Part 1
Part 2
Part 4
3. Mattogno et al’s Claims and Arguments
3.3 Capacity of the Graves
3.4 Soil Removed from the Graves
3.3 Capacity of the Graves
The mass graves identified by Prof. Kola at Bełżec were way too small to take in the bodies of all the camp’s victims, Mattogno claimed in his Bełżec book. He wrote [95]:
On the basis of experimental data, the maximum capacity of a mass grave can be set at 8 corpses per cubic meter, assuming that one third of them are children.260 Hence, the alleged 600,000 corpses at Bełżec would have required a total volume of (600,000÷8=) 75,000 cubic meters. The average depth of the graves identified by Professor Kola is 3.90 meters. Assuming a layer of earth 0.3 m thick to cover the graves, the available depth would be 3.60 meters.261 It follows that the burial of 600,000 corpses would have required an effective area of (75,000÷3.6 =) approx. 20,800 square meters. On the other hand, the surface area of the graves identified by Kola is 5,919 square meters and their volume 21,310 cubic meters, theoretically sufficient to inter (21,310×8=) 170,480 corpses – but then where would the other (600,000 – 170,480 =) 429,520 corpses have been put?
The reference for the "experimental data", according to which "the maximum capacity of a mass grave can be set at 8 corpses per cubic meter, assuming that one third of them are children", is Mattogno & Graf’s Treblinka book, where one reads that "On the basis of his investigations of the mass graves of Hamburg (Anglo-American terror-bombardment of July 1943), Katyn (Soviet mass murder of Polish officers, 1940) and Bergen-Belsen (mass dying from typhus in spring 1945), John Ball came to the conclusion that one could assume a maximum of six bodies per cubic meter in a mass grave", and that "in order to take into account the hypothetical existence of children as comprising one-third of the victims, we assume a density of a maximum of 8 bodies per cubic meter"[96]. Readers had to wait until Mattogno’s response to my criticism for an explanation of how this "maximum" was calculated[97]:
Above I have presented the experimental data. As for the percentage of children, according to demographer Jakob Leszczynski[40], the percentage of children aged 14 or under among the Jewish population of Poland in 1931 amounted to 29.6%, that is little less than 1/3.
Based on scientific tables on weight increase, the medium weight of children aged 17 and under is approximately 35 kg[41]. If for a normal adult a medium weight of 70 kg is assumed, the medium weight of 3 persons (two adults and a child) is ([70 + 70 + 35] : 3 =) 58.3 kg. Therefore 6 adult corpses, weighing (70 x 6 =) 420 kg, are equivalent to (420 : 58.3 =) 7.20 corpses of adults and children in the relationship of 2:1. According to other tables, the medium weight of children aged 14 and under is approximately 25.4 kg, which in turn gives us a medium weight of 55.1 kg and a density of (420 : 55.1 =) 7.6 corpses per cubic meter. The figure of 8 corpses per cubic meter which I have assumed for my calculations is thus rounded off upward.
So Mattogno expects his readers to believe that Jewish adults deported to Bełżec weighed 70 kg on average and Jewish children aged 14 and under weighed 25.4 kg on average.
According to Brocca’s table[98], 70 kg is the ideal weight of a male 1.78 meters high or a female 1.82 meters high. It is also the normal weight of an adult person 1.70 meters high. Mattogno’s readers are thus asked to believe that Jewish adults in starving Polish ghettos in the early 1940s were 1.70 meters high on average and had a normal weight, or a lower ideal weight.
The height of the average German adult in the 1940s can be safely assumed to have been no more than 1.68 meters[99]. According to anthropological sources referred to by Charles Provan [100], the Jews of Poland were about three inches shorter than the average German. 1.68 meters equal 66 inches, so if the Jews of Poland were about three inches smaller than the average German, according to Provan's source Dr. von Verschuer, their average height was 63 inches or 1.60 meters.
