Critique of Claims Made by Robert Jan Van Pelt

In the case of

David John Cawdell Irving,
Plaintiff

against

(1) Penguin Books Limited, First
Defendant

(2) Deborah E.
Lipstadt, Second Defendant

 Germar Rudolf, January-April 2000

Those who choose to be their own lawyer, have a fool as their client

David Irving refused to present Germar Rudolf as an expert witness. Here is the price he has to pay for it: He lost his law suit, and has to pay $3.2 million (AP) or even $4.5 million (Reuters). Justice Gray made it pretty clear that refusing to present me as a witness forced him to reject Irving’s law suit:

“The Leuchter report 13.79 The reason why Irving initially denied the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz was, as has been seen, the Leuchter report. I have summarised in some detail the findings made by Leuchter at paragraphs 7.82 to 7.89 above. I will not repeat myself. I have also set out at paragraphs 7.104 to 7.108 above the reasons why van Pelt on behalf of the Defendants dismissed the Leuchter report as flawed and unreliable. Those reasons were put to Irving in cross-examination. It is a fair summary of his evidence to say that he accepted the validity of most of them. He agreed that the Leuchter report was fundamentally flawed. In regard to the chemical analysis, Irving was unable to controvert the evidence of Dr Roth (summarised at paragraph 7.106 above) that, because the cyanide would have penetrated the brickwork and plaster to a depth of no more than one tenth of the breadth of a human hair, any cyanide present in the relatively large samples taken by Leuchter (which had to be pulverised before analysis) would have been so diluted that the results on which Leuchter relied had effectively no validity. What is more significant is that Leuchter assumed, wrongly as Irving agreed, that a greater concentration of cyanide would have been required to kill humans than was required to fumigate clothing. In fact the concentration required to kill humans is 22 times less than is required for fumigation purposes. As indicated in paragraph 7.105 above, and as Irving was constrained to accept, Leuchter’s false assumption vitiated his conclusion. Irving conceded the existence of many other factual errors in the Leuchter report.

13.80 In the light of the evidence of van Pelt and Irving’s answers in cross-examination, I do not consider that an objective historian would have regarded the Leuchter report as a sufficient reason for dismissing, or even doubting, the convergence of evidence on which the Defendants rely for the presence of homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz. I have not overlooked the fact that Irving claimed that Leuchter’s findings have been replicated, notably in a report by Germar Rudolf. But that report was not produced at the trial so it is impossible for me to assess its evidential value.“

Judgment of Justice Gray, Queen’s Bench Division, Royal Courts of Justice, Strand, London,
David John Cawdell Irving ./. (1) Penguin Books Limited,
(2) Deborah E. Lipstadt, Ref. 1996 I. No. 113, April 11, 2000, Section 13.79f.

Personal Background

My name is Germar Rudolf.[1] I studied Chemistry at the Universities of Bonn and Stuttgart between 1983 and 1993. I received my Diploma in Chemistry in 1989 at Bonn University. Between 1990 and 1993 I had a scholarship of the Max-Planck-Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart in order to prepare a PhD thesis in the field of solid state Chemistry/Crystallography.

Since 1990, I am conducting research in my spare time to verify the so-called “Leuchter Report”,[2] which eventually led to the preparation of an expert report[3] about chemical and technical details of the so-called ‘gas chambers’ of Auschwitz.[4] The distribution of one version of this report eventually led to a criminal court case in Germany against me for “inciting hatred” and “stirring up the people”. I was eventually sentenced to 14 months imprisonment because of comments that were added to my report without my knowledge.[5] In fact, in the U.S.A. and in Great Britain, such a case would have never reached a law court, as these countries grant proper freedom of speech.

Subsequently, the University of Stuttgart refused to appoint a date for my final exam to receive my PhD, referring to art. 4 of the German Law For Carrying Academic Degrees (Gesetz zur Führung akademischer Grade), which was introduced 1939 by Adolf Hitler and which allows to withhold or withdraw academic titles in case the defendant doesn’t show sufficient “academic dignity”. According to the University of Stuttgart, the fact that I was found guilty by a German court of a major crime damaging my academic dignity, they had the right and duty to withhold the PhD-title from me.

Since 1991 I was involved in the publication of two anthologies critically reviewing the established version of the so-called ‘Holocaust’, which were published in 1994 and 1995, respectively, with me as the editor.[6] They, too, led to criminal investigations and in one case[7] to a trial in Germany. Though two well renowned German historians[8] stated during this trial that the “accused” book matches scientific standards and should be protected by freedom of speech and freedom of research, the Tübingen District Court ordered all copies available to the authorities to be burned, and the publisher, the editor, some of the authors, many book retailers who sold the book and customers who bought more than one copy of it to be punished with more or less heavy fines and prison terms.[9]

As a result of the oppressive German legal system, my tenancy agreements were cancelled twice between 1993 and 1996, and my employments ended early either because of pressure put onto my employer or because I had to flee the country in order to avoid being imprisoned for many years. As a consequence I had no choice but to make the critical revision of contemporary history my profession, since my career as an ordinary academic chemist was destroyed by the German authorities. Since 1996 I am publishing a quarterly German language journal mainly focussing on topics that are being suppressed by the mainstream media, be they popular or scholarly.[10] ‘Holocaust revisionism’ is one of the most important topics within it, as there is no topic where legal and social repression is harder, and since it is my firm believe that exactly there, where the powers that are want to suppress critical voices, they have to be raised.

I think that my education in solid state chemistry combined with my now 10 years lasting research and thorough discussing especially of the chemical parts of the “Leuchter Report” have made me one of the foremost expert in this field worldwide. In contrary to that I cannot see which qualifications Prof. Robert Jan van Pelt has that could make him an expert in judging any of the topics addressed by Leuchter, especially when it comes to chemistry.

The Leuchter Report

The Leuchter Report is now 11 years old. It was a pioneering work, because it was the first time that the ‘gas chambers’ of Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek were investigated forensically without the influence of any totalitarian regime. It was prepared by the author in a very short period of time, in which he didn’t have enough time to collect all the information about the matter that is available now. Therefore it is understandable that it has many shortcomings, which I shall not address here.

The Van Pelt Report

A. General, Non-Chemical Remarks

1. Designation of Rooms

Even though I could say much more about van Pelt’s report, I restrict myself to chapter IX., where he addresses the Leuchter Report in detail, because I am convinced that there are other experts who are more qualified to criticize van Pelt’s non-chemical statements, especially regarding his chapter VI. about documents.

When talking about the crematoria IV and V, van Pelt states [p. 289]:

“First of all virtually nothing is left of these structures except concrete slabs and some low walls reconstructed after the war, and the blueprints of these buildings do not show any designation of gas chambers as morgues. So it is unclear on the basis of what evidence he [Leuchter] was able to come to a verification in the case of crematoria 4 and 5.”

This statement shows the preoccupation of van Pelt: He is right that nothing on the blue prints designates the rooms he refers to as “morgues”, but there is nothing that designates them as ‘gas chambers’ either! In fact, we do have a clue from the blueprints of these rooms that indicates what they were planned for originally. The spots where the lights were to be built in are marked as “ex.gesch.” which means “explosionsgeschütz” (explosion proof).[11] That indicates the intention of the planning architects to fill these rooms with explosive gases like hydrogen cyanide (“Zyklon B”) in a concentration,[12] which could at least come close to an explosive level. If Prof. van Pelt were right that homicidal mass gassings with Zyklon B do not require any protection against explosion [pp. 289f., 332, 340], then these provisions indicate that the rooms were indeed intended to serve as delousing chambers, and not as ‘homicidal gas chambers’, as he claims. On the other hand, if homicidal mass gassings would have borne the risk of an explosion, then the fact that such provisions were not included in the basement rooms of the crematoria II and III in Birkenau labelled by van Pelt as ‘gas chambers’ is an indication that they were not intended to be used as such (the blueprints say they were simple “morgues”!). In any case, van Pelt’s way of arguing brings him in contradiction with the facts.

