Foner (Foner, Samuel P. "Major Historical Fact Uncovered" SPOTLIGHT
Vol. XIX, Number 2, January 11, 1993) tells us:
The small gas chamber of Krema I was used for gassing for a short
time, and then converted into an air-raid shelter; after the war,
it was reconstructed to look as it did when it was used for
gassing, as
Dr. Piper notes in his letter of response to the
Cole
video. The text of Piper's letter is a bit stilted, as Polish is
his native language, but his intent, and the facts, are quite
clear:
The Fact is also confirmed in the book by Jean Claude
Pressac "Auschwitz: Technique and operation of the gas
chambers, published by The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, New
York 1989 515 Madison Avenue. On the page 157 you may
read: "With part of the building converted to an air raid
shelter, this is the state in which the SS abandoned
Krematorium I in January 1945." Repeating what Pressac had
written I told what was the nature of the adaptation works
carried out by the Nazis and what one had to do to remove
those changes in order to regain the previous appearance.
They are all "
Piper's revelations. In spite of the fact
that such secondary restoration works had to be done, there
is an undisputable reality that the gas chamber in question
is housed in the same builldin which has been existed from
prewar times till now.
[(See people/p/piper.franciszek/press/daily.texan.1093) for the entire letter from Dr. Piper to the
Daily Texan regarding the Cole video.]
Breitman offers the following as background information to the
development of
Zyklon B as a killing device, and (more specifically)
to the early use to which Block 11 was put:
The buildings, many of them former Polish army
barracks, were full of insects, and the camp administration had
previously brought in the Hamburg pesticide firm of Tesch and
Stabenow to get rid of them. Two experts had fumigated
particular buildings with a patented insecticide,
Zyklon B, a
crystalline form of
hydrogen cyanide that turned gaseous when
exposed to the air. (Höss, "Commandant of Auschwitz," 175.
Interrogation of Höss, 14 May 1946, NA RG 238, M-1019/R 28/63)
On September 3
Fritsch decided to experiment. First he crammed
five or six hundred Russians and another 250 sick prisoners from
the camp hospital into an underground detention cell. Then the
windows were covered with earth. SS men wearing gas masks
opened the
Zyklon-B canisters to remove what looked like blue
chalk pellets about the size of peas, creating a cloud of poison
gas. After they left, the doors were sealed. (Höss, Commandant
at Auschwitz, 173. See also Yehuda Bauer, "Auschwitz," in
Jäckel and Rohwere, eds., Der Mord an den Juden, 167-68)
Höss wrote later that death was instantaneous. Perhaps that was what
he was told. But he was not present to witness the event; he
was away on a business trip. Other sources indicate that even
the next day not everyone was dead, and the SS men had to
release more insecticide. Eventually all the prisoners died.
When
Höss returned to Auschwitz, he heard about the successful
experiment. On Eichmann's next visit to Auschwitz, Höss told
him about the possibilities of
Zyklon-B, and, according to
Höss, the two decided to use the pesticide and the peasant
farmstead for extermination.
(Höss, Commandant, 175. From the
History of KL Auschwitz, New York, 1982, I, 190)(Breitman, 203)
SS-Unterscharführer Pery Broad described a gassing in Krema I while
giving testimony (Museum, 176):
The tins were filled to the brim
with blue granules the size of peas. Immediately after opening
the tins, their contents were thrown into the holes which were
then quickly covered. Meanwhile
Grabner gave a sign to the
driver of a lorry, which had stopped close to the crematorium.
The driver started the motor and its deafening noise was louder
than the death cries of the hundreds of people inside, being
gassed to death."
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Nizkor
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provides them so that its readers can learn the nature and extent of hate and antisemitic discourse. Nizkor urges the readers of these pages to condemn racist
and hate speech in all of its forms and manifestations.Auschwitz: Krema I
Auschwitz: The Experimental Gas Chamber
David Cole has produced a videotape which filmed the director of the
Auschwitz State Museum [
Dr. Piper] "admitting" that the gas-chamber known Krema I
was constructed after the war ended, on the direct order of Stalin. The videotape on which
Piper makes his revelations was taken in
mid-1992 by a young Jewish investigator,
David Cole. It has
just been released, on January 1, 1993, although Cole announced
his project at the 11th International Revisionist Conference at
Irvine, California last October.
Cole maintains that I first time admitted the allegedly
unknown fact the Nazis adapted the crematorium in question
in which the gas chamber were located for air-raid shelter,
the fact allegedly unknown even for Museum guides. It is
un truth. See enclosed copies of pages from the books
which constitute the fundamental reading for Auschwitz
guides. In book by T-an Sehn "Concentrat Camp
Ogwiqcim-Brzezinka (Auschwitz-Birkenau) Warsaw 1957, You may
read on the page 152-" In May 1944 the old Crematorium I in
the base camp was adapted for use as an air raid shelter.
Auschwitz had been receiving trainloads of Soviet commissars and
other POW's who were subject to liquidation.
Höss's men had
shot previous shipments of Russian prisoners, but on September 3
Höss's enterprising subordinate
Hauptsturmführer Fritsch
thought of an expedient new method based on the camp's own
experience.
".... The 'disinfectors' were at work. One of them was
SS-Unterscharfuehrer Teuer, decorated with the Cross of War
Merit. With a chisel and a hammer they opened a few
innocuously looking tins which bore the inscription 'Cyclon, to
be used against vermin. Attention, poison! to be opened by
trained personnel only!'.
Müllers eyewitness account of gassings in Krema I, in April, 1942, is
recounted in Hilberg's "The Destruction of the European Jews":
The
Auschwitz procedure evolved in stages. In April 1942,
Slovak Jews were gassed in Crematorium I, apparently with their
clothes on. Later, deportees from nearby Sosnowiec were told
to undress in the yard. The victims, faced by the peremptory
order to remove their clothes, men in front of women and women
in front of men, became apprehensive. The SS men, shouting at
them, then drove the naked men, women and children into the gas
chamber.
In The Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Jozef Buszko (Jagiellonian
University, Krakow) writes: "The first, relatively small gas chamber was
built in Auschwitz I. Here the experimental gassing using Zyklon B gas
first took place, on September 3, 1941. The victims were 600 Soviet
prisoners of war and 250 other prisoners. After that experiment, the
firm J. A. Topf and Sons received a contract to build much larger,
permanent gas chambers connected with very large crematoria in
Auschwitz-Birkenau, where the mass exterminations were mainly carried
out. Altogether four such installations -- II, III, IV, and V -- were
built in Birkenau." (Encyclopedia, Vol. I, 113)