The Holocaust Historiography Project

Jack Wikoff on Jean-Claude Pressac’s book

It has been claimed that millions of Jews were gassed to death by the German National Socialist regime. These gassings are alleged to have taken place primarily in six concentration camps. The most infamous of these camps is Auschwitz, a word familiar to almost everyone in the world.

In Auschwitz, the vast majority of these gassings allegedly took place in two buildings, each with identical, mirror-image groundplans. Hundreds of documents, including blueprints, exist from the construction of these buildings, allegedly used to murder and destroy the bodies of 750,000 people.

Although tens of thousands of books have been written about the Holocaust Story, very little information has been available as to how the gas chambers supposedly worked. The French researcher into the Holocaust, Jean-Claude Pressac, has attempted to rectify this omission in the Holocaust literature with the publication of Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers.

The following is a review by Jack Wikoff of Pressac’s book which appeared in REMARKS issue #2, September-October 1990 (PO Box 234, Aurora, NY 13026; sample copy of current issue — $3.50.)

In this review, Mr. Wikoff demonstrates that in spite of having studied hundreds of documents on Crematories Two and Three at Auschwitz Birkenau, JEAN-CLAUDE PRESSAC CANNOT PROVIDE A SINGLE DOCUMENTARY OR FORENSIC PROOF THAT A SINGLE PERSON WAS GASSED IN THESE BUILDINGS.


Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers

By Jean-Claude Pressac. New York: Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, l989. 564 pp., illustrated, $100.
Reviewed by Jack Wikoff

Auschwitz. This name has come to represent something supposedly so evil as to be beyond comprehension. An image comes to mind of an enormous death factory, a slaughter-house for human beings, an incredibly efficient machine of destruction.

At the war crimes trials in Nuremberg, Germany the Soviet prosecutors claimed that four million people had been murdered at Auschwitz in specially-designed gas chambers.(1) These rooms were supposed to have been filled with thousands of people at a time, who were then killed with hydrogen cyanide gas. The alleged gas chambers at Auschwitz and the adjacent camp Birkenau are supposedly the sites of the greatest mass murders of all time.

Homicidal gassings are claimed to have taken place in six concentration camps in German-occupied Poland. The most infamous of these is Auschwitz-Birkenau. Although it is claimed homicidal gassings of human beings took place in seven or eight locations at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the vast majority of the killings, about seventy-five percent, would have happened in just two buildings.(2)

These buildings are known as Crematories Two and Three: two buildings, mirror-images of one another, most of the killings at Auschwitz/Birkenau must have taken place in this one single type of industrially designed facility.

Every investigation of alleged murder must consider the weapon or means by which homicide may have been committed. It must be proven that the weapon was actually capable of doing the ghastly deed claimed to have been done.

Very few people and even fewer scientific experts, have critically examined the characteristics of the structures claimed to have been used to murder six million Jews.

Yet, since World War Two there have been some historians, engineers and scientists who have questioned the claim of homicidal gassings in German National Socialist concentration camps. These Revisionists reject the charge of mass murder and seek to revise commonly held views about World War Two.

One method Revisionists use is to examine forensic data regarding claims of homicidal gassing. This frequently involves on-site study of technical and architectural details of buildings allegedly used to murder millions.(3)

One of the earliest researchers to question the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz was Paul Rassinier, a French leftist who was imprisoned by the Germans in Buchenwald concentration camp. Rassinier was appalled at the tall tales and lies told by his fellow inmates about atrocities in the camps. Beginning in l948, he started to write about his personal experiences and to question the verdicts of war crimes trials.

