Herbert Verbeke 
(Editor) 
Auschwitz: Plain Facts 
A Response to Jean-Claude Pressac 
With Contributions by Prof. Dr. Robert Faurisson, Manfred Köhler, 
Carlo Mattogno, Serge Thion and a preface by Ernst Gauss 
Foundation VRIJ HISTORISCH ONDERZOEK v.z.w. 
AAARGH 
Original German version: ISBN: 90-73111-16-1Wettelijk depot: D/5727/1995/31. Edition 1995 Editor: Herbert Verbeke 
© The copyright to each contribution is held by the authors. 
The contribution by C. Mattogno (Italian) was translated by Anne Sharp, the contribution by R. Faurisson (French), Ernst Gauss and Manfred Köhler (German) by Michael Hum-phrey, the Contribution by Serge Thion by (???). 
Source of this internet version: http://vho.org/GB/Books/anf/index.html#toc
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Table of Contents 
Ernst Gauss: Preface .......................................................................................................5 Manfred Köhler: Pressac and the German Public...........................................................14 Serge Thion: On Pressac: History by Night or in Fog?..................................................27 Robert Faurisson: Answer to Jean-Claude Pressac on the Problem of the Gas chambers47 Carlo Mattogno: Auschwitz: The End of a Legend........................................................96 Robert Faurisson: Two Further Comments on my Answer to Jean-Claude Pressac .....176 
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""Freedom of Science" also means that in principle every research goal can be chosen. Any "index of prohibited knowledge", a "catalogue of research goals put under taboo", or a research moratorium, are incompatible with the self-understanding and dignity of science, because we have to insist tenaciously that under any circumstances, cognition is better than ignorance." 
Prof. Dr. Hans Mohr, Natur und Moral, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1987, p. 41 
"The Natural sciences [like other scholarly disciplines] are extremely conservative and dogmatic. Any corroboration of a paradigm is welcome, whereas any innovation or revision will long meet with resistance; the instinct for preservation (including self-preservation!) is stronger than the search for truth. Therefore, new findings usually gain acceptance only when sufficient numbers of researchers vouch for them: then the dogmatic status quo topples, a ‘scientific revolution’ occurs, a new paradigm replaces the old […] 
The bottom line is that no student, no researcher and no layman should believe any facts to be ‘conclusively proven’, even if the textbooks present them as such […]" 
Professor Walter Nagl, Ph.D., Gentechnologie und Grenzen der Biologie, 
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1987, pp. 126f.
"The Basic Law [German Constitutional Law] protects scientific research and basically wants the impartiality of this research. This is especially true for history, which is, after all, not about defining a central thread and making it binding, but about making offers for the discussion. In a pluralistic society, this must be manifold and controversial." 
Prof. Dr. Peter Steinbach, ARD-Tagesthemen, 10. June 1994, 22:30 
"But otherwise one can in my view say that what we historians work out in accordance with the rules is not dangerous. I do not think that truth, if it is the truth, is dangerous." 
Prof. Dr. Christian Meier, in: Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (ed.), Verantwortung und Ethik, Berichte und Mitteilungen der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, vol. 3/84, Munich 1984, p. 231
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Preface 
Ernst Gauss aka Germar Rudolf 
1. The End of Jean-Claude Pressac 
French pharmacist Jean-Claude Pressac has been for some time the darling of our media with respect to research into the history of the concentration camp Auschwitz. They hope to have found in him the technically qualified expert who could counter the arguments and the methods of those who wish to revise the history of the concentration camp complex Auschwitz in particular and the Holocaust in general. The contributions of Manfred Köhler and Serge Thion give an overview of this exaggerated praise from the judicial system, the media and scientists. Köhler's article makes it clear that these hymns of praise have been premature and that Pressac's book does not meet the standards of scientific work.
Even in terms of technical competence, the work Pressac has delivered is unsatisfactory in many respects, as Prof. Faurisson and Carlo Mattogno will show in this book. His friends of the same cast of opinion also seem to be skeptical of his technical qualifications, since the first English version of Pressac's work which recently appeared was somewhat censored by being subsumed in a collection supported by other pieces, as Prof. Faurisson will show in his short addendum.
The present book was written to demonstrate to the world that the work of the one who has been advertised as the Auschwitz specialist were better considered to be a novel than a study which should be taken seriously as a work of historical science. It constitutes a corrective review, with the consequence that the historical account on the subject of the concentration camp complex Auschwitz will be fundamentally revised. The revision of the historical account on concentration camp Auschwitz, begun by Revisionists and brought before a broader public by Pressac, now returns to its authors.
2. Should There Be Freedom for Revisionism? 
This book, which proclaims a dispute on the traditional historical version on the annihilation of the Jews in the concentration camp complex Auschwitz through an analysis of Pressac's book, claims to be in conformance with the standards of science. If this is the case, it is owed the protection of the German Basic Law, which in Article 5, Section 3 protects science without restriction, on the condition that the book does not itself harm the similarly protected fundamental rights of others.
From a certain quarter it is always objected that works that end in completely or partly denying or refuting the intentional, industrially organized annihilation of European Jews by the National Socialists – in other words, the Holocaust – are fundamentally incapable 
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of being scientific, since anyone who operated according to scientific method must automatically come to the conclusion that the so far accepted description of the Holocaust corresponds to historical reality.
Others object that Revisionist works should not be afforded the protection of the Basic Law even if they fulfill the formal criteria of the scientific method. The reason given for this is that it is a clearly established fact that the Holocaust happened and that any assertion to the contrary represents an offense to the human dignity of Holocaust victims, their descendants and relatives and to the Jewish people generally. In this way the fundamental rights of others are massively harmed. Since human dignity must be valued more highly than freedom of science, it should be forbidden to science to adopt such theories. In any case the mere proposition that the Holocaust – the purposeful, planned destruction of the Jews in the Third Reich – did not happen is an implicit claim that Holocaust history was knowingly fabricated for the purpose of deception, and possibly to obtain material or political advantage. This would be an affront to the dignity of anyone who might be implicated thereby that can not be tolerated.
In what follows I would like to analyze this matter more thoroughly.
3. Unrestricted Research and Revision: Foundations of Science 
The basis of the reasoning just stated is that freedom of science should be thought a lesser good than human dignity. This idea is very doubtful. Science is not merely a plaything of unworldly researchers. On the contrary, it is not only the highest manifestation of our capacity to perceive and understand, but in the word's most general sense it is the basis of every human capacity to perceive and to understand that exceeds that of animals. It is the basis of every human mode of living and doing that is distinguishable from the modes of living and doing of the animals. One could say that science, in the word's most comprehensive sense, first made man human and gave him that dignity that lifts him above the animals. The freedom of science is thus inextricably involved with human dignity.
Scientific understanding serves human decision-making both on the individual and on the political level; the natural drive to create knowledge was implanted in man by nature. In order to make valid decisions, that is, decisions which conform to reality, it is an essential precondition that scientific knowledge be true. Truth as the only test for scientific validity means: every other influence on the process of discovering scientific truth, whether economic or political, must be excluded. It also must be made certain that all scientific findings can be published and distributed without hindrance, because it is only through the unhindered confrontation of scientific opinions in open forums that it can be insured that the most convincing opinion, being most in conformity with reality, will prevail. In our case that means that there can be no reason to suppress an opinion in accord with scientific norms in any way.
Increasingly in recent years the freedom of science in the area of contemporary history has been constrained, in that scientists who offend against the ruling Zeitgeist through expression of their scientific views have their social reputations destroyed by political or 
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media inquisitions or are threatened with loss of their professional standing. Sometimes the judicial system is brought in in order to add criminal prosecution to professional ruin. The recently intensified criminal prosecution of Revisionist opinion through the modification of Sec. 130 of the Penal Code (race persecution) on 1.12.1994 is a striking example of the growing inquisitorial drive in our society.
Prof. Hellmut Diwald has characterized this shielding of discussion on the Holocaust with the penal law as follows: [1]
In the history of the Third Reich there is no complex of questions that is more hopelessly kept from close examination by German historians than the horrible fate of the Jews during the war. The Basic Law of Bonn does guarantee the freedom of research and science. But a series of related decisions and convictions has shown that one would be well advised neither to expose oneself to the risk of being a test case for the freedom to invoke this fundamental right by choosing this subject matter nor to expose oneself to the lesser risk of even peripherally violating the 21st Penal Code Modifying Law of 13th June 1985 and provoking an indictment due to offense. 
This means that the very complex of questions of contemporary historical research has been made taboo that, together with the continually upheld theme of collective guilt, burdens the German people like no other event.
There is a general understanding that the intensified punishment of Revisionist viewpoints primarily serves to combat uneducated, unteachable right-wing extremists. The philologist Arno Plack thinks otherwise. In his view, the [2]
"actual intended groups" with respect to the punishment of the "Auschwitz lie" [are ...] the office-holding German historians, who, because of forced confession (one time!) and threat of punishment impose upon themselves a judicious form of restraint with respect to certain decisive questions. [...] A judicial system that clamps down on [possibly, E. G.] erroneous opinions that are not due to any intention to injure is not without effect. It fortifies the widespread tendency to be silent in the face of burning questions; it demands readiness to give the expected lip service and it stirs up doubt as to [apparently, E. G.] irrefutable facts even among all those who have learnt, "The truth always prevails". [...] Finally, such a judicial system stimulates denunciation. [...]
By the principles of a liberal community, the best weapon in the battle of opinions is not prohibition or punishment, but argument, the "weapon word", as Lev Kopelev has said. If we are not to lose our belief that democracy is a viable form of society, we can not accept that it should defend against [presumably, E. G.] making Hitler inoffensive with the same compulsory methods which the dictator himself quite naturally used to suppress contrary opinion. [...] I believe his [Hitler's] ghost, his repression of mere doubt, his tendency simply to prohibit what was not acceptable in the ruling system, yet needs to be overcome in those who overcame him.
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As part of the intensified persecution of Holocaust Revisionism, our legislators and judges have apparently decided to put Revisionist research on the "Index of Forbidden Knowledge". One indication of this was the confiscation of the book Grundlagen zur Zeitgeschichte ordered by the Municipal Court of Tübingen, which was carried out on 27.3.1995. [3] In effect, a moratorium on research has been declared. The research goal to clarify the technical background of the supposed mass murder of Jews has been put into the "Catalog of Forbidden Research Goals". The only opinions and conclusions that will be accepted are those that fit the predetermined picture.
This official behaviour is incompatible with the thousands of years old principles of Occidental theory of knowledge, which Prof. Hans Mohr has concisely expressed as follows: [4]
"Freedom of research" also implies that the purpose of research may be anything whatever. An "Index of Forbidden Knowledge" or a "Catalog of Taboo Research Objects" are unreconcilable with self-understanding and the worth of science, because we must unfailingly and in all circumstances maintain that understanding is better than ignorance.
It is equally unreconcilable with self-understanding and the worth of science when the protectors of the Zeitgeist may require this or that conclusion or forbid some other. That science is free always and before all else presupposes that it is free to take any approach and reach any conclusion. No science that is worthy of the name can exclude any conclusion beforehand.
Prof. Walter Nagl [5] maintains that every scientific discipline possesses a certain conservative inertia with respect to its paradigms that can sometimes be supported by campaigns of "Political Correctness". Usually it takes a number of researchers attacking the same point in order for newer theories to prevail over older, no longer adequate theories. Although some science has held good for thousands of years it is also true that no scientific paradigm – whether in the natural or in the social sciences – can claim to have eternal validity. Rather it is the duty of scientists and also lay people not simply to accept the obvious, supposedly finally proven facts, even when they are there in the textbooks, but always to look critically on them. [6] This applies also to research into the Holocaust complex. I agree with historian Prof. Dr. Peter Steinbach that our Basic Law protects the freedom of scientific research without "if" or "but" and favors unrestricted freedom to pursue any question and make any finding:
That applies not only to, but particularly to, historical science, in which it is not a question of pointing out a red thread and making it obligatory, but rather of proposing ideas that can be discussed. That will unquestionably be divisive and controversial in a pluralistic society. [7]
In particular, in historiography and in the publication of the findings thereof there is now the phenomenon that Eckhard Fuhr, speaking of the treatment of irksome scientists, has characterised as systematic falsification. [8] It is not the scientifically evaluable truth of a 
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scientist's assertion that is the criterium for the media and the politicians, but rather the question of its political usefulness.
Under pressure to conform to the Zeitgeist and in fear of the inquisition conducted by the media and the political and judicial authorities, many scientists feel forced to compromise and to adjust their research findings to the political standard. This suppression of the full truth or even the promotion of a half- or even a complete lie due to public pressure is the most baneful thing that can happen to science. Such conduct not only destroys respect for science but also inflicts immeasurable harm on our people and on all mankind.
I agree with Prof. Dr. Christian Meier's assertion that truth which has been arrived at by the rules of the scientific method can never be dangerous. [9] In the writing of history especially, it is half-truths and lies that are dangerous for the amity of peoples.
With respect to our thesis this much is clear: No matter which theories Revisionists start out from and no matter which results they may come to, they should be free to do their work and should not be restricted in any way as long as they satisfy the norms of scientific method. To penalize a certain result of scientific work would be to kill the freedom to do science and with it science itself, which without question violates Article 19, Sec. 2 of our Basic Law, which lays down that no fundamental right may be infringed on in an essential way. Restriction of the freedom of science can therefore never depend on what theories a scientific work starts out from or what results it comes to. The freedom of science can only be restricted with respect to the methods that are used to acquire knowledge. For example, research which endangers the mental or physical health of persons is not covered by the Basic Law.
Since in science there are no final or self-evident truths, then also there can be no such truths in respect to scientific investigation of the events of the Third Reich. Even in this subject area it is a fundamental duty of science to criticize old results and revise them when necessary. Revisionism is an essential component of science.
4. Toward Freedom of Expression 
It is not difficult to protect the freedom to express an opinion that corresponds with that of the ruling class. The most horrible dictatorships fulfill that criteria. A state that honors human rights distinguishes itself in that it allows the freedom of expression to those whose ideas are not welcome to the ruling class. The right to freedom of expression is the citizen's defense against state interference: [10]
In its historical development down to the present the function of fundamental rights consists in providing the citizen defensive rights against the use of state power 
(BVerfGE 1, 104, Decision of Federal Constitutional Court). Standing judicial opinion is that this is its primary and central effect even today (BVerfGE 50, 337).
Taken on its own merits, an opinion that contradicts the current historical description of the Holocaust endangers neither the formal foundations of our state, such as fundamental 
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rights, popular sovereignty, the division of power or the independence of justice, nor the formal legitimacy of those who hold power, so such an opinion must be tolerated. However, there is hardly any other area in which our state proceeds more repressively against undesired opinions than with respect to the Holocaust. [11]
The right to free expression can only be restricted when its exercise infringes others' fundamental rights. When someone says the Holocaust did not happen the way we have always heard it did, or says it did not happen at all, his right to free expression will be de facto denied. The reason given for this will be that such assertions harm the dignity of those Jews once persecuted and killed, their descendants today and the entire racial group of Jews.
One may consider this principle as an extended protection of the direct victim of a crime, in order to protect him from slander thereafter. For example, everyone would accept that it cannot be allowed for people to slander a woman who was raped, saying she invented the story of the rape only to sneakily get retribution from or take revenge on the tried and convicted rapist for some other reason. This applies even when there may be doubt as to the truth of the woman's representations in light of her statements and the court records. The same protection must be allowed to every Jewish fellow citizen whose former (possibly only claimed) torturer was duly convicted. Nevertheless, it is not clear to me why all the relatives of the victim and all the members of the same religious group should enjoy the same protection.
In every case, however, he who maintains that the supposed crime did not take place must be given the opportunity to produce the proof of his assertion. Anything else would be contrary to the order of a state under the rule of law. To determine whether the proof is correct, there must be scientific examination of the evidence.
For example, a scientific work that comes to the conclusion that there never was a Holocaust would not improperly diminish anyone's dignity, since the results of scientific work may not be forbidden without coming into conflict with the fundamental right to freedom of science (Art. 19, Sec. 2, Basic Law). In a state under the rule of law, such a work must be permitted to be used as evidence in order that an accused might provide evidence in defense of his opinion.
5. Battle zone "Common Knowledge" 
Section 244 of our criminal procedure permits the court to refuse evidence on the grounds of "common knowledge". This provision allows our courts not to have to prove over and over again things that have been proven in court many times before and which are commonly accepted as true. There is nothing objectionable about this paragraph, which seeks to restrict delaying tactics in judicial procedure. To return to our previous example, a woman who has already proven several times and in the opinion of the court could still prove that she actually was raped should not be required to prove it anew before the whole world each time someone comes forward who disputes the event. Of course, this "common knowledge" principle does not exclude that there are circumstances under 
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which the evidence should be re-examined. It is a judicial rule that common knowledge does not endure forever and that there are times when the principle should be suspended.
For one, the principle fails when a significant dispute about the commonly accepted fact occurs in public. For another, every court is duty-bound to suspend the principle when it receives evidence that is superior in evidentiary value to evidence formerly submitted.
In my experience, it is media inquisitions organized by the mostly left-leaning governing elites which make it impossible that there be a significant public dispute on Holocaust matters. This would not be so bad if one at least were permitted to present in court proof that the evidence that he brought was superior in evidentiary value to what had been presented to German courts before. Unfortunately, in recent years we have had to suffer that every court in Germany would refuse any motion to determine merely the fact, whether new evidence was superior to old, on the grounds of "common knowledge". The evidentiary value of evidence is something that can certainly never be common knowledge. However, the Federal High Court has approved the practice that motions to determine evidentiary value may be denied on the basis of the common knowledge of the Holocaust, and even said that it did so because it had always been done. [12] If this ruling becomes settled, it will be clear that the judicial system of the Federal Republic of Germany has elevated the de facto principle of common knowledge of the Holocaust to an unchangeable dogma.
6. On the Defense of Human Rights in Our Country 
The most radical position of the opponents of Holocaust Revisionism is that which denies all freedom to Revisionism whatever, on the grounds that Revisionism and its theories harm the dignity of Jews. I have some questions to propose about this:
• Whose human dignity is more diminished, that of the victim whose suffering is disputed, or that of the convicted criminal who may have been erroneously convicted?
• Whose human dignity is more harmed, that of the victim of whom people say his suffering was a lie, or that of the scientist who people say has constructed a pseudoscientific structure of lies?
German courts protect the dignity of every Jew who, in connection with the Holocaust, has been accused of lying directly or (supposedly) indirectly, from any conceivable attack. In the sense of the extended protection for victims this may be acceptable.
When the same courts use the absolutized objection of "common knowledge" to refuse to hear any mitigating evidence they dismiss or prohibit everything that could protect the dignity of the scientist who is accused of constructing a pseudoscientific structure of lies. Does not the scientist have the same right to the protection of his dignity as any of our Jewish citizens? Is he not entitled to have his arguments heard and considered in court?
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German courts protect at law the dignity of the actual or supposed victims of the Holocaust from any conceivable attack. When these courts use the absolutized objection of "common knowledge" to refuse to hear any mitigating evidence they dismiss or prohibit everything that could restore the dignity of the convicted SS man. Does not the convicted SS man have dignity that needs to be protected? Many of our contemporaries may have asked themselves this question, and the fact that many would probably answer this question spontaneously, No, shows that the principle of equal treatment before the law laid down in Article 3 of the Basic Law has long disappeared from the understanding of many citizens. But, in fact, the dignity of the SS man and the dignity of the Jew are equally deserving of protection.
German courts correctly protect the dignity of the supposed Jewish victims from any conceivable attack, in accordance with Article 1 of the Basic Law. At the same time they dismiss or prohibit anything that could restore the dignity of those of whom it is said, they were members of a criminal organization. They dismiss or prohibit anything that could restore the dignity of the ordinary Wehrmacht soldier, of whom it is said by his service he enabled and prolonged the murders.
German courts protect dutifully the dignity of the members of the entire Jewish race from any conceivable attack. They dismiss or prohibit anything that could restore the dignity of the entire German people, who are marked as criminals.
The German state and its component German judicial system accept every injury to the dignity of the German people and each German person, or injure it themselves, and forbid anything that might defend this dignity. Does not this state and this judicial system commit a massive breach of Article 1, Section 1 of the Basic Law, in which human dignity is stipulated as inviolable and the state is enjoined to use every power it possesses to defend the dignity of every person?
Does not this state and its component judicial system violate the equal treatment principle laid down in Article 3, Sections 1, 3 of the German Constitution by defending the dignity of the Jews but neglecting or even forbidding the defense of the dignity of Germans generally, and of SS members, Waffen SS members and Wehrmacht soldiers in particular?
Does not this state and its component judicial system deny to all who hold a natural scientific worldview the freedom to profess that worldview, a freedom specified in Article 4, Section 1 of our Basic Law? We are compelled to believe in bodies that burn of themselves, in the disappearance of millions of people without any trace, in geysers of blood spurting from mass graves, in boiling human fat collecting in incineration pits, in flames meters high spurting from crematory chimneys, in Zyklon B insertion hatches that are not there, in gassing with diesel motors, which is not practical for murder, and so on and so forth. The next thing we will be asked to believe in are witches riding on broomsticks to the Boxberg.
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Does not this state and its component judicial system refuse to allow someone to communicate his opinion of things connected with the Holocaust from the standpoint of his natural scientific worldview, contrary to Article 5, Section 1 of the Basic Law?
Finally, does not this state and its component judicial system deny to every researcher, scientist and teacher his right to conduct an unprescribed, unrestricted search for the truth and to publish his scientific opinion, contrary to Article 5, Section 3 of the Basic Law?
It would appear that this state and its component judicial system are inflicting an ongoing injury to the majority of its people, in that it refuses the presentation of possible mitigating evidence, contrary to Articles 1, 3, 4 and 5 of the Basic Law,
It would seem to be high time to change this practice if we are to keep it from being said that this state is grossly inimical to human rights. A first step should be to stop banning scientific books and throwing their authors into prison.
Ernst Gauss, Rothenburg o. d. T., 5 May 1995
NOTES 
1.	Deutschland einig Vaterland, Ullstein, Berlin 1990, p. 71.
2.	Hitlers langer Schatten, Langen Müller, Munich 1993, pp. 308ff.
3.	Ernst Gauss (ed.), Grundlagen zur Zeitgeschichte, Grabert, Tübingen 1994. Cf. Az. 4 Gs 173/95 of the Municipal Court of Tübingen. This concerned a collected volume of Revisionist pieces on the Holocaust. It can be obtained through: VHO, Postbus 46, B-2600 Berchem 1, Belgium (DM 70.-).
4.	Natur und Moral, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1987, p. 41.
5.	Gentechnologie und Grenzen der Biologie, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1987, p. 126.
6.	Ibid., p. 127.
7.	P. Steinbach, ARD-Tagesthemen, 10.6.1994.
8.	FAZ, 23.12.1994, p. 1.
9.	In: Berichte und Mitteilungen der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Heft 3/1994, p. 231.
10.K.-H. Seifert, D. Hömig (eds.), Grundgesetz für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland , 
Nomos, Baden Baden 1985, pp. 28f.
11.On the reasons for this behaviour, cf. G. Rudolf, in: A. Mohlau (ed.), Opposition für 
Deutschland, Druffel, Berg am See 1995. 12.Bundesgerichtshof, Az. 1 StR 193/93.
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Pressac and the German Public 
Manfred Köhler [1] 
1. The Claim 
1.1 The Media 
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the most respected newspaper of the German-speaking world and one of the most respected newspapers world-wide, published an article by Joseph Hanimann entitled "Ziffernsprache des Ungeheuerlichen" (Encrypted Speech of Monsters) on 14.10.1993 on page 37. In this piece Hanimann reported on the book by French pharmacist Jean-Claude Pressac published at the end of September 1993 by the publishing arm of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique on the crematories of Auschwitz, that supposedly sheltered the technology for the mass murder of countless persons, mostly Jews. [2] Hanimann wrote:
The book is filled with photographic material and construction plans. It reads like an engineer's handbook in which technical data, such as incineration capacity and fuel consumption per corpse coldly document the whole monstrous thing [...]
The principal benefit of this publication is that the technical details have been historically analyzed for the first time.
The amazed layman learns that the claimed worst crime of human history has been subjected to a technical-criminological investigation for the first time 50 years after the fact. Almost every vehicular death and ordinary murder is routinely investigated by technological and criminological experts as soon as possible after it is reported. Why the 50 years' delay here? Hanimann himself indicates the answer:
The author, who can think the ice-cold logic of technicians and can speak the hollow speech of the numbers of race-murder, meets the technicians of the time and the Revisionists of today on their own ground. But at the same time one gets the impression that someone else in the mirror is writing the book: Pressac's earlier teacher, the Revisionist Faurisson. In that Pressac expends his entire power of argument to prove what is clearly true, the reality of the gas chambers, his former doubt seems to linger.
Apparently there are people who dispute the mass murder in Auschwitz on technical and scientific grounds. These people must be met with scientific-technical expertise. Yet again the layman must wonder, Were not the doubters formerly portrayed as crazies whose arguments need not be taken seriously? Why do we need to argue with them and bring up such a big gun as a publication put out by the most prestigious scientific institute of France? Are the objections of the deniers worthy of discussion? Do their arguments 
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have substance? In that case, why were they withheld from the German readership of the reputedly most thorough newspaper in Germany? Why do we hear about them first through a supposed refutation? Why does the FAZ conceal from its readers the views of the deniers, who after all were the real reason for Pressac's book? Does not the FAZ trust its readers to be able to distinguish between true and false argumentation? Are the staff of FAZ not very bright? Or are the editors afraid that the readers might discover that those who put the newspaper together are not very bright? Question upon question ...
Apparently readers' criticisms of this one-sided discussion of the subject had an effect on Joseph Hanimann, because in his discussion of the German edition of Pressac's book, [3] under the title "Teuflische Details" (Devilish Details) on 16.8.1994 (p. 8) we find, in addition to what was essentially a repeat of what he had already written, the following passages:
The German Germar Rudolf describes Pressac's proofs as fraudulent; Faurisson has himself published a "Réponse à Jean-Claude Pressac" (Answer to ...). Out of context, he welcomes what he takes to be Pressac's "concessions" to the Revisionist viewpoint: that the number of victims is less than that formerly given, that no decision for mass murder was taken at the Wannsee conference, that Zyklon B was used for combating typhus, that the crematories of Birkenau were originally planned without gas chambers. The exiguousness of the objections that Faurisson can raise to Pressac clearly shows his embarrassment.
Other reviews evaluated Pressac's new book similarly. For example, in Die Welt on 27.9.1993 in a piece entitled "Neue Erkenntnisse über Auschwitz" (New Knowledge on Auschwitz), Greta Maiello wrote:
The result is a comprehensive and highly professional study.
A piece entitled "Die Maschinerie des Todes" (The Machinery of Death) which appeared in Welt am Sonntag on 3.10.1993, signed by "ell", contained:
[...] describes even the tiniest technical details as to how people were killed in the concentration camps.
In "Die Gaskammer-Erbauer von Auschwitz" (The Gas chamber Builders of Auschwitz), Peter Hillebrand of the TAZ in Berlin said on 21.3.1994 about the German edition of Pressac's book:
By means of technical data he [Pressac] can now confirm the existence and the operation of the gas chambers. [...] In his book, which will appear soon in German, he describes with gripping, ice-cold technical detail the work of the fitters, site engineers and architects. It is just this painful description of technical detail, revealing changes of plans, fudging and bungling [...] which demonstrates the incomprehensible unscrupulousness of the builders of these killing facilities.
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Following an interview with Pressac in the piece "Die Technik des Massenmordes" (The Technology of Mass Murder) in Focus, nr. 17 (pp. 116ff.) on 25.4.1994 Burkhard Müller-Ullrich added this commentary:
What has been missing until now has been proof of the technical method of mass murder. The Revisionists – an international group of private historians, mostly confessed National Socialists, who deny the crime or want to "minimize" it – attack just this point. [...] Pressac's merit is that with his book he has undermined the foundation for any objections of the Revisionists and Auschwitz-deniers, if there ever was any. [...] Even Nolte did not know about the conclusive, indisputable refutation with which Pressac disposed of the main point of the Auschwitz-deniers, that a mass gassing of several thousand people in one day in a single camp was technically impossible.
On 29.4.1994 in the Süddeutsche Zeitung under the caption "Die Sprache des Un-faßbaren" (Speech of the Incomprehensible) Harald Eggebrecht stated:
[...] since the brutal resurgence of neo-Nazis and their shameless denial of the annihilation of the Jews in the gas chambers of Auschwitz, propped up with pseudoscien-tific theories that the murder machinery was impossible on so-called technical grounds, it has appeared necessary to prove Auschwitz all over again. [...] In this document concerned with the careful analysis of all documents there are only a few lines in which Pressac grabs hold of the horror. [...] As said before, this book is not a sensation, this is no argument from the defense against the attack of the unteachable, the shameless, the cynics and the relativizers à la Ernst Nolte, assuming that one should take their arguments and theorization seriously as belonging in a scientific discussion. Whoever does that is well on the way to believing in an "Auschwitz lie" and acceptance of the Nazi era as an integratable period.
Manfred Kriener, discussing Pressac's masterwork under the heading "Die Technik des Massenmordes" (The Technology of Mass Murder) on 18.6.1994 in the regional newspaper Stuttgarter Nachrichten, was equally forthright:
Pressac has written on technology, but not a technical book. The shadow of the piles of corpses and the suffering of the victims are always present. [...] His books have become part of the material that now make Auschwitz one of the "best documented mass killings of all human history." [...] The hope that Pressac, as a former "Revisionist", can persuade his former intellectual comrades to the opposite view is surely illusory. Only the wrong-headed would read such books. [...] Comprehension of the mass murder and its practical, technical realization – that is Pressac's main contribution.
This much is clear: The print media present the work of Pressac as a technically-oriented study on a high scientific plane, which, though not strictly limited to technical matter, was intended to and is capable of refuting the supposedly pseudoscientific arguments of the supposedly ignorant and neo-Nazi Revisionists and Auschwitz deniers. [5]
 	16
1.2 The Judicial System 
The criminal justice system in Germany refuses to allow an accused who is charged with publicly denying the Holocaust in part or wholly to present any evidence in support of his view. The reason they give for this is sec. 244, para. 3, sentence 2 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which states that evidence will not be allowed when a thing is commonly known to be true. Since the Nuremberg trials of 1946, our judicial system has operated on the presumption that the Holocaust is as well-known a fact as that the earth revolves around the sun. The objection on common knowledge can be defeated by two things: first, by a discussion within competent scientific circles and second, if the accused presents new evidence that is superior to all previously submitted evidence. For example, a technical-scientific expert report would be superior to any previous evidence if only witness testimony and documents had been presented before, because the latter are inferior in evidentiary power to technical evidence. Recently, two technical expert reports have been commonly presented by the defense as evidence for the correctness of the views of their clients, namely, the Leuchter Report [6] and the Rudolf expert report. [7] When these expert reports were presented in a criminal trial recently, the court refused to accept them as evidence, saying that they were not only not capable of resolving "doubts" in "competent scientific research", and that they did not constitute new evidence superior to previously submitted evidence. To quote the Upper Land Court of Celle: [8]
The evidence submitted is mainly supported by researches of Diplom Chemist Ru-dolph [9] and the so-called "Leuchter Report" of the American Frederick A. Leuchter [...] As to the discussion of the question in technical circles, we merely point out that the "Leuchter Report" has been criticized, and that the French pharmacologist and toxicologist Pressac [10] as well as the retired Social Counselor 
Wegner have produced expert reports that came to an opposite conclusion. Therefore, there are no facts to prove that the new research presented has led to a discussion in the technical community due to new doubts as to the consensus nor that there is any ground for thinking the evidence presented is superior to evidence already at hand.
Social Counselor Wegner, a man nearly 90 years old, had recently made a fool of himself with his article, [11] which did not even approach the standards of a competent technical expert report, since he was not qualified in chemistry, toxicology or other technical matters and had never tried to put his writing in the form required by the rules and customs of these disciplines. He is therefore of no account in any discussion in technical circles. Pressac, however, was portrayed as the single technical specialist who argued against the Revisionists – even though he had never addressed the arguments in the Rudolf expert report. Nevertheless, for the court, Pressac's works constitute a refutation of Revisionist arguments, or are at least a match for them. Pressac is the last reed to which German justice can cling when they raise the objection "common knowledge" – for the purpose of suppression of evidence.
 	17
1.3 The Historians 
Eberhard Jäckel, Professor of Contemporary History in Stuttgart and one of the most widely-known specialists on the Holocaust, wrote a review of the German edition of Pressac's book, which appeared shortly thereafter, under the heading "Die Maschinerie des Massenmordes" (The Machinery of Mass Murder), in the weekly Die Zeit on 18.3.1994. In the review he said:
It has angered a few readers that he [Pressac] has described all this with the unfeeling precision of a heating technician. For every assertion he has a letter or a quote from the records of the construction office. What is even more aggravating is that he gives the impression that he is the one who discovered the evidence. In fact, the method of operation has been known for a long time, though without the technical details, and moreover it is questionable whether they were developed in the way he describes. [...] He has been researching for ten years but he has not become a sound historian. His book is through and through technical, limited to a single mode, one might say benighted. Nevertheless, it is useful for just that reason. The usefulness is not so much that there is now a completely irrefutable proof for the existence of the gas chambers. [...] It is useful that Pressac has refuted the anti-Semitic deniers with their own technical arguments. One waits in suspense to see what they will think of next. But since they are not interested in the truth, but only in the seeming justification of their prejudices, not even Pressac will convince them. The greatest usefulness of the book lies in this, that we can now understand the operation in its technical details.
Thus the opinion of the Holocaust court historians did not deviate markedly from that of the media. They are of one viewpoint in their evaluation of Pressac as the technical-scientific wonder weapon against the "evil" Revisionists, but there are discrepancies with respect to how evaluate Pressac's working methods. Jäckel is angry that Pressac pretends that he alone has discovered the wheel. Indeed, most of the work had already been done by others, including not only the established historians and hobby-historians but also by Revisionists such as Faurisson – something Jäckel omitted to mention.
The response from the Institute for Contemporary History when asked to make a comment on the Rudolf expert report was revealing: [12]
The Institute for Contemporary History will make no comment on this expert report. In our opinion, it is useless to go in detail into the diverse attempts of the Revisionist side to dispute the mass gassings in Auschwitz. The fact of these gassings is obvious and has only recently been reconfirmed by the records of the construction office of the Waffen SS and police found in the Moscow archives (see the publication by 
Jean-Claude Pressac, Les Crématoires d'Auschwitz. La machinerie du meurtre de masse. – Editions CNRS, Paris 1993).
Here again Pressac was brought out as a decisive weapon against the Revisionists.
 	18
2. The Reality 
2.1 The Scientific Basis 
Briefly defined, science is any research open to examination by outsiders and the systematic description of same. Examination by outsiders means that anyone could undertake the same research through experimentation based on defined conditions and logical deduction. Also, the source data that the researcher has relied upon must be publicly available. This means that conclusions that are based on original documents or on the data of foreign scientific research should be identified such that the outsider can retrieve the original documents or the publications of the foreign scientists. Further, proper scientific procedure requires the inclusion in the research of at least the most important of the current scientific theories and counter-theories; there should be a systematic treatment of known works on the same subject. Also, a scientist should make clear the premises of his research; he should distinguish between facts and value judgements openly and acknowledge the limits of his technical competence if this is not clear from the context of the publication.
Pressac violates many of these principles grossly. R. Faurisson, for example, will show below how Pressac's method of citation cannot be accepted as scientific. Over and over he constructs sentences with several assertions and then proves the assertions with a document that bears on only one of them. Also he frequently mixes his personal, usually unfounded, opinion in with statements taken from documents he references without making it clear that he is doing so.
The way Pressac organizes his work also leaves much to be desired, since he has apparently not taken the trouble to use the documents he has analyzed to form an overall picture of Lager Auschwitz, which, if he had done so, might provide a very different picture from the one he presents. Instead, he sifts through the hay pile of documents for this or that indication of a presumed crime and omits to include possibly exonerating documents in his investigations.
In Pressac's work one can find hardly any opposing opinions. Although he alleges that he will show that the arguments of the Revisionists are invalid – and the media, contemporary historians and judicial officers sing the same song –, Pressac systematically excludes all facts, sources, views and conclusions that put his conception in question. No Revisionist work is named, no Revisionist argument is discussed. Since Pressac is invoked because of the Revisionists and against them, this fact alone must be the death stroke to his work.
Nowhere does Pressac tell us that as a pharmacist he does not have the requisite technical or historical training nor has he taught himself sufficiently in these areas. With his book and the hubbub with which the media responded to it he created, if only sloppily, the impression that he would publish definitive results in these technical areas. If he wanted to meet the requirements adhered to by scientists, he had a duty to make it clear that he did not possess expert qualifications
 	19
2.2 Technology and Physical Science 
One might be tempted to pardon the systematic omission of contrary viewpoints if Pres-sac had been true to the task he set for himself in the title of his book, which, as we are incessantly reminded by our media, contemporary historians and judicial officers, was to deliver a technically founded treatment of the question of the crematories in Auschwitz. Unfortunately, his work does not contain a reference to any source from a technical publication. It does not contain the results of a single technical study of his own or anyone else. Here is an example: With respect to the time it would take to cremate a corpse in the crematories at Auschwitz, a figure necessary to the determination of maximum capacity, Pressac's book does not contain any calculation or figure based on the technical literature. Instead it contains a collection of conflicting values in various places throughout the book (1 hr., p. 7; 30-40 min., p. 13; 1 hr. 12 min., p. 15; 15 min., p. 28; 1 hr. 36 min., p. 34; 34-43 min., p. 49; 13 min., p. 72; 29 min., p. 74; 22 min., p. 80) [13] For some incomprehensible reason Joseph Hanimann praised J.-C. Pressac in the FAZ for his determination of the capacity of the crematories at Auschwitz ....
In this book, C. Mattogno will demonstrate in detail that Pressac fails to examine critically and mostly even ignores the contradictions on technical processes that appear in the witness statements and documents – as though he had not noticed them. Significantly, one notices dry comments from Pressac that this or that witness has exaggerated and can not be relied upon but there is nothing as to what could be proven to be technically possible. In this Pressac does not differ from the other historians and hobby-historians of the credulous Holocaust brotherhood.
2.3 Historiography 
Pressac's book also does not measure up to the requirements made on works within the discipline of historiography. In that respect it differs little from the works of others of the same intellectual orientation.
For example, where is the critical evaluation of testimony and documentation, the alpha and omega of all historiography? As mentioned above, there is no sign of any critical evaluation of witness testimony. One looks in vain for any evaluation even of the most important of the 80,000 documents that Pressac studied. C. Mattogno gives one example of how necessary critical evaluation is to documents found in the KGB archives.
One can not necessarily demand of a work that sets out to investigate the technology of mass murder through study of the crematories of Auschwitz that it furnish an historical overview of the events in the camps of Auschwitz. What one can and must demand, however, is an overview of the technical and organizational conditions and operations in the camp directly or indirectly connected with the claimed killing machinery. In this respect also Pressac is blind to technical facts that contradict the picture of a ghastly, inhumane killing camp: recreation facilities, infirmaries, expensive, ultra-modern sanitary facilities, civil, non-criminal use of the crematories, ground water drainage, waste water filtration, biogas reclamation from sewage sludge, industrial work programs, and so on.
 	20
3. The Evaluation 
3.1 The Press 
When the chief editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung was asked to explain why they had praised Pressac's book so uncritically and whether there was any one on the editorial staff with a technical or scientific background who might have recognized the above-mentioned defects of the book, they declined to answer and referred the inquiry to the responsible journalist Joseph Hanimann, living in Paris. The latter, when he answered, stated that it was neither part of his assigned duty nor within his competence to critically review Pressac's book, that it was his task to report on events in France, which included the publishing of Pressac's book and the accompanying publicity campaign. In addition, he did not see any reason to undertake a critical review of Pressac's book, because to his knowledge no reputable historian saw any reason to do so. [14] In German editorial offices critical journalism does not appear to be called for when our court historians cough. Anxious obedience is a better description of such behaviour. Apparently Mr. Hanimann also does not understand that historians are not the proper respondents for technical or natural scientific questions. One could not expect an historian to recognize deficiencies in these areas. This sort of reporting demonstrates the incompetence of the journalists and editors of the FAZ on this subject and the fact that our journalists do not do much more than to rewrite uncritically what others of the same orientation have already written. It is the same with the other reviewers, whose similar-sounding phrasing make the rewriting sometimes patent.
Hanimann's review of the German edition of Pressac's book, published by the FAZ on 16.8.1994, was a little bit better. It is true his judgement on Pressac's book was identical with that of October of the previous year but at least he named two of the leading Revisionists. By chance, however, he omitted to mention that which he allowed to Pressac by mentioning his profession (pharmacist): he withheld from the reader that both Revisionists were academics. Whether Hanimann's belief that Pressac embarrassed Faurisson is true or not we will leave to the judgement of our readers. It is strange, however, that Hanimann imputes to Germar Rudolf that he described Pressac's technical documentation as a forgery. Rudolf had thoroughly discussed Pressac's book in a technical paper in which his judgement is the same as that expressed here. [15] The word "forgery" does not occur in Rudolf's work in connection with Pressac's documentation. He did mention the forgery of the Demjanjuk identity card found in the Moscow archives [16] in order to emphasize the necessity of critical evaluation of documents, something in which Pressac was flagrantly negligent. However, FAZ did have the fairness to publish a correction by Rudolf as a letter to the editor on 26.8.1994 on p. 8, including a list of the assertions which were actually made in his expert report.
 	21
The Stuttgarter Nachrichten has shown itself more unscrupulous in its handling of the truth than Hani-mann. They embellished their above-mentioned article with a picture from Pressac's book of a hot air clothing disinfestation apparatus in Auschwitz and captioned it with these words: "The machinery of human annihilation: the gas chambers of Auschwitz", clearly suggesting that it had to do with the killing gas chambers. Since this picture appears in Pressac's book explicitly 
The machinery of human annihilation: and unambiguously labeled as a hot the gas chambers of Auschwitz air disinfestation chamber, thus as 
Falsification of a photograph – mislabeling by the Stuttgarter harmless equipment for cleaning 
Nachrichten (18.6.1994): What is shown is actually an appa-prisoner's clothing to prevent dis-ratus for hot air disinfestation of prisoner's clothing.  ease and to protect Jewish lives, if we are to believe that the responsible journalist, Manfred Kriener, made a mistake we must attribute to him either illiteracy or partial blindness. My personal opinion is that this is one of the vilest falsifications and most brazen deceits I have encountered.
It is characteristic of the mode of thinking of our media on the Revisionists that, on the one hand, they defame all of them categorically as Nazis or reproach them as apologists for the Nazi regime. The average reader is probably influenced by this mostly false imputation, yet it has no bearing on any technical argument and can only have the effect of diverting the discussion from the technical area to the political. This political instrumentalization of the subject by the media (and also by the court historians and the judicial system) can never contribute to a scientific discussion – it represents the violation of science.
On the other hand, one constantly comes across media warnings to the effect that the citizen should beware of the danger of Revisionist arguments. On 19.5.1994 the Swiss Welt-woche wrote:
Hence our warning to all that may come in contact with this propaganda material that only barely disguises its anti-Semitism: Do not get into a discussion with a Revisionist! Whoever denies the murder of Jews in the gas chambers of the Nazi regime lies and can not claim the right to freedom of opinion, as the Constitutional 
High Court in Karlsruhe recently decided.
Here we have it: Because of the potential danger to the one's spiritual contentment due to knowledge of the truth, it is safer to: see nothing, hear nothing, say nothing! It is better to: warn, threaten, malign and censor.
 	22
3.2 Justice 
The decision of the Upper Land Court of Celle mentioned above refers explicitly to the works of W. Wegner und J.-C. Pressac as counter-expert reports opposed to the Revisionist works. In fact, an expert report can be used in a trial as countervailing evidence only when it has been submitted by one of the parties. It is an error of procedure to deny a motion to submit evidence on the grounds that there is a paper somewhere that reaches a different conclusion. It is beyond the competence of the court to decide whether the works of Wegner and Pressac are capable of refuting the arguments of the Revisionists. For example, it has never been asserted that Pressac has refuted the Rudolf expert report, yet since Spring 1992 the latter has been refused as evidence without an examination and without a reason. Whether the responses of the opposing side can refute Revisionist arguments is a question for technical experts to clarify. Above all, this is an interdisciplinary question whose explication can not be accomplished by a court and which a court has no business dealing with.
It is a peculiar arrogance to require that there be a public discussion on Revisionist theories as a condition for overcoming the objection of "common knowledge", since anyone who makes Revisionist utterances in public is charged and sentenced without possibility of defense through the invocation of this very same "common knowledge". It is the incantation "common knowledge" which blocks public discussion.
Our judicial system assumes the power to make decisions on scientific questions, despite gross incompetence, and persecutes scientists of an opposite viewpoint with methods that are comparable to those of mediaeval witch hunts.
3.3 Historians 
It is elementary that historians are not qualified to resolve technical or natural scientific questions in a competent fashion. It is apparently less elementary that the foundations of historiography can only be what is consistent with physical laws, the laws of logic and what was technically possible in the period being studied. These scientific disciplines dominate even historiography – even if this is not to the taste of many historians. Technical and physical scientific questions play an overriding role in the question of the claimed mass murder of Jews during the Third Reich since such a gigantic mass murder without trace represents a phenomenon that needs a technical investigation – quite apart from the critical evaluation of so many absurd witness statements that our court historians have accepted uncritically for decades, as though they were children hanging on the storyteller's every word. Even Pressac is critical of this practice: [17]
No, no. One can not base competent historical writing on witness testimony alone.  
It is a singular circumstance that even the supposedly super-competent Institute for Contemporary History could do no better in response to the Rudolf expert report than appeal to the common knowledge of the Holocaust, since their mention of Pressac, who merely interpreted documents and testimony, completely fails to meet the points made by the 
 	23
technical and natural scientific Rudolf expert report, and therefore can not invalidate it. There can not be much substance to the arguments or the competence of these "scientists" working for the Institute for Contemporary History, supposedly the leaders in the field of Holocaust research.
4. The Freedom of Science 
In a decision on 11.1.1994 the Constitutional High Court stated: [18]
The defense of the fundamental right to freedom of science does not depend either on the correctness of methods and results or on the validity of the argumentation and evidence or the completeness of the viewpoints and authorities on which the work is based. The decision between good and bad science, between the truth or falsehood of results can only be made scientifically. [...] Therefore freedom of science protects minority opinions as well as research endeavors and results that prove to be erroneous or faulty. Unorthodox or intuitive methods likewise enjoy the protection of the fundamental right. The only precondition is that the question be about science; this includes everything whose form and content indicate that it is concerned with the discovery of the truth. [...]
The quality of being scientific cannot be refused to a work because it is one-sided or contains omissions or does not sufficiently pay attention to differing conceptions. [...] It can be withdrawn from the domain of science only when it lacks any claim to being scientific not just in details or according to the definition of certain schools, but systematically. This would be the case if it were intended not to make known the truth but to give preconceived opinions or conclusions the appearance of scientific derivation or provability. An indication of this could be the systematic refusal to deal with facts, sources, views and conclusions that put the author's conception in question. On the other hand, it is not sufficient that the scientific quality of a work is disputed in controversies in scientific circles between different orientations of methods or subject matter.
In almost all of their works the established historiography ignores the opposing scientific opinion of the Revisionists on the subject of the Holocaust. [19] This would be understandable if Revisionist research were considered so insignificant and ridiculous that no one need bother with it. However, the numerous papers in research publications and in the media prove that it is the theories and methods of the Revisionists that determine the questions and methods of Holocaust research today. In the French philosophical monthly Les Temps Modernes, edited by Claude Lanzmann, issue for 11/93, under the title "La Catastrophe du Révisionnisme", Robert Redeker described the situation as follows: [20]
Revisionism is not a theory like any other, it is a catastrophe. [...] A catastrophe is a change of epoch. [...] Revisionism marks the end of a myth [...] it means the end of our myth.
