Regarding the claims of Robert Faurisson,
Gas chambers: Rudolf Höß, the Auschwitz Kommandant swore in an affidavit that Zyklon-B was dropped into the death chamber through a small opening.
Referring to Pery Broad's testimony,
He described how the area surrounding the crematorium was kept closed. The Jews arrived in columns. They were told they were going to be disinfected. After they entered the chamber, the door was bolted. The contents of tins of Zyklon-B were thrown into the chamber through six holes in the roof.
Referring to Kula's testimony,
Kula testified that four wire mesh columns were made for the gas chambers in crematoria 2 and 3: these columns were described by Kula as "structures of ever finer mesh", which contained a removable can within the innermost column which was used to extract, after the gassing, the Zyklon "crystals" or pellets that had absorbed the hydrocyanide.
Also documents from February 1943 referred to the provision of gastight doors and windows.
In a letter dated 31 March 1943 Bischoff presses for the delivery of a gastight door with a spyhole of 8mm glass, with a rubber seal and metal fitting. There is a timesheet of a construction worker which makes reference to fitting gastight windows to crematorium.
Pictures or plans of gas mass-killing chambers: After the revelations in the Allied media concerning the gas chambers at the camp at Majdanek in late 1944, Himmler had ordered the dismantling of the extermination installations in the crematoria at Auschwitz. In late 1944 the Nazis duly dynamited the crematoria and destroyed the camp archives. Only the documents from the Central Construction Office archives accidentally survived.
Nazis used gas chambers to kill both Jews and non-Jews by the historic and forensic evidence listed below.
Speeches by Nazi officials: Speeches by Heinrich Luitpold Himmler and Paul Joseph Goebbels confirm the plans of extermination for Jews.
Himmler's speech at Posen on October 4, 1943 was captured on audiotape (Trial of the Major War Criminals, 1948, Vol. XXIX, p. 145):
I refer now to the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish people. This is one of those things that is easily said: "the Jewish people are being exterminated," says every Party member, "quite true, it's part of our plans, the elimination of the Jews, extermination, we're doing it."
Goebbels (as translated in Lochner, The Goebbels Diaries, 1948, pp. 86, 147-148):
February 14, 1942: The Führer once again expressed his determination to clean up the Jews in Europe pitilessly. There must be no squeamish sentimentalism about it. The Jews have deserved the catastrophe that has now overtaken them. Their destruction will go hand in hand with the destruction of our enemies. We must hasten this process with cold ruthlessness.
March 27, 1942: The procedure is a pretty barbaric one and not to be described here more definitely. Not much will remain of the Jews. On the whole it can be said that about 60 per cent of them will have to be liquidated whereas only 40 per cent can be used for forced labor.
Six extermination camps were established between 1941 and 1943. The extermination camps can be divided into two groups: the “pure” extermination camps and the combined extermination/concentration camps.
“Pure" extermination camps (Chelmno and the Operation Reinhard camps):
Four camps, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka (the Operation Reinhard camps) and Chelmno were all “pure” extermination facilities.
In 1942, systematic mass killing in stationary gas chambers (with carbon monoxide gas generated by diesel engines) began at Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka, all in Poland. As victims were "unloaded" from cattle cars, they were told that they had to be disinfected in "showers." The Nazi and Ukrainian guards sometimes shouted at and beat the victims, who were ordered to enter the "showers" with raised arms to allow as many people as possible to fit into the gas chambers. The tighter the gas chambers were packed, the faster the victims suffocated.
Combined extermination/concentration camps (Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek): Both of these camps were originally concentration camps. In time, however, they were included in the organised mass murder, following the construction of gas chambers.
The Nazis constantly searched for more efficient means of extermination. At the Auschwitz camp in Poland, they conducted experiments with Zyklon B (previously used for fumigation) by gassing some 600 Soviet prisoners of war and 250 ill prisoners in September 1941. Zyklon B pellets, converted to lethal gas when exposed to air. They proved the quickest gassing method and were chosen as the means of mass murder at Auschwitz.
Written documents: Orders for Zyklon-B gas, blueprints and orders for building materials for the crematoria, etc.
Orders for Zyklon-B- In a letter requesting for a truck to bring Zyklon-B to Auschwitz, the term "resettlement of Jews" is used as a camouflage term to refer to extermination. Another document asks for "material for special treatment" which is another term used to refer to extermination which is present here.
The first and most significant body of such evidence is the blue print material, which consists of a series of architectural drawings which depict the adaptation of crematoria 2 and 3 and the construction of crematoria 4 and 5. None of these drawings refers overtly to any part of the buildings being designed or intended to serve as gas chambers whether for fumigation or extermination purposes. In particular the drawings for Leichenkeller (morgue) 1 in crematorium 2 make no provision for ducts or chimneys by means of which Zyklon-B pellets might be inserted through the roof.