Three of Rassinier’s books were reviewed (and rudely dismissed) by an American magazine in 1962.(4) In the 1970’s an American professor of engineering, A. R. Butz, published The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, perhaps the most important Revisionist book to date. In his analysis of the “holocaust” story Butz theorized that aerial reconnaissance photos of Auschwitz must have been taken during the war because of the strategic petro-chemical plants in the vicinity.(5)

Mr. Butz predicted correctly. In 1979 a Central Intelligence Agency publication revealed declassified photographs of the alleged gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau.(6) There was no evidence in these photos of smoke from crematory chimneys, lines of Jews in front of gas chambers, or flaming pits of cadavers.(7)

The preeminent Revisionist today is Robert Faurisson, who lives in Vichy, France. Mr. Faurisson’s writings have been widely published in many languages and his essay The Problem of the Gas Chambers is an excellent introduction to the subject.(8)

Mr. Faurisson has been heavily persecuted for his research. He has lost employment, been sued, criminally prosecuted, and physically attacked on six occasions.

Researcher and writer Friedrich Paul Berg, a mechanical and environmental engineer by profession, has written extensively on technical aspects of the “holocaust” story. A series of three in-depth articles by Mr. Berg which appeared in the Journal of Historical Review is essential reading.(9)

Another Revisionist of note is Fred A. Leuchter, an American engineer who specializes in the design and fabrication of execution hardware. Mr. Leuchter was a defense witness for Ernst Zu"ndel, a German/Canadian who has been prosecuted for publishing Did Six Million Really Die? Mr. Leuchter went to Poland in 1988 and conducted scientific examinations of the alleged gassing facilities at several camps including the ruins at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

As part of his investigation Mr. Leuchter took samples of brick and mortar from Crematories Two and Three, analyzing them for traces of hydrogen cyanide. The chemical and architectural studies by Mr. Leuchter have proven that the structures at Auschwitz-Birkenau could not have been used to commit mass murder by gassing as claimed by “Exterminationist” historians. Leuchter’s analysis has been published as The Leuchter Report, The End of a Myth: An Engineering Report on the Alleged Gas Chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek, Poland.(10)

Jean-Claude Pressac’s Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers is an attempt to prove these Revisionists wrong. For years Exterminationist historians and “Shoah-business” promoters have shouted that the “Holocaust” can not be debated. This book is proof that Revisionism can no longer be ignored and must be debated. The Exterminationists are compelled to attempt some emergency damage control.

Pressac, 46 years old, is a pharmacist by profession. The sales promotion material for the book claims Pressac was once a Revisionist, who after a decade of research in the Auschwitz archives became convinced of the Exterminationist thesis. A New York Times review proclaims:

“…the publication of Mr. Pressac’s Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers is not only an unusual addition to the Holocaust literature; it is also a personal story of scientific discovery during which, as Mr. Pressac writes in a postscript, he was converted from “revisionist” to “exterminationist".(11)

This is pure hype, since Pressac wrote an anti-Revisionist article about crematoria and alleged gas chambers as early as 1982.(12)

The Pressac book has been published in limited edition in the United States by Serge and Beate Klarsfeld, the husband and wife “Holocaust” researchers and “Nazi hunters".

In past years the Klarsfelds' “Nazi-hunting” activities have included dangerous publicity stunts and criminal activity. Beate once slapped West German Chancellor Kurt George Kiesinger to call attention to his German military service during World War Two.(13) According to the New York Times, Serge Klarsfeld admitted paying $5,000 for travel expenses to a Bolivian hit man to murder Klaus Barbie in Bolivia. The plot was called off when Bolivia agreed to extradite Barbie to France.(14)

Beate Klarsfeld has curtailed her attention-grabbing publicity stunts since she and four American Jews were detained by Italian police in 1987 after one of six smoke bombs went off in her hotel room. Apparently this “gang that couldn’t bomb straight” had planned to create a disturbance in St. Peter’s Square to protest a meeting of Pope John Paul II with Austrian President Kurt Waldheim.(15)

When Robert Faurisson was nearly assassinated in September 1989 by three Jewish terrorists from a group called Sons of the Memory of the Jews, Serge Klarsfeld had this to say: “Someone who has provoked the Jewish community for years should expect this sort of thing."(16)

In preparing Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, Jean-Claude Pressac was granted extensive access to the enormous “Archives of the Warsaw Central Commission for the investigation of Hitlerite crimes in Poland” located at Oswiecim (Auschwitz), Poland.

