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.