Nazi Document on Mass Extermination of Jews in Auschwitz-Birkenau: The Franke-Gricksch Report

The so-called Franke-Gricksch report on the "resettlement action" in Auschwitz is the most detailed and explicit contemporary Nazi document on the mass murder of Jews in an extermination camp. The document describes the process of mass killing in Auschwitz-Birkenau, including how "the unfit [Jews] go to the basement of a biggish house" and  "are put to sleep" by "certain substances" introduced "by lowering containers into pillars from above" before "the corpses are incinerated". Previously, only a crude post-war copy of the report has been made public. We have located and now publish for the first time a war-time carbon copy made by the staff of the SS Personnel Main Office.

The Document

(BArch R 187/539, p. 24-25)

TRANSCRIPTION

Umsiedlungs-Aktion der Juden

Eine besondere Aufgabe hat das Lager Auschwitz in der Regelung der Judenfrage. Modernste Massnahmen ermöglichen hier in kürzester Zeit und ohne grosses Aufsehen die Durchführung des Führerbefehls.

Die sogenannte "Umsiedlungsaktion" der Juden läuft folgendermassen ab:

Die Juden kommen in Sonderzügen (Güterwagen) gegen Abend an und werden auf besonderen Gleise in eigens dafür abgegrenzte Bezirke des Lagers gefahren. Dort werden sie ausgeladen und durch Aerztekommissionen in Anwesenheit des Lagerkommandanten und mehrerer SS-Führer erst einmal auf Arbeitsfähigkeit untersucht. Hier kommt jeder, der noch irgendwie in den Arbeitsprozess eingebaut werden kann, kommt [sic!] in ein besonderers Lager. Vorübergehend Erkrankte kommen sofort in das Sanitätslager und werden durch besondere Kost wieder gesund gemacht. Grundsatz ist: Jede Arbeitskraft ist zu erhalten. Die "Umsiedlungsaktion" älterer Art wird völlig abgelehnt, da man es sich nicht leisten kann, wichtige Arbeitsenergien laufend zu vernichten.

Die Untauglichen kommen in ein größeres Haus in die Kellerräume, die von aussen zu betreten sind. Man geht 5 - 6 Stufen herunter und kommt in einen längeren, gut ausgebauten und durchlüfteten Kellerraum, der rechts und links mit Bänken ausgestattet ist. Er ist hell erleuchtet und über den Bänken befinden sich Nummern. Den Gefangenen wird gesagt, dass sie für ihre neuen Aufgaben desinfiziert und gereinigt werden, sie müssten sich also alle völlig entkleiden, um gebadet zu werden.

-2-

Um jegliche Panik und jede Unruhe zu vermeiden, werden sie angewiesen, ihre Kleider schön zu ordnen und unter die für sie bestimmten Nummern zu legen, damit sie nach dem Bad auch ihre Sachen wiederfinden. Es geht alles in völliger Ruhe vor sich. Dann durchschreitet man einen kleinen Flur und gelangt in einen grossen Kellerraum, der einem Brausebad ähnelt. In diesem Raum befinden sich drei grosse Säulen. In diese kann man - von oben ausserhalb des Kellerraumes - gewisse Mittel herablassen. Nachdem 300 - 400 Menschen in diesem Raum versammelt sind, werden die Türen geschlossen und von oben herab die Behälter mit den Stoffen in die Räume gelässen [sic]. Sowie diese Behälter den Boden der Säule berühren, entwickeln sie bestimmte Stoffe, die in einer Minute die Menschen einschläfern. Einige Minuten später öffnet sich an der anderen Seite eine Tür, die zu einem Fahrstuhl führt. Die Haare der Leichen werden geschnitt[en] und von besonderen Fachleuten (Juden) die Zähne ausgebrochen (Goldzähne). Man hat die Erfahrung gemacht, das[s] die Juden in hohlen Zähnen Schmuckstücke, Gold, Platin usw. versteckt halten. Danach werden die Leichen in Fahrstühle verladen und kommen in den 1. Stock. Dort befinden sich 10 grosse Krematoriumsöfen, in welchen die Leichen verbrannt werden. (Da frische Leichen besonders gut brennen, braucht man für den Gesamtvorgang nur 1/2 bis 1 Ztr. Koks.) Die Arbeit selbst wird von Judenhäftlingen verrichtet, die dieses Lager nie wieder verlassen.

Bisheriger Erfolg dieser "Umsiedlungsaktion": 500 000 Juden.

Jetzige Kapazität der "Umsiedlungsaktion"-Oefen: 10 000 Juden in 24 Stunden.

TRANSLATION

Jewish resettlement action.

The Auschwitz camp has a special task in the settlement of the Jewish question. The most modern methods make it possible to implement the Führer Order very quickly and discreetly. The so called “resettlement action” for the Jews proceeds as follows:

The Jews arrive in special trains (goods wagons) towards evening and are taken by a special line to a special area of the camp. There they are unloaded and examined by a medical board in the presence of the Camp Commandant and several SS leaders in the first place to see if they are fit for work. Here anybody who can be integrated into the work process in any way is sent to a special camp. Those with some temporary ailment are sent immediately to the quarantine camp and are brought back to health through a special diet. The basic principle is: keep as many prisoners as possible for labor. The “resettlement action” of the old sort is completely rejected, for it is not permissible to systematically destroy substantial labour capacities.

The unfit go to a biggish house, into the basement rooms, which are accessible from the outside. They descend 5 or 6 steps and come to a long, well built and ventilated basement, fitted with benches on the right and left. It is brightly lit, and above the benches are numbers. The prisoners are told that they are to be disinfected and washed ready for their new tasks. They therefore have to undress completely to be bathed. In order to avoid any panic or disorder, they are told to arrange their clothes neatly and leave them under a number so that they can find their things again after the bath. Everything proceeds in complete calm. They then go through a small corridor and arrive in a big basement room that resembles a shower room. In this room, there are three big pillars. Into these it is possible from above, outside the basement, to lower certain products. After 300 to 400 people have gathered in this room, the doors are closed and from above the containers with the products are lowered into the pillars. When the containers reach the floor of the pillars, they produce certain substances that put the people to sleep in one minute. A few minutes later, the door on the other side is opened, leading to a lift. The hair of the corpses is cut off and the teeth are broken out (gold teeth) by qualified people (Jews). It has been observed that Jews have hidden jewels, gold, platinum, etc. in hollow teeth. After this the corpses are loaded into the lift said go to the first floor. There, there are 10 big crematorium furnaces in which the corpses are burned. (As fresh corpses burn particularly well, the whole process requires only ½ to 1 Zentner of coke). The work itself is carried out by Jewish prisoners who will never leave this camp.

The result to date of this “resettlement action”: 500,000 Jews. The present capacity of the “resettlement action” furnaces: 10,000 in 24 hours.

(with some changes, the English translation is based on Pressac, Technique and Operation of the Auschwitz Gas Chambers, p. 239)

Provenance

The US historian Charles W. Sydnor wrote in the postscript of Soldiers of Destruction: The SS Death's Head Division, 1933-1945:

"The Franke-Gricksch Memorandum, entitled "Umsiedlungsaktion der Juden" and originally discovered by this author in 1976, is a verbatim typed copy, in German, made from one of the carbon copies of the original at the time the carbon was first found, in the autumn of 1945, by a documents analyst of the U.S. Army, assisting in the process of assembling and evaluating materials for possible use as evidence in the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. The carbon copy has never been relocated, and quite possibly is still buried in the mass of unindexed Nuremberg trial materials. The original of the Frank-Gricksch Memorandum, written for and submitted to the chief of the SS Personnel Office, Maximilien von Herff, has never been found.
The typed copy made from the carbon, found by this writer in a collection of private papers, was given along with the entire collection to the Tauber Institute at Brandeis University and is now deposited there."

The document analyst who located the report after the war was Eric M. Lipman of the U.S. Third Army, who typed a crude copy of the document (Figure 1). His copy included some English words ("had" instead of "hat", "and" instead of "an") and typos ("vörübergehend" instead of "vorübergehend").  Jean-Claude Pressac noted in his analysis of the Franke-Gricksch report that Lipman "seems to remember finding the carbon copy of the original report among a set of documents in a place he cannot recall exactly, somewhere in Bavaria".

Figure 1: Typed post-war copy of the Franke-Gricksch report, from Pressac, Technique and Operation of the Auschwitz Gas-Chambers, p. 238.

The British historian Gerald Fleming dedicated a section in his book Hitler and the Final Solution to discussing the historical context of the document. He cited Lipman's typewritten copy, but also stated that "one of three carbon copies from Alfred Franke-Gricksch's report ... is in author's possession." Fleming never published the carbon copy of the report. The Holocaust denier Brian Renk claimed in 1991 that he contacted Fleming about the carbon copy, but was only sent a photocopy of the typewritten copy as a reply. Whether true or not, it is not feasible to verify the formal authenticity of a document only known from a person's words.

In 2005, the British Holocaust denier David Irving joined the debate on the Franke-Gricksch report. According to his description, he did see the report at the former Berlin Document Center (BDC) in the 1980s (by the way, it is one of Irving's secrets as to why a document saying that "the most modern methods make it possible to implement the Führer Order very quickly and discreetly" does not personally implicate Hitler!). His reference (from memory) "238-I and II" looked like a reference to a file in the so-called Schumacher collection (thanks to our Nick Terry for this hint). Bruno Schumacher was an employee of the BDC, who collected all sorts of documents of various provenance on the National Socialist period.

