Holocaust Revisionism And its Political Consequences Jürgen Graf, January 2001, in Tehran exile

9. The scientific investigations

a) Introduction

Everybody familiar with the normal rules of court proceedings knows that physical evidence is greatly superior to eyewitness testimony, since an eyewitness may lie or err in good faith. For this reason, an autopsy of the corpse, as well as an expert report on the murder weapon, are ordered in any ordinary non-political murder trial. If the statements of eyewitnesses contradict the results of the forensic tests, the latter will be conclusive.

What is true in any ordinary murder case must apply to an even greater extent when hundreds of thousands, let alone millions of victims are involved. But after Word War Two, Germany's accusers never cared to carry out a forensic investigation of the alleged gas chambers. Nor did they make any serious effort to find out whether the Auschwitz crematoria could possibly have disposed of the four million people said to have perished at the Auschwitz camp. (This figure, which was later gradually reduced by the holocaust historians, was claimed by the Soviets at the Nuremberg trial, cf. Nuremberg document URSS-008.)

Only in two cases have the accusers of Germany made a half-hearted attempt to prove the reality of the mass extermination scientifically. After the liberation of the Majdanek concentration camp in summer 1944, a joined Polish-Soviet commission drew up a report which Carlo Mattogno and I have unearthed in the archives of the Majdanek museum and published in our book KL Majdanek. Eine historische und technische Studie (Castle Hill Publisher, Hastings, 1998, chapter V and VI). But the Polish and Soviet scientists shamelessly cheated and made ridiculous claims, affirming that the five ovens of the new Majdanek crematorium, which only started functioning six months before the end of the camp, could have cremated 600.000 bodies within this period. The real figure was about thirty-two times lower. In 1945, the Polish authorities ordered some forensic testing to be carried out at Auschwitz. In the Cracow report (the text of which figures in the anti-revisionist book Wahrheit und Auschwitz-Luege, edited by B. Bailer-Gailanda and W. Benz, Deuticke Verlag 1995), the Poles claimed to have discovered cyanide traces in sacks of human hair found at the camp. But even if this is true (which is impossible to ascertain today), it does not prove that anybody was gassed. During the war, human hair was used for industrial purposes (for example for stuffing mattresses), and in this case it would not have been unusual to delouse it before use. If any homicidal gassings had occurred, it would have been absurd to cut the hair off after the murder, since Zyklon B clings to surfaces and would have endangered the workers. The hair would have been cut before the victims were sent to the gas chambers.

The first revisionist researcher who seriously examined the technical aspects of the holocaust question was Robert Faurisson. Faurisson studied the execution technique used in some US states where death sentences were carried out with hydrocyanic acid. (Hydrocyanic acid is also the active ingredient of the insecticide Zyklon B which has the shape of small pellets from which the gas is released through contact with the air). An execution by gas is a complicated matter. Many precautions have to been taken, and the gas chamber must be hermetically sealed, otherwise the execution will become a gamble with death for the penitentiary employees. (This is one of the reasons why almost all US states have by now given up this execution method, using lethal injection instead.) Faurisson, who had visited Auschwitz and studied the plans of the crematoria which, according to the witnesses, contained gas chambers, wondered how up to 2000 people could have been murdered simultaneously in these rooms which could not be hermetically sealed and had no facilities for the introduction of the gas. He came to the conclusion that any gassing with Zyklon B performed in these rooms would not only have killed the victims in the gas chambers, but contaminated the surroundings as well, and that it would not have been possible to remove the dead bodies from the rooms shortly after the gassing, as claimed by the witnesses. (For details, see Serge Thion, Verite historique ou verite politique?, La Vieille Taupe, Paris 1980).

b) The Leuchter report

In 1985, German-born revisionist activist Ernst Zuendel was tried in Toronto, Canada, and sentenced to 15 months in prison on the basis of an obsolete law forbidding the "spreading of false news" for selling Richard Harwood's booklet Did Six Million really die? Zuendel's lawyer Douglas Christie had appealed the verdict, and the second round of the trial took place in early 1985. (About this trial, there is a book which contains an immense wealth of information about the holocaust and revisionism. It was written by Barbara Kulaszka and has the same title as the Harwood brochure which had led to the Zuendel trials, Did Six Million really die?, Samisdat Publishers, 206 Carlton Street, Toronto). During the court proceedings, Zuendel and Faurisson assigned American execution specialist Fred Leuchter, who had constructed gas chambers himself, to draw up a report about the rooms designated as gas chambers in Auschwitz I, Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek. With a small crew, Leuchter flew to Poland in late February. Upon returning, he wrote his report which would become a real icebreaker and initiate the scientific victory of the revisionists (Fred Leuchter, An engineering report about the alleged execution gas chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek, Poland, Samisdat Publishers, Toronto 1989). Here are his conclusions about Auschwitz:

- The "gas chambers" were exactly what they were called in the war-time documents, namely ordinary morgues. Owing to their features of technical constructions, they could not have been used for homicidal gassings.

