Anybody know what tin sheets were used for?

[PotPie]

Hi Laurentz: Good point that a delousing chamber with a metal (tin sheets) floor, could be miscontrued as an electric floor, hence the electrocution floor at Belzec.

Also good point that metal conducts heat and would thus be good for heat disinfection.

Youd think if that were the case, then people such as Mueller would have reported metal flooring in the gassing rooms at Birkenau.

[Laurentz Dahl]

Hi Laurentz: Good point that a delousing chamber with a metal (tin sheets) floor, could be miscontrued as an electric floor, hence the electrocution floor at Belzec.

Also good point that metal conducts heat and would thus be good for heat disinfection.

Youd think if that were the case, then people such as Mueller would have reported metal flooring in the gassing rooms at Birkenau.

Well, that is easily explained. Mueller never saw the real gas chambers in Auschwitz, that is the Zyklon B delousing chambers at the "Sauna."

The desinfection/delousing chambers at the Reinhardt camps were likely of a more primitive type than the installations at Majdanek and Auschwitz.

I will try to start looking at ways of identifying the ovens described by Kozak. However since I live very far from Germany I may encounter some difficulties in finding sources. But I will try to dig up something.

[Laurentz Dahl]

Possible sources that could be used for the identification of the Kozak ovens:

- A journal (or manual in several issues) entitled Der praktische Desinfektor and published in Berlin in 1941 (Cf Lectures on the Holocaust p.266)

- Documents such as product catalogues from Kori and DEGESCH

- The journal Reichsarbeitsblatt

[Laurentz Dahl]

Mattogno & Graf on a projected hot air delousing chambers for Majdanek, provided by Kori (Concentration Camp Majdanek, p.130):

As per this project, the eight delousing chambers were each 2 m wide, 2.10 m high and 3.5 m long and were heated with a coke-fueled calorifer or air heater located between each pair of chambers behind the outside walls. On the inside an opening in the top, connected to the air heater, allowed warm air to exit; on the opposite side, on the floor of each pair of chambers, was a ventilation opening also connected to the air heater via an underground air channel. In structural terms the facility was very similar to the model designed by Kori on July 5, 1940, for the delousing facility of Alt-Drewitz. Delousing proceeded not with Zyklon B, but with hot air.

[Friedrich Paul Berg]

Does anyone know the German words that were supposedly used originally to refer to the "tin sheets." Was the German wording simply "Blechscheiben?"

Sheets of tin are so rare that I have never seen any, for what that is worth. But sometimes galvanized sheet metal (like one can get in any Home Depot) is, I believe, casually referred to as "tin." Steel with a thin coating of tin is routinely used to make "tin" cans which might have been scavenged in a time of terrible shortages for any number of purposes. My aunt in Long Island in the 1970's still horded all of her old tin cans because she thought she might someday still need them. During WW2 in the US, they were recycled for the war effort--even in the raw material rich USA.

Friedrich Paul Berg
Learn everything at www.nazigassings.com
Nazi Gassings Never Happened! Niemand wurde vergast!

[Laurentz Dahl]

Does anyone know the German words that were supposedly used originally to refer to the "tin sheets." Was the German wording simply "Blechscheiben?"

The original Reder pamphlet is in Polish, which unfortunately I have not yet mastered.

The "tin sheets" are not mentioned in any other Belzec witness testimony as I am aware of.

[Laurentz Dahl]

Regarding disinfestation methods, Pressac in his Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers (p.66) quotes a "Medical Field Manual: Field Sanitation" published by the US War Department, Washington DC 1940:

173: IMPROVISED HOT AIR DISINFESTORS:

Clothing and equipment may be placed in ovens, boxes or cans and subjected to dry heat. Small buildings or dugouts may be converted into hot air disinfestors by installing heating apparatus which will heat the air to 150 F[ahrenheit= 71 C]. Clothing should be hung loosely and exposed about thirty minutes.

I suppose then that the disinfection chambers described by Kozak would be halfway between improvised and refined hot air chambers.