Besides being considerably smaller than would correspond to the average weight postulated by Mattogno, the Jews of Eastern Poland, where most deportees to Bełżec extermination camp came from, were ill-fed and even starving[101]. According to the Body Measurement Index table[102], a person with a height of 1.60 meters is underweight at 38 to 48 kg. Assuming that the average weight of adult Jews in Polish ghettos at the time was in between the upper and the lower value of what the BMI table considers underweight, it would be (38+48) ÷ 2 = 43 kg. According to Mattogno's "other tables", the weight of an adult is 2.76 times that of a child up to 14. This relation would mean a weight of 43 ÷ 2.76 = 15.6 kg for ill-fed or starving children in Polish ghettos. Rounding up the latter value, a group of two adults and one child 14 years and younger from a Jewish ghetto in Poland would thus weigh (43+43+16)/3 = 34 kg on average, instead of the 55.1 kg calculated by Mattogno. The average weight of deportees to Bełżec was probably even lower as children made up a higher proportion of deportees from Galicia, at least 42.1 %[103] According to Mattogno's formula, 420 ÷ 34 = 12.4 (12) corpses with this average weight could fit into 1 cubic meter of grave space.
Now to Mattogno’s reference weight based on "experimental data" (6 adults a 70 kg per cubic meter = 420 kg per cubic meter). Alex Bay[104] calculated the space that would be occupied by a human being having the measurements of proportions of Leonardo Da Vinci's "Vetruvian Man", and concluded that 91,000 corpes with the proportions of the "Vetruvian Man" and an assumed height of 68 inches (1.73 meters) could have fit into 8,502 cubic meters of grave space - 10.7 (11) per cubic meter. The ideal weight of a person 1.73 meters high would be 66 kg for men and 62 kg for women. Taking the lower value, 10.7 human bodies with the measurements and weight of an ideal adult person 1.73 meters high would have a weight of 10.7 x 62 = 663.40 kg, instead of Mattogno's 420 kg. Using the former value as a reference, the unrealistically high weights assumed by Mattogno for an adult+adult+child group, i.e. (70+70+25,4) ÷ 3 = 55.13 kg, would mean 663.40 ÷ 55.13 = 12.03 (12) corpses per cubic meter. With the more realistic weights for malnourished Polish ghetto Jews mentioned above, the average would be 663.4 ÷ 34 = 19.51 (20) corpses per cubic meter.[105]
With this calculated concentration for an adult+adult+child group weighing as much as half-starved Polish ghetto Jews can realistically (even somewhat optimistically) be expected to have weighed, the number that could be buried at one time in the space estimated by Prof. Kola for the 33 graves he found was 19.51 x 21,310 = 415,758.[106] This is close to the total number of victims of Bełżec extermination that is now accepted by historiography, the 434,508 mentioned in the Höfle Report[107].
The Bełżec mass graves were not filled all at once but during a period of about eight months between the arrival of the first transports in mid-March 1942 and early December of that year, when the last load of deportees was murdered at Bełżec. This means that mass grave space must thus have been "recovered" due to bodies in the graves' lower layers losing volume through the effects of quicklime and decomposition.
There is evidence suggesting that the mass graves at Bełżec were filled to or even beyond the rim, the upper layer being covered with further layers of bodies or with sand after the corpses had sufficiently matted down due to decomposition. In his report dated 4 May 1945 Kurt Gerstein wrote the following[108]:
The naked corpses were carried on wooden stretchers to pits only a few metres away, measuring 100 x 20 x 12 metres. After a few days the corpses welled up and a short time later they collapsed, so that one could throw a new layer of bodies upon them. Then ten centimetres of sand were spread over the pit, so that a few heads and arms still rose from it here and there.
Despite the obviously exaggerated statement about the depth of the pits, Gerstein’s description is interesting in its reference to a procedure, that of filling the graves to the rim and then adding further bodies when the collapse due to decomposition of those already inside the grave freed some space at the top, which was probably at the root of the following ghastly phenomenon at Bełżec described by the later commander of Treblinka, Franz Stangl[109]:
Wirth was not in his office, they said that he was up in the camp. The man I talked to said that one of the pits had overflown. They had thrown too many bodies inside, and the decomposition had gone too fast, so that the liquid gathering below had pushed the bodies up, to the surface and above, and the corpses had rolled down the hill. I saw some of them. – Oh God, it was awful …
A human body’s changes in the course of the decomposition process can be studied by observing the decomposition of an animal with a very similar organism, the pig[110]:
At the stage of putrefaction, the corpse or carcass bloats up. This bloating, which in Bełżec and other camps of Aktion Reinhard(t) led to the phenomenon described for Bełżec by Franz Stangl, is due to the formation of gasses inside the body, such as methane, hydrogen sulphide, cadaverine and putrescine.
