Smoke Over Birkenau in 1943

A reader of this blog called to our attention a ground photograph from the album of the construction offices in Auschwitz showing plums of smoke rising above Birkenau and wondered if it could be "smoke from bunker 1 and 2".

Yad Vashem Archives, Photo Archive, album FA157/74, item 46043

Location

The photograph was taken from about 500 m South-East of Auschwitz Birkenau with view on its South-East corner on the left and the main entrance gate on the right.

Date

Crematorium 3 seems to be visible on the far left of the picture, which was completed in 1943.  According to a document in Bartosik et al., The Beginnings of the Extermination of Jews in KL Auschwitz in the Light of the Source Materials, p.175, the vegetable storage houses in the foreground was still under construction in July 1943. Hence, the photograph was probably taken in summer 1943.

Origin of the Smoke

While the direction of the smoke could roughly correspond to the locations of Bunker 1 and Bunker 2 extermination sites, it is presumed that those sites were not in operation anymore in summer 1943 as the crematoria took over the extermination. Open air cremation might have taken place in August 1943 especially at crematorium 5 (see Open-Air Cremations in Auschwitz, August 1943). The exact origin of the smoke on the photograph seems unclear. Other than from cremation, it could be smoke from the chimneys of kitchens, delousing facilities or a narrow gauge railway transporting material to construction sites.

A new document mentioning "special cellars" (Sonderkeller) in the crematoria 2 and 3 at Birkenau.

Dr. Pavel Polian has kindly provided us with several documents from a collection residing in the Military-Medical Museum (Voyenno-Meditsinskiy Muzej) in Saint-Petersburg, Russia.

One of the documents is important for confirming the chronology of the decision to install gas chambers in the cellars of the Birkenau crematoria II and III.

We will provide a short historical introduction as well as an analysis of the Holocaust deniers' take on the issue

1. Introduction to the "special cellar" issue.

We know that the first two Birkenau crematoria (II and III) were initially planned as "normal" hygienic installations. Their morgues were began to be intended as gas chambers some time in 1942* and as undressing rooms some time in 1943.

Auschwitz-Birkenau Aerial Photographs

The following is a compilation of published aerial photographs (with close-ups) of the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex. I have also listed visible features relevant to mass extermination and figures on Jewish mass transports (derived from the so called Glaser list) to those days with aerial photographs of sufficient quality and before the halt of the extermination in October 1944.

In the context of Holocaust denial, it is noteworthy that the known aerial photographs show only few seconds of Birkenau from high altitude on few days in 1944, thereof only two days with excessive mass killings taken place (31 May and 8 July 1944 - as opposed to four other days in June and August with "mild" activity and "only" one or two Jewish transports arriving). At such frequency, the photographs cannot directly depict the actual magnitude of mass killing on a certain day or even over a period. And yet, more or less static features constantly present or only slowly changing over time such as open air incineration area, thick security and camouflage screens and discolouration at the gas introduction openings on the gas chambers' roofs, as well as repeated heavy smoke from an incineration trench located close to the crematorium 5 gas chambers (also belching smoke on Sonderkommando ground photos) provide more than just a glimpse on the extermination machinery.

A useful resource of information on the various photos compiled by the late Harry Mazal can be found here (just some of the scale figures need to be corrected).

Other blog postings related to the Auschwitz-Birkenau air-photos:

The Auschwitz Open Air Incineration Photographs as Evidence for Mass Extermination

Personal Movement in the Auschwitz-Birkenau Compound on 25 August 1944 Aerial Photographs

The Gardens at the Crematoria of Auschwitz-Birkenau

John Ball's Air Photo Evidence on Auschwitz

The Gardens at the Crematoria of Auschwitz-Birkenau

In his contemporary manuscript, Marcel Nadjari, a prisoner of the Jewish Sonderkommando in Auschwitz-Birkenau, provided the following description of crematorium 2/3 (he was usually employed at the latter):

"It is a big building with a wide chimney and 15 ovens. Below a garden there are two big endless rooms in the basement. The one serves for undressing and the other is the death chamber, where the people enter naked and after filled with about 3000 people, it is closed and they gas them, where they gave up the ghost after 6 to 7 minutes of martyrdom."

(Contemporary Handwritten Letter of Auschwitz Sonderkommando Prisoner Marcel Nadjari Deciphered, my emphasis)

Fake Footage of Auschwitz-Birkenau Football Match in Hungarian Documentary

As I learned from this youtube clip, there is a documentary KL Auschwitz by Bárány László from 2008 aired on Hungarian television including footage of a football match apparently taking place in Auschwitz-Birkenau (here and here). On a closer look, it turns out that the scenes are not authentic footage from the concentration camp.

