Gas Chambers for Robert Faurisson: Answers to a Challenge

If you have not followed the debate between Fritz Berg and Robert Faurisson
about the "gas chambers" you may, at first, have some difficulty
understanding why Berg, a revisionist, is so hell-bent on demonstrating that
the Germans did employ gas chambers-- and employed them all over
Europe! Neither Faurisson nor Berg believe the German State employed
gassing chambers for the mass murder of Jews or anyone else. Faurisson
wants to show that the gassing chambers the Germans are alleged to have
used for mass homicidal gassings could not have functioned as such for
technical reasons, therefore the gassings did not take place. Berg wants to
demonstrate, not only that Faurisson is wrong on a number of technical
issues, but that the Germans had professionally designed gassing chambers
all over Europe and used them regularly -- to save lives. That is, a
technology designed by Germans to save lives through disinfestation, or
delousing, was "redefined" by Allied war propagandists as a technology
designed for mass murder. When you discover what "gassing chambers" the
propagandists overlooked then, and what they evade discussion of today,
you will have gained a new insight into the gas-chamber controversy. -- Bradley SMITH

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In an article for the Journal for Historical Review, Robert Faurisson, a
leading Holocaust revisionist scholar, repeated the nine-word
challenge he had made on other occasions: "Show me or draw me a
Nazi gas chamber!" Although the challenge may have been a useful
prod to the Holocaust believers, Faurisson's article also contained a
great deal of nonsense about German delousing chambers. That
nonsense was, in effect, a challenge to this author since I had written
two articles for the same journal about the German delousing gas
chambers that were used during WW2 to keep people alive. When I
submitted a four-page answer to Faurisson's challenge, the editor,
after a long delay, returned a watered-down version for my
approval. I rejected that watered-down version. My original text
appeared in two other publications to which Faurisson
responded -- see Christian News, January 10, 1994, page 17 -- with more
of the same arguments. I replied with a scale drawing of a Degesch
delousing gaschamber and the following counterchallenge: "If it is at
all possible, please return to me a copy of the accompanying drawing
with only one sentence added with signature saying that this is 'not' a
'drawing of a Nazi gas chamber.'" The only person to answer that
counter challenge was Faurisson himself.

    In Faurisson's original article (Journal for Historical Review,
July/August 1993), he had claimed that a "Zyklon B delousing gas
chamber could not have been used as a homicidal gas chamber"
because of "the extreme difficulty of removing gas from the skin,
mucous membranes, and bodily fluids of a corpse." Faurisson was
simply wrong! The German Degesch company had begun early in the
war to manufacture a standardized 10 cubic meter delousing chamber
which certainly could have been easily adapted for mass-murder by
the mere addition of some internal screening or metal grating so that
people trapped inside could not wreck essential equipment which was
readily accessible from within the chambers. That equipment included
an automatic can-opener, a wire-mesh basket to hold Zyklon B
granules, a radiator and a special four-way valve. No further changes
would have been needed. If the intended victims had been strapped
into chairs firmly fastened to the floor, the delousing gas chambers
would have been just as effective as any American execution
gaschamber even without the addition of internal grating or shielding
of equipment.

Fig. 1: An illustration of the common and as it turned out,
vital, German delousing chamber for clothing and other
items. Failure to maintain delousing efforts during the
closing months of WWII led quickly to massive outbreaks
of typhus, cholera, and other diseases not only in the
concentration camps, but all across Europe. Eastern
Europe was particularly had hit.

Delousing was an essential control measure against typhus which is
generally transmitted by lice. Delousing gas chambers were used to
kill lice in clothing to protect the owners of the clothing and people
with whom they came in contact. In concentration camps, delousing
with gaschambers was quite normal and a perfectly reasonable
procedure to keep people alive. Except for their modest size, the
standard Degesch delousing gas chambers certainly could have been
used for mass-murder. The absence of screening or gratings is strong
evidence, however, that these real Nazi gas chambers--many of which
were actually in concentration camps such as Auschwitz and
Maidanek, sometimes within crematory buildings as at Dachau--were
never used for mass-murder. The exterminationist believers in the
Holocaust are perfectly correct when they show Degesch delousing
chambers as gas chambers; they are perfectly dishonest, however,
when they fail to explain that these chambers would have been
completely impractical for mass-murder without some shielding of
essential equipment or some kind of restraint--shackling or strapping
into chairs-- of the intended victims. To use delousing chambers for
homicide without any shielding of vital equipment or any additional
restraint of the victims would have been comparable to trying to
execute someone in an American gas chamber without first forcing
them into a chair.