At the stage of black putrefaction, the bloated corpse collapses, and a large volume of body fluids drain from the body and seep into the surrounding soil.
At the stage of butyric fermentation, the body loses the remaining flesh and dries out. At this stage the body issues a cheesy smell due to the formation of butyric acid.
Finally, at the stage of dry decay, the body is reduced to just bone and hair.
The four phases described above take place in the open air respectively 4 to 10 days, 10 to 20 days, 20 to 50 days and 50 to 365 days after death. If the corpses are buried, these processes take four times longer[111]. However, in the open Bełżec mass graves the corpses – at least those in the upper layers – were still in contact with air, so decomposition must have been faster than with bodies buried underground, if not necessarily as fast as with bodies lying in the open. Forensic anthropologist Arpad A. Vass and his colleagues have "worked out a simple formula, which describes the soft tissue decomposition process for persons lying on the ground. The formula is y=1285/x (where y is the number of days it takes to become skeletonized or mummified and x is the average temperature in Centigrade during the decomposition process). So, if the average temperature is 10 °C, then 1285/10 = 128.5 days for someone to become skeletonized".[112] According to Vass's formula, the time to skeletonization at Bełżec in the late spring, summer and autumn of 1942, at temperatures presumably ranging between 20 and 30 degrees Celsius, would have been 43 to 64 days for bodies exposed to air and insects, as bodies lying in open mass graves can be expected to have been. The time until the bodies were reduced to less than half their original volume and weight through loss of fluids and other factors would be even lower.
Modeling the effects of corpse decomposition on the amount of grave space available at Bełżec should ideally be done on the basis of a day-by-day or at least month-by-month breakdown of the 434,508 deportees delivered at that camp according to the Höfle Report. Unfortunately no such breakdown is available. The next best thing is a table in Appendix A of Arad’s study on the Reinhard(t) camps[113] that adds up to a higher number (513,142, according to my summation) and allows for a day-by-day breakdown of this number, albeit with certain assumptions and the inaccuracies inevitably resulting from such assumptions. Based on this table, I modeled a scenario of mass grave space management at Bełżec taking into account the loss of body volume due to decomposition, the results being that even 513,142 dead bodies could have been buried in 20,670 cubic meters of burial space (the volume of the burial graves according to Prof. Kola’s investigation results, see section 2.1) considering decomposition-related grave space economy, and that it was therefore also possible to bury the much lower number of documented deportees to Bełżec (434,508) in the same burial space.[114] The model assumed a density of 14.8 non-decomposed corpses per cubic meter,[115] which means that with the density calculated above (19.51 per cubic meter) the saving of burial space due to decomposition would be even higher. While of reduced relevance to demonstrating sufficiency of the burial space estimated by Prof. Kola for the number of corpses corresponding to Höfle's report of 11 January 1943 (as the concentration of 19.51 bodies per cubic meter established above means that 415,758 out of 434,508 bodies could have been buried in all Bełżec mass graves and 403,272 could have been buried in the 20,670 cubic meters of the burial graves alone even if all bodies had been buried at the same time or maintained their original mass and weight), the model shows what significant contribution the decomposition process could have made – and probably did make – to the SS' management of the burial space they had available Bełżec.
The model does not take into account another factor that may have further stretched the volume available for body disposal at Bełżec, the partial burning of bodies in the graves mentioned by witness Dr. Wilhelm Pfannenstiel[116]:
From the inspection site the corpses were taken directly to deep mass graves that had been dug in the vicinity of the extermination installation. When the pits were rather full, the corpses were doused with gasoline – it may have been some other flammable liquid – and were then lit. I could only determine that the corpses burned just partly. Then another layer of earth was thrown over the corpses and then fresh corpses were placed into the same pit.
Wehrmacht non-commissioned officer Wilhelm Cornides also noticed the smell of something burning when passing Bełżec extermination camp in a train on 31.08.1942, being informed by a co-passenger that this smell was from the "crematory". The burning of the corpses was mentioned by a policeman that Cornides talked to on 1 September 1942, as recorded in Cornides’ diary[117].
