Explosives, to Erase Corpses

Only two witnesses have suggested that dynamite was used to assist in the removal of traces of mass murder. One of them was Rudolf Höss, the former commandant of the Auschwitz Camp. During a postwar interrogation, he claimed that Paul Blobel had tried to destroy the corpses of inmates killed at the Chełmno Camp by blowing them up with explosives, “but their destruction had been very incomplete,” Höss explained. After his capture by the British, Höss had been tortured and abused for days before he started “confessing.” (See the respective entries for details.)

A similarly ludicrous corpse-removal technique was claimed by Vladimir Davydov. He asserted that the SS used unspecified “dynamiting techniques” at Babi Yar when trying to erase the traces of their alleged mass murder.

Such “techniques” merely would have scattered body parts all over the place, but would not have made them disappear in any way. Therefore, it can be excluded with certainty that these claims relate to real events.

Other witnesses have claimed that explosives were used as a murder weapon. See the previous entry on this.