New Voices: Claimed Crematory Rates at Birkenau

Claimed Crematory Rates at Birkenau Seem Improbable

Postings from Usenet newsgroup, alt.revisionism, by Jean-Francois Beaulieu

The following text represents the author's opinion, which is being made available for public review and comment.

Jean-Francois Beaulieu is a resident of Montreal, Canada who, like many people, simply stumbled across the revisionist debate. On examination of some of the details, he became at first puzzled by descriptions that seemed technically improbable. After posting a few questions and comments about this, he then became indignant about the lack of basis for the rude dismissal his positions received from the newsgroup. He was particularly incensed by the common practice there of one person doing some shallow investigation, and then passing himself off as the arbitrer of that subject. Beaulieu's response to this defensive technique was an equally curt and far more appropriate dismissal of what he accurately describes as intellectual dishonesty. All it takes to assess this situtation (and other similar ones) he posits, is to consult experts in certain fields and then do a little reasoning yourself. It helps to have a degree in the physical sciences, as Mr. Beaulieu does, but any person who can read technical reference books can easily follow his arguments (which leads to another subject).

Mr. Beaulieu's first language is French and his admirable efforts in English clearly reflect that. Some on alt.revisionism have complained that his posts are difficult to follow because of the resulting sentence construction. We don't share that view, in fact, quite the opposite. At times, the alterations of the "normal" order of the words in English lends a surprising clarity and emphasis to his comments, rather like a Gallic Yoda. Surely the meaning of, "I did a stupid," conveys his message as or more clearly than something like, "I must apologize for a rather simple error made in the calculations posted yesterday." We think so, but have prepared two versions of this text -- the one that follows with original wording, and an edited one that will arguably be more readable to English-only folks.

Index

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Subject: CREMATORY RATES AT BIKERNAU LUDICROUS SAY EXPERT
From: Jean-Francois Beaulieu <jfbe@vir.com>
Date: 24 Feb 1996 22:04:06 GMT
Message-ID: <4go20m$5g@Vir.com>

Daniel Keren wrote:

>Greg "Hitler was a great man" Raven just doesn't know
>when to quit.

>Someone should explain to Mr. Raven that no one needs four
>huge crematoriums to cremate people who die from '"natural"
>causes"'. One small crematorium would certainly be enough.

>Holocaust deniers claim about 70,000 people died in Auschwitz,
>right? Let's do a little calculation, assuming an average
>death rate:

>70,000/(365*4*52)=0.92

>(365 days a year times 4 years times 52 cremation furnaces).

>This would mean that, on the average, one furnace would cremate
>less than one corpse a day!

>This is obviously ridiculous; one furnace could easily dispose
>of far more corpses daily. Why, then, would the SS waste so
>much effort and money on building crematoriums they didn't need?

>The answer is obvious: they needed all this cremation power
>because they killed far more than 70,000 people in the camp.

You know, I was close to send a message of protestation to
underline a spectacular case of intellectual dishonesty there,
but suddenly I realized that I've just confuze you with another guy
who's posting regularly for years here. You won't believe me:
there's another Daniel Keren who is posting here, a true crank
this one. But for your information, I will just explain you
your error, since it's just an error and not a deliberate distorsion.
There was 6 muffles in Auschwitz 1 and 46 muffles in Bikernau,
but they didn't run over all the war. The 30 muffles of Bikernau
were working just after january 1943, and there was several breakndowns
that were documented by Pressac. Those aspects were use several
times, I remember even that the other Daniel Keren told me a day
that the crema 2 and 3 started to work in 1943.
May I suggest you a very basical book about the Holocaust before
to continue here? Holocaust for beginners, or something like that,
perhaps a cartoon will be more appropriate. You'll see, if
you stay with us, this is a fascinating subject where fat is flowing
at a time and not flowing at another time, and so on...

Post and email.

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Subject: CREMATORIES: Introduction
From: Jean-Francois Beaulieu <jfbe@vir.com>
Date: 24 Feb 1996 22:06:06 GMT
Message-ID: <4go24e$5g@Vir.com>

Previous Subject was: Re: CREMATORY RATES AT BIRKENAU LUDICROUS SAYS EXPERT

jmorris@gpu.srv.ualberta.ca (John Morris) wrote on Wed, 31 Jan 1996 09:20:14
GMT

>> I'm actually grabbing informations on my side about crematories, but it
>> will take me few weeks I think. But since you seems to like this topic:

[...]
>> 'In the crematory structure', you mean the walls?

