Mattogno's Attack on Pressac and Auschwitz

by J. L.

A student essay from Dr. Elliot Neaman's History 210 class (historical methods - spring 1998)

I have been well aware of the fact there exists in the world, people who harbor hatred toward another group of human beings. I have never personally met a bigot, I guess I should count myself fortunate, for bigots appear to me to be small, close minded, uninteresting people. This is one of the reasons why I was interested in reading Mattogno’s critique of Pressac’s study.

I could tell that Mattogno had enough intelligence to mask his real intentions in what read as a thinly veiled attempt to debunk long held views about the deathcamp of Auschwitz, and it’s adjacent sub-camp at Birkenau. He does not go so far as to be openly anti-Semitic, so I cannot justly say he is so. However, I believe there were other reasons than those of scholarly astutes which motivated Mattogno to write what he did.

Mattogno introduces himself as linguist, a researcher and a man of international note in the field of history. A person who has supposedly dedicated himself to historical revisionism. He is associated with neither a university nor reputable organization. Yet he would have us believe he is a scholar of some importance. The only organization he seems to be affiliated with is the Institute for Historical Review. As we are by now well aware, the institute is devoted to denying the Holocaust.

Mattogno will lay out what he calls " many faults" in Pressac’s analysis. He will use Pressac’s figures in reverse logic, essentially trying to confuse in what is an attempt to dupe the reader into buying his argument. In his introduction, he is so blatantly confident he will succeed in convincing you, he proclaims he will prove gas chambers and crematoria were never installed in Auschwitz.

Following, after a brief examination of Mattogno’s attack on Pressac, I will take a look at what Pressac actually says about the crematoria. After having taken a look at the conclusions of both men, I will use the studies of Franciszek Piper and Randolph Braham which will be used to support my assertion Pressac’s is the more valid of the two.

Studies of the crematory ovens have to confront and solve two problems, what Mattogno calls thermotechnical problems, capacity and yield. Capacity is the number of corpses cremated within a time frame. Yield is the relation between heat produced and used. More to-the-point, it is the relation between amount of fuel needed to heat the oven to the degree needed for consumption. Mattogno says Pressac did not scientifically examine either of these two problems while doing his study. He therefore could not have come to the conclusions he did, which are as follows.

The Auscwitz model oven had a capacity of 30 to 36 corpses per day. The ovens were used approximately 21 hours per day. The three two-chambered ovens had the capacity of 200 to 250 corpses per day. The capacity of the five, three-chambered ovens at Birkenau was 800-1000 corpses per day. The capacity of the two eight-chambered ovens installed in Crematories 4 and 5 at Birkenau was 500 corpses per day. Cremations lasted approximately forty minuets. Therefore the total capacity of the crematories at Auscwitz-Birkenau was 4,156 per day starting in March 1943.

To Mattogno, these figures are completely without technical and documentary proof. Concerning the capacity and attacking Pressac’s citation of a Topf firm letter, the Topf firm which was the company which contracted to build the crematories, he says Pressac obviously had no understanding of the content of the letter. He states the rate of 30 to 36 corpses, taking 40 minutes to burn in one oven, could only be obtained under optimal conditions with the aid of an intake draft system. The oven’s typical limit of efficiency for adult corpses was 60 minutes when you count principal combustion plus the post-combustion which lasted 20 minutes.

The aforementioned figures which Pressac is using apparently don't apply to Auschwitz because they are based on a model called the "Gusen Model", therefore, when Pressac was applying them to the ovens at Auscwitz, he was doing so theoretically.

The gas generating ovens which were heated by coke required daily cleaning to remove the residue of the coke that stained onto the furnaces. This caused considerable downtime for the ovens which meant they were only in operation for 20 hours per day.

The data in the Topf letter apparently states the maximum capacity for the two chambered ovens as 228 corpses per day. Therefore, Pressac need not have given his estimate of 200 to 250 corpses per day because he knew the actual number.

