Trovärdiga ögonvittnen från koncentrationslägren

"---It is well known that under conditions of incomplete combustion carbonaceous fuels will produce carbon particles, which will deposit on the walls of the smoke ducts in the form of soot. Under appropriate conditions (if the soot layer is sufficiently thick and the temperature sufficiently high) the soot will ignite and flames will indeed emanate from the chimney.

In pre-war times, when the average European household was using wood, coke, or coal almost exclusively for home-heating, such cases were so common that the phenomenon was, on occasion, produced intentionally for scientific studies. For instance, in early 1933, such experiments were carried out in a nearly abandoned four-story building in Berlin.[6] A diagram shows that 95 minutes after the ignition of the soot on the first floor one meter above ground level the combustion temperature of the soot in the smokestack reached 1060°C. This is not really surprising, for soot consists of carbon having an ignition temperature of 700°C.

Obviously, this phenomenon will not occur continuously, but only at times, because it depends essentially on the accumulation of a sufficiently thick layer of soot, and that requires some time. It is clear that this phenomenon is unrelated to the reports of eyewitnesses who speak of flaming smokestacks as a direct consequence of the incineration of corpses. The most telling of such statements is that of Henryk Tauber who declared on 24 May 1945:[7]

"It was possible to charge up to eight 'muselmans' [in one muffle[8]]. Such big charges were incinerated without the knowledge of the head of the crematorium during air raid warnings in order to attract the attention of airmen by having a bigger fire emerging from the chimney"

The purpose of such false statements was obviously to give credence to the falsehoods concerning the mass incineration of purportedly gassed victims, such gigantic incinerations causing flames to shoot from the smokestacks.---

Let us recapitulate: when the Birkenau ovens were in operation, the chimneys of the crematoria smoked continuously. This could not be avoided, because

- the triple-muffle and eight-muffle furnaces did not have any recuperators for preheating the combustion air;

- in the triple-muffle furnaces, the air blowers could not be controlled individually for each muffle;

- the cold air fed into the muffles from above cooled down the walls of the muffles and caused the temperature to drop;

- a single damper controlled the combustion in the three muffles;

- in the eight-muffle types, a single damper controlled the combustion in four muffles

Moreover, the top of the chimney of crematorium II was black with soot.

But why did Pressac ignore even an obvious proof in the form of a photograph? The answer is simple: he could not allow the chimneys of the Birkenau crematoria to smoke, because the aerial photographs known to him (which show no smoke coming from the chimneys) were taken at a time when mass gassings and incinerations were supposed to have taken place and thus the crematoria could not, under any circumstances, have been inactive.

This question is to be investigated in a further article.---"

"---Vilket intryck gjorde befrielsen på er?

Vansinnig glädje vid avresan men på samma gång sorg över att jag inte kan stanna till slutet för att med egna händer mörda fångvaktarna och SS-männen.

Vilken bestraffning skulle ni föreslå, om ni själv fick bestämma hur det skulle förfaras med edra plågoandar?

Kastrering av alla tyskar, även ickenazister, barnen inbegripna, utförd utan narkos så att ”Herrefolket” försvinner från jordens yta en gång för alla. Dock före döden skall de arbeta av sina skulder i fängelset till gagn för de marterade folken.---"

"---Vilken upplevelse har på er gjort det obehagligaste intrycket?

Jag såg transporterna gå in i gasen. Jag visste att det var deras sista steg. Och sen, efter några minuter, såg jag flammorna.

Ett annat fruktansvärt intryck: Det var ungefär i oktober 1944. De unga män som arbetade i det s.k. Sonderkommandot178 antände krematorierna.

Det var en sällsam syn när lågorna slog upp, men ynglingarna fick betala med sina liv. In mellan lågorna flög kulorna som släckte de trehundra hymnsjungande männens liv.179 Det var fruktansvärt. 180---"

"---Dora B. greps i april 1944. Hon hade varit i fem läger, bl.a. i Krakau-Plaszow, Auschwitz (två gånger) och Bergen-Belsen.

Familjen befann sig tre dagar i Irsavou, sedan fördes de till en tegelfabrik i Munkacevo, och därefter till Auschwitz.

Dora B. efter kriget, i Sverige.
Hur reagerade befolkningen i er stad eller by vid sådana bortföranden?

Det fanns folk som beklagade oss, men också många som gladde sig, eftersom de hoppades få våra tillgångar. Rop som: ”Alla judar till Palestina!” följde oss på vår väg.

Kan ni med några exempel belysa, i vilken omfattning invånarna i de olika lägren avlidit?

Det dog många människor i koncentrationslägren. Jag har bl.a. sett följande: Det kom en stor svart bil som stannade till. Man såg kvinnor, män, barn. Människorna steg av vid en bestämd plats, där det var en stor grav. Det ena skottet efter det andra och en efter en föll de ner i graven. Efteråt hällde man på bensin och tände på. Jag arbetade i närheten och har sett det. Detta hände dagligen och på det sättet gick människorna dit, varifrån det inte finns någon återvändo.298

Vilka voro enligt er uppfattning de vanligaste dödsorsakerna?

Människorna dog huvudsakligen av misshandel och även av hunger och sjukdomar.

Har ni själv sett någon gaskammare och i så fall var?

