Liberation of Majdanek 1944

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Earldor
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#16

Post by Earldor » 22 Apr 2004, 13:20

michael mills wrote: It is difficult to tell exactly which of the three chambers Simonov is describing. It appears he also described another chamber which had shelves for clothes.
Here are some pics of the Majdanek gas chambers:

http://www.mazal.org/Majdanek%20jpg/MajdanekText.htm

And if you are truely confused, why not contact Majdanek camp museum. I'm sure that they would be more than happy to provide you with information.

http://majdanek.pl/en/kontakt.htm

However, it seems that the museum staff are convinced that there were homicidal gas chambers in Majdanek...

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#17

Post by michael mills » 22 Apr 2004, 14:05

Are the photos of Barrack 41 or Barrack 42?

The photos showing exterior doors do not seem to correspond to the description of Barrack 41 in the site that I posted, which gave the impression that the chambers were entered from inside the building, from the shower room.

I see nothing in the photos indicating that the rooms were not disinfestation chambers. The heavy blue staining continually referred to by Mazal indicates prolonged exposure to very high concentrations of HCN, something that would be typical of a gassing for the purpose of killing insects, but not of a homicidal gassing, where neither prolonged exposure nor very high concentrations would be required (or so we are told).

As for Mazal's contention that the same room was used for homicidal gassing by both HCN and CO, I doubt that. There would seem to be no reason for using two different gassing methodologies. Since the blue staining indicates repeated and prolonged exposure to HCN, it is fairly obvious that this was a chamber in which Zyklon-B was used. Since there would be no reason to pump CO into a disinfestation chamber using Zyklon-B, the pipe must have had some other function. There are no other German examples of combined HCN and CO chambers.

As for the testimonies by German staff captured in 1944, they speak only of very small numbers on particular dates, often at second hand. None of the testimonies by staff members claims a program of regular homicidal gassing.

As I have written previously, there is nothing that would prevent a disinfestation chamber using HCN to also be used for a homicidal purpose, simply by shutting people up inside it. It may be that the disinfestation chambers in either Barrack 41 or Barrack 42 were used on odd occasions to kill people, but the design of the building suggests that that was not the main purpose of the facility, but that the main purpose was the delousing of the clothing of new arrivals and/or existing prisoners.


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#18

Post by Earldor » 22 Apr 2004, 14:15

michael mills wrote:David,

If you consult any recent history of the massacre of the Jewish prisoners in KL Lublin on 3 November 1943, I do not think that you will find any that claim that it was perpetrated other than by shooting.
Why would Erntefest be in any way relevant to the existance of homicidal gas chambers in Majdanek? Both shooting and gassing were used as means of mass extermination in KL Lublin.
The concentration of Jewish workers was perceived as a security threat located on the German supply lines, and after the series of ghetto uprisings during the year (of which that at the Warsaw Ghetto was only one) Himmler was taking no risks.
Well, Himmler did justify the aktion with security concerns and they may have been legitimate in Nazi and revisionist eyes but it is clear to any reasonable person that the security concerns were an excuse.

Christopher Browning has layed out the background of the massacre in his book "Ordinary Men", p. 135-137:

"With a victim total of 42,000 Jews in the Lublin district, Erntefest surpassed even the notorious Babi Yar massacre of more than 33,000 Jews outside Kiev. It was exceeded only by the Rumanian massacre of more than 50,000 Odessan Jews in October 1941. Erntefest was the culmination of Himmler's crusade to destroy Polish Jewry. As the murder campaign gained momentum in 1942, Himmler had been plagued with complaints from industrial and military authorities about the removal of Jewish workers essential to the war effort. In response to such complaints, which he viewed as pure pretense, he agreed to spare some Jewish workers on the condition that they were lodged in comps and ghettos entirely under SS control. This allowed Himmler to parry pragmatic arguments based on the necessities of the war economy while insuring his ultimate control over the fate of all Jews. For in the end, the sanctuary of the labor camps and work ghettos was only temporary. As Himmler said, "There too the Jews shall likewise one day disappear in accordance with the wish of the Führer. "

