"The rest camp Mittwerda in Silesia" aka the gas chamber of Ravensbrück

The existence of a temporary gas chamber (a barrack near the crematorium) in the concentration camp Ravensbrück in early 1945 is fully proven by the statements of the SS members, most importantly the last camp commandant Fritz Suhren and the protective custody camp leader Johann Schwarzhuber (see B. Strebel, "Die Gaskammer im Konzentrationslager Ravensbrück Anfang 1945" in G. Morsch, B. Perz (Hrsg.), Neue Studien zu nationalsozialistischen Massentötungen durch Giftgas. Historische Bedeutung, technische Entwicklung, revisionistische Leugnung, 2012 (2. Aufl.), S. 277ff.).

The mendacious Holocaust denier Mattogno in Inside the Gas Chambers, Oct. 2016, pp. 181ff., dismisses these statements as evidence alleging some sort of a mythical "defense strategy" for which he cites no evidence at all.

In fact, when one looks at Suhren's interrogation of 05.12.1949 before the French military court in Rastatt, one sees him vigorously denying accusation after accusation. Certainly no coercion was involved at this particular moment. Suhren would have had no problem whatsoever denying any knowledge of any gas chamber if he so wished. Yet he admits that a gas chamber was built (denying his own guilt; pp. 80ff. of the interrogation protocol). All of Mattogno's whining aside, he can't refute this testimony, which stands as evidence.

Mattogno, his Einsatzgruppen book and the Gas Vans. Part VII: Semantics

 Mattogno, his Einsatzgruppen book and the Gas Vans

Part I: A Dilettante at Work

Part II:  Mental Degeneration or Dishonesty, Your Choice!

Part III: Genesis and Pictures That Say it All

Part IV: The "Enormous Contradiction" That Is None

 Part V: Nazi Foreign Office Documents vs. Holocaust Denial

Part VI: Gas Van Arithmetic

Part VII: Semantics

 Part VIII: Little More Than Hot Gas

If we search through the books published before the Second World War, the word Gaswagen has been used with three meanings: a) short for Holzgaswagen (producer gas vehicle), short for Gastransportwagen (vehicle for transporting gas), c) any vehicle with an internal combustion engine (for sources see Mattogno and the Activity & Situation Report of Einsatzgruppe B on its Gas Vans). 

Between 1941 and 1944, the Nazis deployed homicidal gas vans with engine exhaust. The vehicles consisted of a closed cargo box mounted on a light to medium truck chassis and can be described as Kastenwagen (box wagon/van). Vergasungen (gassings) were carried out inside the closed box, so the vehicle would be something like a Vergasungskastenwagen. The bulky term can be shortened to Gaswagen (as in Gaskammer/gas-chamber, the prefix Vergasung- can be simplified to Gas-). It is semantically plausible that the Nazis would have called their homicidal gas vans as Gaswagen.

Mattogno, his Einsatzgruppen book and the Gas Vans. Part V: Nazi Foreign Office Documents vs. Holocaust Denial

 Mattogno, his Einsatzgruppen book and the Gas Vans

Part I: A Dilettante at Work

Part II:  Mental Degeneration or Dishonesty, Your Choice!

Part III: Genesis and Pictures That Say it All

Part IV: The "Enormous Contradiction" That Is None

 Part V: Nazi Foreign Office Documents vs. Holocaust Denial

Part VI: Gas Van Arithmetic

Part VII: Semantics

 Part VIII: Little More Than Hot Gas

In mid-May 1943, the German Foreign office was troubled by a story that the Generalkommissar for Weissruthenien, Wilhelm Kube, showed an Italian delegation of fascists "a gas chamber in which the killing of the Jews was allegedly carried out" in Minsk. It was a mobile "gas chamber", since only gas vans are known to have operated in Minsk (see also here).

Contemporary Handwritten Letter of Auschwitz Sonderkommando Prisoner Marcel Nadjari Deciphered

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

American Knowledge of Grafeneck in 1940

Back in 2009, I posted this New York Times article from 1999, which had explained how Vice Consul Paul H. Dutko in Leipzig had cabled the the American Embassy in Berlin and the State Department in Washington about killings in Grafeneck. The NYT article also cited a "Feb. 23, 1940, memorandum to Secretary of State Cordell Hull from Assistant Secretary Adolf A. Berle Jr." noting "reports from the embassy in Berlin that Jews were being sent to ''unnamed concentration camps'' in Poland." Below I post a highly relevant document, casting light on these matters, which I have scanned from the NARA collection, Records of the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees, 1938-1947, which is available to me here via the Gale Digital Collections resource, Archives Unbound.

