Ernst
Zündel Replies:Rebuttal # 41:
Ernst
Zündel Replies:This is an extension of QA #40 which I have
already answered. It is akin to asking whether screws can be driven in
with a hammer. Perhaps it is possible, but why would anyone want to do
it?
There are problems with burning in pits that make it impractical. Traditionally,
open air cremations are done on a pyre, with wood most frequently used
as fuel. In India, where open air cremations are still widely practiced
for religious reasons, it takes approximately 480 kg of good quality, dry
wood to cremate a body. It should also be indicated that after massive
civilian casualties caused by the Allied bombings, the Germans also used
pyres to incinerate corpses. They did not do so in pits.
A pit adds nothing but unnecessary work. It actually complicates the combustion
process by severely restricting the flow of air to the bottom, which is
essential for combustion. Holocaust propagandists should take a good look
at a barbecue set. There are always holes at the bottom of the pan that
holds the charcoal to allow air to come in.
It is often claimed that burning of bodies in pits in concentration camps
was allegedly done throughout the year, which included winter months. In
the warm climate of India it takes almost half a ton of dry wood to cremate
a body, but in subzero temperatures of Poland in the winter months it would
only be natural to assume that cremation would require even more energy
than in India, to account for the fact that the rate of heat loss into
the atmosphere would be considerably greater. It would take plenty of energy
just to melt the ice on and in the bodies! Human bodies, as is well known,
contain at least 60 percent of water.
Worse yet, the bulk of "cremations in the pits" has allegedly
been performed at Birkenau, but that is simply impossible because of the
high level of the ground water table, where it is often just a foot or
two from the surface of the earth and the entire area is practically flooded
when the snow begins to melt in the spring.
As stated in #40, Filip Muller, a Jew who claims
to have been a member of the Auschwitz prisoner working brigade and whose
task included disposal of the dead, insists the pit cremations were done
in spite of the water. In the movie Shoah, Muller presents an even more
absurd story in that a fire truck had to be used to pump the water out
of a pit near Birkenau, so that the dead bodies could be cremated in it!
How absurd can the stories get?
They do get pretty crazy. The subject of burning pits have been dealt with
extensively during the first Zundel trial. An "eyewitness", Rudolph
Vrba, claimed he saw them, so I am treating you with an excerpt from his
testimony under cross-examination by defense attorney, Doug Christie:
Q: Mm-hmmm. Would you say, sir, that you told us yesterday about burning pits?
A. Yes.
Q: Would you say that yesterday you told us there were pits that were six meters wide, six meters long and six meters deep?
A. I also made the remark that I didn't make a measurement with a tape, but it was my judgment of that measure.
Q. You gave us an example by referring to the panels on the wall, and you pointed up to, I think, the top of the first panel; didn't you?
A. Yes, that would be it.
Q. Mm-hmmm. Well, how do you explain the method by which the Germans could burn bodies under water in this marshy ground where the water level was about - well, you described it as marshy ground. Tell us how they did that.
A. Well, they didn't invite me for technical consultations. And if you accept that I'm not speaking only as a witness, I saw only when it was finished; but if you want my technical advice, I would think, without having seen how they have done it and without me having consulted how they have done it, that I could have to do it myself given three, four hundred slave laborers. There's no problem.
Q. Well, tell me how - you agree you described the ground all around there as marshy ground, or do you say otherwise?
A. The ground all around was marshy. This means as a countryside.
Q. Because it was between two rivers.
A. It was between two rivers, but as you probably have been in your life in a marshy countryside, you know that even in marshy countryside there are occasional visitors around and fishermen. So in marshy land I would say that there are some quite dried out, well-prepared pieces of land by the administration of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp which were not marshy or which were not to be considered too marshy especially when (it) was in winter 1942 it was heavy frost, and you know it was sort of solid earth.
Q. Mm-hmmm. It was frozen earth?
A. Frozen earth.
Q. Well, how does the fire keep the water from melting?
A. How does fire. . .
Q. How is the fire arranged so that the water in this marshy ground did not melt and fill up the pit that was as high as that top panel on the wall over there? That's a long way down, isn't it?
A. Yes. Well, you are asking me again something which I do not know, neither from eye witness acount, nor have I consulted on technical problem, and I suppose that anybody with a slight technical education will explain to you that if you are in a marshy land and dry out that marsh on, say, one kilometer square, then you get completely different conditions within that kilometer square than in the rest of the marsh. I would think so. . . .
Q: Six meters.
A. Yes. At the bottom of the pit.
Q: Six meters down?
A. Yes. But it was only four meters and not six meters. because I didn't have a tape, and my measures would be very sort of lost, and perhaps in view of the awesome situation it might have appeared to me bigger than it was, you see, within a meter or two.
Q. Within ---
A. I know you will blame me that I didn't use a yardstick, but it wasn't technically possible.
Q. No, I don't blame you at all. I am just asking you questions, and perhaps if you will answer them, that will be a good idea.
A. I will be pleased.
Q. So, if I understand you correctly, the six by six by six metters might be out by one or two meters?
A. Might be out by one or two meters.
Q. Mm-hmmm. You don't understand or know any reason why there would be no water in the bottom of this pit; you have no explanation for this at all.
A. Of course I have an explanation. If the pit was heated up, and if there was a lot of bodies burning, everything - and if it was not used once but many times, then the water from around would have long dried out.
