Railroad rails in fires

[Carto's Cutlass Supreme]

I'm always looking for technical snafus in prisoner's testimony. There's a lot of it, and the imprisoned Germans spiced up their confessions with it, in a way that would go over the heads of the interrogators. In actuality it went over the heads of almost everybody, not all of it is even discovered today I'll bet!

Franz Stangl wrote,

"I know that in the beginning (in Treblinka) they used rails from the trolley to build the cremation grill. But it turned out that these were too weak and bent in the heat. They were replaced with real reailroad rails."

Yitzhak Arad.
Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka: The Operation Reinhard Camps
page 174
Indiana University Press

My question is this: is this another plant in a confession? What are German WWII rails made of? Would they hold up in bonfire-like heat if weight was on them? Conversely, would trolley (lighter) rails bend?

[Vallon]

Here is a picture of a pyre on the Altmarkt square in Dresden after it had been bombed.
The bodies were piled on a grill made of railroad rails.

[PLAYWRIGHT]

At 1500 degrees, steel will not melt, but does lose it's structural strength, and takes on the mechanical properties of cold licorice. Under weight, it will bend. That's one of the things that brought down the WTC Towers.

Also, in cold weather like that, thermal stresses between extreme heat and extreme cold will begin to twist it.

Trolly rails are much thinner than standard railway gauge, and I suppose might bend a little quicker.

BUT Vallon's pic does bring up some other questions, especially in the lurid tales surrounding Belzec and Treblinka. I noticed that they have the bodies piled in a tier about four high, and certainly not more than five high. It doesn't look like it could possibly get any bigger, and that contradicts some of the testimonies out of those two camps, where they reported the body pile being as much as twenty high.

Also, notice the little boy in shorts, and how his legs are bloated from the beginnings of decomposition. Keep that in mind when looking at other "Holocaust" pics. This is what real, as opposed to staged, body piles look like.

[Vilho]

What did they use to get the bodies in Dresden etc. to burn?

It's pretty stupid that the holocaust-liers are using photos like these as evidence of the holocaust, as everyone with eyes can see, these bodies are not burnt in a pit, but in a high pile. I wonder why they didn't burn them in pits if it worked so well at the "extermination camps"

[Hannover]

Vilho says:

It's pretty stupid that the holocaust-liers are using photos like these as evidence of the holocaust, as everyone with eyes can see, these bodies are not burnt in a pit, but in a high pile. I wonder why they didn't burn them in pits if it worked so well at the "extermination camps"

And consider how long it took to burn these Dresden corpses. Many, many hours for very incomplete cremation. But the absurd and impossible 'holocau$t' stories claim complete pit cremations (very poor oxygen flow) took mere minutes.

- Hannover

[Carto's Cutlass Supreme]

Hi Playwright: the Treblinka/Sobibor/Belzec stories claim 4-5 high also.

The Dresden photo is always shown as proof that the Treblinka burnings are possible. But look how much wood there is room for underneath these rails. Plus, when burning, disinfection and cremation are two different things.

Licorice huh? I wonder if these thick rails, presumably propped up higher than this Dresden photo and some of them thoroughly engulfed in flames, would have bent with the weight of 4 or 5 bodies?

[Daniel Saez Lorente]

Hi Playwright: the Treblinka/Sobibor/Belzec stories claim 4-5 high also.

The Dresden photo is always shown as proof that the Treblinka burnings are possible. But look how much wood there is room for underneath these rails. Plus, when burning, disinfection and cremation are two different things.

Licorice huh? I wonder if these thick rails, presumably propped up higher than this Dresden photo and some of them thoroughly engulfed in flames, would have bent with the weight of 4 or 5 bodies?

I don't know much about rails but during the American Civil War railroad wrecking was practiced by heating the middle of the rail over a fire then using horses to bend the rail around trees, etc. Sound like hard work to me. Presumably the ties were used for fuel.

[Scott]

I don't know much about rails but during the American Civil War railroad wrecking was practiced by heating the middle of the rail over a fire then using horses to bend the rail around trees, etc. Sound like hard work to me. Presumably the ties were used for fuel.

That's true, although Civil War steel was probably not as good as in WWII. Still would not be too hard to bend though.