- The capacity of the crematoria would only have been sufficient to incinerate a small fraction of the alleged victims.

- Analyses of mortar samples taken from the walls of the "gas chambers" showed no significant quantities of cyanide residue. The analyses did however indicate an enormously high cyanide content in a sample taken from a Birkenau delousing chamber. (Nobody claims that human beings were gassed in that room.)

The Leuchter report was far from perfect. The chapters about the construction of the "gas chambers" contained some serious flaws (for example, Leuchter erroneously stated there had been no ventilation system in these rooms, and he overestimated the explosion risk), and the part about the capacity of the crematoria is unsatisfactory, as Leuchter had no competence in this field. However, the chemical part, which has never been refuted, would turn out to be decisive.

c) The Rudolf Report

In 1993, German chemist Germar Rudolf verified the results of the Leuchter report in a much more detailed study which is probably up to this day the most important thing the revisionists have ever produced (Das Rudolf-Gutachten. Gutachten ueber die Bildung und Nachweisbarkeit von Cyanidverbindungen in den "Gaskammern" von Auschwitz, Cromwell Press, London 1993, updated version: Das Rudolf-Gutachten 2000, Castle Hill Publisher, Hastings 2000. A shortened version of the report is contained in Ernst Gauss, Grundlagen zur Zeitgeschichte, English version: Dissecting the Holocaust, Capshaw/Alabama 2000). All attempts to refute it have failed miserably. Rudolf proved that the alleged main gas chamber of the Third Reich, the one in the crematorium II of Auschwitz-Birkenau, where several hundreds of thousands of Jews were gassed according to the eyewitnesses, was never exposed to Zyklon B. Hydrocyanic acid forms an extremely stable pigment (ferric-ferrocyanide) with the iron-bearing components of the masonry. This pigment decomposes as slowly as the masonry itself, as shown by long-time experiments over decades. High concentrations of cyanide compounds are still to be found in the delousing chambers of Birkenau, while no relevant concentrations can be traced in the alleged gas chamber of Krema II (there were four crematoria at Birkenau, named Krema II - V, but all of them were blown up in late 1944 or early 1945, and Krema II is the only one where the "gas chamber" is still partly accessible). This leads to the inevitable conclusion that no gassings can have taken place there.

Another no less crucial argument against the gassing story is that the holes in the roof of the "gas chamber", through which the Zyklon B pellets were introduced according to the witnesses, did not exist at the time when the mass murder was purportedly taking place. The witnesses speak of four round holes, and the two holes which we now sew in the roof are of irregular shape; moreover, the reinforcement rods running through the holes show that these were clumsily made after the war to create the illusion of Zyklon B introduction openings. Thus, the poison could not be introduced into the "gas chamber". This is also irrefutably demonstrated in the Rudolf report.

d) The capacity of the Auschwitz crematoria

"How can I get rid of the body of my victim?" is the nightmare of every murderer. The human body is difficult to destroy, as it consists to over 60% of water. Tales of "holocaust survivors" such as the Polish Jew Henryk Tauber, who claimed that at Auschwitz corpses could be burnt without fuel are absolutely preposterous, yet holocaust historians such as Jean-Claude Pressac, who considers Tauber a very reliable witness, take this nonsense seriously (Jean-Claude Pressac, Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, New York 1989).

