Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day011.08 Last-Modified: 2000/07/20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is this 4 or 5 or were they indentical? A. This is No. 4. Left equals right. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Otherwise the same? A. We are going to turn to the model now. What is the important thing is that these are stoves indicated in these rooms. The plan only shows basically a block with a cross through connected to a chimney. I was not present . P-65 when this final thing was drawn, and my ex students have drawn in what are Canadian stoves basically, big iron ones. It would be more likely, given what the design culture was and the means of production in Poland that it would have been a so-called cuttle hole in the design at least. But what we also know is that this cuttle oven that were installed, but at a certain moment also are stories about portable stoves. I do not know really know what to make of that, but they were heated with portable stoves, these spaces, which means the cuttle oven broke down, yes or no. Q. What were these spaces again? A. These are the alleged gas chambers right here, and then we have here the entrance vestibule, undressing room, in the winter used as undressing room, but also a morgue installation room. In the summer there are accounts that people undress outside of the building. MR IRVING: The average gas chambers, how were they designated on the blue prints? A. They are not designated at all. There is no designation at all. Actually, this room is also not designated. So now we actually are looking at the side we are going to enter very soon. Again, I do not think we need to explain too much, except these chimneys, which are sitting right there, to which these stoves are connected, and also again the small little windows, 30 by 40 centimetres, as the . P-66 plan says, which give access to these throw light or not into those lower spaces. Q. Can I ask you what was the building made of? Just bricks was it? A. Bricks, yes. Q. Quite a flimsy construction, in other words? A. Yes. I mean flimsy. If you throw a bomb on it, yes. Certainly these spaces would not have been very useful as an air raid shelter. Now our eye level has gone down and we are now going towards this entrance right here, this vestibule. We have now come into the vestibule. We turn left first inside this very big room which gives access to the schloit and then the incineration room. This is that very large hole in the middle, which eyewitnesses say were used especially in the winter as an undressing room but also was used as a morgue. Now we turn around 180 degrees. I want to show you. It is an open roof truss situation there, the vollmar as it is called, V O L L M A R, that is, it is the most economical way to construct a roof in a wartime situation. Now we turn around. Q. What are those roof trusses made of? Steel or wood? A. Wood. This was really as cheap as possible and as light as possible. Q. So it would have been totally unsuitable as an air raid shelter then, this building? . P-67 A. Yes. So we now go back towards the incineration, towards the vestibule. I just want to say that this actually is a detail which is in the photos of the building and not in blue prints, but at a certain moment in the construction they decided to put windows in that room, which are not in the blue print, but they are in the photos. Q. About how high up are those windows off the ground? Could you see in them? A. No. They were quite high. You would not see in them. Q. Which is what you would expect in a mortuary then? A. Yes, possibly, or another use. So now we have turned around 180 degrees and we are looking back at that door, just before, and I am going back into that space to the right. What I am going to do is take you through these spaces. It is a kind of surreal experience, I must say, but I do not have a picture right now of this space, but immediately go into this space. So I have a view going in here. Then first we have two views inside this space, which is one from the door looking in, and then from that point looking back. Let us call this for a moment No. 1, and this No. 2. Then we look inside this space and from the door looking back. That is room No. 2, so at any given moment we know where we are. We are now in that second vestibule, and we look here in that space No. 1 to the side, and we have here actually at the end of it an opening which actually gives . P-68 access to the ovens. These ovens were always fired from the back, these cuttle ovens, or they could be. Two or three rooms shared them. So this was to the point where they could be heated and the same is actually right here. That is what the blueprints indicate but it is not in the picture. I just want to point out this porthole sitting right there, 30 by 40 centimetres, in the plan. I do not know exactly which blue print we are talking about in the court bundle, but now we are looking in room No. 1. Again, two of those openings right there, plus an outside door, which by the way opens to the outside. Q. Before you move on from that picture, Professor can I ask you, is there any provision in this room that the blueprints or drawings inform us for drainage? A. There is drainage, yes. Q. Where are the drains in this room? A. They are not depicted, but the blueprints show them. Q. You appreciate that, if this is a gas chamber, it would need drainage? A. Yes, but the blueprint, I did not oversee the final making of these models. They are in some way crude but in the blueprints I am happy to point out the drainage to you. Q. I would be happy, when you return to the witness box, that you do so because, when people die en mass, it produces unpleasant after effects which need to be cleaned up. If . P-69 there is no provision for drainage, it is a problem we have of course with Leichenkeller No. 1, with the draining provisions there too, which are of course far worse, being underground. A. We can just look at the blueprints in both cases to look at the drainage, I think. Now I just walk outside of that door. I just want to show you that we were in this room right there. I just popped outside. We will go back in that room right now. Now we look back to the door we came in and there one sees the stove in the corner, and this port hole right there, 30 by 40 centimetres connecting to the next room. There we have little detail. Q. Would you like to tell the court what inference you are inclined to draw from the porthole's presence? A. The portholes together are obviously the kind of gas tight shutters which I mentioned in one the bills, 30 by 40 centimetres. They are they are being ordered, 12 of them, six for this building, six for the other one, and they are ordered at the size of 30 by 40 centimetres. The plan shows quite literally they are 30 by 40 centimetres. It is in the bundle in detail. We have enlarged it a few times. Then of course a number of these portholes have survived and are installed in crematorium 1 right now in the back, and can be inspected, and again are 30 by 40 centimetres and obviously they are very thick and they . P-70 have a kind of gas tight design that there is a number of different, I do not want really know, my English starts to reach its limit. Q. Fasteners? A. Jambs have a kind of seal in it in the way it is designed so it is very difficult. They are very thick. They are like 20 centimetres thick. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Have they been tested for cyanide? A. They have not been tested for cyanide. MR IRVING: Would you agree that those shutters that have been found in the Auschwitz camp are in fact standard German air raid shutters supplied by manufacturers to a standard design? A. First of all, I do not know but it was very clear. What we do know is that these are 30 by 40 centimetres and that the things ordered were gas tight things of 30 by 40 centimetres. The only plan I have where they have twelve of these holes of 30 by 40 centimetres is actually the plans for these rooms at the end of crematoria (iv) and 5, which obviously were not air raid shelters because the roof construction is too flimsy. Q. Am I right in suggesting that the inference you are drawing is that through these apertures the top six substances were thrown? A. Yes. We go back in the vestibule. We are now moving to room No. 2. The door is open and we see now the stove, . P-71 and again in the room one of these little openings. Now we are in the room, just entered. Here is the stove. We look now to the outside door, two other 30 by 40 centimetres little windows, and we turn around now. We look back at the stove and the door towards the second vestibule, so to speak. Q. Professor, why would they not have adopted the method they allegedly adopted here and just drilled holes in the roof to drop the substances through? A. The problem, first of all, is you would have to go on the roof and this building was all above ground. Q. Yes. A. This method was used already in bunker No. 2 and bunker No. 1, where they used basically holes or little windows in the side of the building to introduce the Zyklon-B. So it was a proven method. MR JUSTICE GRAY: What is the evidence for that? A. For what? Q. That they injected Zyklon-B through the windows of bunker No. 2 and No. 1? A. Eyewitness testimony.
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