Rebuttal of Mattogno on Auschwitz, Part 5: Construction Documents, G: Gas Chambers

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 Room
D: Outward Opening Door & Removal of Corpse Chute
E: Gas Detectors
F: Cremation with Simultaneous Special Treatment
G: Gas Chambers

The crematoria in Auschwitz-Birkenau were equipped with gas chambers. Leaving aside testimonial evidence (which also specifies their purpose), this follows clearly and explicitly from documentary evidence from the archives of the central construction office Auschwitz. I will first quote the relevant documents (including a rebuttal of Mattogno's arguments against their homicidal interpretation, which I think is necessary, but is hidden with the HTML spoiler code as it may beyond the interest of many readers), followed by a rebuttal of Mattogno's own hypothesis of the nature of these gas chambers and completed by some photographic evidence for a homicidal gas chamber in Auschwitz, which remains insufficiently explained by Revisionists up to this day. 

The Documents

• Letter from the head of the central construction office Karl Bischoff to his superior Hans Kammler of 29 January 1943:
  
  

  "The planking of the reinforced concrete ceiling of the corpse cellar could not yet be removed due to the freezing weather. However, this is not significant, as the gassing cellar can be used for this purpose."

On this letter, Mattogno writes:

"It is essential to stress that the matter had a strictly limited character and was valid only as long as 'Leichenkeller 2' was not operational: the 'Vergasungskeller' could be used 'hierfür,' i.e. as a morgue ('Leichenkeller') on January 29, 1943, and on the days immediately following. Yet since during this period, as Bischoff states in the above letter, Topf had not yet shipped the 'aeration and de-aeration system' 'on account of freight restrictions,' the 'Vergasungskeller' could not have been operational as a homicidal gas chamber. The interpretation of official historiography – the undressing room for the victims is not operational but that is of no importance, because the homicidal gas chamber could be used for this purpose – is thus nonsensical a fortiori: if the alleged homicidal gas chamber was not operational, why should it be used as an undressing hall for victims? And victims of what, if the homicidal gas chamber did not work?

In conclusion, we can say that the victims could not undress in 'Leichenkeller 2' because the room was not operational. While they could undress in the 'Vergasungskeller,' they could not be gassed there, as the ventilation system had not yet arrived. Therefore, the 'Vergasungskeller' must have had some other function."

(Mattogno, ATCFS, p. 57 - 58)

This argument assumes that - by 29 January 1943 and within the framework of the exterminationist hypothesis - the only function attributed to corpse cellar 2 towards Kammler was that of an undressing room. But there is no proof and no necessity for why this should be the case (cf. part C of this series).

It is possible that corpse cellar 2 was not yet selected as undressing site for the gassing victims. It is also possible that corpse cellar 2 was selected as undressing site by the Auschwitz SS in charge of the extermination, but that this was not yet communicated to Kammler. It is further possible that by 29 January 1943 corpse cellar 2 was intended as having a dual function as undressing room and corpse cellar (in this case, the room would have to be cleared from corpses and well ventilated some hours prior a gassing operation).

Therefore, there are at least three possibilities competing with the assumption that the only function attributed to corpse cellar 2 towards Kammler on 29 January 1943 was that of an undressing room. If anything, Mattogno's argument shows that this specific assumption is wrong, and hence that one of the others holds. But it cannot show that this gassing cellar didn't have a homicidal function.

With either one of the three possibilities left, the document can be interpreted as follows: the letter was meant to report to Bischoff's superior Kammler in Berlin that the promised completion date for crematorium 2 was not missed again, although it was in fact not completed yet. The trick was that Bischoff separated the cremation from the killing function of the site, and reported that the cremation part is (practically) finished. The crematorium building was finished, the ovens were set up. Still, the problem left was that the construction of corpse cellar 2 was not completed yet. In order to get around this, he explained that this is practically irrelevant since the corpses can be placed in the gassing cellar these days, which is not in operation anyway because of the lacking ventilation. 