Q: I see. Is it true that what you said earlier was the case that it was marshy ground?
A. The marshy ground was general around Auschwitz. In other words --
Q: Not around Birkenau?
A. Around Birkenau. In other words, how marshy Birkenau was, I, the first time realized only after I left Birkenau and had to cross the common camp area. In other words, Birkenau was built up in a marshy area, but Birkenau itself was not marshy any more.
Q. Oh, you say that it was built up above the level of the land.
A. I do not say that it was built above the level of the land, but proper and simple ameliorative measures were taken so that Birkenau and the Birkenau installations will not be succumbed by the swamps. The swamps were there, otherwise you will have to ask for the technical administration of Auschwitz camp house. I am not a builder, but I knew how to build things.
Q: What ameliorative measures do you say were taken?
A. Yes, ameliorative measures, which translated means measures to regulate unexpected flood of water. It is used quite frequently by great agricultural enterprises when they want a piece of their agricultural dry, and a piece wet. This is achieved by amelioration.
Q. What ameliorative measures do you say were taken to prevent water from being a problem in Auschwitz? Do you say that they raised the level of the land. . . ?"
Now, class. Compose yourselves!
Back to more serious matters. When a body is cremated in a furnace, the
heat of combustion is contained within the retort and the burning continues
all the way to the smoke stack, making it the most economical method of
cremation. But when a body is cremated in the open, plenty of heat escapes
without coming into contact with the body, which, obviously, makes it an
extremely wasteful method of cremation. And the pit would not improve things
at all, even if dug on a high ground, with no water seeping in. Just look
at what it takes to prevent losses of energy in a normal furnace - special
high-temperature resistant bricks, afterburners with multiple baffles to
create turbulence in the flue gas and thus to facilitate combustion of
small particles, forced draft, very high smoke stacks! Why in the name
of plain common sense, burning pits?
And finally, a few gems from Nizkor.
Nizkor: "A high-energy, refined fuel like gasoline was not required. Cheap and relatively plentiful inflammables like motor oil and methanol were used instead."
It is not clear what they mean by "motor oil". If they mean lubricating
oil, then it was just as precious as gasoline. Theoretically those "evil
nazis" could, of course, have been using the old motor oil. All they
had to do was to issue an order to the frontline and other troops to save
the old motor oil each time they did an oil change and to send it to Auschwitz.
Tanks, trucks, ships, submarines, airplanes, steam engines do consume plenty
of lubricants, and the Germans, being so frugal, would, no doubt, have
found a way to collect it from the Afrika Corps, from the Eastern and Western
fronts, from Italy, Norway, Finland, the shipyards, ports and airfields
- just to make sure that all those hundreds of thousands of bodies would
be disposed of.
As for the methanol, it is not cheap; it takes a rather involved technological
process to produce it in industrial quantities, and that kind of a plant
cannot be hidden in an underground factory. Whatever facilities to produce
methanol Germany had were busy supplying the needs of the underground Dora
factories producing V-2 rockets.
Nizkor would be well advised to talk to the car racing aficionados and
to find out the main reason why alcohol and not gasoline is used as fuel
in formula car racing. It is done for safety sakes, as alcohol fires, which
can take place during a crash or a spill in a pit, are not as "hot",
since methanol releases less heat during combustion. Such fires, obviously,
are easier to contain. They do not burn as well.
Nizkor again: "Hoess describes the open air burning process..."
It is common knowledge that Hoess was severely tortured in order to obtain
his "confession" and to make him write his "memoirs".
I have discussed this elsewhere. As a result of the torture, Hoess came
up with amazing details, such as a nonexistent camp "Wolzek",
as well as other things which could not have possibly been taking place.
He also gave an absurdly high number of victims in Auschwitz-Birkenau which
is not taken at value even by the most hard-core Holocaust researchers.
Nizkor: "It was only toward the end of the summer of 1942 that cremation began to be used - first by means of a wood pyre of about two thousand corpses..."
Come on. Take your calculator. If it takes about 480 kg of dry wood per
corpse to accomplish a cremation in the hot climate of India, can you imagine
how much wood it would take to process the number of bodies mentioned by
Nizkor? In the winter it would have taken even more.
To sum up the above, I would like to quote Carlo Mattogno.
"... exterminationist historiography, which predominates in this field, is rooted in dogmatism. The virtually theological nature of this dogmatism is pointed up in a declaration by 34 French "scholars" published in the French daily newspaper Le Monde on February 21, 1979, in which they stated:
"The question of how technically such a mass murder was possible should not be raised. It was technically possible because it occurred. This is the necessary starting point for all historical investigation on the subject."
("My Banned Holocaust Interview")
In the traditions of our civilization we examine physical evidence. We
call for expert analysis. Even in a case of a simple break-in, not to mention
a murder, police forensic experts would be all over the scene of the crime,
scouring it for evidence. But in the case of this so-called "Holocaust",
six million people have allegedly been murdered and yet the side that is
making that claim does everything possible to obstruct the introduction
of the forensic evidence into the "proceedings"!
Their eye-witnesses make absurd claims, which are completely removed from
reality, but anyone who points that out becomes a "neo-nazi",
a "Hitler apologist" and so on.
It's very simple, really: To know that milk is sour, you do not have to
drink a quart. It is enough to take a sip. You do not have to eat a lamb
to know what mutton tasts like. It's quite enough that you consume a cutlet.