The Gas Chamber of Sherlock Holmes
5. The Eastern Camps, Polevoi's Report, and the Gerstein Statement
ALREADY IN THE SUMMER of 1944, the Soviet propagandist Ilya Ehrenburg began acquiring testimonies from the Aktion Reinhardt Camps. Some of these were collected and published in Merder fun Folker in 1945.178 Looking over some of these testaments today, one finds that while gassing claims are repeated, they are not usually presented with much detail.179 We should keep in mind however that for these Aktion Reinhardt camps (Sobibor, Treblinka, and Belzec) the buildings had been dismantled and there were no physical traces of gas chambers.180 No orders, correspondence, or documents concerning gas chambers were presented at the time, nor has there been any such documentation since.181 Our knowledge of these three camps -- in which today it is said that close to two million were killed -- rested then, as now, solely on witness depositions and SS confessions.182 The only corroboration for the actions alleged at these camps are some mass graves, which by normal estimation of grave mass, contain perhaps a few tens of thousands of bodies altogether.183 This may indicate murders and mass executions of some type, but they do not indicate mass exterminations, let alone by poison gas.
At the end of January, Auschwitz was liberated, and the Red Army found about six thousand prisoners who were considered too ill by the Germans to march back to Germany.184 Photographs of the liberated inmates, that included several hundred children, indicate old age, even infirmity, but neither starvation nor epidemics.185 Obviously the fact that such inmates were alive tended to contradict the already reigning conception; later, an SS man would confess that Himmler had ordered all exterminations to cease the previous November, in fact, precisely on November 26, 1944, the day the WRB report was issued.186 Needless to say no documentary evidence in support of this confession has ever surfaced.187
At the same time, the Soviets made reference ot the liberated Auschwitz camp in their national propaganda organ, Pravda. After a brief reference on February 1, a full report, by correspondent Boris Polevoi, was published on Friday, February 2, 1945, less than a week after the camp had been liberated, and a full three months before the official Soviet report on Auschwitz.
Polevoi's indebtedness to the Majdanek reportage is explicit, but at the same time there are some differences:
Last year, when the Red Army revealed to the world the terrible and abominable secrets of Majdanek, the Germans in Auschwitz began to wipe out the traces of their crimes. They leveled the mounds of the so-called "old" graves in the Eastern part of the camp, tore up and destroyed the traces of the electric conveyor belt, on which hundreds of people were simultaneously electrocuted, their bodies falling onto the slow moving conveyor belt which carried them to the top of the blast furnace where they fell in, were completely burned, their bones converted to meal in the rolling mills, and then sent to the surrounding fields.
In retreat were taken the special transportable apparatuses for killing children. The stationary gas chambers in the eastern part of the camp were restructured, even little turrets and other architectural embellishments were added so that they would look like innocent garages.
There is one major surprise to this narrative: first, it is completely different from the report of the Soviet Special Commission on Auschwitz. That report, in turn, would show the influence of the War Refugee Board (WRB) Report of November 26, 1945. An obvious inference is that the Soviet Auschwitz narrative was revised subsequent to this report to make it harmonize with the various anonymous messages which comprised the WRB report. Nevertheless, Polevoi's report shows other influences and connections.
For example, the concept of the "factory of death" is today well-known in the Holocaust literature, but appears to have its beginnings here. That concept in turn seems clearly linked to Russian, Soviet, and Western symbolism rejecting the industrial factory system, compare the short stories of Anton Chekhov or various writings of Maxim Gorky, or further the angst of German Expressionism. Meanwhile, the concept of the Germans "wiping out the traces of their crimes" goes back, as we have seen, to the Katyn Forest revelations of 1943.
It hardly needs to be pointed out that the "electric conveyor belt" has no place in any subsequent Auschwitz narratives, this story element is probably linked to the reports concerning the large electric chambers at Belzec and elsewhere. The "special transportable apparatuses for killing children" are probably references to gas vans, their special utilization for that purpose first attested at the Krasnodar-Kharkov trials. The description of "stationary gas chambers" is apparently a reference to either the delousing stations BW 5/A and 5/B at Birkenau, or else Crematoria IV and V. The reference to the "gas chambers" as "garages" ("garazhi") was a characterization first made of the "gas chambers" at Majdanek.
What is most striking about this press report is not its derivative nature or that it is totally at variance with the version of Auschwitz that we have come to know, substituting the traditional atrocity record with another, completely imaginary one. Rather, that the first non-anonymous observer at the Auschwitz camp could be so far from the current narrative speaks not only to the inaccuracy of this initial report, but also to the artifice of subsequent ones.