The capacity of the eight chambered ovens is actually more like 756 copses per day, so Pressac's estimate of 800 to 1000 is technically errant. What is Matagno's main point through all of this is that since Pressac's information has technical faults, then we should ignore his study as it is incorrect.

Mattogno then attacks the figures of the estimated number of people who lost their lives at Auscwitz-Birkenau. Again, he returns to belaboring the point of capacity in his supposition of the reality of gassings. He bases this part of his argument on the apparent lack of an efficient draft intake system in the ovens at Auschwitz. For this reason, he only allows 20 hours of operation(a point he repeatedly makes), the operation time is further reduced by the need for the air to clear. Therefore, it is his point that the actual capacity is 1,040 corpses per day, approximately 3000 less than Pressac's estimate.

Next, he attempts to explain the reason for the gas chambers. During the summer of 1942, a typhus epidemic had descended on the camp. The decimation in the male sector alone was in the first weeks of August was 4,113. Therefore the ovens were established on the order of Himmler, to deal with the deaths due to the typhus outbreak and the expected increase in the POW population who would ultimately die from the disease. The ovens were not there as result of any homicidal gassings.

The crematoria also have an architectural problem if they were actually used to burn corpses on a massive scale as is alleged during the Holocaust.

At the beginning of 1942, the basements of the crematoria had undergone simple upgrades to facilitate the expected numbers of dead from disease. If the crematoria had not been a simple sanitary installation, it’s transformation into a part of the final solution would have made necessary the upgrades and modifications needed for mass extermination.. This basically means they would need to install additional ovens.

That did not happen. Therefore, if the crematoria did not receive upgrades in their function levels, the figures Pressac supposes as the actual numbers for the amount of corpses cremated in one day, are wrong. The fact that there is no existing evidence to support Pressac’s arguments on these statistics, is another example of his failure to efficiently examine the evidence in it’s entirety.

Pressac asserted that Zyklon B was the ingredient used for extermination. Though he recognizes that Zyklon B was used for delousing purposes, massive amounts were ordered by the SS commandant as the major extermination tool.

Mattogno rejects this assertion outright. He argues Zyklon B was only used for a disinfectant on all incoming prisoners. The amount needed for the final solution was actually much more than what Mattogno says was used. Of the total tonnage of Zyklon B which was ordered and used by Auschwitz, only 2% to 3% of the amount Pressac stipulates would have been needed for disinfecting. Therefore, it is his reasoning that Pressac was, for all intents and purposes, fabricating his evidence.

It is important to bring up Mattogno's argument against the figures relating to the deaths of a number of Hungarian Jews. Why he decides to I’m not sure because, as far as I can tell, Pressac does not discuss the plight of the Hungarian Jews in his study. But since Mattogno raises the issue in his reasoning against the existence of gas chambers and crematoria, I felt it prudent to address his argument.

Of the 438,000 Hungarian Jews who were sent to Auscwitz-Birkenau, 146,000 were saved through work ability, which leaves 292,000 who died at the hands of the Nazis, according to Mattogno. As a point of interest, the numbers he came to are roughly average with the accepted number of deaths by mainstream scholars, just presented in a way to confuse the reader.

But because Mattogno does not furnish any proof of the actual transfer of the 146,000 who were saved, it is easy for him to say that of the 438,000 shipped to the camp, and allowing for the deaths of roughly 28,000 old and informed people who died from hardship, it is conceivable 410,000 lived through Auscwitz-Birkenau.

If 410,000 lived, then the process of extermination that supposedly was in existence could not have been so. The proof, to Mattogno, lies in the unaccountability of the Holocaust promoters to substantiate the figures. According to Mattogno, of the Hungarian Jews who lived through the death camp, most either went on to live in either the United States or Israel, living to a ripe old age.

Now that you have the basic arguments Mattogno has against Pressac, what does Pressac really say in his study on Auschwitz-Birkenau?

