Paisikovic, Dov

Dov Paisikovic (1 April 1924 – 1988) was a Jew from Hungary deported to Auschwitz, where he arrived on 31 May 1944. He claims to have been a member of the so-called Sonderkommando. Only the frenzy of the investigations leading to the Frankfurt Auschwitz show trial motivated Paisikovic to come forward with his testimony. His first affidavit was recorded on 17 October 1963 in Vienna. Seven days later, he was interrogated specifically for that trial, and on 8 October 1964, he testified in Frankfurt. In August 1964, he wrote a long report for the files of the Auschwitz Museum. The following list sums up the more-peculiar of Paisikovic’s claims:

• For the alleged makeshift gassing facility outside the Birkenau Camp, usually called “Bunker 2,” he used the term “Bunker V,” which was coined by Höss, indicating that Paisikovic had read Höss’s memoirs.
• For Paisikovic, the victims undressed outside, if at all, while other witnesses have the orthodoxy conclude that there were several undressing barracks nearby, which Paisikovic does not mention at all.
• Paisikovic’s statement for the Auschwitz Museum is accompanied by four sketches of this “bunker.” This and his description of the facility (three equally sized parallel rooms for 300 people) contradict the description and sketches drawn by the other key witness for the bunkers, Szlama Dragon (four unequally sized parallel rooms for 2,000 to 2,500 people). Both Paisikovic’s and Dragon’s sketches and descriptions radically contradict the foundation walls of this alleged building extant to this day (seven irregularly sized and arranged rooms).
• SS Hauptscharführer Moll allegedly came in a white uniform – although no SS man had such a uniform.
• The corpses he had to drag to a burning pit were bloated, which was not an effect of the gas, as he might have insinuated, but of these corpses having died several days earlier.
• According to his Vienna statement, the burning pit, 6 m wide and 50 m long, was ablaze, yet Paisikovic and his fellow inmates had no trouble dragging more corpses to it and throwing them onto this burning inferno without getting burned themselves. However, in his statement for the Auschwitz Museum, the pit he dragged bodies to measured 30 m × 10 m and was not yet on fire.
• The capacity of the burning pits near “Bunker V” were practically unlimited – although air photos of that time clearly show the absence of any large pits and of any smoke in the claimed area.
• 3,000 victims were crammed into Morgue #1 of Crematorium II (& III), the alleged homicidal gas chamber – an impossible packing density of 14.5 people per square meter in this room of 210 m² (per his Vienna statement; in his statement for the Auschwitz Museum, he claimed 2,000).
• For Paisikovic, Zyklon B was poured into this morgue/gas chamber through two roof openings onto a large surface behind a net surrounding two concrete support pillars. The orthodoxy has it, however, that there were four wire-mesh Zyklon-B introduction columns separate from the concrete support columns.
• A gassing in this gas chamber lasted only 3 to 4 minutes – an impossibly short time (…or maybe it lasted 5 to 20 min., per his Frankfurt testimony.)
• Due to the tight space, dead people kept standing upright – which is physically impossible.
• This chamber was ventilated only for a quarter of an hour before the door was opened – again an impossibly short time that could not have allowed for the removal of all the poison gas from this room. He later doubled that time in his statement to the Auschwitz Museum. Still, with a room densely packed with corpses, that would not have been enough either.
• The ventilator fans were set in the side walls. In fact, the side walls only had ventilation openings. The fans were located in the building’s attic.
• The crematorium’s 15 furnaces (=muffles) burned 3,000 victims within 12 hours, meaning one body every 3.6 minutes! Paisikovic even said so: “about 4 minutes.” In his statement for the Auschwitz Museum, he changed that to 2,000 bodies in 15 hours, with 2-3 bodies loaded into each muffle, which is still only 6¾ minutes per body, or some 20 minutes for a load of three (…or maybe the capacity was 3,000 in 24 hours, per his Frankfurt testimony, which is 7.2 minutes per body). However, the Birkenau furnaces were designed to burn one body within one hour.
• Two or three SS men monitored the work in the furnace room from another room through a window – but there was no internal window anywhere inside that building.
• After the mass-murder of the Hungarian Jews was over, all Hungarian Sonderkommando members were killed – of course except for Paisikovic, due to a miracle, like all other surviving Hungarian Jews claiming to have been members.
• Paisikovic insisted that, “once the furnace was burning, the bodies themselves fed the fire,” so no fuel was needed. However, self-immolating bodies do not exist. The furnaces of Crematoria II and III needed at least on average 20 kg of coke per body under ideal conditions.
• In his 1964 statement for the Auschwitz Museum, he claimed that “Mengele and a Jewish inmate of Hungarian origin [M. Nyiszli] carried out various experiments on the dead and the living.” This indicates that Paisikovic was aware of, and influenced by, Miklós Nyiszli’s book about Auschwitz.

For more details on this witness, see Mattogno 2016f, pp. 109-113; 2021d, pp. 135-160.