 	24
In the issue for 12/93 he continued these thoughts under the title "Le Révisionnisme invisible": [21]
Far from signifying the defeat of the Revisionists, Mr. Pressac's book Die Kremato-rien von Auschwitz. Die Technik des Massenmordes signifies its paradoxical triumph: The apparent victors (those who affirm the crime in its whole horrible extent) are the defeated, and the apparent losers (the Revisionists and with them the deniers) come out on top. Their victory is invisible, but incontestable. [...] The Revisionists stand in the center of the debate, determine the methods, fortify their hegemony.
Revisionist theories and methods therefore can not be ignored, but are obviously the principal challenge for the established historiography. Therefore one must deny that the established Holocaust historiography can claim to be science, since it disregards the arguments and the publications of the Revisionists. This applies to Pressac's book especially.
The present book constitutes a systematic documentation of Pressac's numerous scientific errors, not to mention fraudulence. It is a Revisionist book that is concerned almost exclusively with the opinions of the opposing side. It proves all its research and conclusions in detail.
Our judicial system sees the picture reversed: The Revisionists, they say, are not scientific and should be criminally prosecuted because their theories supposedly offend the Jews. But the court historians, whose method is provably non-scientific, are allowed to play the fool and can potentially offend the German people with their theories, because, by the ruling of the highest court in Germany the latter are not subject to being offended – there is no "defined group" in that case.
Should the judicial system decide to haul the authors of the present book into court and to ban their work, they are reminded that with this work the last reed to which the judicial claim of "common knowledge" clung has been broken. The public is reminded that only the truth can be a stable foundation on which peace and understanding between peoples can thrive. Truth can only be found through free, unhindered scientific discourse and never through a historical description fixed by penal law.
NOTES 
1.	 Manfred Köhler is a pseudonym for Diplom Chemist Germar Rudolf, who does not wish to have his career and his happiness destroyed by Federal German justice or inquisitional media. Under the same pseudonym he has published Auch Holocaust-Lügen haben kurze Beine , Cromwell Press, Brighton 1994 (now: P.O. Box 
62, Uckfield/East-Sussex TN22 1ZY (Great Britain)), an answer to the theories of Prof. Dr. Ernst Nolte in: Streitpunkte, Propyläen, Berlin 1993; and also: Der Wert von Aussagen und Geständnissen zum Holocaust , in: Ernst Gauss (ed.), Grundla-gen zur Zeitgeschichte, Grabert, Tübingen 1994.
 	25
2.	 J.-C. Pressac, Les Crématoires d'Auschwitz. La Machinerie du meurtre de masse , CNRS Éditions, Paris 1993.
3.	 Die Krematorien von Auschwitz. Die Technik des Massenmordes, Piper, München 1994. 
4.	  [Aaargh: missing] 
5.	 Hans-Günther Richardi deviates from this general line in his article, "Untilgbare 
Spuren der Vernichtung", Süddeutsche Zeitung , 13./14./15.8.1994, p. 9, in that he describes Pressac's book as "documentation", by which he may mean that he thinks Pressac's new book merely served as a reason for someone to write a general study on Auschwitz.
6.	 F.A. Leuchter, An Engineering Report on the alleged Execution Gas Chambers at 
Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek, Poland, Samisdat Publishers Ltd., Toronto 1988, 195 pp.; in German: F.A. Leuchter, Der erste Leuchter Report, Samisdat Publishers Ltd., Toronto, 1988.
7.	 R. Kammerer, A. Solms, Das Rudolf Gutachten, Cromwell Press, London 1993 (now: P.O. Box 62, Uckfield/East-Sussex TN22 1ZY (Great Britain). DM 35,- 
Vorkasse).
8.	 Upper Land Court Celle, decision on 13.12.1993, Az. 3 Ss 88/93, Mona-tszeitschrift für Deutsches Recht , 46(6) (1994) 608.
9.	 Incorrect: the spelling is "Rudolf".
10. Incorrect: Pressac is neither a pharmacologist nor a toxicologist, merely a pharmacist.
11. W. Wegner in: U. Backes, E. Jesse, R. Zitelmann (eds.), Die Schatten der Ver-gangenheit, Propyläen, Frankfurt/Main 1990, pp. 450. 
[Aaargh: Footnotes 12 to 19 are untranslated from the German original: http://www.vho.org/D/anf/index.html#Inhalt] 
12. H. Auerbach, Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Schreiben vom 21.12.1993 an G. 
Herzogenrath-Amelung.
13. Seitenangaben der französischen Originalausgabe. 14. Briefwechsel FAZ/J. Hanimann mit G. Rudolf.
15. G. Rudolf, »Gutachten über die Frage der Wissenschaftlichkeit der Bücher 
Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers und Les Crématoires d'Auschwitz. La Machinerie du meurtre der masse von Jean-Claude Pressac«, Jettingen, 18.1.1994, abgedruckt in: W. Schlesiger, Der Fall Rudolf. Menschenrechtswidriger Vernichtungsfeldzug gegen einen tadellosen 
Wissenschaftler, Cromwell, Brighton 1994 (jetzt: P.O. Box 62, Uckfield/East-Sussex TN22 1ZY (Großbritannien)).
16. Vgl. D. Lehner, Du sollst nicht falsch Zeugnis ablegen, Vowinckel, Berg o.J. 17. J.-C. Pressac im Interview mit Burkhard Müller-Ullrich, »Die Technik des 
Massenmordes«, Focus, Nr. 17, 25.4.1994.
18. Az. 1 BvR 434/87, S. 16f.
19 Die einzige nennenswerte Ausnahme bildet hier E. Noltes Streitpunkte, Propyläen, Berlin 1993.
 	26
On Pressac: History by Night or in Fog? 
by Serge Thion 
Editor's introduction 
Considerable attention has been devoted during the past year to a book on "The Crematories of Auschwitz" by French pharmacist Jean-Claude Pres-sac. Published in September 1993, it has been widely praised for providing definitive proof that the "Holocaust deniers" are wrong. For example, The New Yorker (Nov. 15, p. 73) commented that Pressac has provided "incontrovertible evidence" of the existence of a wartime German "industrial-style process" for killing Jews. Similarly, Newsweek magazine (Dec. 20) praised the new Pressac book as a "dramatic rebuttal" of revisionist views. "Holocaust experts have hailed his work as definitive," the influential weekly added. (A brief, preliminary critique of Pressac's new book appeared in the January-February 1994 Journal.) 
While a German edition of Pressac's book has been issued, an English-language edition apparently is not forthcoming. Instead, an abridged portion of it is included in Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, a 528-page work recently published in association with the taxpayer-funded United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 
Pressac's writings — including his much-discussed 1989 book — and the considerable discussion they have generated, confirm that a genuine debate about the supposed extermination gas chambers is underway. In the following review essay, French scholar Serge Thion contributes to the welcome discussion with a detailed and highly critical look at Pressac's new book. Incidentally, Thion's title for this essay is a play on the title of a 1955 French Holocaust movie, "Night and Fog," that is obligatorily shown in school classrooms throughout France. 
"Historian by night," writes the Paris daily newspaper Le Monde in its presentation of the new work of an "amateur" who happens to be a pharmacist by day. [1] While for the last twelve years revisionists have been reproached as being merely "amateurish historians," suddenly this term is presented as a quality that guarantees the worth of the new thesis being promoted by the media as the definitive response to the revisionists. I shall not be so cruel as to recall that this one joins a long list of "definitive responses" that have figured on various lists, since the big trials of 1980-1982, and including masterworks such as Filip Müller's Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers, or Claude Lanzmann's cinematographic production, "Shoah." [2] 
 	27
Jean-Claude Pressac, the author of this miraculous new book, Les crématoires d'Ausch-witz ("The Crematories of Auschwitz"), [3] has already been presented several times as the ultimate champion, the man who will finally terminate Professor Robert Faurisson. He showed up during a colloquium at the Sorbonne in 1982 that was supposed to have already settled the question. His patron at that time was the Great Moral Conscience of our age, Pierre Vidal-Naquet, the White Knight in the struggle against revisionism. Because the discussion dealt mainly with material and technical questions, which were way beyond Vidal-Naquet's competence as a specialist of Greek history, he had palmed Pres-sac off onto another archenemy of revisionism, Georges Wellers, a little-known chemist who happened also to be the editor of the journal of the Jewish documentation center in Paris. 
After a long period of hesitation, Wellers published a paper by Pressac in his holy and irreproachable journal, Le Monde Juif (July-September 1982). In that paper Pressac developed his theory of "little gassings," abandoning altogether the canonical version that had ruled until then. He replaced it with the view that, of course, gassings had taken place, but on a smaller scale than previously thought, and that all figures must now be revised downwards. The impact of Pressac's new theory was negligible. Other means were needed to make use of Pressac in the struggle against revisionism. The Klarsfeld clan, with its strong community and media ties, was ready to intervene. 
With their help, Pressac produced an enormous hodgepodge. In his research in the Auschwitz archives, he was not able to find any definitive proof that the Nazis had set up a murder factory there. Instead, he found a number of circumstantial traces that he thought might lead to some kind of presumption of extermination. It was couched in language reminiscent of a weak court case. 
His 1989 book, Auschwitz: Technique and Operations of the Gas Chambers, included hundreds of plans, blueprints, photographs and documents from the Auschwitz camp's technical departments, which were, of course, part of the SS administration. In an effort to make this massive and disorganized dossier more convincing, the Klarsfeld organized its non-dissemination. Reports of its existence were considered more effective than its actual distribution in bookstores. Translated into English (no French-language edition was ever made available), and published in New York, it was not publicly sold, and was sent to few of those who ordered it. It was given merely to "responsible community leaders" and "opinion makers." Through its impalpable existence, it was supposed to promote the idea that there now existed, finally, The Response to revisionism. 
Revisionists quickly managed to get hold of copies of this work, which neither Vidal-Naquet nor Klarsfeld obviously had ever read closely. Otherwise they would have caught a certain number of oddities and inconsistencies that would have caused them to doubt if they'd picked the right horse. 
Pressac was trotted out again to battle against Fred Leuchter, the American expert of gas chamber construction who had carried out on-site examinations of, and took wall scrap-
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ings from, the supposed gas chambers, and who concluded that massive and repeated gassings would have been physically impossible. 
Now we are presented for the fourth time with what the press calls the definitive argument. This time Pressac has another patron, an official historian by the name of François Bédarida who has been for quite some time head of the so-called "Institute of the Modern Age." He once distinguished himself by taking part, along with some shadowy political figures, in a phony academic "jury" that decreed, without reading it, that Henri Roques' thesis on the "confessions" of Kurt Gerstein was completely worthless. Having thus styled himself a master, Bédarida, whose works on English history are deservedly almost unknown, also wrote a thin booklet, in the form of a catechism, about the so-called Holocaust. It has been distributed free of cost to every history teacher in France in order to provide them with guidelines on how to stuff their pupils' heads with sanitized notions about Second World War events. Emboldened by such mass distribution, Bédarida felt brave enough to write an article in Le Monde (July 22-23, 1990) in which he revised the Auschwitz death toll downwards. It did not occur to him to explain why this revision was necessary, or the basis for his view that not four million, but rather 1.1 million people supposedly died in Auschwitz. Obviously still not entirely confident of himself, he added that the archives have still not been explored. He would not elaborate to explain why 45 years have not been enough time. Here's where Pressac came in. 
Along with a few minor satellites, this luminary of historical thought, Bédarida, now serves as Pressac's patron. This patronage is not negligible, because Pressac's new book is published by the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). In order to obtain this prestigious label, the book was submitted to an ad hoc committee of specialists. There must have also been an official evaluation of some kind, which we would be delighted to read. 
What does Pressac's book really say? It presents incontrovertible evidence that the Germans built crematories. Of course, only journalists believe, or pretend to believe, that the revisionists deny the existence of the crematories or of the concentration camps. These concentration camp crematories are well-known and have been documented since 1945. The issue has been whether they disguised secret facilities for carrying out mass killing. 
Pressac, who combed through tens of thousands of documents left behind by the Ausch-witz Bauleitung (construction office), states categorically that these installations, as planned from the outset, show no sign of lethal or homicidal intent whatsoever, and that they were specifically designed and built to contend with the health problems caused by a rather high mortality rate in the camps, above all after the beginning of the war. These problems, he shows, were linked with the raging epidemics that could (and did) wreak havoc not only among the camp inmates, but also among the Germans in the camps as well as the outside population. In this context, crematories had no ethical import, but were conceived as facilities to maintain public health, of the inmates as well as others. 
Having carried out a detailed study of the correspondence between the Auschwitz construction office and the outside private civilian firms that contracted for specific jobs, 
 	29
Pressac is able to provide us with a thorough — and quite tedious — history of the different phases in the construction of the various crematories, including the numerous changes in plans by the chiefs of the SS construction office. Evidently lacking anything like a long-term perspective, these officials depended closely on their superiors, who envisioned grand projects without bothering much about the budgetary and procurement problems that those poor subordinates would have to solve on the spot. 
Among these thousands of documents, where there are no secrets, where the SS "politicians" scarcely interfere; documents which after the war were divided among Germany, Poland, and Moscow; documents that remained intact at the end of the war, the department head having "neglected" to destroy them: among all these documents, there is not a single one that states clearly that these facilities were ever used for mass killing. Not one. 
Pressac offers no explanation whatever of this strange fact. To be sure, following others, he states that the references found in certain documents to "special actions" refer in coded form to the existence of that monstrous crime. But the documents oblige him also to state "special actions" could and did designate all sorts of "other," quite banal activities, and that the term "special" (in German, "Sonder-") was very widely used in the German military and non-military administration during that period. 
The great value of Pressac's work would therefore lie in its almost complete sifting through of the documents dealing with the construction of the crematories, the presumed site and instrument of the alleged crime. As in his previous writings, he picks out "traces" of criminal intent. Many of these, incidentally, he's had to leave by the wayside. A number of "traces" he presented in his 1989 book are conspicuously missing from the 1993 work. 
He notes, for example, that the SS wanted to install ventilation systems in the underground morgues of the crematories. He considers that this shows an intent to use these rooms for criminal purposes. Pressac is so convinced of this that he doesn't even bother to consider alternative explanations that would occur to less prejudiced souls, such as, for example, the need to disinfest, during typhus epidemics, the morgues with Zyklon B (used throughout the camp for disinfesting clothes, barracks, and so forth). 
He thinks he's found a criminal "trace" in the fact that a wooden fan was requested in the ventilating system, because wood is more resistant to corrosion by hydrocyanic acid than metal. Yet, several days later, the engineer in charge had the wooden fan replaced by a metal one! 
Pressac also states that the "definitive proof" of the existence of a homicidal gas chamber in crematory facility (Krema) II is found in a document dated March 1943 (cited on p. 72, doc. 28), which shows that the Auschwitz services were looking for gas detectors capable of detecting traces of prussic acid (hydrocyanic acid). But because he has explained earlier that these services used "tons" of Zyklon B for disinfestation, this "proof" is not particularly probative. 
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Eighty thousand documents. That's the number Pressac cites in his interview with the Nouvel Observateur. [4] These 80,000 documents, which he says he consulted in a matter of some days in Moscow, concern exclusively, if I'm not mistaken, the SS construction office at Auschwitz. One office among many others, therefore, but the one that would have been responsible for designing and constructing the infamous "industrial slaughterhouses." One might be astonished to learn that such installations are entrusted to the same low-level functionaries who dealt with the barracks, the bakeries, the roadworks, and so forth. No secret, no particular precautions were taken, as these same low-level officials didn't hesitate to subcontract with private firms, from which no particular discretion was requested. This is explained, as Pressac abundantly demonstrates, by the fact that these facilities were not designed or planned for a lethal purpose, but, quite to the contrary, as means of local public health control. 
It's very clear: of these 80,000 documents, only a fraction of which concern the crematories, not a single one deals explicitly with an installation for killing. Otherwise, this document would have long since been brandished triumphantly to the public. Until Pres-sac, one could surmise that there were hidden or inaccessible archives, harboring such a document. But Pressac tells us that these archives (concerning the Auschwitz construction office) are now complete, and that the chief of this office, evidently believing they contained nothing incriminating, took no measure to destroy them at the end of the war. 
In short, it must be acknowledged that among this mass of documents, which are supposed to clarify this issue, there are only a few that raise any suspicion. Where logically we should have found 1,000 or 10,000 incriminating documents — considering, as Pres-sac concedes, there was no code language, that no documents were destroyed, and that everything was done according to superior orders — one finds only a few minor elements, the interpretation of which remains open. 
These "traces" might conceivably support the charge if we could reconstruct a context in which only one interpretation is possible. Or, if several interpretations were possible, a historian should discuss the various ones before choosing his answer. This is not Pres-sac's practice. He dares not entertain the possibility of alternative interpretations of the documents. For if he were to give up calling these "the beginnings of proofs" (indeed, in a recent France-Inter radio interview he protested only feebly when a hasty journalist treated his "beginnings of proofs" as well-established proofs), Pressac would have to concede that all his work had been in vain. He would have to concede that he had rigorously demonstrated that German officials and engineers conceived and planned, in a rather disorderly way, crematory facilities that, as a matter of fact, did not work very well. No. This no one has ever doubted. He would have to admit that he had spent ten years of his life pushing on an open door, a door whose plan, conception, and stages of construction he describes in meticulous detail. What is truly interesting here is precisely that he found nothing obvious, in spite of exhaustive research. 
What does Pressac do to salvage what he can of the extermination thesis? Injections. The basic text of his book, that is, the product of his own research, is a careful chronicle of the planning and construction of the crematories. He refers here to the archives. The refer-
 	31
ence notes provide sources: they follow each other with abbreviations to archives (abbreviated as ACM, ARO, AEK, and so forth), according to the key given on page VIII. However, if one turns to check the reference notes that are grouped together on pages 97-109 — and disregarding the rare bibliographic references or the occasional bits of factual information ("Pohl was Oberzahlmeister [chief paymaster]") — one finds that the series of archival references is interrupted here by non-archival references, either to the official Polish Kalendarium (or Auschwitz Chronicle — more about this later) or to the supposed postwar "memoirs" of Auschwitz commandant Höss. These non-archival references, we find, are the sources cited by Pressac for the passages in the main text dealing with homicidal gassings. 
For example, on page 34 he abandons the archives to write about a "first gassing," and, in the same paragraph, he writes of the cremation "in one or two weeks of intensive work" of 550 to 850 corpses, leading to the deterioration of an oven. There exists no obvious or necessary link between the first "fact," based on the Kalendarium [5] and Höss, and the second — an oven's deterioration — the factuality of which is established from archival documents. This link is a merely a supposition that is dishonestly presented here as a fact. 
This rigorous scholar then tells us that "it is estimated today that very few homicidal gassings took place in this crematorium, but they have been exaggerated because they impressed direct or indirect witnesses." We know that Pressac is a poor writer, but just what is an "indirect witness"? And what does it mean to "exaggerate" a gassing? We need to decode here, I think. What Pressac means to say in this tortured sentence, I suppose, is more or less this: sure, there has been a lot of talk about gassings in crematory building (Krema) I, in the Auschwitz I (main) camp. Genocidal gassings are supposed to have begun there. However, because the revisionists have pointed out so many inconsistencies, Pressac ("it is estimated") has chosen to give ground ("they have been exaggerated"), attempting to explain inconsistencies by claiming that witnesses were "impressed," even if they were not actually present, but who nonetheless are regarded as "indirect" witnesses. Not a single source, not a single document is cited by Pressac to justify this climb-down. 
Pressac knows full well that the "classical" view cannot be defended, but in order to salvage something of it he must make concessions, without being able to justify them either. "It is estimated today . . . ," and presto! — the trick is done. What follows is of the same nature. He writes (p. 35): 
As gassing forced the total isolation of the area of the crematorium [not a single witness has ever made such a statement, but this point is a result of revisionist criticism], and since it was impossible to carry them [gassings] out while construction was in progress [same comment], it will be decided at the end of April to transfer this sort of activity to Birkenau [Auschwitz II camp]. 
There is a pure invention, a supposition asserted as a fact by Pressac so that he can land on his feet and rejoin Establishment history. 
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The amusing paradox in all this is that Pressac respects the Establishment history only with regard to gassings. As for the rest, he joyously tramples dogmas underfoot. The famous "Wannsee Conference" of January 20, 1942, which so many thoroughly dedicated historians have designated as the time and place of the decision to exterminate, is swept aside in a mere six lines (p. 35). Pressac does what revisionists do: he reads the text of the Wannsee conference protocol, which speaks of the evacuation of the Jews to the East, and says nothing of industrial-scale liquidation. He confirms not a single specific instruction was sent to the Auschwitz construction office as a result of this high-level conference. The fog surrounding the supposed genocide decision becomes thicker and thicker. 
On page 39 we come to the two little farmhouses near Birkenau that are supposed to have been the next sites of gassing extermination. In the middle of the information culled from the archives, one finds a new injection from the Kalendarium. On page 41 Pressac reports that Himmler informed Höss "of the choice of his camp as the center for the massive annihilation of the Jews." As Pressac himself tells us, Höss' account contains enormous implausibilities and cannot be trusted at all (footnote 132). It's a rotten branch, but it's the only one left for Pressac to cling to, because he's done no research whatsoever in the realm of policy. That's a job for historians, and thus one far beyond the abilities of our pharmacist. At the same time, though, there is a need to suppose that someone, at some time, made the decision to initiate this vast homicidal enterprise, which was then carried out by low-level functionaries. Himmler might have made the decision, but because Pres-sac can't find anything to support that supposition, he relies on Höss' admittedly dubious account. Better something than nothing. 
When Pressac comments on the work of the inmates' Sonderkommando teams "dragging the bodies from the gas chambers" (p. 43), the source he cites (note 141) is once again the Kalendarium. Third injection. 
Later, on page 47, Pressac tells us that large quantities of Zyklon B were deemed necessary to combat the typhus epidemic that raged in the camp, and that they had been requested from higher authorities on account of a "special action" — which obviously was to disinfest buildings. (One SS man was even poisoned, as the previous page confirms.) Further on this same page, Pressac adds that Bauleitung officials gave consideration to building a new crematorium "because of the situation created by the 'special actions'" — an obvious reference to the measures taken in an effort to halt the epidemics. How Pres-sac manages to conclude from this information that Auschwitz had been chosen "as the site of [the] massive annihilation of the Jews" remains a profound intellectual mystery. 
Here was an administration that struggled to contain an epidemic that may have killed 20,000 people (according to Pressac), [6] which had learned from higher authorities that the camp would again be considerably expanded (to accommodate tens of thousands of new deportees from the East, who were considered particularly "lousy"), and which was trying to gather the weapons to combat typhus: tons of Zyklon B and crematories. (Recall that at the Bergen-Belsen camp the British were unable to contain the epidemic that was raging there when they arrived. Some of the most "incriminating" photographs of horrific 
 	33
scenes from the camps were taken at Bergen-Belsen when it was under British administration.) 
Pressac then launches his own personal theory (p. 47), which only makes sense if he is attempting to conform to an already established explanation pattern: 
This stupefying cremation facility [nevertheless obviously in strict accord with the needs dictated by the situation there] could not but attract the attention of the SS officials in Berlin [obviously, since they authorized the expenditures] who afterward associated it with the "final solution" of the Jewish problem. 
This assertion has no basis in the documents found in the archives. 
Ever eager to protect his rear, Pressac believes that these "special actions" (a term that covered anything and everything in the military-administrative jargon of the period) were used as a pretext to obtain authorization from Berlin to construct crematory facility (Krema) III, which he determines actually had a "public health function." In using this "special action" term, then, the sneaky SS men of Auschwitz sought to make Berlin believe that their crematory requirements were linked to the extermination of the Jews, whereas in reality they concerned only the real, normal needs of the camp. This is a good example of Pressac's acrobatic abilities. 
I shall not dwell on the issue of open pit incinerations, which provide Pressac with an opportunity (p. 58) to severely criticize Höss' account, except to point out that he invents a figure of 50,000 corpses, burned in two months, based on a calculation of alleged killings that is derived, without actually quoting it, from the Kalendarium. Pressac pays no attention to the 100,000 cubic meters of wood (at a minimum) that would have been required, and of which there seems to be no trace in the archives. 
Pressac has himself confessed that he first got involved with Auschwitz because he wanted to write a novel, several scenes of which would be set there. We know that many people have had a similar itch. This compelling urge re-emerges from time to time, for instance on page 65, when he simply conjures up, out of the blue, relations between the director and the engineers of the Topf company (which built the ovens for the crematories). The three following pages — in which Pressac, the suburban pharmacist, impersonates the terrible SS as they look for ways to rationally organize gassings — are probably also taken from a novel we'll never read. The welcome details are not derived from the archives, but rather from a testimony dear to Pressac, that of a person named Tauber (footnote 203). 
When he evokes the first alleged gassing in crematory facility (Krema) II — supposedly the real industrial killing plant — and which was probably finished in March 1943, Pres-sac does not cite archival sources, but rather the secondary source Kalendarium and Tauber's testimony (pp. 73-74). The second alleged gassing is also based on the Kalen-darium. 
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There is no point in going on. Pressac's injection technique is now quite clear. The reader must keep his eye riveted to the footnotes in order to detect the changes in the story line. All this would be quite acceptable if the sources used were of comparable value. But for some time now historians have learned to refer to Danuta Czech's official Kalendarium only with the utmost caution. Of this work, Pressac himself writes (note 107, p. 101): 
Danuta Czech has produced a work that is vulnerable to criticism because, without explanation, it retains some testimonies while dropping others, and because it favors testimonies above documents. This peculiar historical orientation persists in the latest, third, edition, now published in Polish ... which makes no room for the Bauleitung documents of the Central Archives in Moscow. This greatly lessens the veracity of this fundamental work, which unfortunately was composed with a vision a little too skewed in the strained political atmosphere of the 1960's [in Poland]. 
What Pressac is really trying to say here, God only knows. For many people, though, this is a work that comes straight from the Polish government's Auschwitz State Museum, and thus from the exploitation of Auschwitz by Russian and Polish Stalinism as an instrument to encourage anti-fascist sentiments in the West during the Cold War. We know well the real value of the "testimonies" that were mass produced at that time. If Pressac were really confident of sources of this kind, it would be logical for him to use them. But he shows the greatest mistrust. Nevertheless, his account of homicidal gassings comes exclusively from such sources, the value of which he himself acknowledges to be severely limited. These stories have already been published a thousand times. It was their internal weakness that moved Paul Rassinier to criticize them, and launch the movement now known as Holocaust revisionism. In continuing to use them, with only slight cosmetic adjustments, Pressac seems to make a fool of himself. 
But the most extraordinary thing about Pressac's book is the pretense that it dispenses entirely with testimony to make its case. That is what Pressac claims to journalists. They swallow this lie because they more easily trust commentary than the text itself. By burying in the depth of his footnotes his use of the most hackneyed products of the Polish Sta-linist dossier, Pressac thus appears to respond to the revisionists on their own ground, that of verifiable fact, as long as one accepts that the physical laws of nature are as valid today as in 1944-1945. 
In chronicling Pressac's inconsistencies, I have refrained from referring to Pressac's earlier writings, comparing them with his most recent book. But others might be less indulgent and could be naughty enough to point out variations, reversals, and other shifts of position that such a reading would obviously disclose. 
I shall also spare the reader a crucial facet of the discussion of basic facts, the capacity of the crematories in terms of their actual output (an appropriate term when speaking of an industrial facility). To be sure, Pressac clearly realizes that there is a difference between the outputs claimed by Topf company salesmen and the reality of operation, hampered by breakdowns and design and manufacture flaws. But Pressac goes no further to establish 
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the actual figures, and when he provides an estimate of 1,000 cremations per day for Kremas II and III, one sees clearly that he takes his readers for chumps. In the most modern crematory facilities, the limit is four bodies a day per oven. In the largest Auschwitz crematory facility, Krema II (at Birkenau), with its 15 ovens, one might envision tripling or even quadrupling the rate. In that case a peak figure of 300 bodies per day could be attained (but at the risk of wearing out everything very quickly). Pressac carefully avoids venturing into this technical area. Elsewhere, he says that the "ideal" figures provided by the SS to Berlin are propaganda lies, but that they are nevertheless to be trusted (p. 80). In his latest book, Pressac carefully refrains from citing the figures for coal provisioning of the crematories, which appeared in his 1989 work. [7] In the light of those figures, it is all the more difficult to believe that two or three kilograms of coal would have been enough to burn a single corpse. If he had found in Moscow additional invoices to make his estimates less improbable, he certainly would have let us know about them. 
In the main body of his new book, this macabre accounting is only marginally important. It becomes important only in Appendix Two, "The Number of Deaths at KL Auschwitz-Birkenau" (pp. 144-148), where Pressac uses his estimates of cremation capabilities to revise downwards the numbers given in the "testimonies" found in the Kalendarium, to simply decree that there were fewer trains, and that they carried fewer persons. He writes as if the arrival of the trains was pre-determined by the efficiency of the crematories. This is obviously absurd. 
Other discrepancies occur in his calculations that I will pass over here. Regarding the deportation of Jews from Hungary (about which Rassinier had already noticed the impossibilities of the estimates of official Polish sources), Pressac rejects out of hand the estimates of Georges Wellers, telling us in passing that the Israeli Yad Vashem center holds documents showing that 50,000 Jewish women from Hungary were transported onwards from Auschwitz to Stutthof, near Gdansk/Danzig. (Because these Jews had not been registered upon their arrival at Auschwitz, they are normally considered to have been "gassed.") Pressac believes that there is a need for further research. With regard to the number of Polish Jews who were deported, he mentions "the uncertainties of this question, due to an absence of documents." 
To return to the question of the Jews deported from Hungary, Pressac places himself in untenable positions. For example, he accepts the stories about cremation pits, which have been completely disproved by the aerial reconnaissance photographs of Auschwitz taken by Allied aircraft at precisely that period. He does so because it is necessary to increase the theoretical cremation capacity in order to account for a theoretical total of 438,000 Hungarian Jews arriving at Auschwitz from Hungary. (This would have been twice the total population of Auschwitz at that time.) His abstract calculation (p. 148) is that the SS could have annihilated 300,000 persons in 70 days. But this raises a question: where could these 300,000 persons, dead or alive, have been herded or stockpiled during the two months it would have been necessary to burn them all? And why do we find no sign of them in the aerial reconnaissance photos? 
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Pressac arrives at a figure of 630,000 people who were supposedly gassed at Auschwitz. Several years ago, the Poles lowered their official figures of Auschwitz "gassing" victims. Raul Hilberg in the United States, François Bédarida in France, and Yehuda Bauer in Israel have each lowered his figures. Pressac lowers them still further. Now, just how and why were these figures lowered? Has some new information come to light? Not at all. The calculations are being fudged in other ways. Pressac, who is certainly foxy but also a bit naive, shows how to do the trick. 
Because most of the figures of deportees are merely guesswork estimates, they are subject to change. Wellers "loaded" the rail convoys with 5,000 deportees each. Hilberg disagrees, finding that 5,000 persons per rail convoy is too many. So he simply says to hell with it, and decides on 2,000. If one calculates on the basis of 120 train convoys, this makes a big difference (240,000 compared with 600,000). Along comes Pressac, who is not happy with either of these — not on the basis of rail convoy capacity, but rather crematory capacity. Accordingly, he lowers (pp. 146-7) the figure of rail convoy capacity to 1,000-1,500. The day he realizes that his estimates of crematory capacities are illusory, and that cremation pits would have been visible from the air, he will have to lower them again. None of these calculators have gone to look in the archives. They've done it off the cuff. Thus, if the figures change, it's not because the documents demand it, but rather on the basis of the prevailing fashion and these calculators' hunches. 
The Reception of Pressac 
As has consistently been the case throughout the 15 years that this gas chamber controversy has been public, the most interesting aspect has been the behavior of the press. Its role in molding public opinion is crucial. Anyone who wants a clear understanding of the historical background and context of the so-called Holocaust must do a great deal of research precisely because the problems have not yet been fully clarified. In this, the journalists, and the experts whom they quote, are thus in a position to separate truth from falsehood and, for the public at large, to differentiate between the Good and the Evil. In two books, [8] I have attempted to chronicle this media agitation, of which the large-scale worldwide publicity for Pressac's book is the latest chapter. 
It must be said that the Pressac media campaign has been carried out in fine style. Pres-sac, who had been rather quietly working in the shadows, so to speak, was launched into public awareness as if a public relations expert had masterminded the operation. L'Ex-press, a leading French news magazine, was first to open fire, with a Depardon cover photo and a big headline: "Auschwitz: The Truth." [9] 
Soon follows the Nouvel Observateur [10] with a weekend at Auschwitz with Pressac, along with the heavy artillery of the "leading specialists." Libération , a Paris daily, joins in with two pages and more photographs and documents. [11] Le Monde, another Paris daily, then appears with a half-page article from the pen of Laurent Greilsamer, who has followed the Faurisson affair in the courts for a long time. Then came a barrage of television and radio publicity. La Ville-du-Bois, the little town south of Paris where Pressac sells his drugs, hasn't known such uproar since the Hundred Years War. 
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"A work that will serve as a reference for historians of the whole world," said L'Express. Thanks to the Soviet archives "the first synthesis of knowledge of one of the most important events of the 20th century has been accomplished," L'Express went on to remark. This commentary is provided by someone named Conan and another chap called Pe-schanski, a research fellow who owes obedience to Bédarida. [12] The distinguished commentators affirm that both the decision for and the execution of the "Judeocide" (a new term that has yet to gain wide acceptance) were shrouded in "absolute secrecy," of which we might say that it still hasn't been pierced. 
But why did the archives lie dormant? "Because an important current of Jewish memory refused any rational approach to the Final Solution, which was deemed an 'unspeakable' and 'unthinkable' event." One would prefer, of course, a more straightforward denunciation, naming names and citing references, but at L'Express prudence prevails. The idyllic situation at the archives was disturbed by the "literature of denial," which set about picking out the errors "logically numerous in witness testimonies or in the postwar Soviet texts that made Auschwitz a theme of ideological propaganda." The fine sleuths at L'Ex-press haven't noticed that every single assertion by Pressac regarding homicidal gas chambers is based directly on these very Soviet and Polish texts. But then one can't demand too much of journalists. It is Pressac who is supposed have personally discovered that "the technological history of the Final Solution still remains to be written." It is impossible for a well-bred journalist, as they prefer them at L'Express, to recognize that the father of this brilliant "discovery" (in France) is none other than Professor Robert Fauris-son. After all, it wouldn't do to acknowledge that from that discovery on, every advance in this area owes something to him. 
In his 1989 book — published in New York by the Klarsfelds — Pressac boasted that, on the basis of his work in the archives in Poland and Germany (50,000 documents), he was solving the riddle in its entirety. Now, he says, the 80,000 documents from the Soviets will tell us more. However, the 1989 work — of 564 large-size pages — was far more comprehensive, and dealt with many more subjects. Had the journalists done their homework, they would have recognized that Pressac's 1993 book is much more limited in scope, and is much more circumspect, indeed diffident, in its assertions than the 1989 work. 
After having explained the book's stupefying discovery — that the administration administered, that the construction office made plans and requested estimates and invoices — the subtle analysts of L'Express assert that Pressac "found proof of the organization of the killing." There's the trick. Pressac swims in a sea of ambiguities. He does not positively state that he has found "proofs," but rather traces, or clues, which are almost as good as proof. Journalists can't afford to indulge in such subtlety, and Pressac makes no protest against their distortions. As in a child's game, he seems to say: "I didn't say it. He did." Pressac is always able, faced with real criticism, to take refuge in this infantile position. These "proofs," he writes (p. 82), are "precise indications" that "betray the rules of secrecy." This secret is so secret that it may not exist, Pressac himself having explained that there was no coding in the documents. 
 	38
In the list of clues magically transformed into proof, the most ridiculous is not in his book but in what he told the press: "In a real morgue, there is a need to use disinfectants, like chlorinated water or cresol, but not a product for killing lice." [13] The pharmacist who sells drugs to his everyday customers obviously has no idea of the scale of the problems arising from a full-scale typhus epidemic. The crematories were built to deal with a situation in which 250 to 300 corpses, swarming with disease-bearing lice, were delivered every day. [14] Can one imagine heaping them up in the morgues without further ado? Sending in a team to wash them in chlorinated water, while in all the other facilities, including the barracks, Zyklon B was used to kill lice? 
If these morgues had not been treated in an efficient way, they would have been great reservoirs of infection — biological bombs. Pressac, with his bottle of chlorinated water, is a public menace. He should lose his license as a pharmacist for daring to say such things. Why such an idiotic remark? To persuade the reader to believe that the morgues would have been the only place in the camp where the use of Zyklon would not have been normal. Because the SS knew about chlorinated water, [15] they had no need to disinfest the morgues with Zyklon. The logic here is ridiculous. But this reasoning has a hidden corollary: If the SS had used Zyklon in the morgues to protect the crematory personnel (themselves included), they could have done it only once in long periods. Without ventilation, the lethal gas would have stagnated. Consequently, they needed a ventilation system for these semi-underground rooms. This would explain why they requested the installation of such a system there. 
Pressac rightly provides considerable detail about this. But because he has already concluded in advance — and without the least support from the 130,000 documents available to him — that the very existence of a ventilation system is a "clue" providing evidence of a homicidal plan, he must discard in advance any possible alternative interpretation. That is why the two L'Express journalists dutifully accepted, like holy water, this role of chlorinated water. Holy water for journalistic holy writ. 
Similarly, the journalists have no problem forgetting about the January 1942 Wannsee Conference. They swallow Pressac's currently fashionable view as avidly as they swallowed, five or ten years ago, other authors who said just the opposite. Nothing else was to be expected. Journalists now easily accept the notion that, by late May or early June 1942, an anonymous "political will," of unidentified origin, "found [by some kind of chance] in the technical innovations [although, says Pressac, the oven technique is quite elementary and somewhat archaic] implemented at Auschwitz (thanks to engineer Prüfer) the means for an industrial-scale extermination." To put it in a nutshell, thanks to this obscure little engineer, a salesman of crematory ovens who receives a percentage cut from sales he makes for Topf company, the highest-level officials of Nazi Germany (who? Himmler himself?) would have said to themselves: "What a windfall! Hurray for Prüfer! Now we can really kill Jews!" Without wishing to seem overly critical, it is difficult to believe that a "genocide" of that alleged magnitude could have been decided in such a manner. For journalists turned historians, though, this latest revelation is as much revealed truth as the old one, and an act of faith costs nothing. 
 	39
In the same way, these journalists have no trouble accepting without a murmur the numerical hocus-pocus that Pressac presents as "calculations." Without knowing why, we come down from 5.5 million deaths at Auschwitz (the Soviet figure in 1945) to 800,000. The L'Express journalists even predict that these figures, as well as estimates of deaths in the other camps and in the ghettos will be similarly revised downward in the future. It appears to be a general trend, and readers should be ready for it. (Do they already have new figures in mind?) But, basically, none of this is very important, they add in closing, because "the nature of the Final Solution remains unchanged." Personally, I take the view that only religious dogmas never change. (And sometimes even they change.) 
L'Express also published an article by Bédarida, sponsor of Pressac's work. The bédarida is a little known species of squid. It swims in the cultural soup and propels itself rapidly toward all directors' chairs, to which it adheres with strong suckers. Always on the defensive, it emits jets of ink to cloud its surroundings. Author of a thin but definitive booklet on "the Nazi Extermination Policy," Bédarida courageously acknowledged that he did not have "all the necessary knowledge" on this subject. He sees in Pressac a case of biological mutation (he "transformed himself into a historian"), and believes that this pharmacist has become "an incontestable, if not unique, expert." Contested he is, however, and not only by revisionists. Unique, perhaps, if one considers only Establishment history, produced by all sorts of bédaridas, and the effects of the anti-revisionist laws. When he adds that Pressac has subjected the documents to a "pitiless critique," he looks like a fool to the astute reader. He regards as "terrifying" a work devoted to the study of construction plans, ventilation problems, overheating and other matters that are the daily concern of every civil engineer. This characterization seems to me to show, among the squid, a tendency toward bombast. When he adds the words "an irrefutable terrifying work," he is hallucinating. There are answers. Bad luck for the squids. 
How is it possible, asks the sucker, [16] that no one had looked into these questions before this? He could have told the plain truth: that it's because nobody knew how to respond to Professor Faurisson. (For years it was fashionable to say that he didn't even deserve a response.) No, Bédarida prefers to claim that in those days people instead emphasized the "perpetrators and the victims." And how to justify this late date — 15 years after Faurisson raised the matter? Bédarida's explanation — the opening of the Moscow archives — is pure eyewash. Pressac's wretched hodgepodge that supposedly "settled everything" was published in 1989 — before the opening of the Moscow archives. The only new thing culled from the 80,000 documents found in Moscow is the story of an apparatus produced by the Siemens company to kill lice with short waves. It seems that some experimental use was made of this machine at Auschwitz near the end of the war. [17] This was new for Pressac and for most of us. Should this machine be added to the long list of mythical industrial-scale installations, including the Jewish soap factories, the electrified swimming pools, the vacuum and steam chambers, the heated iron plates, the trains of quicklime cars, and so forth, which, although described in numerous and precise testimonies, have sunk into oblivion from whence they could be revived only through the immense talent of a Claude Lanzmann? Because it does not seem that this Siemens machine could kill people, it's been ignored. This is the big novelty from Moscow, suppressed for 45 years by the KGB! 
 	40
In 1979 I rhetorically asked "how" before "why." [18] In 1993 the squid is still looking for "how and why." It's not historical research work that has made real progress in those years, but rather that a number of obstacles meant to prevent such research have been removed. The road is still not clear, but one day it certainly will be. 
Journalist Claude Weill must have access to secret information because in the Nouvel Observateur he writes "that the existence of the gas chambers and the reality of the Jew-ish extermination policy have been overwhelmingly demonstrated. The evidence is available to anyone who can read and who is willing to open his eyes." I pray Mr. Weill to open my eyes, to make this evidence public so that Mr. Pressac's labors would become quite useless and thereby permitting him to concentrate on his work as a druggist. 
Weill tells his own little story. He visits Auschwitz where he follows Pressac around, listening to his technical arguments. But after a while, he breaks down. These discussions are odious, and he asks Pressac to get to the point. The learned pharmacist responds: those who refuse to do scholarly and technical work "are making Faurisson's bed for him." This throws the journalist for a loop. Overwhelmed, he sadly faces the fact that history will win in the end, that the good times are over, and that "the Shoah will not escape the historians' cruel scrutiny." I didn't know that historians have a cruel look. Cruel for whom? This sentence says a lot, I think. But then the journalist can be pretty cruel himself: he cites figures of total deaths at Auschwitz provided by several earlier authorities, and crudely calls them "lies." The Pope, Willy Brandt, and many other important visitors to Auschwitz have bowed down before the memorial plaque there bearing these "lies." Considering how these official figures were arrived at, there's no reason why the latest figures supplied by Pressac won't one day also be called "lies." 
In concluding his article, Weill expresses some skepticism. He finds some of Pressac's conclusions "hasty," the throwing overboard of the Wannsee Conference "not entirely convincing," the lowering of the number of victims "a bit imprudent." Pressac "has not closed the debate." 
Not being fully convinced, this journalist needs to cover himself. So the Grand Masters of the Official Truth are permitted to speak. The first is Pierre Vidal-Naquet, who introduced Pressac to the Establishment. The first thing he shows us is that, as usual, he can't read: Vidal-Naquet believes that the "point" made by Pressac about the precise date of the "first gassings" is derived from the Moscow archives. This is clearly wrong. [19] This "point" is actually the result of an argument typical of Pressac: he sees in the archives records that the buildings were not usually completed by the dates given by "authorities" (based on "memory"). Pressac then searches for the dates on which construction of the crematories were completed, then refers back to the Kalendarium (which is also largely based on "memory," and which even Pressac himself calls dubious) to determine what gassings took place that day. Evidently the Moscow archives make no mention of any homicidal gassings. As for Pressac's calculations, Vidal-Naquet finds them a bit hasty, too much based on assumption, it's "not so simple," "probably". . . The man who earned the Légion d'Honneur by dint of his anti-revisionist efforts prefers Hilberg's figures, which he calls "rather solid." Vidal-Naquet hesitates more than usual. He seems to be 
 	41
having second thoughts about his wisdom in launching Pressac, who has become the satellite of others and who threatens to crash land. 
Then comes Raul Hilberg. After being grilled on the stand during the first Zündel trial at Toronto, in 1985, this professor of political science has learned to be more cautious. [20] He laments that Pressac isn't really a historian, that his is not the "the last word on the subject." He complains that "important research is still necessary," that "considerable research is still needed," that "the German sources should be studied further," and that there is still a lot of work to do. One wonders what this fellow's been up to since he began his study of this subject in 1948. 
But Hilberg says something very embarrassing: an extermination order by Hitler has already been missing; now an extermination order by Himmler is likewise nowhere to be found. Höss and Himmler did not even meet "during the crucial period." What now? Is it Höss who decided everything by himself? Or was he in the dark as well? An extermination order by Höss to his subordinates cannot be found either. Another mystery. Perhaps we should ask Vidal-Naquet. 
But the best, as usual, comes from Claude Lanzmann. He's a raw fundamentalist, dazed, totally inaccessible to the least reasoning, but with an animal's intuition. He showed this intuition in making the movie "Shoah," in which he abandoned all (or nearly all) reference to the documents. He knows the documents. He doesn't know what they really mean, but he has a photographic memory and rightly says that all the documents cited by Pressac were already known. Lanzmann defends his work as a movie maker in almost Celinian terms: art should create emotions, nothing else. ("I prefer the tears of the Treb-linka barber to Pressac's document on the gas detectors"). Lanzmann is very modern; he likes to hit below the belt, crying to avoid thinking, toying with the macabre. Pressac's material "drives out emotion, suffering, death," he says. Lanzmann tramples on Vidal-Naquet, who licked his boots for years: "The sad thing is that a historian, his being doubtless threatened by the truth, the force, the evidence of the testimonies, does not hesitate to endorse this perversity [Pressac's book]. A historian abdicates before a pharmacist ..." 
Lanzmann smells a rat in Pressac. He understands much better than the media and academic crowd, which rushed to embrace Pressac in the hope of finishing off revisionism, that 
Faurisson is the only one this convert wants to talk to. To be listened to by him [Faurisson], he [Pressac] must speak his language, make his thought processes his own, accept his methodology, produce the crucial evidence, the ultima ratio, that will convince his former master ... In order to refute the revisionists' arguments, one must give them legitimacy, and they thus became the central point of reference. The revisionists occupy the whole terrain. 
The poor man is right. He must feel quite lonely with his useless reels. He had to first delay, and then completely reorganize his movie because of Faurisson's work. In fact the 
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terrain is not occupied by the revisionists — who are persecuted everywhere — but by the remnants of an imploded belief. Lanzmann, late in life, has become the epic poet, the cantor, of this belief. It's not just the revisionists' questions that caused the implosion. Time destroys myths: fugit irreparabile tempus, irreparable time flies. 
The Libération article is quite cautious. The journalist who wrote it sticks to Vidal-Naquet's 1979 phrase: "It [gas chamber killing] was technically possible because it occurred." [21] (The author of that phrase has been having regrets.) [22] The Libération journalist effortlessly swallows the fantastic element of Pressac's book: the technicians, the foremen of the private firms who took part in the construction of the crematories, "saw." It is an interesting use of the word. "They saw." These two words say it all: the entire story and its refutation. But it's pure speculation. Nothing in the documents indicates that "they saw" anything implied by this lapidary formulation. In his interview with Libération, Pressac is less than hinting broadly when he says calmly: "I was close to Fau-risson, who trained me rather well in deniers' theory in the late '70s." And, further on, he returns to one of the most amusing arguments in his book: the only members of the Bau-leitung who were ever tried, Dejaco and Ertl, in Austria in 1972, were acquitted because (he says) the Austrian judges couldn't read a blueprint or a technical description. Nevertheless, the court had access to documents from the Moscow archives. The Austrians, therefore, were cretins who awaited, without knowing it, the light emanating from Pres-sac's pharmacy. But it seems that Pressac himself did not inquire into the trial of Prüfer, the Topf company engineer who designed the crematory ovens, which took place before a Soviet court in April 1948. The transcripts of the Prüfer interrogations must certainly be somewhere in the Russian archives. The Soviets of 1948, doubtless as stupid as the Aus-trians in 1972, did not believe that Prüfer was the prime mover of extermination (as Pres-sac argues). Well then, whose turn is it to go to the Moscow archives now? 