>Yes, the "walls." The brick liner, or the brick liner and ceramic
>sheath in some modern crematoria.

>> What is this 'tiny amount' of additional fuel?

>Don't know. Didn't bother to ask.

>> What's the title of 'your man', his usual task? His name doesn't
>> interest me for the moment, I don't believe you invented this story,
>> but I mean: he's a crematory director, operator ?

>He runs the machinery. I will not reveal his name because I promised
>that I wouldn't. If you ask the same questions of any operator, you

I have no problem on my side to reveal the name of the person with
whom I had an interview: Marc Poirier, from the funeral house 'Magnus
Poirier', corner Jean-Talon and Viau in Montreal. He wasn't curious
about the reason of my inquiry, I just said that it was for a research,
I presume he took me for a student or something like that. I have
no problem neither to give the name of the chemist who gave me some
other informations later: Raymond Strokowski, a man who's job
is to maintain several crematories for the low-level questions, he's
not living in Montreal but I got his phone number from Mr Poirier.

I will not, on the other hand, give their phone number here
publically since I don't want them to receive 50 calls. But with
those informations it is not so hard for someone who want really
to verify my statements to trace back them with a couple of extra-effort.
But I imagine that if someone want to verify i'ts even more practical
to visit a crematoria by himself, I doubt that informations will be
so different.

I've no problem on my side to reveal the name of my 'man'simply
because I will not mix my own claim with their statement and say
that an expert told me that crematory rates at Bikernau were ludicrous
(I didn't even mention Bikernau to them) nor claim that my man
think he could reduce a normal body in ashes without a coffin in 30
minutes, nor that jewish corpses are less flammable than other
corpses (this one is a joke, btw). I'll just take care to isolate
their statements from my deductions and thus I'm just feeling safe
to give their name in that case. I've nothing to hide on my side.

>>will get much the same answers. I think this falls into the category
>of knowledge that can be easily verified by recourse to common
>sources. Which is to say: if you don't believe me, call a crematorium
and ask.

>> Why does he say that he think that it would take 1/2 hour to burn a
>> boddy without a coffin? If he say that, I presume that he base his
>> assumption on something?

>I assume that he bases it on the fact that the greatest amount of the
>burning time in a normal funeral cremation is spent on reducing the
>coffin completely.

Wrongo. I did try to get this information from Mr Poirier and despite
my insistance he didn't want to give me an estimation: some coffins
are made of wood, some others are of a material that looks a bit like
cardboard, and the burning time is variable. In this case however,
I must say that you don't need to boil up the water in a coffin,
contrarelly to the body, wood is flammable immediatelly. The process
to vaporize water from the amphiboles is enough long that even persons
who are burning several minutes in a car accident an are exposed to
intense heat will not continue to burn as soon as the tank is empty.
I never burned a body but I did burn wood in my life, the best analogy
I could take is a door, or something a bit thicker. In a crematoria
all the conditions are put to favorize combustion, intense heat but
also artificial oxygenetion. So the statement that the 'greatest amount
of time' is require to reduce the coffin is ludicrous. I can also
try to check with another crematory operator, but for me its common
sense. Nevertless, this question for the time it take to burn a coffin
is a bit tricky: there's several types of coffin and the opinion of
crematory operator who's not checking through a window those aspects
is meaningless. This is probably why Mr. Poirier didn't want to give
a fix estimation.

Post and email to John Morris

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Subject: CREMATORIES: The speed
From: Jean-Francois Beaulieu <jfbe@vir.com>
Date: 24 Feb 1996 22:07:09 GMT
Message-ID: <4go26d$5g@Vir.com>

