The Kula Kolumn – Exactitude in Action

Introductory Remarks

"Show me, or draw for me a Nazi Gas Chamber" has been a repeated demand framed by French university Professor Dr. Robert Faurisson in one form or another since March 23, 1974, when he sent a letter to the Centre de documentation juive contemporaine in Paris.

In this letter, he asked if the Hitlerite gas chambers were a myth or a reality.[1] I have heard him speak on this matter, and he said that the wonderfully cooperative French woman there brought him books from the collection that showed photos of hair, shoes, eyeglasses, and teeth. Faurisson quietly pressed for actual photos of "Hitlerite [homicidal] gassing chambers." She finally admitted that she could not produce any.

Faurisson's diligence in studying the available literature along with primary documents from Auschwitz, plus his own visits to the Polish site, produced over time numerous reactions from the French media and Jewish Holocaust Story writers, jurists, politicians, and academics, reactions that were almost without exception ad hominem attacks on him, even accusing him of trying to rehabilitate Hitler and Nazism by his audacity in asking this sort of question. These "Negationists" – as I must call them, because they have been so negatively opposed to an international scientific investigation – insisted that the Nuremberg Tribunal had clearly established the reality of the homicidal gassing facilities and other judicial courts had declared them to have existed on the basis of "Judicial Notice".[2]

Of course, Faurisson is quite willing to accept such Judicial Notice for the scientific results that water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit, but he was not then, or on his deservedly happy 75^th Birthday on January 25^th, 2004, willing to accept that the alleged Hitlerite gas chambers truly existed unless scientifically established by forensic investigation by a team of physical scientists.

Van Pelt's The Case for Auschwitz

Over the course of many years when Jewish Holocaust Story historians chose to ignore Faurisson, one writer, a specialist with a doctorate in the History of Ideas who has passed himself off as a "Professor of Architecture" – a Dutch Jew named Robert Jan van Pelt – finally found that Faurisson's demand had to be confronted.

Dr. van Pelt has made the material evidence for confronting Faurisson by presenting a corpse cellar with axonometric drawings, very neat and impressive drawings at that, including a triple-mesh metal Zyklon B poison insertion column.[3] Eight of these are alleged to have been built – with four in each Leichenkeller (corpse or mortuary cellars) of Birkenau Kremas (crematories) II and III – and alleged to have been built by a Polish Roman Catholic inmate named Michal Kula with the designed intention for killing human beings. The Christian Kula thus became an accomplice to murder.

Van Pelt's presentation of the Kula-Kolumn (I have chosen to spell "column" with a "K" for alliterative emphasis) is not, however, a photo or an original construction drawing or a drawing based on any other original document of such a death induction device, but rather an "axonometric reconstruction," following Kula's testimony, drawn by Marc Downing on page 194 and by Scott Barker on page 208. And, if I may add, these are very impressive drawings.

Thus, they are a positive response by van Pelt to Faurisson's request for either a photo or a drawing of a Hitlerite gas chamber. As an effort to be scientific by van Pelt, they are praiseworthy since they can be analyzed and evaluated.

But I must ask if such reconstructed drawings based on nothing but one witness account are convincing evidence, since there is not one of these eight alleged columns, nor are there pieces or even documents of them at Auschwitz or elsewhere to be examined for authenticity.[4] Why, in addition, should the former inmate sentenced to four-and-a-half years imprisonment be trusted? Did he not have animosity against his German captors and also belong to a group that attempted violence against the Camp authorities?[5] Did he not also willingly aid the Polish Communist authorities on June 11, 1945, when he gave testimony against the Germans and described these alleged columns as designed only for murder of unsuspecting innocents?

In general, the Jewish Holocaust Story contains the standard tale that once the prisoner special teams had finished their assigned role in the gassing and cremation process, they too were murdered and cremated so that there would be no surviving eyewitnesses to murder. Yet Michal Kula, we are told, survived over four years in this so-called anus mundi. Perhaps Kula, if he were alive and available to talk in 2004, would tell a different story, a story in which he collaborated with the Germans eagerly and thus survived the closing of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp just before the Red Army marched in on January 27, 1945.