[...]By the fall of 1943, two things were apparent to Himmler. First, the work Jews in the camps would have to be killed if his mission were to be completed. Second, over the past six months Jewish resistance had arisen in Warsaw (April), Treblinka (July), Bialystok (August), and Sobibor (October), when the Jews in those places saw no further hope of survival. Until the spring of 1943, the Jews of Poland had clung to the all too understandable but mistaken assumption that event the Nazis could not be so irrational by utalitarian standards as to kill work Jews making essential contributions to the German war economy. [...] But the Jews were gradually being stripped of their illusions. The Germans encountered resistance when they tried to carry out the final liquidation of the Warsaw and Bialystok ghettos, and revolts broke out in the death camps of Treblinka and Sobibor when the work Jews there realized that the camps were about to be closed. Himmler could not expect to liquidate the Lublin work camps gradually or one by one without encountering further Jewish resistance born of desperation. The inmates of the Lublin labor camps would therefore have to be killed in a single massive operation that would catch them by surprise. Such was the genesis of Erntefest."
If there had been a homicidal gassing facility at KL Lublin, the Jewish workers could have been brought in over a period of days and killed, without exceeding the capacity of the gas-chamber or of the crematorium.
Again, you seem to be hell bent on trying to disprove that there were homicidal gas chambers in KL Lublin. I wonder why.

The scale of the KL Lublin gassings may have been smaller than in the Operation Reinhard death camps or Auschwitz-Birkenau but both perpetrator and survivor testimony attest that they did take place.

What is your take on the Höfle -messages quote on "Lager L"?
Thus it was quite possible for prisoners to arrive at the disinfestation facility at KL Lublin, undress and hand in their clothes to be taken to the adjoining Zyklon-B chambers, have a shower and be shaved for personal delousing, and then receive their deloused clothes or camp uniforms at the end of the procedure.
According to Donat's "The Holocaust Kingdom" the victims did not keep their own clothes but were given old clothes on arrival.

There are other problems in your scenario as well, why would you have just one chamber for a real shower and several for the clothes? Don't you think that the people showering would take more room than their clothes?
As for the doors on the six chambers next to the shower room in Bad- und Desinfektionsraum II, I imagine they were some sort of standard gas-tight door that could have a spy-hole for all sorts of reasons.
Why do you tend to speculate so eagerly? Why is it always to diminish the number of victims or to deny the existance of homicidal activities?

Shouldn't you be looking for evidence to back up your claims before posting them?

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#19

Post by michael mills » 22 Apr 2004, 14:25

I have taken up Earldor's suggestion and sent an email to the scientific department at the museum, enquiring whether it is possible to get a diagram of the building containing the gas-chambers.

Note from the museum site that about 70% of the prisoners were young men and women aged 20-25. Another 6% were children aged under 15.

That does not seem like an extermination camp to me, more like a labour camp.

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#20

Post by michael mills » 22 Apr 2004, 15:11

Earldor asked:
Why do you tend to speculate so eagerly? Why is it always to diminish the number of victims or to deny the existance of homicidal activities?
When I see a claim that contains many anomalous and improbable features, I question it.

Here the claim is made that Barrack 41, a building constructed like a normal facility for delousing arriving prisoners, containing a large shower-room for personal delousing and small chambers for delousing clothing, was actually a homicidal facility.

The presence of the shower-room is explained away on the basis that the shower improved the operation of the gassing, either the victims' pores were opened, or else being hot and wet from the shower helped the gas to evaporate.

The claimed homicidal function of Barrack 41 is clearly anomalous. I know of no other German homicidal facility that so clearly resembled a reception centre with a delousing installation.

At Auschwitz-Birkenau there were no buildings combining a delousing and a homicidal function; the gas-chambers were installed in crematoria, not in shower blocks. The delousing facilities were elsewhere, eg the so-called Sauna, and their design resemble Barrack 41 at KL Lublin.

Furthermore, the combination of showering and homicidal gassing does not occur anywhere else. At Auschwitz-Birkenau, where the bulk of homicidal gassing with Zyklon-B occurred, there was no need to shower the victims first.

The anomalous nature of Barrack 41 as a homicidal facility compared with its normality as a delousing installation suggest that it was the latter rather than the former.

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#21

Post by Earldor » 22 Apr 2004, 15:17

michael mills wrote:I have taken up Earldor's suggestion and sent an email to the scientific department at the museum, enquiring whether it is possible to get a diagram of the building containing the gas-chambers.
Good for you. Did you also ask them what is their view of the function of the gas chambers? Could you post your e-mail to the museum's representatives for us to see?
That does not seem like an extermination camp to me, more like a labour camp.
It's not a question of either or. There were camps that had a dual function, as you undoubtedly know. We discussed Maly Trostinets earlier. The KL Lublin was a concentration camp, a labor camp and an extermination camp. No need to muddy the waters.

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#22

Post by Earldor » 22 Apr 2004, 15:22

michael mills wrote:Earldor asked:
Why do you tend to speculate so eagerly? Why is it always to diminish the number of victims or to deny the existance of homicidal activities?
When I see a claim that contains many anomalous and improbable features, I question it.
Aah, well I have seen you explain the possible faults in the Soviet deductions, but I have also seen you try to extrapolate them even further. What I haven't seen is a shred of evidence to back up your claims.

