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The Holocaust and the Neo-Nazi Mythomania
© 1978, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
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= 45 m3, he calculates." (41,
p. 63). This manner of presenting Gerstein's account necessitates a few
observations.
First of all, Rassinier is inventing when he says that
Gerstein "measured" the dimensions of the gas chambers that he had seen; for
Gerstein, he who in another connection gave the detail that he had measured the
duration of the gassing with a stop watch, says nothing like that. It is
perfectly obvious that it is a question of an estimate by "the naked eye", with
all of the approximation which it implies, particularly on behalf of a man who
was profoundly and violently struck by what he saw in 1942 and who still
remained at the height of his emotion in 1945, in the middle of the defeat,
while writing his "report." This explains the fact that one time he indicates
an area of 4x5 meters and another time 5x5. As for the number of gas chambers
that he mentions – at one time 6 and at another time 4 (never ten as
Rassinier abusively indicates), the contradiction is only apparent: an
attentive reading of Gerstein's text reveals only that at the time of the first
visit he saw six empty chambers ("Moreover, this afternoon I did not notice,"
he underscores) and the next day four in operation without one's knowing
whether it was a question of the same and how many there were in all at Belzec.
Based on his declarations, it is possible only to say that there were at
least six, but there is no contradiction. Gerstein says twice that 700-800
or 750 persons had been piled into each of the chambers. It is evident that
here, too, he gives not a precise figure which, besides, he had no means of
establishing, but rather an estimate expressing an extreme piling up,
underscored in the context: "In the chambers, the SS push the men. "Fill up
well" – Hauptmann Wirth has ordered (it). The naked men are standing at
each other's feet..." And further on he adds again: "At Belzec and Treblinka
the trouble was not taken to count in any exact manner the number of Jews
killed."
Finally, Gerstein speaks of a train containing 6,700 persons,
which Rassinier finds unlikely, writing in the usual tone of mockery "(...) it
is certain that with its mere 6,700 (...) persons, this train of forty-five
carriages was the most nightmarish of all the trains transporting deportees
(...). Thus Kurt Gerstein decidedly has not an accurate eye, and for an
engineer that is not very flattering" (41, p. 64). Rassinier is wrong to
exercise in this matter his ironic and acid verve; Gerstein indicates
sufficiently clearly that it was in fact a question of a "nightmarish" train,
since he says that upon arrival out of 6,700 persons there were already 1,450
dead. As for the accuracy of engineer Gerstein's eye, there is every chance
that no one had ever taught him nor given him the opportunity before his
journey to calculate with precision the area of the chambers of a
slaughter-house for men, nor the number of persons that could be piled in there
by force to exterminate them. It is perhaps more exact to say that confronted
with the sight this engineer lost his calmness to the point of forgetting all
of the compasses in the world, which is rather "flattering" for him.
It
is undeniable that there are some flagrant contradictions in the "report" and
that certain of them are real, for example the area of the
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The Holocaust and the Neo-Nazi Mythomania
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