[1994] Denying the Holocaust by Deborah Lipstadt.
DEBORAH LIPSTADT: A review of Denying the Holocaust
Translated from a chapter of Olocausto: dilettanti allo
sbaraglio,
Edizioni di Ar, Padova
Edited and Copyrighted MCMXCVIII by Russ Granata
In the whole panorama of antirevisionist propaganda, it would be hard to find a book more vile than Denying the Holocaust by Deborah Lipstadt. [1]
The falsehood of revisionism having Nazi origins, is not merely upheld with an unparalleled stridency, that smear actually comprises the very essence and raison d'etre of her entire book. Furor arma ministrat.
The tale which is repeated in all forms and flavors - reocurring obsessively throughout her entire book and constituting its fundamental thesis, is that revisionists are Nazis; or Neo-Nazis; racists; anti-semites; and so therefore, revisionists are liars. I shall not waste time responding to these accusations, but I offer samples of the noble prose of this pure soul who is inflamed, not only with a rabid hatred of revisionists, but who also burns with a passionate devotion to the truth! And yet, out of her 278 pages of insults and inconsequential prattle throughout her entire book, a mere 7 pages actually touch on the subject of Zyklon B and alleged homicidal gas chamber - although all that those few pages do is to reproduce the conclusions of Jean-Claude Pressac's first book which obviously made a deep impression on our paladin of truth - as it has on other incompetents like her - following that rule of antirevisionist propaganda which stipulates that the less you know, the less competent you are, the more you write, and the shriller become your lamentations. It shall be those few pages then, at the end of her eloquent anthology, which are the pages I shall address.
The whole methodological principle which is at the basis of the contrivances of Deborah Lipstadt, is quite an elementary one: Because the Holocaust must not be debated, whoever challenges it must necessarily be a liar and therefore all she needs to do is to concoct the most suitable lie for demonstrating this preliminary assumption. In the solution of this problem, out of her wealth of fancy, Deborah Lipstadt has far exceeded all preceding propagandists by creating a myth of a world conspiracy on the part of revisionists, whose elder sages, scheming in the shadows, have forged in their infernal smithy a diabolic structure for rehabilitating and resuscitating the Nazi regime, and that diabolic structure is revisionism.
Deborah Lipstadt first sketches her general principles:
"In the 1930's Nazi rats spread a virulent form of antisemitism that resulted in the destruction of millions. Today the bacillus carried by these rats threatens to 'kill' those who already died at the hands of the Nazis for a second time by destroying the world's memory of them" (p. XVII).
"Before fascism can be resurrected, this blot must be removed. At first they attempted to justify it; now they deny it" (p. 23).
"Initially Holocaust denial was an enterprise engaged in by a small group of political extremists" (p. 24).
"In order to achieve their goals, one of which is the historical rehabilitation of Germany, they must "eliminate" the Holocaust" (p. 42).
"Consequently Holocaust denial became an important element in the fabric of their ideology. If the public could be convinced that the Holocaust was a myth, then the revival of national socialism could be a feasible option" (pp. 103-104).
From there, Deborah Lipstadt proceeds to demonstrate the plot theory with a bold historical reconstruction of the genesis of revisionism:
"The end of World War II meant the defeat of Adolf Hitler's dream of a Third Reich. Most rational people assumed it also meant the end of fascism as an ideology. As long as fascism could be linked with Nazism, and Nazism, in turn, could be linked with the horrors of the Final Solution, then both would remain thoroughly discredited. There were those, however, who were not willing to abandon these political systems. They knew that the only means of trying to revive them would be to separate them from the Holocaust and the multitude of atrocities that accompanied it" (p. 49).
This unmentionable operation began in France, thanks to Maurice Bardeche, promoted for tactical purposes to the world's first revisionist with his book, Nuremberg ou la terre promise [Nuremberg or The Promised Land], which appeared in 1948:
"He was also the first to argue that the gas chambers were used for disinfection - not annihilation. Bardeche's dubious credentials - he remained a committed fascist all his life - made him a controversial figure in denial circles. Despite his contentions that the Holocaust was a myth and that the Nazis were wrongly implicated, Bardeche has never been openly embraced by contemporary deniers. That has not kept them from adopting his ideas. Though they use his arguments, they rarely mention him by name because of his political views, about which he was always quite explicit. Indeed, he began his book What Is Fascism? with the unequivocal declaration: 'I am a fascist writer.' In Bardeche's second book he laid out his objectives, which remain almost verbatim, the credo of contemporary deniers [...]" (pp. 50-51).
