Nazi gas chambers

David Thompson · Post by **David Thompson** » 25 Feb 2004 06:05

Part 5: From Pressac, Jean-Claude, Auschwitz: Technique and operation of the gas chambers, The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, New York: 1989, p. 367:

David Thompson · Post by **David Thompson** » 25 Feb 2004 06:06

Part 6: From Pressac, Jean-Claude, Auschwitz: Technique and operation of the gas chambers, The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, New York: 1989, p. 367:

David Thompson · Post by **David Thompson** » 25 Feb 2004 08:01

Part 7: From Pressac, Jean-Claude, Auschwitz: Technique and operation of the gas chambers, The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, New York: 1989, p. 370:

David Thompson · Post by **David Thompson** » 25 Feb 2004 08:03

Part 8: From Pressac, Jean-Claude, Auschwitz: Technique and operation of the gas chambers, The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, New York: 1989, pp. 370-71:

David Thompson · Post by **David Thompson** » 25 Feb 2004 08:11

Part 9 (Final): From Pressac, Jean-Claude, Auschwitz: Technique and operation of the gas chambers, The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, New York: 1989, pp. 371 and 375 (all intervening pages are filled with illustrations of the various documents to which M. Pressac alludes):

Dan · Post by **Dan** » 25 Feb 2004 14:29

An alternative that has been suggested is that the heated air came from the ambient air in the crematory room itself being vented to the cellar. Venting of the exhaust from the ovens would have filled the cellar with noxious elements.

Reading the first part over, is sounds like using the super heated air from the ovens was tried, but the fan failed, and attempts to get the gas chamber up to 89-85 degrees F (preheating) were abandoned.

So, again we're back to a room with, as the document states, with imperfect ventilation, and at times freezing cold. We are told that the numbers of victims was greatly exaggerated by the witness credited with giving the numbers.

The Zyklon was dropped in to this unheated room which did nothing according to the author until it reached 26-27 degrees. (P.S. I don't buy that either, but I'll have to check). So, when the body heat from the victims brought the room to the 80s F (including during a Polish winter), the HCN was given off killing the people. The people fell to the ground, which was covered in blood, urine and feces, air was forced in from the top, and came out the bottom which by some means wasn't clogged, and then the process was started over.

Again, I don't question homicidal gassings, but this account is a bunch of bullshit.

Dan · Post by **Dan** » 25 Feb 2004 14:56

OK, I just did a google search, and I was right. Pressec confuses evaporation rate with boiling point, which is slightly over 25C.

You get into trouble figuring evaporation (dispersal) rates with Zyklon, though since you have to figure in the time taken for the HCN to seperate itself from the carrier, whethe diotomatious earth or wood pulp. But here's everything you wanted to know about Zyklon but were afraid to ask.

Once More: "The Efficiency of
Prussic Acid at Low Temperatures"
by R. Irmscher
German Society for Pest Control, Frankfurt am Main

Further to the recent publication in volume 8/9 of this journal *), we shall report here on some additional experimental results of the same kind.

While at the time of the employment of thorough prussic acid gassing in Poland in the winter of 1939/40 and later in France during the winter of 1940/41 room temperatures up to -8 C had to be overcome, the winter of 1941/42, with its abnormal demands in the east, presented us with the question whether the usage of prussic acid in the occasional low room temperatures to be found there could technically be carried out at all.

http://www.holocaust-history.org/works/ ... m/p035.htm

Note to newbies, Prussic acid is HCN and Zyklon is make up of pellets of different sorts which has been "soaked" in HCN.

I think from the link you will see HCN applied in an dispersal pellet would take about 2 hours to release 95+% at 15 degrees C, or 59 degrees F. It would be faster in warmer weather, and slower in colder weather.

Again, we have a document (at least the first part, which is all I've been through) full of not only specutations, pre-judgements of character, unlikely hypotheses and down right techical errors that could have been avoided by having a graduate student in chemistry review it.

xcalibur · Post by **xcalibur** » 25 Feb 2004 16:51

Dan wrote:
An alternative that has been suggested is that the heated air came from the ambient air in the crematory room itself being vented to the cellar. Venting of the exhaust from the ovens would have filled the cellar with noxious elements.
Reading the first part over, is sounds like using the super heated air from the ovens was tried, but the fan failed, and attempts to get the gas chamber up to 89-85 degrees F (preheating) were abandoned.

So, again we're back to a room with, as the document states, with imperfect ventilation, and at times freezing cold. We are told that the numbers of victims was greatly exaggerated by the witness credited with giving the numbers.

The Zyklon was dropped in to this unheated room which did nothing according to the author until it reached 26-27 degrees. (P.S. I don't buy that either, but I'll have to check). So, when the body heat from the victims brought the room to the 80s F (including during a Polish winter), the HCN was given off killing the people. The people fell to the ground, which was covered in blood, urine and feces, air was forced in from the top, and came out the bottom which by some means wasn't clogged, and then the process was started over.

Again, I don't question homicidal gassings, but this account is a bunch of bullshit.

I too have only read the first section of this. It really is quite a turbid explanation. It certainly leaves one with more questions than it strives to answer. The only valid point he makes is that there is no reason to introduce heat into a room that is intended for use as a morgue.

