Viewer's Guide to "Auschwitz - The Surprising Hidden Truth" (Minutes 16 - 22)

Viewer's Guide to "Auschwitz - The Surprising Hidden Truth" 

Minutes 0 - 10

Minutes 10 - 16

Minutes 16 - 22
Minutes 22 - 38
Minutes 38 - end

Crowd Density

[16 min] [...] This level of crowding would take military discipline, total compliance and a lot of practice.

The argument seems to be taken from Germar Rudolf's The Rudolf Report, p. 204, where it reads:

"How did they get these 1,000 people to pack themselves tightly together, as one can expect from soldiers who have practiced this for weeks on a parade ground? The only solution is that this must have been practiced just as intensively and disciplined as soldiers do it. And of course, at some point in this alleged scenario, people had to realize that they were not gathering for a shower, thus resulting in panic and lack of orderly cooperation with their murderers’ procedures."

 ~ Germar Rudolf, Rudolf Report, 2011

Note that denierbud considers a packing of 8 people per m² impossible, while Rudolf even denies that a "packing" as low as 5 people per m² was feasible in the gas chambers.

The issue of crowd density in the homicidal gas chambers can be broken down into three questions:

1. What is the range of the gas chamber crowd density as estimated by eyewitnesses?
2. What is necessary to densify crowds?
3. What densities can be achieved in practice?

According to the estimations of the former Sonderkommando prisoners, the capacity of the gas chambers of crematorium 2 was 2000 (Jaacov Gabbai, Josef Sackar, Leon Cohen) to 3000 (Marcel Nadsari, Filip Müller, Miklos Nyszli, Dov Paisikovic) people. With an area of 210 m² (neglecting the space of the concrete support pillars and gas introduction devices) this yields a crowd density of 10 to 14 people per m². Possible sources for the figures are hearsay knowledge from SS men (also via Kapos), deduction from the oven capacity based on the ovens loading scheme and crude estimation of the masses by themselves.

The Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höß was overseeing and organizing the mass extermination and should have been in a good position to estimate the gas chamber capacity. In his Nuremberg interrogation of 1 April 1946 he estimated that the gas chambers "could accommodate 2,000 persons". In a note on the technical realization of the mass murder to the Nuremberg prison psychologist Gustave Gilbert, Höß wrote that "it was possible in one gas chamber to put to death up to 2,500 persons". These figures translate into crowd densities of 10 to 12 people per m².

The second question was already addressed in the previous posting in the section "gas chamber loading": High crowd densities can be obtained when confined people are compacted by some external force (such as crowd pressure). Accordingly, highly packed crowds require neither any military discipline, nor any practice, nor any compliance.

Lastly, what is the maximum crowd density then? There is no single figure, since the density of a crowd when its individuals are in contact is depending on the physical constitution of the individuals. For example, a group of obese persons dressed in Winter clothing will need significantly more space than a group of the same size of anorexic, skinny persons in swimming trunks. Men take more space than women than children. Western Europeans in average more than East-Asians. People in 2013 more than in 1913. Etc.

The term "super dense crush load" with up to 16 persons per m² has been coined with regards to the Mumbai (India) public railway system:

"Against the original design offering a capacity of 1,800 passengers (900 sitting plus 900 standing) per nine-car train, at present a nine-car train, carries 5,000 passengers (900 sitting plus more than 4,000 people in standing condition) during peak hours. This has resulted in, what is known as, super dense crush loading conditions in Mumbai resulting in a passenger loading of 16 passengers per square metre, which is the highest in the world."

~ Sehgal and Surayya, Innovative Strategic Management: The Case of Mumbai Suburban Railway System

The figure should be taken with a pinch of salt, as people may also overcrowd the seats, which was apparently not considered here and determining the number of people in a train rushing home or to work seems somewhat challenging (and the figures may be just a crude estimate).

The range of practically achievable crowd densities has been studied both by laboratory experiments and analysis of film and photo footage from mass gatherings.