You ignored the second part of the question...

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#23

Post by Earldor » 22 Apr 2004, 15:40

michael mills wrote:Are the photos of Barrack 41 or Barrack 42?
I do not know.
The photos showing exterior doors do not seem to correspond to the description of Barrack 41 in the site that I posted, which gave the impression that the chambers were entered from inside the building, from the shower room.

Well, hopefully you asked the Majdanek officials about the matter.
As for Mazal's contention that the same room was used for homicidal gassing by both HCN and CO, I doubt that. There would seem to be no reason for using two different gassing methodologies.
Maybe the two gasses were not used at the same time. As we know the camps that were under WVHA control used HCN and Globus' (euthanasia derived) approach was to use CO. The Höfle message seems to suggest that KL Lublin was a more integral part of Operation Reinhard than has been previously known.

Even Leuchter seems to agree somewhat with the CO-scenario:

"The alleged experimental gas chambers, located at Bath and Disinfection Building #1, are a brick building connected to the main facility by a loose wood structure. This building is surrounded on three sides by a depressed concrete walkway. There are two chambers, an unknown area and a control booth, which has two steel cylinders, allegedly having contained carbon monoxide, which are piped into the two chambers. There are four steel doors with a rabbet, presumably for a gasket."

Kogon et al.:"Nazi Mass Murder" (Yale University Press, p. 175):

"The iron doors with their rubber packing could be securely bolted; they were furnished by the firm of Auert in Berlin. 5 In its judgement the Düsseldorf court mentions "at least three concrete rooms, provided with tight-fitting steel doors," and estimates the capacity of the big room as "up to three hundred" and of the small rooms as "up to 150 people each."

Both Zyklon B and carbon monoxide were used for killing. As regards the gassing process, the Düsseldorf court reached the sameconclusions drawn by other investigations:

The carbon monoxide, which was in steel bottles, was introduced through a system of ducts leading from an anteroom located in front of one of the small gas chambers. From this anteroom the gas flow was regulated by means of a hand-operated valve, and the gassing process could be observed without danger through a little window in the wall. Gassing with Zyklon B, contained in cans, was carried out in the following manner: the contents of the cans were emptied directly into the chambers through funnels set into the ceiling, or else by the machines that produced the hot air necessary to release the gas, especially when the weather was cold. 6

Note 5: [Letter to the head office of the Central Construction Department of the Waffen SS and the police,] letter no. 17. The delivery numbers of the firm were 656, 657, 659.

Note 6: [StA Duesseldorf AZ: 8 Ks 1/75, judgement of 30 June 1981 (ZSL Coll.: 577)] pp. 80f."
As for the testimonies by German staff captured in 1944, they speak only of very small numbers on particular dates, often at second hand. None of the testimonies by staff members claims a program of regular homicidal gassing.
ibid. p.176

"The head of the gas chambers and crematoria, SS-Hauptscharführer Erich Muhsfeld, testified on 4 August 1947 while a prisoner in Poland that "the arriving convoys were always submitted to a selection process... Those unfit for work were asphyxiated in the gas chamber." 12

Note 12: Record of the interrogation of Erich Muhsfeld, Maidanek State Museum Archives, microfilm no. 66.

Ibid.

"Dr. Jan Nowak, a Polish physician assigned to take care of prisoners, succeeded in July 1943 in getting the following information to a respondent outside the camp: "Every day the weak, the cathectic, and those unable to work are put to death. From the infirmary block I was able to observe, helplessly, these unfortunate people marching to the gas chambers. Yesterday, late in the evening, several dozen Soviet officers were delivered and gassed." 13

Note 13: [Josef Marszalek, "Majdanek: Geschichte und Wirklichkeit des Vernichtungslagers" (Maidanek: History and reality of the extermination center) (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1982)] p. 145."

Yes, the gassings are in on a smaller scale than in the O. Reinhard camps or Birkenau, but they were ongoing.

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#24

Post by michael mills » 23 Apr 2004, 04:29

Here is a copy of the email I sent to the Majdanek Museum.
Dear Sir,

I would like to get some information about the homicidal gas-chambers at this camp.

I would like to know whether the homicidal gas-chambers were in Barrack 41 or Barrack 42, or both.

I would also like to know whether the entrances to the homicidal gas-chambers were from the outside of the building or from the inside. I have seen photographs showing doors on the outside and also entrances from the inside.