Here, I will give the brut datas that I got from those 2 men:
The crematory operator told me that it take 2 1/2 hour to cremate a body
and that this was an average. He told me also that very small bodies
could take 1 hour 1/2 or a bit less, while very fat persons can take
more than 3 hours. In Auschwitz, the claim is about 20 minutes or
something like that, depending of the author. Mr Strokowski (the chemist)
gave me identical figures, 1 hour 1/4 for very little and small bodies
and 2 hours to 2 hours 1/2 for normal bodies. I must add here that
if some photos show Auschwitz inmates as very thin persons with no
fat some other photos show other inmates in almost good healt. The
dead inmates from typhus and othe epidemies were probably thiner than
the average. On the other hand, several cremated persons were allegedly
jews who were gased upon arrival. In that case, for the adults, a
figure of 1 hour 3/4 or 2 hours for a modern crematoria is probably a
good figure.
I have now 2 sources to estimate the ventilation capacity for crema 1
in Bikernau: the photocopies of 'anatomy of a death camps', a book
that I was finally able to find, and an old posting from you to
Olie Krieberg that I found too:

>As I posted in another thread, the artificial draft for the Krema I
>smokestacks at Auschwitz was, at 8300 m3/hr, almost double the air
>supply described by Leuchter. Now this was the artificial draft meant
>to assist the natural draft of a smokestack already constructed to be
>fifty percent higher than originally planned. One can deduce from the
>draft rate that the compressed air injected into the Krema I muffles
>was *at least* double that of the furnaces described by Leuchter.
>Since burning time is proportional to the amount of fresh air injected
>into the muffle, the Krema I crematoria could burn bodies at a much
>higher rate than one very hour and a quarter.

I have no way to know what was the ventilation capacity for crema 2
and 3 furnaces, the documentation doesn't seems to talk about it but since
the krema 1 was allegedly modified for extermination it is
reasonnable to think that the figures were comparable. If you disagree,
than it is you who must bring the ventilation figures for crema 2 and
3 furnaces, such a claim of an extraordinary ouput rate that was
never reach in the story must be prooven by technical datas like that.
In our last exchange you said:

>> How much air (or oxygen) for 1 corpse (per second)?

>> How much for 3 corpses?
>[...]
>I moved 4000 m^3/hr. The draft was further increased by increasing the
>height of the smokestack and by installing additional flues. I have no
>idea how this compares to a modern crematorium, and, frankly, I find
>that the discussion has reached such a low level of technical
>quibbling that it is difficult to believe that your question is
>anything besides a matter of looking for excuses to believe that it
>was not possible to cremate anyone at all.

If I understand well, you asked several questions to a crematory
operator, but you were just interest by the aspects that could be
use against revisionnists: the structure that must preserve heat,
the coffin, but you forgot this little detail. Nervertless, when
Olie Krieberg or Jeff are talking about Legace testimony, you use
your large experience based on an interview with a crematory operator
to throw details and you quote several books to show that such
cremation speeds were possible because a great amount of air was
injected. I asked to the crematory operator, he wasn't aware, but
the chemist knew it and was kind enough to give me this figure:
around 625 feet cube per minutes. He also said that the variations,
depending upon the crematoria model, was +- 15% approximativelly.
Since he's dealing with several crematories in Quebec, I suppose
that his opinion based on documents that he took in his file was
correct. If we convert, this gives 37,500 feets cube per hour or
around 1,400 meter cube per hour. Now the krema 1 had 6 muffles,
so this 8,300 meter cube per hour that you used is giving a data
that is almost similar with the amount of ventilation that we
can find in a modern crematoria for a single muffle

So Mr. Morris: since the ventilation capacity, that you use often
to show your point, to proove such high output rates, is not
really different than what we can find in a modern crematoria, how do
you explain that the cremation time would be 500% faster?