The Topf Firm was, in fact, engaged to build the crematoria. They had the technical know how, the experience of qualified personnel and the German government had already contracted with them to build crematoria at Buchenwald.

By 1941 there would be an exceptionally close relationship growing between the camp command structure, what Pressac calls the Zentralbauleitung, and the firm. The architect of the ovens whose correspondence is much of the evidence for Pressac’s argument, is a regular guest at the camp.

Kurt Prufer designed the entire system from gas chamber to the inner workings of the crematoria. When the system needed to be expanded, he showed them how. When the smokestack of the crematoria began to crack from overuse, he made s special trip to correct the problem, and ended up making the system more efficient. Prufer provided all the technical assistance the Nazis needed and he made a commission every time he installed an oven. He left a detailed description of everything he did.

For Auschwitz, they would incorporate what were then considered new innovations to facilitate the task of the crematoria. The ovens had to be fueled by coke. The older systems fueled by oil had to be phased out due to the rationing that had been necessitated in Germany by the war. This new coke firing system would need a special ventilation system incorporated into the roof of the ovens in order to handle the added time needed to burn the amount corpses they would have to for the final solution.

As the size of the gas chambers, and as result the crematoria were increased, the designers of the system realized they needed to increase the size of the ventilators in conjunction with the rest of the system. It was decided the number of ventilators in each oven would be increased from 2 to 3. This would provide enough intake of air to create what they called forced draft, a system that took in air in an exponentially greater rate to facilitate consumption, and remove the smoke faster into the stack which served the entire crematoria.

For example, the crematoria that were to built at the adjacent camp of Birkenau, were to have a 66% increase in their ventilation capacity. This would mean they would have the capacity to move 8,000 cubic meters of air through the oven in one hour. A far more efficient system for round the clock use the SS was expecting the for the ovens. It was on-line and functioning by the summer of 1942. The number corpses Pressac says were cremated daily was 1,440 approximately for each oven.

Pressac acknowledges there was a typhus epidemic and this was pretty much an expected threat to people who lived in conditions that existed in a place like Auschwitz. However, there was never the need for a crematoria the size of the ones which existed at Auscwhitz to service just those who died from the disease. When the epidemic did break out, the backlog it created was apparently so fierce, that the SS were forced to bury overflow in large earth pits, situated in the forest surrounding.

This had the result of prompting the camp administration to accelerate the building of larger and better crematoria needed to handle the extra amounts of deaths. Birkenau was chosen as the sight for the new construction as not one, but two additional ovens were added to the already existing ones. The number of corpses that could be cremated in Birkenau was 6,670 prisoners per day. As you can see, the Birkenau ovens were becoming the industrial workhorses of the extermination complex and it would be in these, that the vast majority of the bodies were being disposed by 1943.

On the subject of the Zyklon B Pressac has this to say. Yes, there was Zyklon B used for disinfecting. On that point, all records seam to agree. The facts also point to excessive amount of residue the poison left on the walls of the gas chambers. The only reason there could be these high levels of residue remaining would be that massive amounts, an estimate of over 90% more, was used. That means that of the total amount of Zyklon B which was reported to have been sent to the camp, and as stated earlier Mattogno used the same figures in a backward argument, only 2% to 3% were used for the delousing. That means the rest were going for the purpose of the genocide.

The issue of the Zyklon B and the crematoria has been delicate ones, in which many of those in the deniers camp have decided to attack it’s relevance. To further add credence to Pressac’s argument, I though it might be a good ideas to get another scholars point of view. I decided on Franciszek Piper.

Piper states the first of the prisoners gassed by Zyklon B were 600 Soviet prisoners of war, who met their deaths in the summer of 1941. Zyklon B was an efficient killing agent which was found locally and had a tendency to exterminate in a rather short time span, allowing the Nazis to keep to their rigorous schedule. The resulting test gassing, if you will, pointed to Zyklon B as the most likely agent to perform the job at hand.