In addition to this, Mattogno's assumption that the corpse cellar 2 was only an undressing room according to Exterminationists is a straw man anyway. In Van Pelt's view (and recall that ATCFS is a rebuttal to him), corpse cellar 2 had a dual function by 29 January 1943, which was obviously missed by Mattogno (although he cited the very next paragraph on ATCFS, p. 64 f.):

"The second morgue, Leichenkeller 2, initially was meant to function both as a morgue and as an undressing room, but it quickly was fully committed to the latter purpose. The letter thus mentions that there are problems with completing Leichenkeller 2 and that therefore the gas chamber - formerly Leichenkeller 1 - would have to serve (temporarily) its original and store corpses."

(Robert Jan Van Pelt, The Case for Auschwitz, p. 297, my emphasis)

 
• Memo from the Topf engineer Fritz Sander of 17 February 1943:
  
  

  "Mr. Schultze is calling and reports the following: The aeriation blower number 450 for the gas cellar cannot be found there, although it has allegedly left us."

Mattogno objects the following:

"Considered from van Pelt’s point of view, however, the use of this term [gas cellar] is totally out of place. Little more than two weeks after Kirschneck is claimed to have been reprimanded for his “slip” of January 29, 1943 – i.e. for having written down the prohibited term “Vergasungskeller,” thus violating the alleged rule never to use the term “gas chamber” – we have here, in fact, a member of ZBL spreading not only the term “Gaskeller” but doing so toward civilians to boot! R.I.P. Rule of secrecy of Zentralbauleitung."

(ATCFS, p. 69 - 70)

Actually, there is no indication in the document that the term Gaskeller was passed on to Topf by "a member of ZBL [central construction office]". The term was used in conversations between two or three Topf employees (Prüfer, Sander, possibly Schultze). It is possible that "a member of ZBL" passed on the term to them, but it's also possible that they coined it themselves based on observed activities to use the basement for homicidal gassing. Also, if the term were used in oral communications between the construction office and Topf, it would not put any rule of secrecy not to write on gassings to rest. Thirdly, even if a member of the construction office violated the rule in this specific case, it does not consist any argument whatsoever against the existence of such a rule or a homicidal interpretation of the document, as if there are no exceptions to rules. Last but not least, the central construction office could not prevent Topf engineers from violating any rule of secrecy in their own internal memos.

"Besides, the back of the document designates Leichenkeller 2 precisely by “L-Keller,” morgue basement, and not by “Auskleidekeller,” the alleged undressing room which could not be unknown to the Topf employee, if he had known about a sinister kind of “Gaskeller,” i.e. about an alleged homicidal gas basement."

Here we go again: the assumption that corpse cellar 2 was decided as undressing room (in this case) by 17 February 1943, when the memo was written. However, the first evidence that an undressing site was planned into corpse cellar 2 is dated 26 February 1943. Moreover, even if the decision to undress the victims in corpse cellar 2 was made on or before 17 February 1943, it is certainly false that the Topf employees had to know about such plans weeks before they might have been implemented. For all we know, no SS personnel might have mentioned towards the Topf engineers in February 1943 that corpse cellar 2 will be used to undress any gassing victims and for all we know undressing benches were installed in the undressing room only in March 1943. In this case, the Topf engineers would not know about the undressing room by 17 February 1943.

 

•  Work time sheet of 2 March 1943 on work at crematorium 4:

"Ground covered with hard fill, tamped down and floor concreted in gas chamber"

(Pressac, Technique, p. 446)


In addition to these explicit contemporary German documents on gas chambers in the crematoria, there are numerous more on the installation of gas-tight doors and windows in crematoria 2 - 5 in Auschwitz-Birkenau, see Pressac, Technique, p. 429 ff.

Mattogno's Hypothesis

It is already noteworthy that Mattogno accepts that gas chambers were installed into the Birkenau crematoria. This is not beyond dispute among Holocaust deniers, as a popular theory explains the gas-tight doors and gas/gassing cellar as part of the implementation of anti-air-raid measures (see Butz, Crowell, most recently an anonymous CODOH article). Mattogno has spent considerable effort to rebut the so-called bomb shelter hypothesis in the past. In this debate - which is, simply speaking, resolving around which false Revisionist premise can explain the evidence worst - Mattogno seems to be one-eyed king among the blinds.

