Testimonies on flames from Auschwitz crematorium chimneys

[TheBlackRabbitofInlé]

Unfortunately the google news search function doesn't work that well like in the past anymore - No Archive.

On December 16, 2013, a Google News employee stated in Google Product Forums that Google News is "performing a much needed facelift on our News Archive search function," and that access to archived stories would be limited for several months while "this new system" is being built.[5] As of December 17, 2013, newspapers at news.google.com/newspapers are still available for browsing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_News_Archive

We can only hope that this is true and that they haven't simply pulled the plug on it without making a proper announcement. They ditched further plans to continue expanding it back in 2011:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2385664,00.asp

[Hektor]

Unfortunately the google news search function doesn't work that well like in the past anymore - No Archive.

On December 16, 2013, a Google News employee stated in Google Product Forums that Google News is "performing a much needed facelift on our News Archive search function," and that access to archived stories would be limited for several months while "this new system" is being built.[5] As of December 17, 2013, newspapers at news.google.com/newspapers are still available for browsing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_News_Archive

We can only hope that this is true and that they haven't simply pulled the plug on it without making a proper announcement. They ditched further plans to continue expanding it back in 2011:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2385664,00.asp

Ah, I see.
Under the newspapers extension one still can get the "flames" articles:
https://www.google.com/search?q=flames% ... newspapers

[TheBlackRabbitofInlé]

Under the newspapers extension one still can get the "flames" articles:
https://www.google.com/search?q=flames% ... newspapers

If you spot any about survivors seeing them coming from crematory chimneys, be sure to post them here.




Czech-Jew Zdenka Fantlova recalled some Holocaust denying she'd done at Auschwitz-Birkenau 52 years earlier.

Three male prisoners came in. One of them I instantly recognised as Ota Weil. He had helped us with the theatre lighting in Terezin, which he had left two years ago in a transport "to the East." So now we knew where they had all been sent.

All three men were working in the camp as electricians and were able to move about freely. Ota had come to see if his sister was amongst us. I jumped down straight away to greet my old colleague. But though he recognised me he looked different now, with a strange, absent expression in his eyes like a man from another world.

"When did you get here?" he asked.

"Some time yesterday afternoon."

"Alone?" "No, my sister's here with me. And Mother."

"Your mother's still with you, or did she go to the left?"

"Yes, she went to the left. So I suppose she's in another block with older women."

He took me to the door, opened it halfway and pointed to the column of red flames rising high up to the sky from a nearby tall chimney. "That's where she went," he remarked dryly. "She went up the chimney."

What was he babbling about? Poor Ota, he's been here two years and all the things he's seen and experienced here must have driven him crazy. I suddenly felt sorry for him and to avoid further argument said: "Yes, I suppose so."

I had seen the flames, sure enough, but persuaded myself it must be a bakery. To cope with so many mouths they no doubt had to bake bread non-stop, right through the night. Realising I was not going to see eye-to-eye with Ota, I bade him a quick farewell. I was a new arrival, still in full possession of my senses, whereas he, poor chap, was not any more.

"Everyone who went to the left was sent straight up the chimney," he added, as we said goodbye.

- Zdenka Fantlova, The Tin Ring: How I Cheated Death, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne: Northumbria Press, 2010, p.113. Originally published in Czech in 1996.

[TheBlackRabbitofInlé]

Lodz Jew Anna Eilenberg-Eibeshitz wrote in one of her many books:

Finally our journey was over. The train came to a sudden, jolting halt. Shortly the doors of the sealed cattle car burst open with a frightening bang. The gruesomeness of Auschwitz lay before us. Those who could not jump out of the car fast enought [sic] were rolled or pulled out. Those who were completely immobile were thrown aside, and after only a few minutes the place was strewn with human bodies. Those who had not succumbed were lined up in a column of five abreast and, at a rifle signal, marched along a sandy and graveled road. The length of the marching column was endless. We noticed a strange smell, a sharp smell that assaulted our nostrils. Then someone said: "This smell is of burned human bodies." People around me started to weep. And as I looked ahead I noticed smoke rising to heaven from the creamatorium [sic!] chimney. I noticed flames, leaping flames, and I asked myself if these flames would bear witness to our tragedy.

- Anna Eilenberg, Breaking My Silence, NY: Shengold Publishers inc., 1985, p.93.

[TheBlackRabbitofInlé]

Hasidic Jew, rabbi Wolfgang Sinai Adler, from Upper-Silesia.