Deborah Lipstadt, writing in the United States, may have been able to deceive her readers by counting on their ignorance, but Pierre Vidal-Naquet, who wrote in France, did not allow himself to do so, and felt compelled to admit the truth, albeit through clenched teeth:
"The forward to the second edition of Le Mensonge d'Ulysse (1954) features a striking tribute to Maurice Bardeche (p. 235 note 6) [2], who had begun his political campaign in 1948 with Nuremberg ou la Terre promise. It is worthwhile reading that 'admirable book' (Rassinier, Veritable process Eichmann, p. 43) [3]. At the time Maurice Bardeche had not yet discovered that Hitler's genocide did not exist: "There was a will to exterminate the Jews, for which there is copious evidence" (p. 187) [4].
The citation from Vidal-Naquet is correct: Bardeche not only wrote that "there was a will to exterminate the Jews, for which there is copious evidence" [5], but Bardeche was even more explicit:
"Yes, in Eastern Europe, there were terrible scores to be settled between Germany and her neighbors. There, yes, was a policy of extermination" [6]. [...]"Obviously, on the other hand, the testimony presented by the Soviet delegation must be taken into account here, in particular that which describes the extermination base at Treblinka, where mass executions of Jews were performed soon after their arrival in a fake railroad station which hid execution facilities" [7] [...]. "The Nuremberg defendants maintained that throughout the war they had known nothing of the mass executions which had taken place at Auschwitz, Treblinka and elsewhere..." [8].
Let us return to Deborah Lipstadt. After having appointed Bardeche the fascist founder of revisionism, with the same love for truth she also makes Rassinier a disciple and accomplice of that fascist writer:
"The next assault on the history of the war also emanated from France. In 1948, Paul Rassinier, a former Communist and a Socialist who had been interned in the concentration camps of Buchenwald and Dora, published Le Passage de la Ligne (Crossing the line). This was the first in a series of books he would write during the next two decades intended to show that survivors' claims about the behavior of the Nazis, particularly in relation to the atrocities, could not be trusted. Rassinier, who became a member of the Communist Party in 1922 when he was sixteen, left the Communists in the mid 1930's and joined the Socialists. When the was broke out, he became pat of the resistance. Eventually he was captured and sent to Buchenwald. On liberation in 1945, he returned to France and was elected a Socialist member of the National Assembly, where he served for one year. Shortly thereafter he began a prolific publishing career, the bulk of which was devoted to vindicating the Nazis by proving that the atrocity accusations against them were inflated and unfair" (p. 51).
Fortunately, Deborah Lipstadt, with her acute critical eye, has discovered and revealed Rassinier's diabolical plan for the world:
"First he had to demolish the credibility of his fellow prisoners' testimony. As long as one could trust what they said, any attempt to absolve the Nazis would be futile" (p. 53).
But even the minus habentes for whom the Lipstadt book is intended, might wonder: Why would Rassinier - a socialist; a resister; tortured by the Gestapo for eleven days: ("hands crushed; a broken jaw; a burst kidney" [9], then sent to Buchenwald and Dora concentration camps where he remained for nineteen months and from which he emerged an invalid. [10] Why would this man "defend the Nazis"? - out of gratitude to his jailers? - out of sado-masochism? Deborah Lipstadt can do nothing else but resort to the classical explanation adopted by propagandists of her ilk when they cannot produce any other explanation: antisemitism. She proclaims therefore that: "Rassinier's Holocaust denial was no more than a guise for the expression of a classic form of antisemitism" (p. 64).
Incredible dictu: Rassinier hated the Jews who had done nothing to him, much more than he did the Nazis who had tortured him and sent him into concentration camps! But of course he knows that "prejudices" are "irrational"!
Deborah Lipstadt then outlines with her customary intellectual honesty the successive developments of revisionism:
"Bardeche, Rassinier, Barnes, App, and others among the first generation of deniers differ from those who followed them. The first group sought to vindicate the Nazis by justifying their antisemitism" (p. 52).
But in view of the failure of this plan, the revisionist elder sages decided to change tactics:
"Only in the 1970s, when they finally began to recognize the futility of trying to justify Nazi antisemitism, did deniers change their methods. They saw that, from a tactical perspective, the proof of Nazi antisemitism was so clear that trying to deny or justify it undermined their efforts to appear credible. As deniers became more sophisticated in the subtleties of spreading their argument, they began to 'concede' that the Nazis were antisemitic. They even claimed to deplore antisemitism, all the while engaging in it themselves" (p. 52).
