Newsgroups: alt.revisionism Subject: Holocaust Almanac: Filip Muller's Testimony (Auschwitz) Reply-To: kmcvay@nizkor.almanac.bc.ca Followup-To: alt.revisionism Organization: The Nizkor Project, Vancouver Island, CANADA Keywords: Blobel,Muller,Auschwitz Archive/File: camps/auschwitz deathcamp.03 Last-modified: 1993/03/26 From the testimony of Filip Muller, an Auschwitz survivor, Konnilyn Feig reports the following account: "Filip Muller, a young Slovakian, arrived early in Auschwitz -- April 1942 -- and survived! He did so, however, because of his forced work assignment as a stoker in the Auschwitz crematorium and then as a jack-of- all-trades in the Birkenau extermination plant squad, the Sonderkommando. His descriptions of the facilities and of the process are the most precise and chilling accounts we have. In the antiquated Auschwitz crematorium the procedure was remindful of the Stone Age. The stokers dragged the bodies across the floor to the ovens. A main rail track ran across the room, with six branch tracks leading to the six ovens: On the main track was a turn-table which enabled a truck to be moved onto the branch tracks. The cast-iron truck had a box- shaped superstructure made of sheet metal, with an overall height and width of just under 1 metre. It was about 80 centimetres long. An iron hand-rail went right across it's entire width at the back. A loading platform made of strong sheet metal and not quite 2 metres long jutted out in the front; its side walls were 12 to 15 centimetres high. Open at the front, the platform was not quite as wide as the mouth of the oven so that it fitted easily into the muffle. On the platform there was also a box-shaped pusher made of sheet metal, higher than the side walls of the platform and rounded off at the top. The stokers brought a truck to the branch rail, poured water on the truck to keep it cool, and loaded three corpses on it. Now the time had come to open the oven door. Immediately one was overcome by the fierce heat which rushed out. When the wooden prop had been removed, two men took hold of the front end of the platform on either side pulling it right up to the oven. Simultaneously two men pushed the truck from behind, thus forcing the platform into the oven. The two who had been doing the carrying in front, having menwhile stepped back a few steps, now braced themselves against the hand-rail while giving the pusher a vigorous shove with one leg. In this way they helped complete the job of getting the corpses inside the oven. While the corpses burned, the stokers stripped the waiting bodies. At the most fifty-four bodies could be cremated in one hour. The continuous overloading and operation of the ovens caused the inner fire bricks to crumble. The staff built a new modern chimney in the summer of 1942. But it soon evidenced crumbling; and the extermination process, never very effective, began to disintegrate. Himmler soon became dissatisfied. The process moved too slowly; the stench contaminated the surrounding countyside at night; and the red sky over Auschwitz could be seen for miles.[11] The gassing process generated enormous piles of corpses, and the number grew daily. The small crematorium could not cope, so the squads buried the corpses in mass graves at Birkenau woods. Although the corpses were covered with chlorine, lime, and earth, after a few months the inevitable decomposition began to poison the air, causing an intolerable stench throughout the entire neighborhood. Doctors found deadly bacteria in springs and wells, and predicted serious epidemics. Experts at the fisheries began to complain that the fish in the ponds in the vicinity were dying, which they attributed to the pollution of the ground water through cadaveric poison. The bodies, rotting under the summer sun, swelled up and a brownish red mass began to seep through the cracksto the surface. Quick action had to be taken. Colonel Blobel arrived from Eichmann's office with Himmler's orders that all bodies be exhumed and burned and the ashes removed. Working in two shifts, the prisoners dug up the 50,000 decaying corpses, took them away on trucks, and burned them -- first on wooden pyres, 2,000 at a time, and later in pits. The fires raged day and night until December 1942 when the anti-aircraft defence service protested because the fires could be seen for great distances. Himmler also found fault with the process because open-pyre burning could hardly be kept a secret. therefore the top SS bureaucracy became awary of the vital need in the future for an efficient process of final body disposal." (Feig) [11]Filip Muller, Eyewitness Auschwitz, New York: Stein and Day, 1979, 14-15 Work Cited Feig, Konnilyn. Hitler's Death Camps. LOC D810.J4 F36 1981
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