2. Wire Mesh Columns

One of Prof. van Pelt’s biggest obsessions are some pillar shaped wire mesh columns allegedly added to the morgues 1 of crematorium II and III. He claims that their purpose was to introduce the Zyklon B into the ‘gas chambers’ [p. 294]:

The sides of these pillars, which went up through the roof, were of heavy wire mesh. Inside this grid, there was another finer mesh and inside that a third of very fine mesh. Inside this last mesh cage there was a removable can that was pulled out with a wire to recover the [Zyklon] pellets from which the gas had evaporated.

For this he mainly relies on two ‘witness’ accounts:

1. He quotes Henryk Tauber [van Pelt p. 294, 13]:
   

   The roof of the gas chamber was supported by concrete pillars running down the middle of its length. On either side of these pillars there were four others, two on each side. The sides of these pillars, which went up through the roof, were of heavy wire mesh. Inside this grid, there was another finer mesh and inside that a third of very fine mesh. Inside this last mesh cage there was a removable can that was pulled out with a wire to recover the pellets from which the gas had evaporated.

   Van Pelt describes Tauber as follows [p. 112]:

   Tauber’s testimony is, without doubt, the most important record of the extermination procedure taken immediately after the war. It is largely corroborated by the contemporary testimonies of Jankowski and Dragon, and by the later memoirs of Filip Müller.

   And in his footnote 87 van Pelt adds [p. 138]:

   It is highly unlikely that Filip Müller’s memoirs was inspired and or shaped by Tauber’s testimony.

   Maybe he is right with that, but has he noted that Müller copied entire sentences form the testimony of Miklos Nyiszli?[14] So Müller’s forgery certainly cannot corroborate anything. Henryk Tauber is nevertheless an important witness, as his good knowledge about many details of the crematoria indicates that he indeed was working inside them. However, some of his statements are obviously absurd and/or impossible, indicating that Tauber tended to exaggerate and invent certain stories [van Pelt p. 108, 15]:

   During the incineration of such [not emaciated] corpses, we used the coke only to light the fire of the furnace initially, for fatty corpses burned of their own accord thanks to the combustion of the body fat. On occasion, when coke was in short supply, we would put some straw and wood in the ash bins under the muffles, and once the fat of the corpse began to burn the other corpses would catch light themselves. […] Generally speaking, we burned 4 or 5 corpses at a time in one muffle, but sometimes we charged a greater number of corpses. It was possible to charge up to 8 “Müselmanns.” Such big charges were incinerated without the knowledge of the head of the crematorium during air raid warnings in order to attract the attention of airmen by having a bigger fire emerging from the chimney.

   In their vast thermodynamic study, Franco Deana and Carlo Mattogno have shown that it is impossible that corpses burn totally “of their own accord“, that you could light corpses with a simple straw and wood fire, that a fat corpse can light and incinerate meager ones. Apart from that, the procedure described by Tauber is absurd: Lighting a fire “in the ash bins under [sic!] the muffles” to burn a corps on top of these ash bins is impossible. These “ash bins under the muffles” were meant to gather the ashes of the incinerated corpses. The gas flow of such a cremation is as follows:

   fresh air from oven room → coke gas generator (fire) → muffle with corpse → ash bin → recuperator → flue → chimney

   Provided, this air flow would be maintained, any fire lit in the ash bin would just heat up recuperator, flue, and chimney, but couldn’t “light’ any corpses on top of it. It is more likely, however, that a fire lit in the ash bin would turn around the flow direction of the gases, as hot gases tend to flow upward:

   chimney → flue → recuperator → ash bin → muffle with corpse → gas generator → oven room

   That means that the hot exhaust gasses would pour into the oven room, which would have been quite disastrous.

   Furthermore, Deana and Mattogno have shown that even if it were possible to fit two or even three corpses at one time in a muffle (one cannot get more than three in there due to the limited height of the doors), it wouldn’t make any sense as the incineration process is drastically slowed down due to several thermodynamic effects (reduced surface/volume ratio, narrowed and thus accelerated hot air flowthrough leading to increased energy loss).[16] Tauber’s assertion that the Sonderkommando put up to 8 corpses into a muffle is therefore a lie. Deana and Mattogno proved additionally that it is impossible to get flames coming out of any crematorium chimney, as they had to travel some 30 m through flue and chimney to reach the open. No flame can be that long, except in case of an explosion, which would have damaged or destroyed the crematorium. A few lines later, Tauber writes (italic numbers in brackets refer to pages in J.-C. Pressac) [van Pelt p. 109]:

   Once the people were in the gas chamber, the door was closed and the air was pumped out. [489]

   That is absurd and technically impossible. Elsewhere Tauber writes [van Pelt pp. 109f.]:

   Another time, the SS chased a prisoner who was not working fast enough into a pit near the crematorium that was full of boiling human fat. At that time, the corpses were incinerated in open air pits, from which the fat flowed in to a separate reservoir, dug in the ground. This fat was poured over the corpses to accelerate their combustion. This poor devil was pulled out of the fat still alive and then shot. [499]

   It is true that flesh burned in fire releases fat. But since fat is highly inflammable, one cannot collect it. And fat does not boil, it decomposes and catches fire beyond a certain temperature (184°C/363°F[17]). Tauber is telling atrocity stories which cannot be true. Tauber continues [van Pelt p. 111]:

   So, during the incineration of fat bodies, the fires were generally extinguished. When this type of body was charged into a hot furnace, fat immediately began to flow into the ash bin, where it caught fire and started the combustion of the body. [495]

   I quote this nonsense only in order to show that Tauber knows very well that fat, once released, catches fire when it is being heated beyond a certain temperature… And later: [van Pelt p. 112]

   It was realized that the pits burned the corpses better, so the crematoria closed down one after the other after the pits came into operation. [500]

   Nothing could be more wrong. Would that be true, mankind would have never developed crematories. In fact, by storing and reflecting the heat that would otherwise be lost, the fireproof brick walls of the crematorium muffles are the components which save energy, allow higher temperatures and thus accelerate the incineration process. In an open air cremation, huge amounts of energy are being lost due to radiation an convection.

   After having had a closer look into van Pelt’s (and Pressac’s) star witness’ testimony, who can honestly believe Tauber’s extermination stories?

2. Having just mentioned Fillip Müller, here is his screwed-up version for these devices (van Pelt, S. 28):[17a]
3. The Zyklon-B gas crystals were inserted through openings into hollow pillars made of sheet metal. They were perforated at regular intervals and inside them a spiral [sic!] ran from top to bottom in order to ensure as even a distribution of the granular crystals as possible.
4. Perhaps similarly important to van Pelt as Henryk Tauber is the ‘witness’ Michal Kula who allegedly built those wire mesh introduction devices which Kula describes as follows: [van Pelt p. 113, [18]]
   

   Among other things the metal workshop made the false showers intended for the gas chambers, as well as the wire-mesh columns for the introduction of the contents of the tins with Zyklon into the gas chambers. These columns were around 3 meters high, and they were 70 centimetres square in plan. Such a column consisted of 6 [recte: 3] wire screens which were built the one within the other. The inner [recte: outer] screen was made from 3 millimeter thick wire, fastened to iron corner posts of 50 by 10 millimeters. Such iron corner posts were on each corner of the column and connected on the top in the same manner. The openings of the wire mesh were 45 millimeters square. The second screen was made in the same manner, and constructed within the column at 150 millimeters distance from the first. The openings of the second were around 25 millimeters square. In the corners these screens were connected to each other by iron posts. The third part of this column could be moved. It was an empty column with a square footprint of around 150 millimeters made of sheet zinc. At the top it was closed by a metal sheet, and at the bottom with a square base. At a distance of 25 millimetres from the sides of this columns were soldered tin corners supported by tin brackets. On these corners were mounted a thin mesh with openings of about one millimeter square. This mesh ended at the bottom of the column and from here ran in the [Verlaenderung] of the screen a tin frame until the top of the column. The contents of a Zyklon tin were thrown from the top on the distributor, which allowed for a equal distribution of the Zyklon to all four sides of the column. […]

   I beg your pardon: Wire mesh columns in a room filled with 1,000-2,000 people panicking? According to Henryk Tauber, quoted by van Pelt himself(!), the victims allegedly demolished the entire equipment in that room – and believe me: were they gassed, they certainly would have done that [van Pelt, p. 106]:

   The people going to be gassed and those in the gas chamber damaged the electrical installations, tearing the cables out and damaging the ventilation equipment.[483f.]