In conclusion, there is no reason to assume that the volume of the mass graves at Bełżec estimated by Prof. Kola was not sufficient to take in the corpses of the 434,508 Jewish deportees to Bełżec mentioned in the Höfle Report.
At Sobibór extermination camp the bodies of the murdered deportees were buried only until late July/early August of 1942. After that, the camp stood still for a period of two months due to reconstruction work on the railway line between Lublin and Chelm[118]. When operation resumed in October 1942, the bodies were no longer buried but burned right after being taken out of the gas chambers[119]. The number of people killed in the first phase of the camp’s operation is given by Arad as "90,000 to 100,000"[120] or as "one third of the 250,000 victims in this camp"[121], i.e. about 80,000 victims; the latter is also the figure mentioned by Gilead et al[122] and used by Mattogno, Graf and Kues in their Sobibór book. The "Revisionist" coryphées seem to have given up on claiming that the Bełżec mass graves identified by Prof. Kola could not have held the documented number of deportees, for they write the following [123]:
The Sobibór mass graves have an average depth of 14,718.75 ÷ 3,210 = 4,58 m and a total area of 3,210 m². With a 30 cm layer of sand covering the interred corpses, the available burial space would have amounted to ([4.58 – 0.30] x 3,210 =) approximately 13,739 m³, resulting in a density of (80,000 ÷ 13,739 =) approximately 5.8 bodies per cubic meter. On the other hand, at Bełżec the mass graves were estimated to have a total area of 5,490 m² and an average depth of 3.88 m, which means that ([3.88 – 0.30] x 5,490 =) 19,654 m³ of burial space would have been available. Since it is claimed that 434,508 uncremated corpses were buried at Bełżec, the density would have been (434,508 ÷ 19,654 =) 22.1 bodies per m³.
If the alleged Bełżec victims had been buried with the same density as the alleged Sobibór victims, they would have occupied an effective volume of (434,508 ÷ 5.8 =) 74,915 cubic meters, i.e. 3.5 times the total size of mass graves discovered at Bełżec! This clearly contradicts the notion that the Sobibór camp staff did their best to utilize the available burial space as effectively as possible.
If 22.1 corpses per m³ are MGK’s benchmark for using available burial space as effectively as possible, the Sobibór staff certainly fell behind what their colleagues at Bełżec managed to achieve, which may be related to Sobibór having handled much less "traffic" than Bełżec and the Sobibór body disposal procedure having changed from burial to burning at a relatively early stage. But the difference in efficient use of burial space was not as large as MGK make it out to be, for only graves 3, 4, 5 and 6, with a total volume (corrected for sloping) of 9,525 cubic meters, were used for burial at Sobibór extermination camp (see section 2.2). The total area of these graves was 2,310 m², so deducting 2,310 x 0.3 = 693 m for the 0.30 cm sand cover assumed by MGK[124] there would be 8,832 cubic meters available for burial. Assuming 80,000 buried corpses this would mean a density of 9.1 corpses per cubic meter – more than the "maximum" claimed by Mattogno & Graf in their Treblinka book and by Mattogno in his book about Bełżec.[125]
At Treblinka, the people killed during the year 1942 and buried in mass graves amounted to 713,555 mentioned in the Höfle Report plus some 8,000 deportees from Theresienstadt between 5 and 25 October 1942[126]. The Bełżec mass graves identified by Prof. Kola had an area of 5,391.75 square meters and a volume of 21,310 cubic meters (see section 2.1, Table 2.1.1), with 5,101.75 square meters corresponding to the burial graves, whose volume was 20,670 cubic meters. If all 434,508 victims of Bełżec extermination camp were buried in these graves[127], this would correspond to an average of 85 bodies for each square meter of grave area and 21 bodies for each cubic meter of grave space. Burying the total number of 721,555 Jews killed at Treblinka in 1942 would have required 721,555 ÷ 85 = 8,489 square meters and 721,555 ÷ 21 = 34,360 cubic meters, if the same density that was achieved at Bełżec could also be achieved at Treblinka (the deportee population was also essentially from miserable ghettos in the General Government, and the victims that had been killed between July and October 1942 had been lying in the mass graves for at least four months when the overall exhumation and incineration of the corpses began after Himmler’s visit in late February/early March 1942). However, the fact that ashes, bone fragments and larger remains covered an area of at least 1.8 ha when Judge Łukaszkiewicz investigated the site in November 1945 (see section 2.3) suggests that the mass graves alone covered an area larger than 8,489 square meters, while on the other hand the depth to which human remains were found in the crater that Łukaszkiewicz ordered to be further excavated (7.5 meters) suggests that the burial pits at Treblinka were deeper than the deepest burial pits at Bełżec.