Shortly after Polevoi's report was published, Soviet interrogators developed affidavits from Pavel Leleko, who had been a police guard at Treblinka.188 Coincidentally, Leleko's interrogations are supposed to have begun on the same day that the WRB Report was issued, three months before. On the following February 20 and 21, 1945, Leleko contributed two affidavits, and these rehearse the structure of the Treblinka mass gassing claim, and indeed, the gassing claim for all the Aktion Reinhard camps.189
The Leleko depositions contain the following details of the gassing process:
The victims were detrained, asked to turn in all valuables, were separated by sex, and stripped. Then the victims were walked to a separate area that housed the gas chambers.
The gas chambers had flowers growing alongside in boxes. Instead of a door the victims entered through a heavy hanging made from a rug.
A long passage moved through the length of the building, five rooms on each side (10 in all).
Four rooms on each side comprised gas chambers, 6 meters square in size, 2.5/3 meters high.
The center of the ceiling had a light fixture with no wiring and two showerheads whereby the gas was let into the chamber.
The walls, floor, and ceiling were of cement.
Each gas chamber had two doors, one opening to the outside whereby the bodies were removed.
500 people per chamber (500 people in 36 square meters).
Eight rooms out of the 10 used for gas chambers, the other two contained "powerful German engines" that fed the gas into the chambers.
After being filled, the gas chambers were sealed "by hermetically closing doors."
Progress of the gassing was observed by looking through a "porthole" "near each door."
The gassing took 15 minutes.
About 20 meters distant was the old gas chamber building, which had only three gas chambers.
The bodies were disposed in a concrete incineration pit about 20 meters long and 1 meter deep.190
The interrogation of Leleko is valuable because it is one of the most detailed description of a gassing at one of the Aktion Reinhardt camps.191 All other confessions, to the extent that they describe the gassing process at all, show clear traces of harmony with Leleko's testimony.192
The problem is that Leleko's testimony offers nothing new. The entire shower-gas-burning sequence was already well known by this time, so Leleko's remarks are not revelatory and could have been derivative. More interesting are his comments on the unwired lightbulbs in each room, and the two showerheads through which the gas was supposed to have filled the chamber. Such details tends to confirm our surmise that the association of showers and gas would inevitably lead to the conception of the gas actually coming down through the nozzle: although this method does not seem that it would be particularly effective, given that carbon monoxide is lighter than air.
More serious is the fact that the description of the building sounds remarkably similar to the Bath and Disinfection Complex at Majdanek. Again, we have a long corridor. Again, medium sized rooms into which hundreds of people are forced in the nude. Again, the chambers are constructed with cement, or more likely reinforced concrete. Again, each chamber has two doors. Again, the doors are hermetically sealed, and again, the dying are observed through a porthole or peephole. Even the number of "gas chambers" of the old style (three) corresponds to the number alleged at Majdanek.
Finally there is the detail that is almost decisive in linking Leleko's account with Majdanek: the engines. As we recall, three rooms at the bathing complex were equipped with outside boilers that forced hot air into the rooms. This is entirely consistent with the idea of hot air delousing, disinfection with Zyklon or other cyanide products, or combinations of the two. But the Soviet Special Commission on Majdanek had suggested that these boiler rooms instead generated carbon monoxide gas that was led into the rooms in order to kill the people inside. (The Soviets also alleged that carbon monoxide was led into another room through a pipe.193) Leleko's description of powerful German engines that generated enough carbon monoxide to kill 500 people in 15 minutes seems clearly derivative of the Majdanek concept. Leleko's confession does not specify the type of engine; that would be left to Kurt Gerstein two months later, with even more problematic implications for the mass gassing claim.
Kurt Gerstein was a minor officer in the SS who was apparently involved in some anti-Nazi activities before and during the war.194 He was, however, an engineer, and was apparently involved in the use of cyanide gas for disinfection purposes.
He fled the approaching Red Army and surrendered to allied custody in late April, 1945, and on May 6 was turned over to the French authorities.195 During this period he wrote several versions of an affidavit or statement, which differ in small details, but which generally provide a picture of a gassing at Belzec concentration camp and a confirmation of gassing operations at the other Aktion Reinhardt camps.196
The Gerstein Statement, as the various drafts are known, is probably the most widely quoted document for those who claim that mass gassings took place.197 The problem is that it is almost never quoted in full, because the entire document contains a number of errors and improbabilities.198
The Gerstein Statement, concerning gassing, and a few other matters, may be summarized as follows:
Gerstein visits Belzec and Treblinka,
Belzec has a capacity 15,000 per day,
Sobibor (not seen), has a capacity of 20,000 per day,
Treblinka, a capacity of 25,000 per day.