The Pressac book contains 564 large format pages (17½″ by 11 ¾″) of valuable documents, architectural renderings, blueprints, photographs, technical specifications, road maps, sewage plans, etc. of the Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps. Accompanying these documents is Pressac’s text explaining how he interprets this material to prove the Nazis gassed millions of Jews.

Pressac’s commentary and interpretation of the documents is spread throughout the 564 pages. If his arguments for homicidal gassings and criticism of Revisionism were organized in one section, it would not be more than eighty pages long. Thus, about eighty-five percent of Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers is simply the publication of previously hard-to-obtain documentary material.

Since known Revisionist researchers in many countries are frequently banned from using archives containing documents on the “holocaust", the publication of so much primary material in one volume is ironically a great service to Revisionists. Certainly, putting this material in the hands of Revisionists has not been the intention of the Klarsfelds or Pressac.

The documents in the 564 pages of the Pressac book cover many aspects of the normal operation of the Auschwitz and Birkenau camps and make these wartime penal institutions real. Once the German concentration camps are understood in their true function as labor and internment camps, the myth of “extermination” evaporates.

Much of the data relates to the necessity in these camps to disinfest inmates of lice. Body lice can carry typhus, a deadly disease very prevalent in Eastern Europe until the discovery of DDT and other modern pesticides. Zyklon B is an industrial product containing hydrogen cyanide which has been used since the 1920’s to kill vermin in ship’s holds, barracks, warehouses, railway cars and clothing. Zyklon B was frequently used in standard ten-cubic-meter disinfestation chambers to kill lice and other vermin in clothing and bedding.

The Revisionists say yes, there were gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau, but they were designed to *save* lives, not take them and they were for lice, not human beings. Whether or not people were being gassed at Auschwitz, Zyklon B would necessarily have been used for disinfestation. If not, everyone in the camps, including administrators and guards, risked contracting typhus.

All individuals coming into the camp had to go through a tightly controlled disinfestation process of their bodies and clothing. The facilities designed to do this were modern and highly efficient, beautifully-designed architectural structures.

These gas chambers for lice have purposely been confused with alleged gas chambers for human beings since 1941. Rumors of homicidal gas chambers were deliberately spread during World War Two by the World Jewish Congress, the Soviet Union, Polish Communist Resistance cells and Anglo/American propagandists.

The chambers described by Exterminationist authors for mass gassing of human beings are crude, make-shift affairs in contrast with the sophisticated, modern disinfestation facilities in the German detention camps.

For instance, the reception building at Auschwitz, built by the Germans in l942-44, contained showers and bodily disinfestation facilities divided into dirty and clean sides, and nineteen gas chambers for disinfesting clothing. A study of the numerous blueprints and photographs of this building, reproduced on pages 31-39 is an eye-opening experience.

Other sections of Pressac’s book deal with the cremation facilities in the camps. Crematory ovens in the camps signify nothing sinister, contrary to popular belief. Cremation became the official means of disposal of the dead because of the danger and expense of shipping infested cadavers back to relatives or burial in the swampy soil of Auschwitz.

Pressac emphasizes that the central questions in his Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers center around Crematories Two and Three. When it is understood that these buildings, essentially one structure, were not designed or used for homicidal gassings, the “holocaust” house-of-cards collapses.

Crematories Two and Three were designed by the Auschwitz Bauleitung (Construction Management ) Drawing Office of the SS in early 1942. Bids for construction were taken in the summer of 1942, and the facilities began functioning in March, l943 and June 1943 respectively.

Examination of the blueprints in Pressac’s book make it very clear that these buildings were cremation and morgue facilities. The basement rooms which are alleged to have been used for undressing and gassing are clearly marked as “Leichenenkeller” [corpse cellars or morgues].

Internal access from the morgues to the crematory ovens was by way of an elevator just large enough to contain a cadaver gurney and two attendants. Claims of the number of victims gassed in these 7 × 30 meter basement rooms ranges as high as three thousand a day.(17) Exterminationists have been unable to explain how, even if corpses were stacked in the elevator like cordwood, this “bottleneck” in transferring such a large number of corpses from one floor to another could have been accomplished.