   What would you guess would they have done to these wire mesh columns? If they existed, their outer framework would have been massive steel, but certainly not a flimsy wire mesh construction.

   What else does Kula tell us? First of all, he is one of those witnesses telling us in detail about the alleged trial gassing of several hundred prisoners in the Auschwitz Main Camp. According to Kula, the SS gassed 250 prisoners at August 15, 1941 [van Pelt, p. 112]. Carlo Mattogno has shown in detail how contradicting and totally unreliable the different ‘witness’ testimonies about this alleged event are.[18a] Kula finally destroys his credibility when describing, how the corpses of the gassed victims looked like,which he allegedly had seen while they were carried away:

   I saw then that they [the corpses] were greenish. The nurses told me that the corpses were cracked, and the skin came off.

   Poor Michal. Victims of Zyklon B gassings aren’t greenish (they are pinkish-redish[18b]), and there is no reason for the “skin came off” and the corpses to crack.

   But let us listen to what other ‘eye witness’ tell about how the SS allegedly filled in the Zyklon B:

5. Rudolf Vrba, the witness who publicly admitted of having used a “poetic licence” to freely invent things,[18c] tells us:[19]
   

   He lifted a circular shaped lid and let the grains drop on their heads underneath him.

   The wire mesh columns have disappeared!

6. Jerzy Tabeau states in the War Refugee Board Report:[20]
   

   Everything was locked hermetically, and especially trained SS units threw hydrogen cyanide bombs through the ventilation vents.

   Wow, that is action for Steven Spielberg!

7. Olga Lengyel again knows it differently:[21]
   

   At the ceiling of the gas chamber was a square shaped opening; it had a grid work and was covered with glass. When it was time, an SS guard with a gas mask opened that peephole and poured in a cylinder of Zyklon B. […]

   Either she knew it exactly – you can see such a grid work and a glass cover only if you are quite close to the scene – or she is inventing it.

8. Another important ‘witness’ knows it, too: Alter Feinsilber alias Stanislaw Jankowski alias Kaskowiak alias Alter Szmul Fajnzylberg says, there were simply[22]
   

   two openings in the ceiling

9. Janda Weiss, as quoted by Prof. van Pelt, had other inspirations: [van Pelt p. 95, 23]
   

   There were three columns for the ventilators, through which the gas poured in. A special work detail with truncheons drove the people into the chamber. When the room was full, small children were thrown in through a window.

   Apart from her ventilation/introduction mess (the ventilation had nothing to do with what we are dealing here), Janda made a serious mistake: the room she is talking about were in the basement and thus had no windows. Janda apparently was mentally confused when testifying.

10. Myklos Nyiszli wrote:[14]
    

    In the middle of the room were pillars at thirty-meter intervals. They rose from the floor to the ceiling. Not supporting pillars, but sheet-iron pipes, the sides of which contained many perforations.Since the morgue 1 (the alleged ‘gas chamber’) was only 30 m long, one wonders, how many pillars would have fitted into it when they were placed at 30 m intervals…

11. The Auschwitz-partisan and Nyiszli-plagiator[14] Filip Müller reported a very sophisticated design:
    

    The Zyklon B gas crystals were thrown through holes in the concrete ceiling which opened into hollow sheet-metal pillars. These were perforated at regular intervals; inside them a spiral ran from the ceiling to the floor to allow for as equal as possible a distribution of the granulated crystals.

12. Ota Krauss and Erich Schön-Kulka[24], a pal of Vrba, Wetzler, Müller and Jankoswki, all of them members of the so-called camp partisans of Auschwitz who were involved in what they called “making propaganda“[25], know something about pillars, too, as quoted by Prof. van Pelt, but he disagrees with Kula and Tauber regarding the number of pillars [van Pelt, p. 123]:
    

    Between the concrete pillars were two iron pillars, 30 cm x 30 cm, covered in thickly plaited wire. These pillars passed through the concrete ceiling to the grassy terrace mentioned above; here they terminated in airtight trap-doors into which the SS men fed the cyclon gas. The purpose of the plaited wire was to prevent any interference with the cyclon crystals. These pillars were a later addition to the gas chamber and hence do not appear in the plan.

13. And last but not least, we have the confessions of the engineers and architects who were involved in constructing the alleged ‘gas chamber’. These confessions were obtained by the KGB, and two of the interogatees (Fritz Sander and Kurt Prüfer) died in the KGB prison. One wonders why? One of these men is quoted of having admitted:[25a]
    

    There were square shaped openings in the ceiling [of the ‘gas chamber’] (25 x 25 centimeter)

Now, what do the somewhat more reliable blueprints of the crematoria tell us? Blueprints don’t forget, distort, lie, add or deduct anything. Dr. van Pelt, Professor for Architecture [p. 294]:

These wire mesh columns do not appear in the blueprints of the crematoria.

But if they do not appear in the blueprints, why does he than include them in a drawing allegedly prepared – it says so in the caption – by using exclusively(!) the data derived from these blueprints in one of his publications?[26] Isn’t that a case of forgery? And how can he assume these columns were [p. 294]

attached to four of the seven structural columns that supported the roof (most likely columns 1, 3, 5, and 7), […]

when he asserts that he has no data for this? And how can an architect claim, a severe change of the construction of a morgue by adding four holes in its ceiling which needed to be made waterproof against the surrounding two feet of soil didn’t require a change of the blueprints? Van Pelt continues [p. 294, 112]:

[…] and therefore there was no need to draw up a new set of blueprints after the decision had been made to insert them into the morgue.

[…] They were retro-actively fitted into the space, but do not appear on the blueprints which, with one exception, were all drawn before the decision was made to use Leichenkeller 1 as a gas chamber. Yet their existence is independently confirmed in eye-witness accounts of the gas chamber, the drawings made by David Olère (see below), and the following testimony of Michael Kula, who manufactured these columns.

Every electric cable, every water pipe, every gully was included in the blue prints. Is it really believable that such massive changes would have been ignored?

Of course, Prof. van Pelt has not only no evidence that something was “retro-actively fitted into the space” at all, but he has no evidence about when – or if at all – “the decision was made to use Leichenkeller 1 as a gas chamber” as well. He is simply telling us a fairy tale. And the cultural historian Dr. van Pelt relies on the drawings of an artist, David Olère. But unfortunately this artist is lying, as can be seen from his drawings: he permanently draws crematorium chimneys spewing smoke and fire. Would van Pelt be a proper architect, he knew right away that this is a propagandistic (‘artistic’) hoax. But van Pelt doesn’t notice anything…

As a matter of fact, van Pelt got it totally wrong:

1. There is not even reliable ‘eye witness’ evidence that the wire mesh columns he refers to really existed, as I have shown above.
2. As a matter of fact, van Pelt himself writes in his report [p. 295]:
   

   Today, these four small holes that connected the wire-mesh columns and the chimneys cannot be observed in the ruined remains of the concrete slab. Yet does this mean they were never there? We know that after the cessation of the gassings in the Fall of 1944 all the gassing equipment was removed, which implies both the wire-mesh columns and the chimneys. What would have remained would have been the four narrow holes in the slab. While there is not certainty in this particular matter, it would have been logical to attach at the location where the columns had been some formwork at the bottom of the gas chamber ceiling, and pour some concrete in the holes, and thus restore the slab.

   Prof. van Pelt’s claim that “We know that after the cessation of the gassings in the Fall of 1944 all the gassing equipment was removed” is totally unfounded. All we know is that the Germans always removed as much of their equipment as possible when they retreated (as every army does), but as long as we have no documents about certain devices claimed to have been installed there, we have no clue what this removed equipment was. So we do not know, which “gassing equipment” was allegedly removed, because we do not know, if there was any such equipment in the first place.

   Van Pelt’s next assertion that the camp authorities in late 1944 would have removed the “Zyklon introduction columns” and then fill in the holes to “restore” the slabs, is again without any evidence at all. But at least, Prof. van Pelt thinks that the SS-authorities acted logically when allegedly trying to destroy all traces of their alleged crime. But does van Pelt really think, refilling holes in this ceiling would have made more sense than completely removing the ‘gas chamber’ roof as had been done for the morgue No. 2, the “undressing rooms”? An Allied air photo taken at 21 December 1944 shows that the roof of the other, allegedly less “incriminating”, morgue has been completely removed.[26a] Of course, it makes no sense at all. To believe van Pelt, we would have to believe that instead of simply removing the roofs as had been done with the “undressing room”, the SS-authorities deliberately created architectural relics to confound later generations of tourists and Holocaust researchers. It seems too absurd to be believable.