Contemporary German Documents on Carbon Monoxide Gas and Bottles Employed for the Nazi Euthanasia

The following is a compilation of German documents on the existence, use, filling and delivery of carbon monoxide gas bottles in the context of the Nazi Euthanasia.

1.) Film script for an Euthanasia documentary of 29 October 1942 by Hermann Schwenninger on "[i]n a hermetically sealed room the patient is exposed to the effects of carbon monoxide gas".

2.) Letter from the IG Farbenindustrie to the Criminal Technical Institute of the Security Police of 17 December 1943 on returning "carbon monoxide steel bottles".

3.) Letter from the IG Farbenindustrie to the Criminal Technical Institute of the Security Police of 18 January 1944 on returning "carbon monoxide bottles".

4.) Letter from Albert Widmann of the Criminal Technical Institute of the Security Police to Werner Blankenburg of Hitler's Chancellery of 5 February 1944 on sending superfluous "steel bottles" to the IG Farbenindustrie.

5.) Letter from Albert Widmann of the Criminal Technical Institute to Werner Blankenburg of Hitler's Chancellery of 9 February 1944 on "bottles" from the IG Farbenindustrie.

6.) Letter from Friedrich Lorent to Albert Widmann of 19 April 1944 on "15 fillings of bottles with CO".

7.) Letter from Friedrich Lorent to Richard von Hegener of 19 April 1944 on "60 once-used seamless empty steel bottles for carbon monoxide".

8.) Letter from the IG Farbenindustrie to the Criminal Technical Institute of the Security Police of 26 April 1944 on shipping "60 carbon monoxide bottles (used once)".

9.) Telex from Albert Widmann to the Criminal Police Linz of 2? April 1944 informing Friedrich Lorent on "filling of 15 steel bottles in Ludwigshafen". 

10.) Letter from Helmut Kallmeyer of the Criminal Technical Institute to the IG Farbenindustrie of 2 May 1944 on "filling of 15 bottles with carbon monoxide".

11.) Letter from the IG Farbenindustrie to the Criminal Technical Institute of the Security Police of 20 May 1944 on "60 seamless steel bottles 40 liters content...for carbon monoxide".

12) Letter from Albert Widmann to Friedrich Lorent of 26 May 1944 on a letter from the IG Farbenindustrie on "60 used carbon monoxide steel bottles".

13.) Letter from Friedrich Lorent to Albert Widmann of 9 December 1944 on "51 steel bottles for CO".

14.) Letter from Friedrich Lorent to Albert Widmann of 11 December 1944 on "53 seamless steel bottles...for carbon monoxide".

15.) Letter from Albert Widmann to the IG Farbenindustrie of 18 December 1944 on "53 seamless steel bottles...for carbon monoxide".

16.) Letter from Albert Widmann to Friedrich Lorent of 3 January 1945 on "51 steel bottles for CO announced".

The Auschwitz Museum's instant factchecking of a "gas chamber survival" story

The gas chamber survival stories seem to appear more often in the press lately. All such stories are a priori improbable, and thus require stronger evidence to accept them than an uncorroborated testimony.

If it is claimed that the people were driven into some sort of a room, and simply left there, with a survivor speculating that the Nazis were out of gas or the chamber malfunctioned, then the people would have probably been gassed in another gas chamber or on the next day, not simply sent to work (especially in the light of the fact that it was, as a rule, Jews unable to work who were selected for the gas chambers).

If the story is that the people were driven into a room and the gas was let in, but some person survived and was left alive, this is an even less probable variation. While certain accounts tell of a few individuals barely surviving the gassings, they were inevitably killed by the Nazis afterwards.