Finally, I would like to know whether it is possible to get a diagram of the building containing the gas-chambers, identifying each gas-chamber and showing which of them was a Zyklon-B chamber and which a Carbon Monoxide chamber, and also showing how the chambers are placed in relation to the shower room in the building.

Thank you.

Michael Mills

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#25

Post by Dan » 23 Apr 2004, 04:41

When did you send it, and did you get an answer?

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#26

Post by michael mills » 23 Apr 2004, 05:04

Earldor wrote:
Even Leuchter seems to agree somewhat with the CO-scenario:

"The alleged experimental gas chambers, located at Bath and Disinfection Building #1, are a brick building connected to the main facility by a loose wood structure. This building is surrounded on three sides by a depressed concrete walkway. There are two chambers, an unknown area and a control booth, which has two steel cylinders, allegedly having contained carbon monoxide, which are piped into the two chambers. There are four steel doors with a rabbet, presumably for a gasket."
Earldor,

Thank you for the above quote. It clarifies quite a few things for me.

So it appears that there were two chambers in a brick building not actually part of Bath and Disinfection Building 1 (which I presume contained the undressing room and the shower room), but was connected to it by a loose wood structure.

Each of the chambers has two steel doors, presumably one on the side facing Bath and Disinfection Building 1 and one on the side facing away from the building. Mazal's photos linked by you apparently show the doors on the side facing away from the delousing building.

The above layout is even more similar to a standard disinfestation facility than suggested by the descriptiuons that I had read up until now.

The fact that the gassing chambers were separate from the main structure where incoming prisoners were personally deloused, and connected to it by wood structure, is entirely consistent with the layout described by Van Pelt posted by me in my earlier messages.

Furthermore, the existence of two doors to each chamber is also consistent with the standard pattern for a delousing chamber, with the door facing the main facility being the "dirty side", where the clothes of the incoming prisoners were put in, and the door on the side facing away being the "clean side", where the fumigated clothes were taken out.

Here is Van Pelt's description of a standard delousing facility again; I have bolded the words that correspond to Leuchter's description of the chambers adjoining Bath and Disinfection Facility 1.

"Auschwitz 1270 to the Present", page 220:
Prisoners enter at the left (arrow), proceed via a small vestibule into a waiting room (Warteraum) and a registration room (Aufnahmeraum) and arrive in an undressing room (Auskleideraum). There they hand in their clothes to attendants, who carry them via a covered gallery (see figure on facing page) to the Zyklon-B delousing chambers. The naked prisoners proceed to the physician (Arzt), the barber (Scheerraum), and the shower room (Brauseraum). The showers separate the soiled from the clean side. After the showers the prisoners proceed to a drying room (Raum zum Abtrocknen) and end up in the dressing room, where they receive their own deloused clothes, or inmate uniforms (Kleiderempfang / Ankleideraum).
Page 221:
The open pavilion with delousing gas chambers is connected via two galleries to the prisoner reception and delousing facility depicted in previous figure. The eight gas chambers are filled on the soiled side (unreine Seite) and emptied on the clean side (reine Seite), to be returned to the prisoners in the dressing room depicted in previous figure.
Barrack 41 at KL Lublin, denoted as "Bad- und Desinfektionsraum 1", with an adjoining building containing two gassing chambers connected to it by a wooden gallery, is manifestly a simpler version of the standardised delousing facility described by Van Pelt.

The dedicated purpose of that building must have been as a reception centre for incoming prisoners, with the main building containing a shower room and other facilities for the delousing of the prisoners themselves, and an adjoining structure containing gassing chambers for delousing the clothing of the new arrivals.

Claims of homicidal gassing in that building can therefore not be taken at face value, since that was manifestly not the dedicated purpose of the structure. The gas chambers designed for delousing clothing may possibly have been pressed into service for killing persons on an ad hoc basis.

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#27

Post by David Thompson » 23 Apr 2004, 05:44

Michael -- To summarize: Is it your position that "Claims of homicidal gassing in that building [Majdanek Barrack 41] can therefore not be taken at face value, since that was manifestly not the dedicated purpose of the structure," but that "The gas chambers designed for delousing clothing may possibly have been pressed into service for killing persons on an ad hoc basis"?

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#28

Post by michael mills » 23 Apr 2004, 06:44

I would put it in terms of probabilities, rather than absolutes.

From the information that I have so far, it appears to me most likely that Barrack 41, called Bad- und Desinfektionsraum 1, was built as a reception centre for incoming prisoners, including a shower room for delousing the prisoners themselves, and and adjoining structure for delousing their clothing.

Therefore, I think that the Soviet forces who captured the camp in July 1944 were mistaken in their identification of that building as primarily a homicidal gassing facility. The cans of Zyklon-B discovered in the building were most probably there for the prime purpose of delousing the clothing of incoming prisoners.

