Multiple Corpse Cremation part 2: the Sander Memorandum

Mattogno’s position on multiple-corpse cremation is stated in absolute terms in Auschwitz: The Case for Sanity (2010):

“Therefore, even if multiple cremations had been possible in the ovens of Auschwitz-Birkenau, they would not have led to any gain in time or in fuel. I stress the words ‘if multiple cremations had been possible,’ because the design of the triple-muffle and 8-muffle ovens did not allow multiple cremations… Actually, if two or three bodies had been introduced into one muffle, the corpses would have blocked the three openings.” (p. 285)

The claim is absolute. Even two corpses were physically impossible.

On 14 September 1942, Fritz Sander of J.A. Topf and Sons wrote internally about Auschwitz:

“In my opinion, cremation in the muffle ovens does not proceed quickly enough to handle the increasing number of corpses in the desired short time. Therefore, they resort to using a large number of ovens or muffles and overloading the individual muffles with multiple corpses.”

(1942-09-14 Fritz Sander’s 1942 Report on the “High Demand for Cremation Ovens” at Auschwitz: “Multiple Corpses Must Be Packed into the Muffle Simultaneously”.)

Sander is not proposing multiple loading as a theoretical possibility. He is reporting it as established operational practice and doing so in an internal communication, not postwar testimony subject to the usual denialist objections. A Topf engineer is describing what Topf’s own furnaces were doing in the field.

Mattogno’s response is instructive:

“Unfortunately, only parts of the letter are known, but it is certain that it contained a detailed critique of the muffle furnace system… Besides, there was the enormous problem of introducing several corpses into the muffle at the same time. In the case of three adult corpses, a concurrent introduction into the muffle was an outright impossibility for lack of space.” (p. 319)

Something important has shifted here, and it deserves careful attention.

In 2010, Mattogno declared that even two corpses were an impossibility: the corpses would have blocked the openings. By 2015, faced with a Topf engineer describing multiple loading as operational practice, the threshold has moved. Two corpses are no longer explicitly declared impossible; only three becomes “an outright impossibility.”

This is not a minor technical refinement. If the impossibility of loading two corpses were a genuine physical fact rooted in the dimensions of the furnace, it would remain constant across publications. Physical dimensions do not change between editions. The claim would be the same in 2010 and 2015 because the muffles are the same size in both years. The threshold shifts not because new engineering data emerged but because the Sander memo made the absolute position untenable. That is not a technical argument. It is a rhetorical retreat.

And the retreat does not solve the underlying problem. Sander describes multiple loading unspecified in number as current practice. Mattogno responds by citing his own prior assertion that it was impossible. That is circular reasoning: the evidence contradicting the conclusion is rebutted by restating the conclusion. The most obvious question goes unanswered. If multiple loading was physically impossible, why was a Topf engineer describing it as an operational reality?