Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day010.16 Last-Modified: 2000/07/20 MR IRVING: Each time, right? A. Each time, and all the 30 dwelling barracks in Auschwitz would take 360 and 600 kilos of Zyklon-B. Then there were also workshop storage barracks, and they would have taken 240 to 400 kilos, which means that the complete delousing of the camp (and we are now talking about Auschwitz 1 and Auschwitz 2) would have taken between 1750 and 2,900 kilos. Now, on the basis of this comparison with these other camps, I had established that an amount of 9,000 kilos for Zyklon-B for Auschwitz in 1943 would have been within the kind of range of the possible. It would be the high end, but I would not have been surprised to see so much. This means that if we take that 9,000 as a kind of bench mark of what a normal -- Auschwitz under normal conditions would have used, then we can have at least two . P-134 complete delousing of all the barracks in the camp in 1943. Now, I take two eyewitness testimonies which is one from Helen Zipitehau who was in the women's camp from -- a Slovac Jew -- 1942 until the liberation in 1945. She remembered three our four of these large delousings of the whole women's camp in her two-and-a-half year stay. Then Dr Ziegsmund Bendel in the Tesch trial declared that he has only one delousing of the barracks during his 13 month stay in Auschwitz. This is the kind of practical information we have about how many times. I mean, I do not have any more information on that. It seems then that the 1750 to 2,000 -- that this let us say two or three, maybe two delousings in 1943 of the whole camp would still bring us below the 9,000 kilos of Zyklon used after all the gas chambers have been working every day, the delousing gas chambers, and basically we have had the delousing of the blocks. I must make one kind of -- a particular thing must be noted, that if in the German document sometimes there is talking about the "Entlausung des Blocks", it means that the people in the block are going to be taken to be deloused. There is particular things. It says that block 11 was "entlaust" which means everyone was taken to be BW5A, the delousing building in the women's camp, or so on. . P-135 This means then when we go to page 29 that I say that 9,000 given these two, these very infrequent delousings of the whole camp, that those 9,000 kilos of Zyklon-B which I originally established on the basis of comparison with other camps seems to be on the high side but within the ball park of what Auschwitz would have needed for its normal concentration camp purposes. So then the question is, what are these other 3,000 kilos of Zyklon-B going to be used for? What other kind of needs did Auschwitz have for Zyklon-B which were not to be found in other concentration camps? MR JUSTICE GRAY: That, I think, probably completes your answer. It is a long answer, but it was very helpful and very clear to me. So back to Mr Irving. MR IRVING: My first question is you have, of course, read, have you not, the testimony and supporting evidence in the trial of Bruno Tesch whose company was the main distributor East of the Elf for Zyklon-B? A. I told you before that I have read parts of the trial and part of testimony. In detail, they are the testimony of Alfred Zamm. Q. This question is not meant to be the least bit offensive, but you are not an expert in disinfestation, are you? A. No, I am not. Q. The company of Tesch and Stavanacht were, in fact, the leading disinfestation experts in the whole of Europe . P-136 which is why their Managing Director found himself on the end of a British rope in 1946? A. I do not think that is why he found himself on the rope, but they were the leading firm, yes. They developed the procedure. Q. The record of the trial shows that both he and his fellow convict, Weinbarer, repeatedly visited these camps and checked what was going on and trained the local staff in the proper application and use of these pesticides and fumigating agents, these materials, is that not right? A. I remember that in the transcript of what I read that, indeed, there is a mention of these visits, but I would not comment in detail since I do not have them in front of me. Q. Is it not right that during the trial, which is recorded verbatim -- it is in the Public Record Office, in fact -- the accountant of the company was required to produce the records on which you have partially based your calculations showing precisely what the deliveries of Zyklon-B to Auschwitz were during the years concerned for precisely the same exercise that we have been doing in court today? A. That exercise has not been done. Q. In the Tesch trial? A. At the trial, at the trial they did not do this exercise. Q. Have you read the letters of clemency that were submitted . P-137 to the court after the death sentences were passed? A. I have not. Q. Yes. Well, then we are in a difficulty. Will you take it Bruno Tesch, the Managing Director, when confronted with the figures of Zyklon-B delivered to the Auschwitz camp, and doing the calculation of how many sets of clothing had had to be fumigated on a regular interval, on a regular basis, and how many barrack buildings had had to be fumigated and disinfested, expressed astonishment that they managed to do the task with as little as 12 tonnes in that one year concerned? He said that on these figures they would have had nothing left whatsoever for any kind of sinister purposes, and that this is very clearly stated in the trial and in appeals for clemency? A. I cannot comment on what Mr Tesch said. What I can comment on is the fact that the amount of Zyklon being delivered to other camps was so much smaller than Auschwitz that I think this is a more interesting road to pursue. Q. That was, of course, the point of my interruption which his Lordship quite properly reproved me for, when I pointed out that Auschwitz was receiving very large quantities of pesticide for a certain reason which you set out so admirably in your first book, namely, that Auschwitz had been built in the middle of an area which had traditionally over the centuries attracted typhus . P-138 plagues, and it was the heart of a terrible typhus plague in 1942? A. I do remember what is in my book without actually having to consult it. I never say anywhere in the book