Constructing the Krema gas chambers

It is not opinion, it is evidenced by multiple documents and witnesses. Gas chambers to kill people were constructed in the Birkenau Kremas in 1943.

No, documents and witness statements are evidence.



The documents clearly state that gas chambers were constructed inside the Kremas.



The Topf & Sons engineers do not lack credibility. They were at the Kremas in 1943 and knew what was being done there.



The documents and witnesses prove that the purpose of the building was altered so that they could be used to gas people.

A few years ago the argument began to emerge that the various gastight fixtures of the Birkenau crematoria were best explained in terms of protection against chemical warfare. The first exploration in this area was by Arthur R. Butz of Northwestern University, whose "Vergasungskeller" article of July 1996 argued that the basement spaces of Crematoria II and III at Birkenau were equipped in a manner consistent with an anti-chemical warfare "gas shelter." In the spring of 1997, our own research led to the article "Technique and Operation of German Anti-Gas Shelters in World War Two" (hereinafter, Technique), which approached the issue of chemical warfare defense from an air raid protection point of view, supporting the argument with many references to contemporary German civil air defense literature.

Technique expanded the argument for gas protection considerably, but also created a link between chemical warfare protection and air raid protection because it showed that chemical warfare protection was intrinsic to German bomb shelter design: that is, all bomb shelters were meant to provide gas protection, and gas shelters were essentially a subset of bomb shelters.

It should be said that the argument in Technique was not meant to be comprehensive but merely to alert interested students to the possibilities of German civil air defense literature in explaining the origin and purpose of the gastight fixtures of the Birkenau crematoria. Hence, the article consisted of a simple comparison of only two data sets: the German civil air defense literature on the one hand, and the so-called Criminal Traces of J. C. Pressac on the other.

Of course, the idea that the crematoria of Birkenau would be equipped to protect against bombs or poison gas is unusual, but it was a conclusion that seemed to us inevitable, given the essential identity of all of the gastight fixtures noted by Pressac and ordinary civil air defense paraphernalia found in the German literature. For this reason, we thought it important to put the matter before the public. At the same time, however, the idea was unusual enough that it seemed to call for further investigation, and hence a sister article, "Defending Against the Allied Bombing Campaign" (Defending) followed in July of 1997.

The primary aim of Defending was simply to investigate whether the gastight fixtures common in the German civil air defense literature were also common in Germany during the war. The secondary aim of Defending was to see if there was any other evidence of bomb shelters or gas shelters in the concentration camps, and particularly in Auschwitz. The main limitation of Defending was that at the time we had no documents proving the existence of gastight bomb shelters in either the concentration camps, or at Auschwitz, and in the meantime we were constantly being assured from all sides that there had never been any.

Technique and Defending, along with Professor Butz' prior article, became the basis for what was essentially a new model for explaining the gastight fixtures at Auschwitz. For many years, the existence of gastight fixtures at Auschwitz had been assumed as references to homicidal gas chambers, while since the late 1970's the standard antithesis was that these gastight references were all references to delousing or disinfection gas chambers. We may call these the "gas chamber thesis" and the "disinfection thesis" respectively. (See NOTE) The new emphasis on protection against poison gas in an air raid context, however, provided a third model, what we have called the "bomb shelter thesis."

We would define the bomb shelter thesis in this way: there are a number of objects, fixtures, and names applied to spaces in the Birkenau crematoria and other buildings at Auschwitz, and most of these terms, although not all, include reference to gastightness. The bomb shelter thesis simply states that some, or many, or most, or all, of these are best explained in a civil air defense context, which includes gas protection. Like any thesis, the bomb shelter thesis has a maximum and a minimum. It may be that the thesis explains some of these gastight fixtures, but not others. It may be that it explains all of them, in which case it would seem to follow that the gastight fixtures of the Birkenau crematoria were applied to those buildings with the intent of following civil air defense or gas protection guidelines, and not for purposes of mass gassing or disinfection. The only way to test the thesis would be for the various experts in this field to apply the civil air defense model to the existing evidence, and for that reason our writings on the subject have sometimes challenged these experts.