I have kept the article in Le Monde for dessert. [23] Its author, Laurent Greilsamer, has long followed the judicial saga of Professor Faurisson, toward whom he has always shown the same hatred. That's why it's amusing to note that he praises Pressac exactly for what he found so blameworthy in Faurisson: for being an amateur historian, for starting with an examination of the weapon used in the crime, for being a pioneer, for being curious about everything, and for deliberately turning his back on the survivor testimonies to interest himself in the ruins and the documents. "Elementary," he says. This "elementary" weighs several tons of court papers! But there is more. Pressac's conclusions, writes Greilsamer, "revise, in the noble meaning of the term, that which the community of historians believed was established." How beautifully inspired is this revision "in the noble meaning of the term"! No camouflage, no coded language, everyone understands, we are in full clarity. 
Why then, this journalist wonders with hypocritical anguish, hadn't anyone said these things earlier? "Fear of provoking a scandal," he writes. Pressac adds: "Because people weren't mature enough. The subject was too sensitive and the Berlin Wall hadn't yet come down. Don't forget that the history of Auschwitz was written in Poland by the Communists and that, even in France, the Gayssot law forbids free expression." [24] Revisions therefore had to be administered "in homeopathic doses." We have seen that Dr. Pressac, 
 	43
however, has used the opposite technique: a large dose of revision, coupled with intravenous injections of the Polish Kalendarium to sedate memory sufferings caused by amputation of illusions. The journalist is not sufficiently alert to ask what Pressac would write if there were no Gayssot law. 
Pressac is happy to talk to Le Monde. An amateur, he can easily dismiss the intellectual establishment: "The researchers have kept quiet in order to hold onto their precious positions. There has been cowardice in the universities, and the revisionists have taken advantage of this for denial. Personally, I am doing the basic work. Anyone with common sense could do it." I love it. 
He is more careful with the false "eyewitness" testimonies: "We shouldn't say they lied. We must take into account a factor of personal emotionalism." This is outrageous. Pres-sac knows full well that there have been deliberate, organized, profitable lies, which have nothing to do with "factors of personal emotionalism" (which may exist, surely, as in every testimony of whatever nature). 
Lanzmann is right. Without Faurisson, there would be no Pressac. Pressac is 90 percent Faurisson, with the rest coming from easily identifiable and discredited sources. The media simply falls into line. One wonders who's more hypocritical: Pressac, who half saws away, in his notes from Höss and the Kalendarium, the branch on which he's sitting, or the journalists, who accept with joy and recognition from Pressac everything they rejected when it came from Faurisson? 
There is, perhaps, a way out of this tangle. It is indicated in a remark by Bédarida (in L'Express). He says that Pressac was first attracted to revisionism but later refused to follow this group "on the road of denial." On the other hand, the Italian writer Umberto Eco said to Le Monde that revisionism is all right, that it's natural; it is possible to calmly discuss the documents, but one mustn't fall into "denial," which, he says, consists of denying that anything bad was done to the Jews during the Second World War. 
I wonder if a new line is being drawn here. It makes a distinction between, on the one hand, revisionism, once again beautiful and good, exemplified by Pressac and his patrons and followers, who are obliged to adopt the revisionist method because it is the normal method of historical research, and, on the other hand, "denial," banished to the outer limits of taboo, including those who doubt the gas chambers, as well as (non-existent) deniers of the concentration camps, the rail deportations, and so forth. The consequence of this new view would be that revisionism, recognized at last, would demonstrate (in the style of Pressac, that is, sloppily) the existence of homicidal gas chambers, but in a way that they would lose their diabolical character. The death figures could be dropped much lower without infringing the nature of the Shoah. Faurisson and his associates would lose the use of their rational armament, captured by their enemies, and would be banished to the void by the Gayssot law. This might offer the best opportunity for the restored squids to pursue and enhance their brilliant careers. 
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Notes 
1.	 Le Monde, Sept. 26-27, 1993, p. 7.
2.	 Robert Faurisson's Journal review of Lanzmann's movie, "Shoah," is followed by Ted O'Keefe's review of the book version. See: The Journal of Historical Review, 
Spring 1988, pp. 85-95.
3.	 Jean-Claude Pressac, Les Crématoires d'Auschwitz: La Machinerie du meurtre de masse ["The Crematories of Auschwitz: Machinery of Mass Murder"] (Paris: 
CNRS Editions, 1993), 155 (+ viii) pages. [German edition: Jean-Claude Pressac, 
Die Krematorien von Auschwitz: Die Technik des Massenmordes (Munich: Piper, 1994).]; See Robert Faurisson's "brief, preliminary" critique of Pressac's 1993 book, in the Jan.-Feb. 1994 Journal, pp. 23-24.
4.	 Nouvel Observateur, Sept. 30-Oct. 6, 1993, p. 94.
5.	 Danuta Czech, Kalendarium der Ereignisse im Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-
Birkenau 1939-1945 (Rowohlt, 1989); English-language edition: Danuta Czech, Auschwitz Chronicle, 1939-1945 (London: I.B. Tauris, 1991). (Danuta Czech is head of the scientific research department of the Auschwitz State Museum in Po-land.)
6.	 Nouvel Observateur, Sept. 30-Oct. 6, 1993, p. 94.
7.	 J.-C. Pressac, Auschwitz: Technique and Operations of the Gas Chambers (New York: Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, 1989). Reviews and analysis of this book that have appeared in this Journal include: M. Weber, in Vol. 10, No. 2 (Summer 
1990), pp. 231-237; C. Mattogno in Vol. 10, No. 4 (Winter 1990-91), pp. 461-485; R. Faurisson in Vol. 11, No. 1 (Spring 1991), pp. 25-66, and in Vol. 11, No. 2 (Summer 1991), pp. 133-175; A. Butz, Vol. 13, No. 3, (May-June 1993), pp. 23-37.
8.	 Vérité historique ou vérité politique? (Paris: La Vieille Taupe, 1980, 352 pages), and, Une allumette sur la banquise, (Paris: Le Temps irreparable, 1993, 330 pages).
9.	 L'Express, Sept. 23-29, 1993. (Eleven pages of text and photos.) The classic Or-wellian translation of this headline would be: "Auschwitz: The Lie."
10. Nouvel Observateur, Sept. 30-Oct. 6, 1993, pp. 88-90, 92, 95-97. By Claude 
Weill, including interviews with J.-C. Pressac, Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Raul Hilberg and Claude Lanzmann. Eight pages are devoted to this trip, which calls to mind those Mediterranean cruises in which noted archaeologists act as tour guides. The allusion is quite explicit (p. 92): "Pressac runs through the ruins like an English archaeologist on the site of Ephesus." The image is revealing: the English were in fact the first, in 1863, to dig at Ephesus. It thus evokes a 19th century context, the beginnings of scientific archeology, the discovery or rediscovery of the great lost civilizations. Pressac, seen as an eccentric gentleman from an adventure novel, is about to reveal an unknown world for us. Everything we've known until now is made null and void by the triumphal "running" of the discoverer, resurrecting the past, and almost re-creating it.
11. Libération , Sept. 24, 1993, pp. 28-29.
12. Denis Peschanski is a research fellow with the Contemporary History Institute of the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique). Pressac's Les Créma-
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toires d'Auschwitz was published under the guidance of Bédarida by the CNRS press. The cardinal principle of the world of Parisian literary criticism is well known: "No one is better served then by oneself — but it shouldn't show."
13. Nouvel Observateur, Sept. 30-Oct. 6, 1993, p. 84.
14. Information from the Auschwitz camp death registry volumes ("Totenbücher"), for the period of the epidemics. See: J.-C. Pressac, Les Crématoires d'Auschwitz 
(1993), p. 145.
15. Where, among the 130,000 documents, are the invoices for chlorinated water? 16. Presently glued to the chair of Secretary General of the International Committee of Historical Sciences.
17. J.-C. Pressac, Les Crématoires d'Auschwitz (1993), pp. 83 ff.
18. In "Le Comment du Pourquoi," 1979, which was included as the first part of Véri-té historique ou vérité politique? (1980).
19. In an unforgettable article, published in 1980, Vidal-Naquet explained that because Faurisson had written something (supposedly) faux (false), he was a faus-saire (forger). This may be found in Vidal-Naquet's book, Assassins of Memory: 
Essays on the Denial of the holocaust (Columbia University Press, 1992). I dismantled this stupid pun and the poor arguments of Vidal-Naquet in Une Allumette sur la banquise (Le Temps irréparable, 1993). [ Assassins of Memory is reviewed by Mark Weber in the Nov.-Dec. 1993 Journal, pp. 36-39.]
20. Although the media routinely calls Hilberg a "historian," that is not his profession. 
He, too, is another "amateur."
21. This phrase appears in the 1979 declaration co-authored by Pierre Vidal-Naquet and Léon Poliakov, which was signed by 34 scholars. It is quoted in the foreword to Assassins of Memory (p. xiv), and in The Journal of Historical Review: Spring 
1983, p. 35; Summer 1985, pp. 166-167; and, Nov.-Dec. 1993, p. 38.
22. Regarding this phrase, Vidal-Naquet wrote, for example, in the review L'Histoire 
(June 1992, p. 51): "We were certainly wrong, at least in the form, even if the basis of our interrogation was justified." In fact, there never was any interrogation.
23. Le Monde, Sept. 26-27, 1993, p. 7.
24. Gayssot is a Communist member of the French parliament. The "Fabius-Gayssot" law of July 1990 forbids "contesting the crimes against humanity" as defined by the Nuremberg Tribunal, and specifies heavy fines and jail terms for violators. 
The law was passed as a trade-off between the Communists and the Socialists, to obtain continued support from the Communists in parliament for the Rocard government. I don't know whether this critical review violates the Gayssot law, but it's clear that Pressac's book (and thus all the press accounts of it as well) infringes the law seriously. [For more about this law, and the legal assault in France against Holocaust revisionists, see the Journal, March-April 1993, pp. 26-28.]
Original French version published in: Sur Pressac. Histoire de la nuit ou du brouillard ?, La Gazette du Golfe et des banlieues, n° 8, novembre 1993, pp. 5-13. In English published in The Journal for Historical Review. Reprinted from The Journal of Historical 
Review, 14(4) (1994), pp. 28-39 (PO Box 2739, Newport Beach, CA 92659, USA. Domestic subscriptions $40 per year; foreign subscriptions $50 per year.) 
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Answer to Jean-Claude Pressac on the Problem of the 
Gas chambers 
Robert Faurisson 
TABLE OF CONTENTS Note to the Reader Foreword Introduction 
1. Evidence that Pressac can not hide 2. Realities that Pressac never mentions 
3. Tricks that Pressac borrows from other historians 4. Deceptions that are Pressac's own 5. Divagations of the novelist Conclusion Annex: Document NI-9912
Note to the Reader 
Jean-Claude Pressac's book Les Crématoires d'Auschwitz. La Machinerie du meurtre de masse (The Crematories of Auschwitz, The Machinery of Mass Murder), to which the present work is an answer, unquestionably falls foul of the Fabius-Gayssot Law as it is formulated in the Penal Code and also as it has been applied by the judges of the 17th Correctional Court and those of the 11th Appeals Court of Paris and by the judges of Caen, Fontainebleau, Amiens, Nice and others. Notwithstanding there is no legal requirement to do so, they have held liable the least suggestion, hidden intention or tendency signifying the possible existence of a Revisionist heresy with respect to the dogmas decreed in 1945-1946 by the judges of Nuremberg.
In Pressac's brief introduction alone (pp. 1-2) there are four causes for prosecution.
The author affirms or lets it be understood that at the Nuremberg Trials the judges failed to obtain "unambiguous technical information on the machinery of mass murder"; that their understanding of the facts was "hardly sufficient"; that their reconstruction of the history of the genocide and the homicidal gas chambers was not "free from oral or written witness testimony, which is always fallible" and that, to take only one example, the date they had given to the "unleashing of the industrial phase of the 'Final Solution'" was so far wrong that it needs to be put one year later. A hundred other causes for prosecution could be picked out from the two hundred or so pages of his book. The statements he has 
 	47
made to the media can only aggravate his case (cf. especially the article by Laurent Greil-samer in Le Monde, 26/27 September 1993).
If Pressac escapes judicial prosecution based on the Fabius-Gayssot Law or any other law, it should be the same for those who respond to him on his chosen ground.
On the other hand, if the latter are prosecuted, so should Pressac be brought before the bar of the 17th Correctional Court of Paris together with the management of the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) who published his work, irrespective of any statute of limitations.
Foreword 
Who are the Revisionists? And what do they say?
People have talked about them since the end of the decade of the '70's. However, for all practical purposes, one never sees or hears them, and their arguments are always presented by their adversaries, if at all. There is no chance to read them. The law prevents that. They are condemned, beaten and imprisoned. Why?
There was a special law passed against them: the Fabius-Gayssot Law. Another law against them is being drafted: the Méhaignerie-Pasqua-Goldenberg Law.
At the same time, we are told they are dead, dead and buried!
In his recent work, Les Crématoires d'Auschwitz. La Machinerie du meurtre de masse , the pharmacist Jean-Claude Pressac makes a reply that is at once new, scientific and definitive to the leader of the Revisionists in France, which is to say, Professor Faurisson — whom he never mentions but to whom he refers indirectly. At least, that is what we are told in a deafening media campaign that is being conducted throughout the Western world.
J.C. Pressac presents himself as a careful, exacting researcher. In the media, he affects the icy reserve of the man of science coming to grips with the "problem of the gas chambers" of Auschwitz. His book swarms with technical data — at least, that is how it appears.
Robert Faurisson is the one who should respond to such a work. He knows the author, who came to him during the decade of the '80's to confess his doubts on the existence of the gas chambers of Auschwitz. J.C. Pressac even went so far as to offer his services. His offer was tentatively accepted. However, the professor dismissed him due to his lack of aptitude for scientific research, his difficulty in expressing himself, "his confused mental state, his panicky fears, his aversion to clarity and frank speaking" (cf. Revue d'histoire révisionniste no. 3, November 1990/January 1991, p. 130).
No journalist has taken the trouble to contact Robert Faurisson to ask him his opinion of a book which, if one were to believe their own announcements, wipes out, as it were, so 
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many years of research. Could it be that the journalists know or suspect that in reality there is nothing new about the book by J.C. Pressac, that it is scientific in appearance only and that, once more, willy-nilly, the soundness of the Revisionist position has been demonstrated?
At the end of 1978 and the beginning of 1979, during a period when Le Monde published the views of Professor Robert Faurisson on the "rumor of Auschwitz" or the "problem of the gas chambers" (the latter expression is that of Olga Wormser-Migot, a historian of Jewish extraction), a powerful media counter-offensive was unleashed to convince the public that Revisionism had been nipped in the bud. In June 1982, an international colloquium at the Sorbonne, announced in the media with much fanfare, apparently confirmed the death of Historical Revisionism. Numerous other colloquia in the following years (particularly one held at Oxford in 1988, organised on a large scale by press magnate Robert Maxwell) propagated the news that sensational new documentary or deductive evidence was sufficient to bury Revisionism forever. In 1986 in France and elsewhere the "affair of the Nantes doctor's thesis" aroused great excitement. Henri Roques, the author of the thesis, was publicly pilloried, his doctor's degree was withdrawn and the public was assured that his thesis had disappeared down the memory hole of history. In 1990 there was another media mobilisation, this time with the purpose of hounding University of Lyons researcher Bernard Notin. A series of spectacular trials in Lyons, Israel, Ger-many, Austria and Canada resulted in ever newer and more definitive pretended triumphs over the Revisionists, whose voice in the meantime could never be heard — which no doubt proved that they were dead and doubly so. Anti-Revisionist works were launched with great fanfare at frequent intervals, such as, in 1980, Filip Müller, Trois ans dans une chambre à gaz d'Auschwitz ; in 1981, the book by Georges Wellers, Les Chambres à gaz ont existé , and, in 1984, the book by Eugen Kogon, Hermann Langbein, Adalbert Rückerl and twenty-one other authors, Les Chambres à gaz, secret d'état . Every year there are new Holocaust museums, expositions, films such as Holocauste or Shoah and documentaries serving to demonstrate the defeat of the Revisionists.
The book by J.C. Pressac has its place in this continuing series of theatrical productions.
It is only fair to acknowledge that, unintentionally, J.C. Pressac has struck a blow at the prohibitions that bar the freedom of historical research. His book constitutes, in effect, a challenge to the Fabius-Gayssot Law, a law of which he states that it "prohibits one from speaking freely" in historical matters, but which he, for his part, violates at will (Le Monde, 26/27 September 1993). The way is thus open ...
In May 1992 the Revue d'Histoire Révisionniste was compelled to suspend publication after the sixth issue appeared. Our charter has never been to publish books. We are thus unable to publish this Answer to Jean-Claude Pressac either as a series of articles nor as a book. But we undertook to distribute it. For two years, Faurisson was the scientific advisor of our journal and we have published numerous articles or studies under his name. Despite the prohibitions decreed against us by Pierre Joxe, Minister of the Interior (decree of 2 July 1990), and despite the provisions of the Fabius-Gayssot Law enacted to criminalize Historical Revisionism ("disputation of crimes against humanity", such as 
 	49
those condemned by the Nuremberg Trials), we have thus provided a forum for the outlaw.
Fifteen years ago, Faurisson proposed publicly that the "problem of the gas chambers" should be addressed on a scientific and physical basis. He was the first to do so. For some time his audacity has appeared sacrilegious. At present, the adversaries of the Revisionists are constrained to do battle on the ground that Faurisson has chosen. It is normal that one should oppose to the work of J.C. Pressac, which presents itself as a work of a technical nature, an answer that is equally technical. Professor Faurisson — whose specialty is officially defined as "analysis of texts and documents (literature, history, media)" — has done exactly that.
By way of Professor Faurisson's analysis, this Answer to Jean-Claude Pressac constitutes a discourse on the proper method of examination of a historical problem. It illustrates how false facts can be given the appearance of truth by false science — here in the person of the pharmacist J.-C. Pressac — with the help of the media. At the end of 1993, it allows a review of the concessions that historical science has had to make to Historical Revisionism; finally, it helps the factual truth to reclaim its rights over the distortions of war propaganda that have lasted too long. As long as people have faith in these distortions, they will not be able to see that the true war crime, the true "crime against humanity", is war itself and the train of horrors it brings.
The editors of the Revue d'Histoire Révisionniste 24 December 1993
Introduction 
Jean-Claude Pressac's recent work bears the title, Les Crématoires d'Auschwitz and the subtitle, La Machinerie du meurtre de masse (The Crematories of Auschwitz, The Machinery of Mass Murder), (CNRS éditions, August 1993, viii-156 pp. and 48 pp. photographic collection). The book is true to its title, but not to its subtitle. In this work there is a striking contrast between the plethora of evidence and documents demonstrating, on the one hand, the existence of the crematories — which no one disputes — and, on the other hand, the absence of evidence and documents demonstrating the existence of homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz — which are highly disputed.
Neither photograph nor drawing 
From an author who pretends that the Nazi gas chambers were real one has a right to demand a physical description of these extraordinary chemical slaughterhouses. However, Pressac's book contains neither a photograph, nor a drawing, nor a sketch, nor a model of a homicidal gas chamber. In the 48-page photographic collection there are 60 "documents", but none of them have anything to do with the homicidal gas chambers and include, as we will see below, the only "document" (no. 28, on the ten gas detectors) presented falsely as evidence. The author has not even dared reproduce a photograph of the gas chamber of crematory I, the one that visitors see at Auschwitz. He also has not shown the interior or the exterior of the — very revealing — remains of the supposed gas cham-
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ber of crematory II at Birkenau. The model imprudently displayed by the Poles in Block 4 of the Museum of Auschwitz is not reproduced. The motive of these omissions is easy to understand: the least attempt at a physical description of one of these pretended homicidal gas chambers of Auschwitz would immediately expose the physical and chemical impossibility of gassing with hydrocyanic acid in these structures [1].
Practically nothing new 
This work whose contents appear so modest, offers practically nothing new. It is merely a shortened version of the tedious compendium that Pressac published in 1989 with the misleading title Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers [2], which I have reviewed in articles entitled "Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers (1989) ou Bricolage et 'gazouillages' à Auschwitz et Birkenau selon J.C. Pres-sac (1989)" [3] and "Improvised Gas Chambers and Casual Gassings at Auschwitz and Birkenau According to J.C. Pressac (1989)" [3a]. At the risk of seeming presumptuous, I must declare that it was my review in 1990 that caused Pressac to shorten his discussion of the gas chambers considerably, down to a pair of windy, confused pages, and to choose a title for the work in French that was much less ambitious than that of his work in English.
Auschwitz: 800,000 dead instead of nine million 
The single important novelty of this work in French is Pressac's figure for the number of dead at Auschwitz. In the film by Alain Resnais, Nuit et Brouillard ("Night and Fog"), the figure nine million was given ("Nine million dead haunt this countryside", was stated at the end of the film.) At the Nuremberg Trial, a document of which the Tribunal took "judicial notice" (doc. URSS-008) set the figure at four million. Until April 1990, the same figure had been inscribed in nineteen different languages on nineteen flagstones at the memorial at Birkenau. In that month the authorities of the Museum of Auschwitz discreetly replaced the markers with new ones inscribed with the figure one and a half million. In France, historian François Bédarida estimated 950,000 ( Le Monde, 22/23 July 1990, p. 7). Now here is Pressac come to tell us that he has decided the figure should be 775,000, rounded up to 800,000; he has estimated the number of Jews gassed to be 630,000 (p. 148) [4]. The true figure is probably 150,000 dead from 1939 to 1945, counting both Jews and non-Jews. The great majority of the deaths were due to natural causes, especially epidemics of typhus and typhoid fever.
Pressac doesn't believe in "Wannsee" anymore, but he still believes in Hitler 
There is one more new thing: Pressac no longer believes that the Germans decided on the physical extermination of the Jews on 20 January 1942, at the Wannsee conference presided over by Heydrich (cf. below). It appears that he no longer even believes that there was a policy to exterminate the Jews (what is called "genocide"). In any case, he never implicates Adolf Hitler [5]. The name of the Führer appears in the book only four times: first, with respect to the topic of Hitler's "architectural projects", "which were intended to glorify the new German and reduce unemployment" (p. 6), then with respect to one of his 
 	51
secretaries (p. 10) and his diatribes against the Jews (p. 65), and finally on the subject of "the revival of [economic] activity following Hitler's arrival at the Chancellery" (p. 137).
The theory of the "casual gassings" 
Pressac's theory on Auschwitz is bizarre: it is that of "casual gassings", of "handiwork", of "blunders" and "bungles". Certainly, Pressac never uses the phrase "casual gassings" except in private conversation, but this expression summarizes the theory in question.
According to Pressac, the Germans improvised the crime as well as the instrument of the crime. They gassed groups of different sizes here and there until they had killed close to a million people, and never carried out a systematic program of mass gassing. At the beginning, according to Pressac, the Germans HAD NOT EVEN CONSTRUCTED 
HOMICIDAL GAS CHAMBERS. He admits, for example, that the crematories II and III at Birkenau, finished in 1943, had not been designed in August 1942 for killing but were solely to incinerate the corpses. He recognizes that innocuous cold rooms (which he calls morgues) were attached to the crematories for the preservation of corpses waiting to be incinerated, but he adds that the Germans decided to transform the cold rooms into homicidal gas chambers under uncertain conditions and at an uncertain date. The Germans involved were certain captains, lieutenants and non-commissioned officers and also a handful of civil engineers and technicians whose specialty was cremation, isolation and ventilation, and not, as one might expect, highly-placed politicians or chemists, toxicologists or medical doctors. The one most implicated was a former mason who had become an expert in the construction of crematory ovens and worked for an Erfurt company, Topf and Sons (p. 10). This genius of evil was named Kurt Prüfer. After the war the Americans imprisoned and interrogated him, but they decided that he had done nothing other than build crematories and they let him go. Prüfer returned to Erfurt, which was in the Soviet occupation zone. This was a mistake: The KGB arrested him and interrogated him and in April 1948 he was sentenced to twenty-five years hard labor [6]. Four years later he died in prison.
According to Pressac, the work of Prüfer and his co-workers was so sloppy that the transformation of the cold rooms into gas chambers was nothing but slap-dash handiwork. For example, the direction of air flow was in from above and out from below, which would be normal for a cold room used for the laying up of corpses, as Pressac himself admits. However, hydrocyanic acid gas, the principal component of Zyklon B, has a lower specific weight than air; therefore the ventilation system needed to be constructed the other way around in order to lead the gas out from above after the mass murder of the victims — otherwise the use of hydrocyanic acid gas would have been "technically insane" (p. 71). However, instead of reversing the direction of flow, the ventilation specialists left it the way it was. They contented themselves with insuring "the ventilation power" (ibid.). They ventilated much in the gas chambers. The author stupefies us with details of the direction and movements of currents of air as well as of the power of the ventilators. Not without reason, certain facetious Revisionists have reproached him with having transformed the gas chambers into air chambers and of putting too much wind in his words.
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Pressac tells us that the slap-dash methods of these German small-scale technicians would not leave any visible traces or proofs of their criminal doings. For this reason, he warns us not to expect unambiguous and solid proofs for the existence of the execution gas chambers. Instead we must satisfy ourselves with slight indications, the beginnings or parts of proofs, or distinctive details that in his jargon he calls criminal "blunders" or "bungles". Of course, it requires a particular kind of sagacity to detect the tiny traces of a crime without precedent in history and naturally, it is Pressac, pharmacist by day and historian by night, who is able to bring this sagacity to bear.
Pressac's promises and the reality 
In his introduction he promises us a "rigorous history" of Auschwitz, "an almost perfect comprehension of criminal engineering" and an "historical reconstruction free from oral or written witness testimony, which is always fallible and becomes less certain over time" (pp. 1-2).
We will see that this is nothing but bluster and that, quite the contrary, the book is filled with confusions, incoherencies and approximations; there is nearly constant recourse to witnesses when the discussion concerns the pretended homicidal gassings. Even on the question of the crematory ovens his words are unconnected and frequently obscure.
To judge such a work, one should apply the simplest criterion: if the author can show us a photograph or a design of a Nazi gas chamber, we should pay attention; otherwise not. Pressac, a good photographer and a good draftsman and probably a good model builder, has carefully avoided the acid test, which would be to give us a physical description of one of these monstrous chemical slaughterhouses. Consequently, one should not spend too much time with this product of a scrambled brain. I am going to do it nevertheless so that the reader can take the measure of the catastrophe that this book constitutes for the adepts of the exterminationist theory.
Proceeding in five stages, I demonstrate one after the other the evidence that the author can not hide, realities that he never looks at, tricks that he borrows from other "Holocaust" historians, deceptions that are his own and, finally, his novelistic divagations.
To close, I renew the proposal of the American Fred Leuchter and propose to our adversaries to establish an international commission of experts which should go to Auschwitz and Birkenau to examine the weapon of one of the most atrocious crimes that history has ever known; the locations and facilities at which hundreds of thousands of Jews (or millions, as was once claimed [7]) were killed by hydrocyanic gas should be studied by forensic experts.
For historians who pretend they are busy with the scientific history of Auschwitz, there is no longer any excuse not to make such a technical study.
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1. Evidence that Pressac can not hide
Due to fundamental discoveries on the part of Revisionists, there are embarrassing evidences that the Exterminationists can not hide anymore. Pressac follows along with the rest.
"Wannsee" is no longer "Wannsee" 
For decades, historians of the supposed "Holocaust" of the Jews have repeated that on the 20th January 1942 at the Wannsee conference in Berlin the Germans decided on the physical destruction of European Jews. It took until 1984 for the Exterminationists gathered in congress at Stuttgart to quietly abandon this thesis (Eberhard Jäckel and Jürgen Rohwer, Der Mord an den Juden im Zweiten Weltkrieg, DVA, 1985, p. 67).
It was not until 1992 that Yehuda Bauer, Professor at the University of Jerusalem and a leading Israeli "Holocaust specialist", declared publicly that this thesis was "silly" (The Canadian Jewish News, 30 January 1992; cf. as well, "Wannsee: 'Une histoire inepte'", R.H.R. no. 6, May 1992, pp. 157-158). In conformance with the new official version, Pressac writes:
On the 20th January the conference called "the Wannsee Conference" took place in Berlin. Even if an operation to remove the Jews to the east was planned which might entail the "natural" elimination of some through labour, no one there spoke of industrial mass-liquidation. In the days and the weeks that followed, the construction office at Auschwitz received no call, telegram or letter requesting the planning of an installation intended for this purpose (p. 35).
In his "chronological summary", he put: "20th January [1942] — Wannsee Conference in Berlin on the removal of Jews to the east" (p. 114). He wrote "removal", not "extermination".
In Auschwitz little could be kept secret 
We had been told that the location of Auschwitz was chosen because its remoteness helped maintain secrecy. However, Pressac is obliged to recognize that the camp was established in a neighbourhood of the town of Auschwitz, which was itself situated on a railway network which provided connections to Berlin, Vienna and Warsaw (p. 9). It should be mentioned that travellers in the trains passed close to the camp every day.
Today there is no longer any dispute that the camp at Auschwitz swarmed with civilian laborers of German, Polish and other nationalities who were busy with many different tasks, including the building and operation of the crematories, except that during periods of typhus epidemics these laborers mostly stayed home. By itself alone, this fact is incompatible with the necessity to wrap with secrecy the existence and the operation of the chemical slaughterhouses where victims were swallowed by the hundreds of thousands (by millions, it was once claimed). These civilians wore a green arm-band (p. 62):
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For the building of the crematories of Birkenau, twelve civil firms were involved [...]. On every construction project [...] there were a hundred or a hundred and fifty workers, of which two thirds were inmates and one third were civilians, under the direction of the foremen of the firms concerned (p. 56).
The author does not explain the anomaly which the massive presence of civilian strangers on the site of the crime should have presented him, nor the fact that work which one might suppose would be the most secret of any in the Reich was directed by foremen from civilian firms from outside the camp.
The archive has mostly been recovered 
We have been told, in 1945 the Germans destroyed nearly all the archives of the camp. However, Pressac admits that the count of documents from the archives of Auschwitz runs to tens of thousands, if not to hundreds of thousands, both in Auschwitz itself and in Moscow. Those of the central construction office (Zentral-Bauleitung) are intact. One might suppose that, these documents being the most compromising in Pressac's eyes, their destruction would have had a high priority. Why were they not destroyed? The answer of good common sense is that, not needing to conceal any trace of a large-scale crime precisely because there was none, there was no need to destroy such archives. Our author has another explanation as to why the SS did not destroy these archives: The SS did not understand the "explosive" nature of their contents (p. 1). This is his modus operandi: if he can not understand a phenomenon, he usually blames it on the stupidity or ignorance of the SS.
In 1972 both chief architects had to be acquitted 
I have frequently pointed to the decisive significance of the innocent verdict for Walter Dejaco and Fritz Ertl, the two chief architects of the crematories of Auschwitz, on trial in Vienna in 1972. The Soviet and Polish Communists had put the documents they had in the hands of the court. The conclusion that one would normally come to is that these documents did not provide proof of any crime; they must have all had ordinary technical significance for architects, engineers and technicians. Our pharmacist Pressac, however, tells us all these people were incompetent:
[...] no-one, neither the judges nor the so-called technical experts, at that time possessed the ability to evaluate the excellent historical material that had been provided by the Poles and the Soviets (p. 96).
The papers and documents from the Dejaco-Ertl trial, in the possession of the Austrian judicial system, are kept inaccessible to Revisionists. Why not release them?
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Typhus epidemics fought through use of Zyklon B 
Typhus — always endemic among the populations of eastern Europe — ravaged Ausch-witz. In the eastern part of the Soviet Union, the Germans confirmed "one hundred and fifty thousand cases of typhus in the Summer of 1941" (p. 32). Pressac, compelled to acknowledge certain truths that have been asserted by the Revisionists for some time, writes,
The SS medical doctors knew that the Auschwitz region was marshy. They had already been confronted with the problem of untreated water which had led to typhoid fever caused by Eberth's bacillus. At the end of May 1942, because of numerous cases of typhoid appearing among the inmates, the consumption of tap water was forbidden to the SS and to the employees of the seventeen civilian firms operating in the camp. It was replaced with mineral water provided for free in abundance. The medical doctors feared that it was nearly certain that there would be fatalities due to malaria in the Summer, caused by mosquitoes from the marshes. To counter this danger, the SS planned to open an institute of hygiene in Raisko; this happened in October. But the typhus took them by surprise. They thought that that their prophylactic measures (quarantine, haircuts) and hygiene measures (local disinfestation of the hair, showers) applied to new inmates on their arrival would prevent the outbreak of the plague in the camp by eradicating the vector, the flea. This was true as far as it went, but the trouble came from those who had not had to submit to such a treatment, the civilians, who were in close company with the inmates daily [8]. Soon, the latter were infected, and, since the hygienic conditions in the camps were lamentable, the death count skyrocketed. From May to December 1940, the monthly death count was estimated at 220; from January to July 1941 it tripled; from August to December 1941 it reached a thousand; in July 1942 it passed 4,000. The sanitary situation became uncontrollable. It was necessary to keep typhus from spreading to the neighboring area. The whole camp was closed off and no one was allowed to leave. On the 10th July a partial quarantine was ordered [1942] (p. 43).
He adds,
But when the ravages of the typhus epidemic continued unabated and the situation became catastrophic, the total isolation of the camp was decreed on the 23rd July [1942] (p. 46).
The epidemic reached levels of 250 to 300 deaths per day among the inmates, the civilians and the SS (p. 50). Pressac omits to mention that the head medical doctor, Dr. Popi-ersch, himself died of typhus [9]. From the 7th to the 11th September 1942, the first epidemic reached its peak with 375 deaths in one day (cf. the table on page 145).
A second epidemic and then a third broke out during the first half of 1943 (p. 82).
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Disinfestation, particularly by means of Zyklon B, was a vital necessity:
The week of the 5th to the 11th July [1942], the building where the SS guards lived and which swarmed with vermin was gassed [with Zyklon B] (p. 16).
The central sauna at Birkenau,
was a high-performance sanitary complex due to be equipped with four rooms for disinfestation by hot air (document 23), three industrial autoclaves (document 24), a room for hair cutting, a room for medical examinations and fifty showers. With this complex the SS intended to deter the resurgence of typhus in Birkenau "definitively". The inmates were to be shaved, examined, disinfested and showered while their effects were disinfected. Unfortunately, the installation was not operational until the end of January 1944 (p. 69).
Document 23 and especially documents 24 and 40 illustrate the degree to which the Germans were concerned about hygiene, especially in a part of the camp occupied by the Gypsies at one time. Documents 42 and 43 show interior and exterior views of a battery of nineteen gas chambers for disinfestation with Zyklon B (this construction was not finished).
Auschwitz was equipped with
the most recent disinfestation technology developed in Germany. It was a stationary ultra-short wave disinfestation unit (decimeter- or centimeter-waves) (pp. 82-83).
Already in 1946 Marc Klein, professor on the faculty of medicine at the University of Strasbourg and a former inmate of Auschwitz, mentioned the "disinfestation by short-wave" and the impressive number of measures taken by the German medical doctors to care for the inmates in the conditions of close proximity of a forced labor camp ("Observations et réflexions sur les camps de concentration nazis", Études germaniques no. 3, 1946, p. 18).
Cremation: a hygienic measure 
Pressac writes:
To prevent typhus and other uncontrollable epidemics, the corpses resulting from the war and the microbes they carried needed to be burnt to ashes. That was Prüfer's job [so far as Auschwitz was concerned] (p. 32).
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Initially the Germans buried the corpses, but Auschwitz was situated in a marshy area. Sometimes the water table rose almost to ground level. Therefore it was necessary to disinter the corpses and incinerate them.
[...] the putrefaction products from the corpses began to infect the ground water, which could have become thoroughly infected if the water table rose. There was nothing left to do but disinter the corpses and incinerate them in open air before winter came (p. 57).
The major part of the book is devoted to the history of the crematories, which is to say, the buildings called crematories, and in them, to the ovens of these crematories. The recital is tiresome, unconnected and hardly comprehensible. It turns out that the ovens were subject to frequent breakdowns (pp. 22, 81, note 108, etc.), which necessarily correspondingly reduces the delirious output capacities that have been generously attributed to them by the Exterminationists, including Pressac (300,000 cremations in 70 days (p. 148), more than 4,285 per day!).
Crematories designed without gas chambers 
Here we come to the most important concession the author has made to the Revisionists: the four crematories of Birkenau, designed in August 1942, which is to say at a considerable remove from the date the official historians give to the policy of extermination of the Jews, were "planned without gas chambers" (p. 53). One searches in vain for the precise date at which these crematories, finished between the 31st March and the 25th June 1943, were "planned with" gas chambers.
His concession is significant: in 1982, at a time when historians affirmed that all the crematories were planned and constructed with gas chambers, in a moment of audacity our author dared to write that the crematories IV and V were designed without gas chambers. Then, in 1989, making amends, he wrote that the two crematories had been designed with gas chambers. Today he reverts to his position of 1982: the crematories were designed without gas chambers. He said nothing in 1982 with respect to crematories II and III, but in 1989 and today he asserts that they were planned without gas chambers. On crematory I in the main camp, which predated the other crematories, one can not quite determine in the midst of Pressac's constantly changing theories whether he thinks it was planned with or without a gas chamber. We are faced with the same uncertainty with respect to the mysterious Bunkers 1 and 2. For references to these diverse changes of position, see R.H.R. no. 3, pp. 74-79 (cf. equally my Réponse à Pierre Vidal-Naquet , La Vieille Taupe, 1982, 2nd edition, pp. 67-83).
Other evidence that he can not hide 
If we limit ourselves to the collection of photographs, other evidence appears that the author can not hide. Far from working quietly and secretly, as one would expect of those engaged in criminal activity, the staff of the central construction office at Auschwitz complaisantly let themselves be photographed (doc. 12). Pressac could have shown other 
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photographs in which one can see these engineers, architects and technicians working in their offices where they have proudly posted their crematory designs on the walls. Among the photographs in the collection we see a heating plant at some distance from the camp (doc. 44), stables where inmates were kept busy (docs. 45 and 46), armories and factories for the production of synthetic motor fuel where the inmates worked (docs. 47 and 48), enormous potato warehouses (doc. 49) whose presence could be considered surprising in a place the Allies called an "extermination camp", a water treatment facility located near the crematories (doc. 50), one of the piggeries where the inmates worked (doc. 51), fields and greenhouses for vegetable cultivation (doc. 52).
At this point, under the heading of evidence the author can not hide, one should note how everything so far discussed contradicts the thesis of extermination at Auschwitz. It has required the great pressure exerted by the work of the Revisionists to make the representatives of the official version of history recognize these facts.
2. Realities that Pressac never mentions
The author passes silently by a large number of facts which show that Auschwitz and Birkenau could not have been "extermination camps" (an expression devised by the Allies), but were rather concentration camps, labor camps and transit camps. He has also been silent on many documents of great importance. I will limit myself to a few examples.
No photograph and no plan of crematory I 
Here we have a book devoted to the "crematories of Auschwitz" which paradoxically does not contain a single photograph or plan of crematory I and its gas chamber among the sixty photographs and reproduced documents it contains. However, it is this first crematory with its pretended homicidal gas chamber which, I repeat, is shown to every visitor as the irrefutable proof of the crime. Pressac shows us the photograph of an oven located at Dachau (doc. 7) or at Buchenwald (doc. 60) but he won't let us see the ovens of Auschwitz!
He does this purposely because he knows that this crematory with its "gas chamber" is a complete fraud. He could hardly remind his readers that I discovered that fact at the site in 1976 and described the proof thereof in a book I wrote in collaboration with Serge Thion: Vérité historique ou vérité politique? (La Vieille Taupe, 1980, pp. 316-317). Pres-sac could not apprise his readers that I was the first in the world to discover — with much difficulty — the plans of all the crematories of Auschwitz and Birkenau in the Museum of Auschwitz, to publish some of them and to demonstrate the physical and chemical impossibility of any homicidal gassing operation in these buildings.
No photograph of the "gas chamber" of crematory II 
No more does he dare to show us a photograph of the ruins of what he dares to call the gas chamber of crematory II at Birkenau which was, in reality, a cold room set partly in 
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the ground (Leichenkeller). THE CONCRETE ROOF WHICH HAS COLLAPSED QUITE CLEARLY POSSESSES NO BUILT-IN OPENING THROUGH WHICH ONE COULD POUR ANYTHING AT ALL. The only two holes which one can see today are punctures which were made after the war: the proof of this is that the rebar of the reinforced concrete is twisted and bent back. Consequently, Pressac's theory that the SS poured granules of Zyklon B through four openings built-in for that purpose is unsustainable for reasons of pure physical evidence which anyone can see today who will go and look.
Not a word about the expert reports 
The author does not breathe a word on the successive expert reports by the American Fred Leuchter or the German Germar Rudolf or the technical study by the Austrian Wal-ter Lüftl, all of which came to the conclusion that there were no homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz or Birkenau [10].
Above all, he is silent on the expert report from Cracow. Intending to counter the report by F. Leuchter, the authorities of the Museum of Auschwitz commissioned an expert report from the Criminological Institute of Cracow; this expert report, dated 24 September 1990, did not please those who had requested it and it has been suppressed [11]. What right does Pressac have to withhold from his readers the scientific elements of the Ausch-witz record? If the expert reports do not please him, he should tell us so in his book and propose an expert report to his liking. Moreover, it is high time that we insist to those who criticize the Revisionists that they please provide us with an expert report on the weapon used in the crime supposedly committed at Auschwitz and Birkenau. A scientific examination of the buildings or the ruins of buildings which are only a half-century old would be easy. How can one stubbornly refuse such an expert report or examination and at the same time pretend to be making a scientific study of history, as the Revisionists are?
No complete photograph from The Auschwitz Album 
The most valuable document that we possess on the realities of Auschwitz is a collection of 189 photographs which is usually called The Auschwitz Album. It constitutes a solid refutation of the fairy tales on the fate of Jews arriving at Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1944. It has been embarrassing enough for the Exterminationists that they waited thirty-six years after it was discovered in 1945 to finally publish it in its entirety. Up to that date only a few of the photographs had popped up here and there in various published works. In 1981 these people could not forego to follow up this publication of the whole collection with a novel on the "miraculous" discovery of said album, written by Serge Klarsfeld. Two years later this same S. Klarsfeld entrusted to Pressac the task of publishing a "complete and stable version" through Editions du Seuil, one of the largest French publishers [12] (cf. R.H.R. no. 3, Annex 3: "Les Tricheries de Pressac dans L'Album d'Auschwitz", pp. 149-152).
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Aside from the photograph of the Jewish woman on the cover (cut out from one of the photographs of the album), Pressac does not reprint a single photograph from this valuable collection!
Not a word about the air reconnaissance photos 
Pressac does not reprint any of the air reconnaissance photographs of Auschwitz and Birkenau published in 1979 by the Americans Dino A. Brugioni and Robert G. Poirier [13]. Certainly these photographs deliver proof that there was never a crowd gathered near the crematories, that the chimneys did not belch clouds of smoke (cf., in Les Créma-toires d'Auschwitz, "two squat chimneys spitting flames", p. 91), and that the "incineration ditches" are imaginary.
Not a word about the cold room register (Leichenhallenbuch) 
We had to wait until 1989 for the Museum of Auschwitz to resign itself to unveil the existence of the mortuary register of Auschwitz crematory I, the "Leichenhallenbuch" (this should not be confused with the camp death registers in which all deaths were recorded, the Sterbebücher or Totenbücher ).
In her new edition of the calendar of events at Auschwitz-Birkenau Kalendarium der Er-eignisse im Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau 1939-1945 published in 1989, Da-nuta Czech tells us something she curiously "forgot" to tell us in the first edition of the same calendar divided into seven parts (Hefte von Auschwitz no. 2 in 1959, no. 3 in 1960, no. 4 in 1961, no. 6 in 1962, no. 7 and no. 8 in 1964, no. 10 in 1967): the existence of the important register recording the persons whose corpses were kept in the cold room (Lei-chenhalle) of the crematory I between 7 October 1941 and 31 August 1943 (Kalendar-ium, 1989, p. 10 and elsewhere). Even if some of these dead persons might have been buried and not incinerated when the camp first opened, here we have a document which gives an understanding of the real number and not a theoretical number of incinerations carried out.
Pressac ignores many other documents concerning the incineration of the dead. For example, the death notices recording that there had been an incineration, telegrams and tel-exes announcing a death, the shipping receipts for urns, the reports summing the number of corpses incinerated or laid up in the cold rooms (cf. for example, for Buchenwald, the death notice (Totenmeldung) reproduced by Reimund Schnabel, Macht ohne Moral, Frankfort, Rödenberg-Verlag, 1957, p. 346).
The myth according to which those destined to be gassed were not registered should not exempt Pressac from providing us with that information in a book entitled Les Créma-toires d'Auschwitz.
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Other documents not mentioned 
Other documents are ignored, for example, those concerning requests for allotments of wood, coal and coke and those concerning requests for delivery of fuel to the crematories, not to mention other documents which prove that the ovens could not have operated 24 hours per 24-hour day (cf. the operating manuals reproduced in A.T.O., p. 136).
Other things Pressac does not mention 
I will not revisit here what I have enumerated with respect to his previous work (A.T.O.) under the titles, "Trois petits secrets de J.C. Pressac" (Three little secrets of J.C. Pressac) (R.H.R. no. 3, pp. 134-135) and "Omissions délibérées" (Deliberate Omissions) ( ibid., pp. 137-140) [14]. A whole chapter could be written on the variations of Pressac's ideas on Auschwitz in the last eleven years, which include complete 180° turnarounds. Pressac is silent on these changes, and, in particular, on his own experiment to incinerate a rabbit's corpse in a hole in his garden to see if he could give any credence to stories that the Germans had burnt thousands of corpses in "incineration ditches". The experiment was unsuccessful despite his repeated efforts. The author concluded that it was impossible to incinerate corpses in a ditch due to lack of oxygen, especially at Auschwitz where, as I have already noted, the water table sometimes rose almost to ground level. As we will see below, this does not stop him from asserting that at Auschwitz the Germans sometimes burned their victims in "incineration ditches"; sometimes they even pushed them still living "into the burning ditches". (p. 91)!
Not content to pass by in silence so many realities and so many documents of such importance, Pressac has used other means to hide the truth about Auschwitz: he has used tricks that are common in the literature as well as some of his own.
3. Tricks that Pressac borrows from other historians
Whether we are dealing with evidence that Pressac can not hide or realities that he never mentions, it all leads to the conclusion that we can not find any trace of genocide or of homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz and Birkenau. If one stubbornly intends to pursue the Exterminationist thesis, one must necessarily resort to subterfuge. This is what our handy historian does: following his illustrious predecessors Léon Poliakov, Georges Wellers, Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Raul Hilberg and Christopher Browning, and certain French courts, he resorts to the same box of tricks they habitually use (cf. R.H.R. no. 3, pp. 204-205, as well as no. 4, pp. 192-193). There are four of them: unproven assertions, resort to unverified witness statements, decoding of a pretended code and, finally, an assembly of what are less proofs than an irregular bundle of scraps of proofs, of traces of "blunders" and "bungles" left behind inadvertently by the SS.
