zyklon-b

[Tarpon27]

Scott wrote:

Why simplistic and why uncivilized, Mark? That condition reminds me of ontological questions which begin with problems of impertinence and propriety instead of intellectual curiosity.

Okay...I apologize. I am not trying to be uncivilized.

I just find the assertion ridiculous, and rather specious.

Scott wrote:

And considering that the Nazis were supposedly using engine exhaust for murder before insecticide, I think it is a valid question. Oh, yes the Nazis really cared about humane killing methods; that's why they made their victims into items for home decoration and performed sadistic medical experiments without probative scientific value, and even tossing infants alive into crematoria.

Since we are now on a path of divergence, seen any artifacts carved from human shin bones?

No? Know where I can view them?

I guess that is different. But let's not get off-topic.

Sailor "wonders" why Jews in Krema II or III weren't simply suffocated, while awaiting a leisurely death. Gosh, I don't know, nor do I know why the Kremas were built to such capacity...a minor detail.

Later,

Mark

[Scott Smith]

Scott wrote:

Why simplistic and why uncivilized, Mark? That condition reminds me of ontological questions which begin with problems of impertinence and propriety instead of intellectual curiosity.

Okay...I apologize. I am not trying to be uncivilized.

And I'm not trying to be impertinent or intellectually improper, just impious.

I just find the assertion ridiculous, and rather specious.

Not a problem. Everyone has different ways of looking at the world.

And considering that the Nazis were supposedly using engine exhaust for murder before insecticide, I think it is a valid question. Oh, yes the Nazis really cared about humane killing methods; that's why they made their victims into items for home decoration and performed sadistic medical experiments without probative scientific value, and even tossing infants alive into crematoria.

Since we are now on a path of divergence, seen any artifacts carved from human shin bones?

Not meaning to diverge either but Lindbergh did not testify in court that he actually saw American soldiers making artifacts from Japanese body parts, and therefore it should not be taken as anything more than hearsay. But Dr. Blaha did testify to having seen people gassed at Dachau and babies cremated alive. That is different. But the important point is that questioning such nonsense usually evokes an hysterical response among the faithful. Just look at this thread:

http://www.thirdreichforum.com/phpBB2/v ... 36&start=0

Sailor "wonders" why Jews in Krema II or III weren't simply suffocated, while awaiting a leisurely death. Gosh, I don't know, nor do I know why the Kremas were built to such capacity...a minor detail.

All good questions, I think. But packing people into a airtight room is a deathtrap in-and-of-itself--and in short order. I think it raises an excellent problem from the standpoint of process-engineering. And the descriptions of mass-gassings that we have do not leave me with the impression that this was in any way very humane; that is laughable.

Best Regards,
Scott

[Roberto]

Not meaning to diverge either but Lindbergh did not testify in court that he actually saw American soldiers making artifacts from Japanese body parts, and therefore it should not be taken as anything more than hearsay. But Dr. Blaha did testify to having seen people gassed at Dachau and babies cremated alive. That is different.

Yeah, that's an unreliable witness, not because of what he stated but because differences among his statements on various occasions made his accuracy seem dubious and there's no corroboration of his deposition by other witnesses. So what? Criminal justice and historiography never took Dr. Blaha seriously. And the credibility of one witness doesn't tell us anything whatsoever about the credibility of any other.

But the important point is that questioning such nonsense usually evokes an hysterical response among the faithful. Just look at this thread:

http://www.thirdreichforum.com/phpBB2/v ... 36&start=0

It sure is worth looking at. See the Faithful Reverend making a big bloody fuss about the depositions of one witness, as if the inaccuracy thereof meant anything at all in regard to the depositions of any other witness. Moreover a fellow like Dr. Blaha, whose depositions criminal justice and historiography obviously knew better than to take at face value. If they had not, they would have assumed that homicidal gassings took place at Dachau concentration camp, for Blaha was the only witness to such events.