With this in mind, we tried our luck in the Schumacher collection at the Bundesarchiv Berlin, which had incorporated the BDC files. A promising candidate turned up in the archive's search engine in the file R 187/539, with a document described as "resettlement action, camp Auschwitz, memo, without date". Its former BDC reference 240-I might be what Irving misremembered as 238-I. Indeed, the document turned out to be the report on the mass extermination of Jews reproduced above.

Historical Context

In late 1948, Alfred Franke-Gricksch of the former SS Personnel Main Office dictated to his wife a note on a meeting with the Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler at his Headquarters in Lötzen in East-Prussia in Spring 1943 (Fleming, Hitler and the Final Solution, p.153). According to this "diary", Himmler summoned Franke-Gricksch and his superior Maximilian von Herff because of increasing suicides and requests for front duty among SS leaders of "certain camps" in the East.

Figure 2: Alfred Franke-Gricksch, born 30.11.1906, promoted to SS-Sturmbannführer on 20.4.1943 and to SS-Obersturmbannführer on 1.9.1944 (BDC SSO file)

Von Herff believed "that some of the leaders in these camps cannot cope with the emotional burden and that they should, therefore, be taken to the front". Himmler denied the request to rotate the staff with the words that "you don't know the matter". He explained that "as you now have to go to these camps, you should also be informed of their task", namely carrying out Hitler's decision "to exterminate the biological centre of Judaism once and for all".

Figure 3: Maximilian von Herff, born 17.4.1893, promoted to SS-Gruppenführer und General der Waffen-SS on 31.1.1943 and to SS-Obergruppenführer und General der Waffen-SS on 20.4.1944 (BDC SSO file)

Himmler further emphasised that the execution of this "task does not tolerate any waste of time and must be carried out by all means, smoothly and without much attention" as "secrecy is the deciding factor in this case" and this "task, which is extremely difficult, must be performed by each and every one of them in an untainted manner". These words of Himmler - though only passed on by Franke-Gricksch - sound like his authentic speech as they reflect real concerns of the SS leadership (see also What's There to Hide? Camouflage and Secrecy of Nazi Extermination Sites).

The visit of the head of the SS Personnel Main Office and his adjutant to the East is well documented.

On 22 April 1943 von Herff informed the Higher SS and Police Leader of the General Government, Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger, of his plan to "carry out an official trip to the General Government in the first week of May [1943]" in order "to meet the [SS] leaders of the individual agencies". His adjutant Alfred Franke-Gricksch accompanied him. They intended to inspect Auschwitz concentration camp on 4 May 1943  (see Figure 5 below; Tuviah Friedman previously published the letter).

According to a lengthy trip report also written by Franke-Gricksch, the journey started with a flight from Berlin to Cracow on Tuesday 4th May 1943 and the inspection of Auschwitz in the afternoon (see Appendix A; we are grateful to Stephen Tyas for providing the images). The further sequence of the stations - Cracow, Lemberg, Lublin, Radom, Warsaw - is corroborated by a "travel itinerary" of Krüger's staff of 7 May 1943 (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Travel itinerary of the economy department of the Higher SS and Police Leader of the Generalgouvernement dated 7 May 1943 (BArch NS 19/1794, p.38).

The two SS officers from the SS Personnel Main Office reached Warsaw on 14 May and received "a detailed report on the battles in the ghetto" (trip report in Appendix A).

According to Franke-Gricksch's post-war narrative, v. Herff had told Himmler to be "very happy if we make positive or negative notes for the personnel files of certain leaders to help them, after completion of the task by appropriate transfers".  Indeed, there exist assessment notes from the trip in the personnel SS officer files of the Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höß, the SS and Police Leader of Lublin Odilo Globocnik and the SS and Police Leader of Galizien Fritz Katzmann.

The so-called Final Solution of the Jewish Question was a significant task for Auschwitz concentration camp. For example, on 22 May 1943, a memo on a meeting between Hans Kammler and the Auschwitz SS reads that "in addition, there has recently been the Solution of the Jewish Question, for which the prerequisite for the accommodation of initially 60,000 inmates had to be made, which within a short time will grow to 100,000" (Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933-1945, Band 16, Doc. 70).

The otherwise lengthy report of Alfred Franke-Gricksch on his trip to Auschwitz (Appendix A) is quite short, not to say silent on the role of the large Birkenau camp for the Final Solution of the Jewish Question. The omission can be well understood if this delicate issue had been split off into an own report entitled "Resettlement Action of the Jews".

Carbon copy

Franke-Gricksch's above-reproduced account on mass extermination in Birkenau is a carbon copy, which is evident from the blurred contours of the letters. There were no additions made to the document after its creation (apart from the handwritten archival numbering). Thus, the top sheet fully included its content - but not necessarily vice versa (i.e. it is possible that the first sheet was signed, dated or commented after separated from its carbon copies).

The nature of a carbon copy is explained in appendix B to this posting. Just keep in mind that a carbon copy was written at the same time and by the same person and with the same strokes as the top sheet.

Typewriter

In the absence of a stamp, handwritten notes, pre-printed letterhead, etc., it seems challenging to verify a document's formal authenticity. There are, however, still a few more things that can provide valuable insights into the origin of a source, like the paper, the ink or the lettering of the typewriter.

In this case, the typewriter could be the key to verify the authorship of the document, since several letters lack strokes usually expected of the characters of this font. But the truncated letters are meaningless without a sample of known origin with the same combination of properties.

Since the report on the "resettlement actions of the Jews" was reportedly written by Franke-Gricksch about a trip together with his superior von Herff, we looked through their BDC files and those from their agency, the SS Personnel Main Office. The SS officer file of von Herff includes a typed copy of the letter to Krüger of 22 April 1943 (Figure 5). The document exists in two duplicates and displays the same characteristic letters as the report on Auschwitz.

Figure 5: Copies of a letter v. Herff to Krüger of 22.4.1943 from v. Herff's BDC SSO file (BArch R 9361-III/530593).

Figure 6 compares the letters of the Franke-Gricksch report (no. 1) with two copies of the writing to Krüger (no. 2 and 3) and two other documents from von Herff's and AFG's BDC SS officers files (no. 4 and 5) written with different typewriters for comparison.

As can be readily seen, the letters "i", "m", "n" and "u" appear defective in the Franke-Gricksch report and the letter to Krüger. While truncated letters can be occasionally found in other documents as well, it is the exact combination and characteristics of the defective letters, which point to the same typewriter. Another common feature is that the typewriter lacked capital Umlaute (Ä, Ö, Ü), Eszett  (ß) and the sig rune (or the author decided not to use it).

Figure 6: Comparison of the letters of the various documents. The boxes indicate the defective letters of the typewriter used for the Franke-Gricksch report and the copy of the letter to Krüger.

To be on the safe side, we had photographs of the documents examined by a qualified expert on typescripts. According to this expert opinion, both the report on Auschwitz (document "A") and the Krüger letter (document "B") were written with the font AR 1 from the company Ransmayer & Rodrian with a layout in use since 1930. The analysis concludes the following:

"The matching system features and type features justify the conclusion that the documents  "A" and "B" were with a great probability [mit großer Wahrscheinlichkeit] written with one and the same typewriter. A higher probability statement was not possible because the examined documents were not available as originals."

(expert opinion of 3 April 2019 by Bernhard Haas, Sachverständiger für Maschinenschriften, provided to the author)

Style

The minimalistic formal style of the report is found in other notes from their trip to Auschwitz and the General Gouvernement (duty trip report and the assessment notes on Höß, Globocnik and Katzmann, which all lack letterhead, date and signature).

Figure 7 are further examples of reports written by Franke-Gricksch without many formalities.

Figure 7: Top: First page of a report by Franke-Gricksch; the last page is signed by him. Bottom: Last page of a report by Franke-Gricksch.  From his Handakte at the SS Personnel Main Office, BArch NS 34/15.

The command of language is compatible with that of Franke-Gricksch in other correspondence (see the correspondence in his BDC SSO file BArch R 9361-III/524709). For instance, the Auschwitz report makes grammatically correct use of parentheses, including the relatively rare case of an independent sentence. Franke-Gricksch showed the same use in a letter to Rudolf Brandt of 17 October 1941.

 Perspective

The first paragraph deals with the increasing lack of labour force in the Third Reich and the change of the extermination policy to meet the demands of the armament industry. The author points out the "basic principle" to "keep as many prisoners as possible for labor", even caring for "those with some temporary ailment" with "a special diet". It is now regarded as "not permissible to destroy systematically substantial labour capacities" as in the past. The statement also implies the view that it was perfectly permissible to kill those Jewish, which were found unfit for work in the long term. The systematic mass murder was considered justified within the framework of the Nazi ideology.

The author writes about the mass killing of hundreds of thousands of people, but carefully avoids terms and images that may discredit this policy and practise. The whole operation including the mass killing is termed a "resettlement action" - a common phrase among the Nazi authorities used to camouflage (morally and towards outsiders) the extermination of the Jews (see Appendix C). The Jewish prisoners carrying out the gruesome work "will never leave this camp" - another way to say they are liquidated. The killing capacity of 10,000 people per day is wrapped into the technical phrase "present capacity of the 'resettlement action' furnaces".

The murderous activity inside the crematoria is alleged to have been as pleasant as possible. The victims enter a "well built and ventilated basement, fitted with benches" and "brightly lit". They are told to get "disinfected and washed ready for their new tasks" and "everything proceeds in complete calm". Before they really notice it, they are put "to sleep in one minute". The picture - based on the (mis)conception of the Nazi Mass Euthanasia with a clean and sudden death - was denying the agony of the victims during the mass gassings with Zyklon-B.