Unproven assertions 
In A.T.O., Pressac takes note at least five times (pp. 115, 313, 464, 501, 533) of "Himmler's order on the 26th November 1944 to destroy the crematories II and III of 
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Birkenau, thereby terminating the gassing". In my review of this book I wrote, "Our autodidact merely repeats here without verification the assertions of eminent Jewish authors (with variations on the dates)." (R.H.R. no. 3, pp. 83-84). What does our autodidact do in his new book? He writes, "At the end of November [1944], the homicidal gassings were terminated by verbal order of Himmler" (p. 93), but naturally, he does not give any proof of the existence of this order, now described as "verbal" and whose date has suddenly become uncertain. Equally arbitrarily he writes that on 17 July 1942, Himmler "attended a homicidal gassing at Birkenau" (p. 115). He asserts that the physical extermination of the Jews,
was not decided on by the SS authorities in Berlin [which?] before May/June 1942, and was subsequently [exactly when?] technically realized by the SS construction office Auschwitz and the engineers of the firm of J.A. Topf and Sons of Erfurt (p. 2).
He dispenses with any need for proof or testimony when he asserts that human beings were gassed in Bunker 2 (p. 42), that "on 4 July, a convoy of Slovakian Jews were 'selected' [meaning partly gassed] for the first time" (p. 43), that "in November 1942 the SS construction office decided to equip the crematories with homicidal gas chambers" (p. 66), that ventilation specialist Karl Schultze was "informed by Prüfer of the particular purpose of the inflow and outflow ventilation systems of morgue 1 [of crematory II]" (p. 71). By "particular purpose" Pressac means gassing of humans. In the same way, he affirms that "the SS could annihilate up to 300,000 people in 70 days" (p. 148), that two foremen climbing down from a scaffolding or the roof "told foremen belonging to another firm that the heat of the flames turned the green forest in the forbidden zone red-yellow" (p. 58), and that at the "end of October 1942 the obvious idea presented itself to transfer the 'gassing activity' [sic] of Bunkers 1 and 2" to a crematory (p. 60).
True to his routine of assertions without proof, he adopts as his own the most traditional of the lies of the anti-German propaganda: the history of the pretended gas chamber of Dachau that was "fortunately, never put into operation" (p. 68).
The list of the assertions of this kind that Pressac never takes the trouble to supply with a proof or even a witness statement would be a long one. The relative brevity of his work should not excuse such absence of proofs, witness statements or exact source references for his assertions, especially when they involve accusations of such gravity.
Resort to unverified witness statements 
In a hurry to forget the specific promise made in his preface, he makes use of witness statements throughout his work. For example, those of SS-men Pery Broad and Rudolf Höss, of inmates Henryk Tauber and David Olère and other witnesses whom he fails to name — in the latter case he refers to the Kalendarium of Danuta Czech, which is itself replete with witness testimony.
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He has the audacity to invoke the testimony of SS-man Pery Broad, which he proceeds to manipulate (p. 18) [15]. In 1989 Pressac said of this testimony that it raised "problems" and that in form and in content it had a "false ring". He added that the version we have is "clearly colored by a somewhat too flagrant Polish patriotism", that we do not have the original manuscript and that the Poles had "reworked" P. Broad's statements (A.T.O., p. 128) [16].
The testimony of SS-man Rudolf Höss which Pressac invokes frequently (cf. his name in the index of Crématoires d'Auschwitz ), is totally discredited today. In 1989 Pressac himself explained that the "errors" committed by Höss "throughout his biography" had an explanation: "he was present without seeing" (A.T.O., p. 128), a somewhat surprising observation to make about a man described as an "eye-witness". In 1993 he disposed of his own witness in the long note 132 (pp. 102-103) where he spoke of Höss' statements in the following terms: "gross improbability", "pure anachronism", "chronological errors", "imaginary visit", "death-counts [...] regularly doubled or tripled". He concluded, "despite his essential role in the 'Final Solution', Höss can not be considered a reliable witness with respect to dates and numbers".
With respect to the Jewish shoemaker Henryk Tauber (notes 203 and 223), in 1989 Pres-sac enumerated his serious "errors" and "contradictions" and concluded that he never was a witness to homicidal gassings. His explanation was that Tauber permitted himself substantial exaggerations under the "political climate of the times" (A.T.O., pp. 483-484, 489, 494).
Let us turn to David Olère. Pressac presents this man's Chinese ink drawings as "documents" (cf. docs. 30 — erroneously labelled 33 —, 31, 32, 35). However, in 1989 he judged that this witness suffered from "crematory delirium" (A.T.O., p. 556). His drawings are nothing but grotesque fairy tales. In 1989 Pressac said about one of them: "Whether the picture is entirely imaginary or is based on what the artist saw, it is the only one which shows a homicidal gassing" (A.T.O., p. 258). One observes that in this picture or drawing, the pellets of Zyklon B are spread out around a box lying on the floor of the "gas chamber", a detail which contradicts Pressac's thesis that the pellets were introduced from outside through a "grilled duct for pouring in Zyklon B" (doc. 31: drawing by David Olère).
With respect to other witness statements, for which we are told neither the source nor the name of the witness, in his notes Pressac always refers to the Kalendarium of Danuta Czech. However, if we are to believe him, this Kalendarium, its author and the witnesses cited have little value as references. He writes that,
In retaining without explanation certain witness statements at the expense of others and in giving witness statements priority over documents, Danuta Czech lays herself open to the attack of critics. This unusual historical orientation persists in the third and newest version of the Kalendarium [...] by Czech, actually published in Polish and not utilizing the store of the Bauleitung documents from the Central Archives of Moscow, appreciably diminishing the veracity of this fundamental 
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work, which suffers too much from a political viewpoint owing to the decade of the '60's (note 107).
If this is so, why refer so frequently to a source one considers so questionable?
One notes with surprise that in 1993 Pressac does not mention anymore two witness statements of which he had made the greatest use four years earlier in his book in English (A.T.O.): that of Nyiszli (the presumed author of the best-seller Médecin à Auschwitz ), and that of Filip Müller (presumed author of the best-seller and winner of the LICRA prize (of the League against Racism and Anti-Semitism), Trois ans dans une chambre à gaz d'Auschwitz). Is it possible that he was able to learn something from my remarks on the way he had abused these witness statements (cf. R.H.R. no. 3, pp. 126-130, "Drôlerie [involontaire] de Pressac à propos de M. Nyiszli" and p. 123)?
Without daring to name F. Müller, he uses his testimony in a furtive manner. Recall the episode of the "incineration ditches":
Toward the end of the summer, as the supply of Zyklon B began to run short, the ones from the convoys who were unfit for work, who were still sent to Auschwitz, were thrown directly into the burning ditches of crematory V and Bunker 2. — n. 293 (p. 91).
Note 293 refers us to the following text: "Hermann Langbein, Der Auschwitz-Prozess, eine Dokumentation, Band I, Europa Verlag, Vienna, 1965, p. 88". If one turns to the book and the page indicated (in fact, pp. 88-89), one discovers that this testimony on the victims thrown still living into the incineration ditches comes from F. Müller, who added details that Pressac preferred to omit: the ditches had a depth of 2.50 m. (which would have been impossible in water-soaked terrain and which would have aggravated the shortage of oxygen) and
[...] they scooped the fat dripping from the burning corpses and poured it back over the corpses in order to accelerate the burning (!).
Decoding the code 
Many historians have asserted that the Germans used a "code" to describe their alleged policy of extermination of the Jews. These historians made another assertion: they pretended to have the key to the code. Consequently, their work consisted in "decoding", which means, to find in the documents that which they themselves had put there. It should be noted that they "decoded" a lot. In 1989 Pressac denounced the "myth" of the "code", or the secret language (A.T.O., pp. 247, 556).
In 1993, he himself takes up the abuse that he once condemned. Now it is he who decodes with abandon. According to him, in the end the "final solution" of the Jewish problem signified the liquidation of the Jews (sense of page 29) and "special commando" 
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(Sonderkommando) supposedly indicated a squad of Jews given the task of carrying the corpses of the gassed victims to the incineration ditches (p. 43). The expressions "special treatment" (Sonderbehandlung) or "transfer of the Jewish population" hid the meaning "liquidation by gas of unfit Jews at Birkenau" (p. 46). The expressions "special actions" (Sonderaktionen) or "treated" (behandelt) had the same horrible implication (pp. 64, 77).
But at moments Pressac has his doubts. He admits that the expression "special action" had to mean an intervention or police mobilization at Auschwitz on the occasion of a spontaneous strike of civilian workers (p. 63) and that "special measures" must have signified some kind of sanitary measure (p. 82 and note 256).
On "special treatment" (Sonderbehandlung), he should read his own references more carefully. When he tells us that an official of the camp requested the sum of 60,000 RM to build "four barracks for the special treatment of the inmates of Birkenau" (p. 46), the purpose is to house inmates in barracks, as the text clearly says, and not to dispatch the new arrivals to the gas chambers.
The "blunders" and "bungles" of the SS 
The author's definition of "criminal blunder" is
any indication in a document of any kind (writing, design, photo) relative to a non-normal usage of the crematories which can not be explained except by the massive gassing of human beings (p. 60).
Sometimes, instead of the word "blunder" he uses the word "bungle".
In practice, what this definition amounts to is that if Pressac — and he alone — finds a detail concerning the use of the crematories (the crematory ovens?) which he, the pharmacist, considers unusual, and which he, the pharmacist, can not explain, the only conclusion can be that this is an indication of a ghastly crime. When one reflects that even the most qualified man of science can be perplexed by a problem in his own discipline and that the beginning of wisdom consists in saying nothing when one knows nothing, one must be awe-stricken at the artlessness and presumption of our pharmacist. The author should recall his own experience. In his work of 1989, he devoted a whole chapter (chapter VIII) to a description of ... thirty-nine "blunders". Today, he has apparently retained only five or six of these "blunders", which should indicate that he has been able to explain thirty some details that could have constituted an indication of a ghastly crime four years before. In my review of 1990, I discussed these thirty-nine "blunders" (R.H.R. no. 3, pp. 89-104) and I refer my reader there. Here I will only revisit a few of them and I will also comment on a few new "blunders" that Pressac thinks he has found.
The "disappearance" of the body ramp (pp. 64-65)
This ramp never disappeared in order to make way for a stairway by which the designated victims could enter on foot the "disrobing room" next to the "gas chamber". If it 
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does not appear on a partial design dated 19 December 1942, this is probably for the simple reason that the architect's design only concerned the stairway leading to the street and there was consequently no need for the inclusion of a ramp, which in any case appeared nine months later in a design dated 24 September 1943 (A.T.O., p. 327). Even today the remains of this inclined surface (Rutsche) are visible in the ruins of crematory III; it was made for a cart used for moving the corpses. In 1989 Pressac said this himself and showed a photograph of the remains (op. cit., pp. 544-545)! As for the narrow stairway of the supposed "disrobing room", it obviously would have not been suitable for use by crowds of people.
Vergasungskeller (p. 69) 
Because the plans that are available to us today are so imprecise, no one can situate the "Vergasungskeller" (gassing cellar?) exactly and say exactly what its function was. It could have been a cellar where disinfestation material was stored: cases of Zyklon, gas masks, filter detectors, sheets for laying out Zyklon pellets, tools for opening the boxes, and so on. But there are other possibilities (cf. R.H.R. no. 3, pp. 100-103).
A gas-tight door and fourteen fake showers (p. 80) 
I refer to my review where I discussed the ordinary significance of the presence of gas-tight doors and showers in a crematory (R.H.R. no. 3, pp. 95-99). Also note that in the German document there is no mention of fourteen (false) showers, but of fourteen true shower-heads.
The heating of the "gas chamber" (p. 73) 
I refer to my review (R.H.R. no. 3, p. 104) and add that the proposal to install a heating system was abandoned several days after it was made, which Pressac himself says (p. 77). There is no point to further discussion.
The Zyklon B insertion apparatus (p. 79) 
I refer to my review (R.H.R. no. 3, pp. 99-100). I repeat that the roof of the supposed gas chamber does not contain any opening for such an apparatus. Moreover, the Italian Revisionist Carlo Mattogno has alerted me to the fact that Pressac has made an error in translation: "Drahtnetzeinschiebvorrichtung" has the meaning of an apparatus for "inserting" (einschieben) and not for "pouring". It is possible that this German word refers to iron rebar mesh disposed in the concrete so as to permit the insertion or the installation of some component.
The wooden blower (pp. 70-71 and doc. 26) 
There is nothing more ordinary than a blower made of wood. Pressac explains that the blower was made of wood because a blower made of metal would have been corroded by the gas drawn from the gas chambers. Six pages later (p. 77), he tells us that several days 
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later the SS decided to "replace the wooden blower for the outflow ventilation of the gas chamber with a blower made of metal". The explanation that Pressac has devised for this is that the SS believed that Schultze had "exaggerated the corrosion danger". Note that this commentary on the blower is characteristic of Pressac: windiness, incoherence and SS incompetents to whom he attributes a train of thought that he has created himself in all parts.
The "normal" and "nonnormal" gas chambers (p. 89) 
A confused passage is devoted to the "extraordinary blunder" which an ordinary civilian employee made in composing a letter to the "Testa" firm, distributors of Zyklon B. This "blunder" consisted in the fact that in the letter the term "normal gas chamber" was used and in the answer "Testa" had used the same expression. Pressac deduces from this that there must have existed "nonnormal", that is, homicidal, gas chambers! He does not reproduce the text of this correspondence, but gives us a rather confused summary from which he appears to conclude that the "normal" gas chambers were planned for use with Zyklon B and the "nonnormal" gas chambers were planned for use with Zyklon B but underwent "an adaptation by refitting" to operate with another agent, Areginal, due to the shortage of Zyklon B in May 1944.
The ten hydrocyanic acid gas detectors (pp. 71-72) 
With the hydrocyanic acid gas detectors we leave the domain of "blunders" and "bungles", of "criminal indicia" and "indications of proof" to come upon, finally, a "definitive proof", and even "the definitive proof".
What's this about?
It is about the "existence of a homicidal gas chamber in crematory II" (p. 72). One is astonished to see the immense construction entailing the most serious accusation that one could make against the German people built upon an ordinary commercial letter.
On 2 March 1943, the firm Topf and Sons of Erfurt sent a letter to the central construction office of Auschwitz concerning an order for ten hydrocyanic acid gas detectors for crematory II. There is nothing strange in that. The letter is commercial and contains nothing secret. The words "Gasprüfer/Krematorium" (gas detectors/crematory) are in the header. The apparatus were called "Anzeigegeräte für Blausäure Reste" (hydrocyanic acid trace detectors). These are what I called the "trace gas detection apparatus" in my Mémoire en défense [...] (La Vieille Taupe, 1980, p. 171), which is the translation, in the circumstances, of "Gasrestnachweisgerät" [17]. This apparatus could be found everywhere gassing (Vergasung) material was stored and everywhere disinfestations with Zyk-lon B were carried out. In view of the ravages caused by typhus at Auschwitz and the accumulation of corpses of typhus victims in the crematories, disinfestation operations at such locations would have been necessary and the use of such paper detectors normal. Since 1922 [18] and continuing to today, Zyklon has been used to disinfest dwelling places, silos, libraries, ships and so on.
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In many of the tricks that Pressac has borrowed from other historians, one can detect a mixed dose of ignorance and bad faith, but, as we shall see, the pharmacist has his own deceptions which he adds to the mix.
4. Deceptions that are Pressac's own
Several times in the past I have pointed out that Pressac does not hold back from trickery. As I have mentioned above, one of the annexes to my review of his book in English had the title "Les Tricheries de Pressac dans L'Album d'Auschwitz" (Pressac's Trickeries ...) (R.H.R. no. 3, pp. 149-152). In that review I noted two particularly crass examples of fraud: In the first case, Pressac altered a map of Birkenau by deleting a road to make it appear that Jews who followed the road would have to end up at the crematories. In the other case, he fraudulently manipulated the classification of the source of the photographs, their arrangement and the titles of the different sections on a grand scale.
In Les Crématoires d'Auschwitz Pressac makes a sort of admission on these two points: on page 48 he discreetly restores the road on the map that I reproached him for removing. As to the manipulated photographs, they have disappeared completely, including the one which he classified last in his publication of L'Album d'Auschwitz in 1983 and presented as a decisive proof of the existence of a homicidal gas chamber.
Improper insertions 
The deception that Pressac resorts to most frequently is the insertion in an otherwise inoffensive context of one or more words which distort the meaning of the context and indicate an abomination perpetrated by the Germans.
As we have seen, where one document (p. 80) mentions "fourteen showers" (or shower-heads), the author discusses "fourteen (false) showers". In slipping in the parenthesized word "false" he distorts the sense of the document he cites and insinuates that we are in the presence of a true homicidal gas chamber equipped with false shower-heads to lure the victims.
Here is a context with three sentences concerning a visit by Himmler to Birkenau:
Next, he visited all the areas of interest of the camp and of Birkenau (document 19). Then, he attended the sorting of a convoy of Dutch Jews and the gassing of the unfit ones in Bunker 2. Finally he toured the "Buna" [works] at Monowitz, which at the time was nothing but a large goods yard. — n. 142 (p. 44).
The first sentence, duly supported by reference, tells a true fact. The third sentence, also duly supported by reference, tells another true fact. But the sentence inserted between the two others reports a fictitious event. The episode of the sorting and the gassing, which Himmler supposedly witnessed, has been invented, but when presented between two facts true and supported, it acquires the appearance of a fact true and supported.
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Tying a big lie to a small true fact 
Sometimes the big lie comes at the beginning and the (referenced) small true fact follows. That is the case in the following passage:
The victims, numbering between 550 and 850, were incinerated in the two double-chamber ovens of the crematory in one or two weeks of intensive labor which caused damage to the second oven. — n. 108 (p. 34)
If one refers to the referenced document — whose text Pressac does not provide — one discovers that the only thing true about this passage is that a certain oven was damaged on a certain day.
Sometimes the small true fact comes before the big lie. That is the case in the following passage concerning Dr. Wirths, the chief of medicine of the camp:
[In his report on the lack of means for delousing] he expected a return of typhus if "special measures" (Sondermassnahmen) to ameliorate the situation were not taken immediately. He explained that it was useless to require SS medical doctors to sort out the new arrivals while those fit for work were being wiped out by typhus, and that it would be better to send them all off to the gas when they got off the train (p. 82).
Here the big lie is in the phrase, "and that it would be better to send them all off to the gas when they got off the train". The result of this deception is that Dr. Eduard Wirths, a chief medical officer concerned about the hygienic situation in the camp, is presented by Pressac as a man who "knew" that there were homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz.
This method of tying the true and the false could easily permit one to write that one day at the Berghof, Adolf Hitler decided on the extermination of the Jews of the 3rd Reich and then received such and such a dignitary for tea, or that just before tea, he took the decision on the genocide of the Jews. A footnote would contain a reference to a source that, on inspection, would only mention that there had been a tea party.
The deception in these two forms can be quickly exposed, but the deception in his inventions on Himmler, Höss or the SS at Auschwitz is less easily seen.
Retouching plans and maps 
Many of the maps that Pressac presents have been retouched. The map of Birkenau shown on page 48 is one such. Near the crematory area there is a large rectangular zone designated "B II f" on the maps. The left part contains a sports field and the right part contains a hospital for men. The sports area and the hospital were for the use of inmates, Jews and non-Jews alike. Their existence was completely normal. The line separating the sports field and the garden of crematory III was marked only by a simple barbed wire 
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fence which could not conceal any part of the crematory from the view of players or spectators. But the existence of a sports area and a hospital designated for the use of inmates is not consistent with the Exterminationist thesis that the camp was an "extermination" camp. In particular, how do we explain that the SS permitted crowds of inmates to have a direct view of a crematory where supposedly ultra-secret events transpired and near which, we are told, thousands of victims were crowded every day?
Instead of concealing the existence of the hospital, now too well known, Pressac uses the device of making the neighboring sports area with its view of the crematory disappear. In his map on page 48 he proceeds as follows: on the right part of the area containing the hospital, he has decided to write nothing and leave it blank, but in the left part where he should have written "sports field" he has put the inscription, "B II f: camp hôpital" [19] - a pathetic sleight-of-hand.
Other plans, such as the one on page 90, contain a similar deception: the label "gas chamber" has been given in block letters though nothing of the sort appears in the original plans.
Misleading wording even in the titles 
Pressac's habit of tacking a truth onto a lie or a lie onto a truth is so deep-rooted that he even practises it in the titles of some chapters and even in the pair of the title and sub-title of his work.
Chapter VI is entitled: "Le Contrat Mogilew et le Premier Gazage Homicide à Ausch-witz" (The Mogilev Contract and the First Homicidal Gassing at Auschwitz) (p. 31) while the following chapter has the title: "Le Début du Meurtre de Masse des Juifs et L'Épidémie de Typhus" (The Beginning of Mass Murder of Jews and the Typhus Epidemic) (p. 41). As we will see, in the first case the truth comes before the lie and in the second case the truth follows the lie. In the first case, the fact of a contract concerning the construction of crematory ovens is used to support a lie of the execution gas chambers in Auschwitz, in the second case the lie of the execution gas chambers in Auschwitz is supported by the reality of the devastating typhus epidemics. It should be noted that here Pressac makes his own sly use of the confusion in many reader's minds between crematory ovens and "gas chambers" and also their confusion of the corpses of typhus victims with the corpses of gassing victims.
The title and sub-title of this work illustrate this style of deception: in Les Crématoires d'Auschwitz. La Machinerie du meurtre de masse the title is true and the sub-title is false. Pressac's cards are marked: here he plays on the widespread association of "concentration camp crematories" and "murder".
Use of "gas chamber" (meaning: homicidal gas chamber) for "cold room" 
The author's most frequently used cheat is to substitute the expression "gas chamber(s)" for "cold room(s)", when the opportunity presents itself. For example, he writes:
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On 10th March [1943], Schultze and Messing tested the inflow and outflow ventilation systems of the gas chamber of crematory II for sixteen hours. Apparently there were problems, because Messing worked there another eleven hours on the 11th and another fifteen hours on the 13th. — n. 227 (p. 73).
Note 227 refers to a document whose text he does not provide. This document quite clearly reveals that the work of the two men took place not in a homicidal gas chamber but in a cold room that Pressac has decided to baptise a homicidal gas chamber. He dares to add, "There were preliminary experiments on the introduction of Zyklon B." He makes no reference of any kind for this assertion, probably because the proximity of note 227 suffices to give a serious appearance to a pure invention.
Use of "gas chamber" (meaning: homicidal gas chamber) for "disinfestation chamber" 
A variation on the former method of cheating is to refer to documents on the disinfestation gas chambers and let the reader believe that it must mean homicidal gas chambers. On the subject of a foreman, he writes:
In his daily work report, he noted: "Place gas-tight windows". On 2 March, having to lay a concrete floor in the area where the gas-tight windows had been placed, he wrote: "Lay concrete floor in gas chamber". — n. 233 (p. 76).
As is frequently the case with Pressac, the reference note is there to impress and contains no source text. Only the expert would know to look, for example, in the register of the Auschwitz locksmith (Schlosserei) to see that here we are merely dealing with a disinfestation gas chamber. The Pole Jan Sehn, investigating judge in the Rudolf Höss case, compiled extracts from this register. Quite by accident, by copying document no. 459 of 28 May 1943 he shows us that the Germans of Auschwitz called this type of gas chamber "Entwesungskammer" (delousing chamber) or, more simply, "Gaskammer" (gas chamber). The document in question states:
Entwesungskammer K.L. Auschwitz [...]. 1. Die Beschläge zu 1 Tür mit Rahmen, luftdicht mit Spion für Gaskammer (delousing chamber for concentration camp Auschwitz [...]. 1. Fittings for 1 door with frame, gas-tight with spy-hole for gas chamber)
In 1989, Pressac wrote — for once in complete honesty — that he had discovered the inscription "GASKAMMER" (GAS CHAMBER) right above the words "WASCH- und BRAUSEBAD" (WASHROOM AND SHOWER ROOM) in a disinfestation barracks in Birkenau and he added, "The association of showers and gas chambers could have caused the prisoners to think: 'The showers are gas chambers'" (A.T.O., p. 549).
In his book of 1993, far from attempting to dispel this confusion in his readers, he pursues a deception which consists in inducing them to believe — without directly saying so 
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— that when the Germans used the expression "gas chamber" they meant homicidal gas chamber.
Documents without connection to the essential facts 
On the subject of supposed "incineration ditches" (a physical impossibility, especially in the marshy terrain of Birkenau), Pressac wrote:
The oven of [crematory] V rapidly overflowed and small ditches were dug beside the gas chambers to incinerate the victims in the open air (document 57) (p. 90).
Document 57 does not prove nor even illustrate anything with respect to the passage. It concerns a photograph which has circulated among books and articles about the extermination of the Jews for a half century. This photograph is sometimes believed to prove the existence not of incineration ditches but of homicidal gas chambers. It is impossible to say when or where or from whom this picture came. It shows civilians in the midst of what appears to be a pile of naked corpses scattered on the ground. In the distance billows of bright smoke rise, as though it were not from the corpses, but from brushwood (perhaps, if the photograph is genuine, it is the smoke of a fire for the purpose of reducing the odor or repelling insects?). In any case, there are no ditches.
Use of fictitious references 
One of Pressac's other kinds of cheat consists in giving the prestige of a fact examined and determined to be true to something that he has just thought up. Instead of writing, "I have changed my mind and now I think that ...", he will write, "Now it is thought that ...".
In 1989 he asserted with great assurance that the first homicidal gassing at Auschwitz took place on the 3rd September 1941 exactly (A.T.O., p. 132).
Four years later, in the present work he prefers to write:
Today the first killing with poisonous gas is placed somewhere in the period between the 5th [December] and the end of December [1941] (p. 34).
He does not justify the new dating just as he did not justify the old one. He ascribes to anonymous persons — who do not exist — his personal change of opinion that it is painful for him to admit. With this dodge he escapes the task of telling us why his opinion has changed and why it has become vaguer. I am inclined to believe Carlo Mattogno who, in 1992 in an unpublished article on the Les Crématoires d'Auschwitz , tells how he showed Pressac that these first gassings could not have taken place, especially not on 3 Septem-ber 1941. (cf. Carlo Mattogno, Auschwitz: la prima gasazione, Padua, Edizioni di Ar, 1992, 190 pp.).
Using the same subterfuge, Pressac also writes:
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Today it is estimated that only a relatively few killings by poisonous gas took place in this crematory [I], but that a larger number was reported because of the deep impression they made on the direct or indirect witnesses (p. 34).
Behind this "it is estimated" that seems to point to many, there lurks the "I estimate" of a single observer.
In 1989 Pressac set the number of homicidal gassings at crematory I at 10,000. (A.T.O., p. 132). Today, he estimates that there were "very few" such gassings, without being more exact. Here again, he has changed his opinion without telling us, and here again, he has taken refuge in vagueness.
One should pause to enjoy the explanation, not to say the justification, for the lie: the direct witnesses (which?) or indirect witnesses (what does this mean?) had such a vivid impression that they "reported a larger number" of gassings.
This "very few homicidal gassings" is similar to the dissimulation of the adjoint direc-toress of the Museum of Majdanek, who when interviewed by Pressac on the subject of a gas chamber in that camp, responded to him "that gas chamber was little used, really very little used", which our author cheerily tells us, meant that they were "not used at all" (Jean-Claude Pressac, "Les carences et incohérences du 'Rapport Leuchter'", La Lettre télégraphique juive , 12 December 1988, p. IX).
Tangled thinking deliberately nourished 
Our author is confused by nature. But he knows how to use his own confusion to mislead his readers, embroil them in multifarious incohérences and dupe them. He piles it on, like the donkey who plays the donkey because it serves his purpose. Numerous pages, such as those he devotes to "the first clear 'criminal blunder'" need to be particularly clear because they deal with an important event (pp. 60-61) — but no, they seem to be inextricably tangled by design. Elsewhere simple phrases such as "these official numbers are lying propaganda but are valuable nonetheless" (p. 80) permit our author to escape responsibility and take refuge in equivocation.
The beginning of page 47 is an example of a kind of confusion which can only be deliberate. Here, Pressac describes the supposed "sneaky way" used by the SS at Auschwitz to conceal from Berlin that they were not in control of the typhus fever. These SS members decided to explain the "frightful quantities of gas consumed" by the disinfestation as being required by their effort to exterminate the Jews! According to Pressac, they devoted 97 to 98% of the gas to the disinfestation of lice and 2 to 3% to the gassing of Jews (the pharmacist will not say where he has gotten his figures), the SS members then decided to "make Berlin believe that most of the Zyklon B delivered was used in homicidal gassings in Bunkers 1 and 2"; but in Berlin, the SS authorities did not know about the methods of "treatment" of the Jews, they only knew "result of the treatment"! One can not think of anything more confused.
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The rest of the description is no more clear nor coherent. Such a smorgasbord has the advantage of entertaining us with the myth of the gas chambers without giving us arguments which are distinct and substantial enough to be criticized.
The rope dancer and the flim-flam artist 
Another form of confusion that serves to disguise his deceptions is to impute to the stupidity of the SS an absurdity that he has concocted as an explanation for some phenomenon. For example, in attempting to describe the gassing procedure in crematories IV and V, because of the configuration of the buildings, he is forced to invent the story of the SS-man who parades from one building to the next carrying a ladder which he successively props up near the different Zyklon hatches of the gas chambers, where he opens the hatch with one hand and pours in the pellets of Zyklon B with the other; the SS-man performs this stunt six times in a row. In 1989, in A.T.O., p. 386, he tells us the SS-man climbed the ladder three times at each stop, which means, he tells us, the SS-man had to climb up the ladder eighteen times and climb down the ladder eighteen times, thirty-six ascents or descents in all. Pressac calls this procedure "irrational", "ridiculous" and worthy of "a circus act", but, he tells us, "the camp authorities thought that a little physical exercise would do a world of good for the soldiers of the health service responsible for the gassings". The "task [of the SS-man] resembled that of a rope-dancer" he wrote in Les Crématoires d'Auschwitz (p. 76). But the rope-dancer is none other than our flim-flam artist in one of his favorite numbers.
A heavy load of fraudulence: the two descriptions of gassings of humans 
The descriptions of homicidal gassings should constitute the core of Pressac's present work. Instead, they occupy only a very peripheral place. A part of page 34 describes a homicidal gassing in Block 11 and a homicidal gassing in crematory I, and a part of page 74 describes a homicidal gassing in crematory II. That's all there is!
To determine the number of deceptions, the reader need only count occurrences of two cases: in one case, the grave assertions which are not accompanied by proof nor name of source or of some work referring to the source, and, in the other case, assertions that seem to be supported by proof or name of source or of some work referring to the source. In the latter case the reader can verify that Pressac has cheated every time: he uses either anonymous witnesses, or witnesses that he admits elsewhere that one should be wary of, or witnesses whose names are concealed (in this case, he refers to the Kalendarium), or documents in which "the little truth" has nothing to do with "the big lie". One can confirm cases of the first kind in notes 106 to 109 and cases of the other kind in notes 228 to 230 and in the references to documents [sic] 30 to 35.
Let us take a document and a note as examples.
"Document" 30 is nothing but a photograph of a box of Zyklon B! As for note 228, it states simply, "Kalendarium ..., op. cit., p. 440". However, if one takes the trouble to consult said work at the given page, he will discover that it is from this calendar — which he 
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has thoroughly criticized in note 107 — that Pressac has borrowed the fiction of the 1,492 gas victims (Jews from Cracow); Danuta Czech, the editor of the calendar, herself borrowed the story from the infallible Henryk Tauber, who, she explains, admitted that he had never really seen anything during the gassing because the Germans locked the Son-derkommando to which he belonged in the dissection room of crematory II!
A flash flood of fraudulence 
Let us stay for awhile with the story of the gassing of the 1,492 Jews in crematory II.
In most of the deceptions that I have enumerated, it should also be noted that Pressac has ignored all material circumstances that embarrass him. The SS could not have poured Zyklon B through four openings in the roof for the simple reason that no such openings existed — a fact which can be confirmed even today.
Moreover, Pressac knows very well, since he has read the documents that I published in 1980 (in particular, Nuremberg documents NI-9098 and NI-9912 [20], pertaining to Zyk-lon B and its use), that the members of the Sonderkommando could not have entered the gas chamber "after fifteen or twenty minutes" and, working in a space of 210 sqm. (30 m. x 7 m.) [21], undertaken the gigantic task of cutting the hair of the victims, pulling gold teeth, removing finger-rings and jewelry, dragging 1,492 corpses to a small hoist and incinerating the corpses in "two days" (p. 74). He knows that hydrocyanic acid, the principal component of Zyklon B, adheres tightly to surfaces, that it is difficult and time-consuming to draw off (it takes nearly a day of aeration for a room with windows situated at ground level), that it is absorbed by the hair, the skin and the mucous membranes and penetrates the body to the degree that it would make any handling of cyanide-poisoned corpses dangerous (poisoning can occur through simple contact). The Sonderkommando would never have been able to enter a cloud of hydrocyanic acid gas to remove — with much huffing and puffing — 1,492 cyanide-poisoned corpses. Even with a mask and special filter (filter "J"), any physical effort is proscribed because it accelerates respiration and in the case of an effort such as this gas would leak through the filter. Pressac could have let his ventilators run as much as he wanted, no ventilator system would have been able to drive off in a few minutes the poison molecules adhering to the floor, the ceiling, the walls and the door, saturating the corpses or trapped in pockets among the piles of corpses. I make reference to the method used in American execution gas chambers to execute a single person with hydrocyanic acid gas (S. Thion, Vérité historique ou vérité politique?, La Vieille Taupe, Paris, 1980, pp. 301-309).
As to the incineration of 1,492 corpses in two days in a set of fifteen ovens (coke-fed and probably only operated 12 hours out of 24 hours), Pressac knows that this is impossible because it would involve almost fifty cremations per day per oven (today in France, a crematory oven fed with gas, and therefore considerably more efficient, can complete only three to five cremations in an eight hour day).
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Also, where would one have put the 1,492 gassed corpses before they were cremated? The author, to whom this question has been posed many times, knows that there is no answer.
There is another question which needs to be answered.
According to Pressac, the four crematories of Birkenau were transformed into slaughterhouses. For example, in the crematories II and III, the two rooms intended for the reception and storage of the corpses of the dead from ordinary causes were surreptitiously transformed, one into a disrobing room where the Jews undressed (Leichenkeller 2), and the other into a gas chamber where the same Jews were gassed (Leichenkeller 1). If this were so, there is no way the Germans would have been able to receive and store the corpses of the one hundred or so persons, on average, who died every day, due mostly to the epidemics which were the very reason that they were planned and built [22]. (the argument that applies to crematories II and III applies for the same reasons and in the same way to crematories IV and V) [23].
The problem is the following:
If the buildings called crematories were really nothing but slaughterhouses for the reception, execution and incineration of Jews, where at Birkenau could the corpses of those who died of ordinary causes, and, in particular, those of the victims of the epidemics which ravaged the camp, have been received, stored and incinerated?
In other words, where are the true crematories of Birkenau?
Pressac bridles at the restraints of submission to the facts and of rejection of fantasy or falsification which every historian must impose on himself. He is much more at ease in fiction, in particular that of the novel.
5. Divagations of the novelist
When one examines a study of a historical nature, it is not usual to bother much about the question of style. An historian who does not express himself well may be more appreciated than one who is known for his elegant style. But Pressac is in a class by himself. His conception of narrative, his vocabulary, his turn of phrase are without parallel in their slovenliness, crudeness and clumsiness. Anyone who thinks this is not so should name me a single book of history — or even of fiction — where one could come across such poverty of language, such an abundance of hackneyed, maladroit and dull-witted expressions as can be found in the excerpts to follow. Pressac's style is wooden and flat, especially when he tries to make it appear elevated or flowery or colorful.
Here are a number of samples from a "rigorous history" (p. 1), on which I shall refrain from comment. I only suggest to the reader that he should bear in mind the following question as he reads: "Where in the blazes did Pressac, who claims to be the discoverer of a 'rigorous history', uncover proofs for the things he says here?"
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The conversation turned sour and the SS-man hung up (p. 24).
Naumann was obviously not a "normal" SS-man, because a real SS-man would never apologize, whatever his conduct might have been (ibid.).
That request made the engineer very happy [...] His colleague Shultze, however, was anything but happy (ibid.).
Good news usually comes in pairs (p. 25).
Naumann [...] humbly demanded [...] (ibid.).
At this point Prüfer made a bad mistake, trying to push his luck. Naumann's refusal was firmly blocked. He intrigued so cleverly [...] (ibid.).
[...] a certain SS adjutant Heider [...] (ibid.).
Now a secret battle was begun [...] to sabotage this imposed business deal.
[...] thanks to a clever administrative blockage [...] and the unanticipated assistance of a fire possibly caused by an Allied bombing [...] (ibid.).
[...] he was answered dryly [...] (ibid.).
[...] without good relations with Party big shots [...] The personnel of the firm sympathised with Ludwig because he was quite affable, as opposed to his aggressive, pretentious, strict and married younger brother (p. 30).
Of course, this was a pure lie [...] (ibid.).
But that he still owed them anything became a servitude and a mortal snare to Ludwig as the events to follow would show [end of chapter] (ibid.).
Prüfer did not say any more in the — probably only — personal letter he wrote to Bischoff. In effect, an incredible burden had been placed on Prüfer which left him panting for commercial relief (p. 31).
But Prüfer fell into his troublesome error again, in continuing [...] raged in vain, thinking it useless to put the blame on Kammler [...] (p. 37).
The SS members of the political section feared for their precious lives [...] (p. 40).
Himmler had unloaded an abominable criminal task on Höss, who, hardened jailer though he was, did not appreciate the doubtful "honour" bestowed upon him (p. 45).
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[...] the inane passion of the Reichsführer for his prima donnas, his Waffen-SS divisions (ibid.).
[...] unexpected windfall [...] that the Jews' undressing in the open was disorderly [...] (ibid.).
They found a sneaky way out: make it seem the Jews were to blame for the frightful quantities of gas consumed (p. 47).
[On inmates who died of typhus] civilians and SS members accompanied them to the beyond [...] (p. 50).
[...] while chatting with SS members he found out something he was not sensed [sic, means "supposed"] to know [...] (p. 52).
Actually, Prüfer had bad luck, because Ertl was severely scolded by Bischoff [...] (p. 53).
[...] whatever was not too extravagant [...] (ibid.).
The project was crazy [...], but none of these brilliant Topf engineers recognized that they had just crossed the boundary between the normal and the abnormal, which left them swaying in criminal complicity (p. 55).
The three SS-men were back in Auschwitz for lunch. We do not know if they were able to swallow it (p. 58).
[...] hell opened its reddened maw day and night in the middle of the birch forest (ibid.).
[SS general Pohl showed up suddenly] at Auschwitz to learn what was happening there and where the consignments of tons of Zyklon B were disappearing. [...] When he asked about the Zyklon B, he was told that they used it to destroy lice and Jews at the same time. Pohl, impressionable and sympathetic, asked nothing more. [...] As soon as he returned to Berlin, he informed Ernst Grawitz, the SS chief of medicine, a pretentious and aggressive fool, who debarked the 25th at Auschwitz, where his idiotic advice [etc.] (p. 59). Holick and Koch's return to Er-furt certainly provoked a disturbance in the firm. Belonging to Prüfer's department, they made their report to him and mentioned the blaze at Birkenwald. If the engineer knew what was going on from hear-say, he never saw the result. Embarrassed by their story, he must have counselled them to be quiet and to stay at home to enjoy the Noel season. Holick, who had already made acquaintance with the world of the concentration camps at Buchenwald, which he perceived to be hard and implacable, could not imagine that Hitler's diatribes against the Jews could take the form of the horrors which he had witnessed with Koch. A letter of Topf from the beginning of March 1943 hints that the two men talked. Possibly in 
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the factory, after having been questioned by the Topf brothers on their stay at Auschwitz, or at home with family members or friends, who quickly "confided" their statements to the officers of the firm. As soon as the story leaked out, Prüfer was duly summoned by the Topfs and ordered to explain himself. That interview would occur at the beginning of January 1943. It was easy for Prüfer to inquire politely of Ludwig Topf if he had had as good a Noel season as the one the year before with the charming Mademoiselle Ursula Albrecht, to add that the young woman was relieved and happy that the Director was no longer a soldier, then to convince Ernst-Wolfgang Topf, who had approved the first sales sent to Ausch-witz and proudly signed the contracts for the sale of ten triple-chamber ovens for crematories II and III, that if the "crematory construction" division had not landed these sales, the competition, Heinrich Kori or the Didier-Werke of Berlin would have gotten them. In addition, the Topf ovens had not been part of the Birkenwald atrocities and only had a health purpose, the destruction of pathogenic germs by fire. If Ernst-Wolfgang Topf accepted Prüfer's biased explanations, Ludwig Topf, neutralized, did not object to them, since, having signed off on the specification for the ventilation of crematory III since his return from the army, he condemned himself by signing nine months later that for the exhaust system of crematoria IV and V, which were criminal pure and simple (p. 65). [Prüfer] confirmed with a pretended sadness that the guarantee of the oven of crematory IV had expired [...] (p. 79). Topf opposed the detachment of vaults furiously [...] (p. 81).
[...] he denied it vehemently (p. 82).
[During a visit by Himmler] The convoy of cars crossed the bridge crossing over the railway lines, stopped at a goods dock to look at the new potato warehouse which adjoined the ramp where the Jews were sorted (document 49), and departed at high speed towards Birkenau. The passage on Birkenau in the report stated, "The 1st and 2nd stages of construction of the KGL as well as the crematories and the troop quarters were inspected in detail. The interior of the inmate quarters in the 2nd stage of construction, which were nearly ready for occupancy, were particularly praised." The SS passed by the water treatment station (document 50), the two potato warehouses in the KGL yard, and then dashed toward Harmense where there were duck and poultry farms and a fish hatchery near the new dike on the Vistula. A slight car collision did not moderate the crazy speed of the inspection, which ended at the recent camp of the female inmates of Budy, with its piggeries (document 51), its stables and its forestry school. At a high speed, they covered the "Reichsstrasse" leading to Raisko, where they explored the SS Institute of Hygiene and the SS Establishment for Agricultural Research with its outbuildings from top to bottom (document 52). They toured the vegetable greenhouses almost at a run [...] (p. 85).
[...] which provoked an outcry of disappointment, barely hiding the general shameful relief (p. 86).
They had a lavish feast (ibid.).
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[Title of chapter XI:] Horror, shabby business and final debacle (p. 87).
[IG Farben] begged a thousand tons [of cement] [...] (p. 91).
The "chief" [Pohl] was generous, too generous [...] knew that he'd promised the wind [...] (ibid.).
[...] the gypsy children, stricken with "noma", with necrotic cheeks and feverish eyes, smiling through the fetid gangrene, shook Pohl deeply. Having in front of him the radiant gaze of these small tattered creatures, unmoving in front of the doors of the black barrack-stables, and having behind him to the left in the azure sky, two squat chimneys spitting flames, and on his right a whitish cloud rising from the Birkenwald, Pohl must have understood that his administration had transgressed the ethical norms and would be marked by it for a long time. He remembered Monday, the 22nd May 1933, the day when he had encountered Himmler in the gardens of the casino of Kiel, and he cursed that day. But worse was yet to come. (ibid.).
In his youth, Pressac was vividly impressed by a novel by Robert Merle (La Mort est mon métier (Death is My Business), 1952) inspired by the story of Rudolf Höss, one of the three successive commandants of concentration camp Auschwitz. (A.T.O., p. 539). He dreamed of writing a novel himself someday where he could "describe the world resulting from a German victory in 1945 or 1946" (A.T.O., p. 541), a world where he could evoke the extermination of the Jews at Auschwitz. Les Crématoires d'Auschwitz. La Machinerie du meurtre de masse is to some extent the novel he dreamed of [24].
Conclusion 
Pressac claims that he has found a middle way between the Exterminationist and the Revisionist theses. As we have seen, his thesis is actually hybrid and bizarre: at Auschwitz lower level engineering staff members and civilian and military technicians surreptitiously refitted the innocuous cold rooms used for the preservation of corpses to be homicidal gas chambers, whose technology and method of operation the author is unable to describe to us in scientific terms.
Pressac's method of proceeding consists in ignoring material realities: structures and rooms that one can still see today at Auschwitz and at Birkenau and which he has the nerve to baptise as "homicidal gas chambers", dangers in the use of Zyklon B, substantial difficulties with the drawing off of the gas, lack of any place to keep the gassed corpses waiting to be incinerated, absence of any facility to receive, store and incinerate the corpses of those who died of ordinary causes (since the crematories intended for that purpose had been transformed into chemical slaughterhouses reserved for the reception, gassing and incineration of the Jews), inability of the crematoria ovens to incinerate so many corpses. His method also includes dissimulation and trickery, especially in the handling of documents and of sources and references.
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The result of his work is miserable. The single item worthy of interest that one could take away from his work is that, according to Pressac, the number of Jews gassed at Ausch-witz and at Birkenau should be set at 630,000 and the number of all victims (from 1940 through 1945) should be set at 775,000, or 800,000 in round numbers. Even this information has no scientific value because there is nothing to support it. It only demonstrates the habitual need to lower the estimated numbers; there will no doubt be further reductions in the same way in the more or less distant future [25].
Of the 80,000 documents in the archives in Moscow that were consulted or that could have been consulted, Pressac has really only used one: an insignificant commercial letter concerning gas detectors (Gasprüfer ). I have reasons to suspect that he has suppressed documents that would have supported the Revisionist thesis. In particular I suspect that he has discovered detailed plans of the cold rooms (Leichenkeller) of crematories II and III, as well as detailed plans of the rooms in crematories IV and V that he has baptised "homicidal gas chambers". The Germans never contented themselves with simple rough plans: the extraordinarily precise and detailed plans of the Leichenkeller at Sachsen-hausen that I personally discovered in 1986 show this (cf. R.H.R. no. 3, pp. 106-107).
At Auschwitz, we are told, the Germans committed a crime of gigantic proportions. An expert study of the weapon which they used to perpetrate such an abomination is indispensable. Today there are expert studies of ruins thousands of years old. Why should there not be an expert study of buildings and ruins that are only a half-century old? If crematory I has been "partially reconstructed", as we are told, why should that hinder an expert study, if only to determine which parts are original and which reconstructed? [26] As for the supposed "gas chamber" of crematory II, under the collapsed roof it is almost completely intact — a windfall for experts. Instead of making an expert study of some hair, some metal objects and mortar, as was done after the war (Criminological Institute of Cracow, 12 July 1945, report signed by J. Robel), why not demand an expert study of these premises?
With the publication of Les Crématoires d'Auschwitz the management of the CNRS have painted themselves into a corner. The introduction to the work called for a "historical reconstruction at last free from oral or written witness testimony, which is always fallible and decreases over time" The time has come to put this requirement into effect. If these officials believe they need to repudiate all expert reports from specialists and independent laboratories that have confirmed the Revisionist thesis since 1988 and if they have reasons — which they have not made public — to keep secret the results of the expert report undertaken in 1990 by the Criminological Institute of Cracow at the request of the Museum of Auschwitz, the solution that remains for them is to undertake their own expert study or to assign the task to an international commission of experts.
The presumed greatest crime of human history cries out for an official study. The judges of Nuremberg quietly did not bother to undertake one and many other judges since then have done the same, particularly those of the Auschwitz guards trial (Frankfurt, 20 De-cember 1963-20 August 1965); during two visits to Auschwitz the German judges did not even inspect the presumed weapon of the crime. There were reasons for this absence of 
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curiosity, just as there were reasons for prohibiting the Revisionist Paul Rassinier from observing the trial.
It is true that the legend that has wrapped itself around the name Auschwitz would be in danger from such a study, but there is no doubt that science, history and justice would benefit.