In the event, however the experts have been disinclined to pursue the thesis at all. In early 1998, we received copies of three documents from the Auschwitz Central Construction Office, which are today archived in Moscow, and these proved that the camp was involved in air raid protection measures a full year earlier than had previously been believed (Auschwitz Central Construction Office = Zentralbauleitung der Waffen-SS und Polizei Auschwitz = ZBL). These documents, along with a brief letter which outlined our proposed interpretation of them, with, it must be admitted, a certain challenging and unguarded tone, were published on the Internet website of the British historian David Irving (see Documents). Shortly before, Technique was published by the German scientist Germar Rudolf in his revisionist journal, Viertelsjahrhefte für freie Geschichtsforschung. A year later, in early 1999, Herr Rudolf's translation of Technique was subjected to a critique by the Italian revisionist Carlo Mattogno, himself an apostle of the disinfection thesis. This called forth a rather brief rebuttal from us, (see Comments), which a few months later led to a further critique by Mattogno. Finally, in early 2000, the bomb shelter thesis was discussed in some detail by Professor Robert Jan van Pelt in his expert report for the David Irving v. Deborah Lipstadt/Penguin libel trial. This came shortly after the Journal of Historical Review had published another adaptation of Technique, this time in Mark Weber's version.

In the meantime, during the Irving v. Lipstadt trial, David Irving adopted a limited acceptance of the bomb shelter thesis with regard to the gastight fixtures of Crematoria II and III, and the thesis was the subject of testimony by Irving and van Pelt, was referred to in the closing speeches of both Irving and Richard Rampton QC, and was discussed in the judgment of Justice Charles Gray. It may be fairly said that the thesis is beginning to be discussed more widely, and therefore is deserving of review.

The purpose of the present study is to review the evidence for bomb shelters and the application of civil air defense procedures in the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex, based primarily on documents from the Auschwitz Central Construction Office. We do not mean to rewrite or rehash the content of either Technique or Defending, but simply to supplement these articles with other information that has come to our attention over the past three years. In the course of doing so, we will have an opportunity to reappraise our interpretation of the Criminal Traces and answer the critical objections of Mattogno and van Pelt.

In Part One we will describe the background to the argument, which essentially turns on the presentation of documentary evidence that the Birkenau crematoria were adapted for the purposes of mass murder with poison gas. Here we will briefly cover the documentary situation from the time of the Nuremberg trials through the writing of our own articles in 1997.

In Part Two, preceded by a brief survey of documents for occupied Poland, we will present several documents, many of them from the Central Construction Office of Auschwitz, which will show that Auschwitz was in receipt of civil air defense directives from the beginning of the camp's existence. We will also see that certain evidence for the implementation of civil air defense procedures comes from the summer of 1943.

In Part Three, we will review the Criminal Traces of J. C. Pressac, and make some expansions and some concessions as to the proper interpretation of some of these documentary references. In addition, we will offer a few new documents.

In Part Four, we will array a few dozen documents, nearly all of them from the archives of the Central Construction Office, and nearly all of them unearthed by revisionist researchers in the past few years. We will attempt to arrange these documents into a coherent narrative that supports the disinfection thesis, and after, to point up the deficiencies of the gas chamber thesis in explaining these documents.

In Part Five, we will review the criticisms of Mattogno and van Pelt and provide our responses to them.

Our overall conclusion is that the crematoria in Birkenau ended up fulfilling three functions. First, they were built to implement the special measures dictated by General Kammler of the SS Construction Office in Berlin with respect to improving the hygienic conditions in the camp by providing crematoria that would allow for the rapid disposal of the dead. Second, the showers, washing facilities, and other facilities with which the crematoria were equipped were to be used temporarily for the showering of the prisoners, and the disinfection of their garments, prior to the completion of the Central Sauna at the end of 1943 and the main Reception Center in the main camp in 1944. Finally, like all new constructions and particularly those equipped with showers or other washing facilities, the crematoria were also equipped with various gastight equipment in order to fulfill civil air defense requirements, including those for chemical warfare decontamination, in accordance with a further set of directives from General Kammler. The evidence suggests that the early adherence to civil air defense guidelines was something of a formality, but that by early 1944 the matter of adequate civil air protection in the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp became a pressing concern, and continued on until the liberation of the camp in early 1945.

In short, we will see that the documentary and material evidence, at all levels, indicates concern over civil air defense and gas protection in the Auschwitz camp that increases probably from the fall of 1942 until the end of the camp's operation. This involved, by early 1944, the proliferation of gastight fixtures, and other fixtures, identical to the gastight fixtures with which the Birkenau crematoria were equipped the previous spring. The deficiencies of the alternative explanations will be noted, and the bomb shelter thesis will be argued as the most plausible explanation for the gastight fixtures of the crematoria.

codoh.com/library/document/bomb-shelters-in-birkenau-a-reappraisal/en/

Why do the construction office documents regularly use the word gas, when referring to the construction of gassing cellers/chambers inside the Kremas? Why does no constructiondocument use the German words for bomb shelter, showers or delousing chamber? If that iw what they were building, why not use those descriptives?