The report pays almost no attention to the executioners - with two exceptions. Implicitly, by noticing that "the work itself is carried out by Jewish prisoners", it assures that the SS men stay away from the most dreadful work and especially the corpses. But the author did not dare to address the issue of what the SS staff was doing. Perhaps he still felt uncomfortable with their role but knew there was nothing to do about it anyway.  Himmler already denied the transfer of SS leaders to the front because of the mental strain in certain camps in his earlier briefing for the trip at his Headquarters in Lötzen in East-Prussia.

The other appearance of the SS in the report is that of "the Camp Commandant and several SS leaders" during the selection at the ramp. The observation and terminology make total sense for an officer of the SS Personnel Main Office. The "SS leaders" were precisely the group of people Franke-Gricksch was interested in his job. For the same reason, he and v. Herff requested "to meet the [SS] leaders of the individual agencies" in the letter to Krüger of 22 April 1943.

In short, the report clearly describes the mass extermination of Jewish people in Auschwitz from a perpetrator's point of view.

Reliability

A detailed analysis of the reliability of the report can be found in Appendix C.

The document portrays the primary trend of the Nazi extermination policy towards the Jews, the increasing focus on forced labour while ruthlessly killing unfit people regarded as so-called useless eaters.

Its implementation in Auschwitz is outlined with numerous details of the extermination process, which are supported by other sources. The author traces the path of the victims: they arrive in freight cars (so-called special trains) in a separate area of the camp, those unfit for work are sorted out and sent to a biggish house. They use steps to enter the undressing basement with benches and hooks and are funnelled into the killing cellar through a corridor. The poison substance is introduced from the top of the roof through columns. The Jewish prisoners working at the site remove hair and gold teeth from the corpses, which are brought to the ground floor by an elevator. The corpses are incinerated in coke-fired crematoria ovens on the ground floor.

The level of detail displayed by the author reflects extensive insider knowledge and is only comparable to that provided by SS men, Jewish Sonderkommando prisoners and other prisoners who became eyewitnesses in the crematoria. In contrast to that, reliable information about the extermination sites was barely known outside of the inner circle (see also Knowledge of Mass Extermination Among Hungarian Jews Returning from Auschwitz).

It should be mentioned, however, that the report contains several inaccuracies, some of which can be explained as a result of simple memory lapses, inattentiveness, poor view, exaggerations of the tour guide, others need a more sophisticated explanation.

The most severe mistake appears to be the description of the victims being removed from the gas chamber through a door at the opposite side of where they entered the gas chamber. Even if - and it's a big if - the gas chamber of crematorium 2 had already been divided into two and if Franke-Gricksch had noticed that door between two gas chambers, it could not have escaped him that the victims were taken out from the same door they had previously entered the chamber if he witnessed the scene.

Therefore, one can presume that a break occurred during the visit, as pointed out by the Auschwitz researcher Jean-Claude Pressac. If the SS visitor left the basement before the gas chamber was opened, and returned to the basement later on through a different entrance (or did not return at all), one could explain his confusion concerning the clearing of the gas chamber as a misunderstanding.

Another issue is whether Franke-Gricksch did witness an actual gassing or only the empty crematorium. So far, there seems to be no evidence to support Jean-Claude Pressac's belief that the Greek transport had not arrived yet when the SS officers from Berlin inspected the place. If the train had already been in Auschwitz, it is conceivable that Höß would have ordered to take out a few hundreds of victims from it to crematorium 2 for a show gassing for his visitors. However, neither is there evidence that the SS officers observed the operation of the killing site.

What is remarkable is that numerous details in the report are consistent with and correspond to those of the manuscripts written by the Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höß after the war (first published in German in 1958 and earlier in Polish in 1951, see Broszat, Kommandant in Auschwitz, 2000, p.14). A striking example is a description in both accounts that they found valuables hidden in hollow teeth of some victims - a detail not mentioned in many other testimonies on the subject (the only exception known to me is Benedikt Kautsky's memoir Teufel und Verdammte, 1946).

The substantial overlap in content supports that an SS officer guided by the Auschwitz commandant authored the report. It is also no surprise that after the war Höß remembered especially well exactly those details on mass extermination, which he used to tell his visitors to the camp.

 Conclusion

The document presented at the beginning of this article can be considered an authentic note of the SS officer Alfred Franke-Gricksch (AFG) on mass extermination of Jews in Auschwitz-Birkenau written as a result of his trip to the East for several reasons:

1. The note fits into the gap left by AFG's lengthy trip report (Appendix A) on the subject of Solution of the Jewish Question in Auschwitz-Birkenau.

2. Its formal style corresponds to that of other notes on the trip, its linguistic style corresponds to that of AFG.

3. It was created with a typewriter that was most likely also used for the copy of a letter authored by AFG a few days before his trip to the East.

4. The report describes the mass extermination of Jews in Auschwitz from a perpetrator's point of view.

5. The interest shown in the "SS leaders" is characteristic for AFG and matches the purpose of his trip to the East.

6. The level of detail reported is consistent with an eyewitness of the site. The description of the actual killing process could be hearsay, but in that case, it would have been obtained from the accompanying SS staff (i.e., the Auschwitz commandant).

7. The significant correspondence between the content of the report and the testimony of the Auschwitz commandant suggests that the latter was the report's major source of information as a tour guide.

Maximilian von Herff is quoted from his post-war diary that "the extermination of the Jews was the beginning of our misfortune. Here men had to appear and stop it".

The two SS officers appeared at the camps but did not stop it. On the contrary, Franke-Gricksch's impression, as noted in his report, was glossing over the extermination of the Jews.

_______________________________________________________________________

Appendix A: Franke-Gricksch's Trip Report on the Journey to Poland, 4 to 16 May 1943

(TNA, WO 309/374; courtesy of Stephen Tyas)

Appendix B: Carbon Copies

A carbon copy is created by interlaying carbon paper between sheets of paper and typing on the top sheet. The characters are transferred through the carbon paper from the top to the bottom sheet(s). A "carbon" is typically characterised by less clear-cut lettering.

The carbon copy was made at the same time, with the same strokes and by the same writer as the top sheet. In this sense, it is also an "original" document, but may differ in purpose and/or details from the top sheet. In US law, carbon copies with the same features as the top sheet are classified as "duplicate originals" (e.g. Texas Rules of Evidence Manual, which also points out the relevance of intent for classifying a document as a duplicate original or a mere duplicate).

Let's take a look at the two cases with examples.

1.) The carbon copy is different from the top sheet:

The first page of a draft for a letter from Hitler to Schacht is depicted on the left and its carbon copy on the right (images taken from here). The main content of the carbon copy is an exact duplicate of what was typed on the top sheet (blue marking). But the document on the left also has a pre-printed and pre-imprinted letterhead of Hitler's office (red marking), which is not on the carbon copy. The parts marked in orange were added to the documents after they had been removed from the typewriter and separated. This carbon copy is therefore not an exact duplicate - it is a document with its own characteristics and purpose. It was originally meant to document the letter to Schacht in Hitler's office.

2.) The carbon copy is a duplicate:

The top sheet (right) and carbon copy (left) have the same purpose and content (BArch R 58/11422; only the separately created signatures add a slight variance). The documents were forwarded by Gestapo offices to the RSHA in Berlin as supplementary to applications for expatriate jobs.

In conclusion, a carbon copy is no less "original" than its top sheet (in the sense that both were created simultaneously) - it is either a duplicate original or was made/used for a different purpose. In Nazi offices, carbon copies were often used to document a bureaucratic process for the files.

Appendix C: Reliability of the Franke-Gricksch Report on the Jewish Resettlement in Auschwitz

"Jewish Resettlement Action" (Umsiedlungs-Aktion der Juden)

...and its linguistic variants with Aussiedlung/Evakuierung were commonly used Nazi euphemisms to disguise the extermination of the Jews in correspondence and speech.

For instance, Einsatzgruppe C proudly reported on the Babi Yar Massacre that "the 'resettlement measure' [Umsiedlungsmaßnahme] against the Jews was approved throughout by the population. The fact that in reality the Jews were liquidated was hardly known until now" and that "more than 30,000 Jews showed up, who still believed into their resettlement until shortly before the execution thanks to an extremely clever organization".

A commando order of 5 February 1943 by the commander of the Security Police and SD in White Ruthenia described a "resettlement site" [Umsiedlungsgelände] as "two pits", with squads of ten men assigned to each pit and two men "handing out the cartridges" (Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933-1945, Band 8 Sowjetunion mit annektierten Gebieten II, p. 581).

"Jewish resettlement" was widely used in the context of the extermination of the Jews in the General Gouvernement.

On 7 April 1942, Richard Türk of the Civilian Administration spoke of the "Jewish resettlement action [for the time-being] of the SS and Police Leader [Globocnik]" (Faschismus, Ghetto, Massenmord, p. 271). 

The men assigned to the extermination camps had to sign duty notes that "through SS-Hauptsturmführer Höfle as head of the main department "Einsatz Reinhardt" at the SS and police leader in the district of Lublin, I have been informed and instructed in detail ... that under no circumstances I am permitted to send any information to the outside of the circle of employees in the "Einsatz Reinhardt" verbally or in writing about the course, the execution or events of the Jewish resettlement [Judenumsiedlung] ... that the events of the Jewish resettlement [Judenumsiedlung] are subject to a "Secret State Affair" in the sense of the classified regulation" (see doc. 8 here). 

