In any trial of even the most ordinary murder, one can expect
an abundance of information
about the murder weapon, including a detailed description of the
weapon and how it was
used. Surely, with regard to murder as novel and as bestially
spectacular as the alleged
mass-murder of millions of Jews in gas chambers, one would be
given far more information.
Surely, the postwar trials involving those monstrously amazing
gas chambers would provide
the most extensive and precise documentation possible regarding
such unconventional murder
weapons. But no, that is not what one finds at all. Although there
is a vast literature, based in
part on those trials, including many "eyewitness accounts"
and "documentaries" covering the
most diverse aspects of the holocaust story, nonetheless, as far
as the actual mechanics of the
extermination process are concerned, about all one ever finds
is an occasional short and vague
description.
The information gaps regarding the mechanics of the alleged
extermination process should
arouse the gravest suspicions. We are after all no longer in the
immediate postwar era, when
there would have been many valid excuses for confusion as to events
which may or may not
have taken place in a terrible war which had ended just recently.
Almost forty years have now
elapsed. The holocaust specialists have had more than enough time
and opportunity to examine
documents and alleged mass-murder sites as well as the testimony
from the most massive trials
in the entire history of the world. Throughout this period they
have certainly been active, and
yet they have found little. Aside from a few bits and pieces of
so-called "confessions" and
"eyewitness testimony," they have, in fact, found next
to nothing.
The information gaps are bad enough; what is far worse is that
the bits and pieces of
information which one does find are simply incredible. To kill
people with gas is not inherently
incredible since it certainly does happen, even accidentally.
But if one carefully examines the
available information about the German gas chambers from a scientific,
medical or technical
perspective, he soon realizes that he is dealing with an absurd
muddle. To characterize the
alleged mass-murder methodology as "harebrained," "crackpot,"
or simply "weird" is to
understate the situation. The more one examines what little information
there is, the more
obvious it becomes that the people who repeat the holocaust story
in one form or other really
have no idea as to what they are talking or writing about. The
testimony of the so-called
eyewitnesses is especially weird. The Gerstein statement, which
has been widely accepted by
the holocaust specialists, is probably the best example of such
testimony. But the other
statements" or "confessions" are almost as bad
or worse.
The absurdity of the various alleged extermination methods
does not in itself prove that the
holocaust did not happen, but it should at least persuade reasonable
people to ask for some
other evidence before they let themselves believe such a monstrous
tale. The fact that other
evidence such as documents ordering the killing of Jews with gas,
or hard, physical evidence
such as workable gas chambers -- not just ordinary rooms that
have been mislabelled -- is also
absent should make it quite obvious that something is seriously
wrong. (fn. 1)
To concoct horrible, but conveniently vague, eyewitness accounts
of mass-murder is easy. To
have such tales accepted about a defeated enemy nation after a
brutal war during which the
vast media resources of the victors had succeeded in portraying
the enemy as thoroughly
depraved and wicked is also easy. On the other hand, it is not
at all easy to explain how one
could possibly commit mass-murder with Diesel exhaust.
The Exterminationist Position
The table below is from The Destruction of the European Jews
by Raul Hilberg, published in 1961.
The table summarizes the views of practically all the generally
accepted, "consensus," writers on
the holocaust story of the last 20 years. The camps listed are
the only ones which Hilberg
regarded as having been "extermination" camps. Camps
such as Dachau, Bergen-Belsen, and
Buchenwald are not included. (fn. 3)
Table 1: Characteristics of the death camps according to Raul Hilberg
| Camp Location | Jurisdiction | Type of Killing operation |
Number of Jews killed |
| Kulmhof Wartheland |
Higher SS and Police Leader (Koppe) |
gas vans (CO) | over a hundred thousand |
| Belzec Lublin district |
SS and Police Leader (Globocnik) |
gas chambers (CO) | hundreds of thousands |
| Sobibor Lublin district | SS and Police Leader (Globocnik) |
gas chambers (CO) | hundreds of thousands |
| Lublin Lublin district |
WVHA | gas chamber (CO), shooting |
tens of thousands |
| Treblinka Warsaw district |
SS and Police Leader | gas chambers (CO) | hundreds of thousands |
| Auschwitz Upper Silesia | WVHA | gas chambers (HCN) |
one million |
On the basis of the generally accepted numbers of victims,
one can say that approximately half
of all the Jewish victims of German gas chambers were supposedly
gassed with Diesel exhaust.
