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AUSCHWITZ:
Technique
and Operation
of
the Gas Chambers © | |
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Page 560 |
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In September 1982, my paper was published under the
title “BIRKENAU KREMATORIEN IV and V and their gas
chambers” in the journal of the Centre de Documentation
Juive Contemporaine, “Le Monde Juif”. No 107. The
differences in interpretation between Georges Wellers and myself
were clearly stated in his preface. He did not agree with my theory,
i.e. that “the decision to build Krematorien IV and V (as well as II
and III) was taken by the SS free of any criminal context, the
latter having appeared later”, but was incapable of disproving it,
due to a lack of documents. His refutation was based only on counter
hypotheses. However, it was I who was mistaken about the genesis
of Krematorien IV and V, which were directly planned for
criminal purposes. This is because when I wrote that paper in 1982 I
had not taken into account certain unexplained “details” (but my
theory remains valid for Krematorien I, II and III]. At the time,
Georges Weller was no more able than I was to coordinate these
“details” with the whole. The documents proving the existence of a
gas chamber in Krematorium IV were what counted above all for him.
Since the CDJC journal does not reach a large public, he presented
the "Gasskammer" it in a chapter on Auschwitz in the book “Les
chambres à gaz, secret d’Etat” [Editions de Minuit 1984, and
1983 for the original German edition].
After this article, I
continued with my research. I had to go all the way. One day in the
PMO, white the Museum librarian was finding some newspaper articles
on the “Krematorium architects”, Dejaco and Ertl, for me, she
brought me “The Auschwitz Album” published by Serge
Klarsfeld to help me while away the time. I noticed two photographs,
that I had probably seen before, but to which I had not paid
particular attention, The first showed women and children, with, in
the background, the underground undressing room of Krematorium III,
quietly waiting, as can be deduced, before the wire meshed entrance
gate to the yard of Krematorium II. The second, a group of three men
and a woman, with behind them Krematorium IV, walking towards the
photographer, ready to enter, as can be deduced. Krematorium V.
Serge Klarsfeld had found the “human element” that was lacking from
my own “architectural” explanations. Back in France, I contacted
him, and he gave me a copy of his Album. Once I had
looked through it, my mania for putting things in order took over,
and I sensed that there were “series” of photographs, for example,
that the shots of the “selection” process showed several different
ones. I wanted to find the different sequences recorded by the SS
photographer and determine his exact position for each shot. I
studied the photographs in the Album, and since the quality of
reproductions was less than perfect I again turned to Serge
Klarsfeld and asked him if I could consult the originals. He allowed
me to do so, and in February 1983, with Seuil about to publish a
French version of the American edition of the Album,
Serge Klarsfeld had the publication held up while I put all the
photographs in order and took responsibility for the French edition,
with the help of Anne Freyer who was in charge of the project for
Seuil. The manuscript was completed in June and the book came out in
November 1983.
At the end of 1981, while visiting the stacks
of the PMO archives, I discovered files BW 30/32 to 30/42, whose
existence I had not been aware of. They contained in particular the
“diary” of Messing, a Topf & Sons employee who fitted the
ventilation systems in the furnace rooms, undressing rooms and gas
chambers of Krematorien II and III between January and June 1943; a
notebook with entries written in green ink, relating in similar
terms the work of Riedel & Son on Krematorien IV and V; and a
file of documents concerning the Krematorien obtained from a Soviet
source. These hitherto unknown documents provided another barrowload
of “slips or criminal traces”.
For me, the whole
question of the Krematorien and gas chambers of all sorts in the
former Auschwitz Birkenau concentration camp was resolved beyond all
shadow of a doubt by April 1984. Files BW 30/32 to 30/42 confirmed
virtually all my theories. A further piece of evidence found at the
Central Commission for the Investigation of Hitlerite Crimes in
Poland, in Warsaw, proved “by a + b” that Faurisson’s thesis
was simply nonsense, to use the politest term possible. The “works”
of the revisionists were no longer worth anything more than an
ironic smile. I had at last reached the end of the tunnel and
established a truth, my own, not taken from any other people, and as
close as humanly possible to the absolute truth that can never be
grasped. Serge Klarsfeld then quite simply [!] asked me to put in
black and white all that I had learned. So I went back to work.