Man talade mycket om gaskammare, framförallt i Auschwitz, men jag har inte sett någon.---"

"---Vi såg den natten in i flammorna, som magnetiskt drog oss och alla våra tankar till sig, och vårt förstånd stannade. Bleka läppar rörde sig i stilla bön för de döda ...

I dessa gaskamrar och krematorier kvävdes miljoner människor. I dessa människoslakthus dödades inte bara sjuka, gamla och för tyskarna onyttiga varelser utan även unga friska människor och framförallt mängder av barn. Hela transporter förintades på det viset. Man kunde inte fly, det fanns ingen räddning. Det är så förskräckliga, obeskrivliga katastrofer att det inte finns ord som kan utrycka så många tragedier och så mycket lidande.

Auschwitz var för mig en så fruktansvärd livschock, att mina minnen därifrån och allt vad jag upplevde där höljer sig som i en dimma. Jag gick som bedövad hela tiden. Jag kunde på lång tid inte begripa att det jag upplevde var verklighet, och att det faktiskt var jag som lydigt som ett lamm gick alla obanade och törniga vägar.---"

"A 42hour firing - the first 24 hours to get to temperature and the rest holding it 1320c for ultimate ash build up on the work.

1. A healthy woodpile -Acat, the Hungarian oak."

"---On the basis of these experiments it was found that the truly decisive factors, where the time required for a cremation is concerned, are the maximum temperature of the oven and the sex of the deceased. Statisticians graphically summarized the results of the experiments. One of the analysts, Dr. E. W. Jones, commented as follows:[58]

"From his graph he was able to tell us (we thought this rather interesting) that there is a maximum point, or rather a minimum point, of incineration time below which it is impossible to go, and our statistician defined this as a thermal barrier that, because of the make, the nature of human tissues, you cannot incinerate them at a rate which is below round about 63 minutes. Now some people will come up with readings of 60, 59, 58, they are the lower ends of this scatter of readings, and that this thermal barrier's optimum temperature is round about 800-900° C."

The graph shows that the time that most closely approximates the thermal barrier is 60 minutes, given a temperature of 800° C (1470° F). If the temperature is increased to 1000° C (1830° F), the time required for cremation increases to 67 minutes, and at 1100° C (2010° F) it drops again, to 65 minutes. At higher temperatures, which were not investigated, the time would presumably decrease further, and at extremely high temperatures it probably drops below the thermal barrier. Dr. Jones stated that if one wanted to decrease the cremation time in this way to 20 or even to 15 minutes, one would have to construct an oven capable of working at 2000° C (3630° F).[58]

In reality, the cremation process must take place between fairly precise thermal boundaries. At temperatures of over 1100 to 1200° C (2010 to 2190° F) one encounters the phenomenon of sintering, where the bones of the corpse and the oven refractory begin to soften and to melt together (fuse), and at temperatures under 700 to 600° C (1290 to 1110° F) the body merely chars.[59] Dr. E. W. Jones then reports an observation of particular interest to us:[58]

"Our statistician colleague did some work, he looked into the records of crematoria in Germany during the last war, and it would appear that the authorities there were presented with a similar problem - that they came up against a thermal barrier. They could not design a furnace that reduced the mean incineration time to a very practical effective level. So we started to look at why there is this thermal barrier with human tissues."

It was found that the cause of this factor was that the proteins in the human body - when they are heated to 800 to 900° C (1470 to 1650° F) - undergo a chemical transformation. They dissociate and form compounds "that can only be described as a hard crust."[58]

Naturally the cremation process took longer in ovens operating with a coke-fired gas generator. Regarding the time required for the cremation cycle, the data to be found in contemporaneous literature is almost never entirely reliable, first and foremost because what is meant by 'the time required' is very rarely clearly defined, and secondly because one must expect that the data have been distorted for reasons of competition or propaganda.

This is why we shall take data supplied by the technical measuring instruments in the ovens themselves as our objective and incontrovertible starting point. From this perspective, the diagram summarizing the cremations performed by R. Kessler with coke fuel on January 5, 1927, is especially significant. This was a case where one is completely justified in saying that the cremations were carried out under the optimum conditions for an oven with a gas generator, because:

the construction system of the oven was excellent;
Kessler had taken every measure necessary to prepare the oven in terms of heat engineering;
the appropriate technical instruments were used to observe the cremation cycle in every phase;
under the knowledgeable supervision of an expert engineer the operation of the oven went off especially smoothly.
During these experiments the average cremation time was 1 hour and 26 minutes, while the shortest cremation took 1 hour. The average temperature in the muffle was about 870° C (1600° F). We shall return to this point later. In this context it is important to stress that engineer Kessler was using the method of direct cremation. For comparison we refer to a different series of eight cremations that Kessler performed in the same oven, using briquettes instead of coke fuel. That time the average cremation took 1 hour and 22 minutes. Two weeks later the same experiment, using gas heating for the oven, returned an average cremation time of 1 hour and 12 minutes for each of the eight cremations.[60]---"

Det förekommer också flitigt hos andra vittnen:

eller i Buchenwald:

Koks är emellertid ett så kallat kortflammigt bränsle, varför flammorna aldrig når liket, utan det är de heta gaserna som förbränner detta.

Civilingenjören Walter Lüftl, som varit ordförande i Österrikes Bundesingeniurskammer och kriminalteknisk expert vid otaliga rättegångar gjorde följande anmärkning till detta: