Post
by David Thompson » 02 Mar 2004 22:21
Dan -- Jean-Claude Pressac talks about Krematorium I in his work Auschwitz: Technique and operation of the gas chambers, The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, New York: 1989, pp. 123-61. He says that during WWII this gas chamber was originally used as a morgue for the Krematorium, and by the end of 1941 was converted into a homicidal gas chamber. It was only used occasionally, and not continuously, for homicidal gassing until some time in 1942 (p. 132). Pressac says that the number of victims is unknown -- "probably not more than 10 000." (p. 132). Krematorium I was abandoned in 1943, with the three furnaces dismantled and the chimney demolished. (p. 132) After the bombing of the Monowitz Buna facility by the USAAF on 13 Sept 1944, the SS converted what was left of Krematorium I into an air raid shelter for patients at the SS hospital next door. (pp. 132-33). The old morgue/gas chamber was divided into 4 rooms during this reconstruction. Immediately after the liberation of Auschwitz in 1945, Polish authorities began to re-convert the building into a Krematorium. This reconstruction was done from the memory of former prisoners, because the architectural drawings, etc. had not been collected and evaluated yet. (p. 133). In February 1988 Fred Leuchter visited Auschwitz and took seven unauthorized scraping samples from the bricks and cement of this structure. Leuchter had the samples tested for cyanide traces, and six of the seven samples from the former morgue were positive for the presence of cyanide. (p. 133).
Pressac explained the presence of blue staining in the disinfestation chambers by saying that, in the disinfestation process, clothes, etc. were exposed to heavy concentrations of the Zyklon b for long periods of time -- 10-16 hours. However, Pressac says, in the homicidal gas chambers the gas only took 10 minutes or so to kill the folks inside, after which time it was pumped out. If I can relocate this passage I'll scan and post it, along with a page reference.