The origin of the stories is not hard to explain. Confused, frightened people who had probably heard certain rumors are crowded into a shower room and expect the worst. Maybe something happens:  they're left there for the night or the water doesn't come from the showers and they interpret it as surviving a gas chamber - or somebody misinforms them afterwards that they had been in a gas chamber. And they believe it. It's an honestly misinterpreted experience. These people are not liars despite the fact that their testimony is not accurate.

Sometimes false memory must be at play - like in the case of the stories where the gas was let in (sometimes in a way which we know was not actually used). Research shows that false memories are relatively easily constructed. It is no wonder that it would happen to some survivors under conditions of stress and uncertainty. Memories of the actual unpleasant experiences in unfamiliar shower rooms would combine in their heads with extraneous information (rumors, nightmares) to create memories of failed gassings, sometimes pretty vivid ones (if demonstrably inaccurate).

(This, by the way, is different from the testimonies of  inmates who actually worked in the gas chambers. The unreliable witnesses we're discussing testify about momentous, one-off events. Whereas the actual witnesses from the Sonderkommando had to work there for months, in some cases years, and the chances of misinterpretation were nil.)

Unfortunately journalists who print these stories are mostly doing it uncritically (self-selection might be at work - if you publish an old survivor's story, you usually don't do it to criticize it, so the articles that do get written and/or published are uncritical). Case in point is the latest such piece published on Oct. 4 on an Australian news site: "Miracle that saved girl from Auschwitz gas chamber":

Yvonne’s hair was shaved and she was forced to strip naked.
Yet Despite Mengele’s decision, Yvonne was ushered into what appeared to be a gas chamber, a simple room filled with what appeared to be shower heads.
“We were forced to strip, our hair was shaven and then — to this day I’m still not really sure what was happened.
“I had no idea what it was — I was in such a state of shock, I didn’t think anything. I was shaking with fear so much so that I was too afraid to even cry.”
Locked in the room in darkness with naked strangers all around her, they waited. Afraid.
Nothing happened.
“The gas chamber must have malfunctioned,” she reasons.
“In the morning we were marched out and then put to work.”

There is of course nothing in this story to suggest it was a gas chamber rather than a normal shower room. Yvonne Engelmann is an honest but confused witness. Yet the author, Paul Ewart, simply accepts her interpretation without question. Certainly not what a responsible journalist (or a historian) should do.

But this time something interesting happened: the Auschwitz Museum factchecked the article on the spot, on Twitter!

https://twitter.com/AuschwitzMuseum/status/782414192611647493

And to his credit, Paul Ewart (or his editor) included this tweet in the article (although the text remained unchanged).

If more such factchecking by authoritative institutions is forthcoming in the future, Holocaust deniers, who, like parasites, cling onto such stories, will have no ground to stand on.

German Footage of a Homicidal Gassing with Engine Exhaust. Part 4: Responsibility (II).

German Footage of a Homicidal Gassing with Engine Exhaust

Part 1: Provenance

Part 2: Location

Part 3: Responsibility (I)

Part 4: Responsibility (II)

Part 5: Responsibility (III)

Part 6: Forgery Allegation

In the previous parts of this series, it was established that the gassing footage (shown below as titled compilation and without the sound added after the war) was taken during an action by Einsatzkommando 8 in the Mogilev asylum. In this part, we will look more closely on the circumstances of what may picture the scene.

 (attention: graphic video!)

German Footage of a Homicidal Gassing with Engine Exhaust. Part 2: Location.

German Footage of a Homicidal Gassing with Engine Exhaust

Part 1: Provenance

Part 2: Location

Part 3: Responsibility (I)

Part 4: Responsibility (II)

Part 5: Responsibility (III)

Part 6: Forgery Allegation

Having established the gassing film's provenance we shall now take a look at the issue of where the film was shot.

Note: this post contains lots of images.

It is usually claimed that the scene depicts a gassing in Mogilev. However there were also some testimonies about similar early gassings elsewhere (Minsk), so we should make sure that we have the right location. In order to do this we should examine photos of the Mogilev psychiatric hospital, specifically of the location where the gassing is claimed to have taken place.

German Footage of a Homicidal Gassing with Engine Exhaust. Part 1: Provenance.