Based on Peter Laponder’s scaled map of the Treblinka area as it looked in August 1943[128], Sergey Romanov calculated by AutoCad the following dimensions, among others (Image 3.3.1): area of the "Death Camp" sector: 41,390 m²; total area of mass graves drawn by Laponder: 9,000 m²; total area inside Treblinka’s inner perimeter: 45,850 m² ("Living Camp") + 19,930 m² ("Reception Camp") + 41,390 m² ("Death Camp") = 107,170 m². The measured mass graves area does not include the mass grave by the "Lazarett" (number 33 on the map). It neither includes the pits in the "Reception Camp" that are shown on Laponder’s map of Treblinka extermination camp prior to October 1942 [129].
Image 3.3.1 (click to enlarge)
Mattogno & Graf claim that Treblinka’s "Camp II", the "alleged" extermination sector, had an area of only 14,000 m² (little more than 10 % of the total camp area of 13.45 ha. = 134,500 m² mentioned in Judge Łukaszkiewicz' report of 29 December 1945, quoted in section 2.3) and was thus way too small to harbor the mass graves area of 19,800 m² that would have been required to bury the corpses pursuant to M&G’s contention that 8 bodies per cubic meter was the maximum possible density.[130] This area of 14,000 m² was calculated by Mattogno & Graf based on a map published by Judge Łukaszkiewicz in 1946 (Image 3.3.2)[131]. In his reconstruction of Treblinka, Alex Bay identified the subdivisions of Treblinka extermination camp mainly on the basis of air and ground photo analysis[132]. Sergey Romanov, at my request, made an AutoCad calculation of the areas shown on Bay’s Figure 14 (Image 3.3.3).
Image 3.3.2 (click to enlarge)
Image 3.3.3 (click to enlarge)
A comparison of Image 3.3.2 with the survey map shown in section 2.3 (Image 2.3.5) shows that the shaded area bearing the number "II" in Image 3.3.2 is a part of the area called the "area of cremation" in Image 2.3.5, which Łukaszkiewicz described in his report of 29 December 1945 in a manner suggesting that this was the mass graves area or one of the mass graves areas of Treblinka extermination camp, but not the whole of the extermination sector. It seems that this part of the "area of cremation" was later considered to be the whole extermination sector – mistakenly so, according to what is currently known about the size of that sector.
The Düsseldorf District Court at the trial against Kurt Franz et al concluded that Treblinka extermination camp measured about 600 x 400 meters and was divided into three about equally large parts, the so-called living camp, the so-called reception camp and the so-called upper camp or camp of the dead (Totenlager), the latter covering the southeastern part of the camp area[133]. According to Arad[134], the upper camp was approximately 200 x 250 meters, which corresponds to an area of 50,000 m². M&G did not explain why they ignored these sources and based themselves only on the aforementioned map as concerns the size of the extermination sector, which is not surprising as convenience to their argument was obviously their only criterion.
According to Romanov’s measurements shown in Image 3.3.3, the "Death Camp" sector on Bay’s Figure 14 has an area of 40,500 m² (Laponder: 41,390 m²), whereas the area of the "Receiving Camp" is 14,190 m² (Laponder: 19,930 m²) and the area of the "Living Camp" is 36,290 m² (Laponder: 45,850 m²). The sum of these three areas inside Treblinka’s inner perimeter is 90,980 m² (Laponder: 107,170 m²). We see that two researchers (Alex Bay and Peter Laponder) reached very similar results independently of each other, especially as concerns the size of the "Death Camp" sector.