One finds on page 206 of van Pelt's book a (faulty) English translation of Kula's testimony from June 11, 1945,[6] wherein, for purposes of the post-War Communist trial against Camp Commander Rudolf Höß, he gave technical details to his interrogators. Kula, as one might expect of a metal construction expert technician, gave rather precise metric dimensions. To these I shall return later.

The van Pelt book is overall a large, highly technical, carefully documented, well laid out, and nicely bound book, with very good drawings and photos, but strangely published – for whatever reason is unknown to me at this time – by a major American university Press at taxpayer expense.

A Debate Open to the Public

If such a debate could take place, the debate statement might run as follows: At Auschwitz-Birkenau there were homicidal gassing chamber specially constructed for employing Zyklon B with its hydrocyanic acid to murder Jews and other human beings.

And if professor Faurisson were on the negative side of the debate, he would demand material evidences, not mere drawings or sketches or cartoons.[7] I can only speculate what van Pelt would offer if he were on the positive side of such a debate, but I think he would offer sketches and drawings and cartoons, but most of all, alleged eyewitness testimony of a Michal Kula (and others) who have never one time been cross-examined under oath in a proper court of law outside of a Stalinist "Show Trial" setting.

Faurisson would insist on cross-examination of Kula in ways similar to the cross-examination of the star witnesses in Toronto, Canada, at the famous landmark trial of Ernst Zündel, when Dr. Rudolf Vrba and Arnold Friedman were finally forced to admit that they had not witnessed homicidal gassings as they claimed in their writings or earlier expert testimonies.[8]

But Michal Kula, born in 1913, would in 2004 be 91 years old, if still living, and would not likely be a witness capable of reasonable testimony or cross-examination.

The Problem of Alleged "Eyewitnesses"

The first question to be asked of course is: Is Kula to be believed? What were his motives in giving testimony to the Polish Communist authorities? Did the Communist court commission a competent scientific investigation whose sole task was to verify or falsify the Kula allegations? Did Kula or anyone else produce actual German Zentral-Bauleitung der Waffen SS und Polizei Auschwitz technical drawings, blueprints, or other documents whereby these alleged complex devices were built and order lists for materials and their cost? After all, we are constantly told by people such as van Pelt that there are "mountains of evidence" and "millions of documents" to prove the Nazi crimes.

J.-C. Pressac's drawing of the legendary "Zyklon B introduction columns" as described by Michal Kula. (Click to enlarge)

There is, however, one document that references Michal Kula by name. Even so, can Kula be trusted to have told the truth on June 11, 1945, or was his detailed metal column story fabricated out of a desire to get even with his German captors?

There is one indication to Kula's credibility as a witness, and it derives from his statement about an actual gassing he claims to have witnessed form an inmates hut. He claimed that he saw how corpses of gassing victims were carried away:

On this, Germar Rudolf comments rightly:[9]

But Professor Doctor Robert Jan van Pelt features Michael Kula prominently in The Case for Auschwitz book and accepts the technical data given to the Polish Communist court as if it were in fact true, even scientific truth!

Documents by Kula at the Auschwitz Schlosserei

Van Pelt could have provided the following, but he chose not to do so. Italian researcher Carlo Mattogno writes in his 2002 article that the Polish Judge Jan Sehn made available for the Rudolf Höß trial a list of the work order numbers, without gaps Judge Sehn produced this list on July 25, 1945, some six weeks after Kula gave his deposition to the court.

There are some 85 of these work orders for the Werkstättenleitung Schlosserei beginning with October 28, 1942, and one, number 433 dated May 20, 1943, is a request for materials by "Kula" who is called "Hersteller" (producer) and he needed two pieces to repair "kopl Verbindungstücke für Gummischlauch." The request is marked "Dringend" (urgent) and was to be delivered to Prof. Schumann for the "Röntgen-Station im F.L." (the x-ray department of the hospital in the women's camp of Birkenau). The document indicates that Kula completed the work on or by May 21, 1943.[10]