German Footage of a Homicidal Gassing with Engine Exhaust

Part 1: Provenance

Part 2: Location

Part 3: Responsibility (I)

Part 4: Responsibility (II)

Part 5: Responsibility (III)

Part 6: Forgery Allegation

The only known German footage of a homicidal gassing can be seen in the documentary Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today (1948), partially available, among other places, at USHMM's website, 0:44-1:21. The USHMM description reads:

CU pipes from a German police car bearing a license plate POL-28545 and a German police truck with license POL-51628 (as well as military unit markings: 7 circle-with-flag IX). Apparently metal piping is directed into the brick work of a small brick building, in an area that appears to be a bricked up window or door. Projected against the wall is what appears to be the shadow of a man in uniform. Five emaciated men pass on an open farm cart/wagon to a wooded location; a tall naked emaciated man and two emaciated children (different from those seen first) are led by a man and a woman in white lab coats to the building. Small red cross appears on man's white coat sleeve. The man and woman put blankets around the patients' shoulders as they are led toward the building (and over a child lying on the cart). A uniformed man - probably German - is visible in the background, along the fence, watching the scene. CU car and pipes connecting the car exhaust to the building. [Scene is consistent with descriptions of September 1941 experimental killings by Einsatzgruppe B of patients from a local asylum in the area of Mogilev, Belarus. Corresponding still images were used in evidence at the trial of Albert Widmann.]

The question of what the events on the tape correspond to will be addressed by Hans in parts 3 to 5 of this multi-part article. In this part we'll take a look at the issue of the provenance of this footage.

Sonderbehandlung 14f13 at Gross Rosen

On April 3, 1942, Arthur Roedl, commandant of Gross-Rosen, wrote that the "the special treatment ) of 127 prisoners has been completed on 2 April 1942." Proof that this meant 'killed' can be derived from the same author's message of March 26, 1942, collected in 1234-PS. This notes that 214 arrestees were "mustered out" on 19-20 January, of whom 36 had died by March 17th and 51 had been declared capable of work. The 127 remaining were killed at Bernburg in batches of 70 and 57: the transfer of the first 70 is shown here.

The process of selection for Sonderbehandlung 14f13 is documented in 1151-PS [scans], summarized in the Staff Evidence Analysis here. Liebensehel wrote on December 10, 1941, that a DoctorsCommission would visit nine camps to make selections. Forms were then issued (NO-1945). The selections at Gross Rosen on 19-20 January were discussed in a letter by Mennecke to his wife (NO-907). The euthanasia centre Bernburg wrote to Gross Rosen on March 3rd to arrange the transfers, noting that "inmates from other concentration camps will arrive" and thus "an interim is necessary for us in order to be able to carry out all this work."

German POWs on Homicidal Gassing in Secretly Recorded Conversations

The British and the US secretely recorded private conversations of some of their German POWs during World War 2. Extracts of the transcripts were published in Tapping Hitler's Generals and Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying. In the following passages, the POWs talked about homicidal gassing carried out by the Germans.

Testimonies of Prisoners of the Demolition Detail on the Crematoria 2 & 3 Extermination Sites

According to the previous posting Knowledge of Mass Extermination Among Hungarian Jews Returning from Auschwitz, mass extermination in the crematoria in Auschwitz-Birkenau was kind of a black box or a box filled with rumors and vivid imagination for most prisoners. One exception to this were prisoners, who were assigned to dismantle the crematoria 2 & 3 in late 1944. Not only did the members of the demolition detail had access to the extermination sites and could inspect themselves of what remained, but they also meet there the remaining prisoners of the Sonderkommando and were introduced into the mass murder machinery. As a result, their testimonies are among the best on the technique and operation of these killing facilities, along with prisoners involved in the construction, maintenance and supply of the crematoria - only next to the Sonderkommando prisoners actually operating these sites.

Natzweiler Gassing Victims (Warning: Graphic Content)

This photo shows a photograph of Menachem Taffel, who had been gassed at Natzweiler. His body was one of 86 found at Reichsuniversität Strasbourg upon its liberation, whereupon autopsies were carried out by Professor Camille Simonin.

A Short Update on Steam

Jansson reiterates his position thus:

Thus the early vague and unreliable rumors were replaced by the detailed steam chamber report, whose description of the killing buildings is the foundation of all later accounts.

