Auschwitz: nya fynd

The use of the metal rack in mass murder and the burning of corpses

Extracts from a deposition by the witness Shlomo Dragon, Auschwitz prisoner number 80359. On May 10-11, 1945, he testified as follows to the murder of people in the gas chambers and the burning of their corpses:

Gassing:

When the chamber was full, the door was closed. This was done by SS guards and usually by Moll himself. Then Mengele gave an order to Scheinmetz who, just as he did at the bunkers, went over to a vehicle with the sign of the red cross on it, took out a canister of gas, opened it, and poured its contents into the chamber through the little window in the side wall. The little window was fairly high up, so he had to use a step-ladder to get to it. Here, just as at the bunkers, he was wearing a mask when he did it.
[...]

"---After 60 years, a metal rack used to load victims’ remains into the furnaces has been excavated adjacent to the ruins of crematorium and gas chamber V. For years, only part of a handle protruded from the ground; everything else lay buried almost a meter below the surface.

The decision to excavate was taken after an examination of the site confirmed that the piece was almost certainly part of the rack.

The rack was in relatively good condition due to soil conditions and the fact that it was buried close to the surface.

The rack was visibly damaged and its handles bent in the explosion that the withdrawing SS set off in order to demolish the crematorium and gas chamber V structure on January 26, 1945, only hours before the Red Army entered Auschwitz.

The Museum Collections Department will receive the rack after conservation. Department director Igor Bartosik said that the new exhibit will be exceptionally valuable, since it includes the only extant loading rack from among those used in the Birkenau crematoria.---"

Och, stanislav, uppgiften som Ezzelino gav om 130 - 170k döda baserar sig bland annat på extrapoleringar av de delar av de s k "dödböckerna" som har hittats. Leveranser av koks till lägret är också en indikator på att dödssiffran låg ungefär där.

Stofthögarna kan alltså bestå av vad som helst