Globocnik, who controls the camps, instructs Gerstein to disinfect clothes and also increase efficiency of the gas chambers which are using old diesel engines.
Globocnik informs Gerstein that Hitler and Himmler had been to the camp August 15, 1942: Gerstein records an utterly incredible conversation between Hitler and Globocnik.
At Belzec the next day, Gerstein describes the bathhouse,
with flowers growing outside,
and a sign "To the baths and inhalations"
The building is accessed by a small stairway,
there are three rooms on either side, 4 x 5 meters, 1.9 meters high, "like garages" (the wording in one version appears to describe two doors per chamber, viz. "on return")
A transport arrives and everyone is forced to strip and turn in valuables in sequence,
the hair is shorn, someone tells Gerstein, "to make of it something special for the submarines, linings, etc."
The people are crowded into the gas chambers, 700-800 in 25 square meters.
The diesel engine fails to work, Gerstein times the delay, two hours and 49 minutes on his stopwatch.
One can see that many are still alive through a little window and the electric light in the room.
After 32 minutes of the gassing all are dead.
The next day he goes to Treblinka, there are 8 gas chambers,
mounds of clothes and underwear 35-40 meters high. and
The numbers reported on the BBC are too low: 25 million have been gassed.
that on June 8, 1942, Gerstein had spread rumors that the cyanide he was picking up at Kollin, in Czechoslovakia was for killing people
that the cyanide in his transport consisted of bottles which he later poured out,
that another method of murder consisted of leading people up staircases and throwing them into blast furnaces.199
The material or documentary evidence for any of these claims is nil.200 It is not normally claimed that anyone was killed with bottled cyanide, when that claim is made, as for example, in postwar testimony by former SS, it is arbitrarily corrected by historians.201 It is established that Hitler and Himmler were never at these camps in August, 1942.202 The crowding elements and the piles of clothing are impossible exaggerations. Therefore we are not bound to analyze the document as fact but are rather entitled to move immediately to the question of the source of the statement's elements.
The diesel gas reference is probably connected either to Soviet revelations of gas vans, or else to Soviet discussions of Treblinka.203 Other tropes can be identified, for example, the description of the gas chambers as appearing "like garages" is almost certainly indebted to Werth's description of Majdanek the previous summer, or Polevoi's description of Auschwitz two months previous.204 It is interesting to note that if Gerstein really was involved in the spreading of rumors about cyanide use for human beings, then the timing of these rumors (June 8, 1942) would coincide with the rumor of cyanide use that reached Switzerland the following August.
Another element: The 25 million victims goes back to a usage manual on Zyklon.205 The heaps of piled clothes are a reference to Majdanek.206 Above all, the statement shows the influence of Leleko's February interrogations and probably other testimonies concerning Treblinka and Sobibor made at the same time or before. In particular, the use of the "blast furnace" motif shows the clear influence of Polevoi. But many other elements, including the number of rooms, the arrangement of the building, the engines, the peepholes, even the flowers in front of the building, also appear derivative.
The main problem with the Gerstein statement is that one does not pick and choose from a document. Many elements of Gerstein's statement are simply false, if we reject these, we must legitimately ask why we should give credence to the other elements.207 As it turns out the only part of the statement which is quoted, and considered unambiguously true, relates to its repetition of the now conventional shower-gas-burning concept. Yet this simply means that we are using a part of Gerstein to confirm what we already know.
The gravest structural difficulty with the Gerstein statement is that it insists on the use of diesel engines in the generation of carbon monoxide gas for the gas chambers. Since 1983, Friedrich Paul Berg, a professional engineer and former environmental expert, has demonstrated that this would be a most improbable method for mass exterminations: diesel engines emit virtually no carbon monoxide.208 These analyses, in turn, cast grave doubts on the alleged gassings at all of the Aktion Reinhardt camps, because, following Gerstein, diesel engines -- usually from Soviet tanks but sometimes from submarines -- are nowadays always alleged as the means of the gas production at these three camps.209
Another point with Gerstein's statement is not that it can be shown as derivative of contemporary Aktion Reinhardt testimonies, or that it contains many absurdities, or that its description of the supposed 600,000 mass murders at Belzec remains essentially uncorroborated. It is rather that Gerstein, a Zyklon technician, was attempting by his confession to deflect guilt away from himself, which in turn proves the extent to which Zyklon was perceived solely as a death dealing mass murder weapon at the time.210 In this regard he was unsuccessful: after his claims were widely publicized in the press in July, 1945, the French indicated their intention to try him as a war criminal, and Gerstein committed suicide.211
NOTES
- Novitch, op. cit., passim
- Ibid.