We will now take a look at this usual document that is use on the
anti-revisionnist side: 'Fritz Sander and Paul Erdmann, Prufer's
superiors at Topf, estimated an output of 30 to 36 bodies in 10
hours[...]' (anatomy of a death camp, page 189). The reference is
Weimar, LK 6451, letter Topf July 14, 1941.
According to the rest of the text, the best I could understand was
that this was a double muffle furnace. In all the chapter there's
several references to contracts, invoices, and not only for Auscwhitz:
it seems that Pressac had acess to a huge amount of letters and
documentation that were written over 10 years, the number of
quotation about the crematories is impressive. I wouldn't be surprise
if he met several references to lower cremation output in those letters.
Nevertless, the documents that are usually use to 'proove' those
crematoria output are rare: I know just 2 up to now.
Since nothing can explain on a physical point of view such crematory
output, I'm in the position of the man who is told that a document
proove that a Volkswagen was able to break the sound barrier during
WW II. Perhaps this document was a sick joke, perhaps a forgery,
but it may be also the kind of approach that a businessman is using
to sell his product. Big exagerations. It is say also that the first
cremation was carry on only on August 15 of the same year with that
furnace. This mean simply that this claim in the letter, probably
for 'selling purpose', was not base on something that they observed
but on an hypothetical optimist estimation. Meaningless.
The other document that is usually mention is the 28 june letter (1943)
from the Auschwitz department which claim that 4,756 corpses
were reduced in ashes in 24 hours. The date of the document is
just during the period where the breakdown of the crematorias
caused major problems to the SS in Auschwitz (By the way, this
breakdown was well documented by Pressac) while SS where desesperatelly
trying to repair those crematories. Morever, according to a document
reroduce by Pressac on page 224 of A.T.O. the crematories were just
operating 12 hours a day. On page 91, Pressac gives the provenance of this
document: 'The Comitte of Anti-Fascist Resistants of the German
Democratic Republic'. This one is clearly a forgery.

I will now say that I asked to my chemist what kind of limitations
were existing for the cremation process: basically, the 2 ones
are pollution and the need to not cool down too much the muffle.
Pollution is not relevant for the case of Auschwitz, but in the
case of those furnaces, his opinion is simply that too much air
injection will cool down the muffle. I think so. It's common sense.
What this mean however, is that fat do not account for a major source
of heat during the combustion, or that more oxygen to the muffle
will not increase the temperature because of the burning fat, and
I will explain later why.

Post and email to John Morris

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Subject: CREMATORIES: several corpses?
From: Jean-Francois Beaulieu <jfbe@vir.com>
Date: 24 Feb 1996 22:08:12 GMT
Message-ID: <4go28c$5g@Vir.com>

Lets take a look now at one of the most frequent claim of the anti-denyer
argument: the number of corpses in the muffle.
I might point here that one of the claim (I'm unsure if its M.P. Stein
or the Nizkor site) is that childrens take less time to burn, and this
is perfectly true, while another claim is that the coffin slow down
drastically the process in a modern cremation but that the nazis were
burning 3-4 corpses at a time in an oven to get more efficiency. It's hard
to use contradictory elements like that to support an opinion. But here we
have it: one of the most important element in that account for the
cremation time is the volume. I asked 3 times to Mr Poirier and his answer
was clear, and he looks a bit exasperate by my question: very fat
persons take a lot of time to be cremate. Here fat do not speed up
the process. I got also a confirmation from Mr Strokowski. I'll have
soon an interview with a man who's job is to cremate animals, but I
bet my computer that he will tell me also that packing the muffle
and getting speed efficiency are not compatibles. I didn't bother
myself to ask them why, it's common sense, Mr Moran had already
suggest me that in an email a long time ago and I had also the seem feeling
even before he sent me that. But I will try to explain the why, I
think it's not hard to catch. There's 2 reasons.

First, if you pack a muffle (around 1 meter of diameter for Auschwitz
I think) , the air flow that is comming along the corpse will be
drastically emped. A draw will be usefull:

air inject
---> muffle
<--- o-----/
\

The combustion of carbon require oxygen, and the decomposition is
giving CO (carbon monoxyde) or CO2. If you increase the number of
mollecules of oxygen that are hitting a burning surface, than you
increase the combustion. Here, for a single body, the oxygen mollecules
will not necesserelly strike directly the corpse, depending upon
the initial path they can strike the muffle wall and rebond to reach
the corpse. The movement of the mollecules is extremelly chaotic,
but accounting for the initial direction of the ventilation, all
we can say is that a part of the mollecules will strike the wall,
rebond on other mollecules that will reach the body, while other
will rebond outside without hiting the corpse. Now, if we pack the
crucible, we reduce also the quantity of air that is comming in.
In that case, fewer oxygen will rebond on the walls, the head, the
shoulders will stop their path. In that case, the combustion
along the corpse (billy, legs) will be defavorize and the only part
that will not be submit to such a drop of air intake is the lateral
section: head, shoulders. But most of the combustion occur on
the larger surface that is expose: the trunk. Reducing the size
of the empty space above the corpses will simply reduce the quantity
of air that can go in and more you pack the crucible, more
you can expect that mollecules that has not a straight path will
not penetrate deep. It's a bit more complex but this is the best
I can do to describe it in my own words.

