| 1) |
Return to the
configuration of May 1945, i.e. return the urns to their initial
room and return the bunks in the “guinea pigs” room to the
prisoners’ room, removing the inscription “vivisection”;
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| 2) |
Open to the public the
morgue of the crematorium, where executions took place [bullets were
found in the filter trap under drain grid]; |
| 3) |
Open to the public the
shower/disinfection section, indicating the circuit followed and
explaining the operation of the disinfection chamber (which has
never been studied) to differentiate it completely from the
homicidal gas chamber. |
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| B in the gas
chamber: |
| 1) |
Retrieve from the
Musée de la Résistance et de la Déportation at the Besançon
Citadelle the funnel with its tap that enabled the camp commandant,
Josef Kramer, to carry out homicidal gassings [this item belongs to
the Struthof camp]; |
| 2) |
Reconstitute the
original installation used for gassing, protecting it by a glass or
plastic case and formally indicating the reconstituted parts [these
would be the metal tube for pouring the liquid into the gas chamber,
three white tiles and 1/2 kg cement for fixing the tube];
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| 3) |
Have the complete
chronology and history of the gas chamber established by competent
historians: |
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a) |
Origin of the building and state
of building and slate of premises before the war; |
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b) |
Use of a cold room as a gas
chamber for training SS recruits in the use of gasmasks in chemical
warfare; |
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c) |
Installation of the device for
pouring of the in a liquid, completed on 3rd August
1943; |
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d) |
The gassing “for the purposes of
medical science” by hydrocyanic acid of 86 Jews and Jewesses between
7th and 21st August 1943: |
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e) |
The first eleven experiments
concerning the use of utropine as a protection against phosgene,
carried out without any deaths in the autumn of 1943 under the
direction of Father Bickenbach; |
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f) |
The four, terminal experiments
of 15th June 1944 carried our by Hirt, assisted by Bickenbach for
the for the technical aspects, which caused four deaths due to acute
oedema of the lung.
The commentary should condemn Hirt, a
Nazi doctor who abused his position of power, and exculpate
Bickenbach, who experimented on his own person in the early stages
of the phosgene experiment.
The photographs exhibited should
be related to these events and not refer simply to any camp where
gassings were carried out. |
| 4) |
Abandon the
designation “formalin tanks” for the three white tiled baths with
wooden covers. This designation is not based on any document and is
a legend by assimilation with the synthetic alcohol tanks in the
Institute of Anatomy at Strasbourg University in which the 86
corpses of the unrealized “Hirt collection” were preserved;
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| C. Produce of a detailed photographic brochure on the
camp, with archive documents and photographs from the French front
the French Military Justice, bearing in mind that visitors want to
have precise, verifiable and irrefutable information. |
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Photo 35 |
Photo 35:
(Personal archives) |
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| Plan drawing of
KREMATORIUM III [BW 30a] located in Auschwitz II [Birkenau], drawn
by David Olère and published in “LE DROIT DE VIVRE”
[The right to live], journal of the LICA [LICRA], 15th February
1964, 31st year, No 316, page 3. |
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| Translation of
the key: |
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| 0 |
The five 3 muffle furnaces
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| 1 |
Undressing room |
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| 2 |
Vestibule where the SS
controlled the victims’ entry to the gas chamber |
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| 3 |
Gas chamber |
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| 4 |
Goods lift for the
corpses |
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| 5 |
Furnace room |
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| 6 |
Incinerator for identity
papers |
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| 7 |
Collective chimney |
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| 8 |
Store for documents to be
burnt |
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| 9 |
SS guard room |
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| 10 |
Zyklon B introduction
opening |
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| 11 |
Coke store |
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| 12 |
Coke wagon on rails |
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| 13 |
entrance to the
basement |
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| Photo 36 |
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Photo 36
(Property
of the Olère family) |
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The construction of Krematorium
III in early March 1943, as seen by David Olère. The chimney is not
yet finished. There is no photographic evidence to confirm that
women prisoners transported the bricks required for its
construction, but this is not unlikely. Although dated 1945, the
caricaturized SS man shows that the sketch was actually drawn some
time in the 50’s.
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AUSCHWITZ:
Technique
and operation
of the gas chambers
Jean-Claude Pressac
© 1989, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation |
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