Zyklon-B introduction devices

Several German wartime camps are said to have had homicidal gas chambers in which Zyklon B was used for mass murder (see the entry on Zyklon B). For most of them, the way Zyklon B is said to have been introduced is uncontested. The situation is different for the claimed homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz, and here in particular for the morgues (aka gas chambers) of Crematoria II and III at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The following list pertains to this very room. It has in the first column the source of a claim (person or organization), then the claimed type of testimony, with “1” meaning first-hand, so the witness claims to have seen it him-/herself, and “2” meaning second- or third-hand, meaning hearsay. Because these testimonies are the least reliable in principle, they are rendered in grey in order to de-emphasize them. The subsequent columns contain various ways and methods by which the poison is said to have been introduced, with a simple fat dot ● where it applies, or a brief description for a variation of the given method:

• poured into room: The Zyklon-B pellets were poured into the room through holes in the roof on top or in between the inmates, without any additional devices.
• piped into room: Not Zyklon B, but hydrogen-cyanide gas was piped in as indicated.
• container thrown in: Not Zyklon B pellets, but a container with some form of the gas was thrown in, to burst or explode open on impact.
• pipe/sheet-metal column: Zyklon-B pellets were poured into columns made of perforated sheet metal.
• wire-mesh column: Zyklon-B pellets were poured into columns made of various layers of wire-mesh.

Witness	type	poured in	piped in	container thrown in	pipe/sheet-metal column	wire-mesh column
C.S. Bendel	1				●
R. Bialek	1		floor drain	bombs
A. Bimko	1		showers
S. Chasan	1					open bottom
S. Chybiński	2		lower air ducts
L. Cohen	1				●
S. Dragon	1				●
H. Fischer	1	●
D. Fliamenbaum	1	●
Franke-Gricksch	1				pillars
Y. Gabai	1	barred glass window			pipes
S. Gertner	1	window
J. Kaufmann	2		showers
S. Kaufmann	2		showers
I. Kertész	2		showers
M. Kula	1					●
E. Kulka	2				pillars
M. Lequeux	2					grated column
S. Lewental	1	upper doors
P. Lewińska	2		showers
M. Lichtenstein	2	1 hatch
S. Litwinska	1		windows
H. Mandelbaum	1		windows			screen columns*
K. Marcus	2	through hole onto net
F. Müller	1				scattering spiral
M. Nadsari	1	●
M. Nahon	2			flask thru window
M. Nyiszli	1				●
N.T. Obrycki	2			cartridge
I.E. Ochshorn	1			bombs
D. Paisikovic	1					net around concrete columns
B. Piazza	1/2	CN powder on floor (1)†		cylinders (2)
A. Pilo	1	●
R. Plucer	1	10 chimneys
F. Putzker	1	gas doors
A. Rogerie	2		showers
J. Sackar	1					●
R. Sompolinski	1		turned on
J. Tabeau	2			bombs
H. Tauber	1					●
M.C. Vaillant-C.	2			capsules
S. Venezia	1	1 manhole
Vrba/Wetzler	2	3 traps
J. Weiss	1				3 fan columns
A. Wetzler	2	thru showers
* after gassing, gas release continued, hence pellets not retrievable. † gas activated by turning on water showers.

As each entry for these witnesses demonstrate, all their testimonies are filled with exaggerations, inventions, impossible claims and distortions. Hence, none of these witnesses are trustworthy. Therefore, there is no reason to give any of the claimed methods of introducing Zyklon B precedence over the others. Even more so since there exists no material or documental trace for any Zyklon-B introduction device or method. Furthermore, detailed investigations of the ruins of Morgue #1 of Crematorium II have demonstrated that the holes claimed by many to have been used to throw in Zyklon B (or to attach any claimed introduction devices, columns or pillars) did not exist during the war.

The holes which can be found in the collapsed roof of this morgue were hacked in after it had been completed, and most likely after it had been blown up at the war’s end. By the time these roofs were cast (early 1943), there either had been a plan in place for a long time to exterminate the Jews, or there was no such plan. If a plan existed, these buildings would have been planned accordingly, with predefined holes when the roofs were cast. Since no such holes exist, there was no plan to have such holes. Hence, there was no plan to exterminate Jews as it is claimed today.