   But would van Pelt have only rudimental knowledge of architecture, he would know that it is impossible to restore holes of the size of 70 ×70 cm (that is almost a half square meter!) in a concrete ceiling without leaving clearly visible traces.

   But at least he agrees with us Revisionists that no remainders of those alleged holes exist. In fact, by stating that there are no such traces, van Pelt has given evidence for the fact that there were never any holes in the ceiling of this room, and consequently no Zyklon B introduction devices of which nature so ever, and henceforth no introduction of poisonous substances in the way as described by the ‘witnesses’. He has proved that his ‘eye witnesses’ are lying. He has proved that there is no evidence for mass murder in Auschwitz. In fact, he has proved that there is no evidence for the Holocaust. “No holes, no ‘Holocaust'” (Robert Faurisson). It is nice to see that in the year 2000 the great Professor of Architecture Robert Jan van Pelt came to the same result as I did in 1991 (as described in my 1993 report), when analyzing the roof of the alleged ‘gas chamber’ of crematorium II in Birkenau. Just our conclusions are slightly different…

3. Photos allegedly showing Zyklon B introduction vents

Prof. van Pelt writes [p. 295]:

These columns were connected to small holes that penetrated the concrete ceiling of the gas chamber, which opened to four small “chimneys” for lack of a better word. These are visible on one of the photos of crematorium 2 taken by the SS during construction, the aerial photos taken by the Americans in 1944 […]

Is Prof. van Pelt an expert for analyzing photos? If he is, than I might add the following conclusions of analyses of the photos van Pelt refers to:

1. Analysis of a section of an air photo of the Birkenau camp taken by a Canadian airplane August 1944.
   • The alignment of the patches referred to by Prof. van Pelt as “chimneys” does not agree with the direction of the shadow cast by the crematorium chimney!
   • On a photo from September 13, 1944, the patches on crematorium III retain their direction and shape even though the position of the sun has changed![27]
   • On that same photo the patches on morgue 1 of crematorium II are missing!
   • The length of the patches would corresponds to objects 4.5 ft. wide and rising 10 to 13 ft. above the roof – in other words, large objects, not the approximately 20-inch-high hatches attested to by witnesses.
   • These jagged, irregular patches cannot be shadows cast by perpendicular, straight input hatches.

   Thus, whatever these objects are, they are not what Prof. van Pelt assumes they are!

   

   

    

2. Analyses of a ground level photo taken by the SSThe photo referred to by Prof. van Pelt is known for decades and was i.a. published by Pressac [27a] and Czech[27b], cf. Ill. 3 (enlarged in Ill. 4). If these objects were indeed Zyklon B introduction vents, as van Pelt assumes, they should be of equal size and equidistant, i.e., evenly distributed on the roof of morgue 1. But as shown in Ill. 4, the objects have different sizes. According to their shades, they probably have a rectangle shape, but not the same orientation. When evaluating their possible position on the roof by means of a perspective drawing, Ill. 5, it turns out that they are standing closely together and are most likely situated all together on one and the same half of the roof.In fact, at none of the possible positions of these object any holes can be found in that ceiling (or traces of refilled holes). This alone is proof that these objects cannot have been Zyklon B hatches. Maybe they are just some sort of building material placed on the roof, since this crematorium was still under construction in February 1943.Besides this it should be noted that these objects are not visible on similar ground level photos from Jan. 20, 1943[27c] and summer 1943.[27d]

4. The Preheated ‘Gas Chamber’

Prof. van Pelt writes [p. 296]:

There are also German documents that attest to the fact that the gas chamber was heated (a fact which, as I have pointed out above, strongly suggests that that room was not anymore to be used as a morgue. [misplaced parenthesis in original]

If Prof. van Pelt would have read one of the most important sources for the study of Auschwitz and Birkenau thoroughly, he would have found out that the temporarily planned heating of one of the basement rooms of crematorium II was abandoned shortly afterwards.[28] This error of seeing only half of the story was already made by. Prof. Gerhard Jagschitz in his expert report in a court case in Vienna in 1991 and was criticized in the literature in 1994, where it was pointed out that according to contemporary expert literature morgues indeed did and do have a heating system to avoid frost in winter time.[29] Furthermore, there is no proof of heating installed in the alleged ‘gas chambers’ in crematorium I, II, and III, as well as the so-called Bunkers. Hence, all his pondering about what the installation of a heating system in a morgue might mean is futile effort.

5. The Ventilation System

Prof. van Pelt writes [p. 208]:

It is important to note here that there is no indication that either Bischoff or Prüfer envisioned a homicidal use for the smaller morgue in the new crematorium. But the presence of the powerful ventilation system charged the design from its inception with a genocidal potentiality which would only require small modifications in the design to be actualized. Indeed: it was the presence of such a ventilation system in the crematorium of the main camp which, seven weeks earlier, had inspired Lagerführer Fritsch to use the mortuary of the crematorium as an experimental gas chamber.

Prof. van Pelt doesn’t give any reference for his experimental gassing claim. But what is more important: He hides the actual performances of the ventilation systems, which indeed reveal that morgue 1, the alleged ‘gas chamber’, was never intended to be used as a homicidal ‘gas chamber’.

1. All morgues in Birkenau had ventilations systems with some 10 air exchanges per hour, a normal performance, as this was required by German war-time law for underground morgues (5-10 air exchanges per hour)[30]
2. A comparison between the performance of the alleged ‘gas chamber’ and that of the alleged victim’s undressing room reveals that there is nothing sinister with the ventilation of morgue 1 (‘gas chamber’), as its performance is even lower than that of the undressing room:
   

   morgue 1 (‘gas chamber’):

   9.94 exchanges per h

   morgue 2 (‘undressing cellar’):

   10.35 exchanges per h

3. War-time literature recommended some 70 air exchanges per hour for professional delousing chambers, a standard that must be expected for ‘professional’ homicidal ‘gas chambers’ as well. [31] In fact, that is 7 times more than that of the systems of these morgues!

After a close inspection of the documented facts it is clear that Prof. van Pelt’s “powerful ventilation system” is nothing but a fiction.

6. Doors

Prof. van Pelt states [p. 297]

that the doors to the gas chambers, located on the left of the plan but depicted on the right of the elevation, open again to the outside.

Has he noted that these were double doors that could impossibly be made gas tight and could hardly be sufficiently reinforced against hundreds of panicking victims? That all doors in Auschwitz, even those made provisionally ‘gas tight’ (they were never gas tight in a technical sense) were made out of simple wood? That such doors, especially when opening outwardly, could never resist a panicking crowd of several hundred people?[32]

7. Incineration Capacity

Van Pelt’s ignorance becomes obvious when he addresses the problem of the allegedly tremendous capacity of the crematoria of Auschwitzer. This is his favorite subject, he covers it broadly [p. 29, 40ff,, 48, 51, 53f., 72, 74f., 78, 100ff, 115, 117, 121, 153, 157, 170, 173f, 202, 207-210, 226, 231, 235f., 239, 246f, 263, 299-305, 324, 344, 404]. I just wonder, what does make a cultural historian being an expert in cremation technology? And why does he ignore the only expert study published on that topic so far?[16] And why does he not refer to a single source of technical expert literature? Why does he not even try to verify the allegations made by witnesses by comparing them with technical data? Why does he not try to verify the only “document” he really relies on with his statements? Yes indeed, he has only one document to rely on! And why is he ignoring the critical studies about this indeed very suspicious “document”?[32a] Van Pelt is not making science, this is quibbling about coffee grounds.