Bay projected 9 areas representing mass graves with an area of 50 x 25 meters into the "Death Camp" sector just to show that that the same could comfortably fit into the "Death Camp"[135]. These mass graves could take in at least 900,000 corpses, according to Bay’s calculations and estimate[136]. The surface area of these projected graves is 9 x 1,250 = 11,250 m², and their volume was calculated by Bay as being 9 x 8,502 = 76,518 cubic meters. The grave space accordingly required to bury the ca. 721,555 Jews murdered at Treblinka in 1942, with the density of ca. 12 corpses per cubic meter assumed by Bay, was somewhat smaller: 721,555 ÷ 12 = 60,130 cubic meters, corresponding to a surface area of 60,130 ÷ 76,518 x 11,250 = 8,841 m² (roughly 21-22 % of the "Death Camp" sector’s entire area).
3.4 Soil Removed from the Graves
The grave volumes that Mattogno & Graf claim would have led to amounts of excavated soil that, according to these authors, would have caused major problems to the camp organization. The volume of soil excavated from a pit or grave is usually 10-25 % larger than the volume of the pit itself, according to M&G’s source, so with mass graves having a total volume of 118,800 cubic meters of soil (i.e. what M&G consider necessary to bury 860,000 bodies), the excavated soil would have had a volume of at least (118,800×1.1=) ca. 130,700 cubic meters. According to M&G[137]:
If this mass were arranged in the form of a pile 6 m high, with sides each having an angle of 30 degrees and a width of 10 m, then its length would have amounted to (130,700÷30≅) 4.4 kilometers, covering some 44,000 m2!
M&G assumed a pile narrowing towards the top to such a degree that half the cross-section area of a 6x10 m even rectangle is lost, which is hardly what one sees at construction sites. A more reasonable assumption is a pile narrowing towards the top in the same manner as a pit with sloped walls narrows towards the bottom.
According to the author’s calculations above, the Treblinka grave pits would have had a volume of 60,130 m³ at most, but their volume might also have been just 34,360 m³ if corpses were buried as densely as at Bełżec. The maximum expanded soil volume would thus have been 60,130 x 1.25 = 75,163 m³ (66,143 m³ with a 10 % dilation) or 34,360 x 1.25 = 42,950 m³ (37,796 m³ with a 10 % dilation). According to Alex Bay’s calculations[138], 9 pits with a total length of 9x50 = 450 m, a width of 25 meters, a depth of 10 meters and 60 degree slope angles would have a total volume of 9 x 8,502 = 76,518 m³, roughly 68 % of the volume (450x25x10 = 112,500 m³) that they would have if they had an even rectangular shape. Dividing the calculated sand pile volumes by this percentage, one obtains roughly the volume that sloped pits with these volumes would have if they were even rectangles. Dividing these volumes by an assumed pit width and depth of respectively 10 and 6 meters (corresponding to the width and depth of the sand pile assumed by M&G), one obtains the length of the sand pile corresponding to each of the aforementioned sand volumes, as shown in Table 3.4.1.
Table 3.4.1 (click to enlarge)
These lengths are presumably on the high side, as the calculation assumes that the same sloping angle is required for a pit 6 meters deep as for a pit 10 meters deep.
Much of the sand removed from the mass graves was used for the embankments on either side of the extermination sector, which Alex Bay estimated to be at least 4 meters high.[139] What sand was not used for the embankments could be left by the mass graves, or it could be taken out of the extermination sector or out of Treblinka extermination camp altogether. The removal of sand from the camp by train is mentioned in a Soviet commission’s report dated 24 August 1944, quoted by Mattogno & Graf[140]:
Dozens of witnesses attest to have seen how up to three transports of Jews, with 60 cars each, arrived in the camp on a daily basis. The trains left the camp either loaded with sand or empty.
So Mattogno & Graf’s removed soil "problem" comes across as rather artificial regarding Treblinka.