Railroad Delousing Tunnels

Gaschambers were widely used to kill lice in the clothing of people
who had come from areas of eastern Europe where typhus was
endemic. Usually, people traveled by train. To control typhus, train
passengers from infested areas such as the Russian front had to get
off their trains at some point and undergo a thorough delousing.
They had to take a thorough shower followed by a medical inspection
while their clothing was deloused either with steam, or hot air, or
cyanide. Delousing of train passengers only made sense, however, if
the train was also deloused before the passengers
reboarded--otherwise, lice which had been in the seats or woodwork
would have simply reinfested clean passengers. For delousing trains,
large gas chambers were often used. Such chambers existed in about a
dozen locations throughout eastern Europe including Budapest,
Posen, and Sarajevo.

    Railroad delousing tunnels (400 to 1600 cubic meters in size) for fumigating entire railroad trains, several cars at a time, would have also been ideal for mass murder if that had ever been anyone's intent.Such large gas chambers would not have required any modifications at all; any intended victims would have already been trapped inside cattle-type railcars. These gas chambers would have also had the great advantage that after forced-venting inside the
tunnels, the railroad cars filled with corpses could be pulled out and
replaced almost immediately with another batch of fresh victims in
railcars. What an enormously efficient operation; one could have had
dozens of batches per day! Afterwards, the railroad cars filled with
corpses could be parked at a rail siding to allow additional open air
venting if that was deemed necessary or simply vented with moving
air over several hours or days on the way to some isolated ravine or
garbage incinerator anywhere in Europe. This technology, however,
has never been implicated anywhere in the Holocaust stories. That is
indirect but strong evidence that the Holocaust is a hoax. Faurisson's
insistence that railroad delousing tunnels could not have been used
for mass murder because of the difficulty of handling the corpses is
ridiculous--and what is even worse he is trying to deny a perfectly
good argument against the Holocaust story in general.

Except for the shielding of some of the equipment inside the delousing
chambers, the standard Degesch delousing chambers and the large
railroad delousing tunnels contained all of the features needed for
mass-murder. They all had a safe and relatively quick means of
producing and dispersing a lethal concentration of cyanide
throughout each chamber; specially coated and insulated walls to
maintain a minimum temperature and reduce cyanide penetration and
loss; and circulation blowers and ductwork to thoroughly ventilate
the chambers with fresh air in about one hour after a batch of victims
had been killed. The venting phase could just as easily last several
hours depending upon the discretion of the operator. During all this
time, the entire contents including corpses would have also been
heated, contrary to another Faurisson claim, to temperatures at least
ten degrees above the boiling point of cyanide. Cyanide boils at 78
degrees Fahrenheit. In this way the amounts of cyanide condensing
on walls, clothing, skin, etc., would have been practically nil even
before the venting phase began. Some cyanide may, nonetheless, have
been retained by moisture near body openings but the danger to
workers removing corpses could have easily been minimized with
rubber gloves and by keeping the blowers operating while the
corpses were removed.