It is her basic myth about revisionism which then serves to justify Deborah Lipstadt's second axiom: No revisionist is honest, or has good faith; they all pursue clandestine aims:
"One of the tactics deniers use to achieve their ends, is to camouflage their goals. In an attempt to hide the fact that they are fascists and antisemites with a specific ideological and political agenda - they state that their objective is to uncover historical falsehoods, ALL historical falsehoods" (p. 4).
The revisionists are "extremist antisemites who have increasingly managed, under the guise of scholarship, to camouflage their hateful ideology" (p. 3).
Fortunately, Deborah Lipstadt has exposed the revisionistic turpitudes and out of high moral rectitude is reporting her discovery to the world:
"This is precisely the deniers' goal: they aim to confuse the matter by making it appear as if they are engaged in a genuine scholarly effort when, of course, they are not. The attempt to deny the Holocaust enlists a basic strategy of distortion. Truth is mixed with absolute lies, confusing readers who are unfamiliar with the tactics of the deniers. Half-truths and story segments, which conveniently avoid critical information, leave the Listener with a distorted impression of what really happened. The abundance of documents and testimonies that confirm the Holocaust are dismissed as contrived, coerced, or forgeries and falsehoods. This book is an effort to illuminate and demonstrate how the deniers use this methodology to shroud their true objectives:" (p. 2).
With that, Deborah Lipstadt reaches her third axiom: all the revisionist arguments are devoid of value. This is the most delicate point of the entire matter: even Deborah Lipstadt's readership might think that in spite of everything, the revisionists' arguments could be based on factual historical evidence; so it was necessary to invent something to eliminate this hazardous doubt. Our propagandist then intones solemnly: "Holocaust denial is the apotheosis of irrationalism" (p. 20); it is "totally irrational" (p. XVI); revisionism is "an irrational phenomenon that is rooted in one of the oldest hatreds, antisemitism. Antisemitism, like every other form of prejudice, is not responsive to logic" (p. XVII).
Still not satisfied with the effect of her misleading theories on the reader, Deborah Lipstadt introduces an apolitical argument. Revisionism is a threat to the very existence of the civilized world:
"Holocaust denial is part of this phenomenon. It is not an assault on the history of one particular group. Though denial of the Holocaust may be an attack on the history of the annihilation of the Jews, at its core it poses a threat to all who believe that knowledge and memory are among the keystones of our civilization. Just as the Holocaust was not a tragedy of the Jews but a tragedy of civilization in which the victims were Jews, so a threat to all who believe in the ultimate power of reason. It repudiates reasoned discussion the way the Holocaust repudiated civilized values. It is undeniably a form of antisemitism, and as such it constitutes an attack on the most basic values of a reasoned society. Like any form of prejudice, it is an irrational animus that cannot be countered with the normal forces of investigation, argument, and debate" (pp. 19-20).
Deborah Lipstadt's conclusion is that there should be no dialogue with the revisionists, both because "there is a significant difference between reasoned dialogue and anti-intellectual pseudoscientific arguments", between healthy historical research and an "ideological extremism that rejects anything that contradicts its preset conclusions" (p. 25), and because revisionism should not be raised to the level of an opponent, an antagonistic school of historical thought (p. 1 et passim). Here if we could ask, why then did Deborah Lipstadt even bother to write Denying the Holocaust? Here is her response:
"Time need not be wasted in answering each and every one of the deniers' contentions. It would be a never-ending effort to respond to arguments posed by those who falsify findings, quote out of context, and dismiss reams of testimony because it counters their arguments. It is the speciousness of their arguments, not the arguments themselves, that demands a response, The way they confuse and distort is what I wish to demonstrate; above all, it is essential to expose the illusion of reasoned inquiry that conceals their extremist views" (p. 28).
This propagandistic statement says it all about the value of Deborah Lipstadt's book, which consists mainly of a tedious recitation of alleged Nazi roots of a few renowned revisionists and also of a number of obscure personalities who have advanced some revisionist ideas. The author displays an impeccable provincialism, not only because she is ignorant of German, Austrian, Swiss, Spanish, Belgian and Italian revisionism, but also because her references are almost all in English and the rare foreign-language writings which she does cite, are treated in turn as publications in English! Exemplary provincialism, but also amateurism.