The same applies as concerns Bełżec, regarding which Mattogno calculated an extracted sand mass of 82,500 m³ considering a 10 % dilation, which would, if "spread evenly throughout the camp in a layer 2 m thick", have covered an area of 41,250 m², "equal to the total area of the camp minus the mass graves", and weighed "(82,500×1.4=) 115,500 tons, or the equivalent of more than 4,600 freight cars or more than 24,000 truckloads".[141]
Actually, considering the volume of the mass graves identified by Prof. Kola (which, as we have seen, were perfectly sufficient to bury the bodies of the camp’s ca. 435,000 victims), the amount of sand was more like 21,310 x 1.1 = 23,441 m³ (assuming a dilation of 10 %, as Mattogno does). If there had been no space to pile up the sand in a layer 2 meters thick (i.e. covering 23,441 ÷ 2 = 11,721 square meters, little more than ¼ of "the total area of the camp minus the mass graves"), they could have piled it up in a layer 4 meters thick (the minimum height of the embankments at Treblinka, according to Bay) covering just 5,861 square meters. 23,441 m³ of expanded sand have a weight of 23,441 x 1.4 = 32,817 tons, or 6,563 truckloads of 5 tons each. With 10 daily trips to a nearby storage place, 656 trucks could manage this load in a single day, 66 trucks in 10 days and 7 trucks in 100 days. Even the much higher quantity claimed by Mattogno could have been removed within 100 days, which was much less than the gassing operations at Bełżec lasted, with no more than 24 trucks. Not exactly an insurmountable logistical problem.
Notes
[95] Mattogno, Bełżec, page 85.
[96] M&G, Treblinka, page 137.
[97] Mattogno, Controversie, page 14; Controversy
[98] German webpage Gewichtstabelle nach Brocca.
[99] In 1890, according to an article in La Gazette de Berlin, the average body height of German army recruits was 1.64 meters. In a thread about average heights in the Wehrmacht on the Forum der Wehrmacht, a poster ("BernieW71", 15.05.2008 21:57) refers to a racial examination chart for the Waffen-SS according to which average height (mittelgross) was considered to be 1.61 to 1.70 for men and 1.51 to 1.60 for women (which would mean an average of 1.61 meters for two men and two women with the respective highest and lowest average height). A German book published in 1969 (Roland Göock, Die grossen Rätsel unserer Welt, Bertelsmann Sachbuchverlag Gütersloh), mentions on page 1 that statisticians established the average body height of Germans to be 168 cm. This average was probably higher than in the 1940s, as results from the known fact that humanity has grown taller over time and is also suggested by the sources mentioned before, so 1.68 meters is probably on the high side regarding the height of the average German in the early 1940s.
[100] Charles D. Provan, Kurt Gerstein and the Capacity of the Gas Chamber at Bełżec (hereinafter "Provan, Capacity"). Provan points out that "according to ethnological studies done by Dr. Otto Von Verschuer, the Jews of Poland were about three inches shorter than the average German" and that "This comparative smallness is confirmed by other authorities, notably John R. Baker and Lothrop Stoddard."
[101] Provan, Capacity, referring to Shonfeld, The Holocaust Victims Accuse, pg. 43ff.; Wells, The Death Brigade, pg. 49.
[102] German webpage Gewichtstabelle nach BMI.
[103] Muehlenkamp, Bełżec Response 4 (1)
[104] Bay, Treblinka, AppendixD - Ash Disposal and Burial Pits (Continued)
[105] With Charles Provan’s test group (Provan, Capacity), the average would be 663.4 ÷ 33.25 = 19.95 (20). Provan's box had a volume of 21 x 21 x 60.5 = 26,680.50 cubic inches or 0.44 cubic meters, and he managed to squeeze 8 people (including the doll representing and baby) into that space - a concentration of 18.2 per cubic meter. These were living people, and they were "able to breathe just fine" according to Provan, meaning that there was still some space left in the box not filled by their bodies. Provan's photos suggest that the box could have taken in one or two more bodies, at least of children, if the bodies had needed no breathing space because they were dead. The difference between the realistic calculated concentration for an adult+adult+child group of ill-fed or starving Polish Jews (19.51 corpses per cubic meter) and the concentration calculated for Provan's test group with the same reference parameter of 663.40 kg, i.e. 19.95 corpses per cubic meter, is not very big because Provan's test group, while consisting mostly of children, was made up of healthy and well-fed (though not overweight) present-day Americans. Applying Polish ghetto weights to Provan's test-group members (i.e. 43 kg for each of the three adults and 16 kg for each of the five children), the average weight would be [(3x43)+(5x16)]÷8 = 26.13 kg, and the calculated concentration would be 663.40÷26.13 = 25.39 corpses per cubic meter. This means that, if the age and sex distribution of half-starved Polish ghetto Jews deported to Bełżec had been like that of Provan's test group, the 21,310 cubic meters of grave space estimated by Prof. Kola could have taken in over 540,000 dead bodies.