Cremation

The very existence of crematory ovens in German concentration
camps is often used to persuade people that the Nazis were
committing atrocities. The facts are quite different however.
Cremation only makes sense if one intends to return a portion of the
actual ashes of a corpse to the true family members--otherwise,
cremation makes no sense at all. The ash is totally worthless compared
to the far greater costs of the coal needed to produce it--the claim
that the Nazis made fertilizer from the bones is a bad joke indeed.
Crematory ovens are specially designed to allow recovery of ashes
from one corpse at a time free of any other ash, either from the coal
used as fuel or from another corpse. Such a careful recovery of ashes
only makes sense if one intends to return something from the
deceased to the family. If one intended to merely destroy evidence of
murder, incineration as is commonly practiced for garbage disposal
would be many times quicker and more efficient in every respect,
especially in terms of the amounts of fuel consumed. One could still
gather enough ashes to fill urns and deceive family members but,
oddly enough, it has never been claimed in any of the Holocaust
literature that garbage incinerators were ever used for anything but
garbage. Even the incinerators within Kremas 2 and 3 in Birkenau
have never been implicated. The startling fact is that by practicing
cremation the Nazis and the SS went to considerable lengths and
expense to treat the dead with genuine respect--even when many of
the dead were Jews.

    Faurisson missed my point completely. In his response of January
10, 1994 Faurisson wrote: "I say that cremation makes sense
everywhere you decide to save space or whenever, as was the case in
Auschwitz, the ground is too marshy for burials or when there are
epidemics." The fact is that if all one wanted to do was save space and
avoid burial, incinerators would have been the logical choice--not
crematory ovens. The incinerators within Kremas 2 and 3 or even
larger incinerators specially built for that purpose certainly could have
done the job and far more efficiently in terms of labor, equipment cost
and cost of fuel.

    The crematory ovens from Topf & Sons at Birkenau could only
cremate one normal-sized body at a time. The reasons are fairly
simple. If one puts more than one normal-sized corpse into a standard
crematory oven, one is likely to make contact between a corpse and
the firebrick. This must be strictly avoided because of uneven heating
of the firebrick and subsequent exfoliation and rapid deterioration of
the firebrick.

    During cremation there are essentially three stages. In the first
stage, the corpse temperature is raised to the boiling point of water
and all moisture is removed. In the second stage the corpse
temperature is raised to the temperature at which the dried corpse
self-ignites. Finally, the corpse consumes itself from its own fuel.
During this last stage, the highest temperatures are reached which
consume the bones as well. (The bones are almost totally consumed --
the exceptions are generally the hip, skull and teeth.) If at this time the
corpse is in direct contact with the firebrick, the uneven heating of
some of the bricks will cause them to crack.

Cyanide Absorption through the Skin

Faurisson's claims that for mass murder "oceans of hydrocyanic acid"
would have been required and that the corpses as well as the
chambers would have been "saturated" with HCN are pure fantasy!
He is apparently unaware of the meaning of the word "saturate" and
of the fact that the amount of HCN needed to kill someone is less
than one gram whereas the amount needed to "saturate" a corpse is at
least a thousand times greater. Practically all of the lethal dosage of
HCN would enter through the lungs and not the skin.

    Faurisson has repeatedly overstated the danger of HCN
absorption through the skin. Although skin certainly does absorb
HCN, it does so rather slowly. According to a source which Faurisson
has himself used, 10 minutes are required to overcome a man with a
gas mask whose skin is exposed to a concentration of 2% HCN in air.

(2) It should also be remembered that a man may be
overcome by the absorption of hydrocyanic acid gas
through the skin; a concentration of 2 percent
hydrocyanic acid being sufficient to thus overcome a man
in about 10 minutes. Therefore, even if one wears a gas
mask, exposure to concentrations of hydrocyanic acid gas
of 1 percent by volume or greater should be made only in
case of necessity and then for a period not longer than 1
minute at a time. In general, places containing this gas
should be well ventilated with fresh air before the
wearer of the mask enters, thus reducing the
concentration of hydrocyanic acid gas to low fractional
percentages.(See: The Gas Mask, Technical Manual No.
3-205, War Department, Washington, October 9, 1941, p.
144, NA RG 407, Records of the Adjutant General's
Office, 1917-- TM 3-205.)