On 18 July 1942, Heinrich Himmler ordered the Higher SS and Police Leader Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger "that the resettlement [Umsiedlung] of the entire Jewish population of the General Government shall be carried out and completed by 31 December 1942 ... no persons of Jewish origin are allowed to remain in the Generalgouvernement ... total cleanup is necessary". The order was forwarded to the RSHA and the Reichskommissar für die Festigung deutschen Volkstums on 29 July 1942. Himmler's Personal Administrative Officer, Richard Brandt, summarized on the carbon copy of the accompanying letter that "the resettlement action [Umsiedlungsaktion] shall be finished until 31 December 1942" (BArch NS 19/1757, p. 1-2).

The train schedule order for August 1942 informed that "until further notice, a special train with resettlers [Umsiedler] runs daily from Warsaw Danzig train station to Treblinka and the empty train back..." (train schedule order of August 1942, Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933-1945, Band 9, doc 111)

A report of the Police Battalion 133 on the "Jewish resettlement actions" [Aktionen der Judenumsiedlung] describes how a "transport was delivered without significant incident to Belzec", except of 300 decrepit, infested, infirm and no longer transportable Jews who have been executed" mostly "shot dead by a carbine or rifle" (Report of Kompanieführer Pol.Bat. 133 of 14 September 1942, Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933-1945, Band 9, doc. 137).

The SS also used the term in the context of Auschwitz:

On 6 February 1943, the head of the SS-WVHA, Oswald Pohl, submitted a "report on the utilization of textile waste from the Jewish settlement [Judenumsiedlung]" (BArch NS 19/225, p. 17).

A radio signal from the SS-WVHA to Auschwitz of 2 October 1942 granted a driving permit "for picking up materials for the Jewish settlement [Judenumsiedlung]" (namely Zyklon B).

Source: Digitale Bibliothek 101, Der Auschwitz-Prozess.

The assessment of Heinrich Kühnemann stated that he "was used exclusively in the course of the  'Resettlement of the Jews' [Judenaussiedlung], where he was assigned to the task of supervising, sorting out and removing the effects of Sonderkommando I and Crematorium II." (Perz & Sandkühler, Auschwitz und die "Aktion Reinhard" 1942 - 45.  Judenmord und Raubpraxis in neuer Sicht, in: Zeitgeschichte 26 (1999) 5, p. 296)

The Auschwitz camp leader Hans Aumeier drew up a report on Auschwitz after the war with the following statement on the treatment of Jews:

"Resettlement of the Jews [Aussiedlung der Juden].

Under this designation, the extermination of the Jews took place in Auschwitz and other places. The order for this probably comes from the Führer or rather the Reichsführer-SS personally."

(deposition of 8 October 1945)

In the so-called Auschwitz Album compiled by an SS man, the processing of Jewish transports is labelled "resettlement of the Jews from Hungary" [Umsiedlung der Juden aus Ungarn]:

Source: Das Auschwitz Album, Wallstein-Verlag, p. 16.

"Settlement of the Jewish Question" [Regelung der Judenfrage]

The more common term was "solution" or "final solution", still "settlement" of the Jewish question was part of the Nazis' language. For instance, during a meeting of the staff of Hitler's deputy it was noted on 20 December 1934:

"Germany sees a final settlement of the Jewish question [Regelung der Judenfrage] only at the moment when the complete spatial separation between the Jewish and the German people are achieved."

On 23 October 1941, Paul Wurm of the Stürmer wrote to the "Jew specialist" at the Nazi Foreign Office, Franz Rademacher, that "on my return from Berlin I met an old party member who works on the settlement of the Jewish question [Regelung der Judenfrage] in the East. Soon, a lot of the Jewish vermin will be destroyed through special measures."

The Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories wrote to the Reichskommissariat Ostland on 18 December 1941 that "on the Jewish question, it should now be clear through oral discussions. Economic issues should fundamentally be not taken into account when it comes to the settling [Regelung] of the problem" (Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933-1945, Band 7, doc 221).

"Special trains" [Sonderzüge]

...was a term employed to describe also the Jewish transports to the East, for example:

• telegram of 14 July 1942 mentions "special Jewish trains [Judensonderzüge] from Belgium, France, Holland ... for labour to Auschwitz" (source)
  
  
  

• train schedule order for August 1942 mentions that "until further notice daily a special train [Sonderzug] with resettlers runs from Warsaw Danzig train station to Treblinka and the empty train back..." (as cited above).

"Freight trains" [Güterzüge]

Transport of Hungarian Jews arriving in Auschwitz-Birkenau:

Source: Das Auschwitz Album, Wallstein-Verlag, p. 107.

"Special tracks in specially designated districts of the camp"

At the time Franke-Gricksch visited Auschwitz, the Jewish transports were unloaded on a sidetrack of the railroad line passing through the area of interest of Auschwitz ("old ramp") (there was only one such "district"). He would have likely seen or heard about the unloading process at this place.

There are other possible explanations for the statement (especially for the plural in districts): 

• He did observe narrow gauge rails in Birkenau used for transporting building material to the building sites and imagined the rest himself.

• He could have heard about the project to build an unloading terminal in Birkenau and supposed it was about to get finished soon. Already in 1941, it was envisaged to extend the rail line into the "POW camp Birkenau". The project was, however, only completed in 1944 for the destruction of the Hungarian Jews in Auschwitz.

Plan showing the rail line into Birkenau, presumably dated 1941, from Bartosik, The Origins of the Birkenau Camp, document 100.

(edit: since the two supplementary points have sparked some confusion among holocaust deniers, see also the additional remarks here)

"Medical Comission" [Ärztekommission]

...was a term that originated from the Nazi (concentration camp) "euthanasia":

Source.

Wilhelm Boger of the Auschwitz Gestapo also called the SS doctors at the ramp a "medical commission" [Ärztekommission] (see next point).

"There they are unloaded and examined"

Wilhelm Boger, Auschwitz Political Department:

On the ramp was the prisoner's reception commando with the associated SS escort guards and the medical commission. After the arrival of the train, the prisoners had to get out. Subsequently, the doctors came into action. The inmates were assigned to work, and the non-working people were taken by truck to the crematoria for gassing.

(Auschwitz trial DVD, S. 3295)

SS photographs of the extermination of the Hungarian Jews in Summer 1944 picture the selection process ("Aussortierung") at the ramp in Birkenau:

Source: Das Auschwitz Album, Wallstein-Verlag, p. 24.

"SS Leaders" [SS-Führer]

It is not the most common term to describe the SS men at the ramp among witnesses of Auschwitz. However, it makes perfect sense that Franke-Gricksch mentioned the word which was often employed by him in his correspondence. It is consistent to his job in the SS Personnel Main Office that he noted the presence of "SS leaders" - along with the camp commandant and the "medical commission" (SS doctors) - at the ramp.

The leader of the Schutzhaftlager Hans Aumeier wrote the following about the SS staff at the ramp:

"The incoming transports were sorted by the camp doctors as soon as the prisoners were unloaded, and they selected those to be gassed. They had instructions to select cripples, sick and unfit above over 55 years, and from then on, children under 11 to 12 years of age were also sent for gassing. Each time a different leader of the detention camp was assigned to the transport as a responsible security officer, who had the task of taking over the guard chain for transport, of allocating the block leaders for unloading, and taking the inmates from the unloading point by truck to the camp or the bunkers."

 (deposition of 25 July 1945)

"Those with some temporary ailment are sent immediately to the quarantine camp and are brought back to health through a special diet. Every workforce is to be sustained. The 'resettlement action' of older kind is completely rejected, because one can not afford to destroy important work energies on an ongoing basis"

The "'resettlement action' of older kind" could be a reference to the first half of 1942 when transports with Polish Jews were entirely liquidated in Auschwitz (see Czech, Kalendarium der Ereignisse im Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau). The Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höß recounted this as follows:

"Originally, according to the RFSS order, all Jews transported to Auschwitz by Eichmann were to be exterminated without exception. This was also the case with the Jews from the Upper Silesia region, but even with the first transports of German Jews came the order to select all working Jews, men and women, and use them in the camp for the armaments industry."

(Broszat, Kommandant in Auschwitz, p. 245)

On the other hand, according to the German historian Christian Gerlach, "possibly this alluded to practices in August 1942; there were relatively few deportation trains whose passengers were all immediately killed but a larger number where the quota was above 90%" (Gerlach, The Extermination of the European Jews, p. 199).

The Nazi leadership aimed towards exploiting Jewish workforce for the armament industry and spare those considered fit for work for the time being. For example, on 16 September 1942, the head of the SS-WVHA, Oswald Pohl, reported to Himmler on a meeting with Speer in Auschwitz that

"....Reich Minister Prof Speer wants to ensure the short-term use of 50,000 Jews who are fit for work in existing closed businesses with existing accommodation. We will take the labor necessary for this purpose primarily in Auschwitz from the eastward migration so that our existing operational facilities are not disturbed by a constant change of the workers in their achievement and structure. The Jews fit for work destined for the eastward migration will, therefore, have to interrupt their journey and carry out armaments work."

(BArch NS 19/14, p. 99 [stamped pagination])

On 2 March 1943 the later Auschwitz commandant Arthur Liebehenschel instructed the then commandant Rudolf Höß:

"As known there, the Jewish transports from Berlin begin on 1 March 1943. It is again pointed out that these transports contain about 15,000 perfectly able, healthy Jews who have worked in the Berlin armaments industry so far. Their work capability is to be emphasized by all means."

(Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933–1945, Band 16, Document 59 [p. 232])

On 8 July 1943, a transport of Jewish inmates to be used as forced labourers arrived in Auschwitz from concentration camp Lublin:

"This morning, the transport with inmates from Lublin arrived at 6 pm with 1500 prisoners, including 5 dead and 2 gunshots wounded. The prisoners were bathed immediately after arrival and deloused and then examined on their health status and their ability to work by the responsible camp doctors in the men's and women's camp.

Of the 750 male inmates, only 424 were selected as fit for work, while the rest of 326 inmates were not fully able to work for the intended use in the labor camp Buna

Of the 750 female inmates, 80 inmates are said to be unfit for work by the camp doctor, which accounts for about 10% of those transferred. Approximately 10% are covered with scabies, and of the remaining prisoners, a large part cannot be used for heavier work. There are a number of pictures attached, showing the inmates' poor physical condition. The report of the camp garrison doctor is also enclosed."

(Blumental, Dokumenty i Materialy, Tom I, p. 140)

On 14 February 1944, the new commandant of Auschwitz Liebehenschel reminded the Auschwitz SS staff that

"...as has been said many times, everything must be done to preserve the working capacity and labor of the prisoners."

(Standort- und Kommandanturbefehle des Konzentrationslagers Auschwitz 1940-1945, p. 411)

"The unfit" [Untauglichen]

While Auschwitz was a centre of selecting forced labour, its other function was to exterminate those considered unfit for work. On 16 December 1942, the Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller suggested Himmler to deport 45,000 Jews from Bialystok and Theresienstadt to Auschwitz yielding some 30,000 to 35,000 unfit Jews:

"In the number of 45,000 is included the unfit addendum (old Jews and children). When an appropriate scale is applied, at least 10,000 to 15,000 workers can be obtained by the selection of the arriving Jews in Auschwitz."

(Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933–1945, Band 16, Document 45 [p. 210])

The figures of unfit Jews selected at the ramp were recorded by the Political Department and reported to the RSHA in Berlin (see Auschwitz SS Men Confessing on Tape: Josef Erber). In the case of transports from Berlin and Theresienstadt, the Auschwitz SS forwarded the record of how many unfit Jews had been taken out from the arrivals and how many had been killed to the WVHA:

Sterbebücher von Auschwitz 1, Dokument 56.

The term "gesonderte Unterbringung" was a default euphemism for extrajudicial killings in Auschwitz, see also "Separate accommodation" in Auschwitz: a code word for extrajudicial executions and Auschwitz-Birkenau Selection List of 21 August 1943.

The so-called Auschwitz album has two sections on women/men "no longer fit for work":

Source: Das Auschwitz Album, Wallstein-Verlag.

It is most telling that the Jewish people selected as unfit for work can be last seen near the crematoria on the photographs of the Album. There is not a single photo which would indicate that they survived their arrival in Birkenau (unlike those people selected for work, which the SS photographer pictured after the hygienic treatment).



"biggish house" [größeres Haus]

This was crematorium 2 in Auschwitz-Birkenau, which the Auschwitz commandant apparently showed to his SS visitors. As Jean-Claude Pressac notes "on 4th May 1943, only Krematorium II was complete and operational, while Kr III was not yet ready".

Franke-Gricksch could have seen and may have been told about crematorium 3 at the other side of the road. It is in accordance with his take-home message that the victims are tricked into their fate and do not suffer that he does call the crematorium what he presumed how an ignorant person and victim would see it, a biggish house.

The Auschwitz Album pictures the groups of Jews selected as unfit for work lining up or waiting near big buildings - the crematoria.

At crematoria 4 & 5:

 At crematoria 2 & 3:

"Basement rooms..." [Kellerräume]

Construction drawing of the crematorium with its basement rooms in cross-section:

...which are accessible from the outside [die von aussen zu betreten sind]

Sketch of the central construction office Auschwitz showing the future direct access to the undressing cellar from the outside:

Google satellite image of the crematorium 2 ruin with steps down the undressing basement marked with a circle:

"...descend 5 or 6 steps..." [5 - 6 Stufen herunter]

The number of steps to the undressing room was 10 according to Pressac. The Sonderkommando prisoner David Olere has shown a similar figure in his drawing of crematorium 3:

Source: David Olere. Un Peintre Au Sonderkommando a Auchwitz, 1989, p. 47.

"...and come to a long, well built and ventilated basement, fitted with benches on the right and left. It is brightly lit, and above the benches are numbers. The prisoners are told that they are to be disinfected and washed ready for their new tasks. They therefore have to undress completely to be bathed. In order to avoid any panic or disorder, they are told to arrange their clothes neatly and leave them under a number so that they can find their things again after the bath. Everything proceeds in complete calm."

Construction drawing of the elongated undressing cellar with access steps:

Source.

Work schedule sheet noting that work has been done "on ventilation in undressing cellar" of crematorium 2:

Source: Schüle, Industrie und Holocaust, p. 459.

Construction document mentioning the "ventilation of the undressing room" of the crematorium:

Source: Schüle, Industrie und Holocaust, p. 458.

The testimony of the Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höß includes a similar scene as described in the report:

The extermination process took place in Auschwitz as follows. The Jews destined for extermination were led, as calm as possible, to the crematoria. In the undressing room they were told in their language by the prisoners of the Sonderkommando employed there that they are now bathing and delousing, that they should put their clothes neatly together and, above all, remember the place so that they could move their clothes quickly after the delousing could find again. The prisoners of the Sonderkommando themselves had the greatest interest in making the process quick, calm and smooth.

 (Broszat, Kommandant in Auschwitz, p. 257)

And from a different perspective by Miklos Nyiszli, who performed work for the SS doctors in the crematorium:

"At the crematorium, they descended 10-12 concrete steps and entered an empty, underground room with a capacity of 2000. The first row stopped instinctively at the entrance, but once they read the signs 'Disinfection' and 'Bath' printed in all major languages, they were reassured and descended the steps. They were immediately ordered to undress; there were benches and numbered clothes hooks along the walls of the room. As part of a careful misinformation strategy, the SS reminded everyone to memorize their number to make sure they would find their clothes after the bath without problem."

(Miklos Nyiszli, 28 July 1945, deposition)

The undressing scene as pictured by the Sonderkommando prisoner David Olere:

Source: David Olere. Un Peintre Au Sonderkommando a Auchwitz, 1989, p. 52.

"They then go through a small corridor..."

Construction drawing with the corridor between undressing room and gas chamber (with added labels and arrows):

"...and arrive in a big basement room that resembles a shower room"

Transfer inventory of crematorium 3 with "14 showerheads" along the "gas-tight door":

Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höß:

"After the undressing, the Jews went into the gas chamber, which was provided with showers and water pipes and completely made the impression of a bathroom."

 (Broszat, Kommandant in Auschwitz, p. 257)

A forensic investigation of the ruins of the crematorium 2 in Birkenau did find "a small disk 8 cm in diameter embedded in the path less than one meter to the east of the gas chamber. The disk shows many small perforations (more readily seen on the reverse side) in a manner consistent with the front plate of a showerhead. The holes are of such a minuscule size - many do not seem to perforate the plate at all - that it is unlikely that much, if any, water could have flowed through them" (Daniel Keren, Jamie McCarthy, and Harry W. Mazal, The Ruins of the Gas Chambers: A Forensic Investigation of Crematoriums at Auschwitz I and Auschwitz-Birkenau, published in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Oxford University Press, Volume 18, Number 1, Spring 2004, available online here).

"In this room, there are three big pillars. Into these it is possible from above, outside the basement, to lower certain products."

There had been four (instead of three as stated by Franke-Gricksch) wire-mesh columns in the gas-chamber into which Zyklon-B pellets were lowered from the top of the roof (see also Rebuttal of Mattogno on Auschwitz, Part 2: Gas Introduction at the Crematoria). According to Pressac:

The explanation of this error is that Franke-Gricksch must have just gone a few paces into Leichenkeller 1, not down to the end, and thus noticed only three of the four columns.

(Pressac, Technique and Operation of the Auschwitz Gas Chambers, p. 239)


"After 300 to 400 people have gathered in this room, the doors are closed and from above the containers with the products are lowered into the pillars. When the containers reach the floor of the pillars, they produce certain substances that put the people to sleep in one minute."

German documents referred to the homicidal gas chamber of crematorium 2 as "gassing cellar" and "gas cellar":

 Source.

Close-up photo from Van Pelt, The Case For Auschwitz, p. 210.

Source.

The killing process was described by Höß as follows:

The doors were now quickly screwed tight, and the gas was immediately thrown by the disinfectors available into the introduction hatches through the ceiling of the gas chamber in a duct to the ground. This caused the immediate emission of the gas. Through the observation hole in the door, one could see that those closest to the introduction duct immediately dropped dead. It can be said that death was instantaneous for about a third. The others began to stagger, scream and gasp for air. But the screaming soon turned into a rattle, and in a few minutes all lay. After 20 minutes at the latest, no one moved anymore. Depending on the weather, humid or dry, cold or warm, depending on the nature of the gas, which was not always the same, on the composition of the transport, many healthy, elderly or sick, children, the effect of the gas lasted five to ten minutes. The unconsciousness appeared after a few minutes, depending on the distance from the introduction duct. Screaming, older, sick, weak and children fell faster than healthy and younger.

(Broszat, Kommandant in Auschwitz, p. 257-258)

The maximum capacity of the gas chamber was at the order of 2000 - 3000 people, according to testimonies.