According to Mattogno's own hypothesis, the "most reasonable scenario is that toward the end of January 1943 the SS authorities, desperate to get the typhus epidemic under control, planned to use Leichenkeller 1 of crematorium II temporarily as a gas chamber employing hydrogen cyanide" (ATCFS, p. 61), which he infers from a breakdown of some hot air desinfestation facilities in January 1943 and a "resurgence of the typhus epidemic...which reached its peak during the first ten days of February" (ATCFS, p. 60). He assumes that the "gas cellar" in the crematorium was a spontaneous idea by the Amtsgruppe C of the SS-WVHA in late January 1943 (ATCFS, p. 61) and meant to be an "emergency disinfestation chamber" (ATCFS, p. 62).

Were the Gas-Chambers in the Crematoria in Birkenau Emergency Disinfestation Chambers?

Firstly, there is not a single direct and explicit piece of evidence (let it be testimonial or documentary) that the gas chambers in the crematoria were ever intended, implemented or used for delousing. No eyewitness or hearsay witness or document mentions the gas chambers in the context of delousing activities. Note that neither the VEDAG invoice of 28 July 1943 mistakenly mentioning "Auschwitz crematorium" when listing work actually performed on the so-called Zentralsauna, the main shower and delousing facility under construction in Birkenau, nor the Topf metal allocation list of 13 April 1943 on "2 Topf disinfestation ovens for Krema II" (which was operated with hot air, not with poison gas) are providing such direct evidence, see Mattogno, ATCFS, doc 4 and 5.

Mattogno insists that "nothing tells us that it [the gas chamber in crematorium 2] was later actually used for disinfestation" (ATCFS, p. 64). The crematoria were equipped with something like 8 gas chambers of several hundreds of m² in total. It is rather implausible that such installations with huge high capacity were carried out merely as back up and without ever using them. And further troublesome for the "emergency" hypothesis is the fact that both the gassing cellar letter and gas cellar memo indicates a permanent installation of a gas chamber replacing the corpse cellar function.

If the "gassing cellar" was only an emergency disinfestation chamber anyway and still a corpse cellar in its primary function, it was pointless from Bischoff to call the room a gassing cellar in the first place instead of corpse cellar 1 and to leave out the numbering of corpse cellar 2, as by doing so he only created the problem to explain away that there was no permanent morgue yet finished by 29 January 1943. According to Bischoff, there was supposed to be one corpse cellar and one gassing cellar in the basement, while the gassing cellar was also an emergency morgue when the actual corpse cellar was not operational, i.e. it is the exact another way round as Mattogno would like it to have. Likewise, the Topf memo identifies one gas chamber ("gas cellar") and one morgue ("corpse cellar") in the basement. This also suggests that the "gas cellar" was no longer considered as a morgue and that the corpse cellar 2 was the only possible morgue left in the basement in the eyes of the Topf engineers, making its numbering superfluous.

The nomenclature in both documents strongly suggests a permanent transformation of corpse cellar 1 to a gas chamber instead of the implementation of an "emergency disinfestation chamber" in a morgue. The fact that the terms corpse cellar 1 and 2 were nevertheless used in most documents is easily explained by the rules of secrecy:

"I had received the order of Bischoff that I could never write the word "gassing." I always had to circumscribe it...I believe that Bischoff pointed out to me, that the word "gassing" should not appear. It is also possible that once such an order has come from higher up."

(Fritz Ertl on 21 January 1972 at his trial in Vienna)

Secondly, not only is there no direct evidence these gas chambers in the crematoria were installed for delousing, but there are at least two contemporary German documents on delousing activities and facilities in the camp, which should have mentioned the alleged "emergency disinfestation chambers" if they were real - but didn't.

• On 22 July 1943, a report on delousing activities in the Birkenau men's camp since May 1943 was drawn up (Architektur des Verbrechens, p. 60). The take-home message of the report is that the delousing capacities in Birkenau are inadequate. There was only a single delousing facility in the camp section B I b, which had to be used for the Gypsies camp B II e as well. Additional delousing capacity was desperately needed according to the report, but it does not mention any "emergency disinfestation chambers" in the crematoria.