In other words, the Diesel gas chambers are as important, at least
in terms of the numbers of
alleged victims, as the gas chambers that supposedly used Zyklon
B and hydrogen cyanide.
For at least several months in 1939 and 1940, Diesel engines
had supposedly been used as part
of the euthanasia program to kill Germans who were feebleminded
or incurably ill in Germany,
The experience gained from the use of Diesels for euthanasia was
supposedly applied later by
some of the same people involved with the euthanasia program,
such as Reichsamtsleiter Viktor
Brack and Kriminalkommisar Christian Wirth, to the killing of
Jews in Treblinka, Belzec and
Sobibor in Eastern Poland. According to Hilberg, it was Wirth
who supposedly constructed the
"carbon monoxide gas chambers" for the euthanasia program
on the orders of Brack, who was
"actually in charge of the [euthanasia] operation."
Then in the spring of 1942 Brack ordered
Wirth to Lublin where "Wirth and his crew immediately and
under primitive conditions began
to construct chambers into which they piped carbon monoxide from
diesel motors." (fn. 4)
In the National Broadcasting Corporation's "Holocaust"
miniseries for television, which was
essentially a dramatization of the generally accepted holocaust
story, there were several
references to the use of Diesel engines for mass-murder. In one
scene, Dr. Bruno Tesch, who in
real life had been a highly qualified chemist and was hanged after
the war by the Allies, (fn. 5)
explains to Eric Dorf, a fictional SS officer administering the
extermination program, that one of
the advantages of Zyklon B over carbon monoxide is that Zyklon
B "won't clog machinery-and
there's no apparatus to break down, as in carbon monoxide."
In another scene Rudolf Höss,
the commandant of Auschwitz, is about to start a Diesel when Eric
Dorf explains to him that he
will not need the Diesel anymore because he has ordered another
substance, namely Zyklon B.
The Gerstein Statement
The statement of Kurt Gerstein is still a major cornerstone
of the holocaust legend in general.
Gerstein was an Obersturmführer (First Lieutenant) in the
SS and a mine surveyor by
profession with a graduate degree in engineering. When he surrendered
to the Americans, he
supposedly gave them a prepared statement dated April 26, 1945
(in French, oddly enough)
written partially on the backs of several receipts for the delivery
of Zyklon B to Auschwitz.
Since then he has been elevated to the status of "righteous
gentile" by the Israelis and by
various Jewish writers for having at least tried to alert the
world regarding the Nazi
extermination program.
The text which follows is a portion of the Gerstein statement
as given in the English translation
of Harvest of Hate by Leon Poliakov. Aside from a rather brazen
"error" on the part of
Poliakov, namely the claim that 700 to 800 bodies were crowded
into 93 square meters instead
of only 25 square meters (which is the way the original documents
actually read) it is probably
no worse a translation than any of the other versions which can
be found. (fn. 6)
SS men pushed the men into the chambers. "Fill it up,"
Wirth ordered, 700-800 people in 93 [sic]
square meters. The doors closed. Then I understood the reason
for the "Heckenholt" sign.
Heckenholt was the driver of the Diesel, whose exhaust was to
kill these poor unfortunates. SS
Unterscharführer Heckenholt tried to start the motor. It
wouldn't start! Captain Wirth came
up. You could see he was afraid because I was there to see the
disaster. Yes, I saw everything
and waited. My stopwatch clocked it all: 50 minutes, 70 minutes,
and the Diesel still would not
start! The men were waiting in the gas chambers. You could hear
them weeping "as though in a
synagogue," said Professor Pfannenstiel, his eyes glued to
the window in the wooden door.
Captain Wirth, furious, struck with his whip the Ukrainian who
helped Heckenholt- The Diesel
started up after 2 hours and 49 minutes, by my stopwatch. Twenty-five
minutes passed. You
could see through the window that many were already dead, for
an electric light illuminated
the interior of the room. All were dead after thirty-two minutes!
Jewish workers on the other
side opened the wooden doors. They had been promised their lives
in return for doing this
horrible work, plus a small percentage of the money and valuables
collected. The men were still
standing, like columns of stone, with no room to fall or lean.
Even in death you could tell the
families, all holding hands. It was difficult to separate them
while emptying the room for the
next batch. The bodies were tossed out, blue, wet with sweat and
urine, the legs smeared with
excrement and menstrual blood. (fn. 7)
It was not a peephole through which Prof. Pfannenstiel supposedly
looked into the gas
chamber-it was a window. And it was a window in a wooden door-not
a steel, gas-tight door
as one might expect. Apparently, there were wooden doors on two
sides of at least one of the
gas chambers. We are told that the intended victims were still
alive after almost three hours in
the gas chambers before the Diesel even started. Surely, there
must have been many air leaks
into the chambers or else the Jews would have been asphyxiated
without the aid of any Diesel.
The men were "standing, like columns of stone with no
room to fall or lean. Even in death you
could tell the families, all holding hands." There is no
mention anywhere of the intended victims
trying to break out. Surely Prof. Pfannenstiel, with "his
eyes glued to the window," would have
noticed if some of the people on the other side had been trying
to smash through. 8 But no,
there is no mention of anything of the sort. We are, however,
told that the victims had enough
presence of mind to form groups of family members and hold hands.
According to the last sentence of the text quoted, "the
bodies were tossed out blue, wet with
sweat and urine." Here we have a flaw as far as the death-from-carbon-monoxide
theory is
concerned because victims of carbon monoxide poisoning are not
blue at all. On the contrary,
victims of carbon monoxide poisoning are a distinctive "cherry
red," or "pink." (fn. 9) This is
clearly stated in most toxicology handbooks and is probably well
known to every doctor and to
most, if not all, emergency medical personnel. Carbon monoxide
poisoning is actually very
common because of the automobile and accounts for more incidents
of poison gas injury than all
other gases combined.
The Gerstein statement, to its credit, makes no claim that
carbon monoxide was the lethal
ingredient in the Diesel exhaust. It is the exterminationists,
i.e., the people who try to uphold
the holocaust story, who have repeatedly stated that death was
due to the carbon monoxide in
the Diesel exhaust. The recurrence of references to "bluish"
corpses in several examples of
so-called, eyewitness testimony" from West German trials
merely demonstrates the "copy-cat"
nature of much of that testimony. That such testimony has been
accepted by West German
courts specializing in holocaust-related cases and by the holocaust
scholars, apparently without
any serious challenge, merely demonstrates the pathetic shoddiness
of those trials and of the
'scholarship' pertaining to the subject in general.
If the corpses had, indeed, appeared "bluish," death
certainly would not have been due to
carbon monoxide. A "bluish" appearance could have been
an indication of death from
asphyxiation, i.e., lack of oxygen. In this article we will investigate
that possibility and we will
see that in any Diesel gas chamber, although death from lack of
oxygen is very unlikely, it is
nonetheless far more likely than death from carbon monoxide.
According to Leon Poliakov, who is a French-Jewish historian
and one of the few historians
anywhere who has actually written at any length in support of
the holocaust story, "there is
little to add to this description [the Gerstein statement] which
holds good for Treblinka,
Sobibor as well as for the Belzec camp. The latter installations
were constructed in almost the
same way and also used the exhaust carbon monoxide gases from
Diesel motors as death
agents." According to Poliakov, more than a million and a
half people were killed with Diesel
exhaust. (fn. 10)
Toxic Effects of Carbon Monoxide
To investigate the Diesel gas chamber claim, two questions
one should ask are: How much
carbon monoxide is actually needed to kill a human being in half
an hour? Does Diesel exhaust
ever contain that much carbon monoxide?