Sailor "wonders" why Jews in Krema II or III weren't simply suffocated, while awaiting a leisurely death. Gosh, I don't know, nor do I know why the Kremas were built to such capacity...a minor detail.

All good questions, I think.

Of course. Whatever comes from a fellow True Believer is necessarily good. One may wonder what happens to Smith's vaunted "skepticism" in such cases.

But packing people into a airtight room is a deathtrap in-and-of-itself--and in short order.

Just how short an order? One hour, two, three? Reason enough to speed up the dying by gassing, even if shortening the victims' suffering is not one of the killers' considerations.

I think it raises an excellent problem from the standpoint of process-engineering.

What is it that Smith calls "an excellent problem from the standpoint of process-engineering"? The utterly irrelevant "why did they do it this way when they could have done it that way" - crap that "Revisionists" like to indulge in, perhaps?

And the descriptions of mass-gassings that we have do not leave me with the impression that this was in any way very humane;

What descriptions are you talking about? Quote a few for us, please. Be careful not to include the one of Dr. Miklos Nyiszli.

that is laughable.

Why laughable? Gassing is no more cruel a killing method than shooting or hanging, and making the killing more "humane" - especially for the killers, but also for the victims - was one of the considerations leading to the implementation of gas chambers. Here's how Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss described his impressions after the first gassing of Russian prisoners of war:

It was then that I saw, for the first time, gassed bodies in the mass.
It made me feel uncomfortable and I shuddered, although I had imagined that death by gassing would be worse than it was. I had always thought that the victims would experience a terrible choking sensation. But the bodies, without exception, showed no signs of convulsion. The doctors explained to me that the prussic acid had a paralysing effect on the lungs, but its action was so quick and strong that death came before the convulsions set in, and in this its effects differed from those produced by carbon monoxide or by a general oxygen deficiency.
The killing of these Russian prisoners-of-war did not cause me much concern at the time. The order had been given, and I had to carry it out. I must even admit that this gassing set my mind at rest, for the mass extermination of the Jews was to start soon and at that time neither Eichmann nor I was certain how these mass killings were to be carried out. It would be by gas, but we did not know which gas or how it was to be used. Now we had the gas, and we had established a procedure. I always shuddered at the prospect of carrying out exterminations by shooting, when I thought of the vast numbers concerned, and of the women and children. The shooting of hostages, and the group executions ordered by the Reichsführer SS or by the Reich Security Head Office had been enough for me. I was therefore relieved to think that we were to be spared all these blood-baths, and that the victims too would be spared suffering until their last moment came.

[Sailor]

Xanthro,

You are telling us here some fantastic stories: A man who is dead after 10 minutes of gassing, after he stops breathing and his heart stops beating, is not really dead, but that he will die 10 minutes later or so, at least that is what the doctors have figured out.

This reminds me of the third of Zeno's paradoxes, a Greek metaphysicist:

A man can never die, someone dies either when one is alive or when he is dead. If he dies when he is dead, then he must have died twice. If he dies when he was alive, then he must have been dead and alive at the same time. Therefore he cannot have died.

I was not serious when I said:

But the question is: How fast would this amount kill a man? In 10 minutes? Any testing done on amount of HCN/kg/time/killing of people? And why use Zyklon B at all?

Of course nobody did this kind of testing of people. I thought that Xanthro would look through this.

I am still searching for the information I owe about adheson of HCN to solids (I haven't found it yet, I remember it was in connection with discharging HCN from Zyklon B through pipes and shower heads, and HCN is somewhat like water, you put your hand into it and it is wet, it adhers to the skin of the hand).

The original question was how much Zyklon B was poured into the chutes in order to kill the people below and whether the SS man who did the work had the proper instructions.

Tarpon came up with a calculation made by Dr. Green and I then referred to a calculation by Rudolf who assumed 10 minute killing time at 3000 ppm gas density (based on some data available from US gas executions) for someone (like Roberto) standing at the farthest corner away from the chute and Rudolf arrived at 20 kg Zyklon B to do the job.

