REPORT OF PROFESSOR ROBERT JAN VAN PELT Table of Contents   Re: M. Undressing Rooms (282-283) Rudolf challenges Mr. Justice Gray's assessment that there is no "innocent" explanation for the presence of undressing rooms in the basements of crematoria 2 and 3 if that piece of evidence is seen in the context of other evidence pointing at the use of those basements as killing installations. The paragraphs to which Rudolf refers are 7.121 and 13.84. As he quoted only part of those paragraphs, I will add the parts omitted in italics. 7.121 The Defendants dismiss as nonsensical the claim that the reason for the redesign of crematorium was to facilitate the fumigation of "objects and corpses". Contemporaneous documents identified by the Defendants show that the new design incorporated an undressing room (Auskleidekeller). Irving was unable to explain in cross-examination what need there would have been for an undressing room if the facility was to be used only for the fumigating of dead bodies and inanimate objects. Irving's theory is in any case untenable, argued van Pelt, because the redesign was clearly intended to enable live people to walk downstairs (see paragraph 7.61 above). Moreover, there would have been no need for a metal-protected, reinforced spy-hole if only corpses and metal objects were to be gassed (see paragraph 7.68 above). 13.84 I have no doubt that Irving is right that there was throughout a need to have fumigation facilities at the camp. There is documentary evidence of concern about the effect on the labour supply of prevailing mortality levels. As van Pelt accepted, ovens would have been required to cremate the large number who succumbed to disease. But in my judgment there is ample evidence which would have convinced an objective commentator that there were also gas chambers which were put to use to kill humans. In the first place there is the eye-witness evidence to which I have referred. Secondly, there is the evidence of van Pelt that the redesign of crematorium 2 in late 1942 was intended to cater for live human beings to walk down to an undressing room before being led into the chamber and to do away with the corpse-slide previously used to convey dead bodies downstairs. Thirdly, there is evidence that a camp doctor asked in January 1943 for the provision of an undressing-room, which would have been unnecessary if the crematorium were intended for corpses. Finally there is the evidence of the letter dated 31 March 1943 in which Bischoff requisitions, as a matter of urgency, a gas-tight door with a spy-hole of extra thickness. It is difficult to see why a spy-hole would be necessary in the door of a chamber used only for fumigating corpses or other objects. For these reasons I do not accept that an objective historian would be persuaded that the gas chambers served only the purposes of fumigation. The evidence points firmly in the direction of a homicidal use of the chambers as well. In response, Rudolf provides a short response in which he proposes that inmates who died in the barracks, at work, in the camp hospital etc, were brought fully clothed to the crematorium, and that as they needed to be undressed somewhere in the crematorium. Therefore there was a need for an undressing room. This theory is not new. In fact, it was proposed in 1997 by Arthur Butz in one of his many attempts to deal with what he called the "nagging 'Gassing Cellar' Problem. 79 Butz's suggestion was preceded by Faurisson, who suggested in 1991 in a comment on the book by Jean-Claude Pressac that the word Undressing Room was a "harmless technical term." 80 But they are both historically wrong. First of all they do not provide any evidence to support their suggestion. Second, there is evidence that corpses of people who had died in the camp were naked when their bodies were brought to the crematorium. Filip Müller does not mention the undressing of corpses when he describes the arrival of the bodies of those who have died in the camp at the crematorium, and he does not mention that these corpses were stored in the morgue next to the incineration room. 81 He does, however, describe the undressing of the bodies of those who have been shot in the crematorium. 82 Pery Broad describes how those who were shot in Block 11 had to undress first. 83 This is the reason why the practice had developed to tattoo the registered prisoners: because the bodies were stored naked, it was difficult for the clerks who kept the deathbooks to keep track of who had died. The tattoos solved the problem. I have already quoted Irena Strzelecka in her study of the Auschwitz hospitals: A permanent feature of the camp scene was the numerous piles of bodies of male and female prisoners amassed temporarily at various locations, mostly in washing rooms in hospital and living blocks, as well as in various outdoor sites. Masses of bodies were most visible in Birkenau, especially on the grounds of the hospitals. At any hour, prisoners encountered piles of naked bodies swarming with rats gnawing at the scraps of muscle tissue. 