The second aspect is that the speed of combustion depends of
the surface that is expose. More surface will speed up to process,
more volume will slow dow it. The main problem is that it's
hard to dispose the body in a scientific way to maximize the
surface. First, because the muffle is small and the manipulation
of heavy corpses in it is hard, second because we are told that
those cremations were occuring on a continous base, we are told
that the walls were extremelly hot when the nazis put a second
batch of corpses within the crucible. In that case, all we can
expect is an anarchical packing method and thus we will simply
not increase the surface as much as the volume. Billies will
touch backs, and so on. So the testimonies about the so-called
use of 3,4,5 bodies in a muffle to get more efficiency are just
lies, including Filip Muller testimony. The more practical way
for the nazis to dispose of a larger amount of bodies in a short
time was simply to build more ovens. And I will now quote
again a text that I put in the 'Counter Faq' several months ago,
since there's a couple of new readers who joined this newsgroup.

*********************************************************************

At the end of 1942 a campain was launch by Himmler to fight typhus
and, as he stated in a letter, to drop mortality rate at 'any cost'
(document 2172-PS, Nuremberg records and volumes).
The 20 th of January Gluecks, inspector of the camps in a circulary
adress to all the commandant of nazi camps ordor to fight the too
high mortality rate 'with all the available means'. Other documents
(1469-PS, NMT, vol 5 p372) attest of this exchange between
Pohl,Himmler et Glucks on that topic and one could also find a more
accesible source about this campain by reading Reitlinger, 'The final
solution', first edition, p 127.

In september, 30, 1943 Pohl was able to report progress in a letter
to Himmler. What is interesting is that he provide the statistics about
mortality rates in miscellaneous camps: from july 42 to february 43
the mortality rate was about 8% while it drop to 2.8% in june 43.An
interesting aspect is the august month:
August 1943
population death %
Dachau 17,300 40 0.23
Sachsenhausen 26,500 194 0.73
Buchenwald 17,600 118 0.67
Mathausen 21,100 290 1.37
*Auschwitz 74,000 2380 3.1
etc....

An again, exterminated jews in gas chambers are not count here in this
internal correspondance.
If we look mortality rates due to natural causes we can see that the
number of ovens is almost comparable with camps where there's no
extermination claim.
In 1942 crematories were constructed in Dachau and Sachenhausen: each
had 4 ovens. At Dachau there was 2 ovens before 1942 (samething for
Sachsenhausen). At Buchenwald 6 were existing. In Auschwitz the number
of ovens was between 30 and 46, depending of the period. The number of
inmates grow to 100,000 there at the end of 1943.
But there's another way:Dachau, Buchenwald, are in Germany an as 'non-
extermination' camps, they can be use for the comparison if we want to see
the intention of the germans when they launch the construction of crema-
tories rather than when they got them functionnal and compare it with
the death rate there. In the previous case, Auschwitz seems a bit more
equip with crematories than the other camps if we take in account the
mortality rate, but if we look back at the moment when the decision
to build crematories was taken, Here we get even a lower proportion of
crematories/death record for Auschwitz than germans camps, sometimes
by a factor 2.

If we just look the year 1942, 45,575 inmates died in Auschwitz and
2,470 in Dachau. But it is at this moment that the SS launch the
construction of most of the crematorias, so we can have a clear idea
of what they had in the mind: Auschwitz was twice less equip with
crematorias than Dachau, according to normal death figures, probably
for budgetary contraints. The main reasons for the high death rates
in Bikernau were the typhus epidemy of 1942-43 for wich germans lost
the control and also the fact that many sick inmates were ship to
Bikernau according to documents ( it was, indeed, a death camp).