After I mentioned Rudolf Roberto got all mad at me and chewed me up. I was worried the man would get a heart attack.

Tarpon tells us that the instructions which I quoted:

Directives for the Use of Prussic Acid (Zyklon) for the Destruction of Vermin (Disinfestation), Document No. NI-9912 Office of Chief Counsel of War Crimes, issued by the Health Institution of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in Prague.

Include a warning about the dangers of HCN and the amount of HCN that could be lethal to people and that this was used to figure everything out. May be. But we really don't know now, do we?

If I would be the SS man on top and would be told that below are 2000 Robertos to be exterminated I would probably pour into each chute 100 kg Zyklon B, and leave it in for at least 2 hours. (Maybe Scott Smith would rather increase this to 200 kg).

[Hans]

Tony,

No gas masks mentioned, for either Boch or anyone else

Not in this interview, but Böck did mention 10 years before when he was interrogated during the pre-trial investigation for the first Auschwitz trial, that the SS officer who opened the Zyklon-B tin and threw it into the Bunker had a gas mask. He also stated that the Jewish prisoners who had to enter the gas-chamber did not had gas masks and he wondered himself why.
This is a very interesting detail. If the gas-chambers were simply made up, the conspiracy either knew that the people who operated them had to wear gas-masks or they didn't. But in this case the SS man Böck said that one group had gas masks, the SS, and the other not, the Jewish Sonderkommando. And he even added that he wondered himself why the prisoners were not given gas-mask when they had to go into the gas-chamber. This seems to be an authentic detail. The SS had to wear gas masks, they cared about their health and there was also the question of responsability in the case of an accident: if the SS officer followed the instructions given to him (wearing a gas mask for example) the SS garrison doctor was made responsible, if he didn't, he himself was. According to several testimonies the red cross car or the truck who drove the Zyklon-B tins to the gas-chambers always carried also a gas mask, the gas mask for the officer who operated the gas-chamber. That this officer always (or at least in most cases) had a gas mask follows from several accounts of former SS men and numerous testimonies of Auschwitz prisoners.

There is also a rather questionable detail in Böck's account. He never said when the prisoners entered the gas-chambers, but it follows from his description that it couldn't have been too long after the gassing. It is of course quite questionable that the Sonderkommando entered the gas-chambers soon after the gassing without gas masks.

A consideration: the Zyklon-B pellets in the gas-chamber lead to a deadly concentration of HCN in the gas-chamber. The victims absorb the poison gas and die. This reduces the HCN concentration of HCN in the gas-chamber. (?)
Further, let's assume that the Zykon-B pellets are crushed by the victims and the HCN is solved in the excrements and blood of the victims. So we assume that there is no more outgassing of HCN in the gas-chamber.
The prisoner takes a breath of fresh air, goes into the gas-chamber for several seconds, takes out a corpse, goes out and breaths fresh air again.

Question: Is it certain that he would die? Is it impossible that the scene described by Richard Böck took place?

If it is, Böck must have told the untruth. The prisoners didn 't enter the gas-chamber immeadiatly after the gassing!
Böck testified about his time as SS man in Auschwitz and he had interest in manipulating his memory when it incriminated him too much. Böck testified that this was the only time he was at the gas-chambers.
This could be wrong. He was a truck driver in Auschwitz and it is not really unlikely that he participated in more gassings. If so, he could have put details from two or more gassings - undeliberately or deliberately - together to form the description quoted by you.

There is another credible detail from his interrogation. He stated that he didn't see any crematoria in Birkenau.
The gassing(s?) described by Böck took place at the Bunker, the little farm houses outside of Birkenau, and Dutch Jews were killed according to Böck. The only period when Dutch Jews were killed in the Bunker was in the second half of 1942. There were no crematoria in Birkenau in 1942, that's why Böck couldn't see any when he was there during this gassing!

