[WW2] - Auschwitz

En halt på över 3000 ppm i Birkenaus utkylda bårhus fullpackade med dödskandidater kräver alltså omkring 20 kilo Zyklon B.

"---Jährling’s bavure shows once again, as if there were any more need for it, with what kind of distorted logic Pressac has fabricated his "criminal traces". The passage merits citation in its entirety; but first, it is necessary to give a brief historical setting. Nineteen Zyklon B gas disinfestation chambers with the Kreislauf system were designed for the Aufnahmegebäude (reception building of the new prisoners) of the main camp. The Kreislauf systems were not at first installed.

At the end of 1943, it was decided to transform eight of these rooms into short wave disinfestation chambers, in line with a new process developed by the Siemens company. Work began in February 1944 (p. 88). At the same time, it was decided to put the eleven remaining rooms into operation by installing the Kreislauf system. The Boos company, which should have performed this work, raised objections. The Testa company (Tesch und Stabenow), distributor of Zyklon B, had also taken an interest in the affair, as had Dr. Wirths, who remembered that according to an ordinance in effect, the Zyklon B had to be replaced by another gas: Arginal, the use of which required an adaptation of the Zyklon B gas chambers. (pp. 88-89).

A cette occasion, l’employé civil Jährling commit une extraordinaire bévue dans une lettre destinée à la Testa. Il désigna les chambres a gaz d’épouillage de ‹Normalgaskammer› mot souligné et mis entre guillemet, comme s’il existait des chambres a gaz ‹normales› et d’autres ‹anormales›. L’appellation fut reprise par la Testa, qui affirmait d’abord que la conversion a l’Arginal n’était obligatoire que dans le cas d’installations nouvelles, et insistait surtout pour que le personnel s’occupant des chambres à gaz normales à l’acide cyanhydrique fût particulierement bien formé, sous-entendant que leur fonctionnement était nettement plus complexe que le simple déversement de Zyklon B dans des chambres a gaz ‹anormales›. (p. 89, our italics)

[On this occasion, the civil employee Jährling committed an extraordinary blunder in a letter destined for the Testa company. He designated the delousing gas chambers as ‘Normalgaskammer’, a word underlined and put in quotation marks, as if there existed ‘normal’ gas chambers and others which were ‘abnormal’. The appellation was taken up by the Testa company, which first stated that the conversion to Arginal [!12] was only obligatory in the new installations, and insisted that the personnel who handled the normal gas chambers with the hydrocyanic acid should be particularly well trained: implying that their operation was distinctly more complex than the simple pouring of Zyklon B into the ‘abnormal’ gas chambers.]

If Pressac had familiarized himself even a little with the disinfestation gas chambers using hydrocyanic acid, he would have known that a Normalgaskammer was a gas chamber according to the norms; that is, a standard Degesch room with a Kreislauf system. A disinfestation room not conforming to the norm was a simple auxiliary gas chamber (behelfsmässige Blausäurekammer). [86]

Therefore, Jährling simply wanted to underline that the envisioned transformation of the operating system referred to gas chambers planned as hydrocyanic gas chambers with the Degesch-Kreislauf, normal, and not to chambers without such a system, abnormal, like that of the BW 5b system of Birkenau. That’s all.---"

"Note these are rules of thumb and are not to be taken as absolutes. Death is caused by a total amount per kilogram of body weight that enters into the body. In light of that, simply examing the concentrations and times reveals there is no direct relationship between them.
Many factors could cause this as HCN interferes with the nervous system that of course controls breathing."