Table 2: Toxic effects of carbon monoxide (fn. 11)
| Parts of carbon monoxide per million parts of air |
Carbon monoxide in per cent |
Physiological effects |
| 100 | 0.01% | Concentration allowable for an exposure
of several hours. |
| 400 to 500 | 0.04%-0.05% | Concentration which can be inhaled for
1 hour without appreciate effect. |
| 600 to 700 | 0.06%-0.07% | Concentration causing a just appreciable effect after exposure of 1 hour. |
| 1,000 to 1,200 | 0.10%-0.12% | Concentration causing unpleasant but not dangerous effects after exposure of 1 hour. |
| 1,500 to 2.000 | 1 5%-.2% | Dangerous concentrations for exposure of 1 hour. |
| 4,000 and above | .4% and above | Concentrations which are fatal in exposure of less than 1 hour. |
Carbon monoxide poisoning has been thoroughly studied since
about 1920, when it was
carefully examined in order to determine the ventilation requirements
of tunnels for motor
vehicles, particularly for the New York City metropolitan area
in such tunnels as the Holland
Tunnel. Since the early 1940s, it has been widely accepted on
the basis of the research of
Yandell Henderson and J.S. Haldane that an average carbon monoxide
concentration of "0.4%
and above," as shown on the last fine of Table 2, is the
amount needed to kill people in "less"
than one hour of continuous exposure. (fn. 12) Concentrations
of 0.15% to 0.20% are
considered "dangerous," which means they might kill
some people in one hour, especially if
those people have, for example, weak hearts. But in order to commit
mass-murder in a gas
chamber, one would require a concentration of poison gas sufficient
to kill not merely a
"portion" of any given group of people, but rather,
sufficient to kill "all."
The vagueness introduced by Henderson's use of the term "less"
is unfortunate. It arises from
the fact that although Henderson and others were able to test
for non-lethal effects in a
laboratory with a high degree of accuracy -- the lethal effects
could not be tested in the same
way. The lethal effects and the corresponding CO levels were determined
on the basis of
careful extrapolation of carboxyhemoglobin levels over time from
nonlethal tests on humans and
from some lethal tests on animals. Although the test results for
lethal effects are not as precise
as one might wish, they are nonetheless sufficiently accurate
to support some important
conclusions about Diesel gas chambers.
According to the exterminationists, the nasty deed was always
done in less than half an hour.
In order to determine how much carbon monoxide would be needed
to kill in only half an hour,
instead of a full hour, one can use the widely accepted rule of
thumb known as "Henderson's
Rule," which is:
In other words, for any given toxic effect, the poisonous concentration
must be inversely
proportional to the time of exposure. This means that to kill
in half an hour, one would need
twice the concentration that one would need to kill in a full
hour. Applying this rule to the
"0.4% and above" needed to kill in "less than one
hour," we get 0.8% and above as the
concentration needed to kill in less than half an hour. (fn. 13)
Applying the same rule to the 0.15% to 0.20% which is "dangerous"
for one hour of exposure,
we get 0.3% to 0.4% as the amount of CO which is dangerous for
half an hour of exposure.
What all this means is that to have any kind of practical gas
chamber using carbon monoxide as
the lethal agent, one would need an average concentration of at
least 0.4% carbon monoxide,
but probably closer to 0.8%. We should keep "0.4% to 0.8%"
in mind as benchmark numbers to
which we can refer shortly.
The important consideration is always the "average"
concentration over the entire exposure
period and not some quantity of poison measured in pounds or cubic
feet. To try to analyze the
problem by determining actual quantities of CO produced, rather
than "concentrations," would
be futile since the little that one is told, in the case of Gerstein's
description, about the actual size
of the chamber or chambers is so incredible to begin with.
Figure 1 gives the symptoms of various low level carbon monoxide
exposures as a function of
time of exposure. The highest CO concentration which is discussed
is 600 ppm (parts per
million). 600 ppm is another way of saying 0.06%. The chart shows
that after one hour of
exposure to an average concentration of 600 ppm of GO, one would
experience a headache but
not a throbbing headache. Even after 100 hours of exposure, the
worst that one would
experience would be a coma but not death. However, after only
half an hour of exposure to
600 ppm, no symptoms are indicated at all-not even a mild headache.
We should keep "0.06%" in
mind as another benchmark number to which we will refer.