Pressac admits that these buildings were designed and built as crematories and morgues, not gas chambers. On page 429 we find the following statements:

“Faurisson asked for 'one proof … one single proof' of the existence of homicidal gas chambers. The 'traditional' historians provided him with an 'abundance of proofs' which were all based on human testimony … But human testimony is fallible. It is unreliable and Faurisson wanted a CONCRETE historical proof, that is proof based on incontestable and irrefutable documents.”

“As for the technical drawings of the Krematorien, cited in legal actions and described as proving that they were planned for large scale assassination by gas (which is in fact incorrect), NOT ONE explicitly mentions in so many words anything like: 'Blausaure' [prussic acid], 'Vergasungs-' or 'Gaskammer' or '-keller' ['gassing'or 'gas chamber' or 'cellar']. This is not because the drawings were 'camouflaged' in any way, but is simply because the buildings concerned were converted from their original function, cremation pure and simple, and transformed for criminal use, so that the compromising words could not have been written on the original drawings of Krematorien II and III …”

“In final analysis, there remain only the various items of correspondence and official documents of German origin. Through the 'slips' that can found in them, they form a convincing body of presumptive evidence and clearly indicate the presence…of gas chambers….”

“In the absence of any 'direct', i.e. palpable, indisputable and evident proof (lacking so far as we know at present) such as a photograph of people killed by toxic gas in an enclosed space that can be perfectly located and identified, or of a label on a Krematorium drawing of a 'Gaskammer um Juden zu vergiften / gas chamber for poisoning Jews' an 'indirect' proof may suffice and be valid. By 'indirect' proof, I mean a German document that does not state in black and white that a gas chamber is for HOMICIDAL purposes, but one containing evidence logically that it is impossible for it to be anything else.”

These are extraordinary admissions. It has taken Revisionists forty-five years to get Exterminationist “experts” to admit these facts.

Thus, Pressac’s only argument is that very late in the construction process (early 1943), the morgues were converted to homicidal gas chambers. In making this argument he contrives all sorts of sinister meanings from construction order forms, drawings, and office correspondence.

The huge volumes of paperwork seized by the Soviets from the Auschwitz camp say nothing about extermination. As Robert Faurisson has pointed out, there are no orders, plans, budgets, drawings for gas chambers or records of gassings. Also, Crematories Two and Three were built long after the alleged extermination of the Jews was supposed to have been ordered, planned and initiated.

Let us analyze the “criminal traces” Pressac claims are “indirect proof” the morgues were converted into gas chambers. The test we will apply is that stated by Pressac: that “criminal traces” constitute evidence of a homicidal gas chamber only if “it is impossible for it be anything else.” (Relevant pages in the Pressac book will be indicated to allow the reader to easily reference this information.)

  • A January 29, 1943 letter by SS Captain Bischoff, Head of the Auschwitz Central Bauleitung (Construction Management) Office, makes reference to a “Vergasungskeller” (gassing cellar) in the basement of Crematorium Two. (pp. 211, 432)
  • A telegram sent by SS Second Lieutenant Pollok on February 26, 1943 requested 10 gas detectors for Crematorium II. (p. 432)
  • An order for a handle for a gas-tight door for Crematorium Two was issued by the Bauleitung on March 5, 1943 and was received by the DAW (German Equipment Works) metal working shop at Auschwitz the next day. (p. 432-3)
  • A letter by Kirschneck dated March 31, 1943 refers to gas-tight doors with peepholes ordered for Leichenkeller I in Crematoria Two and Three. (pp. 432, 434, 438)

These documents indicate that plans were made to convert basement rooms of Crematoria Two and Three to Zyklon B disinfestation chambers and/or air-raid shelters, not extermination facilities as Pressac claims.

