Auschwitz's chimneys belching smoke and flame.

[David Thompson]

robota -- If you have any sourced material, the readers would be happy to see it. Personal comments about other posters are neither necessary nor welcome.

H&WC Section Rules
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=53962

[robota]

I certainly meant no disrespect to the member in question. I am certain that she posts here with the outmost best of intentions and from high moral purpose, I just feel that occasionally she can get a little too enthusiastic.

This characteristic, well known to the habituants of this forum, will not be so obvious to the casual reader.

In reference to
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=94929

If there is one thing worse than being asked to make a definitive judgement from a single, poorly sourced GPR scan it is with breathtaking confidence to make definitive judgements from completely unsourced GPR scans from totally different studies under the claim of "expert" status.

Had I or any other poster made such a firm conclusion in an opposite direction (not that I should wish to!) we would undoubtedly and quite rightly be smartly brought to order.

I have absolutely no objection to such leniency you have shown - because after all, it is utterly clear that her heart is the right place.

Again, I repeat, there is no disrepect intended, simply it does need to be borne in mind when evaluating member's claims.

[David Thompson]

robota -- Let's not change the subject -- if you want to challenge a statement in another, unrelated thread, please do it there.

Here, we're discussing the issue you raised in this thread -- whether witness accounts mentioning smoke and flames coming from the chimneys of KL Auschwitz-Birkenau were indicators of unreliability. Your question was:

Would it be reasonable to suggest that the accounts of flames emerging from chimneys at Auschwitz/Birkenau is more a symptom of the traumatic nature of the events witnessed rather than an actual physical occurance?

Several posters have provided sources, as well as personal experiences and a photograph, all of which demonstrate that flames coming from chimneys is an actual physical occurrence, and they have provided explanations for the effect. Given these circumstances, and the lack of any verifiable evidence to the contrary, it seems to me that the answer to your question is "no."

[Tero]

By robota

I would say chimney fires are unusual although not unheard of.

They are unusual today but they were not unusual in the 40's. This because the fuel burned today is very much cleaner than the fuel they burned in the 40's.

I would say they are very unusual in furnaces, which unlike open house fires, are strickly regulated in terms of fuel and oxygen consumption for efficiency and are far removed from the chimney stack.

You are disregarding the material being incenerated. Burning just fuel in the furnace is regulated, burning thousands of human bodies in a short period of time produces all kinds of byproducts and inpurities which will stick to the chimney inner surfaces and which will be liable to catch fire when reheated enough.

[Sergey Romanov]

The flames from a single Krema chimney may not have appeared extremely often, but there were six of them in Birkenau.

[sallyg]

edit

[michael mills]

I think I can understand the point being made by Robota, namely that survivor testimony tends to interpret the phenomenon of flame emitted from the Birkenau crematoria chimneys as an indication of a huge number of corpses constantly being burned in their furnaces.

In fact, it appears to be an indication that at certain periods the chimneys were not cleaned often enough, allowing accumulated soot deposits to catch fire.

Both the moderator and Sallyg have, by their own account, experienced chimney fires in their own premises, and one assumes they have not been burning large numbers of Jews in their fire-places.

[David Thompson]

sallyg -- Please avoid personal comments in posts.

[robota]

The difficulty I have with accepting the thesis of "numerous periods of chimney fires" is that no-one has presented in evidence of any testimony regarding the SS being concerned about such diastrous and dangerous condition that seem to be prevalent in their chimneys.

Nor do any of the testimony we have of chimneys belching fire night and day (surely an unlikely expression if in fact these were short lived blazes quickly quenched by the Birkenau fire brigade) indicate any situation other than that of normal operation.

As apparantly no one feels willing to address the fact that smoke had a very long and winding path towards the stack and any deposits of soot would preferentially be underground (a very different situation from an open fireplace in a dwelling) or the fact the only picture we have of a crematorium in operation does not show it to be a particular sooty or inefficient operation, I will let those objections rest unanswered.

[DXTR]

As apparantly no one feels willing to address the fact that smoke had a very long and winding path towards the stack and any deposits of soot would preferentially be underground (a very different situation from an open fireplace in a dwelling) or the fact the only picture we have of a crematorium in operation does not show it to be a particular sooty or inefficient operation, I will let those objections rest unanswered.

Well in another post you pointed out that one would need scaffolding to be erected to paint stripes around chimneys. So we must assume that you agree that the smoke stack is hard to access. However you point out that the smoke from the ovens to the smoke stack travelled a long and winding path before it reached the smoke stack. Could one assume that while the smokestack was hard to reach for a regular sweep, the maintainance of the krema was often only restricted to the piping reachable from the ground level?

So could the explanation be that the soot deposit at ground level was often cleaned out, while the deposit in the smokestack was not, due to it being difficult in reaching it? Thereby over time soot would build up in the smoke stack?

regards

[Brumbar]

the smoke had a very long and winding path to the stack

Source?

[stcamp]

Why would the chimney catch fire? They were not burning wood they were burning people. People do not require a lot of coal to burn and the residue builds up inside the stack because you are burning a lot of fat. Think grease fires. Especially when they were operating for awhile.
It would also depend on who was being burned. People fresh off the train who still had body fat or starved people.

Operating Instructions for Coke-Fired Topf Double-Muffle Incineration Furnace that:

"After each incineration, the temperature rises in the furnace. For this
reason, care be taken that the internal temperature does not rise above
1100C (white heat).... This increase in temeprature can be avoided by
introducing additional fresh air." (_Technique_, p.136.)

Henryk Tauber, a Sonderkommando in Krema II, testified:

"...As I have already said, there were five furnaces in Krematorium II,
each with three muffles for cremating corpses and heated by two coke-fired
hearths. The fire flues of the hearths came out above the [ash] collection
boxes of the two side muffles. Thus the flames went first round the two
side muffles then heated the centre one, from where the combustion gases
were led out below the furnace, between the two firinf hearths. Thanks to
this arrangement, the incineration process for the corspes of the side
muffles differed from that of the centre muffle. The corpses of
<> or wasted people with no fat burned rapidly in the side
muffles and slowly in the center one. Conversely, the corspes of the
people gassed directly on arrival, not being wasted, burned better in the
center muffle.... During the incineration of such corpses, we used the
coke only to light the fire of furnace initially, for fatty corpses burned
of their own accord thanks the combustion of the body fat. On occasion,
when the 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 corpses would catch light themselves...." (Ibid. p.489.)


Interesting enough if you go to Birkenau today (KL II) and go to the marshy wood area you will find up to 18 inches of ash still exists on top of the soil - http://www.remember.org/educate/b3mg0027.html
This was primarily from open pit burns. I would think a chimney might produce smoke.

I had to put a lot of thought in how to say the following due to the Forum rules which I believe make sense and the Moderator who I respect.

NEVER AGAIN.

[Sergey Romanov]

I'm not sure what robota's point is. Were the flames from the chimneys possible? Yes they were. Were there any? Yes, as indicated by the witnesses. Did some witnesses exaggerate the description of the flames? Yes, some did.

The point being..?

[Kentaurus]

The point being..?

I think robota believes he's very clever in raising doubt. His problem of course is that he gets shot down every time he tries.

[David Thompson]

Let's save the discussion for the argument, such as it is.