The testimony of Böck can be read here:

http://www.fpp.co.uk/Auschwitz/docs/con ... 21160.html

[Sailor]

Mr. Tarpon questions the 9.5 cu meter/hr air exchanges for morgue 1. Here I repeat how I arrived at it from one of my posts above:

The capacity of the ventilation system in morgue 1 in Krema II was 4800 cubic meter/hr for the exhaust system, according to billing documentations from the Topf Company, who designed and built the Crematoria. (The 8000 cu meter/hr capacity Tarpon is using stems from pharmacist Pressac, without any indication of the source for this).

The volume of morgue 1 was 504 cu meter which gives (4 800/504 =) appr. 9.5 air exchanges per hour. According to the engineering and construction handbook for crematoria by Heepkes "Die Leichen-Verbrennungs Anstalten" the recommended ventilation of morgues at that time was between 6 and 10 air exchanges per hour, depending on the frequency of use. It appears to me that the ventilation system of morgue 1 with 9.5 was correctly dimensioned for the application.

I might add that there were actually two fans of the same capacity installed, one for the fresh air intake, and one for the exhaust. These fans worked in series, not in parallel.

If there is anything wrong with above, please tell us, Tarpon. I always like to learn something new. Maybe you could look also into one of those US ventilation handbooks (I don't have a copy) and see what they are recommending at the present time for underground morgues in th US.

Please?

[tonyh]

So basically Böck should have had somebody there in the later "testimonies" nudging him in the ribs when he embellished his story or left something out. He may have mentioned gas masks for the SS 10 yrs before, but why not mention them later. It's a very important part of the testimony. Also his mentioning that the Sonderkomando had no masks smacks of the dubious nature of his testimony. Why would the SS send in the Sonderkomando into the gas chamber completely free of gas masks, when they had a job that was vital to the speed and the very process of the gas chamber operation. Especially if there was a "blue haze" coming out of the gas chamber after the doors were opened as he said. It makes no sense whatsoever and makes me even more doubtful of Böck's testimony, to be honest. Also his later testimony he says that the gassing operation took ten minutes. Then the Sonderkomando were sent in to "tear the bodies apart". If the Sonderkomando were sent in after ten minutes without gas masks and there was a "blue haze" coming from the gas chamber, they would be added to the casualty list immediately, therefore make the Sonderkomando part of the gassing operation absolutely useless.

Tony

[Xanthro]

So basically Böck should have had somebody there in the later "testimonies" nudging him in the ribs when he embellished his story or left something out. He may have mentioned gas masks for the SS 10 yrs before, but why not mention them later. It's a very important part of the testimony. Also his mentioning that the Sonderkomando had no masks smacks of the dubious nature of his testimony. Why would the SS send in the Sonderkomando into the gas chamber completely free of gas masks, when they had a job that was vital to the speed and the very process of the gas chamber operation. Especially if there was a "blue haze" coming out of the gas chamber after the doors were opened as he said. It makes no sense whatsoever and makes me even more doubtful of Böck's testimony, to be honest. Also his later testimony he says that the gassing operation took ten minutes. Then the Sonderkomando were sent in to "tear the bodies apart". If the Sonderkomando were sent in after ten minutes without gas masks and there was a "blue haze" coming from the gas chamber, they would be added to the casualty list immediately, therefore make the Sonderkomando part of the gassing operation absolutely useless.

Tony

Maybe you don't understand what the Sonderkomando were. They were Jewish prisoners who would eventually be gassed or killed in some manner, then is little to no need to protect them from residual HCN.

A gas mask wouldn't have helped anyway. Gas masks do not protect you from HCN, especially with any lengthy exposure. They do help you against the cough irrantent used in Zyklon B.

The pellets were lowered into a chamber from the roof, the person doing this is exposured to very small amounts of HCN, as it takes a few seconds for the HCN to become gaseous from the pellet mixture. A gas mask wouldn't really help you much even here, but does add some psyhological benefit, and you don't go into a coughing fit.

Once it appears that everyone in the chamber is dead, the remaining mixture is hauled back up through the chamber and onto the roof. This is likely the most dangerous part in terms of possible exposure to HCN.