*********************************************************************

Post and email to John Morris

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Subject: CREMATORIES: the fuel
From: Jean-Francois Beaulieu <jfbe@vir.com>
Date: 24 Feb 1996 22:09:24 GMT
Message-ID: <4go2ak$5g@Vir.com>

Ok, now the coke shipments to Auschwitz. I've ask for Carlo Mattogo's
book, 'the end of a legend' , but since I didn't receive it after 2 months
I suppose that I'll have do it myself. I know that David Irving has
already state that it take 35 kg of coke to cremate a body in a muffle
in a modern crematoria. I don't know were he took those datas, as
far as my man could remember crematories were using oil and the modern
ones use natural gas. But it is true that old crematories like the
Auschwitz crematories were using coke.
For Auschwitz, as we saw the invoices that Pressac presented were
showing a total amount of about 2,200,000 kg of coke provide to
the camp.
First, heat lost are mainly due to the cheminey. Since it is hot air
that is evacuate, the estimation can be taken from your figure
about the exhaust stack. For krema 1, 8,300 meter cube per hour.
This is hot air, and from pv=nRT we can derive, for a temperature
of 1200 degrees (or 1500 Kelvin) that the cold air was about 1,660
meter cube.
To rise up the temperature from 300 Kelvin to 1500 Kelvin for 1 kg
of air we will need to integrate this stuff:
/-
h2-h1= / CpodT where h2 is the entalpy at 1500 degrees, h1
-/

the enthapy at 300 K, Cp the massic heat (chaleur massique).

There's thermodynamic tables for massic heat constant, but for
oxygen this will give:

100*(37.43t +(0.02/2.5) t~2.5 +(178.57/0.5) t~-0.5-236.88*t~-1

where t is the temperature in Kelvin over 100.
The result is 40,525 Kj /kilo mol, or 1266 kJ/kg. For nitrogen,
the result is about 38,300 KJ /kilo mol, or 1360 KJ /kg.
Since air is form of about 80% of nitrogen and 20% of oxygen if
memory deserve, we will take an average figure of 1340 Kj /kj.
In that case, air occupy almost .8 meter cube per kg and this
mean for 1 meter cube we will get 1675 kJ of energy that must be
apply to get this temperature.
There is 4186 joules per kilo calory so 400 kilo calories are
necessary per meter cube. Coal has a calorific power of about
7,000 Kilo cal per kg, so this mean here 1660 meter cube of cold
air took 664,000 kilo cal or a bit less than 100 kg of coal.
I must say here that I did an error recently when I said to
Mark Van Alstine that fat had almost the same calorimetric
efficiency than gasoline, gasoline has 11,500 kcal per kg and
fat 7,000 k cal per kg so the use of human fat as a comburant
was not intelligent. Anyway.

Now, there is also some other sources of heat lost, but the
other ones are less important. Despite that, I think it's reasonable
to take, rather than 100 kg for 6 ovens, a figure of about
20 kg per oven/hour if we consider those other heat loss sources.
So let say 120 kg rather than 100 kg.

Now, your point was that fat was providing extra-heat to
compense those heat lost. I asked to my chemist and he said
that fat takes probably between 30 minutes to an hour before
to melt. What he said also was that the latest step of the
combustion was the longer one, when fat had gone. In that case
I asked to the crematory operator too and said that in his mind
fat take a while to melt. And I will add that I don't believe
that it can burn easilly in the body: there's too much water,
impureties, I think it has to melt and flow out of the body.
But this is a minor point: once fat has melt, it will burn VERY
fast. Fat is not like coal. There's no reason to believe that at
such high temperature fat will melt in a place after an hour,
and in another place 40 minutes after. We are not talking about
a BBQ at relativelly low temperature here. This mean simply
that most of the fat, when it will melt, will melt approximativelly
at the same time, in 15 minutes, 20 minutes, I don't know.
I'll try to get more accurate datas on that, but the burning
of fat is not a part of the last step of the combustion, nor
the first step: it's an intermediate one. What it mean is
that fat will provide a lot of energy but just over a short
duration. Most of this energy will simply be loose in the
ventilation. The crematory operators are not using fat as a
variable to spare fuel: it burn in an uncontroll way, they
can't ajust their machinery just to accomodate such a capricious
variable. This mean simply that even if fat account for a
kind of compensation for heat losses, it's unusefull over
75% if not 80% of the cremation time and you can hardly count
on it as a reliable source of energy as you can for a burner
that you control. In that case, despite fat could spare some
kg of coal, it can hardly spare more than 20%. If fat would
be so usefull Mr Morris, the crematory operator to whom I talked
would have jump on that to say that they are train to use
the melting moment to spare energy, but this is not the case.
By the way, as he insisted, very fat persons take much more
time to burn than peoples who are not fat.