Contemporary Handwritten Letter of Auschwitz Sonderkommando Prisoner Marcel Nadjari Deciphered

According to a recent article Das Ungelesene lesen by the Russian historian Pavel Polian, 90% of the contemporary handwritten letter of the Sonderkommando prisoner Marcel Nadjari has been deciphered "through the use of multispectral images". Previously, the amount of readable text was limited to about 10%.

Short debunking of Steven Anderson's video "The Holocaust Hoax Exposed".

This video by a nutty religious fanatic is popular enough to merit some attention, so here it goes.

Needless to say, the man is a total hack who is ignorant about the very trivial basics of the Holocaust. Like, its definition.

1:32: "The issue is: whether or not 6 million Jews died in gas chambers and were subsequently cremated".
3:27: "The question is: were 6 million Jews gassed and then cremated?"

Since nobody serious has ever claimed that 6 million Jews died in gas chambers, Anderson shows that he has not even bothered to look up what the Holocaust is supposed to be before barging in to "debunk" it!

It's like trying to "debunk" quantum physics while thinking that Newton's laws are paragraphs of the British penal code.

There, I could end this review right now. No one who's uttered something this stupid deserves to be taken seriously.

But just for the fun of it let's see what else he has to say.

On the Number of the Zyklon B Introduction Holes in the Roof of Crematorium I

With the publication of Daniel Keren, Jamie McCarthy, Harry W. Mazal’s article “The Ruins of the Gas Chambers: A Forensic Investigation of Crematoriums at Auschwitz  I and Auschwitz-Birkenau” (Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 2004, vol. 18, no. 1) the slow-burning debate on the number of the Zyklon B introduction openings in the morgue of crematorium I in Auschwitz Stammlager moved forward. It was not the last word on the topic, but it was a very prominent contribution.

Peter Winter on the Auschwitz Crematorium 1 Gas Chamber

Revisionist blogger Peter Winter thinks to end the debate on "Auschwitz I’s 'Gas Chamber'" by simply telling us that what is known since more than two decades and common knowledge since many years: that the crematorium in Auschwitz main camp and its gas chamber have been reconstructed by the Poles after the war. The issue might have been exciting in the 70s and 80s, if at all, but it had been settled in 1989, when Jean-Claude Pressac provided a description of the reconstruction of crematorium 1 in his Technique and Operation of the Auschwitz Gas Chamber, p. 133 and it was "mainstream" in the 90s (e.g. Deborah Dwork and Robert Jan Van Pelt explained the reconstruction of crematorium 1 in their Auschwitz, 1270 to the Present in 1996, p. 400 in the German edition). 

Peter is coming a decade or two too late with his "revelation". 

Plagiarism in Filip Müller's Book

Auschwitz Sonderkommando Filip Müller's book (Sonderbehandlung, 1979 in German; Auschwitz Inferno, 1979 in English) is quoted in numerous works on the mass murder machinery in Auschwitz. Yet, it is has to be treated very carefully as a historical source as in addition to some distortions it has also plagiarised earlier accounts.

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.

Rebuttal of Mattogno on Auschwitz, Part 1: Indoor Cremation

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

Revisionist Carlo Mattogno’s book Auschwitz: The Case for Sanity (September 2010, abbreviated as ATCFS) is hailed as the “the most devastating blow ever” to holocaust historiography according to the Holocaust handbooks webpage or in Mattogno’s own words:

"In fact, I am the author “most damaging” to their [Jean-Claude Pressac and Robert Jan Van Pelt] books about Auschwitz, which I exhaustively refuted in the more than 700 pages of my already quoted study Auschwitz: The Case for Sanity."

(Mattogno [with Graf and Kues], The “Extermination Camps” of “Aktion Reinhardt”, 2013, p. 1496)

Not the first time Mattogno thinks a great deal of his page count (see also Mattogno, Auschwitz: The First Gassing, 2011, p. 7 and Mattogno, Inside the Gas Chambers, 2014, p. 110; Mattogno had been truly hyperactive over the last years, but the other side of the coin is that he missed out to improve the quality of his writings).

The book has some 768 pdf pages, but that’s fortunately not all I had to wade through. It comes along with a large appendix. There are effectively 640 pages of text with about 250,000 words; the figure is not reflecting his original output, since more than 53,000 words are block quotes. Moreover, entire paragraphs and sections have been taken over from at least six previous books and four articles published by Mattogno, a total of about 36,000 words (and I did not even compare the chapter on cremation with his Italian crematoria book; curiously, comments on Aumeier on p. 609 f. are repeated again 30 pages later, something that could have been avoided if the patchwork were subjected to some serious proof reading).

