Writer: Mike Stein

Porter continues:

... contains the following factual assertions which are UNTRUE:

CLAIM: Zyklon becomes instantly gaseous ²⁰

This is the real text of the book: [Höss] saw himself as a technician. As champion of Zyklon B, the hydrogen cyanide pellets which give off fumes when exposed to air, he had engaged in a long personal and scientific conflict with his rival, *Kriminalkommissar* Christian Wirth, who had jurisdiction over the Belzec camp and who was the head of the carbon monoxide school. There had been an awful day at Belzec. which the SS chemical officer Kurt Gerstein had witnessed, when Kommissar Wirth's method took three hours to finish a party of Jewish males packed into the chambers. That Ho"ss had backed the more efficient technology is partially attested to by the continuous growth of Auschwitz and the decline of Belzec. ²¹

Note that the word "instantly" appears nowhere in Keneally's text.

TRUTH: actual dosage: 16 gr/m2 over a 24 hour exposure to kill clothes moths according to Document NI-9912, Directions for Use of Zyklon. The area must be ventilated for 2 days.

The whole truth: the speed with which the cyanide is released depends on the temperature. And if there are blowers to assist the ventilation, it is very quick, according to a surprising source:

[The standard Degesch delousing chambers] all had a safe and relatively quick means of producing and dispersing a lethal concentration of cyanide throughout each chamber; specially coated and insulated walls to maintain a minimum temperature and reduce cyanide penetration and loss; and circulation blowers and ductwork to thoroughly ventilate the chambers with fresh air in about one hour after a batch of victims had been killed. The venting phase could just as easily last several hours depending upon the discretion of the operator. During all this time, the entire contents including corpses would also have been heated, contrary to another Faurisson claim, to temperatures at least ten degrees above the boiling point of cyanide. Cyanide boils at 78 degrees Fahrenheit.²²

Porter:

CLAIM: Zyklon served no purpose other than mass murder. Zyklon and crematory ovens are proof of mass murder .²³

In the text which most closely corresponds to this description, Keneally says: "Late the previous year, Schindler had seen in the SS Bulletin of Budget and Construction an invitiation for bids for the construction of some crematoria in a camp southeast of Lublin. Belzec."²⁴

Looking further, we find:²⁵

The Schindler women had not been precisely informed of the statistics of Birkenau or of the Auschwitz duchy in itself. They could see, though, beyond the birch trees at the western end of the enormous settlement, constant smoke rising from the four crematoria and the numerous pyres. They believed they were adrift now, and that the tide would take them down there. But not with all the capacity for making and believing rumors that characterizes a life in prison would they have guessed how many people could be gassed there on a day when the system worked well. The number was - according to Höss - nine thousand.

The women were equally unaware that they had arrived in Auschwitz at a time when the progress of the war and certain secret negotiations between Himmler and the Swedish Count Folke Bernadotte were imposing a new direction on it. The secret of the exermination centers had not been kept, for the Russians had excavated the Lublin camp and found the furnaces containing human bones and more than five hundred drums of Zyklon B.

News of this was published throughout the world, and Himmler, who wanted to be treated seriously as obvious postwar successor to the Führer, was willing to make promises to the Allies that the gassing of Jews would stop. He did not, however, issue an order on the matter until some time in October - the date is not certain.

One copy went to General Pohl in Oranienburg; the other, to Kaltenbrunner, chief of Reich Security. Both of them ignored the directive, and so did Adolf Eichmann. Jews from Plaszow, Theresienstadt, and Italy continued to be gassed up to the middle of November. The last selection for the gas chambers is believed, however, to have been made on October 30. ²⁵

Porter:

TRUTH: Zyklon was invented as a fumigant in 1922, and is marketed today under the trade name Cyanosil. Crematory oven technology dates back to the 1890s.

The whole truth: While in the quote above, Auschwitz-Birkenau had a maximum killing capacity of 9,000 per day, an offical document gives the maxiumum capacity of the crematoria as "only" 4,756 per 24-hour day. But even if you pretend that the crematorium workers only worked a forty hour week, with paid vacation, that still comes out to just under 400,000 per year. Yet the "official" death toll was only about 150,000 for the entire life of the camp.

Something is very, very wrong here. It is not crematory ovens that prove mass murder, but the fact that they built to such a capacity. Nobody builds such overcapacity unless they expect to use it, or did use it. The official records of deaths were false - because they did not take into account the people gassed immediately, without ever being tattooed and entered onto the books.

[Continued]

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