--VERSION NO. 2--
18 May 1999
Concerning George Ryba's testimony on the alleged execution gas chambers
in Birkenau, I have three remarks, one question, and a comment.
Three remarks:
1. "Later, during gassing, wires and cables were often ripped off by victims gasping for air and writhing in the agony of asphyxiation. We had to repair such damage when the still convulsive bodies were being lifted up for cremation."
It is impossible to enter such a place and to work in it, either immediately or indeed for quite some time after the diffusion of hydrocyanic acid. HCN is difficult to remove by means of ventilation. It sticks to surfaces. It also penetrates the skin. It lingers a long while. Even when wearing a gas mask equipped with a special filter ("filter J"), one must avoid all physical effort in its presence. For example, after the fumigation of a room with Zyklon B (which is in fact pellets of diatomaceous earth impregnated with HCN), when the windows must be opened to air out the premises, one must not try to force open a window if it appears to be jammed. Such exertion would quicken the breathing; the filter would not resist and one would be poisoned. Poisoning through the skin is also a possibility. In this regard, one might bear in mind the procedure (very complicated, because of the danger involved) which is carried out in the execution gas chambers of certain American penitentiaries; at the end of said procedure, a physician and two assistants, wearing special gas masks, have to be extremely cautious in lifting the body of the condemned and removing it from the chamber.
2. "I was still there till about three weeks before liberation, when the SS demolition team squad were blasting away anything indicative of what had been going on in Auschwitz for nearly five years."
The remains of Krematorium II show, still today, altogether plainly that the roof of the so-called "gas chamber" had none of the four alleged regular holes for the pouring in of Zyklon B (HCN) pellets. Therefore the alleged gassing procedure could not even have been started. The room was not a "gas chamber" but rather a "Leichenkeller" (a partly below-ground mortuary).
3. "My testimony withstood long and forceful cross-examination by dozens of the best German lawyers defending the Nazi elite."
There is not a single example of "long and forceful cross-examination" by German lawyers on the subject of the alleged gas chambers or the alleged procedure of the gassing of camp inmates. There was no such cross-examination in 1945-1946 at Nuremberg, nor in 1961 at the "Eichmann trial", nor in 1963-1965 at the "Frankfurt trial", nor has there been one in any other court proceedings anywhere. The existence of such gas chambers and the reality of such gassings were, at the aforementioned trials, supposedly facts of common knowledge and thus the subject of judicial notice. No-one, not even a German defendant's lawyer, dared request a forensic examination of the "crime weapon". One exception, all the same: in 1945 an examination was carried out on the alleged gas chamber of the camp at Struthof-Natzweiler in Alsace; its findings, reached on 1 December 1945, were that the room in question had not been used as an execution gas chamber.
One question: Would George Ryba kindly be more specific about his evidence? Could he cite the references of the transcripts in which we might read his testimony?
A comment: I share his opinion, according to which "it is a very human characteristic to believe what one wants to believe."