Anyway, the good news is this won’t be a 250,000 words riposte. I won’t go after every single minor issue and follow him on every secondary theatre he pulled on Jean-Claude Pressac and Robert Jan Van Pelt. I will also not synthesize a narrative on Auschwitz – I will leave it to the people who have learnt how to do it (historians) to clear up the timeline and details of the Holocaust in Auschwitz if something is still unclear and contradictory. I will focus on a single issue: Did Mattogno justify reasonable doubts on the mass extermination of Jews in Auschwitz? The book will have to be measured on Mattogno’s own words that “the present work furnishes a coherent and actually converging set of evidentiary elements which show that the holocaust thesis regarding the existence of homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz is historically, documentarily and technically unfounded” (ATCFS, p. 24). 

The Auschwitz Open Air Incineration Photographs as Evidence for Mass Extermination

The Auschwitz open air cremation photographs (both the Sonderkommando ground photos as well as the aerial photographs) are examined if they provide evidence for mass extermination in Auschwitz-Birkenau - without resorting to testimonial evidence. The non-incriminating Revisionist interpretation of the photographs is discussed and checked against the available evidence.

The CODOH poster "Toshiro" ...

... is hereby cordially invited to continue our discussion interrupted by Yuku's deletion of the RODOH forum.

I have posted my response to his last CODOH post in this discussion on the Skeptics Society Forum.

Reconstructing "A message to Jonnie Hannover Hargis ..." (2)

Reconstructing "A message to Jonnie Hannover Hargis ..." (1)

In the previous blog of this series, I reproduced posts nos. 1 to 7 from the extinct RODOH forum’s thread "A message to Jonnie Hannover Hargis ...".

In this blog I reproduce posts # 8 to # 10 from that thread. These posts dealt with matters related to corpse cremation at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp.

Reconstructing "A message to Jonnie Hannover Hargis ..." (1)

The extinct RODOH forum's most visited thread, "A message to Jonnie Hannover Hargis ...", was being reconstructed on the RODOH 2 forum.

As that forum was also deleted, a partial reconstruction will be done in several blogs, starting with this one, mostly by inserting the screenshots from the original RODOH thread "A message to Jonnie Hannover Hargis ..." as images, which can be enlarged to a readable size by clicking on them and viewed in slideshow sequence. Where posts considered of interest are available in MS Word format, the text of such posts will also be transcribed in blog format, after some editing to replace German special letters and punctuation marks that got lost in the original RODOH forum's migration to Yuku. Spelling errors will also be corrected, and bare links converted into embedded links, but otherwise the text reproduced will be the same that was posted on the RODOH forum, as can be verified on hand of the corresponding screenshots. Red letters highlight the posts’ sequential numbers on the thread as well as links that were lost when the RODOH forum was deleted.

"Hannover" Hargis tells some more lies

This month's first blog is dedicated to my old friend Jonnie "Hannover" Hargis, well known on the scene as the cowardly and mendacious lead-foot censor who moderates the "Revisionist" cesspit known as the "CODOH Revisionist Forum". Hargis now also writes for a pamphlet called "Smith’s Report", where he has a column in which he presents past exchanges on the CODOH forum.

Carlo Mattogno and an inconvenient document

Last month one of the lesser "Revisionist" brains, Ralph Gordon, chimed into a discussion about cremations on the RODOH forum with the following remark:

Roberto, you really need to read Mattogno's http://holocausthandbooks.com/22/ as he makes it quite clear why the notion of multiple bodies in a muffle is just technically absurd. But od course you're just a biassed propagandist, but others might appreciate it.

Carlo Mattogno, the failed Dragon-slayer

(Last revised: 30.01.2010)

Long sections of Carlo Mattogno's book The Bunkers of Auschwitz [PDF] are devoted to the critique of various testimonies of Auschwitz Sonderkommando Shlomo Dragon and his brother Abraham.

First, let's take a look at Mattogno's comparison of Shlomo Dragon's Soviet and Polish testimonies. Since I have examined the original Soviet testimony and have the text before me, I'm in a good position to analyze Mattogno's analysis.

The first thing I want to state is that all the citations from Dragon's testimony in Mattogno's book, given in footnotes in original Russian, are indeed authentic. Mattogno's translation of some of them is another matter, as we shall see shortly...