The Instrument of Crime

If we try to imagine the goal of a criminal trial, we must admit the primordial importance of hearing experts giving their opinion on a wide range of questions, if only to reach a conclusion as to the credibility of many witnesses as well as a few "documents". Let us formulate here what a few of these questions would be : " How long did it take for "Zyclon B" gas to act, and how did its effects manifest themselves ?

" How long did the gas remain active in an enclosed space (either unventilated or ventilated immediately after use) ?

" Was it possible,as has been stated, to enter the premises without a mask when they were impregnated with "Zyklon B" gas, only half an hour after use of the gas ?

" Was it possible to burn the corpses completely within 20 minutes in a crematorium oven?

" Could crematorium ovens work day and night without time to cool off?

" Is it possible to burn human bodies in ditches several meters deep, and if so how long would it take ? Until now, no "incriminating proof" has been produced. We shall only give two examples:

* that of the "itinerant gas chambers" in lorries ;

* that of the soap made from human fat (a tall story already used during the 1914-1918 war) (Just as "gassing" is a recycled version of the "gassing" of Serbs by Bulgars in 1916).

Source: "The Daily Telegraph",London Marc22nd 1916.p.7 "The history of the exterminations by genuine "mobile gas chambers", which were lorries in which thousands of people are supposed to have been killed by a twist of the Diesel exhaust pipe towards the interior was first spread in Western opinion in the "New York Times" of July 16th 1943, p.7." (Until then, the theme had been developed only in the Soviet press.) The Daily Telegraph, London June 25th 1946. p.5.

There again, the crime weapon (hundreds, if not thousands, of lorries specially installed for these murders) has disappeared. Not one of them was ever found and shown as evidence at any trial.

Here too, we can note that if the "extermination" plan had to remain an absolute "secret", it would be strange if it had been communicated to thousands of lorry drivers and their assistants who would have dealt with the victims (without any order of mission), making thousands of bodies disappear by magic, while being the keepers of the "terrible secret".

It was Wiesenthal who promoted the legend of "human soap" in articles published in 1946 in the Austrian Jewish community paper, "Der Neue Weg" (The new way). In an article entitled "RIF", he wrote :

"The terrible words "Transport for soap" were heard for the first time at the end of 1942. It was the general Government (of Poland) and the factory was at Belzec, in Galicia. From April 1942 to May 1943, 900,000 Jews were used as raw material in this factory." After the transformation of the corpses into various raw materials, Wiesenthal wrote:

" the leftovers, the residual fatty waste, was used for the production of soap." He added:

"After 1942, the people in the general Government knew very well what RIF soap meant. The civilized world cannot imagine the joy this soap gave the Nazis of the general Government and their wives. In each bar of soap, they saw a Jew who had been magically placed there and thus prevented from becoming a second Freud, Ehrlich or Einstein." The Yad Vashem Memorial has answered very officially that the Nazis did not make soap out of Jewish corpses. During the war, Germany suffered a shortage of fats and the production of soap was placed under the supervision of the government. The bars of soap were marked with the initials RIF, the German abbreviation meaning "pure industrial fat". Certain people mistakenly thought it was RJF and meant "pure Jewish fat".

The rumor spread rapidly.
There is a document which, if it were discussed seriously and publicly, would put an end to the controversies about the "gas chambers": this is the "Leuchter Report" (April 5 th 1988).

Zyklon B gas, made from cyanhydric substances, is considered to have been the product used to gas a multitude of prisoners. It is normally used to disinfect clothing and instruments that could spread contagion in epidemics such as typhus, and was in use before World War I.

[Cyanide gas, HCN] was used for an execution for the first time in Arizona in 1920. Other American states used it for their Death-row inmates : California, Colorado, Maryland, Mississipi, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico and North Carolina.

Source : Leuchter Report (number 9.004) Leuchter was an engineer who served as consultant for the State of Missouri, California and North Carolina. Today, several of these states have given up this method of execution because [...] the security precautions required for its use make it an expensive method of execution.

Fumigation with Zyklon B requires a minimum ventilation of ten hours after its use, depending on the dimensions of the building (6.005).