If Kula had testified truthfully about building the eight gas induction columns for Kremas II and III, there had to have been a Schlosserei work order request for materials to obtain the very large quantity of metal mesh of varying sizes, angle iron supports, screws, bolts and nuts, welding rods, wooden base supports, and more. Mattogno points out that van Pelt cannot hide behind a concept of secrecy for these murderous materials since in the work order forms there are requests for "gas-tight doors" for the same Kremas – items alleged by van Pelt that prove the buildings had been altered into death facilities.[10]

We may safely conclude that when Michal Kula testified to Judge Sehn's court on June 11, 1945, he knew that he was giving false testimony. And his fellow insurrection mate, Henryk Tauber – whom van Pelt trusts so fully – gave a similar story about these alleged metal columns.[11]

An Internet site, www.holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/intro-column, relies heavily on Harry Mazal for research assistance, and the Kula-Kolumn is given the utmost credence. Moreover, there is a b/w photo of "A Soviet army man" holding one of the alleged gas chamber wooden chimney covers, with the date given as "October 14, 1944," and from The Illustrated London News, page 442.

The Kula Kolumn under construction on August 24, 2002, on the driveway of the Countess home in Alabama, here with editor Germar Rudolf

Since the Red Army reached Auschwitz only on or about January 27, 1945, readers may wonder how this photo was created to depict a Soviet soldier atop an alleged gas chamber some four months prior to the camp's liberation!

I may safely state, however, that this Holocaust History Project site largely exists because of the decades long insistence by Robert Faurisson that he be shown a Nazi gas chamber. People such as Mazal and his cohorts are trying to do just that – even if they must invent, create, suppress, or falsify reality. And van Pelt is without doubt a willing fellow executioner along with these fanatics.

A final comment on Michal Kula may also be in order in that Danuta Czech does not mention him as prisoner number 2718 on page 51 of her very important book known as the Kalendarium.[12] The non-Jew Kula is restricted to the final footnote in the book and then only as he gave testimony about the outcome of certain Jews.

Development of the Kula Kolumn Model Idea

The van Pelt book appeared in February of 2002, and I obtained my copy on April 18^th and began to work through it with black pen, red pen, and highliter pens, making notes in the margins and everywhere else. Small print, large pages, fascinating book. He made some significant attacks on David Irving here and there. When I reached Chapter Three, "Intentional Evidence", I knew that some highly challenging material was on the horizon. (Black's Law Dictionary does not have an entry for "Intentional Evidence," but "intention" is used with the plan to do a certain act.)

For van Pelt, the substance of Chapter Three is evidence based on German planning with the intention to exterminate by means of physical devices – homicidal gas chambers in mortuary cellars, camouflaged, as he writes, so as to appear simply as morgue repositories. The reader anticipates, at long last, a solid answer to Faurisson's "Show me, or draw for me…" approach. Van Pelt does not ignore Faurisson as so many before him have done.

I prepared a lecture on the book and presented it to the Fourteenth Conference of the Institute for Historical Review in California on June 21-23, 2002, its title: "A Critical Look at Robert Jan van Pelt's Anti-Revisionist Study, The Case for Auschwitz: Evidence from the Irving Trial." My great appreciation for the enormous work van Pelt put into the book was offset by my conclusion that van Pelt's "convergence of evidence" method was at bottom more of a "divergence of evidence" and at best naïve, at worst dishonest.

Thereupon, with the announcement of "The Fourth Annual Convention on Real History" hosted by British historian David Irving near Cincinnati for August 30-September 2, 2002, I submitted the idea for an actual model of van Pelt's "Kula Kolumn" so that instead of mere words of critique, we might gaze upon a real hands on model for Real History and seek to draw conclusions as to the actual practicability or impracticability of these alleged eight Zyklon B insertion contraptions. (A contrivance is a device showing cleverness or ingenuity and "a contraption" is a combining of the words "contrivance" and "trap.")

Irving was positively disposed to the idea and I discussed it with my publishing colleague, Germar Rudolf, and other specialists in the field of Jewish Holocaust Story exactitude analysis. By July, I had begun diligently the construction effort, in spite of a lack of expert metal fabrication experience, but bringing to the task some years of auto mechanical repairs and building construction.