In that case, I will quote the calculus that you sent to Jeff

<quote>
>While that figure may be true for the burning of a single corpse at a
>funeral home, it bears no resemblance to what the various the
>engineers vying for SS contracts said their furnaces were capable of.
>
>In fact, it is doubtful whether 40 kg would be sufficient to burn a
>single corpse simply because more coke than that would be required to
>heat the furnace. Walter Mueller of the Allach firm told the SS that
>his single muffle furnace required 175 kg to heat to burning
>temperature.
>
>But, of course, the furnace would not simply cool to the ambient air
>temperature as soon as the corpse was consumed. Rather, the furnace
>would remain hot for a very long time after the first body was
>consumed. Mueller told the SS that his furnace design would remain hot
>enough that if a single cremation required 175 kg to heat the furnace,
>it would require only 100 kg to bring the furnace back up on the
>following day. If a second and third corpse were burned, they would
>require no additional coke, and only a "small amount" of coke would be
>required to maintain the heat for subsequent burnings.
>
>[Note, Jan. 27, 1996: the retention of heat in the crematory structure
>was confirmed by the crematory operator whom I interviewed. The
>gentleman indicated that next to no fuel is required to cremate a
>second or third body on the same day].

[snip]

>It would also take less coke than a 100 kg on subsequent days if the
>furnace was kept hot for 20 to 24 hours as most witnesses testified
>that it was and as the SS' own documents show (and which caused most
>of the furnaces to suffer damage as the SS work orders also show).
>
>Nevertheless, let's assume that the Kremas worked in three day cycles
>requiring 175 kg on the first day and 100 kg on each of the next two
>days. Let's also add a "small amount" of coke for maintaining the heat
>through the day, say, 50 kg a day. These amounts work out to an
>average of 175 kg a day. Again, if the Kremas ran for more than three
>days, the average amount of coke required would be less.
>
>At 2,188,100 kg of coke the 46 retorts of Kremas II-V could be kept
>running for a total of 271 days, or about half of the 18 months they
>were in operation.

The first problem, by the way, is that this 'tiny amount' of 50 kg
per day is far most subjective than my calculus and my statement
about the fat. The first problem here is that you are doing a projection
of Allach's figures (1 or 2 bodies) to 20 hours!!!
First, it is true that walls can retain energy, but 100 kg the second
day is meaningless for a simple reason: it can be 4 hours after,
8 hours, 15 hours, this make a big difference. Second, since the
heat lost for 6 muffles are about 120 kg of coke per hour, or let
say 100 kg if you really want to consider that the nazis were able
to controll such a capricious variable like fat combustion, then
the extra energy in the wall can't compense for a long duration.
In that case, if you use 175 kg of coke for the first cremation,
it's possible that the second or third cremation will take less
time, but then a steady state will be quickly reach.
You can't expect to see the wall restituing more heat than it received.
Now you are taking a real fact, the restitution of energy for a second
of a third body and you extend that over 20 hours. Wrongo.
The first cremation will take more coke and the next ones will need
around the same amount of energy that is loss in the ventilation system.
We have to consider also some heat losses due to the cooling of the
structure after the last cremation of the day. But since you seems
to refuze this fact and you say that crematories were used
on an almost continuous base, than this will give 2,000 kg of coke
per day ( 20 hours of cremation) for krema 1 (6 muffles) and, for
the 52 muffles of the camp 17,000 kg of coke a day, at least.
Probably even 20,000 kg if we count the extra-coke that was necessary to
start the system.
With those figures, the 2,200,000 kg of coke that Pressac use
would be reach after 3 months 1/2. No Mr Morris, even in that case
the datas that were present are colliding with the holocaust survivor
claim. Crematories were suppose to be used over 18 months if
we account for crema 2 and 3, and more if we count the others.
But now, we will take a look at your other statements.

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Subject: CREMATORIES: documents and testimonies
From: Jean-Francois Beaulieu <jfbe@vir.com>
Date: 24 Feb 1996 22:10:15 GMT
Message-ID: <4go2c7$5g@Vir.com>

>You have misremembered our exchange. I did not agree that "this was
>the correct no of tonnes." For the sake of argument I took the figure
>you supplied from Pressac and demonstrated that it was possible to
>burn hundreds of thousands of corpses in crematoria with that amount
>of coke. You did not answer my argument then either, and now I find
>that you have done nothing more than repost your original article.