- The standard story is that the Germans dismantled them to hide the traces of their crimes, but under our theory the huts would have been dismantled after use.
- All "documentation" pertaining to these camps subsequent to the immediate postwar period has consisted of testimonies, thus, Gitta Sereny's Into that Darkness, Henry Holt, NY:1974, contains what are said interviews with former commandant Franz Stangl in the early 1970's, but aside from being very scanty on detail, these interviews also offer no proof, simply corroboration of the standard claim.
- Ibid.
- Ball, John Clive, "Luftbild Beweise", in Grundlagen, German translation of "Air Photo Evidence" which is rehearsed on Ball's website, at
- noted in the Soviet Special Commission, USSR-8, discussed below.
- Stäglich, op. cit., contains several such photos.
- This is according to a postwar SS affidavit, but is not corroborated. Interestingly, Czech, noted below, references this for the 26th, but then references for the day before (November 25th) a scrap of paper of unknown origin which refers to the order to dismantle the crematoria. The juxtaposition would repay careful scrutiny.
- The facts behind the "stop the gassing" order are reconstructed in "Himmlers Befehl, die Vergasung der Juden zu stoppen" in VffG, I:4 (XII:97), pp.258-259
- Documents of the US government reproduced in Sheftel, Yoram, Defending Ivan the Terrible, Regnery, Washington, DC: 1996, p. 378. It should be noted that the Leleko interviews are the earliest recorded in this document, however it is also important to note that the Soviets had already issued their "special commission" that is, had established the facts, of Treblinka, two months before Leleko's interrogations began. See discussion of "Canonical Holocaust" below.
- The two later Leleko depositions played a crucial role in reversing the conviction of Ivan Demjanjuk, hence, they have been widely distributed and widely cited. We reference the versions found on the Nizkor site, at
- Ibid.
- xxxxx
- Compare, for example, the descriptions established at the various Treblinka trials from 1950, and also the testimony of Franz Suchomel in Lanzmann's Shoah.
- Communique, loc. cit.
- Roques, Henri, The 'Confessions' of Kurt Gerstein, Institute for Historical Review, Newport Beach, CA: 1989 is the standard analysis of his depositions and his life, cf. P. 90.
- Ibid., p. 122f. It is important to note here that Roques is strictly concerned with analyzing the statements of Kurt Gerstein, not with overturning any other particular aspect relative to the gassing claim or the Holocaust.
- Ibid.
- Ibid., cf. Dawidowicz, Reader, in whose anthology it constitutes the sole description of gassing, and the sole document not completely contemporaneous with what it describes.
- Dawidowicz, loc. cit., for an example, Roques cites several others, op. cit., pp. 143-156.
- Roques, op. cit., detailed tables describing the elements of the eight (sic!) diiferent versions are found between pages 117-118.
- The only "corroboration" for Gerstein's testimony, at a camp where 600,000 murders are claimed, is the 1946 book of Rudolf Reder which describes the same lengthy diesel breakdown. That was precisely one of the elements mentioned in French news reports, July 4, 1945 (Roques, op. cit., pp. 108ff reproduces the story in France-Soir.) The "confession" of Pfannenstiehl came later, consult Roques, op. cit., pp. 299-309, esp. 302, for an interesting discussion of his interrogations by the postwar courts.
- Furet, Francois, Unanswered Questions, Schocken Books, NY: 1989, Adam, Uwe Dietrich, "The Gas Chambers", 35n, p. 350, 72n, p. 352 pp. 134-154
- Noakes, op. cit., cited below, like most of those who use Gerstein, annotates when he doesn't omit.
- This seems clear, although Friedrich Berg believes that the diesel motif goes back to the gas vans of the Krasnodar trial of July, 1943, if not earlier in Soviet propaganda thinking.
- Werth's account will be given at the beginning of Section 15, below.
- Roques, op. cit., the document is known as NI-9912. A translation of this document into French was one of the early broadsides in Robert Faurisson's revisionist career.
- cf. Communique
- Rassinier summed this up beautifully in Debunking, q. v.
- Berg's "The Diesel Myth" has existed in several different versions, consult the version in Grundlagen, or one of several articles which cover the same material on CODOHweb.
- Eichmann, in his 1960-61 interrogations, referenced submarine engines as being the source of the carbon monoxide: this is almost certainly a garbling of Gerstein's assertion. It should be noted that the Germans collected hair from German women in both world wars, although the pupose was unclear. In World War One, a woman's hair was used to strengthen rubber driving belts.
- ref. to effect of the Communique, and the WRB report.
- Roques, op. cit.