Basic Assumptions

Assumptions are of two types: 1) those verifiable or falsifiable; and 2) those based on presuppositions about reality but not open to physical testing – as such, these can merely be stated at the outset. What follows are the assumptions that guided my work.

Dr. Countess presenting a self-made model of a "Kula Kolumn" during the 2002 Real History Conference in Cincinnati.

• That van Pelt's technical data were reliably printed in The Case book from his own notes that I assumed to be reliably drawn from the Polish language documents of the 1945 Höß Trial, or from documents in other languages;
• That Michael Kula possessed the technical competence to do what the SS allegedly assigned him to construct;
• That Kula had the mental competence to remember for the court his prison camp experiences with adequate precision;
• That the alleged column's design arose from a clearly conceived SS intention and SS authority to command its construction, provide exact drawings, procure all needed materials and personnel, and work space;
• That none of these construction drawings is available today for examination, since if such was in fact available, there would be no need for van Pelt to have his assistants produce axonometric reconstructions for The Case book; (one must remember that van Pelt produced his work for the Lipstadt Trial in London and that if he had discovered actual, authentic drawings, he would have eagerly produced these for Professor Lipstadt's defense)
• That SS specialists in the design engineering of execution technology had tested such a device in a laboratory and/or field environment in order to insure that the concept, design, and constructed device would work properly; (can anyone imagine a prison using an electric chair for an execution of a convicted murderer without adequate laboratory testing for its operability effectiveness?)
• That such field testing required construction engineers to place such a device beneath concrete roof openings somewhere, doing this before going to the effort and expense of cutting the eight holes in the Birkenau Kremas II and III reinforced roofs;
• That Kula was himself a metal fabricator from the small town of Auschwitz and not himself a design engineer capable of creative design for such a novel device;
• That there was "a paper trail" for the special materials that Kula alleged were used and in the large quantities alleged for construction;
• That the eight holes, measuring an estimated 16 inches, were cut by skilled craftsmen through several inches of rebar rod concrete, and that the rebars were cut neatly [not crudely bent away from the holes], and that cutting tools or acetylene torch equipment were used instead of a crude hammer and cold chisel method; and that this time consuming work was performed at night or with camouflage so that the general camp population might not observe this novel and sinister activity;
• That these eight large and heavy columns were transported in sections rather than as single units since, otherwise, setting them upright would have been impossible due to the extra length of a square column measured from bottom edge to opposite upper edge; [If a van Pelt or an Elie Wiesel were a person who spends time building and repairing, he might have thought of such matters, whereas (Faurisson's ) "paper historian" criticism of such writers comes into play;
• That these alleged eight triple mesh metal columns were removed from their Krema mortuary locations sometime before the Red Army arrived on January 27, 1945, for which activity there must have been some Germans who could have given testimony at later trials; otherwise, the Soviet officials would have preserved one or more of these eight columns or at least have photographed them as incriminating evidence against "the Hitlerite murderers."
• That the destruction of the Birkenau Kremas (Krema I at the Auschwitz Stammlager or Main Camp was not itself dynamited; hence, when Irving speaks or writes about Krema I being "reconstructed after the War" he adds confusion and reveals himself as something of "a paper historian") some weeks or months prior to the arrival of the Red Army has not yet been satisfactorily explained; with some writers, "the SS blew them up in order to cover their monstrous crimes," but with others, rebellious inmates obtained enormous amounts of explosives and set off the charges themselves; one must assume that the Red Army could have ripped out all usable mechanicals and then dynamited them (with Red Army sappers having both the skills and the quantity of dynamite to lift off the heavy concrete roofs);
• That these eight squared holes in Kremas II and III mortuary roofs have to be observable today, even though damaged somewhat by the dynamic explosions set by whomever and whenever; (my second trip to Birkenau (June 2001) enabled me to observe some bent rebar stubs, even some not-so-neatly cut acetylene stubs that perhaps are remnants of Holocaust enthusiasts in recent decades who sought to create "proofs" or "criminal traces" of the alleged holes; but serious researchers have not been convinced by the Revisionist Charles Provan 's research or his conclusion that he found the holes.)[13]
• That every serious interpretation of highly important past events (commonly called "History") faces the problem called "dual interpretation" – that is, the event is interpreted quite differently by different people, even by those involved in the event itself. [14]Therefore, if a Michael Kula had in fact constructed one or more metal triple mesh columns in the metal fabrication workshop at Auschwitz, there is open the possibility that these were used for a benign purpose.