The typical lethal concentration for an execution chamber and for
delousing is only 0.1%--in other words, the lethal gas need only be
one-twentieth as strong as the gas discussed in Faurisson's reference.
If one applies a rule of thumb or reciprocity known sometimes as
Henderson's Rule, one would need twenty times as long to cause the
same toxic effect. In other words, approximately 200 minutes or three
hours of exposure to 0.1% HCN would be needed to overcome a
worker wearing a gas mask but whose skin is exposed. It is almost
inconceivable, however, that workers removing corpses would be
exposed to anything near these concentrations after the doors were
opened. Depending upon the duration of the forced-venting of the
chamber, the cyanide levels confronting workers would be far, far
less than 0.1%; that was why, after all, the chambers would have been
force-vented in the first place before the doors were opened. The
principal danger to workers removing corpses is from cyanide vapors
gradually leaving corpses and walls and then mixing with air
surrounding the workers. However, with the circulation blowers
continuing to bring fresh air into the chambers, the cyanide levels in
air would be maintained easily enough at extremely low levels, safe
enough for workers wearing rubber gloves to remove corpses
without also wearing gas masks. In other words, the danger of HCN
absorption through parts of the skin not covered with rubber gloves
is negligible in a Degesch delousing chamber or tunnel if it is operated
correctly.

American Execution Procedures with Cyanide

Although cyanide gas leaving an American execution chamber is
neutralized chemically before it is discharged to atmosphere, the
Degesch chambers from all I have seen in the German literature never
used any neutralizing equipment although the cyanide concentrations
for delousing were about the same as for US executions. The
delousing chambers discharged 0.1% HCN directly to atmosphere and
apparently relied on dilution with outside air as well as the fact that
cyanide rises in air. There were no forty feet high chimneys either!
Fred Leuchter, an American expert on the use of gaschambers for
executing criminals, has often claimed that forty-feet-high chimneys
are needed for venting. Degesch never made any such
recommendation, even though the cyanide concentrations for
delousing are just as dangerous as those used for executions in
America.

    As to the airing and sometimes beating of items outdoors after a
normal delousing procedure in a Degesch standard delousing gas
chamber, Faurisson fails to understand that the need to remove every
last trace of cyanide is far greater for deloused clothing than it would
have been for victims of mass-murder. Among the items most often
deloused were blankets and bed sheets and undergarments which
would subsequently remain in intimate contact with people for many
hours at a time. Dangerous amounts of cyanide would, if they were
present, slowly leave those items and could enter an individual,
especially if they were asleep, either through the lungs or the skin; no
comparable danger is likely from corpses of murdered Jews.

    The execution procedures employed in the US are quite elaborate
for many reasons having nothing whatever to do with any likely
requirements for mass-murder. One goal of US execution procedures
is to kill quickly and painlessly. The executee must also be easily
observable during his or her agony through a large window by a host
of witnesses, ordinary citizens generally, who, if the spectacle makes
them uncomfortable or puts anyone (other than the executee) in the
slightest danger, may appeal to whomever to disallow executions in
the future. To insist that the Germans would have had to employ
similar or even more elaborate procedures for mass-murder is
ridiculous. Executions in the US by hanging or firing squads are also
elaborate. Murder, or better yet, war must be impossible because of
the complex procedures used to execute people in Missouri and
Maryland. Accounts of hundreds of thousands of soldiers dying from
poison gas during World War I must, according to Faurisson, be
fabrications as well.

    A far better line of argument which is technically correct is the
following: Since the Germans actually had equipment and technology
easily adaptable for mass-murder in their concentration camps and in
major railroad centers such as Budapest, why didn't they use it for
mass-murder? Why wasn't this technology used in Auschwitz or
Dachau or Budapest? Why would the Nazis have employed rather
ordinary, dreary cellars with little holes in the ceilings instead of
well-designed delousing chambers or at least large-scale variations of
those chambers? To be consistent with the extermination theory, the
answers to the above questions must of necessity be so bizarre that
no one could possibly believe them.