In April 1984, the Belgian memorial at Auschwitz was
completed [Photo 41]. It was designed by the Belgian artist,
Serge Creuz, of the Maison de la Bellone in Bruxelles. His work is
strictly apolitical and antitotalitarian. I was extremely moved by
it, as I have always worked in the same spirit. The visitor arrives
to find a traditional dining room of comfortable city-dwellers,
furnished in the pre-way style. On the wall is a 1942 calendar. The
room oozes quiet and peaceful family life, despite the war. There is
then a dark entrance, the arrest, the journey in cattle trucks, and
then the memorial proper [Photo 41]. The family from the
empty dining room was made up of five people: father, mother, a son
and two younger daughters. They are on the left, dressed like you
and me, left, and are looking at the at the visitor. They are
ordinary decent people. Their shoes have left footprints on the
yellow paving leading into the room, then they become the prints of
bare feet disappearing towards the eyes at the end of the room. What
remains of this fine family? The result is on the right; the man,
his head shaved [a preventative measure against lice!], in the zebra
prison uniform, and the empty silhouettes with carbonized edges of
the woman and the three children. This is the tragic condensation of
the awful truth, the brutal reality of the expression “Auschwitz
Birkenau”. A negation of humanity.
Right at the beginning of
my “training course” in Oswiecim, the Poles had told me that the
former prisoner 16660, a Pole wearing the red triangle of the
“politicals,” Father O. Maksymilian Kolbe, had died Kolbe, had died
in the odor of sanctity because he had given his life to save that
of a fellow prisoner. I listened with only half an ear to this
story, which left me indifferent. If Kolbe had the qualities
required to be canonized, then so did the MAJORITY of prisoners, if
only because of the suffering they endured in this “accursed land”
[as Hermann Chaim, member of the Sonderkommando of Krematorien II or
III, wrote of Birkenau in a letter of 6th November 1944, found after
the Liberation]. When Kolbe was officially declared “Saint” I was
pleased about it for the sake of the Poles, but saw this story as
just one banal episode among many others in the Hell of Auschwitz.
Then, at the end of 1985, came the installation of a of a Carmelite
cloister in the former “Theatergebäude”, to provide a place of
prayer close to Block 11 [the “Death Block”] where Kolbe had died.
Part of the camp enclosure was to be removed to provide a direct
path between the cloister and Block 11. With that, the affair become
quite shocking: the sorrow of Auschwitz was being recuperated for
the exclusive benefit of the Catholic Church, The matter should have
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Photo 37:
(PMO
neg No 292)
Construction of Krematorium III by HUTA firm
in March 1943. The collective chimney is completed. Behind the
chimney a mixed gang of prisoners and civilian workers can be seem
pouring the concrete ceiling of the furnace room. |
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| Photo 38 |
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Photo
38:
[Yad Vashem and PMO neg. no. 20995/509] |
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View of the east side
and south end of Krematorium IV in April 1943, taken from the
“Bauleitung Album” and used in the annexes on the Krematorien in
“L’Album d’Auschwitz” published by Seuil on November
1983. Inscriptions by the author. |
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Translation of
inscriptions |
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Krematorium IV or BW
30b
East and south sides, April 1943
(handed over by the
Bauleitung in working order on 22nd March 1943) |
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Chambres à gaz / Gas
chambers |
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Porte étanche au gaz / Gas tight
door |
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Pièce du “Médecin” / “Doctor's
room” |
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Lucarnes éclairant le vestiaire
/ morgue -
Windows illuminating the
morgue/undressing the room |
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Sas / Air lock |
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Cokerie/ Coke store |
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Salle du four à 8 creusets d
’incineration /
Furnace room with eight
cremation muffles |
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WC et lavabos / WC and
washroom |
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Pièce des SS / SS room
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AUSCHWITZ:
Technique
and operation
of the gas chambers
Jean-Claude Pressac
© 1989, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation |
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