Once either all the HCN hase become gaseous, or the remaining HCN is removed, it's a simple matter to ventilate the chamber enough to allow people to enter without immediately dying.

You wouldn't even need to have ventilation other than the doors being open, the remaining HCN would quickly dissapate and the concentration would drop to a tolerable level.

You could walk into a room with a 100 ppm, grap a body and walk out, and do this over and ovor. You wouldn't die right away, but you'd get sick and have long terms health problems. But why would anyone care about long term health problems of people slated to be murdered?

Once the ppm drops below 50, people could continue working for extended periods of time.

Xanthro

[Sailor]

The ocean is so big and my boat is so small. And the seas are hight, 60 feet tall and it blows shit! Mate: Reef the sails and tie down the hatches. Blow me down and run away!
Hurricane Tarpon is approaching.

Mr. Tarpon took exception and expresses his doubts about the 70 air exchanges for the 'Entwesungskammern' (delousing chambers) BW5a and BW5b in Auschwitz, where friend Roberto stores his apples and oranges. I did not make this up, I gave the source information in my post. See above.

There were over 30 of these delousing chambers in Auschwitz, they served the need for disinfection for the whole area around.

Typically the fumigation of clothes etc. etc. took about 1 hour of gassing and 15 minutes ventilation inside these delousing chambers.
(Reference: F. Puntigam/H. Breymesser/E. Bernfus, Blausäuregaskammern zur Fleckfieberabwehr, Sonderveröffentlichung des Reichsarbeitsblattes, Berlin 1943).

Assuming this as correct and the amount of Zyklon B/HCN as per our document No. NI-9912, what then would Mr Tarpon with his newly found engineering wisdom come up with for the necessary air circulation?

I referred to BW5a and BW5b as fumigation buildings, in contrast to dwellings like barracks etc. Morgue 1 is somewhat between those two: Occasionally it was necessary to desinfect it, some of the stiffs that were stored there were infected with typhus. The only way to ventilate it would be with the 9.5 cu meter/hr air exchange system. Being underground there were no windows, capito?

BW5a and BW5b went actually through a change in utilization. At one time they used HCN for disinfection, later they changed to heat and steam for this purpose. Unfortunately I do not have the design details of their ventilation system. These fumigation rooms were designed by Topf or Huta. Oberingenieur (Senior engineer) Walter Schreiber was construction superintendent of the firm Huta in the Auschwitz camp complex. We have a lot of information from him but I think that he is gone now.

Concerning the ventilation of these rooms there is of course a possibility of 'over-design', many engineers suffer from this especially when the construction money does not come out of their own pockets. Like: Better safe than sorry etc.

[Xanthro]

Xanthro,

You are telling us here some fantastic stories: A man who is dead after 10 minutes of gassing, after he stops breathing and his heart stops beating, is not really dead, but that he will die 10 minutes later or so, at least that is what the doctors have figured out.

Sailor, you need to work on reading comprehension.

If you got, "is not really dead" out of my post, then you are an idiot.

I'll use small words so you can understand.

Medically, the time of death is not the time that the person actually died.

Can you understand that? If someone is declared dead at 12:15, that doesn't mean he or she actually died at 12:15 only that the doctor declared the death at that time.

Here is an example you should be able to follow. A person in a hospital suffers a heart attack, and flat lines (the heart stops beating) at 12:00 a team of doctors try to save the patient. The team determines that the person cannot be saved at 12:20. The time of death is 12:20. Not when the persons heart stopped, even if that time is known.

Do you understand, or was it too complex?

In executions, a prisoner is not declared medically dead when his or her heart stops beating, but depending on State law, a number of minutes must pass after the last heart beat.

In some States, you can't rely on equipment to monitor the heart failure, the gas chamber has to be ventilated, and the doctor has to enter the chamber as listen for a heart beat.

The time of death is listed as when the doctor makes this check, which is always minutes AFTER the person has died.