The Diesel Engine
It would have been helpful if the olocaust proponents had provided
such data as the engine
manufacturer's name or the model number, size and HP rating of
the engines. Although similar
information would be considered essential in the investigation
of any ordinary murder, alas,
when one is dealing with holocaust such details are too much to
expect. The most frequent claim
seems to have been that the engines were Diesels from Soviet tanks
(most Soviet tanks during
the war were Diesel-driven, including the famous T-34), but it
has recently been claimed that at
least one of the engines was from a Soviet submarine. Any submarine
engine would certainly
have been a Diesel also. Is In lieu of better information, one
has to investigate the broader and
more difficult question of whether or not any Diesel ever built
could possibly have done the
abominable deed.
If Gerstein had claimed that the carbon monoxide was generated
by gasoline engines, his story
might be more credible. Gasoline engines can, indeed, kill rather
easily and with little or no
warning because their exhaust is almost odorless. Although Diesel
engines look very much like
gasoline engines, at least to most people, they are actually quite
different. Any mining engineer
or mine surveyor should certainly have been able to easily distinguish
between the two types of
engines. For one thing, the sound of Diesels is so distinct that
almost anyone can with a little
experience recognize them with his eyes closed.
Another peculiarity of Diesels is that when in operation they
usually give warning of their
presence-their exhaust generally smells terrible. The intensity
of the smell or stench has, no
doubt, given rise to the thoroughly false impression that Diesel
exhaust must therefore be very
harmful.
Although Diesel exhaust is not totally harmless it is, in fact,
one of the least harmful pollutants
anywhere except for some possible long term, carcinogenic effects
which are totally irrelevant
for the operation of a gas chamber to commit mass-murder. Diesel
emission levels have always
been within the current air emission standards of the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency
without requiring any modifications or accessories. Diesels have
always produced less than 1%
carbon monoxide which is the current standard for internal combustion
engines. Gasoline
engines have only met the same standard after many years of research
and after the addition
of many complex accessories and engine modifications. The Diesels
of the 1930s and 1940s were
as clean-burning as, if not more clean than, Diesels of today.
Figure 2 compares the carbon monoxide emissions from Diesel
and gasoline engines. Gasoline
engines are sometimes called spark ignition engines as in this
figure. Clearly, the logical choice
between the two types of engines as a source of carbon monoxide
would always have been the
gasoline engine. From spark ignition or gasoline engines, one
can easily get 7% carbon
monoxide, but from Diesel engines one can never get even as much
as I% with liquid fuels.
Carbon monoxide emissions from internal combustion engines
are commonly plotted as
functions of air/fuel ratio or fuel/air ratio.
Fuel/air ratio is merely the reciprocal of air/fuel ratio.
It has generally been accepted by the
auto industry and by environmentalists that Diesel exhaust-gas
composition is related chiefly to
these ratios and not to other factors such as rpm. (fn. 17)
An air/fuel ratio of 100, for example, means that for every
pound of fuel burned, 100 pounds
of air are drawn into the engine. However, only about 15 pounds
of air can ever react in any
way chemically with each pound of fuel regardless of the air/fuel
ratio or even the type of
engine. This means that at an air/fuel ratio of 100, there are
always about 85 pounds of air
which do not react. These 85 pounds of excess air are blown out
of the engine without
undergoing any chemical change at all. As far as the excess air
is concerned, the Diesel engine is
nothing more than an unusual kind of blower or compressor.
Gasoline engines always operate with a deficiency of air. As
a result of this deficiency, the
reaction process in a gasoline engine can never go to completion,
a relatively large proportion of
carbon monoxide to carbon dioxide is always formed.
Diesels always operate with an excess of air. At idle, Diesels
operate with air/fuel ratios as high
as 200:1. At full load, the air/fuel ratio is only down to 18:1.
Because of the abundance of air,
there is always far greater opportunity for the fuel to burn to
completion, thereby causing very
little carbon monoxide to be produced as compared with gasoline
engines. Also, what little
carbon monoxide is produced in the cylinders of a Diesel is subsequently
diluted by the excess
air.
As soon as one acquires an understanding of the differences
between Diesel and gasoline
engines, it becomes obvious that the logical choice as a source
of carbon monoxide would
always have been the gasoline engine. The Diesel engine is, and
always was, an inherently
ludicrous choice as a source of carbon monoxide.