[106] Notwithstanding their claim that 8 bodies per cubic meter is a maximum, Mattogno & Graf seem to consider an even higher density plausible, for in another context they tell their readers that "3,000 bodies take up a volume of about (3,000×0.045 =) 135 m3" (M&G, Treblinka, p. 147). The concentration they are assuming here is 3,000 ÷ 135 = 22 bodies per cubic meter.
[107] Witte and Tyas, as note 1.
[108] Webpage The Gerstein Report.
[109] Kogon, Langbein, Rückerl et al, Nationalsozialistische Massentötungen durch Giftgas, 1986 Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH Frankfurt am Main (hereinafter "Kogon et al, Massentötungen"), page 169; my translation from German.
[110] Australian Museum webpage Stages of Decomposition.
[111] Webpage How long does it bring for a human body to completely disintegrate after it's be embalm?: "Decomposition in the atmosphere is twice as fast as when the body is lower than water and four times as hastily as underground." See also Alan Gunn, Essential Forensic Biology, 2009 John Wiley & Sons Ltd., Chichester, West Sussex, UK, p. 30: "Buried corpses decay approximately four times slower than those left on the surface, and the deeper they are buried, the slower they decay (Dent et al., 2004)."
[112] Arpad A. Vass, Beyond the grave – understanding human decomposition.
[113] Arad, Reinhard (as note 1), pp. 383-389.
[114] Muehlenkamp, Bełżec Response 4 (1)
[115] As calculated in Muehlenkamp, Bełżec Research 4 (1).
[116] As quoted in Mattogno, Bełżec, p. 61, after Pfannenstiel’s interrogation on April 25, 1960. ZStL, Z 252/59, Vol. I, pp. 583-588.
[117] Webpage The Report of Wehrmachts Officer Wilhelm Cornides. Cornides’ diary entries were first published in Germany in Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte, Jahrgang 7 (1959), Heft 3, pp. 333 ff. (online).
[118] Arad, Reinhard, page 80.
[119] Arad, Reinhard, page 177.
[120] Arad, Reinhard, page 80.
[121] Arad, Reinhard, page 177.
[122] Gilead et al, Extermination Centres.
[123] MGK, Sobibór, pp. 125.
[124] Gerstein (as note 108) mentioned that ten centimeters of sand were spread over the pits at Bełżec.
[125] Interestingly MGK repeat the "maximum density of 8 bodies per cubic meter" claim on page 123 of their Sobibór book, even though their later writings quoted above suggest that they accept 22.1 bodies per cubic meter as a plausible density.
[126] Arad, Reinhard, pp. 141/142
[127] As mentioned in section 2.1, air photo analysis by Alex Bay suggests that there were further mass graves, not identified by Prof. Kola.
[128] Treblinka Extermination Camp August 1943
[129] Treblinka Extermination Camp Pre-October 1942
[130] M&G, Treblinka, p. 138.
[131] M&G, Treblinka, p. 91. The map is shown as Document 10 on page 324.
[132] Bay, Treblinka, Reconstruction of Treblinka: Summary Overview, Figure 14
[133] Judgment LG Düsseldorf vom 3.9.1965, 8 I Ks 2/64, published in JuNSV Band XXII, Lfd.Nr.596.
[134] Arad, Reinhard, p. 41.
[135] Bay, Treblinka, Reconstruction of the Death Camp (Continued), Figure 42.
[136] Bay, Treblinka, Appendix D - Ash Disposal and Burial Pits (Continued). The number of bodies with the measurements of the "ideal man" that could fit into each these mass graves is 91,000. As many of the deportees were women and children, Bay considers it reasonable to estimate that "the contents of a mass grave 50 X 25 X 10 meters is at least 100,000 people".
[137] M&G, Treblinka, p. 139.
[138] As note 136.
[139] As note 135, Figure 43.
[140] M&G, Treblinka, p. 78.
[141] Mattogno, Bełżec, pp. 87/88.
Surely with out a great post, enjoyed reading it a lot, well done.....
ReplyDeleteMagento Themes
A great post, the efforts wasted in writting such a wonderful and informative post cant be ignored. Well done great posting....
ReplyDeleteCommercial Buildings for Sale