That is why your comparasion of death times between US executions and those using HCN during the Holocaust as invalid.

Xanthro

[Sailor]

Says Tarpon:

Sailor, you and I will never agree, or perhaps we will, but I mean no disrespect. I will also say <grin>, that you will eventually agree with some of my arguements!

Not to arrogant, is it?

No problem here. Do you have any? Actually I am a very agreeable person.

Says Tarpon:

Can you back up that any of these quotes are anything more than a writer putting into print what was fed him/her per Leuchter's qualifications? Let me put it this way: I just got done speaking at a national convention on Thursday, July 25th, 2002 on mold remediation and as I was following Dr. Michael Berry, retired from the US EPA, my biography, supplied by me, sounded most impressive.

Let's cut to the quick: name a US state gas chamber used for capital punishment that Fred Leuchter designed, built, consulted on, and is being used, or was at one time being used.

The famous Missouri, Leuchter built gas chamber does not exist; it was never built.

You have any others?

Listen boss, I am not your flunky. You can go yourself to any public library and check out the back issues of the mentioned material yourself.

Leuchter was lucky. Normally your side likes to beat up people who don't agree with them, Prof. Faurisson was badly hurt more than 8 times, Ginsburg who did not get along with his fellow Zionists was severely beaten when visiting the grave of his wife in Munich, Christophersen treated with acid, houses and ware houses burnt down and printing shops destroyed.

Says 'Lusty Debbie': Serves them right!


All that the forensic tests as done by Leuchter, the Cracow Institute and by Rudolf indicate is that there is no indication that morgue 1 was ever used to gas people with HCN.

Nothing more.
Nothing less.
And nothing else.

Maybe some other gas was used, maybe sarin gas, or maybe bottled CO?

It is up to the believer gang to prove that they performed forensic tests in Auschwitz, which would indicate the use of HCN homicidally, and not to the critical thinkers.

Sofar we haven't seen any. All we get is criticism and condemnation of someone elses work from your people.

[Xanthro]

All that the forensic tests as done by Leuchter, the Cracow Institute and by Rudolf indicate is that there is no indication that morgue 1 was ever used to gas people with HCN.

Nothing more.
Nothing less.
And nothing else.

Maybe some other gas was used, maybe sarin gas, or maybe bottled CO?

It is up to the believer gang to prove that they performed forensic tests in Auschwitz, which would indicate the use of HCN homicidally, and not to the critical thinkers.

Sofar we haven't seen any. All we get is criticism and condemnation of someone elses work from your people.

You get condemnation because you post drivel like this. Both Leuchter and Rudolf show traces of HCN, which shouldn't be there.

Then idiots try to claim it was a morgue and that HCN was used to stop typhus. It's amazing how stupid you people really are.

HCN can be used to control a typhus outbreak because it kills the lice that SPREAD the disease.

HCN does not kill TYPHUS. In fact, why on earth would someone want to delouse dead bodies that are going to be burned?

It's mind boggling that the simpliest of facts escape you, then you have the audacity to claim to be a critical thinker.

Like others of your ilk, the only thing critical about you is how you view holocaust evidence that shows Jews were killed. No amount of such evidence will ever suffice, and the weakest and mose easily refuted evidence is accepted at face value by you as long as it supports the opposite.

Xanthro

[tonyh]

>>Maybe you don't understand what the Sonderkomando were. They were Jewish prisoners who would eventually be gassed or killed in some manner, then is little to no need to protect them from residual HCN.<<

I know exactly what the Sonderkomando was and what their usual ethnic orientation was. However, I simply do not buy the assertion that the SS would send them into a gas chamber without some form of protection, regardless of how they "felt" about them. It makes no sense at all. If something, ie the Sonderkomando, is an integral part of an operation, ie gassing, then there is no point in having that integral part of your operation dying in mid operation, thus severely holding up the entire operation and limiting the amount of Jews etc gassed. Remember, this was supposedly a 24 hr industrial operation.