8. Coating of Walls

Prof. van Pelt states [p. 306]:

Furthermore he [Leuchter] wrongly inferred from the ruins of crematoria 2 to 5 that the walls of the gas chambers had not been coated, […]

Though it is correct that we do not know anything about the walls of the crematoria IV and V, the walls of the alleged ‘gas chambers’ of the crematorium II is still today partly intact and can be investigated: The walls of this room had a plaster of cement mortar, but no paint or other coating. It must be assumed that crematorium III was built in a similar way. It is astonishing to see how Prof. van Pelt, who claims to have visited this place at least once, can spread such untruth. Or is he unaware of the fact that the expert term “coating”, as referred to by Leuchter, means at least partly gas tight coating, and that plaster is without any doubt not a gas tight coating? In fact, Leuchter was talking about some water- and/or gas tight paint such as that applied to kitchen and bathroom walls today and as it can be seen on the walls of the delousing facilities in the Dachau concentration camp still today. Neither cement mortar nor lime mortar, the materials used in the crematoria and delousing facilities in Birkenau, can be called coatings.

9. “burning with simultaneous special treatment”

Like frequently before, van Pelt refers to a document from January 29, 1943, not even marked “Secret”, about … electricity supply. It mentions that the equippment already installed in crematorium II allows “burning [cremation] with simultaneous special treatment” [p. 201ff.], claiming that he had put this document in its historical context by – no, not by using other documents about the equipment of the crematorium – but by pondering about the deporation of Jews from Greece. His conclusion: the electricity required for the “special treatment” refers here “to extract the Zyklon-B from the gas chamber“, i.e., to power the ventilation fans of the morgues. Bad luck for Prof. van Pelt that he didn’t look into the documents in context, which clearly prove that the ventilation systems for the morgues had not even been delivered at the end of January and were not installed for many more weeks to come, as Carlo Mattogno has shown. So, whatever the “special treatment” needed electricity for, it was not for extracting HCN from gas chambers.

B. Zyklon B and its Effects

In Van Pelt’s report, the name Germar Rudolf is not mentioned. According to his statement during the Irving ./ Lipstadt trial, he has heard about my report, but he never saw it.[32b] He obviously never tried to find it. It is freely accessible on the Internet since end of 1997, and every search engine spits out my name and my report on the very first lines, if one only dares to ask them. Reading van Pelt’s statements about the “chemistry” of Auschwitz is like getting the impression that for the last 8 years I was talking aganist a wall.

Van Pelt is correct when stating that the danger of explosion of HCN released from Zyklon B during gassings/fumigations has often been exaggerated [pp. 289f., 332, 340], but he should be aware that even if the danger is lower than frequently assumed, it is still existent. An accident in the United States in 1947 demonstrates this: During a delousing procedure of a normal house with Zyklon B, the explosive mixture of hydrogen cyanide and air exploded and flattened the whole premise.[33] The question is, which concentration of hydrogen cyanide is required to conduct a mass gassing as described by the alleged eye witnesses.

Prof. van Pelt does not make any efforts to establish this concentration. He simply refers to the concentration that is lethal for humans as mentioned in a DEGESCH manual and quoted during the cross examination of Fred Leuchter in Toronto in 1988, and later claims without proof [p. 298]:

First of all, the delousing chambers were designed to operate with very high concentrations of hydrogen cyanide—between 40 and 70 times the concentration the Germans used to kill humans in Birkenau—[…]

To establish the amount of Zyklon B and thus the resulting concentration of hydrogen cyanide in the alleged ‘gas chambers’, we have several sources.

1. Eye Witness Accounts of the Amount of Zyklon B Applied

There are not too many eye witness accounts regarding the amount of Zyklon B known, but according to a Polish source they generally refer to the application of 6 to 12 kg of hydrogen cyanide.[34]

2. Eye Witness Accounts about the Time Required to Kill all Humans in the Alleged ‘Gas Chamber’

An indirect way to calculate the amount of Zyklon B that would have been required to kill all humans in a ‘gas chamber’ is the time that was allegedly needed to kill them. According to nearly all ‘eye witnesses’ it took between only a few seconds and up to ten minutes to kill in the alleged ‘gas chambers’ of crematorium II and III.[35] This can be used to make rough calculations of the amount actually required to achieve such a short killing time.

3. The Time Required to Kill Prisoners in U.S. Execution Gas Chambers

Several hundreds of executions in the U.S.A. conducted with hydrogen cyanide have shown that a quick and painless execution by gas requires the co-operation of the intended victim. Prisoners about to be gassed were usually encouraged to inhale deeply as soon as the cyanide was released in order to make their deaths come easily. However, if an intended victim was uncooperative, the execution could easily become a fiasco. By simply refusing to take the deep breaths needed to quickly take in a lethal dose of cyanide, the agony – even under the most ideal conditions – could last for more than eighteen minutes. But even under normal circumstances, executions in U.S. execution gas chambers take in average some 10 to 14 Minutes.[36] The hydrogen cyanide concentration applied during these executions is usually similar to those applied during normal delousing procedures (0,3%-1%).[37] The victim is immediately exposed to very high concentration of the poison gas as it develops underneath him, rising right into his face.

4. Subsequent Calculations

It is obvious that the killing times reported by the alleged eye witnesses of mass gassings with Zyklon B in Auschwitz and elsewhere, which are similar or shorter than those in U.S. executions, would have required similar concentrations as applied in the U.S. executions (0,3%-1%). As a matter of fact, Zyklon B releases its hydrogen cyanide only very slowly, about 10% in the first 10 min.[38] Furthermore, since there was obviously no appliance to distribute the poison gas quickly all over the entire room, more minutes would have passed before all victims would have been surrounded by high concentration of hydrogen cyanide (even those standing in the corners of the room). We must therefore assume that the minimum amount of Zyklon B to be introduced in these rooms would have been in the order of magnitude of ten times the amount normally used for delousing procedures, in order to reach a similar concentration already in the first 5 to 10 minutes of the execution even in the hindmost corner of that room.[39] This would have been the only way to make sure that all victims in such a room would have been killed in the first 10 minutes after the Zyklon B had started releasing its poison.

The difference between the concentration of hydrogen cyanide required to kill humans as given by toxicological handbooks and referred to by Prof. van Pelt (0,03%) and those concentration established here (1%) can be explained easily.

The toxicological literature gives mainly two threshold values of poisonous substances:

1. The lethal dose 100%, LD₁₀₀, which gives the concentration or quantity of poison required to kill all (100%) individuals of an observed species. This value is used to make sure that all individuals are successfully killed.
2. The lethal dose 1%, LD₁, which gives the concentration or quantity of poison required to kill 1% of all individuals of an observed species. This value is used to mark a threshold beyond which an exposition to that poison is definitively dangerous.

Obviously, both values differ enormously, i.e. the LD₁₀₀ value is frequently much higher than the LD₁ value. When talking about the quantity necessary to kill lice, the literature uses the LD₁₀₀ value, because we want to make sure to kill all of them, whereas when dealing with security risks of humans, the LD₁ or even lower values are used to make sure that no human is being killed. Therefore, it does not make sense to compare both values with each other: A louse in bad shape can be killed by only 0,03% hydrogen cyanide, as it is very well possible that a smart and healthy human can survive a 5 minute exposure to 1% of hydrogen cyanide. Finally, it is quite a difference if one has inhaled an amount of poison that is lethal, or if one has already died. Though the threshold value of some 100 mg of a soluble cyanide salt (or 300 ppm of HCN in the air) may most likely kill most people, it can actually take very long until one is dead. On the other hand, if one wants to kill or die quickly, one has to apply a big overdose to achieve that with certainty.

C. Chemical Analysis of Brick and Mortar Samples

1. Long Term Stability of Iron Blue (Ferro-Ferri-Cyanide)

Prof. van Pelt claims that Iron Blue wouldn’t survive 45 years of exposure to the environment, especially when acid rain is involved [p. 306]:

Then he [Leuchter] took no account of the fact that […] their [the crematoria’s] remains had been exposed to the elements for 45 years, and that the walls had been washed with acid rain—a fact of some importance because, contrary to Leuchter’s belief, ferro-ferri-cyanide is not stable under all conditions, but tends to slowly dissolve in an acidic environment.