Here, as well as elsewhere, the Revisionists have shown the way. What needs to be done is to imitate them and set to work, seriously.
December 1993
Annex: Document NI-9912 
Document NI-9912: it demolishes without exception any so-called "eye-witness testimony" on the use of Zyklon B to kill humans. [27]
The reader will note that document NI-9912 mentions in six places the use of an apparatus for the detection of traces of hydrocyanic acid (cf. the terms "Gasrestnachweisgerät" or "Gasrestnachweis") [28]. Without this apparatus, disinfestation with Zyklon B would have been impossible. It is therefore incomprehensible that Pressac could have the effrontery to offer as a definitive proof of the existence of homicidal (!) gas chambers the mention in a purely commercial letter of an order for ten units of this type which were widely used with disinfestation gassings. At the beginning of 1943, the central construction office of Auschwitz (Zentral-Bauleitung) had trouble procuring these units from the usual distributor. At that time it was more and more difficult to obtain delivery of almost any product. Therefore, there is nothing strange in the fact that the construction office turned to the firm Topf and Sons. Even in times of peace and prosperity it happens that a firm orders a product from a third party that it can not obtain from the manufacturer. This applies even more in times of war and rationing. Moreover, in his book Pressac mentions other orders addressed to third parties (on page 57, there is an order for bitumen, and on page 70, we see that the Zentral-Bauleitung turned to the same firm Topf and Sons to order ... lifts!).
Document NI-9912 comes from the archives of the Nuremberg Trials. It was registered by the Americans at a late date, 21 August 1947, with the reference code NI (Nuremberg Industrialists). It comes from the archives of Degesch [29] and is listed in four catalogs, including one called "Atrocities" [sic].
The original is in the form of four large pages which can be posted on walls. It is essentially a bulletin which was meant to be distributed in many copies — in the present case in the midst of war by the Health Authority in Prague. Its contents consist of directives for the use of Zyklon (prussic acid or hydrocyanic acid) to exterminate vermin in buildings, which could be either civilian or military buildings (apartment buildings, barracks, and so forth). This document reminds us opportunely of a truth won from hard experi-
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ence: of all deadly weapons, gas will undoubtedly remain the one most difficult to handle. When it kills, it kills so thoroughly that it can easily be fatal to the one who applies it.
As easy as it is to kill oneself with prussic acid, it is correspondingly difficult to kill one's neighbor without running great risks.
The document at hand describes the characteristics of Zyklon B, including its explosive danger and toxicity. Only a person possessing a certificate given at the completion of a special training course could use the product. The planning and preparation for a gassing operation involves measures and labor that may require many hours, if not days. Then the operation happens. Among the numerous details one will notice that Zyklon B pellets are not simply dumped in a heap or thrown carelessly. For the best effect, it must be spread in a thin layer on paper sheets, none of it should be allowed to wander unnoticed into a corner and all of it should be collected at the proper time. It takes 6 to 32 hours to kill vermin (21 hours on average). Then the most critical phase occurs, the aeration. The text states: "Aeration presents a great danger for both participants and non-participants. Therefore it should be carried out carefully and gas masks should always be worn." The aeration should last "at least 20 hours". The building must be closely guarded during the whole period, and also afterwards. To be certain that no trace of gas remains, the specialists, always wearing gas masks, enter the site with paper strips used as trace gas indicators. Twenty hours before, simply opening doors and windows and other sealed or closed off openings (this work is nothing in comparison to the work of dragging away thousands of bodies!) presented sufficient danger that after aerating each floor they had to come out into the fresh air, remove their masks and breathe fresh air for at least ten minutes. Everything here speaks to the danger of the gas. I leave it to the reader to discover from every line of this document, how in comparison the stories of the witnesses of the "homicidal gassings" offend the laws of physics and chemistry.
Document NI-9912
Guidelines for the Use of Prussic Acid (Zyklon) For Destruction of Vermin (Disinfestation).
I. Properties of Prussic acid:
Prussic acid is a gas that is released by evaporation.
Boiling point: 26° C. Freezing point: -15° C. Specific weight: 0.69. Vapor density: 0.97 (Air = 1.0). Liquid form evaporates easily.
Liquid form: clear and colorless as water. Smell: unique, bitter-sweet. Powerful ability to penetrate. Prussic acid is water-soluble.
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Danger of explosion:
75 g. Prussic acid in 1 cbm. air. (Normal application is ca. 8 - 10 g. per cbm., so not explosive). Prussic acid should not be brought into contact with open fire, glowing metal wire, and so forth. It burns slowly and loses its potency completely. (It produces carbonic acid, water and azote.)
Toxicity to warm-blooded animals:
Prussic acid acts without notice, therefore it should be considered highly poisonous and highly dangerous. Prussic acid is one of the most powerful poisons. 1 mg. per kg. - body weight is enough to kill a man. Children and women are usually more sensitive than men. A very small quantity of Prussic acid does not harm men, even with constant breathing. Birds and fish are very sensitive to Prussic acid.
Toxicity to insects:
The effect of Prussic acid on insects depends less on temperature than is the case with other gases; that is, it even works at cold temperatures (even down to -5° C). For many species, particularly bedbugs and lice, the eggs are more sensitive than the imagos.
Toxicity to plants:
The degree of toxicity depends on the amount of vegetation on the plant. Plants with hard leaves are less sensitive than those with soft leaves. Mold and dry rot are not killed by Prussic acid.
Prussic acid does not kill bacteria.
II. Forms in which Prussic acid is used:
Zyklon is a mixture of Prussic acid and an irritating agent absorbed in a substrate. The substrate may be wood disks, a granular red-brown material ("Diagriess") or small blue cubes ("Erco").
The irritating agent is used as a warning method, and has the additional advantage that it stimulates the breathing of insects. Release of Prussic acid and the irritating agent by simple evaporation. Zyklon will keep for 3 months. Use damaged cans first. Always use up the contents of a can completely. Liquid Prussic acid harms polish, varnish, paints, and so on - gaseous Prussic acid will not. The toxicity of Prussic acid is not affected by the irritating agent, but the danger is reduced.
Zyklon can be made harmless by burning.
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III. Symptoms when poisoned:
1. Slight poisoning:
Dizziness, headache, vomiting, discomfort, and so on. These symptoms will disappear if one quickly goes out into fresh air. Alcohol reduces the resistance to Prussic acid gassing - do not drink alcoholic drinks before gassing.
Administer: 1 tablet Cardiazol or Veriazol to prevent heart trouble, another tablet 2 to 3 hours later if need be.
2. Severe poisoning:
The victim collapses suddenly and is unconscious. First aid: fresh air, remove gas mask, loosen clothing, assist breathing. Lobelin intramuscular 0.01 g. Camphor injections are forbidden.
3. Poisoning through the skin: 
Symptoms as for 1. Treatment also the same.
4. Stomach poisoning:
Treat with: Lobelin 0.01 g. intramuscular iron sulfate vitriol calcinated magnesia.
IV. Protection against gas: 
When gassing with Zyklon use only special filters, such as filter insert "J" (blue-brown) made by the Auergesellschaft, Berlin, or the Drägerwerke, Lübeck.
If gas gets into the mask, leave the building immediately and change filters, then test the mask and mask seating for tightness. The filter insert is exhausted when gas can get into the mask. With filter "J", first go into the open air for about 2 minutes, so that moisture from the breath can build up in the filter insert.
The filter should never be changed in a gas-filled room.
V. Personnel:
For every disinfestation, a disinfestation team will be used, consisting of at least 2 men. The gassing leader is responsible for the gassing. His duties include particularly inspection, aeration, giving the all-clear and safety measures. The gassing leader should appoint a deputy in case he is absent. The orders of the gassing leader should be obeyed without hesitation.
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Untrained personnel or trained personnel without a certificate should not be used for gassing operations. Such persons also should not be allowed to enter a room filled with gas. The gassing leader should know where his personnel are at all times. All personnel should be able to prove at all times that they possess official authorization to use Prussic acid for disinfestation of pests.
These guidelines should be followed exactly in all cases.
VI. Equipment:
Every man should have with him at all times: 
1. His own gas mask.
2. At least 2 special packets for use against Zyklon Prussic acid. 3. The manual "First Aid for Prussic Acid Victims".
4. A copy of the work order. 5. Authorization certificate.
Every disinfestation team should have with it at all times:
1. At least 3 additional special packets.
2.	1 Trace gas detector.
3. 1 Lobelin injection device. 4. Lobelin, 0.01 g. ampules. 5. (Cardiazol), Veriazol tablets.
6. 1 prybar or spike-hammer to open Zyklon cans. 7. Warning posters of the prescribed kind.
8. Sealing material.
9. Paper sheets on which to lay out Zyklon. 10. A flashlight.
All equipment should be kept clean and in working condition. Damage to equipment should be repaired immediately.
VII. Planning a gassing: 
1. Will the gassing work? a) Type and situation of the building. b) Nature and condition of the roof. c) Nature and condition of windows. d) Presence of heating shafts, air shafts, holes in the wall, and so on. 2. Determine the kind of pests to be exterminated.
3. Calculate the volume of the space. (Do not rely on plans, make your own measurements. Only measure exteriors, include masonry in the calculations.) 4. Prepare the occupants (Remove house animals, plants, food, undeveloped photographic plates, drinks and tobacco, gas mask filters).
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5. Determine openings difficult to seal. (Air shafts, drains, large openings with wooden planking, roofs).
6. Determine necessary safety measures. (Guards, work gangs for sealing). 7. Set the date for the operation and the time needed for evacuation.
8. Make plans for the safety of the neighborhood, if necessary. 9. Notify the authorities.
VIII. Preparation for a gassing:
1. Sealing.
2. Open all doors, wardrobes, drawers, and so on. 3. Spread bedding out.
4. Remove open liquids (left-over coffee, wash-water, and so on). 5. Remove food.
6. Remove plants and house animals (aquariums, and so forth). 7. Remove undeveloped photographic plates and film.
8. Remove dressings for wounds, medications whether open or in packages (especially charcoal).
9. Remove gas mask filters. 10. Prepare to inspect the result. 11. Evacuate the occupants.
12. Collect keys. (All entry door keys.)
IX. Gas concentration and treatment period
depend on - the type of pest, - the temperature, - the degree to which the space is filled, - the air-tightness of the building.
For inside temperatures of over + 5° C one should ordinarily use 8 g./cbm. Prussic acid.
Treatment period: 16 hours, when no other conditions, such as a closed-in method of construction, permit a shorter period. In warm weather one may reduce the period to 6 hours. When the temperature is under + 5° C the period should be extended to at least 32 hours.
The strengths and treatment periods given above apply to: bedbugs, lice, fleas and so forth, and to eggs, larvae and pupae.
For clothes moths when the temperature is over 10° C, 16 g./cbm. and 21 hours application time.
Flour moths, as for bedbugs.
X. Gassing a building:
1. Check to make sure all persons have left the building.
2. Unpack the Zyklon cases. For each floor, prepare the necessary quantity.
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3. Distribute the cans. One man goes into the building, receives and distributes the cans brought to him by the work gang (He puts them by the sheets of paper.) 4. Dismiss the work gang.
5. Deploy the guard; the leader of the gassing team gives them his orders. 6. Check that the sealing and evacuation are complete.
7. Put on all gas protection gear.
8. Open the cans and pour out the contents. Spread the contents out thinly, so that the 
Zyklon evaporates quickly and the required concentration of gas is reached as soon as possible. The treatment should begin on the highest floor, the cellar should be treated before the first floor if the former has no exit. Rooms already treated should not be entered again, if possible. The treatment should be carried out slowly and methodically. Go slowly on stairways especially. The treatment should be interrupted only in case of emergency.
9. Lock and seal the entry doors (Don't forget the keyholes) and give the keys to the gassing team leader.
10. On every outside door put up a placard with the inscription: "WARNING: Poison gas 
— deadly danger — entry forbidden." If necessary, the warning placard should be multilingual. It should show at least 1 clearly visible death's head.
11. All gas protection gear, resuscitation equipment and trace gas detectors should be handy. Every member of the gassing team should know where these items can be found.
12. At least 1 member of the gassing team should remain near the building being gassed. 
The guard should be notified of his position.
XI. Aeration:
Aeration presents a great danger for both participants and non-participants. Therefore it should be carried out carefully and gas masks should always be worn. Aeration should be done in such a way that 1) gas-free air can be reached in the shortest possible time, 2) gas flows off to one side, where there is no danger to non-participants. When the aeration is difficult, one man with special training should remain with the building to observe the flow of gas.
1. Make sure that no persons not involved with the gassing remain in the vicinity of the building.
2. Post the guards such that they can observe the entrances to the building without being in the way of the flowing gas.
3. Put on gas masks.
4. Enter the building, shut the doors but don't lock them.
5. First open the windows on the side of the building away from the wind. Aerate one floor at a time. Begin with the first floor and allow a rest of at least 10 minutes after each floor.
6. In each room of the building the hallway doors, connecting doors and windows should be opened. If any windows are difficult to open, wait to open them until after most of the gas has blown away.
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7. Planking and other seals that cannot be easily handled should only be removed after most of the gas has blown off.
8. When there is freezing or danger of freezing, be sure that heating systems and water lines do not freeze.
9. Rooms with valuable contents such as clothes storage may be closed as soon as the windows are opened.
10. Make sure that open doors and windows do not close on their own. 11. Seals on chimneys should be removed after the provisional all-clear. 12. Aeration should last at least 20 hours.
13. The guard should remain near the building throughout the aeration.
XII. Provisional all-clear:
A gassed room can be provisionally opened to access as soon as the paper strips used as trace gas detectors show a lighter blue than the middle of the reference color scale — windows and doors being kept open. Only aeration and clean-up work can be carried on in provisionally opened rooms. Under no circumstances should anyone rest or sleep in a provisionally opened room. The windows and doors of such rooms should be kept open.
XIII. Clean-up after the provisional all-clear: 
1. Removal of remnants of Zyklon from the gassed rooms. Usually they should be sent back to the manufacturer along with cans and cases. The inscription "Poison" should be removed from the cases before they are sent. Moist, wet or dirty remnants, and damaged cans should never be returned. They can be thrown in the trash or on the cinder heap, but should never be dumped into drains.
2. Mattresses, straw mattresses, pillows, upholstered furniture and other such objects should be shaken or beaten in the open for at least one hour under the supervision of the gassing team leader or his deputy (in rainy weather at least two hours in the hallway).
3. The stuffing of straw mattresses should be replaced, if possible. The old stuffing need not be burned - it can be reused after further aeration.
4. If chimney upper openings were covered, the seals should be removed carefully, otherwise there is danger that the fires in ovens and fireplaces will not have enough draft and that carbon monoxide poisoning could result.
5. After the final all-clear a gassing report in the prescribed form should be completed, in two copies. In particular, it should include: a) Volume of space gassed, b) Quantity of Zyklon used, c) Name of the gassing team leader, d) Names of the other personnel involved, e) Duration of treatment, f) The date and hour of the final all-clear for the disinfested rooms.
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XIV. Final all-clear:
1. Never before 21 hours after aeration was begun.
2. All objects removed for shaking out should be brought back. 3. Windows and doors should be closed for one hour.
4. Heated rooms should have their temperature restored to at least 15° C.
5.	Trace gas detection. The paper strips should not be a brighter blue than the bright end of the reference color scale even between sheets or mattresses laid together, and in places difficult of access or difficult to aerate. If this is not the case, the aeration should be continued and trace gas detection should be repeated after a few hours.
6. In buildings in which people will soon sleep trace gas detection should be done in every room separately. People should never sleep in a room that has been gassed the night following the gassing. The windows should remain open the first night the room is in use again.
7. The leader of the gassing team or his deputy should not leave the building until the final all-clear has been given for the last room.
Published by the Health Authority of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in Prague  
Footnotes 
1. With respect to the photographic documentation, and in particular for photographs of the Polish model, the reader is referred to 25 pages which I added to Wilhelm Stäglich, 
Le Mythe d'Auschwitz, Étude critique , traduit et adapté de l'allemand (The Auschwitz Myth, a critical study, translated and adapted from the German), La Vieille Taupe, 1986, pp. 485-510, under the title "Illustrations. Le mythe d'Auschwitz en images".
2. Jean-Claude Pressac, Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, New 
York, The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, 1989, 564 pp., 45 x 30 cm., subsequently referred to as A.T.O.
3.	Revue d'histoire révisionniste , no. 3 (November 1990/January 1991), pp. 65-154, subsequently referred to as R.H.R..
3a. The Journal of Historical Review, Spring 1991, pp. 25-26; Summer 1991, pp. 133-
175.
4. I have been informed by a reliable source that I can not reveal that Pressac intends to reduce the total of deaths at Auschwitz to 700,000 — when he thinks the public is in the mood to accept a new reduction. In 1989, speaking only of those gassed, he put the figure at "one to one and a half million (A.T.O., p. 553).
5. Pressac has such a predilection for Adolf Hitler that he has a bust of him in his house, at the top of a stairway leading to his attic. He has made the room sound-proof so that he can listen to military music there (for confirmation, see Pierre Guillaume, Droit et histoire, La Vieille Taupe, 1986, p. 124).
6. Pressac, who considers the Soviets and the KGB as rather more clever than the Ameri-cans, writes Prüfer "was sentenced to only 25 years forced labor" (p. 137).
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7. Cf., for example, the statement "Auschwitz, where more than five million men, women and children died, of which 90% were Jews" ("Manifestation du souvenir à Paris devant le Mémorial du martyr juif inconnu" (Memorial ceremony in Paris at the Memorial to the Unknown Jewish Martyr), Le Monde, 20th April 1978). According to this statement in Le Monde, therefore, over four and a half million Jews died in the camps at Auschwitz and Birkenau alone!
8. On the other hand, the Polish resistance deliberately spread typhus and typhoid fever; this revelation comes from Revue d'histoire révisionniste no. 1, (May 1990, pp. 115-
128): "Le rapport Mitkiewicz du 7 septembre 1943 ou l'arme du typhus" (The Mit-kiewicz Report of 7th September 1943 or the typhus weapon). This report notes that in the period January to April 1943 there were "several hundred cases" of "propagation of the typhoid fever microbe and typhus-infected lice" (p. 127). The French Resistance used the same method (ibid, p. 116, n. 1).
9. Cf. Comité international d'Auschwitz, Anthologie (blue), French Version, vol. I, 2nd part, (Warsaw, 1969), p. 196. Among the many other German victims of typhus in 
Auschwitz one could name Dr. Siegfried Schwella (successor to Dr. Popiersch), the wife of Gerhard Palitzsch, the Rapportführer of the camp, and the wife of Joachim Caesar, overseer of agricultural works. Other well-known Germans contracted typhus without dying from it, such as Dr. Johann-Paul Kremer, Dr. Heinrich Schwarz, Dr. Kurt Uhlenbrock and Dr. Josef Mengele. Well-known inmates who died of typhus include Dr. Marian Ciepilowski, who cared for the Soviet prisoners of war, Professor Zygmunt Lempicki and the dentist Danielle Casanova, whom legend held to have been killed by the Germans. Germans living in the east lived in constant fear of typhus; Adolf Hitler himself was vaccinated against this disease on the 7th and 14th of Febru-ary 1943 in Rastenburg (on this, cf. the memoirs of his medical doctor, Dr. Theo Mo-rell, in David Irving, The Secret Diaries of Hitler's Doctor, New York, McMillan 1983, p. 109).
10. F. Leuchter, specialist in gas chamber execution technology widely utilized in Ameri-can penitentiaries (Boston); G. Rudolf, chemist working for the Max Planck Institute 
(Stuttgart); W. Lüftl, president of the Austrian Federal Chamber of Engineers (Vi-enna).
11. Revisionists have managed to get hold of a copy of this report, for the text of which cf. "Crise au Musée d'État d'Auschwitz/La Contre-expertise de Cracovie" (Crisis at the 
Auschwitz-Museum: The Counter Expert Report of Cracow), R.H.R. no. 4, February 1991, pp. 101-104).
12. For comparison, one should first consult the American edition, which is relatively honest (The Auschwitz Album, New York, Random House, 1981, XXXIII-167 pp.), and then Pressac's edition, which is very dishonest (L'Album d'Auschwitz, French edition, compiled and completed by Anne Freyer and Jean-Claude Pressac, éditions du 
Seuil, 1983, 224 pp.).
13. The Holocaust Revisited: A Retrospective Analysis of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Extermination Complex, Washington, CIA, February 1979, 19 pp.
14. It is significant that Pressac does not breathe a word of the abundant Revisionist bibliography. Nowhere does he cite the fundamental work of the American professor Ar-thur Robert Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, which has appeared in numerous editions since 1976 from the Institute for Historical Review (P.O. Box 2739, Newport 
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Beach, Calif. 92659, USA). He omits to mention the work of the Canadian attorney Barbara Kulaszka, Did Six Million Really Die? Report of the Evidence in the Canadian 
"False News" Trial of Ernst Zündel — 1988 , (with a preface by Robert Faurisson, To-ronto, Samisdat Publishers (206 Carlton Street, Toronto, Ontario, M5A-2L1), 1992, 564 pp., 28 x 21 cm.). He ignores the erudite studies of the Italian Carlo Mattogno, the Spaniard Enrique Aynat and the Americans Mark Weber and Paul Grubach, who have reduced to nothing his work in English, Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the 
Gas Chambers.
15. One should compare the text which Pressac mentions in his note 55 with the text of the "declaration" of Pery Broad in Auschwitz vu par les SS (Auschwitz in the eyes of the SS), State Museum of Auschwitz, 1974, p. 166. Pressac has removed all the points which prove that there was false testimony, especially Broad's mention, in the passage cited, of "six holes for ventilation closed with lids"!
16. Even P. Vidal-Naquet, protector of the one he calls the "suburban pharmacist" concedes, "In the documentation on Auschwitz there are witness statements that give the impression that they have adopted the language of the victors. This is the case, for example, with the SS-man Pery Broad [...]" (Les Assassins de la mémoire , La Décou-verte, 1987, p. 45).
17. See below in the annex, the text of document NI-9912 on the use of Zyklon B; the 
"trace gas detection" was such an ordinary necessity of disinfestation gassings that it is mentioned there six times.
18. Law promulgated on 17th July 1992 by the Reich Minister for Food and Agriculture 
(Reichsgesetzblatt, Jahrgang 1922, pp. 630-631).
19. There is an exact representation of Sector B II f in Hefte von Auschwitz, No. 15, Ver-lag Staatliches Auschwitz-Museum, 1975 (outside the text, between pages 56 and 57). 
The sports area is called Sportplatz and the hospital area is called Krankenbaulager für Männer ; there were many other hospital areas.
20. A translation of Document NI-9912 is given in the annex. It is of fundamental importance in evaluating the degree of danger of the use of Zyklon B.
21. The area occupied by seven strong concrete pillars should be subtracted from this 210 sqm.
22. The four crematories began operating between the 31st March and the 25th June 
1943; Pressac confirms that, for the year 1943, the death-registers (Sterbebücher ) permit an estimate of 100 as the daily mortality of "non-gassed" persons (pp. 145-146).
23. With respect to crematories IV and V, Pressac stubbornly avoids the question I put to him fifteen years ago: "How can one possibly designate as execution gas chambers the two rooms in these crematories which each contain a coal-fired oven?" Also, the arrangement of the rooms is such that the first thing the future victims would see on entering the crematories would be the large hall used as the cold room, a room Pressac wants to make us believe served to store the corpses of the gassed victims!
24. A novel which is disfigured by so many misspellings and typographic errors that it is astonishing that it should have been published by éditions CNRS.
25. Pressac and the Exterminationists had high hopes for the archives in Moscow and in other great cities in the East. But they have been disappointed: neither Pressac nor Ge-rald Fleming have discovered anything worthwhile in Moscow, and Shmuel Kra-kowski has not found anything in Prague, Budapest, Riga or Vilna that would confirm 
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the thesis of the "Holocaust" ("Neue Möglichkeiten der Forschung/Die Holocaust-Forschung und die Archive in Osteuropa", Antisemitismus in Osteuropa, Vienna, Picus Verlag, 1992, pp. 115-129).
26. The lame explanation of the Auschwitz Museum, that the reconstructed "gas chamber" of crematory I is "very similar to the one which existed in 1941-1942", is of long standing. It did not originate in September 1992, as David Cole thought. This young 
American Revisionist of Jewish birth believed he had made a sensational discovery when he heard this explanation from the mouth of Franciszek Piper, the director of the Museum archives, in a televised interview. However, I had received that response myself seventeen years before, on the 17th March 1975, from another Museum official, Jan Machalek. I have told that story many times, because, unlike David Cole, I was not satisfied with this lame explanation, but demanded to see the plans so that I could understand what had been reconstructed and what had not been reconstructed. At that time I discovered that which I have labelled "the swindle of the gas chamber in crematory I", which I have tirelessly described in my books, articles and recorded interviews and in testimony before courts in France and Canada, with proof in hand. See especially Storia Illustrata, August 1979, p. 26; Serge Thion, Vérité historique ou vérité politique?, La Vieille Taupe, 1980, pp. 185, 314; The Journal of Historical Review, Summer 1980, p. 109; Winter 1981, p. 335; Summer 1990, p. 187; Spring 1991, pp. 33-35; R.H.R. no. 3, pp. 75-77; the transcript of my testimony at the first Zündel trial in Toronto, Canada in 1985, pp. 2364-2366; also see my video-film on "Le Problème des chambres à gaz" (1982) and my cassettes on the same subject. Already in 1968 the historian Olga Wormser-Migot had admitted that Auschwitz I had been "without a gas chamber" (Le Système concentrationnaire nazi (1933 - 1945) , P.U.F., 1968, p. 157). At the first Zündel trial in Toronto in 1985 Raul Hilberg spoke of a "partially reconstructed gas chamber" (transcript of trial, p. 774). The same year Pierre Vidal-Naquet said of the same crematory I that it had been "reconstructed by the Poles after the war [...]; there is no doubt as to the remaking" (L'Allemagne nazie et le génocide juif, Gal-limard/Le Seuil, 1985, pp. 510, 516). In 1989 Jean-Claude Pressac insisted three times on the fact that this crematory, far from being "a faithful reproduction of the original state", had been "restructured", "reconstructed" and "reconstituted" and "transformations had been made" (A.T.O., pp. 108, 123, 133). It is unfortunate that in September 1992 D. Cole was satisfied with F. Piper's stereotypical explanation and that, not being familiar with the research on the subject, he did not confront his interlocutor with the plans which I had published thirteen years before in which I had demonstrated the blatant fraud of the pretended "partial reconstruction".
27. This annex is mostly taken from Robert Faurisson's book Mémoire en défense contre ceux qui m'accusent de falsifier l'histoire (Note in defense against those who accuse me of falsifying history), La Vieille Taupe, 1980, pp. 165-178.
28. The word "Gasprüfer" (gas detector) is a general term. It applies to any device for the detection of any gas. In the commercial letter cited by Pressac the ten detectors were designated as "Anzeigegeräte für Blausäure-Reste" (detection apparatus for traces of prussic acid) (doc. 28).
29. Abbreviation of "Deutsche Gesellschaft für Schädlingsbekämpfung" (German Company for Pest Control), who produced Zyklon B.
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First published under the title Réponse à Jean-Claude Pressac. Sur le problème des chambres à gaz , R.H.R., Colombes 1994
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Auschwitz: The End of a Legend 
By Carlo Mattogno 
TABLE OF CONTENTS  
I. INTRODUCTION
II. THE CREMATORY OVENS OF AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU ACCORDING TO 
JEAN-CLAUDE PRESSAC
III. THE CREMATORY OVENS OF AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU ACCORDING TO 
CREMATION TECHNOLOGY
IV. GENESIS AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE "FINAL SOLUTION" V. CREMATORIES II AND III OF BIRKENAU
VI. BUNKERS 1 AND 2
VII. CREMATORIES IV AND V VIII. CONCLUSION
APPENDIX NOTES GLOSSARY
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system without written permission from the publisher except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, in which case the following attribution shall appear: "From Ausch-witz: The End Of A Legend, by Carlo Mattogno, Russ Granata, publisher." A copy of the review should be sent to the publisher.
Translated from the Italian, AUSCHWITZ: FINE DI UNA LEGGENDA Considerazioni storico-techniche sul libro Les crématoire d’Auschwitz. La machinerie du meurtre de masse di Jean-Claude Pressac, Copyright © 1993 by Carlo Mattogno.
Translator: Anne Sharp First English language edition Copyright © 1994 by Russ Granata, publisher First Printing 1994
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Mattogno, Carlo AUSCHWITZ: THE END OF A LEGEND Critique On Pressac’s Auschwitz by Carlo Mattogno. 1st ed. Includes index, appendix and glossary CIP 94-75562 ISBN 0-9640716-0-6: Softcover
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Chapter One
Jean-Claude Pressac 
Jean-Claude Pressac is the author of a large-format book on the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex entitled Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, published in 1989 by the Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, 515 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10022. That work, which was acclaimed at the time of its publication as the definitive proof of the existence of homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau, brought Pressac praise as spécialiste incontesté des recherches sur les techniques de l’extermination nazie ("unquestionable specialist in the research of Nazi extermination techniques") and as expert incontesté, sinon unique ("unquestionable expert, if not unique") [1] in this field.
But praise from shallow journalists aside, to the expert eye, Pressac reveals a surprising ignorance of the chemical-physical properties of Zyklon B and its use for the purpose of disinfestation, as well as the structure and functioning of crematory ovens. [2] This double incompetence in the two essential aspects of the problem inevitably led Pressac to unfounded conclusions in his 1989 work. Despite this, that book is valuable for its considerable documentation and for a critical spirit uncommon in the traditional historiographic field, where, regarding the sources, a systematized theological dogmatism rules. Pressac should furthermore be acknowledged for his courage in overcoming, or at least attempting to overcome, the traditional historiographic methodology in this field, which he justifiably labels as:
a history based for the most part on testimonies, assembled according to the mood of the moment, truncated to fit an arbitrary truth, and sprinkled with a few German documents of uneven value and without any connection with one another. [3]
That book provided enough arguments for historical Revisionism to be considered crypto-revisionist, evidently even by its own publisher, since it has been practically impossible to obtain.
Another book by Jean-Claude Pressac, entitled Les crématoires d’Auschwitz: La machinerie du meurtre de masse [The Crematoria of Auschwitz: The Machinery of Mass Murder] published in Paris, 1993, should have complemented his earlier book by virtue of the vast amount of documentation he encountered in Moscow, particularly the archives of the Bauleitung (the Auschwitz construction management), which were left intactes ("intact") in the hands of the Soviets (p. 1) [!1].
But in fact, reading his Les crématoires d’Auschwitz , one senses an uncomfortable reversion: Jean-Claude Pressac returned to the worst clichés of the worst traditional historiography. This was inevitable: In the 80,000 (eighty thousand!) documents at Moscow, and in the entire archives of the Bauleitung [!2], Pressac found NO PROOF of the existence of one single homicidal gas chamber at Auschwitz-Birkenau. For example, concerning 
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Crematory II at Birkenau, no "criminal trace" (Pressac’s term) is dated prior to 31 March 1943, the date of the official consignment of the crematory to the administration of the camp. Now that is, to say the least, just a little bit strange for an extermination plant that was supposed to have functioned:
as a homicidal gas chamber and incineration installation from [the] 15th of March 1943, before its officially coming into service on [the] 31st of March, to [the] 27th of November 1944, annihilating a total of approximately 400,000 people, most of them Jewish women, children and old men. [4]
Thus, for over twenty months of alleged extermination activity in this supposedly homicidal crematory, for an extermination of 400,000 people, the archives of Moscow do not even contain one single "criminal trace"! And the same goes for the other crematories at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
This must have disturbed Pressac, who must have found himself in the difficult position of making these documents say what they do not say. This need explains Pressac’s cranky methodology, which is characterized by his indiscriminate use of sources, and by arbitrary and unfounded deductions inserted into the body of the text within a dense web of notes so as to give the impression of coming from historical documentation. The connection between the various documents appears forced, and the interpretation of those documents is contorted to make it seem as if they support the existence of homicidal gas chambers.
Pressed by Revisionist research which demonstrates the impossibility of mass extermination at Auschwitz-Birkenau from the technical point of view, Pressac plays not only at diminishing the numbers of victims, but also with the intentions of the SS. The number of presumed homicidally gassed victims, which in 1989 was "about 900,000," [5] of whom 750,000 were supposedly killed at Crematories II and III alone, [6] is here reduced to only 630,000 (p. 148). Both figures are completely arbitrary. Furthermore, the homicidal gas chambers have become "little" and thus of small extermination capacity. In effect, Pressac has been forced to "equilibrate" the capacity of the homicidal gas chambers to that of the crematory ovens. In his 1989 work, his ratio of corpses gassed to corpses cremated had been much higher.
All these changes have naturally required jarring contradictions with respect to his earlier 
Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers. But this is unimportant to an author, who seems to accept or reject figures and arguments depending on his whim.
To complete the picture, Pressac has again enormously exaggerated the capacity of the crematories of Auschwitz-Birkenau as he did in 1989, arriving at conclusions which are technically and thermotechnically senseless, due to his apparent ignorance of essential aspects of cremation.
The subject of homicidal gas chambers has caused Pressac no little difficulty, not only due to the absolute lack of proof on this subject in the Moscow documents, but above all, 
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because the documentation on ventilation installations in the basement of Crematories II and III show undeniably that homicidal gas chambers were not planned, and were not installed. We shall subsequently see by what means Pressac has attempted to overcome this difficulty.
The critique presented here is essentially based upon a scientific study of the crematory ovens, and of the presumed homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau, which has involved over five years of research with the very valuable collaboration of Engineer Dr. Franco Deana of Genoa, and Engineer H.N. of Danzig. That work consists of two volumes entitled Auschwitz: i forni crematori [Auschwitz: The Crematory Ovens], Ausch-witz: le camere a gas, [Auschwitz: The Gas Chambers], which are being published in It-aly. The present work is a synthesis of these studies. The interested reader will be able to find among the citations of those two detailed studies, many references which are not included in this critique.
The Crematory Ovens of Auschwitz-Birkenau study to be published in America, extends historiography in this field wherein researchers may find in that particular work, references other than those appearing in this critique. The Table of Contents of The Crematory Ovens of Auschwitz-Birkenau is shown as Document No. 1 of the appendix herein.
Chapter Two
THE CREMATORY OVENS OF AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU ACCORDING TO JEAN-CLAUDE PRESSAC
Capacity: The Suppositions 
A scientific study of the crematory ovens of Auschwitz-Birkenau must confront and resolve two fundamental thermotechnical problems: that of capacity, and that of yield. Capacity is the number of corpses cremated within a time frame (reference: one day of activity). Yield is the relation between heat produced and heat used: specifically, fuel consumption. Jean-Claude Pressac does not confront either of these two problems scientifically, limiting himself simply to a series of statements as to the capacity of the ovens (which he erroneously calls "yield"), sprinkled here and there throughout his book. These statements, under analysis, yield the following argument:
1. The mobile oil-heated Topf two-chambered oven which was installed in Dachau at the end of 1939 had a capacity of two corpses per hour (p. 7). Thus, the cremation of one corpse in one chamber lasted one hour.
2. The Topf two-chambered "Auschwitz model" oven heated by coke was of a design different from that of the Dachau oven. This was the result of a change in the first two-chambered Topf oven at Buchenwald which was originally heated with combustible oil, into a coke-heated oven, via the installation of two gasogenes in the rear (p. 12). Thus, the above-mentioned capacity of two corpses/hour does not apply to this oven.
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3. The installation of compressed air (Druckluftgebläse) reduced the duration of cremation (pp. 13 and 68).
4. The "Auschwitz model" oven had a capacity of 30 to 36 corpses in ten hours (p. 13).
5. The ovens were used 21 hours a day, because their functioning required three hours rest (p. 13).
6. The three two-chambered ovens of Crematory I at Auschwitz had a capacity of 200 to 250 corpses per day (pp. 49, 80).
7. The two Topf three-chambered ovens heated by coke at Buchenwald (of which one was also adaptable for heating with combustible oil) resulted in:
un rendement incinérateur supérieur d’un tiers à celui calculé à partir de l’expérience acquise sur les fours bimoufle (p. 39).
[an incineration capacity larger by one-third, their calculations based on the operation of the twin-chambered ovens.]
8. The capacity of the five three-chambered ovens of this model installed in Crematories II/III in Birkenau was 800 corpses per day (p. 39) or 1,000 per day (p. 80).
9. The capacity of each of the two eight-chambered ovens installed in Crematories IV and V at Birkenau was 500 corpses per day (p. 80).
10. During the first experimental cremation in Crematory II on 4 March 1943, 45 corpses of hommes gras [fat men] were cremated; 3 for every chamber, and the cremation lasted 40 minutes (p. 72).
11. The "official" capacity of the crematories was as follows:
Crematory I : 	340 corpses per day Crematory II : 	1,440 " " " Crematory III : 	1,440 " " " Crematory IV : 	768 " " " Crematory V : 	768 " " "
Pressac comments:
Ces chiffres officiels sont de la propagande mensongères et pourtant sont valables. Leur validité apparente repose sur le fait que la durée d’incinération de deux enfants de 10 kg et d’une femme de 50 kg est égale à celle d’un homme de 70 kg, ce qui in-troduit un coefficient multiplicateur variant de 1 à 3, et rend aléatoires tous chiffres de rendement crématoire. (pp. 80-81)
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[These official figures derive from false advertising but are nevertheless valid. Their apparent validity rests on the fact that the duration of the incineration of two children weighing 10 kg each and of a woman weighing 50 kg is equal to that for a man weighing 70 kg, which introduces a factor of multiplication varying from 1 to 3, and renders all crematory capacity figures uncertain.]
Capacity: The Facts 
This reasoning is completely unfounded from both the technical and the documentary points of view. In this regard, we note the following:
1. The reference cited by Pressac is a letter from the Topf firm dated 1 November 1940 to the SS-Neubauleitung KL Mauthausen (note 9 on page 97). This document is a letter attached to a "cost estimate" (Kostenanschlag) of:
1 koksbeheizten Topf-Doppelmuffel-Einäscherungs-Ofen mit Druckluft-Anlage, 1 Topf-Zugverstärkungs-Anlage.
[One Topf two-chambered coke-heated crematory oven equipped with a compressed air ventilation system (Druckluftanlage), one Topf draught booster system.] [7]
The oven offered is not the Dachau oven but rather the one installed in Crematory I at Auschwitz. This is evident not only from the "cost estimate" mentioned above but also from Topf technical design D57253 attached to the letter dated 10 June 1940, concerning precisely the first two-chambered oven of Crematory I at Auschwitz. This drawing is published by Pressac as Document 6.
Concerning the capacity of this model oven, one reads in the above letter:
Unser Herr Prüfer hatte Ihnen bereits mitgeteilt, dass in dem vorher angebotenen Ofen stündlich zwei Leichen zur Einäscherung kommen konnen.
[Our Mr. Prüfer had already communicated to you that in the oven presented above, it is possible to cremate two corpses per hour.] (Our italics)
2. As stated above, it is evident that the capacity of two corpses per hour refers not to the Dachau oven but to the "Auschwitz model" oven since "the oven presented above" is precisely that model.
3. The source cited by Pressac is the Topf letter of 6 January 1941 to the SS-Neubauleitung KL Mauthausen (note 25 on page 98). That the installation of compressed air reduced the duration of cremation is an arbitrary assumption by Pressac without any foundation in the text (or in reality). The text states:
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Bei beiden Öfen haben wir berücksichtigt, dass die Generatorgase den Ein-äscherungsgegenstand von oben und unten angreifen, wodurch eine schnelle Einäscherung bewirkt wird.
[In both ovens the arrangement is such that the body being incinerated is attacked from above and below, thereby effecting a rapid cremation.] [8]
This letter refers to the two-chambered oven of the Auschwitz model, mentioned in technical drawing D57253, and to the coke-heated oven (drawing D58173) which was never installed, so that the "rapid cremation" (with respect to the civilian ovens) is nothing but the duration of one hour indicated by Prüfer in the 1 November 1940 letter. This "rapid cremation" depended upon the placement of the grill, made of fire-resistant clay, with respect to the opening of the connection to the gasogenes.
4. Pressac’s citation from the Topf letter of 14 July 1941 to the SS-Neubauleitung KL Mauthausen is correct, but Pressac apparently hasn’t the slightest idea of the meaning of this document. [9] This letter speaks of the incineration of 30 to 36 corpses in about ten hours in a two-chambered oven, corresponding to an incineration time of 33 to 40 minutes per corpse. These results could only be obtained under optimal conditions with the aid of an intake draft system (Saugzuganlage). The installation’s typical limit of efficiency for adult corpses was 40 minutes principal combustion in the cremation chamber, plus another 20 minutes of post-combustion in the ash-pan underneath. This was altogether one hour, which even in the 1970s represented the minimum duration obtainable from gas ovens, as resulted from cremation experiments conducted in England. [10] The duration of 33 minutes (plus 20 minutes of post-combustion) could only be obtained in exceptional cases, and only for a short time. These data apply almost uniquely to the oven at Gusen, a Topf two-chambered mobile oven which was originally oil-heated and then transformed into a coke-heated oven like the first oven at Dachau with the installation of two lateral gasogenes (illustrated in Document 7 of Pressac). Because of local technical difficulties those data apply only theoretically to the ovens in Crematory I at Auschwitz.
The first cremation occurred on 15 August 1940 (p. 13). After only three months, on 22 November, the Bauleitung sent the Hauptamt Haushalt und Bauten in Berlin a letter which stated:
Der vergangene Betrieb des Krematoriums hat gezeigt, dass schon in der verhältnismässig guten Jahreszeit die Ofenanlage mit 2 Kammern zu klein ist.
[The past functioning of the crematory has shown that even in the relatively favorable times of the year, the oven with two (combustion) chambers is too small. (Therefore insufficient — Author)] [11]
According to Pressac, from March to December 1940 there were 2,000 deaths at Ausch-witz (p. 146), an average of 8 per day; thus, the crematory at Auschwitz had difficulty in cremating 8 corpses per day! The letter in question is part of the Moscow documents 
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from the Bauleitung of Auschwitz, but Pressac does not even mention it. His motive in excluding it is easily understandable.
5. The gas-generating ovens heated with coke required a daily rest for the cleaning of the furnaces, since the residue from the coke which melted and adhered to them, over a long period of time, would impede the passage of primary combustion air through the bars of the grill, causing poor operation of the crematory ovens. From a letter by Engineer H. Kori at the KL Lublin of 23 October 1941, [12] one deduces that the crematory ovens in the concentration camps were used only twenty hours at a stretch.
6. Accepting the data in the Topf letter dated 14 July 1941, the capacity of a two-chambered oven, over 21 hours of activity, would be:
30 corpses/10 hours × 21 hours = 63 corpses; 36 corpses/10 hours × 21 hours = 76 corpses.
so that the capacity for three ovens would be 63 × 3 = 189 and 76 × 3 = 228 corpses per day. Pressac unjustifiably estimates an excess of 200 to 250 corpses per day. We say unjustifiably, since from the very beginning, the data supply a maximum capacity for an oven with two chambers.
7. In a letter sent to Ludwig and Ernst-Wolfgang Topf dated 15 November 1942, [13] Engineer Prüfer indicates that the three-chambered ovens he designed which were installed in the crematory at Buchenwald had a yield greater by one-third than that which he expected. Here Pressac, who normally confuses capacity with yield, commits the opposite error by using yield for capacity. In effect, the greater yield depended upon a ther-motechnical advantage of which Prüfer himself was not aware (maybe because he had designed the three- and eight-chambered ovens during his "free time" (Freizeit), as he writes in a letter to Topf dated 6 December 1941). [!3] [14] But this has nothing to do with capacity. Instead, Pressac interprets this as duration of cremation of the three-chambered oven as reduced by one-third compared to the two-chambered oven, which is technically meaningless, since the theoretical and effective heat availability of the two-chambered oven was greater than that of the three-chambered oven (about 210,000 kcal/h/chamber as opposed to 163,000 kcal/h/chamber; strictly in terms of combustion capacity of the grill, 30 kg/h/chamber as opposed to 23.3 kg/h/chamber).
Pressac arbitrarily places the closure of Crematory II at 22-23 May (p. 80).
8. But even if, for the sake of argument, the Pressac interpretation were correct, then it would follow that the maximum capacity of a three-chambered oven would be:
36 corpses/10 hours × 21 hours × 3/2 = 113.4 corpses per day,
therefore the capacity of five ovens would be:
113.4 × 5 = 567; 567 × 4/3 = 756 corpses per day.
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But Pressac mentions an effective capacity of 800 corpses per day, which is then magically transformed into 1,000. Thus Pressac is not even consistent in his own technically errant presuppositions.
9. Pressac does not even attempt to justify in some way the capacity that he attributes to the eight-chambered oven, which is as technically unfounded as the capacity he attributes to the three-chambered oven.
10. The cremation of 45 fat adult corpses—three per chamber—in the five ovens of Crematory II at Birkenau in 40 minutes (reference from the witness H. Tauber) can be taken seriously only by those who have not the vaguest idea of the structure and operation of these ovens. First of all, the cremation time of one adult male corpse was an average of 60 minutes; secondly, the small combustion capacity of the grill with two furnaces, which was designed for the cremation of only one corpse at a time in each chamber, would have been insufficient to maintain a chamber temperature of 600°C (less than that required for a positive combustion of the heavy hydrocarbons which develop during the gasification of a corpse—at least 700°C) even assuming the simultaneous cremation of two corpses in each chamber; the simultaneous cremation of three corpses is a fortiori thermotechnically impossible.
11. Pressac’s reasoning, according to which all the capacity figures from the ovens at Auschwitz-Birkenau are aléatoire (uncertain) due to the presumed presence of small-sized corpses, is in reality a simple anticipated alibi: Not able to understand thermotech-nical phenomena with which he is forced to deal, he does not want others to understand, and therefore decrees that any solution to the problem of capacity of the ovens is "uncertain". Even here, Pressac is mistaken. We have confronted and resolved the problem on the basis of the percentage of infants and children presumed homicidally gassed at Birke-nau, by their age and average weight. The result is that the capacity of the ovens, for the assumed presence of infant and child corpses, would have been increased by twenty percent. Moreover, Pressac contradicts his own assertion, since he accepts H. Tauber’s story as true: in effect, that the cremation of 9 adult corpses in 40 minutes corresponds to a capacity of 1,417 adult corpses per 21-hour working day. [!4]
THE COKE 
Pressac mentions absolutely nothing about the consumption of coke at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
THE OVENS 
Before explaining the question of the crematory ovens, it is opportune to rapidly examine Pressac’s historical and technical assertions on this subject to furnish other elements with which to judge his competence and the value of his conclusions.
Pressac’s claim: The Volckmann-Ludwig system crematory oven went off the German market toward the end of 1934 (p. 4). Pressac begins his "recapitulative chronology" with 
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the Volckmann-Ludwig patent (p. 110). He even presents a technical drawing as Document 2, which has nothing to do with the theme he has developed, evidently only to impress those who exalt him as expert incontesté on the subject of cremation. [15]
In fact: The H. R. Heinicke company, holder of the Volckmann-Ludwig patent, at that time had its headquarters at Chemnitz. They installed fifteen other ovens of this type in Germany between 1935 and 1940. [16]
Pressac’s claim: From the W. Müller oven of Allach, the SS deduced that a cremation without casket permitted a cremation time reduction to half an hour, and that 100 kg of coke were enough to cremate twenty corpses in one day (p. 6).
In fact: In a gasogene oven, heated with coke, the casket delayed corpse-water vaporization by 5 to 6 minutes, acting in a way as a thermal shield until breaking apart by the effect of the flames. Simultaneously, the heat produced by the casket, which raised the temperature of the chamber to 1,100°C, accelerated the vaporization process, therefore cremation without a casket did not take less time than cremation with a casket.