In 1942-43 Auschwitz-Birkenau and other camps were suffering from epidemics of typhus and other infectious diseases. On December 28, 1942 an urgent order had gone out from Reichsfuehrer-SS Heinrich Himmler that the death date “be reduced at all costs".(18) An attempt to convert Leichenkeller I into a disinfection chamber in early 1943 is consistent with these urgent disease-control programs being implemented by the German armed forces in wartime Europe.

The clothing on cadavers brought into the underground morgues was frequently infested with disease-carrying lice. If more corpses were in storage than could be handled quickly by the ovens, then these corpses might also have had to be disinfested, ideally in the same building.

Also, in March 1943 an attempt was made to provide heat, when needed, to the basement of the Crematoria, by diverting it with fans and ducts from the crematory ovens. (p. 223) Unfortunately one of the forced-draught motors caught fire and caused considerable damage. The idea of heating for the basement was consequently dropped.

Since the hydrogen cyanide in Zyklon B has an evaporation point of 78.3 degrees F., this temperature must be reached for a room to function either as a disinfestation or homicidal gas chamber. But these underground morgues were designed to stay cool to prevent decomposition of cadavers.

Thus the difficulty of effectively heating these rooms may have been a reason to abandon use of them as disinfestation chambers. The forensic samples taken in the ruins of these basement rooms by Fred Leuchter indicate that very small of amounts of Zyklon B were used there, amounts inconsistent with regular use as disinfestation or homicidal gas chambers.(19) Also the gas-tight doors may have been retained to keep noxious smells contained within the rooms.

Gas-tight doors with peep holes are standard for air-raid shelters and this is another explanation for their presence in the basement rooms. In 1939 orders were given throughout Germany to equip apartment houses, office buildings and other structures which had basements with facilities for shelter from air raids. A bomb blast near a shelter can exhaust all oxygen in the vicinity in addition to producing poisonous gases. This author has in his possession photocopies of l939 German manuals on the construction of gastight bomb shelters. (These photocopies were kindly made available by Revisionist researcher Friedrich Paul Berg.) The gas-tight doors with peep holes illustrated in the manuals are similar to those reproduced in the Pressac book.

Several of the documents reproduced in Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers prove that extensive defenses against aerial bombing were instituted at Auschwitz-Birkenau,. On page 156 is a blueprint for the conversion of the morgue (alleged homicidal gas chamber) in Crematoria One at the Auschwitz Main Camp into a bomb shelter. This shelter had a gas-tight door with a peep-hole which can still be seen by tourists today.

Furthermore, Pressac states that the alleged homicidal gas chamber in Crematorium Two may have been divided in half in 1944 (p. 251). This is very consistent with other documentation on bomb shelters at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The dividing wall would have provided extra reinforcement for the concrete ceiling.

Those with a macabre sense of humor can imagine the irony of one room being used simultaneously as a gas chamber and an air-raid shelter. Picture scores of SS guards, civilian workers, and privileged inmates rushing to the underground shelter as warning sirens wail, only to have the air-raid warden say “Sorry guys, this room is occupied. Can you come back when these 3000 corpses have been removed?”

  • A worker installing the ventilation systems for Crematoria Two and Three referred to Leichenkeller II as the “undressing room". (pp. 432-438) (In each building there were three basement rooms designated on the original drawings as morgues.)

Pressac interprets something sinister from this, claiming this room was where those about to be gassed were persuaded to disrobe before going into Leichenkeller I to shower (and were gassed instead). But Leichenkeller II, in its true function as a morgue, was also the first room in which clothed corpses would have been unloaded to be undressed, searched for money, precious metals and gold teeth. This may be repugnant but certainly not homicidal.

  • An inventory sheet for the basement of Crematoria Two (March 31, 1943) lists among other items “four wiremesh introduction devices” and “four wooden covers” for Leichenkeller I (pp. 429-30, 438-9)
  • A similar inventory sheet for the basement of Crematoria Three (June 24, 1943) lists among other items 14 “Brausen” (shower heads or nozzles) and a gas-tight door. (pp. 429-30, 438-9)

When construction of Crematoria Two and Three was completed by the civilian firms, the SS Construction Management Office officially turned the buildings over to the Auschwitz camp administration. At this time a set of drawings and inventory sheets was submitted. Pressac ascribes a criminal function to selected items on two inventory sheets. He claims the wire-mesh introduction devices and wooden covers were used to introduce Zyklon B into a homicidal gas chamber. Yet he has no drawings of what these items looked like or documents explaining their use.