• That my less-than-perfect model of the Kula Kolumn is a reasonable experiment for verification/falsification of what has been alleged since 1945 by the Polish Communist court led by the Communist Judge Jan Sehn – that is, a rational effort to learn Ranke's "wie es eigentlich war" (how it actually was) of this highly controversial period. Thus, I expose myself to being proven wrong as well as being proven correct on the alleged homicidal gas chambers;
• That of the approximately 1.1 Million persons sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, some 200,000± survived and could serve as possible witnesses to homicidal gassings; further, that the most important alleged eyewitnesses such as Henryk Tauber, Michael Kula, Stanislaw Jankowski, Shlomo Dragon, David Olère, and others would not have been allowed to live and testify to their firsthand knowledge of mass homicidal gassings – especially when JHS writers regularly tell the world that the Nazis destroyed all traces of their crimes;
• That Kula's alleged cups/bowls could hold the 3 pounds of Zyklon B granules in each column and thus effectively evaporate the deadly gas within the granules when only the top exposed layer of granules would be exposed to the circulating warm air. The closed sides of these alleged containers would prohibit exposure to circulating air and the overall result would be weak and of debatable effectiveness for such an elaborately designed method. (An analogy might be to prison execution by lethal injection if the medical technician were to dilute the poison by, say, 90% or greater; is it believable that death technology would be so self-defeating? A more practical analogy open to most of us homeowners would be to pour a bag of the brand name Sakrete into a wheelbarrow and add water but not stir the water into the dry gravel-cement mix. The result would be a hardening of only the top portion of the mix and the end result would be disastrous for serious application to a pole or footing.) In my judgment, the alleged Kula testimony would result in enormous wastage of Zyklon B and this unused large quantity would have required re-canning or waste disposal to a safe containment area – which a researcher might look for even in the year 2004. Even if Kula could be proven to have made the eight columns, the thousands of pounds of spent Zyklon B had to be gathered after each gassing and transported to a dump site, presumably, somewhere close by the Birkenau site whose water table level generally presented its own set of problems for the SS engineers;
• That if the SS Zentralbauleitung had wanted to install mass gassing apparati in the Kremas, my own Kula Kolumn model analysis – along with Germar Rudolf's agreement – the engineers could have more easily and effectively built simple baskets into the ceiling of the roofs, say, 8-10 inches deep, for open mesh baskets with small enough holes so that the Zyklon B granules would not fall down below, yet with adequate ventilation for efficient, quick evaporation of the inhering or adhering Hydrocyanic Acid. I think that the SS through lab or field testing would have sought the simplest, cheapest, and most effective method to engage in mass extermination rather than Kula's more bulky, less efficient method as alleged and accepted by van Pelt;[15]
• That Michael Kula and other inmates in construction departments would have had to know something about the Kurzwellen-Entlausungsanlagen the SS installed at the Auschwitz, designed by the Berlin based Siemens-Schuckert industrial giant[16]. These novel and expensive constructions allowed the quick and efficient delousing of clothing by means of the then very modern development of microwave technology – a result of German observation from the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games when dead insects around the base of radio transmitters led to research on high frequency radio waves as an effective method for destroying the body louse. Kula and his comrades with their anti-German sentiment (which no one can truly fault them for, since they were inmates against their wills!) and their motivations to defame the SS, even to destroy facilities of any sort, could understandably lead to propaganda creation of "triple-mesh metal columns" with exacting metric dimensions; intelligent inmates always have plenty of time to ponder "how to get even" with their captors and persecutors, and I must consider such a scenario as existentially possible, even likely. The very fact that van Pelt omitted any treatment of the Siemens-Schuckert microwave installations points to either a lack of thoroughness in his research for the Lipstadt Trial, or it points to a willingness to withhold exculpatory evidence. One may add that van Pelt refused to travel with Irving to Birkenau to look for the four/eight holes, this itself revealing a lack of scientific commitment by van Pelt and the entire Lipstadt defense team, along with the technically inept Professor Lipstadt herself; and it raises the question about "a hidden agendum";
• That all of my conclusions from the experience of building the Kula Kolumn and to the actual presentation of it at the Real History Conference are tentative conclusions; tentative because conclusions based on historical and scientific research are always conditional at best. Serious scientific-historiographers must always remain open to newly discovered data and better methods of analysis of those data.