Regarding the consumption of coke in the gasogene ovens, incomparably the most important fact to be found in the specialized German literature of the time, is the cremation experiment conducted by Engineer Richard Kessler, one of the top specialists on cremation during the 1920s and 1930s. This experiment occurred 5 January 1927 in the Gebrüder Beck, Offenbach system oven, at the crematory of Dessau. [17] The results of the experiment, displayed in two thermotechnical diagrams, for each of the eight corpses cremated one after the other, were an average consumption of 29.5 kg of coke, plus the casket. These diagrams are of exceptional importance in understanding the operation of the gasogene crematory ovens. With the oven at thermal equilibrium (in a hypothesis of twenty consecutive cremations), the consumption of coke would have been reduced to 23 kg, plus the casket. A casket averaging 40 kg produced an actual quantity of heat equal to that produced by 15 kg of coke, therefore a cremation without a casket required about 38 kg of coke, and with 100 kg of coke three corpses could be cremated, not twenty. The "deduction" is evidently not that of the SS, but rather that of Pressac, and it is a very poor deduction.
Pressac’s claim: For him, the function of the intake draft was to:
augmenter la quantité de gaz de combustion et d’éviter ainsi une dépense de combustible supplémentaire lors de l’incinération des cadavres 'glacés'. (p. 29)
[increase the quantity of combustion gas and thus avoid the waste of additional fuel when incinerating ‘frozen’ corpses.]
In fact: Here our author confuses the abilities of the Volckmann-Ludwig gas oven with the coke ovens of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Actually, in the gasogene oven heated by coke, the intake draught, impacting directly on the draft of the furnaces of the gasogene, caused 
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an increase in the combustion capacity of the grill (the amount of coke burned hourly in the furnace), and consequently an increase in the consumption of coke.
Pressac’s claim: In Crematory I at Auschwitz, which had a chimney 15 meters high,
Koehler ajouta un carneau de liaison de 12 mètres pour obtenir une longueur de ti-rage de 27 mètres. (p. 40)
[Koehler added an exterior flue twelve meters long to obtain an intake of twenty-seven meters.]
In fact: In reality, the force of the intake of a chimney is determined by the height and cross-section of the flue above the grill. The working formula given by Engineer W. Heepke in his classic work on crematories [18] is precisely Z = 0.6 × H (for a fume temperature of 250°C), where Z is the force of the intake and H the height of the flue above the grill of the furnace. The length of the smoke conduit can only have a negative influence on the intake because too long a conduit would cool the fumes excessively.
Pressac’s claim: Pressac attributes the last page of a Kostenvoranschlag (preliminary cost estimate) by Topf for Auschwitz dated 1 April 1943 in the amount of 25,148 Reichsmark, published by R. Schabel, [19] to the planned Crematory VI,
fondé sur le principe de l’incinération à ciel ouvert. (p. 69)
[based on the principle of open-sky incineration],
In fact: Pressac’s interpretation (à ciel ouvert = "cremation pits") is unsustainable since the document in question mentions:
1 gusseiserner Rauchkanalschieber mit Rollen, Drahtseil und Handwinde
[one cast iron damper with pulleys, steel cable and hand winch],
and a smoke conduit infers a closed combustion chamber on one side and on the other a chimney; installations that would not be recommended for an à ciel ouvert (open-air) combustion.
THE FLAMES 
Pressac’s claim: Pressac has the audacity to accept the story told by various eyewitnesses of flames coming out of the chimneys (of Crematories II and III) (p. 91).
In fact: This is technically impossible. Any uncombusted gas emitted from the chambers would either be burned in the smoke conduits if there were the necessary ignition temperature and combustion air, or, should these two conditions not exist, they would emerge from the oven uncombusted. In the first case, completely combusted gas would be emit-
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ted from the chimney (particularly nitrogen, carbon dioxide, water vapor, and a minimum amount of sulfur dioxide); in the second case, only smoke would emerge.
THE PITS 
Pressac’s claim: Even the story of the cremation pits, similarly accepted by Pressac, is technically meaningless. The cremation of corpses in pits by the process described by the eyewitnesses is impossible due to the lack of oxygen in the lower portion of the pit. In 1871, the attempt to cremate the dead soldiers from the Battle of Sedan, by opening mass graves, filling them with tar and setting them on fire, resulted in charring of the uppermost layer of corpses, the baking of the intermediate layer, and no effect on the bottom layer. [20]
In fact: The Pressac technical drawings of the crematory ovens contain structural errors due to his lack of thermotechnical knowledge. Here are some examples:
Plan of the modified Dachau oven (p. 14): The connection of the two gasogenes to the chambers is incorrect (the products of combustion of the gasogenes were emitted in the posterior part of the chambers and discharged directly into the smoke conduit).
Plan of the three-chambered oven at Buchenwald (p. 28): The connection system of the gasogenes to the chambers is wrong (the two gasogenes were connected only to the two lateral chambers; the products of combustion penetrated the central chamber through the three inter-chamber openings that were found in the inner wall of the lateral chambers).
The plan of the rustique (rustic) three-chambered oven (p. 37) is a plan of the probable disposition of the two simplified three-chambered oven (p. 50): The oven only had one gasogene. The Kostenanschlag of 12 February 1942 mentions only one horizontal grill Planrost, [21] not two. The connection system of the two gasogenes to the three chambers through three connection apertures is wrong; the discharge system of the combusted gases is wrong. Due to the draft of the chimney, most of the combusted gases would have passed through the point of least resistance, that is, through the chamber closest to the smoke conduit.
Plan of the initial eight-chambered oven (p. 78): The discharge system of the combusted gases is wrong; the external chamber of every couple of chambers was connected to the horizontal smoke conduit through a vertical conduit placed in the wall of the posterior part of the chamber. Pressac places this conduit between the two chambers.
Plan of the reinforced eight-chambered oven (p. 78): The discharge system of the combusted gases is wrong; the discharge conduit situated by the gasogenes (at the right of the plan) did not exist.
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Chapter Three
THE CREMATORY OVENS OF AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU ACCORDING TO CREMATION TECHNOLOGY
Here we briefly review the results of our thermotechnical study on the Auschwitz-Birkenau crematory ovens.
1. Coke Consumption 
The theoretical consumption of coke for an emaciated adult corpse in the two-chambered oven, is 27.8 kg, and for a normal corpse is 22.7 kg, according to the method calculated by Engineer W. Heepke [22]; the most thorough to be found in the German technical literature of the period. The real consumption of coke for the cremation of 677 corpses (presumably emaciated) in the two-chambered oven at Gusen, during a cremation period of 13 days, at an average of 52 corpses per day with the oven in permanent heat balance, was 20,700 kg [23], averaging 30.5 kg per corpse.
The consumption of the two-chambered oven, adjusted to reflect these experimental data, is 30.5 kg per emaciated corpse and 25 kg for a normal corpse.
The consumption of the three-chambered oven (with a reduction of one-third) is 20.3 kg for an emaciated corpse and 16.7 kg for a normal corpse.
The consumption of the eight-chambered oven (with a reduction of one-half) is 15.25 kg for an emaciated corpse and 12.5 kg for a normal corpse.
In the following table we summarize the coke consumption of the single crematory ovens at Auschwitz-Birkenau:
Type of oven	Emaciated Corpse	Normal Corpse Two-Chambered Oven	30.5 kg	25 kg Three-Chambered Oven	20.3 kg	16.7 kg Eight-Chambered Oven	15.25 kg	12.5 kg
2. Capacity 
The average cremation time of a continuously operating oven was about forty minutes of principal combustion (in the chamber), obtainable with the aid of the installation of an intake draft system (data relative to the Gusen oven).
The average time of a cremation without an intake draft system (taking into account the combustion capacity of the furnace grill) was sixty minutes, as is evident from the statement by Engineer Prüfer (in the 1 November 1940 letter), as well as from the diagrams published by Engineer R. Kessler concerning the principal combustion in the chamber 
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(considering the structural differences of the Gebrüder Beck oven compared to those at Auschwitz-Birkenau). Since the Auschwitz-Birkenau ovens lacked draft intake installations (p. 81), the average time for a cremation (principal combustion in the chamber) was one hour. The continuous operation of the ovens was 20 hours per day, at the most. Therefore, the capacity of the single crematories was as follows:
Site 	Corpses per day Crematory I	120 Corpses per day [!5] Crematory II 300 Corpses per day Crematory III 300 Corpses per day Crematory IV 160 Corpses per day Crematory V 160 Corpses per day Totals:	1,040 Corpses per day
Supposing the reality of homicidal gassings, considering the percentage of small-sized bodies among the corpses, as well as average weight as a function of age, the daily capacity would have increased by 6/5: Column I. In Column II, we include the data from the 28 June 1943 letter which Pressac considers valid in the cremation hypothesis of infants and children, as follows:
Site 	I 	II Crematory I	144	340 Crematory II 360	1,440 Crematory III 360	1,440 Crematory IV 192	768 Crematory V 192	768 Totals:	1,248 4,756
Since in twenty hours the ovens altogether could burn (based on the combustion capacity of the single oven’s grill) 23,200 kg of coke, the average coke consumption for each corpse according to Jean-Claude Pressac would be (23,200 / 4,756 =) 4.88 kg, which is thermotechnically impossible.
3. The Reason for Existence of Crematories 
The decision to build three more crematories at Birkenau was made on 19 August 1942 (p. 49), after Himmler, during his inspection of Auschwitz on 17 and 18 July 1942, had ordered that the actual forecast for the KGL (prisoner of war camp) at Birkenau be increased from 125,000 to 200,000 prisoners (p. 44). It also came during the terrible typhus epidemic in the summer of 1942, which caused decimation in the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp: In the male sector alone, from 1 to 19 August, 4,113 deaths were registered, [24] on the average 216 per day. In the third trimester of 1942, the mortality was 20.5% of the average camp population, [25] which did not exceed 25,000 units. The capacity of the 
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crematories was therefore quite adequate for the camp population established by Himmler, and provided for a possible future typhus epidemic.
4. The Number of Cremations in 1943: The Estimate of the SS. 
The Aktenvermerk (file entry for the records) of 17 March 1943 [26] (mentioned by Pres-sac on p. 119) shows the coke consumption estimate for the four crematories at Birkenau. The operational time of the crematories is estimated at 12 hours. The letter indicates the combustion capacity of the grills of the ovens; therefore one is able to calculate the number of corpses that could possibly be cremated, namely, about 362 emaciated adult corpses per day. From 1 March to 17 March the average mortality at Birkenau was 292 prisoners per day, [27] which, in terms of coke consumption for cremation, represents 80% of the estimate by the SS. This means that this estimate was calculated on the basis of the actual average mortality plus a 20% security margin. Since the average of the presumed gassed according to the Kalendarium of Auschwitz during this period is about 1,100 per day, if the story of the homicidal gas chambers were true, during this period there would have been an average daily death toll of about 1,400, approximately four times the actual estimate of the SS.
5. The Number Cremated In 1943: Coke Consumption 
From 1 March to 25 October 1943 a total of 641.5 tons of coke was supplied to the crematories of Auschwitz-Birkenau. [28] In this period, the number of natural deaths among the prisoners was about 27,300, that of the presumed gassed about 118,300, [29] thus altogether about 145,600. For the prisoners deceased of natural causes, there results an average coke availability of (641,500 / 27,300 =) 23.5 kg per corpse, a figure which is quite compatible with the consumption of the ovens. For the presumed homicidally gassed, plus the prisoners deceased of natural causes, instead there results an availability of (641,000 / 145,600 =) 4.4 kg, which is thermotechnically impossible.
The estimate of the SS of 17 March 1943, and the quantity of coke supplied to the crematories from March to October 1943, demonstrate that the crematories cremated only the corpses of the registered prisoners deceased of natural causes and that, consequently, there was no mass homicidal gassing.
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6. The Cremation Capacity of the Crematories in 1943 
From 14 March to 25 October 1943, the crematories at Birkenau were able to function only for a total of about 400 days. The maximum number of cremations theoretically possible (with the capacities taking into account corpses of babies and children) is about 100,000, but the number of corpses to be cremated (presumed homicidally gassed plus registered prisoners) is about 142,000. Thus, the cremation capability of the crematories rendered the cremation of presumed homicidally gassed prisoners impossible; therefore, there was no mass homicidal gassing.
In Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, Jean-Claude Pressac states that from April to October 1943 the crematories at Birkenau cremated 165,000 to 215,000 corpses with 497 tons of coke, [30] which means that for him it was possible to cremate a corpse with an average of 2.6 kg of coke!
According to Rudolf Höss, Crematories II and III could cremate 2,000 corpses per day, Crematories IV and V, 1,500 per day. [31] Hence the average consumption of coke per corpse was respectively 3.5 kg and 1.8 kg!
7. The Duration of the Fire Resistant Walls of the Crematory Ovens 
In his 1989 book, Jean-Claude Pressac furnishes the following numbers of corpses cremated at Auschwitz-Birkenau:
Site	Cremations
Crematory I	10,000 Cremated [32] Crematory II	400,000 Cremated [33] Crematory III	350,000 Cremated [34] Crematory IV	6,000 Cremated [35] Crematory V	15,000 Cremated [36] Subtotal:	781,000 Cremated Cremation Pit 1942	107,000 Cremated Cremation Pit 1944	50,000 Cremated Subtotal:	157,000 Cremated Total:	938,000 Cremated
These numbers refer exclusively to those presumed homicidally gassed and do not include the corpses of the registered prisoners who died of natural causes.
In his 1993 book, Jean-Claude Pressac reduces the number of presumed homicidally gassed to 630,000, and furnishes a total general death toll of 775,000, rounded off to approximately 800,000 (p. 148).
This revision of the number of those alleged to have been homicidally gassed has no relation to the Moscow documents studied by Pressac. The reduction is dictated exclusively 
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by his realization that the Birkenau crematories in 1943 (and mostly in Spring and Summer of 1944: see No. 8) could not have cremated the corpses of the presumed homicidally gassed even with the inflated capacity numbers he adopted. To eliminate the contradiction, he decrees that the number of the deported brought to Auschwitz-Birkenau at this time according to the Auschwitz Kalendarium (about 53,000) and, consequently, of the alleged homicidally gassed (about 42,000) is excessive (p. 147). Now Pressac, on the basis of simple conjecture, expects to "correct" in one little page, the recent study by Fran-ciszek Piper on the number of victims of Auschwitz-Birkenau, [39] which is the most in-depth and documented Exterminationist work, compiled from the documents in possession of the museum of Auschwitz. Therefore, from the point of view of the supporters of the reality of homicidal gas chambers, the reference work remains that of Piper, and the affirmations of Pressac are mere unfounded conjectures.
All the same, even the new number of cremations adopted by Pressac is technologically impossible. He reduces the number of those allegedly cremated in the open air in 1942 from 107,000 to 50,000, and no longer in "cremation pits" but on pyres. For 1944, he does not furnish any numbers. Thus we take for valid those given in his 1989 book: 50,000. Therefore, of the 775,000 cremated, about 100,000 were cremated in the open, and the remaining 675,000 in the crematories.
The engineer R. Jakobskötter, speaking in 1941 of the Topf ovens heated with electricity in the crematory of Erfurt, states that the second oven was able to perform 3,000 cremations, while the normal duration of the refractory walls of the ovens was 2,000 cremations. [40] The Gusen oven lasted for 3,200 cremations, [41] after which it was necessary to dismantle it and replace the fire-resistant walls. [42] The duration of one chamber was therefore about 1,600 cremations. Now, even supposing that the ovens of Auschwitz-Birkenau were used to the extreme limit of 3,000 cremations per chamber, altogether they would have been able to cremate about 156,000 corpses (according to Pressac, the total number of the victims among the registered prisoners was 130,000 (p. 146)), while the cremation of 675,000 corpses would have required at least four complete substitutions of the fire-resistant walls of all the chambers. This means that for Crematories II and III alone, 256 tons of fire-resistant wall material would have been necessary (not counting that for the gasogenes), with a labor time (based on that required at Gusen) of about 7,200 hours.
All the same, in the archives of the Bauleitung that were left "intact" by the SS of Auschwitz, which Pressac has examined in their entirety, there is not a trace of these enormous projects, which means that they were never carried out, for in these records, there exists, to give an example, "un règlement de comptes administratifs acharné" ["a tenacious administrative settlement of accounts"] between the Bauleitung and Topf of even a meager payment of 828 marks (p. 59).
The cremation of 675,000 corpses is technologically impossible, and consequently no mass extermination was perpetrated at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
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8. The Deportation and "Extermination" of the Hungarian Jews 
Jean-Claude Pressac, embarrassed by the technical impossibility of a mass cremation of the Hungarian Jews alleged to have been gassed, plays at reduction, declaring that of the approximately 438,000 deportees to Auschwitz-Birkenau, 146,000 were able to work and therefore were saved; the 292,000 remaining were incapable of work, and were gassed (p. 147). He refers to the statistical estimates of G. Wellers, who represents Establishment orthodoxy on the matter, and according to whom the number of people gassed was 410,000 (p. 147).
From these, Pressac calculates that with a total capacity of Crematories II, III, and IV, and of the "cremation pits" of 3,300 corpses per day, with the possibility of an extension to 4,300 (Pressac does not say how), "les SS pouvaient anéantir en 70 jour jusqu’à 300.000 personnes" (p. 148) ["the SS could annihilate up to 300,000 people in seventy days."]
Regarding the first point, since Pressac does not furnish any proof of the transfer of (146,000 - 28,000 registered [prisoners] =) 118,000 Hungarian Jews from Auschwitz, with the same logic one can claim that (438,000 - 28,000 =) 410,000 Hungarian Jews were transferred from Auschwitz, and thus did not undergo extermination.
Regarding the second point, we notice immediately the capacity indicated by Pressac is technically impossible: Crematories II, III, and V, would have been able to cremate at the most 900 corpses, while the "cremation pits", as we have indicated, are a technical absurdity.
Nevertheless, the deportation of the Hungarian Jews took place from 15 May to 8 July 1944, in a time frame of 54 days, not 70; therefore, even assuming the maximum capacity of 4,300 corpses per day (54 × 4,300), it would have been possible to cremate 232,200 corpses, not 292,000. As a matter of fact, after eliminating the pauses between the various waves of deportation and the actual days of deportation and arrival of deportees to Auschwitz, which were 39, [43] the installations at Birkenau would have been capable of cremating 39 × 4,300 = 167,700 corpses.— And where would the remaining 124,300 corpses have been put?
It is pointed out also that the aerial photographs taken by the Allied military on 31 May 1944, [44] at the crucial time of presumed extermination, on the day of the arrival at Birkenau of about 15,000 deportees, and after 14 days of intense arrivals (184,000 deportees, averaging 13,000 per day) and with an extermination toll (according to Pressac’s hypothesis) of at least 110,000 homicidally gassed, which would have had to average 7,800 per day, every single day for 14 consecutive days; after all of that, the photographs do not show the slightest evidence of this alleged enormous extermination: No trace of smoke, no trace of pits, crematory or otherwise, burning or not, no sign of dirt extracted from pits, no trace of wood set aside for use in pits, no sign of vehicles or of any other type of activity in the crucial zones of the courtyard of Crematory V nor in the earth of 
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Bunker 2, nor in Crematories II and III. These photographs [45] constitute irrefutable proof that the story of extermination of the Hungarian Jews is historically unfounded.
Chapter Four
GENESIS AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE "FINAL SOLUTION" [46]
Jean-Claude Pressac states that the last stage of the "final solution"
ne fut decidée par les autorités SS de Berlin qu’à partir de mai-juin 1942, pour être ensuite concrétisée techniquement par les SS de la Bauleitung D’Auschwitz et les ingénieurs de la firme J.A. Topf und Söhne d’Erfurt. (p. 2)
[was not decided on by the SS authorities in Berlin until after May-June 1942, and only subsequently concretized technically by the SS of the Bauleitung of Auschwitz and the engineers of the firm J.A. Topf and Sons of Erfurt.]
Regarding this, Pressac reports:
début juin 1942, Himmler ayant convoqué Höss à Berlin, l’informa du choix de son camp comme centre d’anéantissement massif des Juifs. Le chef des SS avait retenu Auschwitz parce que sa situation ferroviaire était favorable et que le camp serait bientôt pourvu d’un extraordinaire crématoire pouvant incinérer 1.400 corps par jour (épisode que Höss place faussement à l’été 1941 comme d’ailleurs Eichmann après l’avoir lu dans les écrites de ce dernier). L’action commencerait le 1er juillet et il fallait qu’à cette date tout soit prêt pour l’exécuter. (p. 41, our italics)
[at the beginning of June 1942, Himmler summoned Höss to Berlin, and informed him of the choice of his camp as center for the massive annihilation of the Jews. The chief of the SS had chosen Auschwitz because of its favorable situation close to the railway, and because the camp would soon be provided with an extraordinary crematory capable of cremating 1,400 bodies per day (an episode that Höss wrongly places in the summer of 1941, which Eichmann also does after having read Höss’s writings). The action would begin 1 July and everything would have to be ready to execute it by this date.]
In reality, it is Pressac who wrongly places in 1942 an event which, according to the chronological and logical developments of the events referred to by Höss, could only have taken place in 1941.
We summarize the following development:
[Höss] In the summer of 1941—at the moment I am not able to cite the exact date—I was suddenly summoned to Berlin to the Reichsführer [Himmler], by his Aide.
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[Himmler] The Führer has ordered the final solution of the Jewish question, and we SS must execute this order.
I chose Auschwitz, both for its optimal communications position and because the adjacent land can be easily isolated and camouflaged.
You will learn further details from Sturmbannführer Eichmann, of the RSHA, whom I will send to you shortly.
[Höss] Soon thereafter, Eichmann came to me at Auschwitz, where he revealed to me the plan of action for the various countries.
Hence, we went on to discuss the means of effecting the extermination plan. The means could only be gas...
Eichmann promised that he would inform himself on the existence of an easily produced gas which would not require any particular installations, and that he would later inform me on the matter.
We went to inspect the area to establish the best location, and ascertained that it was the farm [the future Bunker 1] situated at the northwest corner of the future third sector of buildings, Birkenau. [!6]
Eichmann then returned to Berlin, to report to him [Himmler] the content of our conversation.
At the end of November in Eichmann’s office in Berlin a conference was held on the entire Jewish Section, at which I was invited to participate...
We were not told when the action would begin, nor had Eichmann been able to find the appropriate gas.
In the autumn of 1941, by means of a secret order given to the prisoner of war camps, the Gestapo separated all the politruks, the commissars and some political officials and sent them to the closest concentration camp, to have them liquidated.
At Auschwitz small transports of these men were continuously arriving; they were then shot in the gravel pit by the buildings of the [tobacco] monopoly, or in the courtyard of Block II [Block 11].
On the occasion of one of my service trips, my substitute, Hauptsturmführer Fritzsch, on his own initiative, used gas to exterminate these prisoners of war; he filled the cells located in the basement to overflowing with Russians and, protecting himself with a gasmask, had Cyklon B [Zyklon B] infused, which provoked the immediate death of the victims.
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On Eichmann’s next visit, I reported to him on the use of Zyklon B, and we decided that it would be the gas used for the imminent mass slaughter.
The killing of the Russian prisoners of war with Cyklon B, which I referred to above, continued, but no longer in Block II, because after the gassing, the entire building would have to be aired out for at least two days. As a result, the mortuary room of the crematory near the hospital was used, after the doors were rendered gas proof, and gas emission holes were opened in the ceiling.
I wouldn’t know at what period exactly the extermination of the Jews began; probably already in September 1941, but perhaps only in January 1942. [47]
It is thus clear that the presumed summons of Höss to Berlin came before the first alleged homicidal gassing in the Bunker of Block 11 (and before the successive gassings in the Leichenhalle of Crematory I at Auschwitz); but since Pressac places this event entre le cinq et la fin décembre 1941 (p. 34), it is just as clear that the summons dates back to the summer of 1941, not to 1942.
Himmler’s second motive for choosing Auschwitz does not find any verification in the "Annotations" (Aufzeichnungen) and in the sworn testimonies of R. Höss, but is the simple fruit of the fantasy of Jean-Claude Pressac, which is equal to imagining both the precise date of the presumed summons (at the beginning of June), as well as the date of the beginning of extermination (1 July).
One may ask why Pressac would begin his book with these manipulations. The answer is simple: Not having found any evidence in Moscow of criminal aims in the plans of the crematories of Birkenau, and being forced to admit that these crematories were initially foreseen sans chambres à gas homicides (without homicidal gas chambers) (p. 53), he had to postpone the alleged decision to exterminate the Jews by one year, since otherwise the planning of four crematories without gas chambers in the very place destined to be the principal center of such an extermination would have appeared too unlikely. Pressac falls into contradiction nevertheless, because he places the beginning of the homicidal activities in Bunker 1 at the end of May 1942 (p. 39), that is, before R. Höss knew or received the alleged extermination order from Himmler (beginning of June). Here, it is opportune to remember that the beginning of the activity at Bunker 1 was placed in January 1942 in the first edition of Kalendarium of Auschwitz; [48] in the second edition, it is moved to March.[49] Pressac finally moves it to the end of May. In all three cases this was done without any proof of any kind. In addition, since the second edition of Kalen-darium of Auschwitz places the beginning of the activity in Bunker 2 at 30 June 1942, [50] it is evident that R. Höss theoretically must have been summoned to Berlin at the beginning of June, and it matters little that R. Höss never specifies it: Jean-Claude Pres-sac decrees it authoritatively.
Thus it is clear that the declaration of R. Höss on the presumed summons to Berlin by Himmler in June 1941 upsets Pressac’s reasoning from the very beginning.
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Granting this, let us now follow this reasoning in its successive logical and chronological development.
As indicated, Pressac places the first homicidal gassing between 5 December 1941 and the end of that month (p. 34). Regarding this, Pressac writes:
D’après Höss (qui n’y assista pas) la mort aurait été immédiate. D’autres parlent d’un gazage ayant duré deux jours avec introduction d’une seconde quantité de toxi-que parce que la première n’avait pas tué tout le monde. De l’acide cyanhydrique, se vaporisant à 27°C, utilisé dans un sous-sol non encore chauffé en plein hiver silésien et une méconnaissance de la dose létale pourraient expliquer la durée anormale de ce gazage. (p. 34, our italics)
[According to Höss (who did not take part), death would have been immediate. Others speak of a gassing having lasted two days, with the introduction of a second toxic quantity because the first did not kill everyone. Hydrocyanic acid, vaporizing at 27°C, used in an as yet unheated basement in full Silesian winter and a misreading of the lethal dose could explain the abnormal duration of this gassing.]
It is known that this presumed event was supposed to have occurred, according to the Auschwitz Kalendarium, on the basis of various eyewitnesses, between 3 and 5 Septem-ber 1941. [51] The Polish historian S. Klodzi ski, with the help of responses to a questionnaire on the first alleged gassing which he sent to 250 former prisoners of Auschwitz who were registered before September 1941, alters the date of this gassing to between 5 and 9 September 1941. [52] Pressac, who in 1989 still followed the Auschwitz Kalendar-ium literally, [53] moves the date by at least three months: On what basis? On the basis of our 190-page study Auschwitz: La prima gasazione, [54] in which we show that this event has no historic foundation since it is not supported by any document, but is instead contradicted by the available documents, and finally, that all the testimonies on this subject are contradictory on all their essential points. Pressac, instead of accepting this inevitable conclusion, assumes one of our polemical observations is true, [55] then decrees that this supposed event not only has a historic reality, but de nos jours (at the present time) (p. 34) its official date is that which he has indicated.
Here Pressac gives one of many examples of his captious methodology. The story of the introduction of a second quantity of Zyklon B comes from the testimony of M. Kula (deposition of 11 June 1945), [56] which, however, places the first homicidal gassing with absolute certainty in August 1941:
"According to my information, the first gassing took place the night of the 14-15 and the day of the 15th of August 1941, in the Bunkers of Block 11. I remember this date exactly, because it coincides with the anniversary of my arrival at the camp, and because then the first Russian prisoners of war were gassed." [57]
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M. Kula is the witness from whom Pressac takes the story of the four wire-latticed columns (quatre colonnes grillagées ) for introducing Zyklon B in the supposed gas chambers of Crematories II and III (p. 74). [58]
Pressac’s explanation for the "abnormal" duration of the supposed gassing is the cold temperature and ignorance of the lethal dose. These claims are already discredited in our book on the basis of testimony from the same witnesses:
(witness Glowacki: "there was a tremendous heat";
witness Kielar: the air was very "suffocating, hot").
They are also refuted by practical experiences during disinfestation of the barracks with Zyklon B during the years 1940 to 1941 at times when the local temperatures were between -4°C and -8°C, during which the gas developed to its maximum extent after one or two hours. [59] Finally, in this work we have shown that the lethal dose of hydrocyanic acid for human beings was perfectly well known since the 1930s, on the basis of 
Schädliche Gase, Dämpfe, Nebel, Rauch und Staubarten (Verlag von Julius Springer, Berlin 1931), the classic by Ferdinand Flury and Franz Zernik. This is in direct contradiction to the statements of Jean-Claude Pressac (see above). [60]
Pressac’s thesis involves another contradiction, because this supposed event, predating by at least five months the decision to exterminate the Jews, evidently has no connection with this, any more than do the successive gassings in the Leichenhalle of Crematory I of Auschwitz, from January 1941. All the same, Pressac affirms that at the end of April, difficulties having arisen, it was decided de transférer ce genre d’activité à Birkenau (p. 35); in other words, it was decided to put into operation Bunker 1, which however was linked with the extermination of the Jews.
Here Pressac therefore ruptures the consecutive logic (i.e. logically admissible, but historically false) which he put forth in his 1989 book:
Because the lethal dose for humans was not known, the SS had made a botched trial gassing in the basement of Bunker 11 of the Stammlager on 3, 4, and 5 September 1941, the victims being 850 Soviet POWs and other prisoners.
It was subsequently seen to be more convenient to gas people as required in the very place where all corpses inevitably had to go eventually: the morgue of Krematorium I.
But trials to perfect the technique could not be carried out in this crematory attached to the camp, hence the idea of establishing Bunker 1 in an isolated location on the edge of Birkenau wood. [61]
As regards the "final solution," Pressac inflicts the final blow to the traditional interpretation of the Wannsee conference declaring in this connection:
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Le 20 janvier [1942], se tenait à Berlin la conférence dite de Wannsee. Si une action de 'refoulement' des Juifs vers l’Est fut bien prévue avec l’évocation d’une élimination 'naturelle' par le travail, personne ne parla alors de liquidation industrielle. Dans les jours et les semaines qui suivirent, la Bauleitung d’Auschwitz ne reçut ni appel, ni télégramme, ni lettre réclamant l’étude d’une installation adaptée à cette fin . (p. 35, our italics)
[January 20, 1942, the so-called Wannsee conference was held in Berlin. If an operation to ‘expel’ the Jews towards the East was indeed anticipated with the evocation of a ‘natural’ elimination by work, no one spoke then of industrial liquidation. 
In the days and weeks that followed, the Bauleitung of Auschwitz received neither appeal, nor telegram, nor letter calling for an installation adapted to this end.]
The story of this supposed "final solution," begun with a verbal order from Himmler, could only have been concluded with another verbal order:
Fin novembre [1944], sur ordre verbal d’Himmler, les gazages homicides furent ar-rêtés. (p. 93)
[The end of November (1944), on the verbal order of Himmler, the homicidal gassings were stopped.]
Needless to say, there is no proof of the existence of this "verbal order". [62]
Chapter Five
CREMATORIES II AND III
Jean-Claude Pressac affirms that a capacity of 1,440 corpses per day was foreseen for the new crematory destined for the principal camp, which later became the prototype of Crematories II and III at Birkenau (p. 28). As we have seen, that is precisely what would have induced Himmler to choose Auschwitz for carrying out the extermination of the Jews (p. 41); nevertheless he specifies that:
bien que le crématoire II ait servi de catalyseur pour la choix d’Auschwitz dans la liquidation des Juifs, il ne se rattache pas directement à cette extermination, mais est considéré comme un moyen supplétif occasionnel; le crématoire III n’est projeté qu’en complément du II, pour faire face à un effectif de 200,000 détenus, et n’est 'criminalisé' que pour les besoins de la bureaucratie SS. (pp. 54-55)
[Although Crematory II has served as a catalyst for the choice of Auschwitz in the liquidation of the Jews, it is not linked directly to this extermination, but is considered as an occasional supplementary means; Crematory III is planned only as an extension of II, to deal with an effective 200,000 prisoners, and is only ‘criminalized’ by the needs of the SS bureaucracy.]
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Crematory III had a "sanitary orientation" (p. 50), equal to Crematory II, of which it was naturally the extension; the structures of Crematory II and III were not planned with the intention of homicidal gassing (p. 63), and none of the four crematories at Birkenau initially anticipated homicidal gas chambers (p. 53). Crematories IV and V instead "belonged to Bunkers 1 and 2" (p. 50); they were "destined to Bunkers 1 and 2" (p. 52), "connected directly to Bunkers 1 and 2" (p. 54).
So according to Pressac, Crematories II and III initially had a normal hygienic-sanitary function, while Crematories IV and V (which were not equipped with homicidal gas chambers) had a criminal function because they were supposed to have cremated alleged homicidally gassed cadavers of Bunkers 1 and 2.
This results in the meaningless conclusion that the Auschwitz Bauleitung technicians assigned thirty chambers (presumed capacity: 2,880 corpses per day) to the normal health measures of the camp, and only sixteen chambers to mass extermination. In other words, they expected more corpses from the natural mortality of the camp than from mass extermination!
Another Pressac conclusion, even more revealing, is that Auschwitz was chosen by Himmler to commence extermination of Jews because of the design of the new crematory, which Pressac presumes could cremate 1,440 corpses per day. The Bauleitung technicians however, instead of making this crematory and its twin Crematory III the fulcrum of the extermination, turned to two other crematories of distinctly lower capacity!
Regarding the genesis of the other three Crematories (III, IV and V), Pressac writes:
Le 19 [août] est à considérer comme la date où fut entérinée la décision de cons-truire trois autres crématoires à Birkenau, dont deux étaient liés directement au pro-cessus criminel d’anéantissement des Juifs. (p. 49)
[The 19th (August) is to be considered the date when the decision to build three other crematories at Birkenau was ratified, of which two were linked directly to the criminal process of annihilation of the Jews.]
But 19 August is also a date on which a terrible typhus epidemic raged at Auschwitz-Birkenau that decimated the prisoners of the camp.
Pressac himself admits that:
la pression de l’épidémie de typhus, avec chaque jour ses 250 à 300 morts parmi les détenus, ainsi que les civils et SS les accompagnant dans l’au-delà, conjuguée aux incessantes arrivées de convois juifs, poussa Bischoff, sur demande de Höss, à pré-cipiter la réalisation du programme crématoire et à le doubler. (p. 50)
[the pressure of the typhus epidemic, with its 250 to 300 deaths among the prisoners each day, as well as the civilians and SS accompanying them to the hereafter, plus 
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the incessant arrivals of Jewish convoys, pushed Bischoff, on Höss’s orders, to expedite the crematory program.]
Actually, the decision to construct four crematories at Birkenau depended exclusively on the terror which the typhus epidemic provoked in the SS, [63] in light of the proposed expansion of the camp’s population by about ten times.
Pressac shows that the installations and the precautions of the SS, which were aimed at halting the typhus epidemic, bore the designation special (Sonder-) in the SS terminology.
Doctor Wirths:
prévoyait un retour du typhus si des 'mesures spéciales' (Sondermassnahmen) pour améliorer la situation sanitaire n’étaient pas prises d’urgence. (p. 82, our italics)
[foresaw a return of the typhus if some ‘special measures’ (Sondermassnahmen) to improve the sanitary situation were not taken urgently.]
Pressac explains correctly that:
les termes 'mesures spéciales/Sondermassnahmen' et 'mesures de construction spé-ciales/Sonderbaumassnahmen' désignent des dispositions liées aux questions sanitai-res ou aux bâtiments s’y rapportant (par exemple, alimentation en eau, mesures d’hygiène appliquées aux détenus , etc. (p. 107, note 256, our italics)
[the terms ‘special measures/Sondermassnahmen’ and ‘special measures of construction/Sonderbaumassnahmen’ designate the dispositions relating to the sanitary issues or to the buildings if involved (for example, water supply, hygienic measures applied to the prisoners, etc.]
With the construction of the disinfection and disinfestation installation of the Zentral-sauna:
les SS voulaient contrer "définitivement" toute résurgence du typhus à Birkenau. (p. 69)
[the SS wanted to ‘definitively’ counter any resurgence of the typhus at Birkenau.]
Now the Zentralsauna was in fact part of the Sonderbaumassnahmen (p. 107, note 256) and, as with the crematories, was involved in the Durchführung der Sonderbehandlung (implementation of such special measures) (p. 61).
If, therefore, the construction of the new crematory had a purely sanitary purpose (by Pressac’s admission), it should have been undertaken immediately "en raison de la situation crée par les "actions spéciales", as is stated in a document of the end of July 1942 (p. 
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47), a time of full typhus epidemic; it is clear that these "special actions" (Sonderak-tionen) were linked to the fight against the epidemic and had no criminal connotation.
And, if the same document mentions 4 Stück Baracken für Sonderbehandlung der Häftlinge in Birkenau (p. 46, our italics) ["4 barracks for the special treatment of prisoners at Birkenau"], it is equally clear that even this "special treatment," reserved for the registered prisoners of the camp, referred simply to the "mesures d’hygiène appliquées aux détenus" ["sanitary measures put into practice for the prisoners"], to use the words of Jean-Claude Pressac.
And, if finally on 26 August 1942, during a full typhus epidemic, Zyklon B was picked up at Dessau für Sonderbehandlung , it is still clear that it served disinfestation purposes (p. 47). [!7]
Self-contradictingly, Pressac instead claims that the Sonderbehandlung was a convenient term that designated la liquidation par le gaz des inaptes juifs à Birkenau (the liquidation by gas of the unfit Jews at Birkenau.) (p. 46)
He further specifies that:
l’acte de mise à mort en lui-même était dit 'traitement spécial' ou 'transfert de population juive' alors que la globalité de l’opération, incluant sélection, transport des inaptes et gazage homicide, s’énonçait "action spéciale", terme n’étant pourtant pas spécifiquement criminel car pouvant s’appliquer à une opération qui ne l’était pas. (p. 46)
[the act of putting to death itself, was called ‘special treatment’ or ‘transfer of Jew-ish population’, since the totality of the operation, including selection, transfer of the unfit and homicidal gassing, was termed ‘special action’, a term not specifically criminal, since it could apply to an operation that was not.]
Pressac himself mentions a case in which the term Sonderaktion had no criminal meaning; after the strike (in an extermination camp!) of the civilian workers on 17 and 18 De-cember 1942, the Gestapo made a Sonderaktion consisting of the interrogation of the workers to find out what had produced the refusal to work (p. 63).
Neither Sondermassnahmen, nor Sonderbaumassnahmen, nor Sonderbehandlung, nor 
Sonderaktion had a criminal significance and Jean-Claude Pressac does not introduce a single document to support the contrary. Therefore, his deductions have no foundation.
What Pressac writes about the supply of Zyklon B to Auschwitz is really a bit incredible. He pretends that the SS-WVHA knew nothing about the typhus epidemic that raged at Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1942. This epidemic required enormous quantities of Zyklon B for the purpose of disinfestation. He maintains that the administration of the camp, which did not want the WVHA to know of the epidemic, could not request Zyklon B without betraying itself. This is how he extricates himself:
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Une astuce fut trouvée. Mettre sur le dos des Juifs les effarantes quantités de gaz employées. L’autorisation de transport accordée le 26 août le fut pour 'traitement spécial'. Bien que les responsables du SS-WVHA de Berlin sussent la finalité du 'traitement', ils en ignoraient les modalités, c’est-à-dire les quantités de toxique utili-sées. Ce qui permit de leur faire croire que la majorité du Zyklon-B livré servait au gazage homicide dans les Bunker 1 et 2, alors que 2 à 3% suffisait. Ainsi, 97 à 98% du gaz pouvait être consacré à l’épouillage. (p. 47)
[A ruse was devised. The blame for the bewildering quantities of gas used was placed on the Jews. The shipment authorization given on 26 August was for ‘special treatment’. Although the authorities of the SS-WVHA [!8] of Berlin knew the end result of the ‘treatment’, they were unaware of the specifics, that is, the quantities of toxin used. Since 2% to 3% was enough, this allowed them to make others think that the majority of the Zyklon B delivered was needed for homicidal gassings in Bunker 1 and 2. In this manner, 97% to 98% of the gas could be used for delousing.]
The goal of this reasoning is quite clear: Since the purpose for the ordering Zyklon B are apparently twofold—on the one hand the "special treatment" (Sonderbehandlung: procurement of 26 August) and the "resettlement of Jews" (Judenumsiedlung: 2 October), terms that Pressac interprets in the criminal sense; on the other hand, the disinfestation (Gas zur Desinfektion des Lagers [gas for disinfesting of the camp]: 29 July) [64] — there would exist two types of procurements, bureaucratically defined: one for gassing Jews, the other for disinfestation of the camp. But in this case, the quantity of Zyklon B for a homicidal purpose would be enormous (the request of 2 October alone refers to 5 tons gross), in contradiction to the thesis advanced by Pressac in his 1989 book, that only 2-3% of the Zyklon B supplied to Auschwitz was used for the purpose of homicide. [65] To overcome this contradiction, Pressac has found nothing better than to assert that the request for Zyklon B, supposedly for the purpose of homicide (Sonderbehandlung, Jude-numsiedlung), was in reality only a camouflage for a request with a sanitary purpose! Just how far the WVHA was unaware of the epidemic of typhus that raged at Auschwitz can be deduced from the fact that Doctor Wirths, who on 6 September 1942 had been
nommé médecin-chef de la garrison du camp d’Auschwitz afin d’enrayer l’épidémie de typhus, (p. 116)
[named chief doctor of the garrison of the camp at Auschwitz in order to retard the epidemic of typhus,]
came from the Inspectorate of the Concentration Camps, [66] that is, from the Amtsgruppe D of the WVHA.
Realizing the naiveté of his reasoning, Pressac seeks to render the picture he has drawn more credible by fabricating the purpose of Pohl’s visit of 23 September 1942 to Ausch-witz:
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Le chef du SS-WVHA, le général de corps d’armée SS Pohl, se présenta à l’improviste dans la matinée du 23 septembre 1942 à Auschwitz pour savoir ce qui s’y passait et où filaient les tonnes de Zyklon-B accordées. Pohl se rendit d’abord à la Bauleitung, se fit expliquer l’implantation générale du camp, décrire les bâtiments achevés, en cours (dont les quatre crématoires de Birkenau) et en projet. A sa question sur le Zyklon-B, il lui fut répondu qu’avec ce produit, on détruisait à la fois les poux et les Juifs. (p. 59, our italics)
[The Chief of the SS-WVHA, General of the SS Army Corps Pohl, presented himself unexpectedly in the morning of the 23rd of September at Auschwitz to learn what was going on, and where the assigned tons of Zyklon-B were going. Pohl went first to the Bauleitung, and had the general set-up of the camp explained to him, and the buildings that had been erected, those under construction (including the four crematories of Birkenau) and those planned described to him. His question on Zyk-lon-B was answered that with this product the Jews and the lice were destroyed at the same time.]
Pressac’s source for the above is the diary of Johann Paul Kremer published in Auschwitz vu par le SS (Edition du Musée d'État à Oswiecim) [ Auschwitz Viewed by the SS (Edition of the State Museum at Oswiecim, 1974)], pages 233 and 234 (notes 182 and 183 on p. 105). In reality, these two pages from the end of page 233 to the end of page 234, read as follows:
Le matin, l’Obergruppenführer Pohl est arrivée avec sa suite au Foyer des Waffen SS. Devant la porte, une sentinelle. Pour la première fois, on me présente les armes. Le soir, à 20 heures, dîner au Foyer des officiers SS en compagnie de l’Obergruppenführer Pohl: un véritable festin. On nous a servi du brochet frit à vo-lonté, du vrai café, une excellente bière et des sandwiches.
[In the morning, Obergruppenführer Pohl arrived with his entourage, at the residence of the Waffen SS. In front of the door a sentinel. For the first time I am presented arms. The evening at 20 hours; dinner at the SS Officers Club in the company of Obergruppenführer Pohl: a real feast. We were served fried pike all we wanted, real coffee, an excellent beer and some sandwiches.]
That is all. The rest is the product of Pressac’s imagination. On p. 117 he twice contradicts himself, by writing that Pohl had gone to Auschwitz:
surtout préoccupé de construire une grande station d’épuration des eaux à Bros-chkowitz (au nord de la ville d’Auschwitz) pour réduire le risque typhoïdique . (p. 117, our italics)
[above all, concerned with constructing a large water purification station at Broschkowitz (north of the town of Auschwitz) to reduce the risk of typhus.]
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Therefore, the WVHA already knew of the typhus epidemic and Pohl did not inspect Auschwitz to ask "où filaient les tonnes de Zyklon-B accordées" ["where the tons of Zyk-lon B given them were going"].
Jean-Claude Pressac’s fundamental thesis is that Crematories II and III, planned and constructed as simple sanitary installations, were subsequently turned into instruments of crime:
S’imposa fin octobre 1942 l’idée, somme toute évidente, de transférer l’activité 'ga-zeuse' des Bunker 1 et 2 dans une pièce de crématoire, équipée d’une ventilation ar-tificielle, comme cela avait été pratiqué en décembre 1941 dans la morgue du créma-toire I. (p. 60)
[Towards the end of October 1942, the idea occurred, an obvious one when all was said and done, of transferring the ‘gassing’ activity of Bunkers 1 and 2 into a room of the crematory, equipped with artificial ventilation, as had been practiced in 1941 in the morgue of Crematory I.]
That is an arbitrary statement by Pressac, not supported by any document. He adds an equally unfounded assertion, that:
en novembre 1942, les SS de la Bauleitung résolurent d’équiper les crématoires de chambres à gaz homicides. (p. 66)
[In November 1942, the SS of the Bauleitung resolved to equip the crematories with homicidal gas chambers.]
According to Pressac, initially the intentions of the SS were to:
utiliser pour les gazages la 'Leichenkeller 1' du crématoire II dès qu’elle serait opéra-tionnelle ou, si l’expédition des matériels requis tardait, se rabattre sur la 'Leichen-halle' du crématoire I après avoir installé sa désaération définitive, déjà livrée, et capable d’extraire 8.300 m3 d’air par heure de toutes les pièces du bâtiment, dont environ 3.000 m3 par heure de sa 'Leichenhalle'. (p. 61)
[use the ‘Leichenkeller 1’ of Crematory II for the gassings as soon as it was operational. Or, if shipment of the required material was delayed, to fall back on the ‘Lei-chenhalle’ of Crematory I after having installed its final ventilators, already delivered. These ventilators were capable of extracting 8,300 m3 of air per hour from all the rooms of the building, and about 3,000 m3 per hour from its ‘Leichenhalle’.]
This appears clearly irrational, even from Pressac’s perspective. Granted, on the one hand, that the Bauleitung could have continued to use Bunkers 1 and 2 as it had done until then for mass extermination of the Jews while they were waiting for the requested materials to arrive for the homicidal transformation of Leichenkeller 1 of Crematory II; but 
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on the other hand, the gassings had already been transferred to the end of April 1942 from Crematory I at Birkenau because:
un gazage imposait d’isoler totalement la zone du crématoire, ce qui perturbait l’activité du camp,
[gassing demanded total isolation of the crematory zone, which disturbed the activity of the camp],
and in addition:
il était impraticable lorsque les travaux étaient en cours, (p. 35)
[it was impracticable, while work was in progress], (which occurred fairly often.)
The idea that the SS were thinking again of moving the supposed homicidal gassings to Crematory I occurs to Pressac because a note dated 27 November 1942 gives the order to install the ventilation system of Crematory I (p. 60). Nevertheless, he states at the same time that:
sa morgue étant désaérée mécaniquement, des gazages homicides avec un toxique gazeux pouvaient y être pratiqués. (p. 23)
[homicidal gassings with a toxic agent could be carried out there because its morgue was mechanically ventilated.]
(Referring to the temporary ventilation system mounted in Crematory I by the Boos company between 23 February and 1 March 1941 [p. 18].)
Therefore, if the temporary ventilation system could already support the homicidal gassings, why install a permanent system? If instead the permanent system was indispensable for homicidal gassings, why wasn’t it installed immediately instead of being left in a storage room? It had been shipped from Topf 16 April 1942. Then the idea to use Crematory I for mass gassings was discarded, and the Bauleitung concentrated on the criminal transformation of Crematory II and III:
Transférer les gazages homicides dans les crématoires II et III semblait simple sur le papier, mais l’était beaucoup moins du fait que le bâtiment, conçu par Prüfer et amé-lioré par Werkmann, n’avait pas été envisage à cette fin. Le rez-de-chaussée , avec la salle des fours et ses pièces de service, n’avait besoin d’être modifié. Mais le sous-sol devait être aménagé pour que puissent s’y pratiquer les 'actions spéciales'. (pp. 63-64, our italics)
[Transference of the homicidal gassings to Crematories II and III seemed easy on paper, but was much less so because of the fact that the building, planned by Prüfer and improved by Werkmann, had not been envisioned for this purpose. The ground 
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floor, with its oven room and service rooms, did not need to be modified. But the basement had to be arranged so that the ‘special actions’ could be carried out there.]
There is no doubt that beginning with the end of 1942, the basement of Crematory II had undergone various transformations with respect to the initial project. There is also no doubt that the oven room had not undergone any modification in number or capacity with respect to the initial plan. How to explain this inconsistency? If Crematory II had been planned as a simple sanitary installation, adequate for the natural death toll of the camp, its transformation into an instrument of mass extermination would have required a corresponding increase in the capacity of the ovens: in other words, the installation of additional ovens. But that did not happen. Therefore, all that remains is to excessively inflate the real capacity of the ovens and, contradictingly, to infer that the ovens could handle even a mass extermination without difficulty even though they were designed for hygienic purposes. It suffices for Pressac to declare that Crematory II could really cremate 1,440 corpses in 24 hours (capacity that could be defined as technically preposterous) to overcome the contradiction.
The reality is quite different. The installation in Crematory II and III of a 210 m2 gas chamber (the area of Leichenkeller 1), in which it would have been possible to gas 1,800 victims without difficulty (the eyewitnesses speak even of 3,000), would have required 75 chambers instead of the existing 15 for the cremation of the corpses in one day. The time required to cremate the bodies of the victims, would have taken five days, presenting a serious obstacle to an extermination process. The fact, therefore, that the oven room was not transformed, demonstrates that the changes made in the basement were not of a criminal nature.
The picture of the changes made in the basements of Crematories II and III once more relies on Plan 2003 of 19 December 1942, which Pressac considers a bavure architec-turale [!9] (an architectural trace), in which the slide (Rutsche) for the corpses no longer appears:
l’escalier nord devient le seul accès possible aux morgues, ce qui implique que les morts devront descendre l’escalier en marchant. (pp. 64-65)
[The north stairway becomes the only possible access to the morgues, which implies that the dead will have to descend the stairs walking.]
Actually, Plan 2003 was nothing more than a proposal to transfer the basement access to the street side (Verlegung des Kellerzuganges an die Strassenseite) [67] and not a plan to eliminate the slide. Therefore, the absence of the slide is basically a simplification of a part of the design which is technically irrelevant. The elimination of the slide would have been technically irrational (unless the lift were used to transport the corpses to the mortuary rooms), since the natural mortality at the camp continued. In fact, the slide was constructed according to the original design both in Crematory II and in Crematory III. This was independent of the fact that:
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le plan 2003 arriva trop tard sur les chantiers 30 [Crematory II] and 30a [Crematory III] (p. 65)
[Plan 2003 arrived too late at construction sites 30 (Crematory II) and 30a (Crematory III)],
as Pressac claims. That, however, could not be valid for Crematory III (which was in a less advanced construction stage) but, more precisely, depended on the logical necessity of an easy access for the corpses to the mortuary chambers.
The initial plan of the SS (November 1942) was to install in Crematories II and III two homicidal gas chambers operating alternately:
Les SS envisagèrent aussi que les deux morgues fussent utilisées en chambres à gaz, croyant alors à tort que le fort rendement prévu des cinq fours trimoufle permettrait une marche alternative. Dans cette configuration, un vestiaire extérieur était indispensable, donnant directement sur l’escalier de service, qui desservait les deux salles par le vestibule central. De plus, améliorer la ventilation de la Leichenkeller 2 (seu-lement désaérée) s’imposait, par adjonction d’une aération. Après que les fours eu-rent été testés et leur rendement mieux estimé , cette solution fut rejetée parce qu’elle aboutissait à produire au sous-sol des monceaux de cadavres que les fours du rez-de-chaussée auraient mis trop longtemps à incinérer. (p. 66, our italics)
[The SS had also envisioned that the two morgues be used as gas chambers, at that time wrongly believing that the large yield foreseen for the five three-chambered ovens would permit an alternative operation. In this configuration, an exterior changing room was indispensable, opening directly on the service stairs that connected the two rooms through the central vestibule. Moreover, it was further essential to improve the ventilation of Leichenkeller 2 by the addition of blower type ventilation. At the time it was only ventilated by aspiration, that is, by drawing air out of the room. After the ovens had been tested and their yield better estimated, this solution was rejected because it ended up producing a heap of corpses in the basement which the ovens on the ground floor would have taken too long to incinerate.]
Here Pressac ensnares himself in another series of insuperable contradictions. On one hand, the plan of the dualistic homicidal gas chamber, which depended on an overestimate of the capacity of the ovens, could not have been done in November 1942, because the two three-chambered ovens of the crematory of Buchenwald that were of the same model as the ovens in Crematories II and III of Birkenau went into operation on 23 August and on 3 October 1942 respectively (p. 39). In November therefore, the oven’s real capacity was perfectly known, having already been in activity a total of four months. Furthermore, the plan of the dualistic homicidal gas chamber could not have been abandoned in November 1942 in consequence of the real capacity resulting from the testing of the ovens, because the first test of the ovens in Crematory II took place, according to Pressac, on 4 March 1943 (p. 72).
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What remains sure is that Jean-Claude Pressac admits the irrationality of a plan which envisioned, in the basement of the crematories, a capacity of corpses enormously greater than that of the ovens on the ground floor. In fact, he even states that these gas chambers were divided in two to balance the process of extermination. The capacity of the ovens being (in his opinion, lacking in any technical foundation) still inferior to that of the gas chambers:
La recherche d’un meilleur agencement se poursuivit même après la mise en exploitation. Ainsi, fin 1943, afin de 'régulariser' la marche des crématoires II et III, l’administration du KL fit deviser leurs chambres à gaz en deux, ne consacrant plus que 100 m2 au gazage, pour tuer et incinérer 500 à 700 arrivants inaptes (compre-nant beaucoup d’enfants) en vingt-quatre heurs. (p. 67, our italics)
[The search for a better arrangement continued even after the start of the operation. Thus, at the end of 1943, so as to ‘standardize’ the running of Crematories II and III, the administration of the KL had their gas chambers divided in two, devoting no more than 100 m2 for gassing, to kill and incinerate 500 to 700 unfit arrivals (including many children) in twenty-four hours.]
The source of this information is the deposition of H. Tauber, which however speaks only of Crematory II. Therefore, Pressac’s attribution of this supposed modification to Crematory III, as well, is unwarranted. In his book of 1989, Pressac comments regarding H. Tauber’s story concerning the division of the gas chamber and of the successive gassings as follows:
"One of the very few contestable points in the deposition." [68]
Needless to say that there is no proof of this supposed division, either documentary or architectural.
It is evident that since the maximum real capacity of Crematories II and III of 360 corpses per day (considering the presence of the corpses of children), Pressac admits a fortiori the pointlessness of a supposed extermination plan by the Bauleitung.
The final project of the SS, effectively accomplished, according to Pressac, was the transformation of Leichenkeller 1 into a homicidal gas chamber, and of Leichenkeller 2 into an undressing room. That would mean that Crematories II and III were no longer provided with mortuary rooms. So, one may ask, where did the SS expect to deposit the corpses of the registered prisoners deceased of natural causes which had to be cremated? The question is even more legitimate in that for each of the planned Crematories II and III, we remember that originally there were envisioned three mortuary rooms, exclusively for sanitary purposes, for a total area of 671 m2. [69]
In support of his thesis, Pressac quotes a series of bavures (traces or suspicions) which we shall deal with subsequently. Nevertheless, the "definitive" proof is connected to the ventilation system of the crematories.
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VENTILATION SYSTEM 
The initial ventilation project of the new crematory included:
A blowing ventilator (No. 450) for the B-Keller (the future Leichenkeller 1) with a capacity of 4,800 m3/h;
An aspirating ventilator (drawing air out) (No. 450) for the B-Keller with a capacity of 4,800 m3/h;
An aspirating ventilator (No. 550) for the L-Keller (the future Leichenkeller 2) with a capacity of 10,000 m3/h;
An aspirating ventilator (No. 550) for the oven room with a capacity of 10,000 m3/h;
An aspirating ventilator (No. 375) with a capacity of 3,000 m3/h for the autopsy room (p. 30).
Since Pressac indicates even the volume of the respective rooms (p. 30), it is possible to calculate the number of air exchanges estimated within one hour:
4,800 / 483 = 9.93 exchanges for the B-Keller; 10,000 / 966 = 10.35 exchanges for the L-Keller; 10,000 / 1,031 = 9.69 exchanges for the oven room; 3,000 / 300 = 10 exchanges for the autopsy room.
Subsequently, the capacity of the ventilators was increased as follows: pumping ventilator for the B-Keller: 8,000 m3/h (=16.56 air exchanges per hour); aspirating ventilator for the B-Keller: 8,000 m3/h (= 16.56 air exchanges per hour); aspirating ventilator for the L-Keller 13,000 m3/h (=13.45 air exchanges per hour); aspirating ventilator for the oven room: 12,000 m3/h (= 11.64 air exchanges per hour);
aspirating ventilator for the autopsy room: 4,000 m3/h (= 13.33 air exchanges per hour) (p. 38).
The capacity of the ventilators mentioned by Pressac is not certified by any document. He obviously calculated them on the basis of the power of the motors. These are shown in the D59366 Topf plan of 10 March 1942 (Pressac’s Documents 13-15) which, by its own 
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date, refers to a period in which the crematory was being planned exclusively for hygienic purposes.
Pressac states that Leichenkeller 1 of Crematories II and III was actually equipped with ventilators with a capacity of 8,000 m3/h of air (p. 74 and 118), and even mentions the invoice of the ventilation system for Crematory III: invoice No. 729 of 27 March 1943 (p. 105, note 184).
He leaves understood that the increased capacity of the ventilators from 4,800 to 8,000 m3/h was effected to compensate for the arrangement of the ventilation system planned and built for a normal mortuary room. In fact he states, in relation to the Gasprüfer , which we will deal with later, that:
les SS voulaient vérifier si la puissance de ventilation de la Leichenkeller 1 compen-serait sa disposition d’origine, aération haute et désaération basse prévues pour une morgue, et qui aurait dû être inversée pour une chambre à gaz, requérant aération basse et désaération haute. (pp. 71-72)
[The SS wanted to verify if the power of the ventilation of Leichenkeller 1 would compensate for its original disposition, that is, high ventilation and low air aspiration which was anticipated for a mortuary, whereas the intention was to convert it to a gas chamber, requiring low ventilation and high air aspiration.]
Finally, by this time Leichenkeller 2, having become a changing room, no longer required a ventilation system; the ventilation systems were installed in Crematories II and III but the ventilators’ motors were not. (pp. 79, 80)
The study of the ventilation systems of Crematories II and III actually provides definite proof that Leichenkeller 1 was not transformed into a homicidal gas chamber. First of all, the Topf invoice No. 729 dated 27 March 1943 [70] cited by Pressac mentions that a ventilator with a capacity of 4,800 m3/h was required for the B-Raum, the supposed homicidal gas chamber, and that a ventilator with a capacity of 10,000 m3/h was needed for the L-Raum, the supposed changing room. The same capacities are indicated by the invoice No. 171 of 22 February 1943 for Crematory II. [71]
In his preceding 1989 work, Pressac publishes a table which summarizes "Dimensions and volumes of the Krematorium II and III Leichenkeller" on the basis of the plans of the crematories: Leichenkeller 1 measured 30 m in length, 7 in width and 2.41 in height; therefore, it had an area of 210 m2 and a volume of 506 m3. Leichenkeller 2 was 49.49 m long and 7.93 m wide and 2.30 m high, so its area was 392.5 m2, its volume was 902.7 m3. [72] Consequently, for the supposed homicidal gas chamber, the SS had foreseen 4,800 / 506 = 9.48 air exchanges per hour, while the supposed changing room 10,000 / 902.7 = 11 air exchanges per hour: Thus the gas chamber was less ventilated than the changing room! But that’s not all. In Engineer W. Heepke’s classic work on the planning of crematories, one reads that for morgues/mortuaries it was necessary to provide a minimum of five air changes per hour, and in case of intense utilization, up to ten ex-
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changes. [73] It is therefore evident that the ventilation system of Leichenkeller 1 was planned and built for a morgue. As a means of comparison, seventy-two air exchanges per hour were foreseen [74] for the disinfestation gas chambers with the Kreislauf system, the plans of which Pressac publishes in documents 16 and 17. Additionally, we notice that seventeen air exchanges per hour were foreseen for the first ventilation plan from Topf for Crematory I of Auschwitz (p. 18). This was almost twice that of the alleged homicidal gas chamber of Crematories II and III! These plans were for the autopsy room and morgue, without any homicidal purposes, with a purely hygienic goal.
Concerning the ventilation of Leichenkeller 2, it is true that the motor destined for this area does not figure in Plan 2197 of 19 March 1943, but that does not mean that it was decided not to install it at all. The work done in the crematories demonstrate the contrary. In Crematory II, the ventilation system of the alleged homicidal gas chamber in Leichen-keller 1 was installed between 22 February and 14 April 1943; the ventilation system of Leichenkeller 2’s supposed changing room was installed between 15 and 28 March; the ventilation system of Leichenkeller 2 of Crematory III was installed between 12 and 22 April, as Pressac informs us in his 1989 book. [75] Now, if the absence of ventilator motors had been based on the SS decision to convert Leichenkeller 2 into a homicidal gas chamber, it is difficult to understand why they had the ventilation systems installed in the two crematories of Leichenkeller 2 after they had decided that Leichenkeller 2 did not need a ventilation system! It is therefore evident that the SS had the ventilation system of Leichenkeller 2 installed because they intended to use it. That the motors were not installed immediately was solely coincidental.
What has been presented here is already more than sufficient to cancel the criminal character of the bavures (traces or suspicions) listed by Jean-Claude Pressac, which are in fact framed in a completely different context.
Pressac correctly states that the struggle against typhus at Auschwitz was aided by the disinfestation systems (p. 84). Since the appearance of the first cases of typhus, the SS had begun to think of expanding the existing systems; even with the introduction of new technologies (meeting of 30 June 1942) (p. 83). The compelling necessity of new disinfestation systems is confirmed by the design of the Zentralsauna (24 November 1942), [76] which, by its purpose of fighting the typhus epidemic, was part of the Sonderbau-massnahmen and came under the Durchführung der Sonderbehandlung . All this leads us to recall that in the meantime, at the end of 1942, the SS had decided to install several temporary disinfestation gas chambers. The first of these were in Crematories II and IV, [!10] which were in a more advanced phase of construction. That explains in a historical and logical manner all the bavures mentioned by Pressac, from which we shall take a brief respite.
The term Sonderkeller applied to Leichenkeller 1 (p. 60) enters into the terminology. Sonder- applied to the fight against typhus.
The term Vergasungskeller designates a disinfestation basement. In the explanatory report on the construction of KGL Birkenau dated 30 October 1941, the two Zyklon-B 
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Entlausungsbaracken (disinfestation installations) subsequently built, BW5a and 5b are equipped with a Vergasungsraum. [77]
The plan to preheat Leichenkeller 1 (p. 73) makes sense for a disinfestation gas chamber because it would permit shorter gassing times (the duration of a gassing using 20 g of hydrocyanic acid per square meter required 45 minutes at a temperature of 25°C to 35°C, but three hours at a temperature of 0 to 5°C). [78] It would be much less for a homicidal gas chamber, for a mass extermination in which the bodies of the victims would heat up the area sufficiently; therefore a preheating would be absolutely superfluous. [!11]
The presence of a gas-proof door (p. 80) is perfectly normal in a disinfestation gas chamber.
The request for 10 Gasprüfer (p. 71) (see appendix, Documents No. 7 and 8), supposing that it really deals with Anzeigegeräte für Blausäure Reste (implements for the indication of residues of hydrocyanic acid) (p. 72), is perfectly normal for a disinfestation gas chamber.
Instead, Pressac writes, as enthusiastically as naively:
Ce document constitue la preuve définitive de l’existence d’une chambre à gaz homicide dans le crématoire II. (p. 72, our italics)
[This document constitutes the definitive proof of the existence of a homicidal gas chamber in Crematory II.]
This document can be at best an indication, not a definitive proof, of the existence of a gas chamber. But that this gas chamber was homicidal, however, is a simple arbitrary affirmation by Jean-Claude Pressac.
On this subject Pressac adds a very important explanation:
Des essais avec introduction préalable de Zyklon-B furent pratiqués. La mesure du gaz cyanhydrique résiduel aurait été effectuée par une méthode chimique, et non avec les dix détecteurs de gaz , demandés trop tardivement pour être livrés à temps. (p. 73, our italics)
[Some experiments with the preliminary introduction of Zyklon-B were made. The measurement of the residual hydrocyanic gas would have been done by a chemical method, and not with the ten gas detectors requested too late to be delivered in time.]
Although this document jibes perfectly with our thesis, in our opinion, it is a forgery; of proper design, but poorly executed. To break it down:
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a. The Gasprüfer , in the German technical terminology, [79] were simple analyzers of the combustion gases.
b. To prove the existence of hydrocyanic acid gas residue, there was only one chemical method, and no détecteurs (detectors) based on physical properties. [80]
c. The apparatus that was used for this test was called Gasrestnachweisgerät für Zyk-lon. [81]
d. This apparatus was required equipment at all of the disinfestation installations, including those at Auschwitz.
e. Since these devices were available in the disinfestation installations at the camp, it would not have made sense to request them from a company that did not produce them. They could have been obtained from the above-mentioned installations or ordered directly from the companies which made or distributed them (the same ones that distributed the Zyklon B).
f. Since the crematory administrations did not even request gas masks with the special filter "J" (for hydrocyanic acid), as with the Gasprüfer , it is clear that it was possible to procure them at the camp, where it could also procure the Gasrestnachweisgeräte für 
Zyklon.
Our conclusion: the Gasprüfer were simple analyzers of the combustion gases of the crematory ovens.
Regarding the presence of 14 showers in Leichenkeller 1: According to Pressac, this is a bavure because these showers were false (p. 80), and were used therefore to deceive victims of alleged homicidal gas chambers; that these showers were false is a simple arbitrary statement by Pressac.
The mention of "a wooden blower" (Holzgebläse) destined for Leichenkeller 1 (p. 70) is for Pressac a bavure technique (technical trace) since:
prouvait que l’air extrait n’était plus celui d’une morgue, chargé de miasmes, mais de l’air mélangé à un produit agressif ne devant être aspiré que par une soufflerie ne pouvant être corrodée, donc entièrement de bois (de préférence en cyprès). Le toxique gazeux utilisé dans les chambres à gaz homicides était de l’acide cyanhy-drique à forte concentration (20 gr/m3) et les acides sont corrosifs. (pp. 70-71, our italics)
[it proved that the air extracted was no longer that of a morgue, permeated by miasmas, but air mixed with a corrosive substance which could be vented only by a non-corrodible fan, made entirely of wood (preferably cypress). The gaseous toxin used in the homicidal gas chambers was concentrated hydrocyanic acid (20 gr/m3) and the acids are corrosive.]
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Nevertheless the above-mentioned wooden blower was later replaced with a metal one, as is clear from the Aktenvermerk of 25 March 1943, [82] which reads:
Anstelle des Holzgebläses für die Entlüftungsanlage des Leichenkellers I wird ein 
Schmiedeeisengebläse als Ausführung gewählt.  
[instead of the wooden blower for the exhaust system of Leichenkeller I, a wrought-iron-type blower was adopted into the final design].
Pressac must therefore explain why, given that hydrocyanic acid (as he says) is corrosive, the engineers of the Bauleitung replaced a wooden blower with a metal one, and why the Degesch engineers proposed a metallic apparatus for the disinfestation gas chamber with the Kreislauf system, like those that appear on Documents 16 and 17 of his book. Why would they have done this—so that they could have been "corroded" by hydrocyanic acid?
In these rooms, standard or normal, which had a volume of 10 m3, one can of Zyklon B of 200 g (HCN contents) was used in order to produce a gas concentration of 20 g/m3. Pressac states, as always without any proof, that this was the concentration of the alleged homicidal gas chambers. But previously, he claimed that the concentration of gas used in homicidal gas chambers of Birkenau was 12 g/m3. [83] We shall later learn the reason for this increase.
Drahtnetzeinschiebvorrichtung does not signify "dispositifs d’introduction en treillis de fil de fer" ["introduction devices made of wire netting"] (p. 79), but rather, insertion devices (the verb einschieben, means in fact, "insert, to slide into"; for example, one "inserts" a drawer in a closet).
The device for the introduction of Zyklon B in the alleged homicidal gas chambers would be called Einwurfvorrichtung (Pressac himself speaks in fact of déversement , "pouring out," of the Zyklon B in the alleged homicidal gas chambers [p. 89]). The Holzblenden, obturateurs de bois, "wooden obstructors" (p. 79), cannot be what Pressac maintains, i.e. wooden covers of the alleged introduction devices of the Zyklon B: These devices would be called in fact Holzdeckel, precisely covers, not obstructors.  
Pressac states that the above-mentioned devices were found in "morgue 1" (p. 79), that is, in Leichenkeller 1, the alleged homicidal gas chamber. In reality, in the inventory of Crematory II, [84] these devices are attributed to Leichenkeller 2, the alleged changing room (for the supposed homicidal gas chamber): Did the SS want to gas the victims in the "changing room"? But that’s not all! These devices do not figure at all in the inventory of Crematory III: [85] Then how did the SS think they could introduce the Zyklon B into the gas chamber by affably asking the victims to carry in the cans of Zyklon B and open them after the gas-proof door closed behind them?
Therefore, these devices could have been anything but what Jean-Claude Pressac claims.
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The designation cave à déshabillage "cellar for undressing" (p. 74), Auskleidekeller, attributed to Leichenkeller 2, is perfectly normal, from the moment that a temporary disinfestation gas chamber was installed in Leichenkeller 1.
Jährling’s bavure shows once again, as if there were any more need for it, with what kind of distorted logic Pressac has fabricated his "criminal traces". The passage merits citation in its entirety; but first, it is necessary to give a brief historical setting. Nineteen Zyklon B gas disinfestation chambers with the Kreislauf system were designed for the Aufnah-megebäude (reception building of the new prisoners) of the main camp. The Kreislauf systems were not at first installed.
At the end of 1943, it was decided to transform eight of these rooms into short wave disinfestation chambers, in line with a new process developed by the Siemens company. Work began in February 1944 (p. 88). At the same time, it was decided to put the eleven remaining rooms into operation by installing the Kreislauf system. The Boos company, which should have performed this work, raised objections. The Testa company (Tesch und Stabenow), distributor of Zyklon B, had also taken an interest in the affair, as had Dr. Wirths, who remembered that according to an ordinance in effect, the Zyklon B had to be replaced by another gas: Arginal, the use of which required an adaptation of the Zyklon B gas chambers. (pp. 88-89).
A cette occasion, l’employé civil Jährling commit une extraordinaire bévue dans une lettre destinée à la Testa. Il désigna les chambres à gaz d’épouillage de 'Normal-gaskammer' mot souligné et mis entre guillemet, comme s’il existait des chambres à gaz 'normales' et d’autres 'anormales'. L’appellation fut reprise par la Testa, qui af-firmait d’abord que la conversion à l’Arginal n’était obligatoire que dans le cas d’installations nouvelles, et insistait surtout pour que le personnel s’occupant des chambres à gaz normales à l’acide cyanhydrique fût particulièrement bien formé, sous-entendant que leur fonctionnement était nettement plus complexe que le simple déversement de Zyklon B dans des chambres à gaz 'anormales'. (p. 89, our italics)
[On this occasion, the civil employee Jährling committed an extraordinary blunder in a letter destined for the Testa company. He designated the delousing gas chambers as ‘Normalgaskammer’, a word underlined and put in quotation marks, as if there existed ‘normal’ gas chambers and others which were ‘abnormal’. The appellation was taken up by the Testa company, which first stated that the conversion to Arginal [!12] was only obligatory in the new installations, and insisted that the personnel who handled the normal gas chambers with the hydrocyanic acid should be particularly well trained: implying that their operation was distinctly more complex than the simple pouring of Zyklon B into the ‘abnormal’ gas chambers.]
If Pressac had familiarized himself even a little with the disinfestation gas chambers using hydrocyanic acid, he would have known that a Normalgaskammer was a gas chamber according to the norms; that is, a standard Degesch room with a Kreislauf system. A disinfestation room not conforming to the norm was a simple auxiliary gas chamber (be-helfsmässige Blausäurekammer ). [86]
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Therefore, Jährling simply wanted to underline that the envisioned transformation of the operating system referred to gas chambers planned as hydrocyanic gas chambers with the Degesch-Kreislauf, normal, and not to chambers without such a system, abnormal, like that of the BW 5b system of Birkenau. That’s all.
Chapter Six
BUNKERS 1 AND 2
Before examining Jean-Claude Pressac’s statements on Bunkers 1 and 2, it is well to specify that this designation (like those of "red house" and "white house") is not found either in the German documents or in the reports of the clandestine resistance movement of the period at Auschwitz; it has been created by post-war eyewitnesses.
Pressac states that Bunker 1, destined for mass extermination, went into operation at the end of May 1942 (p. 39), that is, as we have seen, even before R. Höss received from Himmler the alleged order for extermination of the Jews.
There exists no document on the existence of Bunker 1 (and 2) as homicidal installations. What Pressac says on the subject, as if it were certified historical truth, is in reality the simple result of extrapolation of testimonies which contradict each other on all essential points. [87] According to Pressac, Bunker 2 began its activity at the beginning of June 1942 (p. 41). Pressac describes the genesis of the installation as follows:
Non loin de Bunker 1, s’élevait une seconde fermette, crépie de chaux et d’une superficie de 105 m2. La transformer en chambre à gaz était simple, l’opération ayant déjà été réalisée au Bunker 1, et un demi-millier de personnes pourraient y tenir. Mais Höss voulut améliorer la ventilation. Il consulta Bischoff qui lui montra un article du Dr. G. Peters, le directeur de la Degesch (entreprise fabriquant le Zyklon-B), où était décrite une installation d’épouillage au Zyklon-B avec huit petites chambres à gaz de 10 m 3 disposées côte à côte. (pp. 41-42)
[Not far from Bunker 1 arose a second little whitewashed farmhouse with an area of 105 m2. To transform it into a gas chamber was simple. The operation had already been realized at Bunker 1, and it could have held half a thousand people. But Höss wanted to improve the ventilation. He consulted Bischoff, who showed him an article by G. Peters, the director of the Degesch Company (the enterprise fabricating the Zyklon B), which described a delousing installation using Zyklon B with eight little gas chambers of 10 m3 arranged side by side.]
The article, as Pressac himself informs us, had been requested by the Boos Company:
afin de s’en inspirer pour équiper le futur bâtiment de réception des détenus du Stammlager d’une batterie de 19 cellules d’épouillage à gaz semblables. (p. 42)
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[in order to use it as a guide for equipping the future prisoner reception building of the Stammlager with a battery of nineteen similar delousing gas cells.]
Therefore the article concerned the nineteen hydrocyanic acid disinfestation rooms with the Kreislauf system planned for the Aufnahmegebäude. The date of the request is 1 July 1942 (p. 103, note 135), that is, one month after the presumed beginning of the alleged activity of Bunker 2. That this article (in which the plan for a Degesch gas chamber with the Kreislauf system published by Pressac as Document 16-17, which has been previously discussed) is presented as having been shown by Bischoff to Höss for the purpose of furnishing Bunker 2 with a ventilation system, is not attested to by any document, and is the pure fantasy of Jean-Claude Pressac, who states, moreover, that no mechanical ventilation system was installed in Bunker 2.
Finally:
furent construites dans la blanche chaumière [Bunker 2] quatre petites chambres à gaz d’environ 50 m2 (sic), placées en parallèle , sans ventilation mécanique, mais orientées au mieux dans le sens du vent (nord-sud à Birkenau). (p. 42, our italics)
[Four little gas chambers of about 50 m2 [sic] were constructed in the white thatched house (Bunker 2). These were placed in parallel, without mechanical ventilation, but oriented in the best direction for the wind (North-South at Birkenau).]
The aim of Pressac’s pretensions are obvious. One of the criticisms made of his 1989 book regarding the alleged homicidal chambers is that, even though the Germans were at the forefront of technology in hydrocyanic disinfestation chambers, thanks to their invention of the Degesch-Kreislauf System, according to Pressac, the Germans’ alleged homicidal gas chambers were supposed to have been technologically unsophisticated. Pressac must therefore establish in some manner a connection between the two types of systems, which he does in a crafty manner, asserting on the one hand that the transformation of Bunker 2 into a homicidal gas chamber had been done:
en s’inspirant des installations d’épouillage montées par la Degesch de Frankfurt/Main (cellules placées en parallèle), (p. 115, our italics)
[emulating the delousing systems installed by the Degesch Company of Frankfurt/Main (cells placed in parallel)],
and furthermore, that the first homicidal gassing in Crematory II had been done with the introduction of 6 kg of Zyklon B, which:
représente une concentration d’environ 20 g d’acide cyanhydrique par m 3, identique 
à celle préconisée par les dirigeants de la Degesch dans leurs cellules d’épouillage . (p. 119, our italics)
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[represents a concentration of about 20 g of hydrocyanic acid per m3, identical to that authorized by the directors of Degesch for their delousing cells.]
Thus, the Bauleitung engineers would have drawn the least significant element from the article of G. Peters (and E. Wüstiger): the arrangement of the gas chambers en parallèle (in parallel). Of the presumed Bunker 2 only the foundation remains which shows subdivision in seven locations the height of these locations, nothing is known. Therefore the volume calculated by Pressac (4 chambers of 50 m3 each) is simply the fruit of his imagination.
Concerning the concentration of hydrocyanic acid: since the volume of Leichenkeller 1 (506 m3) would have been reduced to about 406 m3, after the removal of about 100 m3 occupied by the 1,492 bodies of the victims and the reinforced cement columns, the concentration obtainable with 6 kg of Zyklon B [!14] would have been (6,000 / 406 =) about 14.8 g/m3, not 20.
Not bad: Pressac states authoritatively that the concentration of hydrocyanic acid in the alleged homicidal gas chamber was 20 g/m3. Here the second factitious connection between the Degesch disinfestation gas chambers and the alleged homicidal gas chambers is created from thin air.
In the beginning, the SS had not foreseen changing rooms for Bunkers 1 and 2; the victims undressed en plein air (in the open air), but then:
Bischoff demanda dans son second rapport le montage, près des deux Bunker, de quatre baraques-écuries de bois comme vestiaire pour les inaptes. Chaque baraque coûtait 15,000 RM. La demande fut formulée ainsi: '4 Stück Baracken für Sonderbe-handlung der Häftlinge in Birkenau/4 Baraques pour [le] traitement spécial des dé-tenus à Birkenau.' (pp. 45-46, Pressac’s italics)
[Bischoff requested in his second report the construction, close to the two Bunkers, of four wooden hut-stables for changing rooms for the unfit. The cost of each hut was 15,000 RM. The request was formulated thus: ‘four huts for the special treatment of the prisoners at Birkenau’.]
The report in question was written at the end of July 1942, during a full scale typhus epidemic. As we have explained, the "special treatment of the prisoners" did not have a criminal significance, but was a health measure coming under the sanitary provisions taken by the SS to arrest the epidemic. There is no need to add that the relation of these huts to Bunkers 1 and 2 is a purely arbitrary opinion by Pressac and, as usual, has no documentary foundation.
The Badeanstalten für Sonderaktionen mentioned in the Aktenvermerk of 21 August 1942 (p. 52) had the same function; each had to be equipped with two three-chambered ovens of the simplified models, evidently to cremate infected corpses of prisoners who died of typhus.
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Pressac believes he has found a bavure in a plan of the area of interest at Auschwitz-Birkenau:
indiquant que la zone où se situaient les Bunker 1 et 2 et leurs fosses d’enfouissement était classée 'Sperrgebiet/zone interdit' (legend of Document 21 and p. 52)
[indicating that the zone where Bunkers 1 and 2 and their burying pits were situated, was classified a ‘prohibited area’.]
But this document bears the date of 2 June 1943, at which time the two bunkers had ceased their alleged activity two and a half months earlier, and the so-called "cremation pits" (which Pressac transforms for the occasion into fosses d’enfouissement, "burying pits") had been covered over and the earth leveled: What, therefore, did the SS want to hide in this zone?
Actually, the Sperrgebiet refers to the entire white area within the oblique hatching, and therefore includes the entire zone of the camp of Birkenau. The Sperrgebiet is clearly related to various Lagersperren (camp closures) decreed by Höss due to typhus: 10 July 1942 (p. 115), 23 July (p. 116), 8 February 1943 (p. 118). In June 1943, typhus still raged in the Gypsy camp at Birkenau, and in Sector BI cases of typhus were reported until the end of July (pp. 120 and 121).
In May-June of 1944, during the deportation of the Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz,
le Bunker 2 fut réactivé pour la circonstance pour de petits groupes, dont les corps étaient brûlés dans une fosse d’incinération de 30 m 2. (pp. 90-91)
[Bunker 2 was reactivated on occasion for small groups, whose bodies were burned in an incineration pit of 30 m2.]
This is decidedly irrational. The SS would have supposedly equipped an extermination installation providing "a half thousand" corpses at a time with a cremation area, sufficient at the most for 50 corpses; that is, only a tenth of the actual needs. It is necessary to add furthermore, that the eyewitness M. Nyiszli speaks of two "cremation pits" which measured 50m × 6m (600 m 2 altogether), and served 5,000 to 6,000 corpses per day. [88] In his preceding book, Pressac considers this witness credible. His only fault: He multiplied the numbers by 4! [89] Yet, in the specific case, Pressac mentions a burning surface 20 times less than that declared by Nyiszli, and a cremation capacity, deducible from the area, 100 to 120 times less!
On page 147, suddenly a second pit appears, plus petite (smaller) than the first. Pressac introduces this to increase the capacity of Bunker 2 slightly, so as to justify technically the alleged extermination of the Hungarian Jews. This does not change anything we have demonstrated above.
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Chapter Seven
CREMATORIES IV AND V
Pressac states that Crematories IV and V were dependent upon Bunkers 1 and 2 (p. 50), and assigned to them (p. 52).
This logistic arrangement was, to say the least, an unhappy one, given that the distance of the crematories (road distance) from the supposed Bunker 1 was about 800 meters, and from the supposed Bunker 2 about 900 meters. Therefore, the corpses would have to have been transported to the crematories by truck. If one considers that in Crematory I (according to Pressac) a more rational extermination procedure had already been worked out, one subsequently begun in all four of the other crematories of Birkenau—the placing of the homicidal gas chamber in the crematory—the planning of two "criminal" crematories not only without gas chambers, but even 800 to 900 meters away from the alleged homicidal gas chambers, is decidedly senseless.
Describing the genesis of these crematories, Pressac writes:
Quant au crématoire IV (et V), son premier dessin d’août 1942 n’en montrait que la partie incinératrice. A la mi-octobre, la Konrad Segnitz, chargée de sa toiture, le re-présenta avec ses dimensions définitives, la salle du four étant prolongée d’une vaste morgue de 48 sur 12 mètres (576 m 2), indiquant son utilisation 'en bout de chaîne': le déshabillage et le gazage des victimes se situaient toujours au Bunker 2, mais les ca-davres produits étaient déposés dans la morgue du crématoire IV pour y être inciné-rés. Puis, les SS cherchèrent à placer une chambre à gaz (chauffée avec un poêle) au centre du bâtiment, ce qui lui aurait donné la disposition logique suivante:
Vestiaire – Chambre à gaz – Sas – Salle du four à 8 moufles (p. 67, our italics)
[As for Crematory IV (and V), its first drawing of August 1942 showed only the incinerator portion. In mid-October, the Konrad Segnitz company, assigned to do its roofing, depicted in its final dimensions that the oven room was an extension of a huge morgue, 48 by 12 meters (576 m2), indicating that its function ‘at the end of the sequence’, which was the undressing and the gassing of the victims, was always situated in Bunker 2, but the corpses produced were deposited in the mortuary of Crematory IV to be incinerated. Then the SS tried to place a gas chamber (heated with a stove) at the center of the building, which would have given it the following logical arrangement:
Changing room – Gas chamber – Airlock – Oven room with 8 chambers.]
The drawing of the Segnitz company is Plan 1361, dated 14 October 1942. [90] "Then," according to that statement, the SS at that time, tried to install a homicidal gas chamber at the center of the building heated by a stove. This is false because the presence of a stove 
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at the center of the building appears in Plan 1678 from 14 August 1942, and Pressac comments on this as follows:
The presence of a stove in the uncompleted room of Drawing 1678 is a formal indication that it was used for gassing. [91]
Thereupon, Pressac expounds the subsequent development of the plans for Crematories IV and V:
Mais le vestiaire manquait. Édifier une baraque-écurie à l’extérieur compensait cette absence et donnait:
Vestiaire – chambre à gaz – Morgue – Sas – Salle du four à 8 moufles.
Les crématoires IV et V ayant un rendement incinérateur moitié moindre que celui des II et III, leurs chambres à gaz devaient être plus modeste. Les SS conjuguèrent leur besoin de chambres à gaz de faible capacité (100 m 2) pour 'traiter' de petits groupes de victimes à l’idée de marche alternative et établirent ainsi le 11 janvier 1943 le plan définitif du crématoire IV (et V). (p. 67)
[But the changing room was missing. The building of a hut-stable compensated for this absence and gave:
Changing room – Gas chamber – Mortuary – Airlock – Oven room with 8 chambers.
Crematories IV and V, having incineration yields half of those of Crematories II and III, were to have more modest gas chambers. The SS combined their need for gas chambers of lower capacity (100 m2) for ‘treating’ small groups of victims with the proposal for an alternative operation and thus established, on 11 January 1943, the final plan of Crematory IV (and V).] 
The simplified plan laid out by Pressac includes this sequence: a changing room which serves two homicidal gas chambers (Nos. 1 and 2), each for 500 "unfit," a corridor, a mortuary room, an Sas (airlock) chamber, and the oven room (p. 67).
He adds that:
cette conception nécessitait la construction d’un vestiaire extérieur, qui n’était pas indispensable par beau temps, les victimes se déshabillant dehors (été 1944), mais l’était en hiver. Pour éviter de le bâtir, les SS attribuèrent à la salle centrale une double fonction, de vestiaire et de morgue, en alternance. (p. 68)
[this conception necessitated the construction of an outdoor changing room, which was not indispensable in nice weather, the victims undressing outside (summer 1944), but was necessary in winter. To avoid constructing it, the SS assigned to the Central Hall a double function of changing room and mortuary, alternately.]
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In summary, the criminal structure of Crematories IV and V, établi par les techniciens et les ingénieurs de la Bauleitung ["established by the technicians and the engineers of the Bauleitung"], revealed itself as "aberrant" (p. 68), only because "les techniciens et les ingénieurs" ["the technicians and the engineers"] of the Bauleitung, after having furnished (according to Pressac) Bunkers 1 and 2 with two changing shacks each, now, unexplainably, had to éviter (avoid) building a single shack near Crematories IV and V! For what reason? Impenetrable mystery!
Pressac states that Crematories IV and V were each equipped with two gas chambers of 100 m2 each, in total 200 m2, which could hold altogether 1,000 people, with a density of five people per square meter. But in his book Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, he writes:
The floor area of the block of three gas chambers was 240 m2 (4,800 m3 [!15]). 2,400 people could therefore be squeezed in at a density of ten per square meter [!] [92] (our italics)
Yet the third gas chamber suddenly reappears on page 147. For what reason, we shall see later. In the above-mentioned book, Pressac admits that the extermination system of Crematories IV and V was even more "aberrant," even with his forcibly inflated oven capacities:
It would take four [or] five days to cremate 2,400 bodies. [93]
Considering the maximum real capacity of the ovens, the cremation of 2,400 corpses would have required over twelve days. Inversely, to cremate 2,400 corpses in the course of one day would have necessitated 100 chambers instead of the existing eight.
The gassing technique imagined by Pressac is this:
Le premier gazage fut catastrophique. Un SS devait, masque sur le visage, monter sur une petite échelle pour accéder à une 'fenêtre', l’ouvrir d’une main et de l’autre verser le Zyklon B. Sa prestation tenait du numéro d’équilibriste et devait être répé-tée six fois. (p. 76, our italics)
[The first gassing was catastrophic. An SS man, mask on face, had to climb on a little ladder to access a ‘window’, open it with one hand, and with the other, pour the Zyklon B. This feat was like a balancing act, and had to be repeated six times.]
Pressac forgets to add that the SS juggler would also have had to plead affably with the victims not to push him backwards, or grab him, or pull him in, while holding himself with one hand on the ladder. He would have had to extend his other hand inside the window (perched at 1.70 meters above the pavement) to pour a can of Zyklon B into the gas chamber!
Pressac’s narration continues:
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Lorsque les portes étanches furent ouvertes pour évacuer le gaz, on s’aperçut que l’aération naturelle était inefficace et il fallut percer d’urgence une porte dans le couloir nord pour provoquer un courant d’air. (p. 76, our italics)
[When the air-tight doors were opened to evacuate the gas, it was perceived that the natural ventilation was ineffective and it was urgently necessary to open a door in the north corridor to induce an air current.]
The story of ventilation in Crematories IV and V is one of those tales which illustrates the silliness of Pressac’s argumentation. In his book Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, Pressac pretends to see this door "urgently" opened in the north wall of Crematory IV in a photograph [94] which shows only the south side of Crematories IV and V not in (on) Crematory IV, which appears clearly in the foreground, but rather in (on) Crematory V, which is in the background partially obscured by trees. The south wall of Crematory V is so indistinct that one can make out a door in connection to the corridor only with a great deal of determination, and examination of the original photograph [95] shows that Pressac has mistaken for a door, shade produced by trunks of trees delimited at the bottom by lighter ground.
Prüfer, arriving at Birkenau the 18th or 19th of May,
constata avec une tristesse feinte que la garantie du four du crématoire IV était expi-rée et qu’il ne pouvait plus réparer un four édifié avec des matériaux de second choix, estima néanmoins que ses chambres à gaz étaient encore utilisables à condition de les ventiler mécaniquement, empocha une commande de deux installations de désaération pour les crématoires IV e V se montant a 2.510 RM, et repartit le 20. (pp. 79-80)
[stated with a feigned sadness that the warranty for the oven of Crematory IV had expired, and that it was no longer possible to repair an oven built with second class materials. He judged that the gas chambers were nevertheless still usable, on the condition that they be mechanically ventilated. He pocketed an order for two ventilation systems for Crematories IV and V, amounting to 2,510 RM, and departed on the 20th.]
The source indicated by Pressac in note 247 (p. 107) is a "lettre et devis Topf du 9 juin 1943" ["letter and estimate from Topf of 9 June 1943"]. But in Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers he affirms, regarding this same source:
The author would point out that NOTHING in this letter indicates that the air extraction systems proposed for Crematories IV and V were for the gas chambers, and that they could on the face of it, only be for the furnace rooms. [96] (capital letters by Pressac)
 	144
Given that the ventilation systems were so urgent and essential for the good operation of the alleged homicidal gas chambers, one would have expected them to be installed immediately; here is instead what occurred:
Concernant ces dernières, la Topf, qui avait trouvé difficilement un moteur électri-que adéquat, expédia quand même une des deux désaérations en petite vitesse le 21 décembre. Elle fut stockée au Bauhof le 1er janvier 1944 et laissée ainsi jusqu’en mai 1944. (p. 88)
[Concerning these last, Topf, who had found an adequate electric motor with difficulty, nevertheless quickly shipped by freight train one of the two ventilation systems on 21 December. It was put into storage at the Bauhof on 1 January 1944, and left as such until May 1944.]
Regarding this, Pressac adds:
L’installation de désaération, en magasin depuis janvier, fut montée en mai au cré-matoire V, dont le four fut jugé capable de fonctionner correctement. Pour les deux chambres à gaz et le couloir, représentant un volume de 480 m 3 presqu’égal à celui des morgues des crématoires II et III, Schultze avait prévu une désaération de même puissance: une soufflerie No. 450 avec un moteur de 3,5 CV extrayant 8,000 m3 par heure. (pp. 89-90)
[The ventilation system, which had been in storage since January, was installed in May in Crematory V, whose oven was judged capable of functioning correctly. For the two gas chambers and the corridor, representing a volume of 480 m3, Schultze had anticipated a ventilation of the same capacity, almost equal to that of the mortuaries of Crematories II and III: A ventilator, No. 450 with a 3.5 CV motor, extracting 8,000 m3 per hour.]
Leichenkeller 1 (the alleged homicidal gas chamber of Crematories II and III) measured 483 m3 (p. 30) and had a ventilator capacity of 8,000 m3 per hour (p. 38), corresponding to 16.56 air changes per hour. Schultze had planned a ventilator for the three alleged homicidal gas chambers of Crematory V, which measured 480 m3, with a capacity of 8,000 m3/h of air, corresponding to 16.66 air exchanges per hour. Therefore, the two systems had the même puissance [same capacity].
We have already pointed out that the volume of Leichenkeller 1 was 506 m3, and not 483 m3, and that the ventilators of its system had a capacity of 4,800 m3/h of air, not 8,000, which corresponds to 9.41 air exchanges per hour, and not 16.56. Therefore, concerning Crematory V, according to Plan 2036, of 11 January 1943, [97] the three areas supposedly transformed into gas chambers measured respectively:
 	145
(12.35 m × 7.72 m = 95.3 m 2) × 2.20 m = 209.6 m 3 (11.69 m × 8.40 m = 98.2 m 2) × 2.20 m = 216.0 m 3 (11.69 m × 3.50 m = 40.9 m 2) × 2.20 m = 90.0 m 3 Totals: 234.4 m2 515.6 m3
Here Pressac finds himself faced with another difficulty: Since the combined volume of the two gas chambers (which he mentions on pages 67 and 68) is 425.6 m3, the ventilator, with a capacity of 8,000 m3/h of air, would correspond to 18.8 air exchanges per hour. In other words, engineering specialists from the Topf company are supposed to have equipped ground-level rooms, provided with doors and windows (and which therefore would have been more easily ventilated), with a ventilating system proportionally more powerful than those of basement rooms, which were more difficult to ventilate! Then Pressac introduces the third gas chamber, and decreases the total volume from 515.6 to 480 m3 to deceptively obtain two ventilation systems de même puissance (of the same power).
On page 90, Pressac presents a plan which shows the:
désaération des chambres à gaz du crématoire V, conçue par Karl Schultze en juin 1943 et monté en mai 1944.
[ventilation of the gas chambers of Crematory V, designed by Karl Schultze in June 1943, and installed in May 1944.]