However, the Critique already addressed this point, noting that "steam is, after all, a gas, and it is not difficult to see how the anonymous source describing steam to Wasser could have deduced that the victims were being killed with steam when witnessing the opening of a gas chamber and mistaken the emanation of exhaust fumes from the chamber for a lethal sauna." It also notes that gas was specified by Milgroim [Milgrom] in a testimony given in Bratislava on 30.8.43. I am therefore entitled to conclude that Jansson is engaging in a "falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus" fallacy that tries to reduce the whole of Treblinka witness accounts in 1942-43 to "steam", and attempts to claim that "steam" invalidates all the other details the witnesses supplied.

Jansson also gaffes in his assumption that we can only be sure that nobody left Treblinka eastwards if there was "a 24/7 watch on Treblinka to make sure that Jews never left the camp." Jansson seems unaware that Polish railway workers were reporting to the underground, despite this fact being noted in the Critique. 

Sehn's Mistake, Bellinger's Gaffe

In 2001, Joe Bellinger, writing as Ross McCullough, wrote this review of Jan Sehn's book on Auschwitz. Bellinger accurately quoted Sehn's claim that, in the verdict against Degesch MD Gerhard Peters, the Frankfurt court stated that "although Peters did voluntarily agree to supply the camp with poison gas, it is impossible today to prove beyond doubt that people were really killed in Oswiecim with cyclon B."

Bellinger kicked up a fuss over this quote without realising, or bothering to check, that Sehn was misquoting the primary source, which he had only seen via a secondary source, a newspaper article (Trybuna Ludu 9.6.1955). The primary source here actually says

Hieraus folgt, dass eine Feststellungen dahin, dass das von dem Angeklagten gelieferte Zyklon B nicht zu Tötungen benutzt worden ist, nicht getroffen werden kann. Es kann aber nicht bewiesen werden, dass mit dem von dem Angeklagten gelieferten Zyklon jemand getötet worden ist

which Valerie Hébert translates as "From this it follows, that a conclusion, that the Zyklon B delivered, by the accused was not used for killing, cannot be made. It can, however, not be proven, that with the Zyklon delivered by the accused someone was killed."

In addition to the trial verdict and Hébert's thesis, a contemporary report of the trial can be read here. I am grateful to Maximus Olson for his help with this piece.

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

Rebuttal of Mattogno on Auschwitz:

Part 1: Indoor Cremation

Part 2: Gas Introduction at the Crematoria

Part 3: Eyewitnesses (Supplement)
Part 4: Sonderkommando Handwritings
Part 5: Construction Documents:
A: Introduction
B: Ventilation & Elevators
C: Undressing Room
D: Outward Opening Door & Removal of Corpse Chute
E: Gas Detectors
F: Cremation with Simultaneous Special Treatment
G: Gas Chambers

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

The Contemporary Sonderkommando Handwritings on Mass Extermination in Auschwitz-Birkenau

The contemporary Sonderkommando handwritings were authored by members of the so called Jewish Sonderkommando engaged in the body removal and disposal at the extermination sites. The manuscripts were written during the operation of Auschwitz concentration camp, buried in the ground near the crematoria and were only to be found after the liberation of the camp between February 1945 and 1980. They are a worthy and unique historical source since they provide impressions of the Jewish prisoners engaged in the mass murder machinery while it was still running or just dismantled. They were not filtered, directed and influenced by external persons (i.e. investigators, interviewers, historians) and post-liberation and post-war knowledge and circumstances. For these reasons, the Sonderkommando handwritings are also extremely powerful evidence on mass extermination in Auschwitz. Here, I present the manuscripts found and published so far with the most relevant quotes with regards to mass extermination.

News Sources: Sobibor Gas Chambers Uncovered

Video

Times of Israel with photo

Washington Post with photos

Reuters

Archaeology News Network

Spiegel 

Dutch TV

Update September 27th, 2014: The second video embedded in this story makes it clear that they still have to do work on the west side which will uncover remaining gas chambers. They also seem to know the engine's positioning and the gap that indicates the entrance:

June 22, 1944

On this day 70 years ago, three years to the day after the beginning of Nazi Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union, the Soviet army launched an offensive codenamed Operation "Bagration", which led to the Wehrmacht’s greatest defeat on the Eastern Front.