The gas chamber had only a single door to the anteroom. Pressac explained this mistake as follows:

This is probably due to confusion with the double door of Leichenkeller 2 leading to the corridor, through which he had just come before having a quick look over the threshold of Leichenkeller 1.

(Pressac, Technique and Operation of the Auschwitz Gas Chambers, p. 239)

One minute to "put the people to sleep" could be the official claim to gain acceptance for the killing method, but that did not correspond to reality inside the gas chamber. A sudden silence after a few minutes is what some ear-witnesses reported from the outside.


"A few minutes later, the door on the other side is opened..."

A gassing time of about 20 min is usually presumed to make sure that everybody was dead. The ventilation was turned on, but the Sonderkommando prisoners could have entered the gas chamber with gas masks already at this point.

There was no exit door on the other side, but the victims were pulled out through the same door as they entered alive. At some point, the Auschwitz SS installed a separating wall with a door in the gas chamber to cope with smaller transports more easier, but it is questionable that such was implemented as early as May 1943. Furthermore, it would not explain why this door was the exit to the elevator.

Jean-Claude Pressac explained this error as follows:

"This can be explained only if there was some kind of break in his visit to the crematorium that caused him to lose his bearings somewhat. His error becomes comprehensible if we assume the following itinerary: descent from the outside to the undressing room [Leichenkeller 2], walk through its entire length to the double door at the far end, through this into the short corridor and then the vestibule, from which he took a few steps into the gas chamber [Leichenkeller 1], whose operation was then explained to him. He emerged from the basement via the northern stairway into the yard. then entered the ground floor of the crematorium through the north entrance and was shown into the furnace room. Here the virtues of the Topf furnaces were extolled, probably while he was standing before Furnace 1. Then he took the corpse lift down to the basement, in front of the entrance to the gas chamber (where, not recognizing the vestibule he had passed through some time before, he thought this was ANOTHER door to the gas chamber). He probably went back up to the ground floor on the corpse hoist and left the Krematorium through the main, north, door. The “break” thus occurred when he emerged from the basement by the northern stairway, instead of more logically taking the corpse hoist directly up to the furnace room."

(Pressac, Technique, p. 239)


"...leading to a lift"

Construction drawing with elevator next to the gas chamber door. On 13 March 1943, the prisoner's metal workshop completed "1 goods lift with a minimum payload of 300 kg. including the fitting of suitable winches, cable and motor and the guide rail" for crematorium 2.


"The hair of the corpses is cut off and the teeth are broken out (gold teeth) by qualified people (Jews). It has been observed that Jews have hidden jewels, gold, platinum, etc. in hollow teeth"

The scene as pictured by Sonderkommando prisoner David Olere...

Source: David Olere. Un Peintre Au Sonderkommando a Auchwitz, 1989, p. 55.

... and described by the Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höß:

"The Sonderkommando removes the gold teeth of the corpses, and they cut the women's hair."

(Rudolf Höß, Die Endlösung der Judenfrage, quoted in Broszat, Kommandant in Auschwitz, p. 258)

See also this posting on the German documents showing how the Nazis generally collected and used human hair from concentration camps.

On the use of gold teeth see the following document by the SS-WVHA to Heinrich Himmler of 8 October 1942:

"The dental scrap gold from deceased inmates will be delivered to the medical office on your orders. It is used there for our men's dental treatment purposes. SS-Oberführer Blaschke already has a stock of over 50 kg of gold; this is the estimated precious metal requirement for the next 5 years. I do not consider it suitable for collecting more gold for this purpose, either for safety reasons or for the sake of utilisation. I ask for confirmation that the dental scrap gold arising from the normal output of the concentration camps will be delivered to the Reichsbank against credit."

(Tuchel, Die Inspektion der Konzentrationslager, p. 151)

The Auschwitz commandant confirmed that gems had been found hidden in teeth:

"Even in the filled teeth, one found gems of immense value."

 (Broszat, Kommandant in Auschwitz, p. 255)

This was also mentioned by the prisoner Benedikt Kautsky:

"These [valuables] were often concealed in clothes or shoes, in the seams, between the soles, some Jews had diamonds cemented into hollow teeth. A lively trade in gold teeth and bits was a matter of course; they examined all the corpses and broke out their gold teeth."

(Kautsky, Teufel und Verdammte, 1946, p.96)

The practice of extracting the gold teeth was common for other extermination sites as well.

Oskar Dirlewanger, commander of an infamous penal unit of the SS, testified before internal SS investigators that he killed Jews sentenced to death with poison and broke out their gold teeth for the use of his men:

"I had noticed that the Jews carried a great deal of gold in their mouths, while for my SS men, only Krupp steel was available for dental repairs. I wanted to remedy these mistakes by having the Jews injected with strychnine, which should result in immediate death."

 (see Dirlewanger to an SS Investigator on Poisoning of Jews)

In Minsk, the Nazis removed the gold teeth prior to execution as borne out by German documents.

Letter of the head of the SD prison to the Generalkommissar of White Ruthenia:

"Subject: Jewish actions

Reference: oral report on May 31, 1943

On April 13, 1943, the former German dentist Ernst Israel Tichauer and his wife Elisa Sara Tichauer (born Rosenthal) were taken to the judicial prison by the SD (Hauptscharführer Rübe). Since then, the gold bridges, crowns and seals have been removed or broken up among the German and Russian Jews who have been delivered. This happens every one to two hours before the action in question. Since April 13, 1943, 516 German and Russian Jews have been executed. However, after a precise determination, the gold items were taken down only in two actions, namely on 14/4/43 at 172 and on 27/4/43 at 164 Jews. About 50% of the Jews had gold teeth, bridges or seals. Hauptscharführer Rübe from the SD was personally present each time and also took the gold stuff with him. This was not done until April 13, 1943."

(Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933-1945, Band 8, Sowjetunion mit annektierten Gebieten II, p.615)

Memo of the commander of the security police and service White Ruthenia Eduard Strauch of 20 July 1943:

I can stress again that they blame my men and me with barbarism and sadism while merely doing our duty. Even the fact that Jews, who were to be specially treated, had  their gold teeth properly removed by medical specialists had been an issue for discussion. Kube countered that this kind of treatment was unworthy of a German man and a Germany of Kant and Goethe. If the German reputation in the world was undermined, then it was our fault. Apart from this, it was also true that my men would satisfy their desires with these executions.

(BArch NS 19/1770, p. 10)


"After this the corpses are loaded into the lift said go to the first floor"

The author meant "ground floor" with "first floor".

The scene as pictured by Sonderkommando prisoner David Olere...

David Olere. Un Peintre Au Sonderkommando a Auchwitz, 1989, p. 57.

... and described by the Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höß: 

"After that, they were brought up with the elevator in front of the now heated ovens."

(Rudolf Höß, Die Endlösung der Judenfrage, quoted in Broszat, Kommandant in Auschwitz, p. 258)


"There, there are 10 big crematorium furnaces in which the corpses are burned."

A contemporary view of the oven room of crematorium 3 (with 14 out 15 oven openings visible):

Source: Yad Vashem Archives, Digital Collection.

A numerical mistake in the number of "crematorium furnaces". The crematoria 2 and 3 had five furnaces, each with three muffles yielding 15 oven muffles.

The Auschwitz researcher Jean-Claude Pressac explained this error as follows:

"Franke-Gricksch probably did not go the whole length of the furnace room, but stood at the western entrance in front of the first furnace and listened to the explanations given. It could be that the figure ten was the total he was given for the capacity of Krematorien II and III together (10 three muffle furnaces)"

Also, Franke-Gricksch might have remembered 5 ovens with double-muffles (Höß committed the same mistake in a post-war interrogation)


"As fresh corpses burn particularly well, the whole process requires only ½ to 1 Zentner of coke"

Fresh corpses from a gas chamber are still warm and require indeed less fuel than older corpses stored in a morgue.

On 4 November 1941, the oven builder Topf & Söhne explained to the Auschwitz construction office that "frozen bodies go to the cremation, which requires more fuel":

Source: Schüle, Industrie und Holocaust, p. 436.

The meaning of the figure of 25 to 50 kg coke for the "whole process" is unclear. The amount appears too low for all ovens. It seems too high for a single corpse. It may describe the total amount of coke per load of multiple corpses (without considering the initial preheating of the ovens, which required much energy).


"The work itself is carried out by Jewish prisoners who will never leave this camp"

The Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höß:

"All the work in the extermination process was carried out by Jewish Sonderkommandos."

"Equally strange was the whole behaviour of the Sonderkommandos. They all knew quite well that when the actions were ended, they would meet the same fate as the thousands of their racial comrades, whose destruction they helped considerably."

(1st quote from his manuscript the Final Solution of the Jewish Question, Auschwitz trial DVD; 2nd quote from his "autobiography" in Broszat, Kommandant in Auschwitz, p. 195)

The vast majority of the about one thousand Jewish Sonderkommando prisoners were indeed liquidated in Auschwitz, and only a small number of about 100 SKs managed to survive (Friedler, Zeugen aus der Todeszone, p. 307) because of the hesitant behaviour of the Auschwitz SS in the last weeks of the camp.