Tony

[Roberto]

Mr. Tarpon took exception and expresses his doubts about the 70 air exchanges for the 'Entwesungskammern' (delousing chambers) BW5a and BW5b in Auschwitz, where friend Roberto stores his apples and oranges. I did not make this up, I gave the source information in my post. See above.

The source is Mr. Rudolf, I presume. The worst source imaginable, as his persistent attempts to fool suckers show. Regarding air exchanges, Rudolf's argumentation is analyzed by Dr. Richard Green as follows:

Rudolf appears to know more about chemistry than the average Holocaust denier and is therefore capable of making some arguments that require some work to deconstruct. That his arguments are made honestly requires further assessment. In an article on the Internet he makes an argument that especially bears examination in shedding light on this question. In this article, he uses the word "exchange" in two different senses. Now, there is nothing wrong with using a word in two different senses, but when doing so in two subsequent paragraphs in such a way that it leaves a deceptive impression, one has an obligation to flag the change in meaning. The argument discusses the ventilation of gas chambers, an issue that I revisit below. Rudolf gives a probabilistic explanation of the same mathematical formula I use below to estimate dilution:

Imagine, if you will, that someone is given a bucket containing 100 blue balls. Each time he reaches into the bucket, he puts in one red ball, briefly mixes the contents and, without looking, takes out one randomly selected ball. How often will he have to do this until only 50 blue balls are left in the bucket and all the others are red? [...] In the case described above, it takes an average of 70 exchanges before half the blue balls have been replaced by red ones.

[emphasis mine]

In Rudolf's example a single room exchange of air would be equivalent to 100 "exchanges" of balls. Rudolf's next sentence uses the very same word "exchange" in a way that misleads the reader:

Calculations have shown that the ventilation facilities in the alleged gas chambers of Crematoria II and III in Birkenau - facilities designed only for ventilation of ordinary mortuaries - could have performed at most 6 to 8 air exchanges per hour.

[emphasis mine]

By using the same word "exchange" in two contexts he gives the impression that ventilation occurs very slowly. What he calls an "air exchange" in the second paragraph corresponds to 100 of his "exchanges" from the first, though he nowhere makes this clear. It seems the reader is expected to believe that it would take ten hours before the level of poison was cut in half; certainly Rudolf does nothing to dispel this notion. In a subsequent article on the Internet, published on May 4, 1999, Jamie McCarthy and I pointed out this dual use of the word exchange. Rudolf's response was to claim that the fault was with our translation. The article that we quoted, however, was an English language article available on the website of CODOH, which presumably appears with Rudolf's permission. I pointed out this "oversight" on July 28, 2000. As of March 10, 2001, the online version still contained the deceptive wording.

From Richard Green's expert opinion submitted to the Court of Appeal at the Irving-Lipstadt trial (the one that probably caused David Irving to get cold feet and withdraw Rudolf's affidavit as evidence, remember?).

Source of quote:

http://www.holocaust-history.org/irving ... affweb.pdf

[Roberto]

>>Maybe you don't understand what the Sonderkomando were. They were Jewish prisoners who would eventually be gassed or killed in some manner, then is little to no need to protect them from residual HCN.<<

I know exactly what the Sonderkomando was and what their usual ethnic orientation was. However, I simply do not buy the assertion that the SS would send them into a gas chamber without some form of protection, regardless of how they "felt" about them. It makes no sense at all. If something, ie the Sonderkomando, is an integral part of an operation, ie gassing, then there is no point in having that integral part of your operation dying in mid operation, thus severely holding up the entire operation and limiting the amount of Jews etc gassed. Remember, this was supposedly a 24 hr industrial operation.

Tony

Why dying in mid operation?

Residual amounts of HCN such as left in the gas chambers after absorption of most of the gas by the victims' lungs and ventilation of the remainder may not have been exactly healthy, but it wouldn't kill either. In the above ground gas chambers that had no ventilation systems, the first Sonderkommando folks who entered wore gas masks, IIRC.