The Danger of Explosion with Cyanide

Another false argument Faurisson has repeatedly used is that cyanide
gas is explosive and, therefore, could never have been used near
crematory ovens. Fred Leuchter was apparently persuaded to fall in
line and used the same argument. The fact is that cyanide in air is only
explosive in concentrations higher than 5.6%--in other words, the
concentration of HCN in air must be at least 56 times greater than the
0.1% one is likely to use in a homicidal gas chamber--before it can even
begin to become explosive! If the cyanide level exceeds 6% in only a
small area--just above an opened can of Zyklon B, for example--the
worst that one can get is a flame, but no explosion! For an explosion,
an enclosed volume filled with a cyanide concentration far above
anything one is likely to use during a fumigation or execution is
needed.

    Faurisson responded to these facts with some very poor counter
arguments. It would be nice if one could totally remove all potentially
explosive substances from the world but that is still impractical. We
drive automobiles with an explosive substance all the time and yet,
generally, automobiles are also equipped with ashtrays and cigarette
lighters. In his response, Faurisson cited one source from the
American Cyanimid Co. which mentions "heat, sparks, open flame"
within a precautionary context but apparently the word s "explosion"
or "explosive" appear nowhere.

    In the "Military Fumigation Manual" from the American Cyanimid
Co. from 1943 which Faurisson also cited, there is indeed a brief
discussion on page 12 as follows:

If a mess hall is equipped with gas, blower-type heaters,
these may be used for heating prior to fumigation, but
they should be extinguished (including the pilot light) just
before applying the fumigant. All pilot lights in boilers,
ranges, etc., should be extinguished. Coal fires in cooking
ranges should be banked so there will be no live flame
during the fumigation.

That text may look at first glance as if it is some evidence for a danger
of explosion but note that there still is no mention of "explosion" or
anything "explosive." In fact, nowhere within the entire manual is
there any mention of any danger of explosion. Although the word
"boiler" appears, that is probably a typo and the word should
probably be "broiler" since the paragraph is about a mess hall. Pilot
lights would have consumed some of the cyanide by ordinary
combustion (just as they would consume oxygen) and would have
reduced the amount of cyanide remaining in the air to kill infestation.

    Faurisson chose to ignore some extremely important text which
appears just prior to the above and which reads as follows:

When outdoor conditions cause the indoor temperature
to fall below 65 degrees F., it is desirable to heat the
building for two or three hours before the Discoids are
applied and during the fumigation so the insects will be
warmed and therefore more susceptible to the gas.

    Furnace rooms should not be sealed but the door
should be locked and barred to prevent entry. . . . The
furnace (if coal) should be stoked so that heat will be
satisfactorily maintained for the short period of exposure
required, if possible. If not possible, the furnace tender
should wear a gas mask when tending the fire.

The reader should note that according to the above text, whenever
the outdoor temperature is below 65 degrees Fahrenheit, the building
should be heated "during the fumigation" to keep the building and
insects warm. Also, if the furnace is in a room adjoining the room to
be fumigated, ventilator openings above the furnace room door
should be sealed--but not the door itself; it should simply be closed
and locked--but not sealed. The furnace may continue to operate to
maintain room temperature provided that the furnace tender "wear a
gas mask when tending the fire." That key phrase totally refutes one
of Faurisson's most often used arguments against the use of
crematory furnaces near alleged gas chambers. Obviously, the danger
that the furnace tenders might also bring about their own destruction
in an explosion is not significant at all.

Faurisson the Revisionist

No one deserves more admiration for his courage than Robert
Faurisson--but we must not let our respect and sympathy for a great
man blind us. If Holocaust revisionists can not come to their senses
and separate themselves from seemingly easy but thoroughly false,
pseudo-scientific arguments, more Jean-Claude Pressacs will emerge
and with good reason.

    As to Faurisson's challenge to show him a Nazi gas chamber for
mass murder, the answers were there all the time. The German
delousing chambers with only minor modification and the large
railroad delousing tunnels without any modification at all would have
served the purpose perfectly well--but, they were used only to keep
people alive! The great killer was disease. The Degesch delousing
chambers and the railroad delousing tunnels and Zyklon B were
essential to keeping disease, especially typhus, under control.
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See Faurisson's response
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Computerized and displayed on the Net in 1998 by
CODOH -- Box 439016 -- San Diego, CA 92143, USA. See
<www.codoh.com/berg/berg.html>

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