Prof. van Pelt’s claim is totally unfounded and has been disproved: The relevant literature consistently describes Iron Blue as an extremely stable pigment. It is insoluble in water,[40] resistant to acid rain[41] and also surprisingly resistant to sunlight.[42] When exposed to weathering, other compounds of hydrocyanic acid will even convert preferentially into Iron Blue. Three examples will demonstrate the environmentally resistant nature of Iron Blue:

1. The outside walls of the delousing building in Birkenau, which are stained blue by Iron Blue, have lost none of their color despite 50 years of exposure to the adverse environmental conditions of the industrial region of Upper Silesia.[43]
2. A long-term test begun in the 1950s to ascertain the
3. environmental resistance of paints has clarified this matter. In this test, many pigments including Iron Blue and iron oxide (i.e. ›rust‹) were tested by applying them only superficially and without protective coating onto a piece of aluminum. After more than 20 years’ exposure to the air of a western industrial suburb of London, two pigments exhibited the least (barely noticeable) changes: Iron Blue and iron oxide (rust).[44]
4. Even scattered on the ground, Iron Blue remains stable and fixed for decades, as tests in gas works shut down decades ago have shown. In this case the Iron Blue obtained in the city gas works was used as a herbicide, and is still present today in virtually undiminished quantities.[45]

Therefore, if Iron Blue has formed on and in a wall, one may expect to find a long-term stability similar to that of the iron oxide from which it formed. Thus, once noticeable quantities of hydrocyanic acid salts have accumulated in brickwork, plaster or mortar, and once damp conditions have allowed these to convert into Iron Blue, then no appreciable reduction in content of hydrocyanic compounds is to be expected after 50 years.[46]

A typical example of the way the media deal with these facts is the report that was issued by the German press agency dpa and carried on March 29, 1993 in almost all major German daily newspapers and even in some radio news broadcasts. In it dpa claimed that, according to unnamed expert, the hydrocyanic acid salts at issue here have a life of only a few months. Inquiries at the Stuttgart dpa office responsible for this press release revealed that the editor in charge, Albert Meinecke, had invented this ‘expert opinion’ out of thin air. Evidently even the dpa press agency does not shy back from issuing false reports.[47]

2. Penetration of Building Material by Hydrogen Cyanide

Prof. van Pelt has added a new howler to this old debate, which I want to address here, because the media payed a lot of attention to it. For his documentary movie Mr. Death about Fredrick A. Leuchter, Errol Morris made an interview with Prof. Dr. James Roth, the director of Alpha Analytic Laboratories in Toronto. In 1988, theses laboratories analyzed the wall samples taken by Leuchter in Auschwitz from the so-called “gas chambers” and tested them for cyanide residues. Subsequently Prof. Dr. Roth testified as an expert witness during the trial against Ernst Zündel. In order not to be accused of being an accomplice of the “Holocaust-deniers” Ernst Zündel and Fred Leuchter, Prof. Roth did everything he could to dissociate himself from the analytic results of his company. Prof. van Pelt writes about Roth’s statement in Morris’ movie [p. 307]:

Roth explained that cyanide will react on the surface of brick or plaster, penetrating the material not more than 10 microns, or 0.01 mm, or one tenth the thickness of a human hair (one micron equals 1/1,000,000 of a meter, or 0.000039 inch). In other words, if one wants to analyze the cyanide concentration in a brick sample, one should take a representative sample of the surface, 10 microns thick, and no more.

This statement is so stupid that, for a long time, I refused to pick it up in the first place. But since more and more inquiries are being sent to me, I feel obliged to publicly accuse Prof. Dr. James Roth of lying and/or being incompetent, and I hope that once he will be sorry for this nonsense. I justify my accusation as follows:

1. 1. Up to date I have not seen that Prof. Roth has supported his claim with scientific evidence. Fact is that the walls of the delousing chambers in Auschwitz, Birkenau, Stutthof and Majdanek are saturated with cyanide compounds not only at the surface, but in every depth, as Germar Rudolf has proved by taking samples from different depth, see especially the samples no. 11, 13, 17, 19b, 23, in the following table. They prove that the cyanide easily reaches deeper layers of plaster and mortar. Even the other samples show that Prof. Roth’s claim is false. It is logically impossible that only the upper 10 microns (0,010 mm) bear all the Iron Blue, as that would mean that between 10 and 75% of the entire Iron in these samples (utmost right column) is concentrated in this thin layer that makes less than 1% of the samples.

1. And fact is that the expert literature is very detailed in asserting that
   1. Hydrogen cyanide is a highly mobile chemical compound physically closely related to water,[48]
   2. which can easily diffuse into deep layers of porous material like walls.[49]
2. Furthermore, as it is generally known that cement and lime plasters are highly porous materials, comparable perhaps to sponges.[50] There is nothing like a defined layer of 0,01 mm in these materials beyond which a gas like HCN could not possibly move, as there is no reason for water not to penetrate a sponge deeper than a millimeter. Water steam for example, that physically behaves quite similar to HCN, can easily diffuse through plaster.
3. And finally, the patch blue discolorations of the outer walls of the delousing facilities in Birkenau, Majdanek, and Stutthof are an obvious and convincing proof for how easily HCN and its compounds can penetrate such walls.[51]

This must be known to Prof. Roth, and one can only wonder why he spreads such outrageous lies. And he is lying, I am dead sure about it! Prof. Roth might have felt the need to attack Leuchter in order to avoid being attacked himself by the very same lobby that destroyed Fred Leuchter’s career. But that doesn’t change the fact that he is a liar. You want a proof for that? Than look what Prof. Roth stated when under oath during the second Zündel trial (see http://www.zundelsite.org/english/dsmrd/dsmrd34roth.html):

“In porous materials such as brick and mortar, the Prussian blue could go fairly deep as long as the surface stayed open, but as the Prussian blue formed, it was possible that it would seal the porous material and stop the penetration.”

So Prof. Roth is either a liar or a liar having committed perjury. Not a nice alternative, is it?

3. Interpretation of low level cyanide residues

Prof. van Pelt claims that the analysis of some samples taken from the walls of alleged ‘gas chambers’ [p. 309]

“clearly show the presence of cyanide in the walls of the gas chambers, confirming the “alleged” use of these spaces as killing installations.”

As a matter of fact, small amounts of cyanide residues were found even by Leuchter and by me in some samples taken from walls of rooms allegedly used as homicidal ‘gas chambers’. But this does by no means proof that these gassings took place. In fact, I have made much more thorough analyses to determine how small cyanide results can be interpreted. Some interesting results from various samples taken from buildings in Auschwitz (marked), Birkenau and elsewhere, analyzed for total cyanide, are given in the following table:

May I draw your attention to Leuchter’s samples taken from crematorium IV. The material he took the samples from is of unknown origin.[52] It is therefore not possible to interpret them. Leuchter’s sample no. 28 was erroneously taken from a wall of what was a washing room in the war-time, not belonging to the alleged ‘gas chamber’. Remarkably enough, there is nevertheless a small amount of cyanide. I have found small amounts of cyanide in a sample taken from an inmates hut (#8) and in a sample taken from a wall that was built into the delousing facilities during its conversion into a hot air delousing facility (#10), even though this wall was not exposed to HCN. Most remarkable is the sample that I took from a Bavarian farm house (#25). It has a higher cyanide value then all alleged ‘gas chambers’, even though nobody claims that millions of Jews where gassed there. While this result could be reproduced when analyzed by another professional analyzing company, the values of those samples stemming from alleged ‘gas chambers’ or inmate huts couldn’t (see value of IUS of #3, 8, 25). The value of a sample taken from a delousing facility (#11) was only reproduced in its order of magnitude, probably caused by the fact that cyanide analyses are not designed to cope with such huge amounts of cyanides. This may cause a bigger variation of results than usual.

My conclusions are therefore: values lower than 10 mg cyanide per kg sample material cannot be interpreted. These analyses are not reproducibility. Possible environmental influences can affect the results when dealing with small traces of cyanide: traces of cyanide may be around everywhere, at least in a laboratory dealing with dusty samples full of cyanides. And at last: the detection level of the method used doesn’t allow a proper interpretation of values as they can be found in the alleged ‘gas chambers’.[53]

4. Analyses Conducted by the Polish Jan Sehn Institute

Prof. van Pelt is excessively quoting a paper published by three Polish Chemists in which they claimed of having refuted the Leuchter report.[van Pelt p. 307-312, 54] I have publicly accused them of a fraud and they never defended themselves against this accusation,[55] so it must me assumed that I am right. Without going into much chemical detail, let me summarize the main point which proof the dishonesty of these Polish authors:

1. The Poles claimed of not having understood how Iron Blue could possibly form in walls as a result of them being exposed to HCN gas:[54]
   

   “It is hard to imagine the chemical reactions and physicochemical processes that could have led to the formation of Prussian blue in that place.”