• Peak densities of 8 - 10 m² have been estimated for the so called "Love Parade" in Duisburg on 24 July 2010 (expert report of Keith Still, 9 December 2011). The crowd forces were high and resulted in 21 deaths.

• During the pilgram gathering at the Jamaraat Bridge in Saudi Arabia, peak crowd densities of "10 persons per square meter or slightly more" were determined from film footage (Johansson, Helbing, Al-Abideen, Al-Bosta, From Crowd Dynamics to Crowd Safety: A Video-Based Analysis Advances in Complex Systems, 11, 4, 2008). The crowd forces were high and resulted in numerous injured and dead people.

• For the Hillsborough disaster on 15 April 1989 in England with 96 deads, a peak density of 10 people per m² was estimated from photographs (Nicholson and Roebuck, The investigation of the Hillsborough disaster by the Health and Safety Executive, Safety Science, 18, 1995)

• Experiments performed by the British Health and Safety Executive with adults of both sexes "suggested that crowd densities of 10 persons/m² could be achieved for periods of 2 minutes without distress." (source as before)

• Japanese researchers have measured peak densities of about 10 persons per m² for crowds of Japanese students compacted only by relatively moderate crowd forces (Shimada and Naoi, An Experimental Study on the Evacuation Flow of Crowd Including Wheelchair Users, Fire Science and Technology, 25, 1, 2006). 

Since the average weight and height of the gas chamber victims was most likely lower than in either of the incidents and experiments and taking into account that they were naked (plus that higher crowd forces were acting in the gas chamber than in the Japanese study), it stands to reason that the practical peak density in the gas chamber could have been even higher than 10 people per m² and thus that the average density may have very well been around 10 people per m². This is in fact corroborated by a contemporary German document from 5 June 1942 that provides an empirical figure of 9 - 10 people per m² specifically for homicidal mass gassings.

In conclusion, the lower estimate of the crowd density provided by the eyewitnesses seems feasible and this already rebuts the Revisionist argument. This does not rule out that also the upper range of the estimations of 12 and 14 people m² was also achievable and realized, but this specific technical detail is not relevant anymore for the question if there had been homicidal mass gassings in Auschwitz (with a high proportion of emaciated people and/or children, even such crowd densities may have been possible/there is no reason to assume that they were not possible under favorable circumstances).

  Jews in the Sonderkommando

[16 min] And it’s not believable that the Germans would have Jews of all the ethnicies of Europe run the killing operation since they are the ethnic that was most likely to format a revolt and a mutiny.

1. Argument from personal incredulity vs. concrete evidence

2. The presence of Jewish Sonderkommando workers, especially when originating from the same country as the victims, may have eased the Jewish victims at the extermination sites resulting in a more smooth killing process.

3. Jews were the most practicable workers to recruit for the Germans for the extermination sites, as they were outlawed and could have been most easily liquidated if nessecary and also most easily replaced from the stream of deported Jews to Auschwitz.

Moreover, according to the National Socialist ideology, the Jews were racially the lowest and most inferiour people. If you are holding this view, it stands to reason to pick them as slave laborers for the most gruesome work you are dealing with.

Obviously, mutiny was no significant concern for the German paramilitary forces. The predecessor of the Jewish Sonderkommando in Birkenau was a small prisoner detail working in the crematorium in the Auschwitz main camp. Most of prisoners were Jewish, in particular those clearing the gas chamber. At these early trials, the SS experienced that Jewish prisoners were unlikely to "format a revolt and a mutiny" when forced to clear a gas chambers of Jewish victims and carry out the body disposal.

Crowd pressure vs. Gas Chamber Door

[17 min] At some point in the gassing operation people would panic and search towards the door. How hard could they push? Consider the Heysel Stadium disaster of 1985, where 39 people were killed [...] They pushed over a concrete wall, so in the gas chamber how hard could they push on this door and what does the door look like.

[18 min] In the movie potrayed it looks strong. But if we have actual photos of the cremation ovens under construction and finished, might there be a photo of a gas chamber door somewhere? To find out we to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum website and look up gassing operations. And scroll down to further readings to find auther Jean-Claude Pressac. In his book Auschwitz: Technique and operation of the gas chambers we find numerous photos of the type of door used though not the actual door.