For those who are not content with mere propagandistic contrivances, Deborah Lipstadt also presents the ultimate "proofs" for the existence of homicidal gas chambers, as well as for the authenticity of the diary of Anne Frank. As for the latter, I personally cannot understand the tenacity with which some revisionists have bothered with this writing which has no relation to the matter of gas chambers, and whether the diary is authentic or not in no way approaches or touches upon that question. Pressac's so-called "proofs", on the other hand, are worth the trouble to discuss. The quotation marks are obligatory, as I explain later.
In the presentation of these "proofs", Deborah Lipstadt says:
"Consequently I devote this section to three of the charges most frequently made by Holocaust deniers, citing a variety of documentary and technical proofs that demolish any semblance of credibility they might be accorded" (p. 223).
After having reported Faurisson's request for "one proof...one single proof" of the existence of homicidal gas chambers, Deborah Lipstadt reveals:
"Pressac's monumental study of the gas chambers is, in essence, a response to this demand for documentary proof" (p. 225).
The Pressac "monumental study" in question is the book, [deceptively titled] Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers cited above. Now, it is true that Pressac responded to the aforementioned request by Faurisson, but not with actual proofs, but rather with suspicions. The chapter in which he addresses this is entitled: "One proof...one single proof": thirty-nine criminal suspicions [11]. Being uncomfortable with this, Deborah Lipstadt has transformed these suspicions into proofs. I have already dealt with these traces in my study titled Auschwitz: The End of a Legend. Here I will limit myself to some examples which show the degree of good faith and soundness of Pressac's arguments and the "irrationalism" of my objections. Before beginning, it should be pointed out that the title of the chapter in question is formulated in a captious manner, since the 39 suspicions which Pressac found, by skipping repetitions of the same suspicion, can be reduced down to 10. Moreover, in this "monumental study on the gas chambers", he devotes less than one page to the structure and operation of gas chambers. I will discuss Pressac's competency in the matter of crematory ovens later. That being said, let us give the podium to Deborah Lipstadt:
"Leuchter found traces of cyanide in rooms that Auschwitz officials described as killing chambers but that deniers claim were morgues. In an attempt to explain why residues of the gas would have been found in a room that supposedly served as a morgue. Faurisson and Leuchter explained that the morgues were disinfected with Zyklon-B, hence the residue. This thesis is illogical: Disinfection is carried out with a bactericide, not an insecticide, particularly one so powerful as Zyklon-B" (pp. 224-225).
Several pages later, speaking of suspicion of gas-proof doors, Deborah Lipstadt clinches it:
"They also claimed the doors were necessary because the morgues were disinfected with Zyklon-B. This is a charge that, as indicated above, contradicts basic science, since Zyklon-B is an insecticide and not a disinfectant" (p. 228).
This argument is an outstanding case of intellectual dishonesty. With reference to the following phrase of Faurisson: "It is probable that the two rooms which J.C. Pressac found suspect in Crematoria IV and V were disinfection gas chambers" [12], Pressac ironically reveals that Faurisson "is the first man in the history of bacteriology to destroy pathogenic germs with an insecticide" [13]. Pressac's irony is completely misplaced. The term disinfection was commonly used as a synonym for disinfestation. For example, a letter from the Lublin-Majdanek concentration camp administration to the Lagerarzt (camp physician) dated 12 August 1943, has the goal of "Desinfektion mit Zyklongas" [Disinfection with Zyklon gas] [14]. Moreover, the writer of Auschwitz Kalendarium normally uses the term Desinfektion (disinfection) in the sense of Entlausung (disinfestation):
"Die Kommandantur des KL Auschwitz erhält vom WVHA eine Genehmigung, mit einem Lastkraftwagen nach Dessau su fahren, um Gas zur Desinfektions des Lages abzuholen"[The command of Auschwitz concentration camp receives from the WVHA a permit to travel to Dassau with a truck to pick up some gas for disinfecting the camp.] [15]
"Bei der Disinfektion wird das Gas Zyklon B verwendet"[Zyklon B gas was used in disinfection] [16]
Deborah Lipstadt considered the suspicion of fake showers to be so damning that she exhorts us with particular emphasis on four points:
This argumentative structure is a true masterpiece of captious methodology and flagrant bad faith. The mention of 14 showers (14 Brausen) and one gas-tight door (1 Gasdichtetür) for Leichenkeller 1 (the alleged homicidal gas chamber) appears only in documentation relating to the delivery of Crematorium III by the Zentralbauleitung to the camp administration on 24 June 1943 [17]. If a gas-tight door and a shower facility are in fact "absolutely incompatible", then why did Auschwitz Zentralbauleitung on 13 November 1942 order "2 100/200 gas-tight doors for the sauna" of the disinfestation installation BW 5a? [18]
If a gas-tight door was not at all incompatible with a sauna, then why would it have been incompatible with a place where showers were located?