We were taken to the compound of Camp 13 in Auschwitz so we could play soccer. Who can imagine the reason for this particular show? Just a few dozen yards away loomed the crematorium where our families were being burned, and its chimney was even then spitting flames at the heavens. And they were handing us a ball to play with. After a few minutes I crept away from the comedic scene and stood at the edge of the compound. I was still sitting shivah for my parents' murder, wasn't I? And who knew what tomorrow would bring?

Rabbi Sinai Adler, B'Gei Tzalmaves, pp. 31-32, quoted in: Menachem Mendel Taub (ed.), Shema Yisrael: Testimonies of Devotion, Courage, and Self-Sacrifice, 1939-1945, Southfield: MI, Targum Press Inc, 2002, p.247.

[TheBlackRabbitofInlé]

Professor Otto Dov Kulka, Czech-cum-Israeli Jew

The following piece was written by his father, who penned a lot of Holocaust books and was "among the founders of the Museum of Tolerance of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Kulka

Otto, the only one in the group who was a survivor of the September transport, was the youngest and smallest in the lot. When SS Sergeant Buntrock, who was checking the identity of the boys from cards and numbers, saw Otto in the line, he asked him in German, "Wie alt bist du?" (How old are you?). "Dreizehn" (thirteen), Otto replied. Buntrock looked at Otto's card and said to him, "Warutn lugst du?" (Why are you lying to me?). With that, he pulled him out of the line. Otto (who is now a professor of history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem) recalls what happened then:

"I was certain that our little trick had failed and that I was doomed. Buntrock looked at my card once again and then checked it against the list. He gave me a long look. I had a feeling that he wanted to avoid delays, or perhaps he was moved by some spark of humane feeling. At any rate, he curtly said to me, "Hau ab!" (Get lost!) I ran back to the group of boys who were waiting in line at the camp entrance. Then came the critical moment. The guard who was escorting our group led us to a road that ran between two of the crematoria. He explained that he was taking us to a 'sauna' for disinfection; the 'sauna' was in a building at the end of the road. At that point we wondered whether this wasn't just another trick and we would wind up in the gas chambers. When we found we were marching directly into the 'sauna,' we heaved a collective sigh of relief. We were given a shower and received new underwear together with striped prisoners' uniforms. From the window of the 'sauna' I could see flames rising from the chimneys of the crematoria."

- "Escape from a death train (part II)," by Erich Kulka, in Lewis Weiner, Gertrude Hirshcler (eds.), Review of the Society for the History of Czechoslovak Jews, Volumes 3, Forest Hills, NY: The Society, 1988-1989, p. 185.

[Hektor]

Flame spitting pits seems to be another variant:

Vera Kreigel's first memory of Auschwitz was as a 5-year-old marching past a huge pit spitting flames. ''They were throwing in small children who they grabbed from their mothers and threw into the fire. They threw them in alive,'' she said, speaking in Hebrew.
''The SS (Nazi guards) with their rifle butts smashed the skulls of the smaller children as if they were chickens. I saw it,'' said Mrs. Kreigel, 46, now a grandmother living in Israel.
Mengele did experiments on twins and dwarfs.
http://www.apnewsarchive.com/1985/Survi ... 4751efad1a

[TheBlackRabbitofInlé]

David Irving , Robert Jan van Pelt and the judge Charles Gray touched upon Krema II and III's flaming chimneys during the libel trial:

IRVING: So in simple terms a flame would have to travel about 90 feet before it emerged?

VAN PELT: Whatever. I presume so. I do not know exactly the behaviour of flames in chimneys. But there is a considerable distance, yes, which of course is important to create the draught.

Irving vs. Penguin & Lipstadt, Day 11, 27th January 2000, pp. 30-31.
http://www.hdot.org/en/trial/transcript ... 26-30.html

IRVING: You will remember, Professor, will you not, that I asked you the length that the flame has to travel from the furnace to the mouth of the chimney?

VAN PELT: Yes.

IRVING: We reached a figure of 90 feet or so, did we not?

VAN PELT: Yes.

IRVING: Have you ever seen flames that are 90 feet long?

VAN PELT: No.

IRVING: Will you take it from me that any furnace engineer would say that you never get flames from a chimney that is as long as that, or route that is as long as that?

VAN PELT: I am happy to accept what your engineer says. I am happy also to accept what another engineer has said. I have not consulted engineers on this.

IRVING: Regardless of what is being burned, even if it was trash from the incinerator or whatever they would not have flames emerging from the mouth of the chimney. Will you also accept that the Germans, being very good design engineers, have also made adequate provision to ensure that no smoke would have come from the chimney either?