The room in which it is used must be airtight, and [...] the doors must have joints made out of asbestos, neoprene or teflon (7.0001).

Having visited and expertised by previous deduction the "gaschambers" of Auschwitz-Birkenau and other camps in the East, the conclusions were the following : (12.001 concerning bunkers 1 and 2 at Auschwitz :

"On the spot inspection of the buildings indicates that the conception of these installations would have been extremely bad and dangerous if they had been used as execution chambers. Nothing was prepared for that use...

"Krema I stands next to the SS hospital at Auschwitz, and has drains that are connected with the camp's main sewage system, which would have allowed the gas to infiltrate all the camp buildings (12.002). On Majdanek, the building could not have been used for the purpose attributed to it and does not correspond even to the minimum needs for the construction of a gas chamber." Leuchter concluded that none of the conditions existed for the use of these buildings as homicidal gas-chambers. Whoever would have worked there would have been doing so at the peril of his life and the lives of those in the surroundings (32.9121). There was no means of ventilation or air distribution, no way of adding the materials required by the use of Zyklon B (33.145)

"After going over all the documentation material and inspecting all the sites at Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek, the author finds the evidence overwhelming : in none of these places were there any gas chambers for executions."

Source : Written at Malden,Massachusetts, April 5th 1988. Fred Leuchter Jr., Chief Engineer. At the Toronto trial, the lawyer, Christie, noted how many "accounts" were in contradiction with the reality of the chemical and technical possibilities. Here are three examples :

a) - Rudolf Hoess, in "Commandant d'Auschwitz".p.198. wrote :

"The doors were opened half an hour after the adduction of the gas, after ventilation had renewed the air. The task of removing the bodies began immediately."

"This task was carried out with indifference, as if it were part of a daily routine. As they dragged the bodies, they ate or smoked." So they did not even wear masks ? wondered the lawyer, Christie. (51123)

It is [highly inadvisable] to handle bodies that have just been in contact with Zyklon B, within a half an hour after the gassing, and even less so to eat, drink or smoke. It takes at least ten hours to ventilate the premises before the place is safe.

b) - Christie produced Nuremberg document 1553 PS, in which Hilberg acknowledged that the same quantity of Zyclon B had been sent to Oranienburg as to Auschwitz on the same day.

Hilberg indicated that Oranienburg was:

"... a concentration camp and an administrative center where, as far as he knew, no-one had been gassed." Leuchter's samples and expertise even shown that traces of cyanide from Zyklon B are found in much larger quantities in those rooms we are certain were used for disinfection than in the supposed "gas-chambers".

"One would have expected to detect a higher level of cyanide in the samples taken from the first gas-chambers (due to the larger quantity of gas used, according to the sources, in these places) than in the control sample. As the opposite is true, we have to conclude ... that these installations were not execution gas-chambers."

Source : Leuchter Report (op. cit.) 14.006. This conclusion was confirmed by a counter-expertise made at Cracow by the Medical-Legal Institute of Expertise from February 20th to July 18th 1990, at the very time that the plaque commemorating the "4 million" was being taken down.

Source : Institute reference. 720.90. Museum reference 1-8523/51/1860.89. It is true that tourists are shown if not the functioning of the "gas chambers", at least their sketchy reconstitution, even in places where it turns out they were never used, as in Dachau.

c) - Leuchter examined the sites which, according to official maps of Birkenau, were used as "cremation ditches" by the Nazis to get rid of the corpses. Most of the texts in the Holocaust literature describe them as ditches about 6 feet deep...The most surprising thing about them is that they are about one and a half feet in water from the surface. Leuchter emphasized the fact that it would have been impossible to cremate bodies under water. And there was no reason to believe that things had changed since the war as books about the Holocaust describe Auschwitz and Birkenau as having been built on a swamp (32.9100,9101). Yet there are photographs in the exhibition ofthese supposed "cremation ditches".

