Fat, Extracted from Burning Corpses

The lowest temperature at which mammalian animal fat, including fat from human tissue, emits sufficient vapor in air to cause ignition upon contact with a flame or spark – the so-called flashpoint – is 184°C (or 363°F; Perry 1949, p. 1584.). This means that, in the presence of fire or embers, human fat ignites at that temperature or above. While small wood fires (such as campfires) may burn at temperatures as low as 315°C (600°F), large wood fires, such as major pyres, easily reach temperatures of 1,000°C and more (some 2,000°F). Therefore, burning wood inevitably ignites any fat exuding from animal carcasses or human corpses lying in such a fire. This effect is familiar to anyone who has ever barbecued a steak and saw fat drip from their meat into the burning charcoal; the grill is quickly ablaze because the fat burns instantly, ferociously and completely. Any witness claiming that, during open-air incineration of corpses on pyres fueled by wood, liquid fat collected at the bottom of a cremation pit, in any shape, is inventing a physically impossible story (Mattogno 2014a).

Witnesses who have claimed this include (where no source is given, see the entry for that person for details):

• Charles S. Bendel
• Leon Cohen
• Szlama Dragon
• Eliezer Eisenschmidt
• four distinguished university professors: Berthold Epstein, Prague; Bruno Fischer, Prague; Henri Limousin, Clermont-Ferrand; and Géza Mansfeld, Budapest
• Alex Faitelson
• Rudolf Höss
• Stanisław Jankowski
• Henryk Mandelbaum
• Kurt Marcus
• Filip Müller
• Joshuah Rosenblum
• Henryk Tauber
• Shlomo Venezia

This agreement of so many witnesses on something physically impossible is a striking case of a “convergence of evidence” on a lie.

Similarly impossible is the claim made in a report sent to London by the Polish underground in May 1944, which stated that at Auschwitz, during “the demolition of the [crematorium] chimney, a true and proper layer of unburnt human fat several centimeters [thick] was found in the soot on the bricks.” (Mattogno 2021, p. 183)

The first “historian” to take this nonsense seriously and include it in his description of Auschwitz was the Polish-Jewish writer Filip Friedman in his pamphlet To jest Oświęcim! (This Is Ausch­witz!; cf. Mattogno 2021, pp. 409-415, here p. 412).