that Auschwitz was a place which was suffering typhus plagues. I only mentioned the issue of climate actually in the discussion of an introduction of Jan Sehn to his report on Auschwitz where Jan Sehn makes a very big point of it, and where I say actually I disagree because Jan Sehn in some way tries to create a context of unhealthiness for the place as if the Germans had chosen Auschwitz with this in mind. I say this, obviously, is not supported by historical evidence. Q. Had Auschwitz ever been used as a disinfestation centre for transients in previous generations or before the Nazis came? Had they used it -- it was right on the border of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was it not? A. Yes. This is part of my research in the past has been actually on the origin of the camp, and the Sturmlager was originally created as a labour exchange. Q. Yes. It had all the appropriate installations there for fumigating the transients, did it not? A. They had no installations whatsoever for the fumigation of transients. Q. Not for preparing them in this manner? A. I mean, one of the big problems was, of course, that . P-139 Zyklon did not exist at the time, at the time that when the camp functioned there were also no steam installations or hot air installations. Q. Have I read your book entirely wrongly then when you suggest that the transients were held in Auschwitz for a while and subjected to appropriate measures to make sure they were fit for travelling into a cleaner part of Europe? A. I have -- I think you are confusing two things. I can see where the confusion comes from. There is one quote I make a general, in the book, a general kind of description of the movement of Eastern European Jews who go to America and who cross the border and at a certain moment are going to be -- their clothing is going to be deloused one way or another. It does not say what way it is. It is an account of a girl called Mary Anton who panics ---- Q. I remember this, yes? A. --- at this thing, so that is the one account which is there. The second account is about the use of ---- Q. Because they are taken off the train and sent in to be washed, am I right? A. Yes, and she gets very nervous about that. Q. She says, "Oh, my God, they are going to gas us"? A. No, "to kill us", not "gas us"; and those facilities existed, some of them at the border and also they existed in the harbours of Bremen and Hamburg. . P-140 Q. When was that? Roughly what year was that? A. This was 1880s, 1890s. Q. So it has been a problem over the decades, there has been a problem in that region? A. I mean, the German ---- Q. It is a very swampy region, is it? A. No, I mean, but this was happening all over the East, that people who were, that Jews, migrants who were leaving the Russian Empire were subjected to German hygienic measures as they crossed the border or came into the harbours of Bremen and Hamburg where they were placed in quarantine. There were special areas of the harbour where these Jews were quarantined. There were these kinds of installations. However, Auschwitz was slightly different because while Auschwitz, at the one side, had these transmigrants who went over the border there, because it was a border town, the camp was not created with that in mind. The camp was created, the Sturmlager was created to very specifically house transmigrant workers who all converged on Auschwitz in March and April of every year looking for seasonal work in Germany. There were only three little hotels in the town, and the hotels said these people were living on the street, and there were 10 or 15,000 people living on the street. So, the Austrian Government decided to create a centre at the border where these people could be housed . P-141 and where then also German agents for the various employment opportunities, like the Jungkris(?) in the estates, could come, send people on and then the most important function there was to actually check if all the young men had done their military service and were allowed to leave the country. Q. And that was Auschwitz, right? A. That was in Auschwitz. Q. Yes. Just to round off this topic of the Zyklon consumption figures, you have done very interesting calculations, and I have to admit they are admirably done, the calculations. You arrive overall at the end of these very lengthy and complicated calculations at a probable consumption of nine tonnes? A. Nine tonnes in the camp in 1943, yes. Q. As opposed to the 12 tonnes that we know to have been delivered. Is this a meaningful difference, in your view, in view of the fact that you are totally inexperienced in pest control? A. I invite other people to redo the calculations again. I thought that, as far as an historian, I must say that using the maximum delousing capacity of the camp and the maximum -- and how much it will take on the basis of German documents to delouse the whole camp ---- Q. Does it make any allowance for inefficiencies of any measures anywhere? Does it make your usual engineer's . P-142 allowance for inefficiencies somewhere or mistakes? A. I think that I have made a very generous assumption in the amount of Zyklon-B which was being used. Q. Or for quantities being sent on to the satellite camps? These are things which you did not -- in my submission, there is no significant difference statistically over that range of calculations and figures and, given the uncertainty of the starting points between nine tonnes and 12 tonnes, on the one hand, is that correct? A. Nine tonnes can be justified, but it is a very high number because I am assuming two complete delousings of the camp, of all the buildings in the camp, per year. Q. If you had assumed three, of course, you would have come over 12 tonnes, would you not? A. No, I would come over nine tonnes. Q. Yes. You said you were just assuming two? A. Not over 12 tonnes. But at a certain moment the question is how many delousings of the whole camp were operated. Q. We just have two eyewitnesses, is this correct, who suggests that -- one of them was one of the eyewitnesses to whom, I have to say, I attach little credence and the other one I may or may not be correct in saying she only records three or four, is that correct, in the time -- -- A. During her whole time in the camp.
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