VAN PELT: No smoke?

IRVING: No smoke would come from the chimney. That is the purpose of the design of chimney roof.

VAN PELT: Okay, it may be so or it may be not so, I cannot comment



IRVING: Regardless, if you concentrate just on the flames will you agree that Olère in one of his drawings which you described as being very good of the outside of the crematorium shows flames and smoke luridly belching from the -- not just trickling out --

JUSTICE GRAY: Well, do not bother, it does.

IRVING: I am sure you know which picture I am referring to.

VAN PELT: -- yes, it is tab No. 3.

JUSTICE GRAY: And it either is or is not intended to be an accurate reproduction of what actually was visible.

IRVING: If you have read Pressac, Professor, do you remember the passage where Olère states that the SS turned bodies into sausages?

VAN PELT: I do not remember that, I am sorry.

Ibid., pp. 104-105.
http://www.hdot.org/en/trial/transcript ... 1-105.html

Enlarged version.

[TheBlackRabbitofInlé]

EYEWITNESS CLAIM

Flames shooting out of heavily smoking crematorium chimneys.

EVALUATION

Coke fires are very short-flamed and develop only little smoke, and this smoke usually burns within the muffle. Even carbonized, burning corpses do not generate any flame and smoke only slightly if the muffle is working inefficiently. That flames could penetrate through a 10 meter long flue and a 15 ft high chimney to the outside, is technically impossible. Even the fire’s reflections disappear in the flue.

Germar Rudolf, The Rudolf Report: Expert Report on Chemical and Technical Aspects of the 'Gas Chambers' of Auschwitz, 2nd Revised and Expanded Edition, p.222.
http://holocausthandbooks.com/dl/02-trr.pdf

[TheBlackRabbitofInlé]

L: And what about the chimneys spewing flames?

R: First allow me to quote the former President of the Austrian Federal Association of Civil Engineers, Walter Lüftl, who wrote on this subject (1991b):

“We know from past cases: even if 46 witnesses more or less firmly declare that they heard nothing, the 47th witness who heard something, whose statement can be verified by experts, nonetheless speaks the truth.
On the other hand, it is strange that in certain proceedings relating to cremation facilities, testimony perhaps is given that ‘meter-high flames shot out of high chimneys,’ although this is technically impossible, since as a rule only warm exhaust gases flow out of chimneys (except in quite rare explosions – with gas heating, perhaps) and there is never even a reflection to be seen, because the flames (as in the case of coke[124] firing) are unable to leave the combustion chamber and the reflection is dissipated in the flue.”

R: Italian revisionist scholar Carlo Mattogno settled that question with extensive and well-documented research. His experiments prove that even under the worst imaginable conditions, flames could never have shot out of the crematory chimneys. The reason for this is the simple fact that the smoke duct from the ovens to the top of the chimneys was around 30 meters long (100 ft). Coke burns almost without a flame. Therefore its flames could never attain such a length, especially if there is nothing in the muffles except human cadavers, with no flammable liquids or gases (Mattogno 2004e).

L: Fine, no flames and only little smoke. But this would just make cremation all the more effective, since it would have been less noticeable

R: The problem of smoking chimneys spewing flames is significant for determining the credibility of witnesses. It is important to know whether they resort to dramatic but untrue enhancements of their testimony. As you correctly note, the presence of smoke and fire would tell us very little about the efficiency of the crematories or the alleged numbers of corpses incinerated in them.



124. Coke is produced from coal by burning it with limited oxygen supply, which removes most non-carbon components contained in coal. The resulting highly toxic gas rich in carbon monoxide and hydrogen (coke gas or city gas) was used until the 1970/80s as heating and cooking gas in many households of larger cities with coking and/or steel industries. Coke has a higher energy content per mass than most coals due to its higher percentage of pure carbon.

- Germar Rudolf, Lectures on the Holocaust: Controversial Issues Cross-Examined, Second Edition, pp. 165-166.
http://holocausthandbooks.com/dl/15-loth.pdf

[TheBlackRabbitofInlé]

Ask Ernst Zündel or somebody that followed his 1985 trial about more details on Arnold Friedman because this man apparently testified, under oath of course, that he saw ‘fourteen foot flames’ shooting out of the crematorium chimneys. I tried searching The Globe and Mail for this information but apparently they don't carry this nutrollious story.