Eyewitness testimony from camp officials, employees and prisoners: Sonderkommando diaries, SS officer Oskar Gröning, confessions of guards such as SS-Unterscharfuehrer Pery Broad and commandants such as SS- Obersturmbannfuehrer Rudolf Hoess and SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer (Captain) Hans Aumeier who admitted that gas chambers had been in operation in Auschwitz and that on many occasions they had been used for killing Jews.
The principal of these Rudolf Hoss, the Auschwitz Kommandant, was captured by the British on 11th March 1946. In the course of his interrogation at Nuremberg Hoss produced a detailed list of the numbers of people transported to Auschwitz from various countries in Europe. The list totalled well over one million. When asked how so large a number could be accommodated at the camp, given that Hoss had said that there were facilities for only 130,000 at the camp, Hoss answered that most of those transported to the camp were taken there to be exterminated.
Hoss later swore an affidavit in which he admitted that he had overseen the extermination, by gassing and burning, of at least two and a half million people. He stated that Zyklon-B was dropped into the death chamber through a small opening. It took from 3 to 15 minutes to kill those in the chamber. After half an hour the bodies were removed. Sonderkommandos or Special commandos removed their rings and extracted the gold from their teeth. Hoss described the process by which those to be gassed were selected. He stated that attempts were made to deceive the victims that they were going to be deloused. He said that the gas chambers were capable of accommodating 2,000 people at one time. Dr Gustav Gilbert, the Nuremberg prison psychologist, recorded in his diary an account of a conversation with Hoss in which he confirmed that two and a half million people had been exterminated under his direction.
Photographs: Photos taken of the burning of bodies that were smuggled out of Auschwitz and of the women on the way to gas chambers.
The Auschwitz Protocols: Rudolph Vrba and Alfred Wetzler were Slovak Jewish prisoners who escaped from Auschwitz in April 1944. They prepared a comprehensive report on what was happening at Auschwitz, and sent it to the West. The information about Auschwitz included relatively accurate drawings of its main camps and the extermination facilities.
Nazi officer evidence for destruction of records: Nazi officers such Rudolf Hoss and Adolf Eichmann have confirmed to have received orders to destroy all records related to the extermination.
Rudolf Höss, the Commandant of Auschwitz, wrote after the war that Adolf Eichmann, the bureaucrat in charge of organizing the deportations of Jews to the death camps, was "the only SS officer who was allowed to keep records concerning these liquidation operations, according to the orders of the Reichsführer-SS [Himmler]. All other units which took part in any way had to destroy all records immediately."
Adolf Eichmann, in his memoirs, which were taped by a reporter named Willem Sassen and then turned into a book, Ich: Adolf Eichmann, published in 1980, said: "Around the end of 1941 or the beginning of 1942 Heydrich, the Chef of the SIPO [Security Police] and SD [Security Service], told me in conversation that the Führer had ordered the physical destruction of the Jewish opponent."
Camp remains: The Auschwitz camp complex was located near the small Polish town of Oswiecim, about thirty-two miles southwest of Cracow.
Auschwitz consisted of several camps. Auschwitz I (Auschwitz-Zasole (The "Stammlager" - Original Camp, Headquarters for the entire complex) served mainly as a concentration camp, Auschwitz II (Auschwitz-Birkenau) or Birkenau, primarily as a killing facility, and Auschwitz III (Auschwitz-Buna) or Monowitz, a forced labor camp. Forced labor was used throughout the Auschwitz system and several smaller forced labor camps served as satellites of Auschwitz.
Birkenau became the largest killing facility in the German Reich. Its four crematoria could gas and incinerate thousands of people each day. Forensic examination conducted showed demonstration of the homicidal use of both the gas chambers and the crematoria for the purpose of exterminating large numbers of prisoners per Pressac.
Research in 1990 by Jan Markiewicz et.al. showed that Cyanide residue was found in high concentrations in the delousing chambers, and lower concentrations in the homicidal gas chambers which is consistent with the amounts required to kill lice and humans.
The present study shows that in spite of the passage of a considerable period of time (over 45 years) in the walls of the facilities which once were in contact with hydrogen cyanide the vestigial amounts of the combinations of this constituent of Zyklon B have been preserved. This is also true of the ruins of the former gas chambers. The cyanide compounds occur in the building materials only locally, in the places where the conditions arose for their formation and persistence for such a long time.
Polish Central Commission for Investigation of German Crimes:
In 1945 the forensic laboratory in Cracow carried out an analysis of, firstly, zinc covers removed from the alleged gas chambers at Birkenau and, secondly, 25.5kg of human hair recovered from the camp. Both were found to contain traces of cyanide.
Olere drawings: David Olere was a painter who was deported to Auschwitz in March 1943. He worked in the Sonderkommando living in the attic of Crematorium 3 and observed the building and related activity. He has also produced over fifty sketches in 1945-46.