The source is not indicated, because it does not exist. This plan is in fact the simple fruit of Pressac’s imagination. Furthermore it is a mistaken fruit, because the letter from the Topf company of 9 June 1943 [98] mentions:
die Ausführung der gemauerten Entlüftungskanäle [the construction of walled ventilation ducts], while Pressac’s plan shows bare pipes.
 	146
Chapter Eight
CONCLUSION
With this, we have arrived at the close of our critique of these Auschwitz books by Jean-Claude Pressac.
The 1979 declaration of French historians on Hitlerian extermination policies closed with the following axiom:
Il ne faut pas se demander comment, techniquement un tel meurtre de masse a été possible. Il a été possible techniquement puisqu’il a eu lieu. Tel est le point de dé-part obligé de toute enquête historique sur ce sujet.
[We must not ask ourselves how technically such a mass murder was possible. It was possible technically because it took place. Such is the obligatory point of departure for all historic investigation on this subject.] [99]
Jean-Claude Pressac, however, wanted to study the crematory ovens and the alleged homicidal gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau technically, although he lacked the required technical competence to undertake such a study. Nevertheless, Pressac had to accept the Revisionists’ methodological principle, according to which, where testimonies and technics disagree, it is the latter which must prevail. He has applied that principle by reducing the number of the alleged victims of homicidal gassing, due precisely to its incompatibility with the capacity (craftily inflated by him) of the crematory ovens. In this manner, he has opened an irreparable leak in traditional historiography, because technology reveals the material impossibility of mass extermination at Auschwitz-Birkenau. If therefore, Pressac wants to be coherent in his technical stance, all that remains for him is to accept this conclusion. If he does not accept it, he can only go backwards, declaring, in acceptance of the 1979 appeal of the French historians, that one must not ask how such alleged mass extermination was technically possible.
In any case, one thing is certain: These Auschwitz books by Jean-Claude Pressac represent the end of a legend.
NOTES 
1.	L’Express, 23-29 September 1993, pp. 78 and 80.
2.	These examples are sufficient to illustrate the level of technical competence of Jean-Claude Pressac:
He thinks that "the temperature has to be raised to 27°C for hydrocyanic acid to evaporate" (J.C. Pressac, Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, p. 375), ignoring that evaporation of hydrocyanic acid can occur even below its boil-
 	147
ing point (25.6°C), even at temperatures below 0°C [See in this connection: G. Peters, Die hochwirksamen Gase und Dämpfe in der Schädlingsbekämpfung: 
Sammlung chemischer und chemischtechnischer Vorträge [Stuttgart: Verlag von Ferdinand Enke, 1942], pp. 85-88].
Regarding the crematory ovens, Pressac presents an "Operation plan of a Topf oven with three chambers which was built in two models in Crematories II and III" (J.C. Pressac, Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, op. cit., p. 492) based on the deposition of H. Tauber, in which the gases of the gasogenes pass around the chambers: The technical basis of this plan is a translation error! (Pres-sac’s two translators have translated the Polish preposition przez, (through), as around. The translation error is found on p. 489. The Polish text says: przez obie boczne retorty [through the two lateral chambers] (Archiwum Pa stwowego Muzeum w O wi cimiu, hereafter: APMO, Dpr.-Hd, 11a, p. 133).
3.	Pressac, Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, p. 264.
4.	Ibid., p. 183.
5.	Ibid., p. 97.
6.	Ibid., p. 183.
7.	Kostenanschlag of Topf for KL Mauthausen of 1 November 1940. Bundesarchiv Koblenz (hereafter: BK), NS4 Ma/54.
8.	Letter from Topf to SS-Neubauleitung KL Mauthausen of 6 January 1941. BK, NS4 Ma/54.
9.	Letter from Topf to SS-Neubauleitung KL Mauthausen of 14 July 1941. Staatsarchiv Weimar, LK 4651.
10. "Factors Which Affect the Process of Cremation: Third Session" by Dr. E.W. Jones, assisted by Mr. R.G. Williamson. Extracted from: The Cremation Society of Great 
Britain Annual Cremation Conference Report, 1975. 11. APMO, D-Z/Bau, nr. inw. 1967, p. 65.
12. Letter of H. Kori G.m.b.H. to SS-Sturmbannführer Lenzer, Lublin, of 23 October 
1941. Archiwum Pa stwowego Muzeum na Majdanku, sygn. VI-9a, vol. 1. 13. APMO, BW 30/46, p. 18.
14. APMO, BW 30/46, p. 6.
15. On the Volckmann-Ludwig oven see:
- Dipl. Ing. Volckmann, Hamburg, "Ein neues Einäscherungsverfahren", Zentralblatt für Feuerbestattung , 1931; - Kurt Prüfer, "Ein neues Einäscherungsverfahren. Eine Entgegnung", Die Flamme, 40 Jg., 1931; - Richard Kessler, "Der neue Einäscherungsofen System Volckmann-Ludwig", Zen-tralblatt für Feuerbestattung , 1931; - Friedrich Helwig, "Vom Bau und Betrieb der Krematorien", Gesundheits-Ingenieur, 54. Jg., Heft 24, 1931; - H. Wolfer, "Der neue 'Volckmann-Ludwig' - Einäscherungsofen im Stuttgarter Krematorium", Gesundheits-Ingenieur, 55. Jg., Heft 13, 1932.
16. H.R. Heinicke, VL-Kremationsofen Bauart Heinicke. Summary of the sales kindly furnished by the H.R. Heinicke company of Stadthagen.
 	148
The two Volckmann-Ludwig ovens installed in the crematory of Dortmund in 1937 are described in Herman Kamper, "Der Umbau der Leichenverbrennungsöfen und die Einrichtung von Leichenkühlräumen auf dem Hauptfriedhof der Stadt Dort-mund", Gesundheits-Ingenieur, 64. Jg., Heft 12, 1941.
17. R. Kessler, "Rationelle Wärmewirtschaft in den Krematorien nach Massgabe der 
Versuche im Dessauer Krematorium", Die Wärmewirtschaft , 4. Jg., Heft 8-11, 1927. 18. W. Heepke, Die Leichenverbrennungs-Anstalten (die Krematorien) (Halle a.S.: Ver-lag von Carl Marhold, 1905), p. 71.
19. R. Schnabel, Macht ohne Moral: Eine Dokumentation über die SS (Frankfurt/Main: 
Röderberg-Verlag, 1957), p. 351.
20. Dr. H. Frölich, "Zur Gesundheitspflege auf den Schlachtfeldern", Deutsche 
Militärärztliche Zeitschrift , I, 1-4, 1872, pp. 109-110.
21. Kostenanschlag auf Lieferung von 2 Stück Dreimuffel Einäscherungs-Öfen und Her-stellung des Schornsteinfutters mit Reinigungstür of Topf, 12 February 1942. APMO, 
BW 30/34, pp. 27-33.
22. W. Heepke, "Die neuzeitlichen Leicheneinäscherungsöfen mit Koksfeuerung, deren 
Wärmebilanz und Brennstoff verbrauch", Feuerungstechnik, 21. Jg., Heft 8/9, 1933. 23. List of the cremations of the crematory at Gusen (26 September-12 November 1941). 
Öffentliches Denkmal und Museum Mauthausen, Archiv, B 12/31.
24. D. Czech, Kalendarium der Ereignisse im Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau 
1939-1945 (Reinbeck bei Hamburg: Rowohlt Verlag, 1989), p. 281. 25. H. Langbein, Menschen in Auschwitz (Vienna: Europaverlag, 1987), p. 74. 26. APMO, BW 30/7/34, p. 54.
27. The numbers of the deceased are based on the Leichenhallenbuch [27a] and on the 
Sterbebücher [27b] for the male camp, on the documents of the clandestine resistance movement [27c] revised and corrected for the female camp.
27a. APMO, sygn. D-Au-I-5. 27b.APMO, 502-4.
27c. APMO, Ruch Oporu, t. II, sygn. RO/85, pp. 62, 62a. 28. APMO, D-Au-I-4, segregator 22, 22a.
29. This number is derived from the Auschwitz Kalendarium.
30. J.C. Pressac, Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, p. 227. 31. Commander at Auschwitz: Autobiographical memoirs of Rudolf Höss (Turin: Ein-audi, 1985), p. 180. Kommandant in Auschwitz. Autobiographische Aufzeichnungen des Rudolf Höss ed. Martin Broszat (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1981), p. 171.
32. J.C. Pressac, Auschwitz, p. 132. 33. Ibid., p. 183.
34. Ibid., p. 183. 35. Ibid., p. 236. 36. Ibid., p. 236.
37. Ibid., pp. 162 and 213. 38. Ibid., pp. 236 and 390.
39. F. Piper, "Estimating the Number of Deportees to and Victims of the Auschwitz-
Birkenau Camp", Yad Vashem Studies 21 (Jerusalem, 1991), 49-103; Auschwitz. Wie viele Juden, Polen, Zigeuner ... wurden umgebracht (Krakow: Universitas, 1992).
 	149
40. R. Jakobskötter, "Die Entwicklung der elektrischen Einäscherung bis zu dem neuen elektrisch beheizten Heissluft einäscherungsofen in Erfurt", Gesundheits-Ingenieur, 
64. Jg., Heft 43, 1941, p. 583
41. The crematory oven of Gusen went into operation on 29 January 1941. From Febru-ary to October 1941 in the Gusen camp, 3,179 prisoners died. H. Marsalek, Die 
Geschichte des Konzentrationslager Mauthausen. Dokumentation (Vienna: Österreichische Lagergemeinschaft Mauthausen, 1980), p. 156.
42. Bescheinigung über besondere Berechnung geleistete Tagelohn-Arbeiten , 12 October 
- 9 November 1941. BK, NS4 Ma/54.
43. R.L. Braham, The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary (New York: Co-lumbia University Press, 1981). See the summary table of the deportations on p. 602 of vol. 2.
44. Records of the Defense Intelligence Agency (RG 373). Mission 60 PRS/462 60 SQ, 
CAN D 1508, Exposure 3055, 3056.
45. J.C. Ball, Air Photo Evidence (Delta, B.C., Canada: Ball Resource Services Ltd.). 46. See in this connection: Carlo Mattogno, La soluzione finale: Problemi e polemiche 
(Edizioni di AR, Padua 1991).
47. Commander at Auschwitz, pp. 171-174; Kommandant in Auschwitz, pp. 157-159. 48. D. Czech, Kalendarium der Ereignisse im Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau, in: Hefte von Auschwitz, Wydawnictwo Pa stwowego Muzeum w O wi cimiu, 3, 
1960, p. 49.
49. D. Czech, Kalendarium der Ereignisse im Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau 
1939-1945, p. 186. 50. Ibid., p. 239. 51. Ibid., pp. 117-119.
52. S. Klodzi ski, "Pierwsza zagazowanie wi zniów i jenców w obozie o wi cimskim", 
Przegl d Lekarski, I, 1972.
53. Pressac, Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, p. 132. 54. Carlo Mattogno, Auschwitz: La prima gasazione [Auschwitz: The First Gassing] 
(Edizioni di AR, Padua 1992).
55. Ibid., p. 159: "Since moreover the first gassing, according to the judge Jan Sehn, was an execution of condemnees to death selected by the commission presided over by 
Mildner, which arrived at Auschwitz ‘in November 1941’ and concluded its work ‘after a month’, the first gassing in any case could not have occurred before Decem-ber."
56. Ibid., p. 85. 57. Ibid., p. 84.
58. Pressac even presents his own drawing of such columns (Auschwitz: Technique and 
Operation of the Gas Chambers, p. 487).
59. Mattogno, Auschwitz: La prima gasazione [Auschwitz: The First Gassing], pp. 131-
132. The reference is to the article by G. Peters and W. Rasch, "Die Einsatzfähigkeit der Blausäure-Durchgasung bei tiefen Temperaturen", Zeitschrift für hygienische Zoologie und Schädlingsbekämpfung , 1941.
60. Ibid., pp. 28-29 and 36-37.
61. Pressac, Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, pp. 184. 62. The Auschwitz Kalendarium places this alleged order under 2 November 1944 (op. 
 	150
cit., p. 921).
63. The mortality indicated by Pressac, based on the Sterbebücher , is lower than the actual, because these registers contain only a small portion of the deaths that took place among the female prisoners.
64. NO-2362, NO-2363; Kalendarium der Ereignisse im Konzentrationslager Ausch-witz-Birkenau, p. 259.
65. Pressac, Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, p. 188. 66. Auschwitz vu par les SS [Auschwitz Seen by the SS] (Musée d'État à O wi cim 
[O wi cim State Museum], 1974), p. 337.
The WVHA was informed monthly of the number of prisoner deaths in all the concentration camps, including Auschwitz (PS-1469).
67. Pressac, Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, p. 302. 68. Ibid., p. 484.
69. See note 72.
70. APMO, D-Z/Bau, nr. inw. 1967, pp. 246-247 (see appendix, Document No. 2). 71. APMO, D-Z/Bau, nr. inw. 1967, pp. 231-232 (see appendix, Document No. 3). 72. Pressac, Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, p. 286.
73. Heepke, Die Leichenverbrennungs-Anstalten, p. 104 (see appendix, Document No. 
4).
74. This follows, among other things, from the article by G. Peters and E. Wüstiger mentioned by Pressac on pages 41 and 103, from which he also draws Documents 16-17. 
The title indicated by J.C. Pressac: "Entlausung mit Zyklon Blausäure in Kreislauf-Begasungskammern", (Zeitschrift für hygienische Zoologie und Schädlingsbekämp-fung, Heft 10/11, 1940) (note 134 on p. 103) is wrong; the exact title is: "Sach-Entlausung in Blausäure-Kammern" ( Zeitschrift für hygienische Zoologie und Schädlingsbekämpfung , 1940, pp. 191-196). On page 195 one reads:
Ventilator mit Motor. Für diesen ist eine Leistung von 12 cbm je Minute bei einem stat. Druck von 80 mm WS ausreichend, um sowohl eine äusserst rasche Gasentwicklung als auch eine genügend rasche Luftung (72-facher Luftwechsel je Stunde) des begasten Kammerinhalts zu bewirken.
[Ventilator with motor. For this a capacity of 12 m3 per minute with a static pressure of 80 mm of water column is sufficient to produce a very rapid development of the gas as well as a sufficiently rapid ventilation (72 air exchanges per hour) of the contents of the gassed chamber.] (See appendix, Documents No. 5 and 6.)
75. Pressac, Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, p. 370. 76. Ibid., p. 68.
77. APMO, nr. neg. 1034/7, p. 5.
78. F. Puntigam, H. Breymesser, E. Bernfus, Blausäuregas kammern zur Fleckfieberab-wehr. Sonderveröffentlichung des Reicharbeitsblattes (Berlin, 1943), p. 31.
79. "Hütte" des Ingenieurs Taschenbuch (Berlin: Verlag von Wilhelm Ernst & Sohn, 
1931), vol. 1, p. 1013, No. 3, with specific and exclusive reference to the "Rauch-gasanalyse" (analysis of combustion gases) (p. 1011) (see appendix, Document No. 
 	151
9).
80. Blausäuregaskammern zur Fleckfieberabwehr , p. 21.
81. Letter of the Tesch & Stabenow company of 29 July 1942 to the Waffen-SS Kriegs-gefangenenlager Lublin, Verwaltung (see appendix, Documents No. 10 and 11). 82. APMO, BW 30/25, p. 8.
83. Pressac, "Les Carences et Incohérences du 'Rapport Leuchter'" [The Deficiencies and 
Incoherences of the ‘Leuchter Report’], Jour J, 1988, p. III.
84. Übergabverhandlung of Crematory II, 31 March 1943. APMO, BW 30/43, p. 12. 85. Übergabverhandlung of Crematory III, 24 June 1943. APMO, BW 30/43, p. 24. 86. Blausäuregaskammern zur Fleckfieberabwehr . This work describes with great accuracy two types of gas chambers: the standard ones with the Kreislauf system and the 
Behelfsmässige Blausäurekammern (pp. 62-68).
87. On page 59, Pressac writes regarding prisoners working at cremating corpses buried in common graves:
Ils étaient devenus, involontairement, les seuls témoins, en dehors des SS, des signes extérieurs du massacre des Juifs car, parmi les détenus qui participèrent à ce 'nettoyage', aucun ne fut laissé en vie. (our italics)
[They had become, involuntarily, the only witnesses, outside of the SS, of the outward signs of the massacre of the Jews, for among the prisoners that had participated in this ‘cleansing’, none were left alive.]
How, then, is the fact explained that the eye witnesses of the alleged extermination activity of the Bunkers were still left alive?
88. M. Nyiszli, Médecin à Auschwitz: Souvenirs d’un médecin déporté , traduit et adapté du hongrois par Tibère Kremer [M. Nyiszli, Doctor at Auschwitz. Memories of a Deported Doctor, translated and adapted from Hungarian by Tibere Kremer] (Paris: Jul-liard, 1961), pp. 96-98.
89. Pressac, Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, p. 479. Actually 
M. Nyiszli is a false witness. See in this connection our study "Medico ad Ausch-witz": Anatomia di un falso ["Doctor at Auschwitz": Anatomy of a Fake] (Parma: Edizioni La Sfinge, 1988).
90. Pressac, Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, p. 397. 91. Ibid., p. 392.
92. Ibid., p. 384. 93. Ibid., p. 384. 94. Ibid., pp. 416-417.
95. APMO, nr. neg. 20995/465.
96. Pressac, Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, p. 386. 97. Ibid., p. 399.
98. APMO, BW 30/27, p. 18.
99. Le Monde, 21 February 1979, p. 23.
!1. Page numbers with no other indications refer to: Les crématoires d’Auschwitz: La machinerie du meurtre de masse by J.- C. Pressac.
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!2. Pressac states that these archives were left intact because the second and last director of the Bauleitung, SS-Obersturmführer Werner Jothann ignored the "‘explosive’ contents of the documents" since l’aménagement homicide des crématoires (the fitting out of the crematories for homicide) was carried out under the direction of SS-
Sturmbannführer Karl Bischoff (p. 1). But on page 88, Pressac contradicts himself, stating that Bischoff "avait pris la tête de l’Inspection des constructions 'Silésie', mais gardait le contrôle de la Bauleitung d’Auschwitz " ["had been in charge of the inspection of ‘Silesia’ constructions, but retained control of the Bauleitung of Auschwitz"] (our italics).
!3. The three-chambered oven, using preheated air in the lateral chambers, had an approximate yield greater by 1/3 than that of the two-chambered oven, that is a lesser fuel consumption by 1/3; in compensation, the volumetric transition velocity of the fumes in the central chamber was greater than their velocity of combustion, hence they burned in the smoke conduits. This, along with a careless use of the intake draft systems, caused the damage of Crematory II at the end of March 1943.
!4. H. Tauber states that the SS was annoyed because: "according to the calculation and plans for this crematory, five to seven minutes were allotted to burn one corpse in a chamber!" (Jean-Claude Pressac, Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas 
Chambers, p. 489). The testimony of H. Tauber is full of thermotechnically unfounded statements of this type.
!5. This is the maximum theoretical capacity. The existing documents show that the effective capacity was much less.
!6. The future section BIII at Birkenau.
!7. In the Auschwitz construction plan of 28 October 1942, a disinfestation facility 
Entwesungsanlage of 1,000 m2 für Sonderbehandlung was foreseen and planned specifically for the hygienic-sanitary treatment of the prisoners; it was endowed with heat, showers, and disinfestation installations (Heiz-Brause- u. Desinfektion-sanlage) and had a cost of 73,680 RM. Another Entwesungsanlage smaller (262.84 m2) was destined for the guard troops (für die Wachtruppe) . Zusammenstellung des 
Bauvorhaben Kriegsgefangenenlager Auschwitz (Durchführung der Sonderbehand-lung, 28 Oktober 1942. Photocopy in: Florian Freund, Bertrand Perz, Karl Stuhlp-faffer, "Der Bau des Vernichtungslager Auschwitz-Birkenau", Zeitgeschichte, Heft 5/6, May-June 1993, p. 207).
!8. SS-WVHA = (Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt: Economic and Administrative 
Offices of the SS)
!9. With the term bavure Pressac means:
toute indication relevée dans un document quelconque (écrit, plan, photo) re-latif à un emploi anormal des crématoires et ne pouvant s’expliquer que par le gazage massif d’êtres humains. (p. 60)
[Any indication noted in any document whatsoever (writing, plan, photo) relating to an abnormal use of the crematories that could only be explained by the massive gassing of human beings.]
!10. That is not unusual. Disinfestation installations were planned in the crematories at 
Majdanek, [!10a] Dachau, [!10b] and Stutthof. [!10c]
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!10a. Plan of 23 October 1941 (Archiwum Pa stwowego Muzeum na Majdanku, sygn. 
VI-9a, vol. 1)
!10b.Plans of the "Baracke X" (crematorium) of March 1942 (NO-3884, NO-3885, NO-
3887)
!10c. Plan of the crematorium of 29 May 1945 (Pressac, Technique and Operation of the 
Gas Chambers, p. 561)
!11. The body of a normal adult, standing, produces 1.72 kcal per minute. [!11a] 1,800 bodies produce therefore 3,096 kcal per minute. The heat of vaporization of hydrocyanic acid is 6.67 kcal/mole; since its molecular weight is 27.03, the vaporization heat of 6 kg of hydrocyanic acid is (6,000 × 6.67) / 27.03 = 1,480 kcal, less than half of the heat produced by 1,800 bodies in one minute.
!11a. F. Flury, F. Zernik, Schädliche Gase, Dämpfe, Nebel, Rauch und Staubarten , Verlag von Julius Springer, Berlin 1931, p. 29.
!12. The gas in question called Arginal (Alkylformiat) was used together with Cartox for the disinfestation of silos against calandra granaria (grain weevil), a fearful grain parasite (H.W. Frickhinger, Schädlingsbekämpfung für Jedermann , Leipzig: Heil-ingsche Verlagsanstalt, 1942; G. Peters, Die hochwirksamen Gase und Dämpfe in der Schädlingsbekämpfung: Sammlung chemischer und chemischtechnischer Vor-träge , Stuttgart: Verlag von Ferdinand Enke, 1942, pp. 37-38 and 55-57).
!13. The indication of 50 m3 is obviously a printing error.
!14. This datum, in reference to the first alleged homicidal gassing in Crematory II, is pure invention by Jean-Claude Pressac, because in this connection, there exists no document, and no witness affirms that on such an occasion, 6 kg of Zyklon B were used. Pressac draws this datum from R. Höss, who speaks in general of 5-7 cans of 
Zyklon B, of 1 kg each (NI-034, NI-036). !15. Printing error, for 480 m3.
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APPENDIX 
Preface to the List of Documents 
The technical documents included in this supplement [or appendix] refer to two important aspects of the presumed machinerie de meurtre de masse [machinery of mass murder] treated in this study: that of the ventilation of the Leichenkeller [basement morgue] of Crematories II and III, and that of the Gasprüfer [gas testers].
According to Pressac, Leichenkeller 1 is the presumed homicidal gas chamber. Documents 2 and 3 refute the affirmations of Jean-Claude Pressac, according to which the capacity of the ventilators of the ventilating system for Crematories II and III of Birkenau was 8,000 m3 of air per hour: the actual capacity was 4,800 m3 of air per hour, corresponding to 9.48 exchanges of air per hour.
These documents show, moreover, that the capacity of the Entlüftung exhaust ventilator of Leichenkeller 2 (the presumed dressing room) was 10,000 m3 of air per hour, corresponding to 11 exchanges of air per hour. The consequence is that, paradoxically, according to the Pressac thesis, the Zentralbauleitung engineers of Auschwitz and the Topf engineers provided a lower number of air exchanges for the homicidal gas chamber than for the dressing room!
The number of air exchanges planned for these locations is in reality that which Engineer Wilhelm Heepke, one of the most specialized German engineers in the field of crematories, prescribed for morgue rooms planned for intense use (Document 4). Therefore, the Leichenkeller were projected and constructed as mortuary chamber morgues.
The warm-air circulation disinfestation chambers constructed by DEGESCH (DEGESCH-Kreislauf-Anlage für Entlausung mit Zyklon-Blausäure) had in effect a ventilator with a capacity of 12 m3 of air per minute, corresponding to 72 exchanges of air per hour (Documents 5 and 6).
With this falls also the affirmation of Pressac according to which Leichenkeller 1 was supposed to have been transformed into a homicidal gas chamber. The fact that Crematories II and III, which were projected and constructed as plain hygienic-sanitary installations, entered into function with the same number of ovens and with the same capacity of the ventilators of Leichenkeller 1 projected from the very beginning, demonstrates that they were not transformed into machinerie de meurtre de masse [machinery of mass murder].
On 26 February 1943, the Zentralbauleitung of Auschwitz requested Topf to send ten Gasprüfer (Document 7). The Topf company supposedly responded with a letter dated 2 March 1943 which speaks of Anzeigegeräte für Blausäure Reste [instruments for indicating remnants of hydrocyanic acid, or prussic acid] (Document 8). Jean-Claude Pressac 
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attributes to this document the value of a definite proof of the existence of a homicidal gas chamber in Crematory II.
The Gasprüfer was a device for the analysis of burnt gases functioning according to physics (Document 9). The test kit for Zyklon B residual gas was called Gasrestnachweis-gerät für Zyklon [apparatus which shows evidence of residual gas] (Document 11) and it functioned according to chemical methods; this was distributed by the same company which supplied the Zyklon B. Gasrestnachweisgerät came in a small wooden box containing:
1) eine Flasche mit Lösung I (2,86 g Kupferazetat im Liter) 2) eine Flasche mit Lösung II (475 cm 3 bei Zimmer temperatur gesättigte Benzidinazetatlösung und 525 cm3 Wasser) 3) Mischgefäss mit 2 Marken zum Abmessen gleicher Raumteile 4) Papprolle mit Fiesspapierstreifen 5) Farbmuster (Papierstreifen in Reagenzglas) 6) sechs leere dickwandige Reagenzgläser mit Korken.
[ 1) a bottle with Solution 1 (2.86 g of copper acetate per liter) 2) a bottle with Solution 2 (475 ml at room temperature of a saturated solution of benzidine acetate in 525 ml of water) 3) a mixing utensil with two markers for measuring equivalent room areas 4) a cardboard roll with strips of blotting paper 5) color test pattern (strips of test paper in a test tube) 6) six empty thick-walled test tubes with cork stoppers].
The test for the residual gas (Gasrestprobe) was accomplished by mixing in the mixing utensil the required proportions of Solutions 1 and 2. In the solution thus obtained, one immersed the lower parts of six strips of blotting paper, each one of which was then introduced into a test tube which was quickly secured with a cork stopper. The person performing the test, wearing a gas mask, entered the testing area with the test tubes which were opened at various locations exposing the strips of blotting paper which were moistened with the test solution. The paper strips reacted in the presence of hydrocyanic acid gas, taking on a blue coloration which becomes more intense with a higher concentration of the gas. (A. Sieverts, A. Hermsdorf, "Der Nachweis gasförmiger Blausäure in Luft", 
Zeitschrift für Angewandte Chemie , 34. JG., 1921, pp. 4-5).
Document 11 is a photograph of a Gasrestnachweisgerät which was found by the Soviets at Auschwitz after the liberation of the camp.
Document 12 is an Allied aerial photo of Auschwitz 31 May 1944. Also published in The Ball Report (Toronto 1993), p. 5. [Not included here]. 
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LIST OF DOCUMENTS 
Document No. 1: The table of contents of the study entitled, The Crematory Ovens of Auschwitz-Birkenau, by Carlo Mattogno with the collaboration of Engineer Dr. Franco Deana, of Genoa, Italy.
Document No. 2: J.A. Topf & Söhne, Erfurt. Billing No. 729 of 27 May 1943 addressed to Zentralbauleitung der Waffen-SS und Polizei Auschwitz concerning the Crematory III of Birkenau. APMO, D-Z/Bau, Nr. inw. 1967, pp. 246-247.
Document No. 3: J.A. Topf & Söhne, Erfurt. Billing No. 171 of 22 February 1943 addressed to Zentralbauleitung der Waffen-SS und Polizei Auschwitz concerning Crematory II of Birkenau.
Document No. 4: Wilhelm Heepke, Die Leichenverbrennungs-Anstalten (die Kremato-rien). Verlag von Carl Marhold, Halle a.S., 1905, p. 104.
Document No. 5: G. Peters, E. Wüstiger, "Sach-Entlausung in Blausäure-Kammern", 
Zeitschrift für hygienische Zoologie und Schädlingsbekämpfung , Heft 10/11, 1940, p. 195.
Document No. 6: P. Puntigam, H. Breymesser, E. Bernfus, Blausäurekammern zur Fleck-fieberabwehr. Sonderveröffentlichung des Reicharbeitsblattes (Berlin, 1943), p. 50.
Document No. 7: Telegram of the Zentralbauleitung Auschwitz to the Firm J.A. Topf & Söhne, Erfurt, of 26 February 1943. APMO, BW 30/34, p. 48.
Document No. 8: J.A. Topf & Söhne, Erfurt. Letter of 2 March 1943 to the Zentralbaulei-tung der Waffen-SS und Polizei Auschwitz. J.C. Pressac, Les Crématoires d’Auschwitz: 
La machinerie du meurtre de masse (Paris: CNRS Editions, 1993), Document 28.
Document No. 9: "Hütte" des Ingenieurs Taschenbuch (Berlin: Verlag von Wilhelm Ernst & Sohn, 1931), vol. 1, pp. 1010-1013.
Document No. 10: Tesch & Stabenow, Hamburg. Letter of 29 July 1942 to the Waffen-SS Kriegsgefangenenlager Lublin, Verwaltung. Archiwum Pa stwowego Muzeum na Ma-jdanku, sygn. I d 2, vol. 1, p. 107.
Document No. 11: APMO, photograph from Nr. neg. 625. The Gasrestnachweisgerät für Zyklon test kit.
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Document No. 1 
The Contents of a forthcoming publication entitled: THE CREMATORY OVENS OF AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU
Introduction
1. Structure and Operation of the Gasogene Crematory Ovens Heated with Coke. 2. Heat Balance of a Gasogene Crematory Oven Heated with coke. 
3. The Duration of the Cremation Process in Gasogene Crematory Ovens Heated with Coke. 
4. The Topf Crematory Oven with Two Chambers Heated with Coke. 5. The Topf Crematory Oven with Three Chambers Heated with Coke. 6. The Topf Crematory Oven with Eight Chambers Heated with Coke. 7. Heat Balance of the Topf Crematory Ovens of Auschwitz Birkenau. 
7.1 Heat Balance of the Oven with Two Chambers for Two Normal Corpses. 7.2 Observations on Heat Balance. 
7.3 Heat Balance for Two Emaciated Corpses. 
7.4 Heat Balance for Two Corpses with an Average Loss of Weight. 7.5 The Coke Consumption of the Crematory Oven at Gusen. 
7.6 Heat Balance for the Ovens with Three and Eight Chambers. 
7.7 Thermotechnical Considerations on the Ovens with Three Chambers. 8. The Duration of the Cremation Process in the Topf Ovens of Auschwitz-Birkenau. 
8.1 The Documents. 
8.2 The Cremation Experiments of Engineer Kessler. 8.3 The List of the Cremations of the Crematory at Gusen. 
8.4 The Simultaneous Cremation of Several Corpses in a Chamber. 8.5 The Capacity of the Topf Crematories of Auschwitz Birkenau. 
9. The Number of the Cremated in the Ovens of Auschwitz Birkenau. 
9.1 The Number of the Cremated According to J.C. Pressac. 9.2 The Activity of the Crematories of Auschwitz-Birkenau. 
9.3 The Duration of the Refractory Covering of the Ovens at Auschwitz-Birkenau. 
9.4 The Number of the Cremated in 1943: the Estimate of the SS. 9.5 The Number of the Cremated in 1943: the Consumption of Coke. 9.6 The Deportation of the Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz. 
10. The Cremation Pits of Birkenau. 
10.1 The Witness Filip Müller. 
10.2 The Combustion Process in a Cremation Pit. 10.3 Human Fat Recovery System. 
10.4 The Procedure of Human Fat Recovery. 
10.5 Mass Cremation Arrangements for Epidemics and Battlefields.
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Document No. 2: 
Billing No. 729 of 27 May 1943 from J.A. Topf & Söhne, Erfurt. Addressed to Zentral-bauleitung der Waffen-SS und Polizei Auschwitz concerning Crematory III of Birkenau. APMO, D-Z/Bau, Nr. inw. 1967, pp. 246-247. Page 1: 
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Document 2, page 2 
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Document No. 3: 
Billing No. 171 of 22 February 1943 from J.A. Topf & Söhne, Erfurt. Addressed to 
Zentralbauleitung der Waffen-SS und Polizei Auschwitz concerning Crematory II of Birkenau. Page 1: 
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Document 3, Page 2 
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Document No. 4: 
Wilhelm Heepke, Die Leichenverbrennungs-Anstalten (die Krematorien). Verlag von Carl Marhold, Halle a.S., 1905, p. 104.
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Document No. 5: 
G. Peters, E. Wüstiger, "Sach-Entlausung in Blausäure Kammern", Zeitschrift für hy-gienische Zoologie und Schädlingsbekämpfung , Heft 10/11, 1940, p. 195.
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Document No. 6: 
P. Puntigam, H. Breymesser, E. Bernfus, Blausäurekammern zur Fleckfieberabwehr. Sonderveröffentlichung des Reicharbeitsblattes (Berlin, 1943), p. 50.
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Document No. 7: 
Telegram of the Zentralbauleitung Auschwitz to the Firm J.A. Topf & Söhne, Erfurt, of 26 February 1943. APMO, BW 30/34, p. 48.
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Document No. 8: 
J.A. Topf & Söhne, Erfurt. Letter of 2 March 1943 to the Zentralbauleitung der Waffen-SS und Polizei Auschwitz. J.C. Pressac, Les Crématoires d’Auschwitz: La machinerie du meurtre de masse (Paris: CNRS Editions, 1993), Document 28.
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Document No. 9: 
"Hütte" des Ingenieurs Taschenbuch (Berlin: Verlag von Wilhelm Ernst & Sohn, 1931), vol. 1, pp. 1010-1013.
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Document No. 9 (second part): 
"Hütte" des Ingenieurs Taschenbuch (Berlin: Verlag von Wilhelm Ernst & Sohn, 1931), vol. 1, pp. 1010-1013.
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Document No. 10: 
Tesch & Stabenow, Hamburg. Letter of 29 July 1942 to the Waffen-SS Kriegsgefan-genenlager Lublin, Verwaltung. Archiwum Panstwowego Muzeum na Majdanku, sygn. I d 2, vol. 1, p. 107.
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Document No. 11: 
Picture of "Gasrestnachweisgerätes für Zyklon", found by the Soviets in the Auschwitz camp after its liberation. APMO, Nr. neg 625. 
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GLOSSARY 
Aide: A military officer acting as assistant to a superior AL: Arbeitslager, work camp Aktenvermerk: File entry Alimentation: Allowance Aleatorie: Coincidental Amtsgruppe: Official group Anzeigegeräte: Indicators
APMO: Archives of the Polish Museum at O wi cim [Auschwitz] Arginal [Areginal]: A Gas Aspiration: Exhaust process Aufnahmegebäude: Admittance building Aufzeichnungen: Notes, records
Auschwitz: German spelling for the Upper Silesian town, [Polish name O wi cim, c. 45,000 inhabitants] located 2 km southwest from the former large complex which is known as Ausch-witz-Birkenau Auskleidekeller: Disrobing basement Badenanstalten: Swimming, bathing facilities Baracken: Barracks Bauhof: Construction yard Bauleitung: Construction administration, office in charge of construction Bavure: Trace Behelfsmässig: Temporary, makeshift, improvised Berücksichtigt: In consideration Bescheinigung: Receipt, certificate Blausäure: Hydrocyanic acid Blausäuregaskammern: Hydrocyanic acid gas chambers Blausäurekammern: Hydrocyanic acid chambers Boos: Name of a German manufacturer (Friedrich Boos) Brennstoffverbrauch: Fuel consumption Buchenwald: Location of a German concentration camp Bundesarchiv: German archives Bunker: Shelter Chemischtechnischer: Chemical-technical Crypto-revisionist: Secret, or underground revisionist Czech (Danuta): Author of Kalendarium der Ereignisse im Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-
Birkenau 1939-1948
Degesch-Kreislauf: Circulatory system type Degesch Drahtnetzeinschiebvorrichtung: Meshed-wire slider Drahtseil: Wire rope
Dreimuffel-Einäscherungs-Öfen: Three-chambered crematory ovens Druckluftgebläse: Compressed air blower Druckluft-Anlage: Compressed air installation Einäscherungsofen: Crematory oven Einäscherungsverfahren: Cremation procedure Einsatzfähigkeit: Operational capability
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Einwurfvorrichtung: Insertion installation
Entlausungsbaracken: Disinfestation barracks, barracks for delousing Entlüftungsanlage: Exhaust equipment Entlüftungskanäle: Exhaust channels Erfurt: A German city Europaverlag: A German publishing establishment Feuerbestattung: Cremation Feuerungstechnik: Cremation technics Fleckfieberabwehr: Typhus prevention Gasentwicklung: Gas development
Gasogene (Gazogene): An apparatus producing gas for fuel by burning coke, charcoal or wood Gasprüfer: Analyzer of the combustion gases Gasrestnachweisgeräte: Residual gas indicators (indicating instruments) Generatorgase: Generator gases Gestapo: Geheime Staatspolizei - Secret State Police later incorporated into the Reich Main Security Office headed by Heinrich Muller Gesundheitspflege: Health care Gesundheits-Ingenieur: Health engineer Gleichschaltung: Co-ordination Gusseisern: Wrought iron Hamburg: Northern German port city Handwinde: Hand winch Hauptamt: Main office Hauptfriedhof: Main cemetery Hauptsturmführer: Captain of SS
Häftlinge: Prisoners HCN: Hydrocyanic acid
Heisslufteinäscherungsofen: Hot air crematory oven Holzblenden: Wooden shutters Holzdeckel: Wooden lid(s) Holzgebläse: Wooden blowers
HUTA: Acronym for Hoch und Tiefbau AG (a construction firm) Judenumsiedlung: Jewish resettlement Kammerinhalts: Room contents Kellerzugang: Cellar or basement entrance KGL: Prisoner of war camp KL: War camp Koblenz: A German city Koksbeheizt: Heated by coke Koksfeuerung: Coke burner Konzentrationslager: Concentration camp Kori: A German manufacturer of combustion plants Kostenanschlag: Cost estimate Kostenvoranschlag: Preliminary cost estimate Krakow: A Polish city Kreislauf: Circulation Kreislauf-Begasungskammern: Circulatory gas chambers Kriegsgefangenenlager: Prisoner of war camp Lagergemeinschaft: Camp community Leicheneinäscherungsöfen: Corpse crematory ovens Leichenhalle: Mortuary
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Leichenhallenbuch: Mortuary book or register Leichenkeller: Mortuary basement Leichenkühlräume: Corpse cooling rooms Leichenverbrennungsöfen: Corpse cremating ovens
Leichenverbrennungs-Anstalten: Corpse cremating facilities Luftwechsel: Air exchange Miasma: Noxious Militärärztliche: Of a military physician nature Nazi: Acronym for Nationalsozialistische (National Socialist) Nord-süd: North-South Obergruppenführer: The rank of General Ofenanlage: Oven installation Offenbach: A German city Öfen: Ovens Öffentlich: Public Österreichisch: Austrian Planrost: Level grate
Politruk: Soviet political officer charged with a number of functions among the troops, including political supervision and agitation. Commonly translated as "Commissar" POW: Prisoner of war Propaganda: Any organized movement to spread particular doctrines, information, etc.
Rauchgasanalyse: Smoke gas analysis
Rauchkanalschieber: Smoke channel slider (control mechanism) Refractory: Fire retardant or resistant Reichsarbeitblatt: German government worksheet
Reichsführer: Reich leader. Position occupied by Heinrich Himmler from 1929 to 1945 Reichsmark: The traditional German monetary unit Revisionists: Those who look back again in order to correct or improve RM: Reichsmark
RSHA: Reichssicherheitshauptamt. Reich Main Security Office formed in 1939. Departments: 
Intelligence, Gestapo, Criminal Police and the SD (Sicherheitsdienst) Sach-Entlausung: Material delousing Saugzuganlage: Exhaust installation Schädlingsbekämpfung: Pest control Schlachtfeld: Battlefield Schmiedeeisengebläse: Wrought-iron blower Schornsteinfutter: Chimney casing SD: Sicherheitsdienst, Security Service Sonder: Out of the ordinary routine
Sonderbaumassnahmen: Special construction and building, undertaking and procedures Sondermassnahmen: Special undertaking and procedures Sonderveröffentlichung: Special publication SS: Schutzstaffel, protective echelon SS-Neubauleitung: SS Office for new construction SS-Obersturmführer: The rank of Lieutenant SS-Sturmbannführer: The rank of Major
SS-WVHA: SS Wirtschaftsverwaltungshauptamt, Central Office of the SS Economic Administration Staatsarchiv: State archives Stammlager: Original camp (Auschwitz) "Central Camp" Sterbebücher: Death records
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Sturmbannführer: The rank of Major Tagelohn-Arbeiten: Part-time work Taschenbuch: Pocket book (notebook) Tesch: Bruno Tesch, engineer
Testa: Acronym for Tesch und Stabenow, German engineering firm Topf: A German engineering and manufacturing firm
Topf-Doppelmuffel-Einäscherungs-Ofen: Topf two-chambered crematory oven Topf-Zugverstärkungs-Anlage: Topf facility for increased circulation Übergabeverhandlung: Transfer negotiations or proceedings of transfer
Verhältnismässig: In relation to VL-Kremationsofen: A crematory oven type built by the firm 
Volckmann-Ludwig Wärmebilanz: Heat balance
Wärmewirtschaft: Heat distribution
WVHA: Wirtschaftsverwaltungshauptamt (Central Office of Economic Administration) Zyklon B: Cyclon B chemical disinfestant
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Two Further Comments on my 
Answer to Jean-Claude Pressac [1] 
ROBERT FAURISSON 
Jean-Claude Pressac's work on Auschwitz [2] has been translated successively to German [3] and to English [4]. These two translations are rich in revelations both as to the work and as to the personality of J.-C. Pressac, pharmacist of La-Ville-du-Bois (Dépar-tement of Essonne, France).
In the German translation, the author once more lowers his value for the death count at Auschwitz. In 1989, he set the count of gassing victims alone to between "1,000,000 and 1,500,000" [5], which could lead one to suppose that he thinks the total number of deaths must be somewhere in the range 1,500,000 to 2,000,000. In 1993, in the work to which I responded, J.-C. Pressac reduced the total number of deaths to 775,000 (800,000 in round numbers), which included, he tells us, 630,000 Jewish gassing victims (Les Crématoires ..., p. 148). In my Réponse ... , I reported that this lowering of the count would probably be followed by a further lowering of the count. I wrote in a footnote:
I have been informed by a reliable source that I can not reveal that Pressac intends to reduce the total of deaths at Auschwitz to 700,000 — when he thinks the public is in the mood to accept a new reduction. (note 4 at the bottom of pages 13-14)
However, in the German translation J.-C. Pressac sets the number of deaths at Auschwitz at 630,000 to 710,000 — in round numbers — of which, he indicates, 470,000 to 550,000 were Jewish gassing victims. (Die Crematorien ..., p. 202).
The English translation is more interesting still. For one thing, it does not contain any estimate of the total number of deaths or of gassing victims!
I know, but again I cannot reveal my source, that J.-C. Pressac ran into difficulties in publishing his work in English in the United States. He was involved in some delicate negotiations with Michael Berenbaum, scientific director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, which opened in Washington in April 1993. J.-C. Pressac, who tries to compensate for his weak character with a show of bravado, boasted that he would not "let himself be trifled with". However, the English translation, which appeared in July 1994, shows not only that "he let himself be trifled with" but that he consented to one of the worst hu-
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miliations that an author can suffer: the imposition of a tutor. They made him cut parts out of his work, substantially rewrite it and reduce it to the size of a chapter in a collective work, all under the supervision of an associate of Mr. Berenbaum. For one thing, he was forbidden to publish his own numbers for the total of deaths or gassing victims. Observe in what terms Mr. Berenbaum puts the pharmacist in his place. He writes as follows:
Robert-Jan Van Pelt has worked closely with Mr. Pressac to ensure that a technical article was clear and lucid as well as precise and informed by the latest scholarship. (Anatomy ..., p. xv)
Could it be any more clear that to Mr. Berenbaum's taste J.-C. Pressac's book in French (Les Crématoires ... ) was confused, obscure, vague and insufficiently scholarly? Unfortunately, despite the efforts of R.-J. Van Pelt, J.-C. Pressac's text is as detestable in Eng-lish as it was in French.
The collective version of this work in English (Anatomy ...) confirms that since 1982, J.-C. Pressac, who is fond of portraying himself as an independent researcher, has been in the pay of a wealthy Jewish foundation (the Beate Klarsfeld Foundation). Mr. Berenbaum writes:
Since 1982, the work of Mr. Pressac has been promoted and supported on a documentary, editorial and financial level by the Beate Klarsfeld Foundation. (p. xiii)
At the end of Alain Resnais' 1955 film Nuit et Brouillard (Night and Fog), which even today is constantly shown in all the schools of France, the number of deaths at Auschwitz is given as nine million: "9,000,000 dead haunt this countryside"!
However, ten years before, at the Nuremberg Trial, a document of which the Tribunal took "judicial notice" set this number at four million.
In 1989, J.-C. Pressac reduced the probable death count to a number between 1,500,000 and 2,000,000.
In 1993, he reduced the count to approximately 775,000.
In 1994, he went to a number between 630,000 and 710,000. Consequently, he has been silenced. And he accepts this silencing.
It is the Revisionists who will not be silent. They will persist in posing questions and in offering their answers:
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1. What is the total number of deaths at Auschwitz? Is it nine million, as is even now taught to the children of France? Or is it rather 630,000, as J.-C. Pressac now thinks?  
The Revisionists, research in hand, say the number is 150,000.
2. Why the persistent refusal to provide a physical description of a Nazi gas chamber, this fantastic chemical slaughterhouse using Prussic acid? Why are we never shown a photograph of the supposed homicidal gas chamber of Auschwitz I, which has been visited by millions of tourists to date? Why has the accusing party never dared to present us with an expert report on the weapon with which the supposed crime was done?  
It is the Revisionists who have the arguments that show that most of the deaths at Auschwitz were due to epidemics and that it takes only a little common sense to see that these sites "in original condition", "reconstructed" or "in ruins" could never have been homicidal gas chambers but were ... ordinary cold rooms for keeping cadavers prior to cremation. And the Revisionists have the expert reports (reports by Leuchter, by Rudolf and by Lüftl and even the draft of a Polish report) to support their claims.
Only persons indifferent to facts and figures could claim that all this has no importance.
November 1994
Notes: 
1. Robert Faurisson, Réponse à Jean-Claude Pressac sur le problème des chambres a gaz, diffusion RHR, BP 122, 92704 Colombes Cedex), 1994, 96 pp.
2. Jean-Claude Pressac, Les Crématoires d'Auschwitz. La Machinerie du meurtre de masse, CNRS éditions, 1993, viii-156 pp. and 48 pp. photographic collection.
3. Jean-Claude Pressac, Die Crematorien von Auschwitz/Die Technik des Massenmordes, 
Munich/Zurich, Piper Verlag, 1994, xviii-211 pp.
4. Jean-Claude Pressac with Robert-Jan Van Pelt, "The Machinery of Mass Murder at 
Auschwitz", chapter 8 (pp. 183-245) of the collective work published by Yisrael Gut-man and Michael Berenbaum, Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1994, xvi-638 pp.
5. Jean-Claude Pressac, Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, New 
York, Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, 1989, pp. 553.
An earlier German language version was published under the title "Zur englischen Ausgabe von Pressacs neuestem Buch", in Herbert Verbeke (ed.) Auschwitz: Nackte Fak-ten, VHO, Berchem 1995, pp. 163f. 
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