To demonstrate that the 14 showers were false, which are mentioned in the delivery documentation dated 24 June 1943 relating to Crematorium III, Pressac uses a plan [19] dated 19 March 1943 relating to Crematorium II ! This plan shows no connection with the showers simply because showers did not exist in Leichenkeller 1 of Crematorium II; in fact, in the corresponding delivery documentation dated 31 March 1943, they do not appear at all; the column Brausen has no entry! [20]
The argument relating to calculation of the number of showers is disarmingly ingenuous: no one has ever claimed that Leichenkeller 1 of Crematorium III was exclusively and essentially a shower room. If Zentralbauleitung had 14 showers installed, it only means that a small section of the premises was intended as a shower facility. Exactly where this facility was located is not known, because strange as it may seem, there is no delivery documentation plan for Crematorium III.
Let us move on finally to the wood bases. They were located under the ceiling of Leichenkeller 1 of Crematorium II, the one which did not have showers [21]. I have personally examined (and photographed) these bases: they are wood boards - rectangular in shape with dimensions roughly 10 x 12 cm and 4 cm thick - set into the cement and purposely placed in this position during carpentry work in casting the floor cement of the premises: what were these boards used for? If Pressac had raised his nose in this alleged homicidal gas chamber of Crematorium I, he would soon have realized that in the cement trusses there are similar boards set in: these serve as support for the lamps which illuminate the premises! Query: What would the lamps of Leichenkeller 1 of Crematorium II have been attached to, given that their ceiling did not reveal the presence of hooks?
The argument of the Vergasungskeller reveals the degree of Pressac's competency in the matter of the structure and operation of the crematory ovens of Auschwitz-Birkenau - a subject on which Pressac discourses with the authoritative tone of the specialist:
"In a letter of January 29, 1943, SS Captain Bischoff, head of the Auschwitz Waffen-SS and Police Central Construction Management, wrote to an SS major general in Berlin regarding the progress of work on Crematorium II. In his letter he referred to Vergasungskeller (gassing cellar). Butz and Faurisson tried to reinterpret the term Vergasung. Butz's explanation was that it meant gas generation. Faurisson argued that it meant carburetion and that Vergasungskeller designated the room in the basement "where the gaseous mixture to fuel the crematorium furnace was prepared." There are fundamental problems with this explanation. Not only is there a significant amount of documentation which refers to gassing, but more importantly, the cremation furnaces were coke-fired and did not use gas generation" (pp. 226-227).
With this objection to the explanations of Butz and Faurisson (who are incorrect, but for other reasons), Pressac reveals only his profound ignorance: the Topf ovens of Auschwitz-Birkenau were powered with gas generators heated by coke, in order to convert it into a combustible gas, specifically here, air-gas [TN: or "producer gas"]. In a gas generator, the air-gas is formed from the incomplete combustion of carbon. The reaction, which is as follows:
C + 1/2(02) = CO + 29.2 Kcal
is completed by making the air flow across the stratum of incandescent coke. At the beginning of the lower strata of coke, carbonic anhydride is formed according to the follow reactions:
C + 02 = CO2 + 97.2 Kcal
2 CO-->C + CO2 + 40.9 Kcal
then in the upper strata carbon monoxide is formed according to the following reaction:
CO2 + C = 2 CO - 38.8 Kcal.
Carbon monoxide is therefore obtained by direct combination of carbon and oxygen and after reduction of carbonic anhydride [22]. Pressac seriously believes that "the cadavers lay on gratings under which the coke burned", according to the fallacious description of one of his genuine eyewitnesses! [23] To give an idea of the level of Pressac's obliviousness, if he does not know how a gas generator works in a coke-heated crematory oven, then he could not know how an engine works in a motor vehicle!