[Laurentz Dahl]

A question for Mr. Berg:

As you seem to have access to a lot of German wartime and pre-war literature on desinfection techniques, have you ever come across a picture of a Heißluftentwesungsofen of the smaller type likely described by Kozak? If you have, it would be great to have it posted online.

[Lupa]

Well

I think that the confusion cames from the similarity in german spelling between Zinn and Zink

Zinn = Sn

Zink = Zn

Zink is an metal with a lot of uses in construction

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... n_dach.jpg

here an example , steel plated with Zink to make a roof.

[Depth Charge]

Who knows? Who cares? Tin sheets were used for what tin sheets are used for; ex.: roofing, siding, etc.

As for Arad's typical absurdity:

- What bodies? No mass grave for an alleged 870,000 Jews has been/can be shown.
- If the tale were true, one would think the Germans never heard of shovels.

Laughable as usual.

Hannover

Not to go too far off topic, but I've always wondered what sort of time/effort would have been required to excavate the amount of land required to bury 870,000 bodies.

[Laurentz Dahl]

This is how Holocaust Research tries to explain away the ovens described by Kozak:

The stoves described were used to heat the shed's rooms, thus allowing the bottled carbon monoxide gas and Zyklon B used in the early stage of the camp's killing activities to work more efficiently in cold weather. It was in this manner that the camp operated in the early weeks, but not without some "difficulties": The gas chambers were in fact, nothing more than a wooden barrack adapted and constructed to give the impression of a bathing facility. To enhance this deception, the false showerheads that an SS man involved in the camp's construction, Erich Fuchs, had been unable to fit earlier, were now installed and signs indicating a bathhouse displayed. Despite all of their efforts, the construction team were unable to make the building airtight. According to Werner Dubois, at each gassing operation in the wooden barrack, sand had to be piled against the outer door to rectify this problem. After the gassing, the sand had to be removed to allow access to the corpses. It became apparent that major alterations were necessary, particularly since the gas chambers were proving inadequate in size.

http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ar/belzec.html

My critique:

1. Who with a knowledge of how Zyklon B worked, would have even thought of gassing human beings in a wooden barrack that was not airtight? Sand piled against the door? Sounds ridiculously makeshift to me. And even if the problem could be temporarily solved in this way, the pulling out of corpses would have had to wait for quite some time, since there is no mention of any ventilation system.

2. How was the Zyklon introduced into the non-airtight wooden gas chamber, since there is no mention of any openings in the roof to the three chambers? Was it thrown in through the door?

In short, the idea of Zyklon B gassings in a building such as described is rather ridiculous.

Btw would heating up the air in any way facilitate carbon monoxide gassing? I'm not an expert here.

[Laurentz Dahl]

Translation of a crucial sentence in the Kozak testimony

Kozak in his testimony describes three different barracks raised close to the railway sidespur. For two of them, he gives only brief descriptions, the focus of the testimony is the third barrack, which is interpreted as housing three homicidal gas chambers.

I am interested here mainly in the description of the second barrack. It is described in a single sentence. The problem is that widely differing translations are given for this sentence.

Arad, on page 25 of his book Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka... translate it as follows:

The second barrack, 25 meters long and 12.5 meters wide, was for the Jews destined for the "baths."

Carlo Mattogno and Jürgen Graf in their Belzec... (p.45) has it as

The second barrack, measuring 25 m in length and 12.5 m in width, was destined
for the Jews going to the bath.

Finally, The Holocaust Research Project (H.E.A.R.T.) website translate it as

The second barrack – 25m long and 12.5m wide – was appointed for the Jews to bathe in.

http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/ar/belzec.html

Thus the translation given by Arad implies that the victims passed through this second barrack on their way to the "bath", which would be the alleged homicidal gas chambers located in the third barrack. The translation in Mattogno and Graf is similar, but without the quotation marks surrounding the noun bath (here in plural). I will return to those quotation marks later on. The translation found on the H.E.A.R.T. website on the other hand differ very much in meaning from the two others. The words "appointed for the Jews to bathe in" can only mean that the second barrack itself was the baths, and a real bath to boot (since equalling bath with gas chamber here would render the interpretation of the third barrack as the gas chamber building meaningless).