There are basically two types of Diesel engines: divided combustion
chamber engines and
undivided combustion chamber engines.
The divided chamber category of Diesel engines is generally
subdivided into precombustion
chamber designs and turbulent cell designs.
Figure 3 shows a pair of emission curves for Diesels with divided
combustion chambers that
were the result of exceptionally careful and extensive tests made
in the early 1940s in the
United States by the U.S. Bureau of Mines to determine whether
or not Diesel engines could
operate in underground mines without endangering miners. l) The
conclusion of the- U.S.
Bureau of Mines as stated in many reports throughout the intervening
years has always been
that Diesels may operate underground in non-coal mines subject
to USBM approval of the
engines and the mechanical arrangements in which the engines are
employed.
The lower curve in Figure 3 is for a precombustion chamber
Diesel. The upper curve is for a
turbulent cell Diesel. The lowest fuel/air ratio always corresponds
approximately to idle and
also to a no-load condition. For the pre-combustion chamber Diesel
at idle, the carbon
monoxide level is less than 0.0211/o. For the turbulent cell Diesel
at idle, its carbon monoxide
level is barely 0.06%. What this means is that at idle both of
these types of Diesels could not
produce enough carbon monoxide to even give a headache after half
an hour of continuous
exposure.
As one starts to impose loads on these engines, thereby, in
effect, increasing the fuel/air ratio's,
the carbon monoxide levels actually decrease at first. Only as
one approaches full load,
represented by the solid heavy line in the figure, do the carbon
monoxide levels rise
significantly to a maximum of 0.1% at a fuel/air ratio of .055.
A CO concentration of 0.1% is still
well below the benchmark range of numbers, "0.4% to 0.8%."
In other words, neither of these
engines could possibly have produced enough carbon monoxide to
kill anyone in half an hour
regardless of the loads on the engines.
Diesel Smoke
One characteristic of Diesels is that they tend to smoke. This
is not due to any inherent
inefficiency of Diesels. On the contrary, Diesels are as a rule
extremely efficient. The smoke is
primarily the result of the nature of Diesel combustion and the
heavier fuels which are used-as
compared with gasoline engines.
The solid heavy line in Figure 3 represents the smoke limit
that manufacturers have found
necessary to protect their engines from excessive wear due to
smoke and solids accumulations
within the cylinders. As a practical matter, a Diesel cannot be
operated to the right of the solid
heavy line with liquid fuels. In Figure 3 as well as in Figure
5, the solid heavy line is at a fuel/air
ratio of 0.055. Many manufacturers are more conservative and limit
their engines to fuel/air
ratios below 0.050.
Diesel engines can operate safely at fuel/air ratios greater
than 0.055 only if they are burning a
clean gaseous fuel; this is the only way to avoid the buildup
of solid material within the
cylinders. The data shown for fuel/air ratios above 0.055 were
only gathered because the
researchers at the U.S. Bureau of Mines chose to test the engines
for theoretical reasons with
gaseous fuel far beyond the normal, full load settings of the
respective engines.
The data for clean gaseous fuel is irrelevant to our analysis
because if the Germans had had a
gaseous fuel for the Diesel, they could have sent that gas directly
to the gas chamber. To have
used a Diesel engine as some kind of intermediate step would have
made no sense at all. Such
an arrangement could only have made the gas far less toxic. Since
carbon monoxide is highly
combustible, any carbon monoxide going into the Diesel would have
been largely consumed
within the engine.
Diesel smoke contains a liquid phase and a solid phase. The
liquid phase generally gets blown
out of the engine with the exhaust and, therefore, does no harm
to the engine. But if enough
solid material is also produced, and rapidly enough, some of that
material will accumulate in the
cylinders where in just a few minutes it can severely damage the
piston rings and valves and
cause the engine to simply self-destruct and stop. As the graph
shows, the amount of solids
produced by the engines increases dramatically just beyond a fuel/air
ratio of 0.055. For this
reason, manufacturers as a rule equip the fuel injection pumps
with stops so that the engines
can only operate below 0.055 or 0.050.