Gabbai: "You know it takes about 4, 5 minutes to die except the peopel who are infront where the gas is coming there it takes about a couple of minutes."

We see wood slads, this is tape to keep the gas from coming out through the cracks. This flimsey rod iron band is what would hold 2000 panicking people inside. It pivets there, swinging this way. The doors were mate by the inmates themselves. On page 46 we read, 'this type of gas tight door, with the same method of closing was to be used as it stood in the homicidal gas chambers'.

[19 min] But up here it says that this is 'the gas tight door of the Kanada I delousing gas chamber'. In other words, behind this door would be a room full of blankets and clothes to be fumigated. But we are supposed to believe that the same door design with no added fortifications would be used to hold 2000 panicking people in a gas chamber

Gabbai: "They get undress and right away they were going direct to the chambers. And since it takes a few minutes to die, then they realized that they were dying. So you always would find when you open the door some scratches in the walls of blood, they were going with their fingers scratching the walls to get safe at some place, there was no way."

[20 min] Müller: "Secondly, most people tried to push their way to the door. It was psychological: they knew where the door was, so maybe they could force their way. It was instinctive in the death struggle."

If a surge of panicking people pushed on such a flimsy door the people nearest the door would be crushed to death and then the latches would give and the door would burst open. And how believable is it that a door for 2000 people to go through on a regular basis is the size of a household door.

At the Heysel Stadium disaster, there were mostly men of the age 16 - 40 one can suppose, the strongest of mankind. On the other hand, the victims in the gas chamber were the weakest of mankind. The wall that collapsed in the stadium was free standing and people were on top of it. Further, the wall was already structural defective:

"...the collapse of a defective wall was a major contributory factor to the deaths”

~ Dunning, Sport Matters: Sociological Studies of Sport, Violence and Civilisation, p. 172

"The wall, no more than four feet high and twenty feet long, was more than 50 years old, its cement cladding crumbling away from the rotting brickwork"

~ Rowland, From Where I Was Standing: A LiverpoolSupporter's View of the Heysel Stadium Tragedy

The collapse of a wall at the Heysel stadium shows nothing but that certain crowds can make certain constructions collapse. It does, however, not demonstrate and not even indicate that the crowd in the gas chamber would have to burst open its door.

What actually needs to be done by Revisionists is to estimate the forces of the crowd on the door and the resistance of the door and door parts. Was not done by denierbud.

The issue of crowd forces on the gas chamber door is not trivial. It is not the force that can be exerted by one person multiplied by 2000. Only a fraction of the potential muscles forces could have been exerted on the door simply due to lack of space in the dense crowd and poor friction between possibly moist feet and concrete floor.

Moreover, only a fraction of the victims could have actually exerted their muscle force on the door. Forces of people in a chain do not accumulate infinitely but are inevitable capped by an upper limit, the pressure that is fatal for human beings. A dead or faint person cannot exert any force actively anymore. Provided that the door could resist the pressure that is just fatal or fainting for human beings, which seems intuitively a reasonable assumption, it would have been unlikely that the door was burst open just by the muscles forces of the crowd.

Crowds can also exert leaning forces. The concrete pillars and gas introduction columns were screening the door from most of the victims; leaning forces may have only effectively accumulated from the first concrete pillar to the door. But if the crowd collapsed at some point, it was screening the door from those farther back. On the other hand, if the gas chamber was packed so dense that the people could virtually not collapse, the bodies also had not much angle to exert large leaning forces.

Generally, forces in highly dense crowds are difficult to predict and up to day, there is no founded estimation specifically for the crowd forces on the gas chamber door and the latter's resistance.

However, we know from the fact that numerous witnesses have testified on homicidal gassings in Auschwitz without any reported incident of a door failure, that the crowd pressure on the gas chamber doors was always - or more conservatively: usually - less than the failure pressure of the same. There is no evidence presented by denierbud or any other Holocaust denier refuting this finding.