One further "proof" follows, which would be unfair to attribute to Pressac, but is one which shows the level of attention with which Deborah Lipstadt has read that French historian's book:
"A letter dated 31 March 1943, signed by SS Major Bischoff, contained a reference to an order of 6 March 1943, for a "gas (tight) door" for Crematorium II. It was to be fitted with a rubberized sealing strip and a peephole for inspection. Why should a morgue or a disinfection chamber need a peephole? It certainly was not necessary in order to watch cadavers or lice" (p. 228).
Yet Pressac is publishing a photograph of a gas-tight door to the disinfestation chamber of Stammlager Block 1 with the caption:
"Gas-tight door of the gas chamber, of conventional design (made by the DAW) with its peephole and two locking bars..." [24]. [my emphasis].
Pressac is also publishing another photograph of the gas-tight door of the cyanide disinfestation chamber of Kanada I accompanied by this commentary:
"The gas-tight door of the Kanada I delousing chamber. Its construction, by the DAW, is very rudimentary. It had a peephole, a handle to open it and two iron bars..." [25]. [my emphasis].
With this I shall close. In these few pages I believe I have sufficiently demonstrated the inconsistency of Deborah Lipstadt's theses and Pressac's "proofs". Considering its true value, Denying the Holocaust did not even merit these few pages which I have dedicated to it.
NOTES
[1] Deborah Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust. The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory. A Plume Book, New York 1994.
[2] Here is the text of this "striking tribute": I have been told that Maurice Bardeche was a right-wing extremist and that, in numerous other cases, he demonstrated little regard for objectivity: of this I am certain and I have not failed to mention it any time I have had the opportunity. But this is no reason to dispute his credibility in this case, or to fail to recognize that in his two works on Nuremberg - unjustly condemned as was Le Mensonge d'Ulysse - he speaks of the German problem based on the same imperatives cited by Mathias Morhardt, Romain Rolland and Michel Alexandre in the aftermath of World War I. And these men, as we know, "were leftists". Paul Rassinier, La menzogna di Ulisse, Edizioni Le Rune, Milano 1966, p. 37, note.
[3] For Rassinier the two books by Bardeche on Nuremberg were "admirable" because they upheld the theses of the French Left and European socialist parties. Paul Rassinier, Le veritable proces Eichmann ou les vainqueurs incorrigibles, La Vieille Taupe, Paris 1983, p. 43.
[4]Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Assassins of Memory, op. cit., p. 32.
[5] Maurice Bardeche, Nuremberg ou la terre promise. Les Sept Couleurs, Paris 1948, p. 187.
[6] Ibidem, p. 128.
[7] Ibidem, p. 159.
[8] Ibidem, p. 194.
[9] Paul Rassinier, Ulysse trahi par les siens. Vieille Taupe, Paris 1980, p. 196.
[10] Ibidem, p. 197.
[11] J.C. Pressac, Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, op. cit., p. 429.
[12] Robert Faurisson, Response a Pierre Vidal-Naquet. 2nd edition, expanded, op. cit., p. 78.
[13] J.C. Pressac, Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, op. cit., p. 505.
[14] Krystyna Marczewska, Wladyslaw Wazniewski, Korespondencja w sprawie dostawy gazu cyklonu B do obozu na Majdanku, in "Zeszyty Majdanka", vol. II, 1967, p. 159. On this page and on successive ones, there are other references to disinfection gas.
[15] Danuta Czech, Kalendarium der Ereignisse im Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau 1939-1945, op. cit., p. 259.
[16] Ibidem, p. 271.
[17] TCIDK, 502-4-54, p. 84 ssgg.
[18] TCIDK, 502-1-328, p. 70: "Herstellung von 2 Stck. Gasdichte Türen 100/200 für die Sauna".
[19] Plan 2197 (b) (r).
[20] TCIDK, 502-2-54, p. 79.
[21] The ceiling of Leichenkeller I of crematorium III is completely collapsed and the premises are currently exposed to the elements.
[22] Wilhelm Heepke, Die Leichenverbrennungs-Anstalten (die Krematorien). Verlag von Carl Marhold, Halle a.S., 1905, p. 31 and ss.gg.; Michele Giua, Dictionary of general and Industrial Chemistry, op. cit., vol.II, p. 383 and ss.gg.; Curcio Encyclopedia of Science and Technology, edited by Armando Curcio, Rome 1973, vol. 5, p. 1842.
[23] J.C. Pressac, Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, op. cit., p. 124.
[24] Ibidem, p. 29.
[25] Ibidem, p. 46.