Railroads in the Civil War

When General Sherman cut loose of his supply line after the fall of Atlanta and continued the march to Savannah these same troops turned their abilities to the destruction of the railroads. The troops would pile up all of the ties from a stretch of track and place on top of these piles the rails taken from the same stretch of track. The pyre would then be set aflame and the rails would soon begin to glow red at the centers. The troops would then pick a rail up off the fire and take it to the nearest tree to bend the rail around the tree and, for added difficulty, twist the rail. They did all of this knowing the South had only one plant which could undo the destruction they had done to the rails. These actions crippled the ability of the South to react to Sherman's trek through the Georgia countryside and state capitol, as well as tax the ability of the South's shrinking industrial base to produce new rail and repair the old. General Sherman employed these same tactics when he left Savannah for his march through the Carolinas.

http://www.gatewaynmra.org/articles/civil-war1.htm

[TMoran]

Addressing various statements by members -

The iron beams in the photo are not rail tracks but I-Beams.

Stangl's nonsensical testimony said there were only three parallel rail tracks involved with the "roasters" and in the photo we have 8 showing and most likely at least two more out of the picture. Stangl's total nonsense said they were suspended three feet (1 meter) off the ground and there ends supported by concrete stanchions.

In the photo there is no fuel underneath even though a few pieces of wood can be seen. There would be no air space to allow combustion. Some of the material is brick, two of which are shown to be used as leveling supports for a cross beam.

According to Stangl's description there would have been as many as 25 bodies per foot on the "roaster" tracks. That would be at least 1500 pounds per foot. That would mean after the first cremation we would have had the rails sagging down to ground level which would also mean the ends would have pulled away from the stanchions. Plop.

The intent or aim of those involved with burning the bodies at Dresden would be to char the remains so as to make them inhospitable to disease and not total cremation. The bodies would have been soaked with flammable material which would have been burned off in a short time.


Stangl's testimony is an ideal example of why the Holocaust community gets themselves into a fit when the 'facts' of the story are challenged.

[Carto's Cutlass Supreme]

That would mean after the first cremation we would have had the rails sagging down to ground level which would also mean the ends would have pulled away from the stanchions. Plop.

Thanks Tom and everyone.

Tom: That's interesting. Do you think Stangl did it on purpose as a deliberately planted lie in his story?

The "crimp" in the story wasn't always technical with every captured German. In Claude Lanzman's Shoah, we have the secret taping of Franz Suchomel. Lanzmann has got to be so excited that he's getting this confession, years later, from Suchomel. Then Suchomel adds his little spoiler to the story: he states that there was a row of poop. Of excrement. Because the women outside the gas chamber got so scared when they saw the gas chamber, and so they all just pooped in a row right then and there.

Lanzmann believed it and included it in his movie.

[Richard Perle]

It is changing the topic somewhat, but I don't think Franz Suchomel was actually unaware of his being filmed.
From Rudolf's Lectures On The Holocaust:

When you look at this interview, you note the following:
– Suchomel often looks directly into the camera throughout long passages;
– the camera is always correctly aimed and focused;
– when both of them look at a diagram of the camp, the diagram is held up to
the camera; the camera then enlarges the pointer and follows it exactly as it
moves across the diagram.

Each German was apparently payed 3,000DM for their interview.

[Carto's Cutlass Supreme]

Hi Richard. That's interesting. I think you're right.

It will be interesting to hear if people think Stangl knew of technical problems with rails heating up, and thus included it.

One thing that points to the idea that these men purposely included technical impossibilites, is that often they put a quirky emphasis on them. With Stangl, he says they used trolley rails, but they bent in the heat. That is giving us a hint. Gawd, without that hint would anyone ever get it? Gerstein did the same thing. He has a German working on a Russian engine. For some reason he wants to emphasize that. Maybe because it would make more sense to have a Russian working on a complex Russian engine. I don't know. So what does he do? He mentions that the German mechanic's name was prominently displayed at the entrance to the chamber. Oh and he has the engine prominently breaking down as well. I've talked about this on other threads, so back to Stangl: anyone?

[Scott]

It will be interesting to hear if people think Stangl knew of technical problems with rails heating up, and thus included it.

I doubt if he really tried to think it through. Stangl was obviously trying to impress with his penitence and his infamy, not unlike Eichmann, and liars frequently try to add verisimilitude to their stories by inventing detail that looks good on the surface but may not wash.

[Carto's Cutlass Supreme]

Interesting. But don't you think he might have struck some bargain to cooperate in exchange for his family not to be harrassed/harmed in Brazil? If he had a family.

Or a bargain not to be tortured. After all, he did die 24 hours after his last interview with Gitta Sereny, which seems odd.

[Vallon]

After all, he did die 24 hours after his last interview with Gitta Sereny, which seems odd.

It was not meant to be the last interview. They had intended to meet the day after. Sereny writes that he had stuck a note on the wall with a name he had tried to remember for that.