A major gap in technical holocaust research was filled by the Italian Carlo Mattogno. In collaboration with engineer Franco Deana, Mattogno has written a large study about the Auschwitz crematoria which is the fruit of many years of research. The book will appear in the Italian language at Edizioni di Ar, Padova, in 2001. But already in 1994, Mattogno and Deana had published an article about the question in the scientific anthology Grundlagen zur Zeitgeschichte we have repeatedly referred to (English version: Dissecting the Holocaust, Capshaw/Alabama 2000). Mattogno and Deana studied the following:

1) The maximum capacity of the Auschwitz crematoria. The first crematorium was put into operation in 1941 at the main camp. Because its capacity was insufficient to incinerate the large amount of corpses (tens of thousands of prisoners succumbed to the typhus epidemics), four big crematoria were planned in 1942. From March 1943, they were put into operation in Birkenau, west of Auschwitz I, the main camp. At no time did all five crematoria function simultaneously; because of technical problems, they constantly had to be overhauled which, of cause, greatly reduced their capacity.

2) The coke deliveries to the crematoria. Except for 1944, these deliveries are documented almost completely, and as the amount of coke required for the cremation of a body is known, the maximum number of cremations may be calculated for any period.

3) The fact that the fire-resistant refractory brick masonry in the crematoria ovens was never replaced which would have been necessary after 2000 - 3000 cremations in one muffle.

Having taken into consideration all these factors, Mattogno and Deana concluded that the crematoria ovens could not possibly have disposed of more than 162.000 bodies. Now, this squares very well with Mattogno's estimate of about 150.000 Auschwitz victims (because of the gaps in the documentation, no exact figure can be given).

Of course, one has to consider the possibility of open air cremations. Such cremations certainly occurred in the second half of 1942 and in early 1943, when typhus wrought havoc at Auschwitz and the Birkenau crematoria were not yet operational. But the crucial period is the one from May to July 1944. At that time, massive deportations of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz were taking place. According to the holocaust historians, between 180.000 and 410.000 of them were gassed and burned at Birkenau between during this time. (The former figure is given by Raul Hilberg, Die Vernichtung der europaeischen Juden, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt a.M. 1997, p.1300, the latter one by French-Jewish historian Georges Wellers, Le Monde Juif, October-December 1983, p. 153). Even the orthodox historians, who routinely exaggerate the capacity of the crematoria, agree that it would not have been possible to incinerate so many corpses in the crematoria, so they claim that most of them were burnt in big pits. (Filip Mueller, a witness especially dear to these historians, describes these pits in his book Sonderbehandlung, Verlag Steinhausen, Frankfurt a.M. 1979. His account is full of technical impossibilities.) But from December 1943, Auschwitz was repeatedly photographed by allied reconnaissance planes. Several of these photos fell into the period between May and July 1944. The most important one was made on 31 May. If we can trust the official figures of deported Hungarian Jews, 15.000 of them were brought to Auschwitz on that very day, and in the preceding days, the daily average had been 13.000. None of the events reported by Mueller and his fellow-eyewitnesses are visible in the photo: There are no lines of prisoners waiting before the crematoria, no gigantic blazing fires, no cremation pits, no smoke-blackened sky. This photo, together with other ones from the same period, can be found in John Ball's exceedingly important book Air photo evidence (Ball Resource Services, Delta/Canada 1992). So there were no large-scale open-air cremations during that period, and as the crematoria could only have incinerated a fraction of the alleged victims, the extermination of the Hungarian Jews at Auschwitz-Birkenau was radically impossible for technical reasons alone - quite apart from the fact that it is contradicted by the documents, as we will demonstrate in chapter 13.

e) The Diesel gas chambers

In the "pure extermination camps" Belzec, Treblinka and Sobibor, there were no crematoria, and no homicidal use of Zyklon B is alleged. During the initial development of the holocaust yarn, all sorts of imaginable execution methods were pictured in great detail by the atrocity mongers, but all of them - from Dr. Szende's "submergible platform" to Jan Karski's "quicklime trains" and Vasili Grossman's "air-pumping vacuum chambers" - have disappeared into the rubbish bins of history and replaced by Diesel exhaust gasses which were supposedly produced by the engines of wrecked Russian tanks (or, according to an alternative version, submarines). - In the fourth and last "pure extermination camp", Chelmno, homicidal gas vans equipped with Diesel engines were used according to the holocaust historians. As French automobile constructor Pierre Marais has demonstrated in an excellent study, these vans were yet another invention of war propaganda (Les camions a gaz en question, Polemiques, Paris 1994). In all four of the "pure extermination camps", the Germans allegedly buried the bodies, only to dig them out and burn them in the open air later.