As Geheimnisträger (bearer of secrets) doomed to death, the Sonderkommando prisoners were separated from the rest of the camp inmates, both in terms of accommodation (either in their block or the crematoria) and appearance. While ordinary Auschwitz prisoners were dressed in blue/grey striped uniforms (with exceptions like the so-called Kanada-Kommando sorting the effects taken from the deported Jews), the Jewish Sonderkommando had to wear dark trousers with light shirts as apparent from the secretly taken Sonderkommando photographs from Summer 1944:

A report from the local police station in Auschwitz of 7 October 1944 reads that "prisoners escaped from concentration camp Auschwitz II from the Sonderkommando (crematorium), mostly Jews ... characteristics: close-cropped, tattooed number on the left forearm. Clothing partly civil with red stripes".


"The result to date of this “resettlement action”: 500,000 Jews."

The figure of 500,000 "resettled" Jews is exaggerated as about 330,000 Jews had been deported to Auschwitz until May 1943 according to the data in Piper, Die Zahl der Opfer von Auschwitz aufgrund der Quellen und der Erträge der Forschung 1945–1990.

Interestingly, around the same time, a figure of 500,000 killed Jews circulated among prisoners allegedly based on information obtained in the Political Department. The escaped Auschwitz prisoners Alfred Wetzler and Rudolf Vrba reported in April 1944:

"At the beginning of the year [1943], the political department in Auschwitz received 500,000 release forms... but they were filled in with the data of those gassed and were deposited in the archive."

(Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933–1945, Band 16, document 108, p. 371)

The figure also made its way into secret reports of the Nazi news agency Internationales Institut für die Aufklärung über die Judenfrage monitoring foreign news on the Jews in Poland:

Source: BArch R 58/7222.

500,000 seems like an inflated figure disseminated by the Auschwitz SS at the time (possibly based on operation time, capacity, estimated transports, instead of actual records they were not allowed to keep). The Auschwitz SS Administration did not have to know about exact figures since they were responsible for the (registered) inmates, but not for those sent immediately to the gas chambers without registration in the camp's books.

Another point: the Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höß may have felt like boasting about the Auschwitz death toll to catch up with the reports on those of the Aktion Reinhardt camps Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor.

In his post-war manuscript on the Final Solution of the Jewish Question, Höß provided more or less decent totals for the Jewish deportations to Auschwitz. According to him, he learnt the figures "from Eichmann or his staff" - quite possible only in 1944.

The death toll of 500,000 up to May 1943 is far too low for a post-war forgery with much higher figures floating around at the end and after the war. The Soviets claimed some 4 Million deaths for Auschwitz. The Auschwitz escapees Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler reported that 1.765 million Jews were gassed in Auschwitz between "April 1942 to April 1944".


"The present capacity of the “resettlement action” furnaces: 10,000 in 24 hours."

According to the Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höß, the crematoria had the following maximum cremation capacities.

"As I said earlier, crematoria I and II were able to burn about 2,000 bodies within 24 hours, more was not possible without causing any damage, and facilities III and IV should be able to burn 1500 bodies within 24 hours, to my knowledge these numbers have never been reached there. "

(Rudolf Höß, Die Endlösung der Judenfrage, quoted in Broszat, Kommandant in Auschwitz, p. 259)

In addition to the crematoria (completed or almost finished), the Bunker 2 extermination site (a former farmhouse converted into homicidal gas chambers with open-air cremation trenches) still existed at the time. In Höß's calculation, the site could account for 3,000 victims per day. Thus, the camp commandant could arrive at a maximum capacity of 10,000 people per day.

Or in his own words for the Nuremberg prison psychologist Gustave Gilbert:

"In Birkenau there were five installations - two large crematoria, each of which had a capacity for receiving 2,000 persons in the course of 24 hours. That is to say, it was possible in one gas chamber to put to death up to 2,500 persons; in five double ovens heated with coke it was possible to burn at the most 2,000 bodies within 24 hours; two smaller installations could eliminate about 1,500 people, with four bigger double ovens to each of them. Furthermore, there was also one open-air installation - that is, an old farmhouse was sealed and turned into a gas chamber, which could also contain 1,500 persons at one and the same time. The incineration was carried out there in an open pit on wood, and this was practically limitless.In my estimation, it was possible to burn there, in 24 hours, up to 8,000 persons in this way. Hence it was possible to exterminate and eliminate up to 10,000 people within 24 hours in the installations described above. As far as I am aware, this number was attained only once in 1944, when delays occurred in the arrival of trains, and consequently five transports arrived together on one day."

A killing capacity of 10,000 daily was apparently his standard figure towards visiting SS leaders. He passed on the same to Adolf Eichmann (though Eichmann was insecure about the statement here):

"In Auschwitz I had to look at those installations yet once more. I told Hoess this and as a consequence he ordered a field car. We rode in the field car through some area - I didn't know my way around in Auschwitz. This was a section - far from the headquarters. I had been there on my business several times only in the headquarters, near the main entrance, I had never been further inside - I also did not have any inclination to do so - and then I saw large buildings, large buildings, this was already in the guise of a factory, the enormous chimney, and Hoess said to me: "Yes," he said, "here there is a capacity of 10,000 - yes 10,000."..

The crematoria in Birkenau did achieve cremation rates far higher than those in civilian crematoria. This was enabled by the technique of multiple cremations, overlapping of cremation cycles, breaking up charred corpses with stoking tools and incomplete cremations.

When the crematorium 2 was planned in 1941, the Topf company estimated a capacity of 1440 adult male corpses per day (Birkenau constructed as POW camp at the time). The figure made its way into the well-known draft of a letter by the central construction office Auschwitz to the SS-WVHA of 28 June 1943:

Source: Schüle, Industrie und Holocaust, p. 460.

Considering the large proportion of children, the Auschwitz SS could have easily calculated with 2000 corpses per day for gassing victims.

Appendix D: The Franke-Gricksch Report and Holocaust Deniers

The Franke-Gricksch report challenges virtually everything a Holocaust denier believes in. It demonstrates the mass murder of Jews, the intent, the means, the scope. It's the quickest way to end Holocaust denial. Hence, the document must be dismissed according to one of the fundamental denier principles: "It's forged, or we're busted!".

Vincent Reynouard, video clip Ce SS qui, en 1943, aurait décrit l'extermination des Juifs

Rebuttal:

Vincent Reynouard And The Franke-Gricksch Report (Part 1)
Vincent Reynouard And The Franke-Gricksch Report (Part 2)
Vincent Reynouard And The Franke-Gricksch Report (Part 3)


Mike Peinovich, on twitter

Rebuttal:

Irregular Musings on the Unicellular Denial. #3. Chris Crookes and Mike Peinovich.


Brian Renk, The Franke-Gricksch 'Resettlement Action Report': Anatomy of a Fabrication

Note that Renk has not been active as Holocaust denier for many years and his latest publication dates 2001.

There is no evidence that a carbon copy of the original report was ever "found" in the SS officer's career file. Nor is there any evidence that this elusive "carbon copy" is in the National Archives, or even that such a document ever existed. The only version of this report that seems to exist anywhere is Lipman's typescript "copy" of an alleged extract from the missing report.

The carbon copy was found and is reproduced in this article.

On the "capacity" of 10,000 people per day:

He [Pressac] does not explain, though, why there should be propaganda falsehoods in a confidential, internal SS report.

Apart from the fact that the figure can be estimated on the crude assumptions made by the Nazis like Höß (see Appendix C), if Renk really does not comprehend the reason why one SS officer would boast towards another, he should ask himself whether doing something else rather than "analysing" historical documents would not better match his intellectual skills.

Pressac concedes that the "Resettlement Action" reports claim that 500,000 Jews had already been killed by May 1943 is not true. The real figure, he asserts without evidence, was "probably somewhere between 200,000 and 250,000." Pressac fails to convincingly explain just why the killers would want to exaggerate their grisly toll by at least two-fold.

Same here. Note that it appears that Höß regarded the business of mass extermination as a kind of competition between himself and the other extermination camp commandants. The figure may have been crudely estimated for it is known that they were not allowed to keep records.

For example, Pressac does not even try to explain how Jewish "Sonderkommando" members could have begun their gruesome work of hauling bodies from the "gas chamber" only "a few minutes" after the killings without themselves promptly falling victim to the residual poisonous vapors.

The original term is "einige", which is an indefinite amount, but less than many. Its size also depends on what "reference" the speaker has in mind. For somebody without any time, already 5 min could be "einige". For somebody thinking on a scale of hours, the same term could describe 30 min. 

The gassing time was on the order of 20 min (without ventilation), and the Jewish Sonderkommando prisoners could have entered the gas chamber with gas masks. It is certainly possible that Franke-Gricksch meant such period with "einige Minuten", especially if he did expect a longer time.

Contrary to the claim in the "Resettlement Action" report (and by various "eyewitness") that the lethal substance (supposedly Zyklon) was lowered or dropped into the chamber through hollow pillars, anyone visiting the site of the extant ruins of this chamber (Leichenkeller I) can easily verify that the pillars there are not hollow, but are made of solid, steel-reinforced concrete.

Now Renk is really getting silly (I mean, even more than before). The "pillars" or "columns" are nothing else than the well-known wire-mesh columns leading from the roof down to the floor of the gas chamber. They are mentioned as "wire-mesh slide-in devices" as well as "suspension device, "angle iron guide" and "framework of gauge rail spanned around with wire-mesh" in contemporary German documents. One can easily verify in the ruins of crematorium 2 the existence of corresponding holes in the gas chamber's roof.

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

Further, Pressac offers no explanation for the document's silly assertion that "fresh corpses burn particularly well."

Perhaps because he knew that fresh corpses - as opposed to cool corpses - burn particularly well?