Additional prisoners of war were tested but it was just a few days later that Jews were being exterminated en masse along with them. A description of one camp prisoner described the process in this manner, "The prisoners were ordered to undress in an anteroom, then they quietly entered the mortuary where they were told they were to be deloused. The filled the rooms to capacity. The doors were then sealed and the gas put into to the room through holes in the roof."

Another eyewitness’s testimony described the event in the following. " A sad procession walked along the streets of the camp. It had started at the railway siding, breaching out from the main railway line which led to the camp. Suspecting nothing, the column marched in, five persons abreast and came to a halt in the yard. They numbered 400 to 500 people. The SS man closed the gate after them. They were told they would then be bathed and undergo delousing; the guards didn’t want any epidemics in the camp. Then they were told they would go to their barracks for hot soup. The first lines entered the mortuary through the anteroom. As soon as the last person entered, the SS guards disappeared. Suddenly the door closed. Those inside were gripped by terror and stared to beat on the door in helpless fits of rage and despair".

Corroborating Pressac on his analysis, Piper states that in the months of 1942, the gassing operation was in fact extended to Birkenau. This was caused by the small capacity of the gas chambers at the main camp, and the difficulties the SS was having in camouflaging them. The expansion at Birkenau then, was a move that was the direct result of the decision of the Nazis to exterminate European Jewry. The expansion was not just a result of coincidence.

Initially, the victims were gassed in one chamber at Birkenau. When that became too small for the capacity, a farmhouse was rid of it’s inhabitants and converted into a gas chamber. Pressac said the same thing. Therefore, it is logical to assume both of these Holocaust scholars would not make the same error in their studies and support each other while independently doing so.

As I have already stated, Mattogno puts forth the theory the majority of the Hungarian Jews lived through Auschwitz. I will now attack that theory using a study by Randolph Braham.

According to Braham, the Hungarian Jews represented a unique place in the Holocaust. The reason being is they remained relatively well off and cohesive until the Nazis occupied Hungary on March 19, 1944.

First off, there were more than 800,000 Hungarian citizens of the Jewish faith in 1944. Protected by their government, an ally of Germany, they believed they would be safe from the persecution. After German occupation in the late stages of the war, this large community was subjected to the most ruthless, concentrated and swift destruction process of the war. Within a few months, all of the Jews in Hungary had, for the most part, been sent to concentration camps, the majority of which went to Auschwitz.

The SS began operations against the Jews as soon as the occupation was complete. They immediately rounded up the leaders of the Jewish communities, prominent artists and journalists, and a large number of Jews who happened to be around railway terminals. Why they randomly picked up Jews who happened to be around railway terminals is unclear.

To ensure the orderly deportation, Hungary was divided into six zones, each encompassing the one or two police districts the country was already divided into.. Accompanied by Hungarian police and SS, special "civilian officials", anti-Semitic Hungarian citizens who volunteered for the task, the roundup began on April 16, 1944. Their first destination were the ghettos of the cities the Nazis had by then become famous for. A little less than one month from when the Germans occupied the country.

In zone one, which encompassed the Northeastern part of Hungary, more than 6,300 Jews were marched from their ghetto to the train station, where they were stripped of whatever remaining valuables they still had. After many days in the ghetto, many were relived they were leaving, lulled by the rumors the SS spread which led them to believe they were going to a work farm for the remainder of the war. They arrived in Auschwitz on May 16. These were the first Jewish citizens of Hungary who entered the deathcamp.

A this point, they were separated into those who were to die immediately and those who would live to work. For those who mat their fate immediately, the extermination process was methodical. Those who were about to be gassed lined up outside the facilities housing the crematoria. One survivor who witnessed the procession said the lines to the chamber was thousands of people long.