Friedrich Berg, an American engineer of German extraction, has analysed the Diesel exhaust story from a technical and toxicological point of view (his article is in Ernst Gauss, Grundlagen zur Zeitgeschichte, English version Dissecting the Holocaust). While it is not impossible to kill people with Diesel exhaust gasses, it is an extremely cumbersome and inefficient method, for the exhaust gasses are poorly suited as murder weapons due to their high oxygen and very low carbon monoxide content. A gasoline motor can easily produce exhaust with a carbon monoxide content of 7% or more, but a Diesel motor cannot even produce a carbon monoxide content of one percent. Ironically, the introduction of Diesel exhaust gases into a chamber packed with people would only have prolonged their death agony, since these gases contain an oxygen content of approximately 16% which is sufficient for survival. Instead of introducing the exhaust gas, the executioners could simply have allowed the victims in the overcrowded gas chamber to suffocate, as the available oxygen would have been breathed up before the carbon monoxide took effect.

Incidentally, the father of the Diesel story was a madman named Kurt Gerstein who reported 20 - 25 million gassing victims. At Belzec, Gerstein claimed to have seen 35 - 40 m high piles of shoes and clothes and 28 - 32 gas chamber inmates per square meter (Andre Chelain, Faut-il fusiller Henri Roques?, Polemiques, Paris 1986). There are no less than six different versions of the Gerstein report! - Evidently, the Diesel story was later taken up by technical morons who thought that such exhausts must be an fearsome murder weapon because they stink so much. In fact, any gasoline engine would have been ten times more efficient. The holocaust historians would doubtless gladly get rid of the Diesel story, but it is too late, as it is now in all history books.

f) Body disposal at the "pure extermination camps"

The way in which the bodies of the victims were allegedly disposed of have been studied in detail by the late and regretted German engineer Arnulf Neumaier in his article Der Treblinka-Holocaust (in: Ernst Gauss, Grundlagen zur Zeitgeschichte, English version: Dissecting the Holocaust). Neumaier assumed 875.000 Treblinka victims. This figure had been given at the Demjanjuk trial in Jerusalem, although Raul Hilberg modestly contents himself with 750.000 and the Soviet Jew Vasili Grossman had mentioned three million in 1946. For Belzec (600.000 allegedly gassed), Sobibor (200.000 - 250.000 allegedly gassed) and Chelmno (150.000 - 400.000 allegedly murdered in two or three gas vans, according to which historian you chose to believe), the figures have to be reduced accordingly, but the method of body disposal described in the standard literature were the same.

To burn 875.000 bodies in the open air would have requested at least 200 kg of wood per corpse, i.e. a total of 175.000 tons. This is equivalent to a forest 6,4 km long and 1 km wide. A deforested terrain of the corresponding size does not, and did not, exist in the vicinity of Treblinka, and the transport of 175.000 tons of wood to the camp would certainly have been noted in the records of the Germany railways if the wood had been brought from same place else.

The 875.000 bodies would have left 2900 tons of human ashes in addition to 1000 tons of wood ashes. These ashes would have contained millions of unburned pieces of bone, plus 20 to 30 million teeth. Had the Soviets and the Poles found but a fraction of these ashes, bones and teeth, they would immediately have summoned an international commission of experts to prove the depravity of their German enemies, just as the German had summoned such a commission in 1943 after finding the bodies of 4000 Polish officers the Soviets had murdered at Katyn in White Russia. But that is precisely what the Soviets and the Poles did not do. One and a half years after the Red Army had conquered the Treblinka area, the Polish authorities still claimed that the victims had been steamed to death (Nuremberg document PS-3311).

g) Ground radar investigation

In October 1999, young Australian engineer Richard Krege went to Treblinka with a ground radar instrument which, among other things, makes it possible to detect the presence of graves and is nowadays commonly used in archaeology as well as in geology. In August 2000, he made a second trip to Poland, this time accompanied by me. He continued his work at Treblinka and performed the same research at Belzec. In the holocaust literature, the places where the gigantic mass graves are supposed to have been (as we remember, the Germans allegedly buried their victims before digging them out again and burning them) are exactly marked, so there is no room for error. Kreges conclusion is formal: The huge mass graves never existed. At Belzec, he found signs of a small mass grave (not in the area designated by the holocaust historians), which is hardly surprising, as a certain number of prisoners must have died in the camp, and as there was no crematorium at that camp. Thus, the whole Belzec and Treblinka story collapses. The result of Richard Krege's investigations will be published in 2001.