Jankowski and the Krema I "ventilators".

On 16.04.1945 Stanislaw Jankowski aka Alter Feinsilber testified before the investigative judge Jan Sehn and deputy prosecutor Edward Pechalski about his experiences in the Auschwitz Sonderkommando. Among other things he said this about the morgue of crematorium I in the main camp (Amidst a Nightmare of Crime, 1973, p. 40):

This big hall had no windows, only two vents in the ceiling, electric light and one door leading from the corridor, the other door leading to the ovens.

On 29.09.1980 he testified before a Paris notary as follows:

This room had no windows, but there were ventilators [ventilateurs] in the ceiling.

Carlo Mattogno also quotes Jankowski's 06.09.1985 statement (Auschwitz: Crematorium I, 2016, p. 34):

... in the ceiling, as far as I remember, there were two openings for the introduction of the gas; there were no false showers, I do not remember any ventilators.

Mattogno sums up (p. 35):

It is, moreover, very curious to see that Jankowski did not know anything about "ventilators" in 1945, then miraculously remembered them in 1980, only to forget about them again in 1985!

But did he? Notice how in the first two statements "vents" and "ventilators" follow the claim about there having been no windows. This hints at a possibility that Jankowski meant the same thing by them. Moreover, if he didn't, one would have to conclude - implausibly - that he forgot to mention the Zyklon B introduction openings at all.

Did he use some word to describe the vents that was mistaken by the French notary as "ventilateurs"?

Let's go to the Polish text of the 1945 statement (AGK, NTN 82, p. 13):

Ta duża sala była bez okien posiadała tylko dwa wentyle w suficie...

So the word translated as "vent" was "wentyl". French was not Jankowski's native language, so most probably in 1980 he used the Polish word which was then misunderstood as referring to a ventilator. He then failed to catch the mistake in the text.

This explains both why in 1980 "ventilators" appear instead of "vents", unlike in 1945, and also why in 1985 he knew of no ventilators. This is the most parsimonious explanation, which Mattogno, who has read the Polish text, could have thought of if he weren't such a hack.

Mattogno and Grabner's Statement

Having posted Maximilian Grabner’s 1945 statement, it is now time to examine Carlo Mattogno’s conspicuous omission of this document from his body of work.  

The statement touches on many topics dear to Mattogno: the first gassing, the Krema I gassings, the Bunkers, the Krema capacities, the holes in the Krema I roof and the wire-mesh Zyklon B introduction columns... 

And yet, seemingly, there is not a single mention of it in any of his major works. I couldn’t check everything of course, but I did check all the relevant books.

In some cases taking into account the information contained in the statement should have influenced Mattogno's reasoning.  

Eric Hunt's 3D Imagery of Crematorium 1

Eric Hunt's recent piece on the homicidal gas chamber of crematorium 1 in the Auschwitz main camp maintains that "a 3D representation of the important area of Crematorium 1 is useful to understand this hole hoax". Carolyn Yeager's blog announces that Hunt's "3D imagery demonstrates the Auschwitz Hole Hoax". Actually, Hunt's "3D imagery" does not really help to understand the distribution of openings in the roof of the gas chamber better than a 2D image. The 3D effect looks nice, but that's it. It does not add anything to the issue, which hasn't been already shown by the 2D images published by Carlo Mattogno in Auschwitz: Crematorium I, p. 124 and its ugly RODOH variants (but how a 3D image can actually help to understand something is shown here for the gas chamber of crematorium 2 in Birkenau).

As I have pointed out previously, the whole argument relies heavily on the reliability of a single blueprint. Furthermore, if anything, it would suggest that the Poles have not properly reconstructed the gas chamber and its gas openings after it was converted into a bomb shelter by the SS after the gassings were ceased in the Auschwitz main camp. In fact, some of the more competent and independent witnesses (Stanislaw Jankowski, Hans Stark and Hans Aumeier with his lower estimate) have provided a figure of 2 for the number openings, and not 4 as assumed by the Polish reconstruction. Aside this, there is even a possible motive for the precaution to place a gas opening directly next to the door, especially when lacking experience with the door's stability during mass murder with poison gas: to kill the victim next to the door first and shield it from attempts to get breached.

The argument brought forward by Mattogno raises some question on how the original gas chamber looked like and why it was made like this, but it does not demonstrate a hoax, not that the Poles have created anything to deceive nor that no homicidal gassings were carried out in crematorium 1.

Rebuttal of Mattogno on Auschwitz, Part 2: Gas Introduction at the Crematoria

Rebuttal of Mattogno on Auschwitz:

Part 1: Indoor Cremation

Part 2: Gas Introduction at the Crematoria
Part 3: Eyewitnesses (Supplement)

Part 4: Sonderkommando Handwritings 

Part 5: Construction Documents:

A: Introduction
B: Ventilation & Elevators
C: Undressing Rooms
D: Outwards Opening Door & Removal of Corpse Chute 

E: Gas Detectors

F: Cremation with Simultaneous Special Treatment

G: Gas Chambers

For conventional delousing practise of housings in Auschwitz, the SS paramedics could enter the room to be deloused, open the Zyklon-B can(s) and leave again through the door. The same procedure was not possible for the killing of people as the victims were locked into rooms behind strong wooden gas tight doors (the first experimental homicidal gassings in Block 11 in the Auschwitz main camp, where the victims were locked behind prisons bars, are an exception to this, but this technique was less efficient/more challenging to camouflage). Instead, the hydrogen cyanide soaked pellets had to be introduced from the outside. The actual method was depending on the structural design of the buildings, which housed the gas chambers. At crematorium 1 in the Auschwitz main camp and at crematoria 2 and 3 in Auschwitz-Birkenau holes were drilled or poured respectively into the flat roofs of the homicidal gas chambers and closed with covers. At Bunker 1 and 2 and crematoria 4 and 5 in Birkenau with their pitched roofs, the gas was introduced via windows in the walls that were closed with gas tight shutters.

The supposed lack of evidence for gas introduction openings in the roofs of homicidal gas chambers in Auschwitz has been a major argument for Revisionists in the past: from the veteran Revisionist Robert Faurisson (“no holes, no Holocaust”) to Germar Rudolf (Rudolf Report), Brian Renk (Convergence or Divergence?) and Carlo Mattogno (No holes, no gas chambers, Auschwitz Lies, Auschwitz: Crematorium I , Auschwitz: The Case for Sanity ). I already dealt with the gas introduction openings of crematoria 2 and 3 elsewhere in detail. This will be a condensed and polished treatment of the matter. Two new pieces of evidence (German contemporary documents and the 23 August 1944 RAF aerial photograph) are also included. In the second and third part, the gas introduction at crematoria 4 and 5 and the gas openings of crematorium 1 in the main camp are discussed with a focus on Mattogno’s arguments.