Crowd pressure vs. Gas Introduction Column

[20 min] And these columns through which Zyklon B was poured, Pressac’s book as a schematic diagram of it, which Pressac drew himself based on eyewitness claims. It looks like chicken wire. They would have been destroyed by the crowd also.

,

Same as before. Without knowledge of the crowd pressure and resistance of the column, no conclusion can be drawn whether it "would have been destroyed". Reportedly, certain crowd forces can bent free standing guard rails, but it is unclear whether the victims in the gas chamber could have destroyed the presumably fastened 5 cm thick iron bars and network of wire mesh.

Elevator

[20 min] Jean-Claude Pressac's book has a photo of the elevator too. It says “a provisional 300 kg capacity goods hoist used in Krematorium II".

[21 min] So the bodies would go on here, and this is a triangular bar with a stabilizing piece of wood here. How flimsy. Imagine you have 2000 bodies in the basement but maximum capacity 661 pounds. So with seven bodies going up at a time, you would have to make 285 trips. Why not just have a conveyer belt on an incline here. Like this. It says provisional as in temporary, but Carlo Mattogno in his book Auschwitz: The Case for Sanity makes a strong case that this was the elevator that remained for the entire war period.

It is false that the “maximum capacity” of the provisional elevator was 300 kg/660 lbs. This figure actually referred to the “minimum capacity” ordered from the metal workshop (see Pressac, Technique, p.488); the maximum or actually used capacity may have been well above this.

The idea of a conveyer belt is pretty much senseless in this context. Since the central construction office in Auschwitz did not even manage to purchase a simple goods elevator for crematorium 2 on time and were forced to install a provisional makeshift one, it is safe to say it was hopeless to obtain a proper conveyer belt.

Even the provisional elevator was sufficient to handle the number of gassed corpses in the basement in relation to the cremation rate of the ovens, as such a bottleneck is not evident from the sources.

The assumptions made by Mattogno to estimate its daily capacity seem unreasonable. It is entirely unclear why say two strong men would take more than a few seconds to displace a single corpse by less than a metre.

It is certainly possible to imagine a scenario that worked for the mass extermination. Assuming that 8 corpses were transported with each load, that each transfer of the elevator to the next level took 1 minute and that each corpse was loaded and unloaded in 10 s, it would have taken some 5 min to transfer 8 corpses or 20 hours for 2000 corpses - less or equal the time needed for the cremation part. 

Denierbud asserts that Mattogno did make "a strong case that this was the elevator that remained for the entire war period" but in the cited book it merely reads "it is not clear" whether a more powerful elevator was installed after May 1944 (Mattogno, Auschwitz - The Case for Sanity, p. 51). So how Mattogno could make a "strong case" that the elevator was not upgraded when he says "it is not clear" is beyond me. Or why Mattogno did not urge for a correction when he viewed the clip (the so called "peer review"), and instead considered it "superb".

Hasty Generalization

[21 min] Germany is the country of BMW, Mercedes, Porsche, Volkswagen, Krups and Braun. Industrial design is part of their culture.

[22 min] So much so that in North America sometimes this is made into a parody. [...] Yet, the design at Auschwitz is so poor that it can't be believed.

This argument is so poor that it can't be believed.

That because some of the finest engineering originates from Germany, that conversely anything engineered by Germans must be fine too, is just hilarious. This is now hard to say for me - as a German - and it may come to surprise to denierbud, but some Germans have actually engineered crap in the past. It's just that you do not get a big player when you engineer crap, you vanish from the market.

Secondly, Germany's top engineers were hardly to be found among SS clerks in a prison camp, but rather in the industry.

Thirdly, conditions for developing and construction were not the best in 1942 - 1944, especially for non-armament industries. Furthermore, the conspirative and ethically questionable nature of the task to design mass murder facilities was a severe constraint. The point is, with restrictive conditions set, you obtain only the most feasible solution under these conditions even with the best people, but not the technologically and technically summit.

And last but not least, the design at Auschwitz was not poor. The cremation site was state of the art at the time. The killing site was engineered to cope with the pace of the body disposal.