Olere's sketches are corroborated by plans that the Russians found in the Central Construction Office, save that Olere depicts vertical wire mesh columns in the gas chamber which are not to be found in the original architectural plans for the site. Olere's arrangement has the mesh columns attached to the west side of the first and fifth structural columns and on the east side of the third and seventh structural columns in the gas chamber.
Numbers evidence: Research on documentation provided the numbers of prisoners shipped to the various camps, the numbers that were transferred, and the number liberated. The difference between the latter with the former two figures gives an approximation of the numbers who died or were killed per The Destruction of the European Jews by Hilberg, 1961.
Construction of the gas chambers and the method of killing is researched extensively by a former Holocaust denier Jean-Claude Pressac in 1989 and further denials by an American execution technician Fred A. Leuchter are analyzed in a document called 'The Leuchter Report: A Layman's Guide'.
Judgement Statement of the Judge Thomas T. Johnson regarding gassing of Jews: Referring to a case between Mel Mermelstein, an Auschwitz survivor and an organization called IHR in 1981, no "credible evidence" was produced for disproving the existence of gas chambers for the purpose of killing human beings at or in Auschwitz.
The Honorable Thomas T. Johnson, on October 9, 1981, took judicial notice as follows:
Under Evidence Code Section 452(h), this court does take judicial notice of the fact that Jews were gassed to death at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland during the summer of 1944 ... It just simply is a fact that falls within the definition of Evidence Code Section 452(h). It is not reasonably subject to dispute. And it is capable of immediate and accurate determination by resort to sources of reasonably indisputable accuracy. It is simply a fact.
Judgement Statement of the Judge Hon. Mr. Justice Gray about existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz: In 2000, in a case between David John Cadwell Irving and Penguin Books Limited
Having considered the various arguments advanced by Irving to assail the effect of the convergent evidence relied on by the Defendants, it is my conclusion that no objective, fair-minded historian would have serious cause to doubt that there were gas chambers at Auschwitz and that they were operated on a substantial scale to kill hundreds of thousands of Jews.
Evidence of underground gas chamber roofs: The underground room, called Leichenkeller 1 on the German blueprints, was in fact a homicidal poison gas chamber, used to kill many thousands of Jews during the latter years of World War II per Peter Myers.
We are left with one other form of evidence: archaeological. This evidence shows that there are three locations on the roof which fit the evidence of the eyewitnesses regarding the presence of roof holes. But based upon the collapse of the 20 year old Revisionist assertion that there "are no holes in the roof of Krema 2's gas chamber", we would be willing to place a large bet that one is there too.
Calculation of the quantity of Zyklon-B required for fumigation: The amount of Zyklon-B delivered to Auschwitz vastly exceeded the quantity delivered to other camps when calculated by Professor Robert Jan van Pelt, Professor of Architecture in the School of Architecture, University of Waterloo in Canada who is an acknowledged authority on Auschwitz. Total Zyklon B Ordered for Auschwitz camps in 1943 was 12,000 kg which was an increase of 60% (160% of 7500) when compared to total Zyklon B of 7500 kg ordered for Auschwitz camps in 1942.
He made a detailed calculation, based on delivery documents and on stated assumptions about the frequency of fumigations, that of the total amount of Zyklon-B delivered to Auschwitz in 1943 (12,000 kilos) not more than 9,000 kilos would have been required for fumigation. That would leave unaccounted for 3,000 kilos, which van Pelt contended would have been more than enough to kill the 250,000 Jews estimated to have been gassed to death that year.
According to figures provided by the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, the overall number of victims of Auschwitz in the years 1940-1945 is estimated at between 1,100,000 and 1,500,000 people. The majority of them, and above all the mass transports of Jews who arrived beginning in 1942, died in the gas chambers.
Jews were not the only victims of this Nazi German killing machine - historians estimate that among the people sent to Auschwitz there were at least 1,100,000 Jews from all the countries of occupied Europe, over 140,000 Poles (mostly political prisoners), approximately 20,000 Gypsies from several European countries, over 10,000 Soviet prisoners of war, and over 10,000 prisoners of other nationalities.
Between 750,000 and 950,000 Jews were killed by gas at Treblinka; 550,000 at Belzec; 200,000 at Sobibor and 150-200,000 at Chelmno. Those were the estimates based on expert German witnesses and accepted in the German criminal prosecutions in the 1960s.
One prominent Holocaust historian, Gerald Reitlinger, estimated that perhaps 700,000 Jews perished at Auschwitz. French Holocaust historian Jean-Claude Pressac estimated in 1993 that the number of those who perished there was about 800,000 - of whom 630,000 were Jewish. Fritjof Meyer, a respected foreign policy analyst estimated that altogether 500,000 or 510,000 persons, Jews and non-Jews, perished in Auschwitz.