After the gassing, the bodies were processed by the Sonderkommando, prisoners who were higher up in the hierarchy. Anything valuable such as gold fillings in the victims teeth was removed to further the advancement of the economic interests of Germany.

Now, here are the real figures for what happened to the Hungarian Jews.

Of approximately 438,00O Hungarians who were deported to Auschwitz from May 19 to July 9, 1944, only about 10% were determined to be fit for labor. Not the other way around as Mattogno’s reverse logic would like us to believe. Some remained in Auschwitz-Birkenau but the remainder and the vast majority were sent other camps in the Nazi dominion, the largest concentrations going to Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau, Gross-Rosen, Mathaussen and Sachenhausen. Most of those who were sent to these camps did not survive to see the liberation in April and May 1945. They most assuredly did not live to emigrate to Israel and the United States.

So how do we know so much about these late stage deportations? The reasons are that both the Germans and the Hungarians prepared detailed reports on the progress of the liquidation process and especially those who went to Auschwitz.

The completion of operations for northern Hungary was reported on June 30. Following the completion of this zone, the number of deportees had risen to 340,162. After the southern part had been rid of its Jews, that number rose to 381,661. After the final deportations, the figure was 437,402 Jews had been taken to their final destination.

In this analysis of Mattogano’s argument against the existence of the gas chambers, I have seen the demented effort of one man to cast doubt on the horrifying reality of the Holocaust. Mattogno, through clever jargon, rewording of the facts, belaboring points over and over, would have us believe the single most devastating event in Jewish history did not happen.

He says the evidence Pressac accumulated is technically errant, yet offers no technical proof to refute Pressac. Pressac apparently based his information on the an type of oven called the Gusen model, a type not used at Auschwitz and therefore, Pressac could not have correct.

The amount of time Pressac calculated for the cremation process was incorrect because coke fuel caused a resin which consistently needed to be cleaned. Therefore, the he is wrong on that point. If the time is wrong, then the actual figures of corpses burned is wrong. Along with that, the data from the Topf firm Pressac basis much of his technical information on is wrong.

Since, according to Mattogno, Pressac’s study is incorrect, then all accepted beliefs of Auscwitz are also wrong. This includes the fate of the Hungarian Jews, of which, he would have us believe the vast majority survived the war. Something he states as fact, without offering any proof.

Mattogno is an idiot. A lackey of the Institute For Historical Review. He offers no real evidence for his arguments. He thinks that by cleverly rewording the facts and figures, and bombarding the reader with endless amounts of graphs that basically say nothing, he can trick people into believing Auschwitz was not the deathcamp it was. If Auschwitz was not the final destination for so many helpless European Jews, then by his reasoning, its conceivable the Nazis never enacted the plan they called "The Final Solution".

Were I ever to meet Mattogno, I would ask him, if all these people did not perish at the hands of the Nazis? If there were never gas chambers and crematoria involved in a cohesive effort at genocide? If Auschwitz and other camps like it were not involved in the attempted extermination of European Jewry, then where are they? They did not go on to live in other countries, namely Israel and the U.S.. That much, we do know.

Bibliography

Mattogno, Carlo. Auschwitz: The End of a Legend. A Critique of J.C. Pressac. Newport Beach CA: The Institute for Historical Review. 1994

Pressac, Jean-Claude with Robert-Jan Van Pelt. The Machinery of Mass Murder at Auschwitz. Excerpt from Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp. Bloomington IA: Indiana University Press. 1994

Piper, Franciszek. Gas Chambers and Crematoria. Excerpt from Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp. Bloomington IA: Indiana University Press. 1994

Braham, Randolph. Hungarian Jews. Excerpt from Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp. Bloomington IA: Indiana University Press. 1994 Kazimierez, Smolen. The Concentration Camp Auschwitz. Excerpt from The History of Auschwitz. New York: Howard Fertig. 1982

Lipstadt, Deborah. Denying The Holocaust: The Growing Assault On Truth and Memory. New York: Plume. 1994.