Operating any Diesel under any substantial load, regardless of
the particular design or engine
type, would have led to the production of significant amounts
of smoke. Smoke is generally also
noticeable immediately after start-up, even at idle or under light
load, when the engine has not
yet had time to reach its normal operating temperature. It should
be no great surprise that
there is no mention of any smoke from the Diesel-black, white,
dense or otherwise-anywhere in
the Gerstein statement or in any of the postwar trial testimony.
Undivided Chamber Diesels
Figure 5 shows that an undivided chamber Diesel still produces
only about 0.03% carbon
monoxide at idle, which is not enough to cause a headache after
half an hour of exposure.
However, as increasing loads are imposed on such an engine, the
carbon monoxide levels do
eventually rise rather sharply, and at full load, represented
by the heavy vertical line, the
carbon monoxide level is indeed about 0.4%. In other words, here
we have a Diesel which
looks as if it could have been used to commit mass-murder in half
an hour.
The problem for this engine, and for au Diesels, is that to
operate at full load continuously for
long periods, such as half an hour at a time, would involve severe
risks of fouling and damage
from accumulated solids inside the cylinders. If operating at
lower and safer fuel/air ratios than
0.055, which would also be lower loads, the carbon monoxide emission
levels drop very
dramatically. For example, at 80% of full -load, which is generally
regarded as a safe maximum
for continuous operation and which occurs at a fuel/air ratio
of about 0.045, the carbon
monoxide level is only 0.13%. According to Henderson's rule and
index figures and some simple
calculation, 0.13% carbon monoxide would not even be "dangerous"
for half an hour of
exposure.
That Figure 3 and Figure 5 are indeed typical of all Diesel
engines over the last fifty years is
attested to by the fact that these particular curves have been
referred to and are still being
referred to in countless journals and books on Diesel emissions
to this very day. In other
words, there are no better examples of Diesel emissions. To be
sure, there are many other test
results which one can find in reputable automotive journals such
as the Society of Automotive
Engineers Transactions. But if one takes the trouble to look through
the SAE Transactions of
the last forty years, as well as through other journals, he will
not find any examples of worse
carbon monoxide emissions than Figure 5. Our analysis of Figure
5 represents the worst case
that can be found anywhere for any Diesel engine.
Engine Loading
Aside from the smoke problem, merely to impose a full load
on any engine is far from easy. For
example, if one has a truck, a full load can be imposed on the
engine by first filling the truck
with a heavy cargo and then racing the vehicle up a steep hill
at maximum speed with the
accelerator to the floor. Under that condition one would probably
be putting out about 0.40/o
from the exhaust pipe if the truck's engine were an undivided
chamber Diesel. However, if the
truck is parked in a driveway, it is far more difficult to impose
a full load on the engine. Simply
"racing" the engine with the transmission in neutral"
will put no more than a few per cent of
load on the engine. Letting the clutch slip and stepping on the
accelerator may impose a
somewhat greater load on the engine but the clutch will rapidly
burn out, jacking up the rear
end of the vehicle and applying the brakes while racing the engine
will impose a somewhat
greater load but the brake linings will rapidly burn out.
The only way to realistically impose a significant load on
any engine is by attaching to the
engine some kind of brake dynamometer or other loading device,
such as a generator with an
electrical load.
Brake dynamometers could have been available and the Germans
must have had many, but
they are hardly the kind of equipment that one finds in the typical
auto repair shop. They are
generally only available in well-equipped engineering testing
laboratories. They cost much more
than the engines to which they are attached, since they are not
mass-produced.
A generator arrangement seems more plausible since places such
as reblinka and Belzec would
have needed electricity, even if only to keep the barbed wire
charged and the lights burning.
However, such an arrangement suggests a continuous operation of
both the generator and the
Diesel which is contrary to the Gerstein statement. According
to that statement, the engine was
unable even to start for almost three hours prior to the actual
gassing. There is nothing in the
statement to even remotely suggest that the engine served any
other purpose than to kill Jews.
If it had had a dual purpose, for example, to also drive a generator,
one could have expected
some comment about the lights going on as the Diesel started-but
there is nothing of the sort.