An inventory of shower heads and a gas-tight door for the same room is claimed as absolute proof of homicide by Serge Klarsfeld:

“A document which mentions at the same time a gas-tight door and 14 showerheads. So, let’s be logical. If it’s a matter of a shower room, why this gas-tight door? This is unshakable proof."(20)

Klarsfeld and Pressac’s assumption that this room was a gas chamber disguised as a shower is unproven. For instance, the shower heads may have been on hoses used for washing off corpses or showers may have been installed for use by crematory workers. As mentioned earlier, the air-tight door was likely there for use as an air-raid shelter and because of an earlier attempt to use the room as a delousing chamber.

In conclusion, it is obvious that Jean-Claude Pressac has failed, by the standards he set himself, to prove that these “slips” on insignificant construction memos constitute “criminal traces” of homicidal gas chambers.(21)

This review has addressed the central arguments contained in Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers. An analysis of the entire 564 page book cannot be done in one article.

Many excellent researchers are currently at work on JeanClaude Pressac’s book and the documents reproduced in it. Robert Faurisson is preparing a lengthy and thorough review for a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Historical Review. Mark Weber has already presented a brief overview of Pressac’s book in the Journal.(22) Ernst ZÀGÀndel has commissioned a study of the book from Fred Leuchter. And a fine Revisionist writer using the pen name “Revisionismus” is working on a review for Instauration magazine.

Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers is being distributed and sold in the USA by Holocaust Survivors and Friends, 800 New Loudon Rd. Suite #400, Latham, NY 12110 USA, phone: 518-785-0035. (These are the same people who, according to the October 1990 IHR Newsletter, are targeting Fred Leuchter with “a vicious campaign aimed not merely at destroying his reputation and his livelihood but even at depriving him of his freedom.")

Only 1,000 copies of the Pressac book have been printed and over 500 have been donated to large libraries. The remaining copies are being sold for $100. This reviewer has heard reliable reports that Holocaust Survivors and Friends have not cashed (or returned) the checks of known revisionists who have ordered the book. Apparently this Jewish “Shoahbusiness” clique does not want revisionists to have easy access to the documentation and material in this book.

So if necessary, tell them your name is Mordecai and that you are donating it to your local Hebrew school, but get this book! These valuable documents from Polish and Soviet archives completely and finally demolish the Auschwitz Lie.