Dan · Post by **Dan** » 25 Feb 2004 17:48

And relying on David Olere as a primary source makes this evidence even weaker. I sure hope there's proof of a much higher callibre than this for the alleged use of "Krema 2" as a homicidal gassing location.

David Thompson · Post by **David Thompson** » 25 Feb 2004 18:40

Dan and xcalibur -- I'm having an even more difficult time following your criticisms than I had trying to follow Pressac's description of the Krematorium II ventilation system.

As I understand it, Pressac is saying that Krematorium II was built with two attached subterranean morgues -- Leichenkellers 1 and 2. During the course of the construction, one morgue -- Leichenkeller 1 -- was converted to a homicidal gas chamber, and the second morgue -- Leichenkeller 2 -- was converted to an undressing room where folks took off their clothes before they went into the gas chamber. The ventilating system for the morgue converted into a gas chamber (Leichenkeller 1) was awkward, so the Germans had to work around it.

What are your specific objections to this description? -- that it would be impossible for the ventilating system (as Pressac described it) to work?

Dan · Post by **Dan** » 25 Feb 2004 18:52

What are your specific objections to this description? -- that it would be impossible for the ventilating system (as Pressac described it) to work?

I think it would be possible for this to work, for that matter it would be possible to have made it work in the Commandant's son's treehouse. But there is precious little evidence, and what there is is linked by missing letters, unproven allegations of greed, factual errors showing an ignorance of Zykon specifics, reliance on people like Olere who even Pressec says in these very documents wasn't always reliable and improbable expirements like attempting to heat the second chamber with super heated air from the krema exhaust.

It just takes me more faith to believe this than to doubt it.

David Thompson · Post by **David Thompson** » 25 Feb 2004 19:03

Dan -- You remarked "there is precious little evidence. . . ." If you are talking about evidence that Leichenkeller 1 was used as a homicidal gas chamber, I misunderstood what you were looking for when I copied all of Pressac's detailed explanation of the ventilation system of Krematorium II. In that case you (and the readers) have my apologies. It will be a lot easier to summarize the evidence that Leichenkeller 1 was used as a homicidal gas chamber than it would be to scan the pages describing how the ventilating system worked.

xcalibur · Post by **xcalibur** » 25 Feb 2004 19:50

David Thompson wrote:Dan -- You remarked "there is precious little evidence. . . ." If you are talking about evidence that Leichenkeller 1 was used as a homicidal gas chamber, I misunderstood what you were looking for when I copied all of Pressac's detailed explanation of the ventilation system of Krematorium II. In that case you (and the readers) have my apologies. It will be a lot easier to summarize the evidence that Leichenkeller 1 was used as a homicidal gas chamber than it would be to scan the pages describing how the ventilating system worked.

Let me say at the outset that I do appreciate you going to the trouble to scan and post this material. I had not had the opportunity to see Pressac's work prior to this.

The first time I read the material I came away from it it with the feeling that something was amiss, along the lines of "These folks could build a Tiger tank but they can't seem to convert a cellar into a gas chamber without resorting to some sort of Rube Goldberg venting system.".

There are two venting issues: That of preheating the chamber and that of extracting HCN gas post mortem. In neither case does Pressac's exploration lead us to a definitve conclusion as to what final solutions (no pun intended) were used to resolve either problem. To go through the various fixes tried and to leave us with "they were able to get around it" is less than satisfactory.

Perhaps I've drawn the wrong conclusion about what he's saying here. I'll try reading it again.

Dan · Post by **Dan** » 25 Feb 2004 19:59

No, my question was that I couldn't understand why the ventilation intake was located at the top in a HCN chamber, but what you downloaded offered the explaination from Pressec, so thanks.

I may have mentioned that we put up greenhouses occasionally as a small time contractor, and I've just built an addition onto my own. And as as a farm manager, I've had to build larger commerical greenhouses with venting systems to get rid of heat, add heat etc.. and after looking at the plans and picture here I think that with a couple masons or a couple sheetmetal workers and a journeyman level electrician I could have reversed the intake and exit directions quickly, perhaps just by turning the fans backwards. With the resources of the SS building organisation and the fact that we know from the Tesch trials and even from what Pressec says here about talks with a pesticide rep, I think this would have been so simple as to be barely worth mentioning.

It just doesn't make since that they didn't reverse the air flow, just like so much else in this story doesn't make sense to me, but my opinion certainly isn't proof that the nazis simply elected to work around this handicap. But it is worth mentioning that leaving the venting system stand as it was would without question have resulted in adding large amounts of time to the re-entry period.

Dan · Post by **Dan** » 25 Feb 2004 20:19

Look to the third caption from top left, entree d'air pour la chambre a gaz.

All you would have had to do would be to reverse this fan, and whatever they used as a backflow preventer, and done the same at the outlet. Although I still wonder how they kept the outlet from clogging up. As it is, blowing air, down, (or sucking it down depending on the number of fans (they could have done it with just one) and their placement) would just leave the HCN remaining sitting at the top of the chamber for some time.

Imagine it as a bunch of smoke at the top of the room you are in right now. Imagine a room where you have a fireplace going but someone covered the top. Now imagine a hole in the floor right under your feet sucking air out. How much would that help? Heat and HCH work the same way, which is why venting ducts are located at the top of greenhouses.