The Soviet captors of the camp obviously did not recognise the purpose of the shower room in Barrack 41. Having concluded that the purpose of the building was homicidal, they were forced to explain its presence as part of the killing process, hence the various claims that it acted to open the victims pores, or to quieten them down etc.

Since any sealed chamber used for the fumigation of clothing and bedding with HCN can be used for a homicidal purpose by the simple expedient of shutting the victims inside, I do not rule out the possibility that the gassing chambers in Barrack 41 may have been used to kill small numbers of victims from time to time, and that might explain the statements by the captured German personnel.

But it should be noted that Barrack 41 is at the opposite end of the camp from the crematorium, which is not what would have been planned in a homicidal set-up. In the material that I have read so far, there are claims that one of the rooms in the (reconstructed) crematorium building was a gas chamber, and if homicidal gassings were carried out in KL Lublin that room seems to be to be a more likely place rather than Barrack 41.

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#29

Post by giles120 » 23 Apr 2004, 15:51

There were two crematorium in existence at Majdanek(KL Lublin). In the early months of 1942 two furnaces for burning corpses were erected within the precincts of the camp. Owing to the extremely large number of corpses that had to be dealt with, the Germans, in 1942, began to erect a large new crematorium with five incinerators. This crematorium was completed in the autumn of 1943.

The second crematorium was burned to the ground on July 22nd 1944 just prior to the SS abandoning the camp(liberated on July 23rd). Its last victims were a group of Polish political prisoners who had been brought from the Gestapo prison in Lublin and executed the day before liberation.

The first crematorium no longer exists, and I have no found any mention of its location within the camp from any documents I have read.

The crematorium that can be seen today is a reconstruction of the second crematorium burned on July 22nd 1944. Can anyone confirm whether this reconstructed crematorium is located in the same place as the original building(ie the original second crematorium)? Additionally, there is a gas chamber located within the reconstructed crematorium, but this is also a reconstruction. There is no prussic acid blue staining on the walls of the chamber because this chamber was never in use).

Tractors were used to transport the dead(both shot and gassed) to the crematorium.

Rottenfuehrer Theodore Schollen, who served in the camp, stated:
"I often saw this machine with trailers going to and fro between the gas chambers and the crematorium. It came from the gas chamber loaded with corpses and went back empty."

The use of a tractor to transport corpses has been testified by many witnesses(both SS and surviving inmates). This does suggest that the gas chamber/s were located some distance from the crematorium. It does not make practical sense, but why does it have to. Was there available room to build a crematorium close by to barrack 41(often described as the main gas chamber, possibly the main/the sole homicidal gas chamber?)

According to the Majdanek guidebook, barrack 42 was the delousing shed and 41 was the homicial gas chamber. Why would there be a sign on the building "Bad und Desinfektion" if it was used to delouse clothes? Barrack 41 was located near to the entrance of the camp(one reason used to support the argument that the SS would have taken steps to disguise the building or at least locate it well within camp grounds, and therefore this could not be the homicidal gas chamber/s). Why? Majdanek camp itself was not hidden, there was at least 50 houses on the camp's west side and the Lublin to Chelm highway on the camp's east side. The centre of Lublin was less than 3km from the camp.

Testimonies tell of the tractor's engine being revved during the gassing procedure to drown out the screams of the victims. Also jazz music was played over the camp's PA system. If the gas chambers were located some distance within the camp grounds, would there be a need to make such a noise to drown out the cries of the dying?

A number of Jewish women tasked with sorting and classifying the clothing were eyewitnesses to the 'homicial' gassings.
As at Birkenau, there was no wall/camoflaged barbed wire fence seperating the gas chamber/s from the sorting sheds.
Also, very close to the gas chamber/s was field 1 which from September 1943 until the evacuation served as barracks for
the women who worked in the sorting sheds. One might ask Why would they locate a 'homicidal' gas chamber/s next to the sorting sheds, surely this would be the delousing chamber? Maybe, but this would then rebut the testimonies confirming the transport of the dead by tractor to the other end of the camp.

Hopefully the response you get from the Majdanek camp authorities may help to answer these issues.


Thanks.

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#30

Post by Victor » 23 Apr 2004, 22:41

Earldor wrote: Christopher Browning has layed out the background of the massacre in his book "Ordinary Men", p. 135-137:

[...]

It was exceeded only by the Rumanian massacre of more than 50,000 Odessan Jews in October 1941.
The highest figure given in official Romanian Army reports was over 13,000 people shot plus the 417 hanged in the city. Does the author mention any source for this information?

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