What then is the origin of those three translations?

Arad gives as his source

Belzec-Oberhauser, Band 6, pp. 1129-1130.

(p.408)

In Arad's "Bibliographical Key to the Notes" (p.401) we read

Belzec-Oberhauser. YVA, TR-10/517, the trial of Josef Oberhauser, Landgericht München.

So Arad's source is an archived copy of the documentation from the Oberhauser Belzec Trial found in the Yad Vashem Archives in Jerusalem.

Matogno and Graf state in their book (p.45, note 106):

ZStL, 252/59, vol. I, pp. 1129f. (translation from Polish into German).

"ZstL" is Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen in Ludwigsburg, Germany. This is were the documentation from the post-war West German NS trials is kept. The page number shows that Arad and Graf/Mattogno are using the same source, a German translation of the original Polish testimony used in the Belzec trial.

Finally H.E.A.R.T. gives as their source "Trial of Josef Oberhauser - Statement of Stanislaw Kozak , YVA TR-10/517", in other words the same as Arad. Apparently they have made their own translation of the document.

If the Kozak testimony is a transcription of a spoken statement, the quotation marks would of course be the arbitrary addition made by the transcriber. It is noteworthy that neither Graf's nor H.E.A.R.T.'s translation contains them. Presumably they are not in the German court translation, but an addition made by Yitzhak Arad. Unfortunately, no German edition of Mattogno and Graf's book seems to be available. This would provide ready access to the German translation used as original for the three translation.

What we really need is of course the original statement in Polish. Thus far I have not managed to find any reference to this document. First then would we know which translation is the most correct.

Until then, I will simply remark that Jean-Claude Pressac in his notes on the Reinhardt camps described (as per Graf's translation found in his and Mattogno's book Treblinka: Extermination Camp or Transit Camp?, p.291) the first part of Kozak's testimony as follows:

There were three barracks built next to one another: the first served as a waiting
room for the Jews, in the second they bathed and in the third they were gassed in three rooms.

Pressac must have read either the German translation or the original Polish documents. The reason for this is that Arad quotes the first part of the testimony in this way:

In October 1941, three SS men came to Belzec and requested from the municipality twenty men for work. The municipality allotted twenty workers, residents of Belzec, and I was among them.... We began the work on November 1, 1941. We built barracks close to the side track of the railway. One barrack, which was close to the railway section, was 50 meters long and 12.5 meters wide.... The second barrack, 25 meters long and 12.5 meters wide, was for the Jews destined for the "baths." Not far from this barrack we built a third barrack, 12 meters long and 12.5 meters wide.

For comparison, the H.E.A.R.T. translation reads like this (passages left out by Arad marked in bold):

There arrived in Belzec in Oct 1941, three SS-men who demanded 20 workers from the Belzec community. The municipal office appointed 20 inhabitants of Belzec as workers – I was one of them. The Germans selected the area to the SE of the Railway station where a siding ended. Alongside the siding ran the railway to Lemberg (Lwow). We began work on 1 Nov 1941 with the building of barracks at the end of the siding. One barrack – which stood right next to the siding – was 50m long and 12.5m wide; it was a waiting room for the Jews. The second barrack – 25m long and 12.5m wide – was appointed for the Jews to bathe in. Near this barrack we built a third barrack which was 12m long and 8m wide.