• On 30 July 1943, the construction office wrote a list of the "installed delousing facilities, baths and desinfection apparatus" in Auschwitz (Architektur des Verbrechens, p. 69). For Auschwitz-Birkenau, only the construction sites 5a and b located in the camp sections B I a and B I b as well as "four pieces portable steam desinfection facilities" are mentioned, but not the crematoria -  not even as back up and "emergency disinfestation chambers".

The lack of any reference to the supposed "emergency disinfestation chambers" in the crematoria in these documents is powerfull evidence these are existing only in Mattogno's mind.

Also, there is a report on an "inspection of disinfestation and sauna units at KL" of 2 February 1943 (ATCFS, p. 61), i.e. four days after Bischoff mentioned the gassing cellar towards Kammler and two weeks after the gas-tight doors for crematorium 4 were ordered. I don't have access to the full report (only the snippet quoted by Mattogno), but in case this report also commented on disinfestation sites planned or under construction, it would be another document contradicting his disinfestation chamber hypothesis. This has to be checked with the full doc.

Thirdly, there is an overwhelming amount of evidence (from testimonies from SS men, prisoners, civilian workers corroborated by material, photographic and documentary evidence) that the gas chambers in the crematoria were actually intended and used for homicidal gassing.

In conclusion, a) the complete absence of direct evidence for the "emergency disinfestation chambers" and b) the presence of numerous direct testimonial evidence refuting the "emergency disinfestation chambers" and confirming homicidal gassing and c) the existence of indirect documentary evidence contradicting the "emergency disinfestation chambers" establishes beyond reasonable doubt that the gas chambers in the crematoria were used to mass murder people.

The Homicidal Gas Chamber Door

The gas-tight doors installed into in crematoria 2 and 3 were equipped with "double 8 mm glass and peephole" (letter of 31 March 1943, Pressac, Technique, p. 453). The presence of a peep hole in a gas-tight door as such is not a suspicious feature. It can be a safety feature to make sure the work inside a delousing gas chamber can be observed by another person. Some gas-tight doors installed into delousing chambers in Auschwitz did have peep holes even with protection grids (see Pressac, Technique, p. 46). During the delousing with Zyklon-B, one did not want somebody breaking the glass of the peep hole, so it was reinforced with a metal grid on the outside.

Mattogno even goes a step further, and claims that the delousing chamber door illustrated in Pressac, Technique p. 46 - 49 "had a round inspection opening with a metal grid on the inside which obviously protected also the glass" (ATCFS, p. 71). As much as I try, I cannot see any metal grid at the inside of the peephole. He argues that this supposed inside grid was used to prevent some "metal carts from which were hung the garments to be disinfested ...while they were being pushed in or out" to "strike the inner side of the door and break the glass of the inspection port". Actually, I would not even know how to strike the peephole with this or these devices not even by purpose. The cart could hit the metal fitting of the peephole, but not the glass. With all due respect, but the whole explanation of the metal grid on the inside to prevent prisoners pushing in carts destroying the peephole is entirely far-fetched.

And yet, there is something that urged Mattogno to make up his inside grid (or maybe it's really there, and I just can't see it) and why he made up his far-fetched explanation for why the grid was supposed to be there. This 'something' can be found in Pressac's Technique on p. 486. Here we have a gas-tight door found after the liberation of the camp in the construction yard. It is not known from which gassing site the door was dismantled. There may or may be not an outside reinforcement in front of the peephole glass, this is hard to tell from the photograph. But what can be clearly seen is that there was a big protection grid on the inside of the door.

Such a configuration makes little sense for a delousing chamber (or bomb shelter), where the greatest risk was to break the glass from the outside during the gassing (or bombing). It does, however, make a lot of sense for a homicidal gas chamber, with the greatest danger to break the glass being from the inside by the victims, not from the outside. The following argument can be made:

Gas-tight door + peep hole + no or only flimsy reinforcement on the outside + massive protection grid on the inside ==> (probably) room to gas people

This gas-tight door with its big fat protection grid on the inside of the peephole (as opposed to no or only flimsy reinforcement on the outside) is strong inferential evidence that homicidal gassing was carried out and further corroborates the abundant evidence on homicidal gassing in Auschwitz.