Notes

  1. Trial of the Major War Criminals Before The International Military Tribunal. Nuremberg, Germany. IMT, 1947. Vol I, p. 47.
  2. On page 264 of Jean Claude Pressac’s Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers he says the Nuremberg figure of 4,000,000 at Auschwitz is “now recognized as 'emotional' and should really [be] more in the order of 1 million". He claims the number of alleged gassings in Crematories Two and Three totaled about 750,000 people.
  3. Another method used by Revisionists is to critically examine “eyewitness” testimony of former camp inmates and Nazi officers and guards. A discussion of witness testimony is not the emphasis of Jean-Claude Pressac’s book as he explains on page 264: “The fact that the history of the extermination rested essentially on eyewitness accounts gave rise in the West to a debate based on comparison and confrontation of these testimonies… Testimony history and its revisionist offspring being closely linked, the one having generated the other, it became absolutely essential to find a new historical approach in order to escape from the closed circle of futile debate and go further in search of the truth. A precise study based on material evidence, such as the study of Krematorien II and III, meets this requirement of getting out of the circle… This study already demonstrates the complete bankruptcy of the traditional history…, a history based for the most part on testimonies, assembled according to the mood of the moment, truncated to fit an arbitrary truth and sprinkled with a few German documents of uneven value and without any connection with one another.”
  4. The Nation, July 14, 1962, pp. 14-15.
  5. A.R. Butz. The Hoax of the Twentieth Century. Surrey, England: Historical Review Press.
  6. The Holocaust Revisited: A Retrospective Analysis of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Extermination Complex. Washington, D.C.: Central Intelligence Agency, February 1979. ST-79-10001.
  7. Revisionists have demonstrated that the crematories were especially designed NOT to emit smoke or flame. Pressac, page 253, attempts to explain away the lack of smoke from the crematoria chimneys by the following example of irrational thinking and obscurantism: “Between May and the beginning of July 1944, some 200,000 to 250,000 Hungarian Jews were annihilated in the gas chambers… The most palpable sign of this demential period, engraved on the memory of survivors, was four black columns of smoke, belched forth 24 hours a day by the Krematorien. This picture, of course, cannot be taken entire at face value because two of the Krematorien were out of service and aerial photographs taken during this period show no trace of smoke. An argument has grown up over the discrepancy between the memory of survivors and the indisputable evidence of the aerial photos. Even though this can now be explained by the gaps between the arrival of convoys, historians have been extraordinarily unlucky in that the American reconnaissance aircraft flew over Auschwitz-Birkenau precisely on days when nothing was happening…”
  8. Robert Faurisson. La question des chambres a gas. Translated into English as The Problem of the Gas Chambers and published in the Summer, 1980 issue of The Journal of Historical Review, PO Box 2739, Newport Beach, CA, 92659, USA.
  9. Friedrich Paul Berg. The Journal of Historical Review. (1) “The Diesel Gas Chambers: Myth Within A Myth", Spring 1984; (2) “The German Delousing Chambers", Spring 1986; and (3) “Typhus and the Jews", Winter 1988-89.
  10. Available from Remarks Books for $10, PO Box 234, Aurora, NY 13026-0234 USA.
  11. New York Times, December 18, 1989. Review by Richard Bernstein.
  12. Enrique Aynat Eknes. “Crematoriums II and II of Birkenau: A Critical Study.” Fall 1988 issue of The Journal of Historical Review". (The article by Pressac was “Les 'Krematorien' IV et V de Birkenau et leurs chambres a gas", Le Monde Juif, No. 107, 1982, p. 97.)
  13. Syracuse, NY Post-Standard, June 25, 1987.
  14. New York Times, January 1, 1985. If the following two paragraphs are correct, Serge Klarsfeld should be arrested and tried by the appropriate legal authorities for conspiracy to commit murder. “A French lawyer who tracked down Klaus Barbie and other accused German war criminals says he joined an assassination plot against Mr. Barbie in 1982 and would support other such plots against important Nazi fugitives if all legal recourse to their seizure were blocked. The lawyer, Serge Klarsfeld, confirmed an account in Life magazine that he and his wife, Beate, paid a Bolivian code-named Juan-Carlos about $5000 for his travel expenses to Bolivia to kill Mr. Barbie, the former Gestapo chief in Lyons. Mr. Klarsfeld said, however, that he did not start the plot or finance it, but agreed out of frustration over 10 years of fruitless legal efforts to assist the plan after it was devised.”
  15. Syracuse, NY Post-Standard, June 25, 1987.
  16. Toronto, Ontario, Canada Globe and Mail, September 18, 1989, p. A5.
  17. The floor area of the alleged gas chamber in the converted Leichenkeller (corpse cellar, morgue) of Crematoria Two and Three would be 210 sq. meters. Subtracting the area of the support columns, 3000 people in a space of this size would come to 13.3 people per square meter!
  18. A.R. Butz, p. 126.
  19. See The Leuchter Report.
  20. E.A. Eknes, p. 310.
  21. Readers interested in a thorough analysis of why these basement rooms could not have technologically functioned as homicidal gas chambers, as described by exterminationists, should read the above mentioned writings by Leuchter, Eknes, Berg, Faurisson, Butz and other Revisionists.
  22. The Journal of Historical Review, Volume Ten, Number Two, Summer 1990.