Nor does he attempt to account for the report's mention of a "special rail track into an area of the camp specifically set aside for this purpose." This can only refer to a rail spur from the main Auschwitz (Vienna-Krakow) rail line into the Birkenau camp. In fact, work on this Birkenau rail spur did not even begin until January 1944.[12]

AFG could have referred to the special line for the special transports just East of Birkenau.

In this letter, Renk also wrote the following: 

To this day, no original German report of 1943 has been presented bearing the name or signature of Alfred Franke-Gricksch, nor Alfred Franke. If Ekkehard's story is true, any wartime document should bear the nom de plume "Franke".

That we are indeed dealing here with H-denial's "expert" on Alfred Franke-Gricksch becomes clear from the fact numerous wartime documents do not bear the name "Franke" but Alfred Franke-Gricksch (like those here and here available online at least since 1999). Also, his signature did read "Franke-Gricksch" at the time, as is evident from this document (BArch R 9361-III/524709):

Next: Carlo Mattogno, The Real Case for Auschwitz, p. 225-228.

His [Pressac] whole reasoning is grounded on the assumption that the document in question is authentic, although there is no proof for this, and hence his analysis aims merely at explaining the “mistakes” in the “report,” instead of checking into the veracity and, ultimately, the authenticity of the document itself. In other words, he pre-empts what he is going to find out.

Okay, let's take it slowly. Here is a source. Which pretends to be a note by an SS leader. On the mass extermination of Jews in Auschwitz.

A quick check of the authenticity (with the evidence available to Pressac at the time, i.e. in 1989):

• The document is about someone's trip to Auschwitz, which indeed took place at the time. Check.


• It recounts the event from a perpetrator's point of view. Check.


• The document describes the mass extermination with numerous details, far beyond what was circulating as rumours among outsiders. Check. 

Some of the details are inaccurate or false. Now the key question: Is it possible to explain the mistakes assuming that the source is authentic? If yes: check. If not, it might indicate that the source is not genuine. 

Thus, Pressac's exercise to explain the report's errors is not avoiding "checking into the veracity", but it's the exact opposite of that. It is an essential part of the process of checking its authenticity. 

Of course, Mattogno will never allow himself to understand this, as it is the central pillar of his Holocaust denial that he can dismiss any source on Nazi atrocities if it just contains something he considers as inaccurate, uncertain or contradictory. Just offering plausible explanations knock down this shaky pillar of denial - a skill Jean-Claude Pressac had mastered on Auschwitz.

Another serious error on Pressac’s side is the fact that he attempts to attribute the erroneous figures in the documents at times to Franke-Gricksch’s SS guide, at other times to Franke-Gricksch himself.   

It is not an "error" but a matter of fact that "erroneous figures" can result from either the sender or receiver.

But, for some strange reason, the “report” does not mention the seven concrete pillars holding up the ceiling of the room.

The concrete pillars of the basement are an irrelevant feature for its function as gas chamber. It's one of the least things a SS visitor would note in a report.

it is altogether unbelievable that, when describing the alleged extermination of Jews, the guide would not have called things by their proper names, like dropping the very name of the installation, crematorium, which the document refers to as a “house.”

Whoever described Mattogno as "a specialist in text analysis and critique" should be punished with reading all of his two dozen "Holocaust handbooks" (just kidding, that would be too cruel). But it's an irony to read this about somebody who cannot even perform a simple "textual analysis" of a trivial sentence like "the unfit go to a biggish house".

Just because AFG did describe the crematorium as "biggish house" it does not mean that the tour guide did not tell him it was a crematorium. Mattogno just makes this up.

Perhaps the tour guide introduced the building as a "house" and only revealed it was a crematorium in the furnace room. Perhaps the guide said something like: "The building we're about to enter may look like a biggish house, but it's actually a crematorium". Perhaps the guide said nothing at all. Of course, the SS visitor had to recognize he was inside a crematorium at the latest when he saw the furnace room. We don't know exactly when he got this information.

But what it is clear is that the author of the report did not want to use the term and decided to describe the site as "biggish house". His possible motive? The report describes the mass extermination in the most positive way, for the victims as well as, implicitly, for the perpetrators. The reason for calling the crematorium a "biggish house" might have been to emphasise that the victims do not realise from the outside they are really led to their slaughterhouse.

Not even Zyklon B is ever mentioned in this “report,” according to which the killing was done with “certain agents” or “particular substances which made the people fall asleep within a minute,” saying that “the containers with the substances are lowered into the columns.”

AFG was not obligated to mention the exact killing agent in the report. Given that death by Zyklon-B in the Nazi gas chambers can be considered quite horrible, he might have even deliberately chosen to circumscribe the killing agent instead.

Furthermore, any supposed forger with the detailed knowledge shown in the report would have known more likely than AFG that Zyklon B/cyanide was said to have been employed in Auschwitz.

People knew after the war - in fact, already during the war - that the Nazis used "Zyklon" and cyanide at Auschwitz. The killing agent was, for instance, mentioned already in the escape report of Alfred Wetzler and Rudolf Vrba ("The containers with this content carry the inscription: 'Cyklon for pest control' and the nameplate of a Hamburg factory. These containers contain - as proven - a cyanide preparation, which turns into gas at a certain temperature"). Therefore, the lack of a mention of Zyklon B is not evidence against the authenticity of the report, but if anything it rather supports the authorship of a one-time SS visitor.

But in the account there is no mention of any “interruption,”

D'oh! It's an account of the process of mass extermination based, among other things, on impressions gathered during a guided tour - not a point-by-point description of this tour.

Without even taking into account that Franke-Gricksch must have been aware of the arrangement and the orientation of Leichenkeller 1 – either because he had entered Leichenkeller 2 from the outside yard where one could see the upper part of Leichenkeller 1 emerging from the ground, or because in the “report” the introduction columns for the sleeping agent introduced “from above, from the outside of the basement” are mentioned. Hence Franke-Gricksch would never have imagined another door at the far end of that room where there was only a wall and soil!

Franke-Gricksch did not have to know from merely entering the undressing room and walking inside the basement that "there was only a wall and soil" in the back of the gas chamber. 

It is not clear if the gas chamber was even visible from the steps of the undressing room (or masked by earth banks, vegetation), it is even less clear that AFG paid any attention to the possibly camouflaged semi-basement at some 60 m distance and it is entirely unknown if AFG would have recognized that structure he may have caught just a glimpse of as the same basement he was shown as the gas chamber later on.

The explanation of the 10 ovens (item 6) makes no sense either, because if Franke-Gricksch had not seen one or several of the ovens farthest away when standing near the first, then he would have given a figure less than 5 for the ovens, or, for the muffles, a multiple of 3, e.g. 9 or 12 (as each oven had 3 muffles), but certainly not ten.

Unless AFG misremembered 2 instead of 3 muffles. 

The mistake would be nothing unusual. Two people, who had seen the furnace room far more often than AFG, Otto Moll and Rudolf Höß, both gave wrong figures of the number of ovens in their interrogations. Höß even "corrected" Moll's twelve ovens with his mistaken figure ("Moll is slightly wrong in regard to the figures he quoted on the furnaces. The two large units were made up of five double furnaces each and the others of four double furnaces each."). If these two guys could be mistaken about the exact number and composition of furnaces of the crematoria, no doubt then that the one-time, short-term visitor AFG could be as well.

When it comes to the cremation capacity of the furnaces in Crematorium II – 10,000 corpses in 24 hours – Pressac falls back on what he calls propagandistic exaggerations by the camp SS.

I thought Mattogno was a bit brighter than to consider that somebody would claim a cremation capacity of 10,000 alone to a crematorium 2. Taking into account the extermination capacities reported by witnesses, the figure can only be understood as the total of all extermination sites in Birkenau. Mattogno knows this, so we are dealing here with flawed reasoning of bad faith.

This chronological impossibility, together with the gross mistakes of the “report” and its incredible ignorance of elementary terms such as “crematorium” or “Zyklon B” shows clearly that it is a fabrication using testimonies of former detainees, which even betray the propaganda effort

Just why - curious minds want to know - does Mattogno not dare to show which "testimonies of former detainees" exactly had been used to "fabricate" the report? 

Is it perhaps the same reason why he does not dare to show what exactly happened to all those hundreds of thousands of Jewish people considered unfit for work by Nazis that were sent to Auschwitz (or any other extermination site)? Because he cannot deliver?

Another striking example for this is this statement: “One has come to know that the Jews keep hidden in hollow teeth[!] jewels, gold, platinum etc.”

The whole section ends with the quote, so Mattogno does not reveal what is supposed to be wrong with the statement that some Jewish victims had - very small - jewels hidden in hollow teeth.

In fact, it is a striking piece of evidence that the report was indeed authored by Franke-Gricksch with Rudolf Höß as his tour guide, because the Auschwitz commandant wrote about the same in his autobiography:

"Even in the filled teeth, one has found gems of immense value."

(Broszat, Kommandant in Auschwitz, p. 255)

________________ Changes
6 October 2019: Correction on Figure 7, see also this comment. The previous version is documented here.
16 October 2019: changed "most likely" into "with a great probability" in the translation of the quote from the expert opinion.
29 January 2020: deleted the sentence "Von Herff is pictured on a photograph taken during the uprising of the Warsaw Ghetto" as it was pointed out that von Herff is not shown in the photo.
2 May  2020: added rebuttals of Reynouard and Peinovich to Appendix D

17 May 2021: Correction: "Transfer inventory of crematorium 2 3 with "14 showerheads" along the "gas-tight door."