Since the turn of the millennium, after decades of indifference regarding the many contradictory claims in this regard, the orthodoxy has come to a consensus that the wire-mesh columns described in detail by Michał Kula, and in a similar, yet less detailed way also by Henryk Tauber and Josef Sackar, were the devices used, and that all other witnesses erred or lied. The reason for this decision is that Kula’s devices would have allowed the removal of Zyklon B pellets from the columns. This, in turn, would have allowed a faster ventilation of the alleged gas chamber, which is a pivotal requirement for the credibility of frequent claims that the gas-chamber doors were opened a short while after the end of the execution. This choice is therefore a clear case of confirmation bias.

All these witnesses missed the pivotal point of a hypothetical device meant to facilitate the mass execution of people locked up in the claimed room: its primary feature would have been the rapid evaporation of the gas and its fast dissipation into the entire room. In fact, German DEGESCH experts had developed such a device as part of their circulation fumigation chambers, such as were installed at Dachau, for example. The Auschwitz camp authorities received a detailed description of this device, and filed it away in their archives. They then ordered 19 of them – for the disinfestation chambers planned for the Main Camp’s reception building (although they were never delivered and eventually replaced by a microwave disinfestation device; see this entry). However, nothing was ever done to use or adapt this advanced and rather simple technology for any homicidal gassings.

While Kula’s device would have allowed the removal of the Zyklon B pellets, and thus accelerated the clearing of the gas, it would have introduced other serious problems with the execution: the Zyklon-B pellets inside the claimed 3-layered columns would have been kept away from the victims’ body heat, and would have been kept lumped together in the narrow, 15-mm gap between the two layers of the inner, removable column as described by Kula. Thus, humidity in this moist basement room would have quickly condensed on the gypsum granules, slowing the gas’s evaporation to a crawl (see the entry on Zyklon B). The moist gypsum pellets moreover would have become gooey, sticking together and to the claimed wire mesh, making it difficult to clean the device later.

What makes this claim farcical is the orthodoxy’s assertion that, when the SS built these buildings, they completely forgot to include the four Zyklon-B-introduction holes in the roof (or holes to house any claimed device). Only once the thick reinforced concrete roof had been cast in January 1943, isolated with a layer of tar and then covered with a cement screed – at a point when the extermination of the Jews is said to have been going on already for almost a year – did someone realize that they had forgotten the most essential element for the alleged mass-murder facility: the roof holes. Hence, someone allegedly came with a jack hammer and ruined the roof, including its layer of isolating tar plus the cement screed protecting it, in order to create the needed holes.

The entire claimed project was a fool’s errand. No architect or camp leadership would ever have allowed four holes to be brutally knocked through this basement room’s massive reinforced concrete roof, which would have severely compromised the roof’s integrity and would have led to considerable rainwater leaks and damage.

Instead, any competent engineer would have used the room’s air-intake duct to serve the desired purpose. This duct was accessible from the building’s inside, for instance in the attic near the fresh-air intake chimney that went out through the roof. This duct could have been equipped easily with a heating coil to preheat the air; or some warm air from the nearby crematorium chimney could have been diverted for this purpose. In the stream of this preheated air, a wire-mesh basket, inserted into the duct behind some port, could have been filled with Zyklon-B pellets. This way, the warm air would have evaporated the gas swiftly, and carried it evenly into the basement through the many outlets along both long sides of the room, rapidly dissipating the gas everywhere. Once done after some 20 minutes or so, the basket with the pellets could have been removed, and the room could have been ventilated using the same duct. Such a system would have been cheap, effective, fast, and non-destructive.

Cheaper and easier still would have been the installation in the crematorium’s attic of a producer-gas generator fueled with wood. These devices, which produced a highly toxic gas with some 20-30% carbon monoxide, were mass-produced during the war and were available literally everywhere. Its lethal producer gas could have been fed into the morgue’s air intake shaft. That solution would have been cheaper in every regard, and ventilation of the morgue afterwards would have been greatly simplified, since producer gas does not adhere to anything or dissolve in anything, quite in contrast to Zyklon B’s hydrogen cyanide.

Knocking holes through a thick concrete roof in order to install some unusable wire-mesh devices would never have happened, and as the lack of any material and documental traces shows, it never happened. The only plausible and logical conclusion is that no such mass-gassing scheme was ever planned or implemented at Auschwitz.

(For more details, see Rudolf 2023, pp. 217-227; Rudolf 2020, pp. 132-162; Rudolf/Mattogno 2017, pp. 291-407.)