2. Hence, they did assume that the Iron Blue in the walls of the delousing chambers must have a different origin, e.g. stemming from paint:
   

   “We decided therefore to determine the cyanide ions using a method that does not induce the breakdown of the composed ferrum cyanide complex (this is the blue under discussion) […]”

3. Although they knew about my well-founded suggestions for the mechanism involved when Iron Blue is being formed in walls as a result of gassings with HCN, and they knew of my arguments refuting claims that the Prussian Blue could stem from any sort of paint,[56] they decided to ignore them.
4. Hence, they chose a method of analysis which excluded the detection of Iron Blue compounds, and which eventually ended in analyses results presumably proving a similar cyanide content in both the delousing chambers and the alleged homicidal ‘gas chambers’, which allegedly proves the reality of the claims of mass gassing of human beings in homicidal ‘gas chambers’ in Auschwitz. A comparison of the results of the analyses made from brick and mortar samples taken by different persons shows this:
   

   Comparison of the order of magnitude of analyses results of different samples
   Author:	Markiewicz et al.	Leuchter	Rudolf
   Detection of:	Cyanide without Iron Cyanides	Total Cyanide	Total Cyanide
   Delousing Chambers	0 – 0,8 mg/kg	1.025 mg/kg	1.000 – 13.000 mg/kg
   Alleged ‘Gas Chamber’	0 – 0,6 mg/kg	0 – 8 mg/kg	0 – 7 mg/kg
   Inmates Hut	0 mg/kg	–	0 – 3 mg/kg
   Gassed Samples	0 – 12 mg/kg	–	50 – 100 mg/kg

    

5. In a subsequent correspondent with the Polish authors I asked for a scientific explanation for this and gave them irrefutable proof for the fact that Iron Blue can indeed be formed in walls when they are exposed to hydrogen cyanide gas.[57] The Polish authors were unable to give a scientific reason for their deliberate omission to detect Iron Blue and refused to admit that they had made a mistake.[58]

It is my conviction that it is not the task of any law court of this world to decide who is right and who is wrong in this struggle, as no judge will ever have the knowledge and the competence to decide this, and because finding the truth is exclusively a matter to be dealt with by the worldwide scientific community. But what can be judged by every reasonable man and woman is the question if these Polish authors behaved in a fair and formally correct way or not. Let me summarize their extremely unscientific and politically biased approach to the topic:

1. The most important task of a scientist is to try to understand what hasn’t been understood so far. The Poles just did the opposite: they decided to ignore and exclude what they didn’t understand (the formation or Iron Blue in walls expose to hydrogen cyanide).
2. The next important task of a scientist is to discuss other scientists’ attempts to make understandable. The Poles just did the opposite: they decided to ignore and exclude from discussion what would perhaps made them (and others) understand.
3. Finally, in their article as well as in a letter to me, the Poles themselves stated that the purpose of their paper was to refute the “Holocaust Deniers” and to prevent Hitler and National Socialism from being whitewashed, i.e. their purpose was not to find out the truth, but to serve a political goal![58] Thus, they used unscientific methods in order to produce desired results for the purpose of achieving certain political goals.

Hence, they are scientific frauds. None of the three authors ever stood up against that accusation. Dr. Markiewicz died in 1997, and the remaining two co-authors have been silent about that ever since, like frauds hiding from being exposed.

Now, let me make some more remarks about the general value of the research conducted by the Poles which shows the massive lack of competence in general:

1. Even after an inquiry, they could not clarify completely what they mean with the following terms used in their paper: old/new, plaster/mortar, dry/moist. In order to make experiments reproducible, the exact conditions must be known, that is here: How many hours/days/weeks/months/years “new/old” were the samples? Which materials were used to make the “plaster/mortar”? To which conditions (temperature, humidity) were they expose before and during the gassing? Which amount of water is included in “dry/moist” samples?
2. When consulting the results of the experiments made by the Poles, one especially revealing fact can be observed: According to their results, the warm, dry, mostly CO₂-free plaster (as it was present in delousing chambers) shows a level of 0.024 mg cyanide per kg sample material. The moist, cold, CO₂-loaded mortar (as it would have been present in the supposed ‘gas chambers’ of crematoria II and III) shows a level of 0.388 mg/kg, a figure greater than that of the delousing chambers by a factor of 16. Fact is that the Polish authors claim in their paper that the supposed homicidal ‘gas chambers’ had no higher reactivity than the delousing chambers with respect to formation of Iron Blue! They contradict their own results!
3. In 1991 paper the Poles claimed against all expert literature that Iron Blue deteriorates under the influence of environmental influences, especially when exposed to acid rain.[59] As a mater of fact, Iron Blue is most stable exactly in a slightly acid medium as provided by acid rain. The Poles could have easily recognized that by looking at the outer walls of the delousing facilities in Birkenau (those buildings have no gutters, and thus a lot of rain flows down the walls). These walls were exposed to acid rain for more than 50 years, yet they are covered with Iron Blue still today (see my report[3] for photos). In contrary to that, most parts of the walls of the alleged ‘gas chamber’ of crematorium II, especially those spots where I took my samples, were protected from any environmental influence by the roof.
4. In a correspondence between Jan Markiewicz, Werner Wegner and me in 1990/91[60] J. Markiewicz openly admitted that he cannot explain the occurrence of blue patches on the exterior walls of the delousing facilities in Birkenau, and stated that it needs to be confirmed that this is indeed Iron Blue. While I did prove that these patches indeed consist of Iron Blue,[3] the Poles subsequently did nothing to verify this. This point would have disproved their theory that Iron Blue cannot be the result of a gassing with Zyklon B. They were aware of the problem since 1990/91, but chose not to solve it because this could have falsified their theory!

5. Expected analyses results

Prof. van Pelt claims that one should expect much lower levels of cyanide residues in the alleged ‘gas chambers’ than in the delousing facilities, and he explains it as follows [p. 306]:

Leuchter wrongly assumed that Auschwitz gas chambers were not ventilated. Furthermore, he wrongly hypothesized that the gas chambers operated at very low temperatures, and that therefore there would have been “a considerable amount of condensation of liquid hydrogen cyanide on the walls, floor and ceiling of these facilities.”[63] Furthermore he wrongly inferred from the ruins of crematoria 2 to 5 that the walls of the gas chambers had not been coated, and that therefore the liquid hydrogen cyanide could have reacted with the iron in the bricks and mortar to form ferro-ferri-cyanide. Then he wrongly reasoned that, in accordance with American practice, the Germans had used a high concentration of 3,600 parts of hydrogen cyanide per million parts of air—the concentration used in United States gas chambers to ensure that the condemned will die a quick death—while in fact the Germans used a concentration of 300 parts per million to kill their victims.[64] Neither did he consider the amount of hydrogen cyanide that would be absorbed by the bodies of the victims.