I remember those argumants. Basically you were talking about the
possible destruction of invoices by the nazis or either the possibility
that the germans could have borrow some coke from Monowitz (Auschwitz 3).
For the first statement, this is completelly ridicoulous: there was
no reason to destroy those invoices. The germans didn't destroy the
crematories draws. They didn't destroy a lot of documents that are
dealing with coke shipment. They let 80,000 documents behind them
for Auschwitz if memory deserve. So they didn't destroy a part of
the invoices just to accomodate a guy who will type on his computer
50 years after with the use of some calorimetric datas.
Monowitz wasn't close to Bikernau. If I have to take your statement
seriously than I'd have to consider that they may have borrow also
to the locomotive mecanician, or from the Auschwitz city. Proove it
with documents Mr Morris. The german were meticoulous and if documents
were needed to order some gas testers (small colorimetric papers) you
won't convince me that they could have borrow from the Monowitz Industrial
center millions of kg of coke with 'verbal agreements'. Authorization
were needed to substract such a huge amount of coke from the german
war effort and drive it to Auschwitz. German bureaucracy was one of
the heaviest that was existing.

Now, I will just finish here today and come back with other aspects
tomorrow. The last aspect that I'd like to rise up is the Kurt Prfurer
post war 'confession'. I saw somewhere in the previous post that
this man (I think it was him) admitted in court that he built
crem,atories for an extermination policy. Mr Morris, this fall in
the category 'post war trial admissions', and it has been post
several times here how the climate of intimidation, the revenge mind,
the way that post war trials were led, that a man who wanted to
maximize his chance to save his life hadn't any other intelligent choice
than to play the game, to admit whatsover the prosecution wanted
him to admit. I'm not taking those post war trial more seriously
than the Moscow trial, a mascarade. Revisionnist can't proove that
there was cases of torture in each case, but they did so for several
cases and this is suffisant to me. If a SS was facing the tribunal of
the winners, his best chance to save his life wasn't to challendge the
judges. It was to reject the fault on others. I've not the intention
to write 500 lines about those trials today, I did enough for
the moment.

Tomorrow: more on crematories

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Subject: CREMATORY RATES AT BIKERNAU LUDICROUS SAY EXPERT
From: Jean-Francois Beaulieu <jfbe@vir.com>
Date: 24 Feb 1996 22:05:08 GMT
Message-ID: <4go22k$5g@Vir.com>

mstein@access4.digex.net (Michael P. Stein) wrote
on : 11 Feb 1996 09:15:35 -0500

>As a first order approximation, no difference at all. The fractional
>body weight of water only varies by the fraction of weigth that is bone.
>The bone fraction, primarily the skull and leg lenght doesn't get to the
>adult norm until some time after adolescense. But this is a second order
>difference.

> Well put. Now would you please tell that to people like Jeff Roberts
>and Ivan Legace, who seem to think that you can only burn one corpse at a
>time in an oven, regardless of its size, and that every corpse takes as
>long as every other corpse, regardless of its size, and therefore it is
>impossible to put three bodies in an oven at once, even if the bodies
>might be two 120-lb women and a 20-lb infant in a chamber which one would
>expect to be designed to cope with a husky 260-pound adult male?

Uuuh, when did Legace said that the volume wasn't making any difference?
If I have to figure an estimation, with 1,000,000 inmates deported
there, 125,000(?) death of natural causes, 2/3 men, and 100,000 inmates
on a regular bases, it's hard to imagine excpet if I'm going at the
library to check the calendar, but for the moment I have the impression
than in the official story the 2/3 of the men were gased upon arrival.
In a population (le say in 1942) I think the proportion of childrens
is about 30%, so the children could hardly account for more than 40%
of the cremated peoples. Despite there's several childrens who survivded
to Auschwitz. I don't think neither that 20 pounds is a good average
figure, childrens may be 8 or 10 years old, not just 1 or 2 year's old.
Well , this is not the most documented post that I have send, but I can
come back on that later anyway.
But, when did Legace said that the volume wasn't making any difference?

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