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THE STRUTHOF
ALBUM STUDY OF THE
GASSING AT NATZWEILER-STRUTHOF
by Jean-Claude Pressac
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Page 8 |
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Pierre Henripierre, a civilian employee
at the Institute of Anatomy, has testified that the bodies were brought there
by truck in three lots: 30 women the first time, then 30 men, and finally
another 26 men. The 86 corpses were spread among six vats full of synthetic
alcohol at 55 degrees Centigrade and not formol [formaldehyde] as is often
believed. One skeleton was missing at the roll-call. An
“incident” had occurred when one of the groups was being pushed into
the gas chamber. Someone resisted and was slaughtered by an SS-man’s
pistol fire. The “spoiled” body was not sent to Strasbourg.
After its “homicidal” use, the gas chamber recovered a
measure of scientific “respectability”. In the fall of 1943, ten
experiments to test for protection against phosgene by hexamethylene tetramine
(urotropine) administered both orally and parenterally, were conducted by
Professor Bickenbach under conditions that did not cause any deaths. A gas
sampling tube had been installed in the door, for the purpose of measuring the
concentration of phosgene in the gas chamber. On the 15 June 1944, four more
experiments were undertaken by Professor Hirt. They caused four deaths by acute
oedema of the lungs, not because, as some historians have thought, the phosgene
concentration was much higher, but because they were under Hirt’s brutal
“direction”. Bickenbach gave his subjects phials containing up to 8
grams of phosgene, with inhalation for 20 minutes in a 20m³ room, with no
mishaps except for slight oedemas. Hirt caused one death with the
administration of a 2.7 g phial over a 25 minute inhalation period, and was
responsible for 3 more deaths with a 10.14 g phial administered for 30 minutes.
Let us try now to understand the discrepancy between Joseph
Kramer’s two depositions. At the Belsen trial he again furnished two often
contradictory versions. Do we then conclude that he was lying each time? It is
not hard to see where the truth lies, by comparing the following two extracts
on the subject of Auschwitz, where Kramer was commandant of sector B.II of
Birkenau from mid-May to the 29 November 1944. In a first deposition he states:
“I have heard allegations by ex-prisoners
from Auschwitz regarding a gas chamber, mass executions and floggings,
regarding the cruelty of the guards, and that all of this supposedly took place
in my presence or that I had knowledge of it. All I can say on the subject is
that these are falsehoods from start to finish.”
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