-haldan

Nice one Haldan, Germar Rudolf quotes it.


http://www.crestwood.on.ca/ohp/friedman-arnold/

Arnold Friedman was arrested during a raid in Slovakia and deported to Auschwitz in the spring of 1944. To my knowledge, he testified to his experiences at Auschwitz at great length for the first time during the first Zündel Trial. Here are few excerpts from what he had to say about the crematories at Auschwitz:265

“There was smoke belching from the crematoria, and it gave us a constant smell – the crematoria being close enough and low enough for the smoke to be dispersed through the camp rather than go straight up. […] Well, there was – the building that I described as a crematorium is a cottage-type low building with a short chimney protruding from it. At nighttime you saw the flames shooting above the chimney about a meter or two meters, depending on the particular time. There was smoke coming out, […] Well, it was the odour of burning flesh, and the flames were changing colours from yellow to a deep red on various occasions. […] We were discussing various things and this was part of the discussion of the guesswork we kids had in guessing that these were Hungarian transports because they have these type of flames, and these are Polish transports, they’re very skinny, […]”

265 District Court… 1985, pp. 315, 326, 407; more smoke: 344, 347; more flames: 402-404. Cf. Hoffmann II 1995 (Hoffmann II, Michael A. The Great Holocaust Trial, 3rd ed., Wiswell Ruffin House, Dresden, NY, 1995), pp. 45-47

- Germar Rudolf, Lectures on the Holocaust: Controversial Issues Cross-Examined, Second Edition, p. 318.
http://holocausthandbooks.com/dl/15-loth.pdf

[TheBlackRabbitofInlé]

Northwest/southeast view of Krematorium II in activity: a sketch produced in 1945 by a member of the Soviet Investigation Commission and based on Bauleitung elevations of the building

Jean-Claue Pressac, Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, p.266.
http://www.holocaust-history.org/auschw ... 0266.shtml

[TheBlackRabbitofInlé]

Found these video stills on a Japanese site. Not sure what they're taken from.

http://iroiro.alualu.jp/sekaisi/sofia/sofia_s09-3.html

[TheBlackRabbitofInlé]

An SS confession about flaming chimneys!



SS-Rottenführer Richard Böck. Screenshot of him featuring in the documentary The World at War, pt. 20

Germar Rudolf quotes Böck from an interrogation he under went in 1959 (I think) for the forthcoming Frankfurt-Auschwitz trial:

“In any case, during the entire time of my presence in Auschwitz I could observe that inmate corpses were cremated in the old crematory. This decreased somewhat only toward the end of 1944. I could see every day how the flames shot two meters high out of the chimney. It also smelled intensively like burned flesh.”

- Richard Böck

cf. Germar Rudolf, Lectures on the Holocaust: Controversial Issues Cross-Examined, Second Edition, p. 381.
http://holocausthandbooks.com/dl/15-loth.pdf

[TheBlackRabbitofInlé]

Joachim Kügler, a prosecutor at the Frankfurt-Auschwitz trial.

Kügler told the court, May 13, 1965:

Um Ihnen zu verdeutlichen, meine Damen und Herren, was der Rampendienst war, und um Ihnen ganz klar eine Vorstellung davon zu geben, was Sie in tatsächlicher Hinsicht wissen müssen, um es im Hinblick auf seine strafrechtliche Verwertbarkeit zu beurteilen, darf ich Sie bitten, mir in Gedanken nach Auschwitz zu folgen um die Jahreswende 1943/1944 und mit mir zu gehen in das Dienstzimmer des Angeklagten Doktor Schatz gegenüber dem Kleinen Krematorium bei der Zahnstation im Stammlager. Dort kommt ein Melder, oder dort kommt ein Telefonanruf, und Doktor Schatz wird mitgeteilt, daß ein Transport eingetroffen sei. Er weiß, daß er auf dem Dienstplan für den Rampendienst steht. Er verläßt die Zahnstation und gelangt auf die Rampe in Birkenau. Wie er dort hingekommen ist, das mag in diesem Zusammenhang gleichgültig sein, zu Fuß, mit dem Fahrrad, mit dem Motorrad oder mit dem Sanka. Und dort steht er auf einem Flecken Erde, von dem aus er die Krematorien sehen konnte. Fünf Meter hoch, hat der Angeklagte Kaduk gesagt, schlugen die Flammen aus den Schornsteinen, und die Gegend war eingehüllt in den widerlichen Geruch, den die Leichenverbrennung nach sich zog. Das Verbrechen, was in Auschwitz begangen wurde, das stank ja im wahrsten Sinne des Wortes zum Himmel.

http://www.auschwitz-prozess.de/index.p ... laedoyer_1