Thus the reader of the quote in Arad will not know that Kozak stated that the first barrack was a "waiting room" (more likely an undressing room). Arad in fact never touches on the function of this barrack. An "undressing barrack" is mentioned later (p.70) but it is not identified as either Kozak's first or second barrack. Furthermore the only map of Belzec that Arad produce shows the camp as it supposedly was during its second phase (when those three barracks had supposedly been demolished). To me it seems that Arad wanted to hide the function of the first barrack and implicate the second barrack as an undressing room. If the gassing scenario was correct, only two barracks would be required: one for undressing and one for the gas chambers. Why would the victims wait in one barrack, undress in another and then be gassed in a third? As Pressac points out, it is more likely that the first barrack was for undressing, the second housed showers and the third contained hot air disinfestation chambers. On the map of Belzec during its first phase shown at H.E.A.R.T. (as well as ARC) the first barrack is called "warehouse", the second barrack is called "undressing barrack" and the third is, of course, the alleged homicidal gas chambers.

It follows that Pressac did not base his critique on what he read (or could have read) in Arad's book, but instead on either the German translation or the Polish original. That Pressac clearly identifies the second barrack as a bath indicate that the H.E.A.R.T. translation is the most correct.

[Laurentz Dahl]

When I was writing my previous post (rather rapidly while having lunch) I had both Mattogno and Graf's book and Treblinka and Mattogno's book on Belzec before me and so managed to confuse them. The Kozak quote is from the latter (the one on Belzec).

Mattogno wrote the Belzec book by himself (in Italian obviously). No Italian original title is given so I presume that Mattogno sent his manuscript directly to Thesis & Dissertations Press to be translated and published.

I don't know whether Mattogno gave the Kozak testimony in German in his manuscript, or if he translated it into Italian first.

The translation of the book was made by someone called Henry Gardner. Thus the English translation of the Kozak quote was made by Gardner, either from a copy of the German text or from an Italian translation of the German text.

It is possible that Gardner glanced at Arad's rendering while translating the quote.

This makes it even more probable that the H.E.A.R.T. translation of the sentence is the most correct one.

[Laurentz Dahl]

According to the Italian AAARGH page on Mattogno

http://www.vho.org/aaargh/ital/archimatto/index.html

the English book is the original (though it was likely written in Italian). There also exists German and French translations:

28. Belzec in Propaganda, Testimonies, Archeological Research, and History. Theses & Dissertations Press, Chicago 2004.

Traduzione tedesca : Belzec Propaganda, Zeugenaussagen, archäologische Untersuchungen, historische Fakten. Castle Hill Publishers, Hastings, dicembre 2004.

Traduzione francese : Belzec à travers la propagande, les témoignages, les enquêtes archéologiques et les documents historiques. La Sfinge, Roma, 2005.

I have no idea if those were translations from the English book or translations from the original manuscript.

If Mattogno did not quote the German translation in his manuscript (and instead gave an Italian translation in it) it is quite possible that the German translator did not bother looking it up in Germany (or requesting a copy from Mattogno).

The guys at H.E.A.R.T. likely have a copy of the German text. I know you are reading this so what about giving us a transcription, at least for this part of the text. Please.

[Laurentz Dahl]

Why is this sentence important?

Perhaps I should make this more clear.

The Holocaust promoters designate the three barracks described by Kozak as respectively a warehouse, an undressing barrack, and a gas chamber building.

They do this despite Kozak's claim that the first barrack was a "waiting room" and the second a bathing facility.

It is possible that a barrack for undressing/waiting and a barrack used as a warehouse would like similar on the inside, even if facilities for hanging up clothes etc. could be expected. According to Kurt Franz' testimony on Belzec (where he served prior to Treblinka) there was "counter for the deposit of valuables" inside the undressing barrack (Arad, p.70).

On the other hand, it would be impossible to mistake an undressing barrack from a barrack housing a bathing facility. In the latter case, a number of water pipes would have to be drawn, the floors and walls would need special layers to withstand humidity, shower heads had to be installed etc. Thus if Kozak, one of the Polish civilians who constructed the barracks, states that the second barrack was for the Jews to bath in, then it most certainly contained an authentic bathing facility (and, it follows, the first barrack a waiting room/undressing barrack and not a warehouse). And, as Pressac remarks, having the victims take a bath before they are killed makes no sense.

Therefore the importance of knowing what exactly Kozak stated regarding the function of the second barrack.