As the only ruin where proper research can be done is the crematorium II, I shall restrict myself to this building, referring to what I already explained above:

1. There were no heating systems in these morgues, thus their walls were cold and wet.
2. The walls of the morgues 1 of Crema II & III were not covered with any gas-tightly sealing material.
3. The HCN concentration applied in the homicidal ‘gas chambers’ would have been comparable to those applied in delousing facilities. Otherwise the attested quick killing couldn’t have worked.
4. The victims could not absorb considerable amounts of the gas for two reasons:
   1. They didn’t live long enough to filter the air surrounding them (see my calculation about that at http://www.vho.org/D/rga/erstick.html).
   2. Whatever the victims would inhale, it would have to be replaced by newly evaporating HCN, as we must insist on a certain concentration to be reached quickly in order to kill all victims quickly. If those victims close to the Zyklon B inhale HCN, than even more Zyklon B had to be introduce to compensate for that loss. Therefore, inhalation of HCN has no effect on our study.
5. As shown, the ventilation system of morgue 1 (alleged ‘gas chamber’) was not appropriate for a homicidal use. How quick it ventilates actually depends on several factors:
   1. How much Zyklon B is in the chamber?
   2. How quickly does it releases its poison?
   3. How effective is the ventilation

   For subsequent calculations, we make the following assumptions, basing on our knowledge about this crematorium:

   1. There were no holes in the ceiling of the alleged gas chamber, thus the Zyklon B once introduced by which means so ever could not be removed before the chamber would have been cleared.
   2. There was no heating in this morgue. Due to its underground location, the average temperature would hardly rise beyond 15°C.
   3. The relative humidity in this morgue was close to 100% (transpiration of victims).
   4. We assume a HCN release velocity as given by R. Irmscher in contemporary literature[38], even though the high humidity would most certainly have slowed down the evaporation. The values measured by Irmscher can be described as an exponential function.
   5. In order to kill all victims in a few minutes as told by the ‘witnesses’, we assume that the Zyklon B must have released enough HCN to reach an average concentration of 10g/m³ after 10 minutes.
   6. The performance of the ventilation system was one air exchange every 6 minutes (10 times per hour).[30] The actual HCN values in time can be described as an exponential function as well, as shown in detail in my report[61].
   7. Since the air intake and outlet at the same wall of the morgue were very close together (2 m) – in contrary to those at the opposite wall (7,3m) – this would have led to a air short circuit, drastically reducing the performance of the ventilation. (Picture to the left: cross section through morgue 1 of crema II & III.)
   8. Since the room would have been filled with a huge crowd of corpses, the ventilation’s performance would have been reduced furthermore.
   9. Thus, we assume an effectiveness of the ventilation system that is comparable with a perfectly working ventilation of 12 min per air exchange at the best, perhaps even only comparable to one with 24 min/exchange or longer.

   We can now develop an equation for the actual HCN concentration in the alleged ‘gas chamber’:

   1. Equation for release of HCN from carrier (in parts of total): A(t) = e^-t/a
      • with t=time in minutes after start of evaporation
      • with a=43,5/min (to reach the speed as given by Irmscher for 15°C and low humidity)
   2. Equation for decrease of HCN due to ventilation: B(t) = e^-t/b
      • with b = time required to once exchange the air volume of the observed room.
      1. Equation for actual HCN content: For the first 10 minutes (no ventilation, only HCN release): C1(t)=(1-A(t))×D
         • with D=e/f
         • with e=mass of Zyklon B-HCN being applied (in gramm)
         • with f=volume of chamber=430m³ (net space minus volume of bodies)
         • e is being adjusted until a concentration of roughly 10g/m³ is reached after 10 minutes of evaporation (leading to a bit more than 20 kg=20,000 g, even when ignoring that the victims inhale a bit of it, which would have to be replaced, as the concentration must be reached to ensure a quick murder! Here, I take exactly 20 kg to keep it simple)
      2. Differential equation for actual HCN content after 10 minutes with ventilation: C2(t+1)=C2(t)×e^-((t+1-t)/b)+(A(t))-A(t+1))×D or C2(t+1)=C2(t)×e^-1/b+(B(t))-B(t+1))×D
         • with (B(t))-B(t+1))×D being the amount of HCN added with each step due to ongoing evaporation.

   The result is shown in the following graph with different b-values, where b-values higher than 6 min mean: the time required to reach a poison gas level equal to that when assuming a perfect ventilation without obstacles, i.e. no.1 after 6 min.

   1. One air exchange in 6 minutes (lowest line): perfect mixing of fresh air with loaded air, no objects in the room, no air short circuit. One air exchange means: on time the air volume equal to that of the morgue (minus the volume of 2.000 corpses) replaced.
   2. One air exchange equivalent in 12 minutes (2nd line from bottom): less perfect mixing of fresh air with loaded air, some objects in the room, only little air short circuit allowed.
   3. One air exchange equivalent in 24 minutes (3rd line from bottom): medium perfect mixing of fresh air with loaded air, many objects in the room, and/or air short circuit.
   4. One air exchange equivalent in 96 minutes (4th line from bottom): bad mixing of fresh air with loaded air, extremely many objects in the room, air short circuit.

   

   I don’t know were the effective time of one air exchange equivalent would have been, but certainly not at the ideal value of 6 min, not even close to 12 min. Taking the value of 24 min might be too conservative – it probably took longer – but I want to be an the save side for the following table, which lists the times needed to reach some threshold values of HCN:

   Some values of the airing success of a hypothetical homicidal gas chamber (all values in minutes) time in minutes
   air exchange time	t(5g/m3)	t(2g/m3)	t(0,1g/m3)	Ic(t) dt/10g/m3
   6 min	24	61	192	35
   12 min	56	97	228	63
   24 min	81	123	254	90
   96 min	100	144	278	118

   The left column again gives the time required to lower the HCN concentration to a value that it would reach after 6 min when the ventilation works perfectly.

   The second column gives the time required to lower the HCN concentration down to a value from which onwards work can be done in the ‘gas chamber’ (measured from the beginning of the gassing, not of the ventilation!) without protective suits.

   The third column gives the time required to lower the HCN concentration down to a value from which onwards hard work can be done in the ‘gas chamber’ (measured from the beginning of the gassing, not of the ventilation!) without protective suits, as poisoning through sweating skin must be expect beyond that.

   The fourth column gives the time required to lower the HCN concentration down to a value that must be reach to work in the ‘gas chamber’ without gas mask for a longer time in order to avoid any risk (measured again from the beginning of the gassing, not of the ventilation!).

   The last column is an integral of the HCN concentration over the entire time of the gassing procedure, leveled to 10g/m³. It gives the equivalent time of exposure of the walls to a constant HCN concentration of 10 g/m³, which is what one needs to compare homicidal ‘gas chambers’ with delousing chambers that operate with roughly 10 g/m³ for many hours.

6. The amount of HCN to be absorbed by the walls does not only depend on the concentration of HCN in the air, but also on the temperature of the walls, their water content and their material.
   1. Cold, damp walls, as were to be expected in the underground morgues of Crema II and III, have a tendency of absorbing ten times as much HCN then warm, dry walls, as for example the interior walls of the delousing facilities BW 5a and BW 5b in Birkenau.[62]
   2. The cement plaster used in the morgues has a much higher tendency to accumulate HCN than the lime plaster used in the delousing facilities, and this tendency prevails longer as cement mortar and plaster stays alkaline for many months and years, whereas lime mortar become neutral relatively quickly (in weeks rather than months, depending on temperature, humidity, amount of CO₂ available and on the consistency of the mortar.)[63]

   In fact, the tendency of the walls of morgue 1 in Crema II to absorb HCN were much higher than that in the delousing facilities. There the walls were on ground level, the rooms were heated, and they were built of cheap lime mortar. Most likely, this increased tendency to absorb HCN would have compensated the somewhat shorter time of exposure of the morgues 1 (‘gas chamber’). Nevertheless, analysis results of a sample taken from of the certainly warm and dry interior wall of this room yielded some 2900,0 mg cyanide per kg sample material (see my sample #12, http://www.vho.org/D/rga/rudolf.html), but the samples taken from the alleged ‘gas chamber’ still don’t yield any result that could be interpreted.

C. Conclusion

I don’t claim to have solved all problems connected with the formation and detectability of Iron Blue in the so-called ‘gas chambers’ of Auschwitz, Birkenau or elsewhere, nor do I claim of having understood the meaning of every document concerning the concentration camp Auschwitz and Birkenau. But I do know that referring to or relying on Jean-Claude Pressac’s flawed works[see critique in note 6], as Prof. van Pelt does, and on the paper published by the Polish authors discussed here either proves his ignorance of the current state of the discussion[64] or of a deliberate attempt of deception. This Polish paper he heavily relies on has been definitely proved to be a scientific fraud no longer worth being mentioned. It is especially not suited to refute the Leuchter Report, not to talk about my own report. Prof. van Pelt should get better advice in architectural and chemical questions.

Germar Rudolf, Hastings, last revised: April 10, 2000

Endnotes

Note of March 2025: Links to documents posted at www.vho.org are currently dead, as Michael Santomauro has stolen this domain name, refuses to reliquish it, and has turned off the server where the site used to be hosted. (Or rather, he blackmails CODOH to pay him 110,000 US dollars before doing anything.)