84 And then there is evidence in the drawings of the Czech Jew Alfred Kantor. Imprisoned in Auschwitz from December 1943 to July 1944, Kantor was liberated in Terezin in 1945. Immediately after his liberation, Kantor began to draw what he had seen. On page 61 of his notebook, one finds a drawing entitled "Hospital." It shows the last bunk of a barrack which has become the place where the "disqualifieds - prisoners weakened to death" live. In front of the bunk are four naked corpses. On page 62 Kantor made a picture entitled "Loading dead bodies." It shows the cart outside the barrack, and prisoners throwing the naked corpses on the cart. 85 This is, in any case, another example of the vice of selective criticism. Taken in isolation from the rest of the evidence, the word Auskleidekeller may obviously be neutral. Considered in its proper historical context, it is far from being so. That context is wholly ignored by Rudolf in this section of his report. For example, he omits to notice that, while the extant drawings of crematorium 2 designate the room as Leichenkeller 2, morgue 2, this description is superseded in various SS documents of early 1943 where the room is referred to as the Auskleidekeller and that this change in terminology is contemporaneous with numerous other significant changes in the design, all of which tend to the conclusion that the original purpose of the building (corpse storage and incineration) had been abandoned in favor of a sinister one (homicidal gassing and incineration). I have reviewed some of the documentary evidence that points at the transformation of the crematoria 2 and 3 in killing stations in my analysis of the changing purpose of the basement of these buildings written in response to Rudolf's assertion that the plan to preheat the morgue did not have any sinister connotations (pp. 60ff. above). I mentioned that the dramatic increase in incineration capacity planned in August 1942 far exceeded the "normal" mortality of a concentration camp, and that this new capacity of over 4,000 corpses per day suggest that all these crematoria were to be part of a program of genocide involving victims to be brought from outside the camp to Birkenau to be killed and incinerated there. Then I pointed to a blueprint drawn in December 1942 which showed the intention to drop the corpse slide and that projected a new staircase into the basement of crematoria 2 and 3 that offered a convenient access for people. I also pointed out that this plan also showed that the doors of morgue 1 were to be re-hung from opening inwards to opening outwards. I mentioned the letter dated January 29, 1943 in which Bischoff referred to one of the basement spaces of crematorium 2 as a Leichenkeller, but he labels the second space as a Vergasungskeller, or gassing cellar, and I discussed Bischoff's letter dated February 11, 1943 in which he expressed frustration with the fact that the ventilator of morgue 1 was needed "with special urgency" and that without this ventilator "the installation can not be taken into operation." A document I did not mention at that time was an order for 10 gas detectors originally made on February 26, 1943 to Topf. On March 2, 1943 Topf responded to this order as follows: Re: Crematorium, Gas Detectors. We acknowledge receipt of your telegram specifying "immediately send ten gas detectors as agreed, price quote to follow." We hereby inform you that two weeks ago we inquired, of five different companies, concerning the residual prussic acid [HCN] detection devices sought by you. We have received negative responses from three companies and two have not yet answered. When we receive information on this matter, we shall immediately contact you, in order to put you in touch with a company that makes these devices. 86 Then I discussed the letter of March 6, 1943 that suggests to pre-heat morgue 1, and the letter of March 31, 1943 in which Bischoff referred to a gas door for Leichenkeller 1 of crematorium 3, and specifies that it is to be an exact copy of the one made for crematorium 2, that is with a spy-hole of double 8mm glass with rubber seal and metal fitting, and so on. All of these pieces of evidence converge to the conclusion that the eyewitnesses were right when they testified that the underground morgues of crematoria 2 and 3 became a killing installation using as gas chamber as a means of execution. And when the evidence concerning the presence of an undressing cellar is put in the context of all of this other evidence, then it is again clear that those eyewitnesses who testified that the killing installations of crematoria 2 and 3 consisted of a sequence of rooms that included an undressing room and a gas chamber told the truth.
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