Conclusion

R. H. Countess, U.S. citizen, born in 1937 in Memphis, Tennessee; Education: BA, MA, PhD in religion (doctorate in New Testament Greek text); MLS in humanities. Dr. Countess taught at several U.S. and European schools: Covenant College, Tennessee State University, Northern Virginia Community College, University of Alabama in Huntsville, Alabama A&M University, Calhoun Community College, Oakwood College, Kiev Christian University, Tyndale Theological Seminary, Odessa International Theological Seminary. Lectures at schools in the USA, South Africa, Australia, Germany, Ukraine, the Netherlands. Published some 100 articles in various journals and magazines; Founder of Theses & Dissertations Press. Served on various Boards of Directors. Retired US Army Chaplain. Resides near Huntsville, Alabama. May be contacted at boblbpinc@earthlink or POB 64, Capshaw, AL 35742.

At the beginning of this chapter, I indicated that my concept was an example arising from Robert Faurisson's notion of exactitude. He defined it for me in an email of September 29, 2003 as "la verité mais au sens de verité verifiable." My translation is "the truth but in the sense of verifiable truth." My "exactitude in action" is thus a tribute to Professor Doctor Robert Faurisson, and whatever faults arise from my imperfectly constructed model and my own faulty inferences from it are my own, for which I take complete responsibility.

The Real History Conference director wrote on September 10, 2002 after my presentation: "I did not get a chance to thank you properly for your magnificent contribution to our weekend function. […] so once again: Thank you!"

And I say to Robert Faurisson "Thank you" and "Thank you again" for your personal friendship and professional example over the past fifteen years since our first meeting on October 10, 1987, at the Eighth IHR Conference. When I think back to that lecture I gave on Saturday afternoon, recounting my experience of teaching History 102 at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and being the first professor in the USA to use Arthur Butz's Hoax of the Twentieth Century in the class over a ten week academic quarter, I was surprised to see that when I finished, Dr. Faurisson was the first to stand and offer enthusiastic applause, then the remainder of the audience. I was surprised because I thought I had done in the classroom what any normal professor ought to do – that is, offer students the benefit of alternative interpretations of historical controversies. Robert assured me that what I had accomplished was quite extraordinary and not at all "normal."

On September 10, 1994, I hosted Faurisson to give a public lecture in Roberts Hall on the campus of the University of Alabama in Huntsville. TV cameras, newspaper reporters, university Public Relations, campus police, and about 60-75 students and residents were on hand for the event. A very wealthy local Jewish scrap metal dealer sat on the front row, a man I have known for many years, and he refused to shake hands with Faurisson.

Of greater interest to me than this shameful display of hate was that all through the week, Faurisson said to me that the lecture would be cancelled at the last minute. I assured him that here in North Alabama that that would not happen, in part because I had a contract for the hall with the university, and also that that is not the way people in Huntsville "Rocket City" (the town that Dr. Werner von Braun made into the center of World rocket science) would behave or permit. In fact, I added that there might be some protesters, but that they would probably dress nicely and hand out some kind of protest literature – all of which quite peaceably took place.

Faurisson was quite surprised that everything happened in a proper fashion and we sent him on his way back to France a day or two later, along with his pleasurable memory of my Cajun wife's Gumbo!

I and my wife send our best greetings to Robert Faurisson on his 75^th birthday in Vichy, France, and we hope he will enjoy many more as he continues to defy his hatemongering enemies who declared over twenty years ago that "Faurisson will not make old bones."

Take good care of those "old bones," Robert!

Notes

This contribution missed the deadline of the Festschrift in honor of R. Faurisson.