14.008 (as far as the open-air crematoriums in the "cremation ditches" are concerned) :

"Birkenau is built on a swamp; all its sites are water-logged 60cm from the surface. The opinion of the author of this report is that there never were any cremation ditches at Birkenau." (14.008) A precious document on these open-air cremations whose smoke filled the sky is : "The Auschwitz album", a collection of 189 photographs with a commentary by Serge Klarsfeld; it includes aerial photographs of Auschwitz and Birkenau taken from American planes, and was published in 1979 by the Americans Dino A. Brugioni and Robert C. Poirier. (The Holocaust revisited : A retrospective analysis of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Extermination complex, Washington, CIA February 1979.)

Whereas Pressac gives us a Dantean picture : "in the clear blue sky, two squat chimneys spat out flames" (p.91), in this inferno of fire whose flames supposedly devoured, according to the orthodox, 25,000 corpses a day from May to August 1944, chiefly because of the deportation to Auschwitz of the Hungarian Jews, aerial photographs dated June 26 th and August 25 th 1944 did not show the least trace of smoke, any more than they show evidence of crowds or of any particular activity.

"The Auchwitz album", a compilation of 189 photographs taken in the camp of Birkenau around the same period, which has an introduction by Serge Klarsfeld and a commentary by J.C.Pressac, shows us 189 scenes of concentration camp life at the time of the arrival of a convoy of deportees from Hungary. There again, there is strictly nothing to suggest a massive and systematic extermination.

On the contrary, a great number of photographs give us a general picture of the place which, far from confirming this extermination, exclude the possibility of its having taken place simultaneously in some "secret" place in the camp. J.P. Pressac's commentary is so full of obvious extrapolations that it achieves the opposite effect and makes the mechanism of fabrication almost tangible.

Source : "l'Album d'Auschwitz". Le Seuil.Paris 1983.221 pages. But it is the Canadian, John C. Ball, a specialist in the interpretation of aerial photos who seems to have compiled the most original photographic documents, competently and rigorously analyzing them. His conclusions totally contradict official history.

Source : Air Photo Evidence. Ball Resource Ltd. Suite 160, 7231 120th street Delta, B.C. Canada. 4C6PS. 1992. 116 pages. But these technical questions as a whole were raised at the trial of Ernst Zundel at Toronto, where the two sides were able to express themselves freely and fully. The account of this trial is therefore an exceptional source for any honest historian as it makes it possible to become acquainted with theses taking into account all the elements of the controversy. The declarations of the different parties are all the more valuable and significant for the fact that each spoke under the control of the immediate criticism of the opposite party.

A detail which seems decisive in its importance : on April 5 th and 6 th 1988, the director of the Calgary Crematorium (Canada), Yvan Lagace, where the crematoriums are built along the same lines as those of Birkenau (though these were built in 1943) was able to expose all the technical restrictions and the need for upkeep of these kinds of incineration apparatus. He spoke of the need to cool the equipment between cremations, and when a body was introduced, because otherwise the ovens' fireproofing was damaged.

Lagace was asked to give his opinion concerning the evaluation Hilberg made of the capacity of 46 ovens in 4 Birkenau crematories ("La destruction des juifs europrens", second edition, p.978).

Hilberg had claimed:

"The theoretical daily capacity of the 4 ovens at Birkenau was over 4,400 but with stops and slow-downs which made it less in practice." Lagace declared that this assertion was "absurd" and "unrealistic" To claim that 46 ovens could burn over 4,400 corpses in a day was grotesque. Based on his own experience, Lagace affirmed it was possible to burn 184 corpses a day at Birkenau.

Source : 27-736 to 738. This is very different from the claims made by a book like that of Pressac, "Les crematoires d'Auschwitz" : "La machinerie du meurtre des masses" (1993), which spares only one chapter of 20 pages (out of 147) for the "gas-chambers", and which does not even quote the Leuchter report,to which he consecrated a "refutation" in 1990 (again financed by the Klarsfeld Foundation). Until a scientific and public debate between equally competent specialists is held concerning the Leuchter report and other works concerning the "gas chambers", there will still be room for doubt and skepticism.

Until now, the only arguments that have been used against those who questioned official history have been a refusal to discuss the matter, attacks and repression.

Adopted from the book: "The Founding Myths of Israeli Politics" by: "Roger Garaudy"