Aldehydes, Nitrous Oxides and Hydrocarbons
There are other pollutants in Diesel exhaust besides carbon
monoxide. These are aldehydes,
nitrous oxides, and hydrocarbons, which are indeed harmful. The
smell or stench for which
Diesels are notorious is not caused by carbon monoxide-carbon
monoxide is completely
odorless. The smell is caused by trace amounts of certain hydrocarbons
and aldehydes which
the most modern analytical instruments can just barely identify,
let alone measure. The
sensitivity of the human nose to these compounds is, however,
extremely high and out of all
proportion to the actual quantities present.
Nitrous oxides can form nitric acid by reacting with the moisture
in the lungs which can, in turn,
cause cancer after many months of exposure. One of the nitrous
oxides formed by Diesels is
tear gas, which is extremely irritating. The possible carcinogenic
and mutagenic effects of
nitrous oxides and certain other ingredients in Diesel exhaust
may become the basis for special
emission standards for Diesels in the not too distant future.
All these effects are, however,
long-term and totally irrelevant for mass-murder in a gas chamber.
Although Diesel exhaust is relatively harmless, inhaling it
is not a pleasant experience. If Diesel
exhaust were introduced into a large meeting room, it would not
take very long before
everyone present would feel driven by an overwhelming desire to
get out, regardless of how
safe he or she were convinced the exhaust really was. And yet,
the Gerstein-statement makes
no mention of any attempt to break out of the gas chamber or even
to break the "window." We
are told rather that the victims formed family groups and held
hands.
Oxygen in Diesel Exhaust
If the Jews were not murdered with carbon monoxide from Diesel
exhaust, could they have
died instead from the effects of reduced oxygen in Diesel exhaust?
Such a theory would at least
be consistent with the claim that the corpses were "blue."
A bluish coloring to certain parts of a
corpse is indeed a symptom of death from lack of oxygen. This
theory, however, does not hold
up very well because of the fact that Diesels always operate with
excess air.
Normal air contains 21% oxygen. In Figure 6 we see that the
oxygen concentration
corresponding to idle in the exhaust of any Diesel (divided or
undivided chamber), shown near
the top of the chart at a fuel/air ratio of 0.01, is 18%, which
is just a few per cent less than one
finds in normal air. At full load, which corresponds to a fuel/air
ratio of 0.055, the oxygen
concentration in the exhaust of any Diesel is 4%.
Probably the best discussion of the effects of reduced oxygen
levels or asphyxia is provided by
Henderson and Haggard:
Second Stage. When the oxygen is diminished to values between
14 and 10 per
cent the higher values of the brain are affected. Consciousness
continues, but
judgement becomes faulty. Severe injuries, such as burns, bruises
and even broken
bones, may cause no pain. Emotions, particularly ill temper and
pugnacity, and less
often hilarity, or an alteration of moods, are aroused with abnormal
readiness ...
Third Stage. When the oxygen is diminished to values between
10 and 6 per cent,
nausea and vomiting may appear. The subject loses the ability
to perform any
vigorous muscular movements, or even to move at all. Bewilderment
and loss of
consciousness follow, either with fainting or a rigid, glassy-eyed
coma. If revived,
the subject may have no recollection of this state, or an entirely
erroneous belief as
to what has happened. Up to this stage, or even in it, he may
be wholly unaware
that anything is wrong ...
Fourth Stage. When the oxygen is diminished below 6 per cent,
respiration consists
of gasps separated by apneas of increasing duration. Convulsive
movements may
occur. Then the breathing stops, but the heart may continue to
beat for a few
minutes and then develop ventricular fibrillation, or stand still
in extreme dilation.
(fn. 23)
According to Haidane and Priestley, "air containing less
than 9.5 per cent of oxygen would
ordinarily cause disablement within half an hour." (fn. 24)
Disablement is still not death.
It is clear that there is no magic number below which death
would occur, or above which life
would continue. However, for any gas chamber relying upon reduced
oxygen as the killing
method, one would have to reduce the oxygen to below 9.5% perhaps
even below 6%.
From Figure 6 we see that to reduce the oxygen concentration
in the exhaust to just 9%, any
Diesel would have to operate at a fuel/air ratio of about 0.040,
which corresponds to about 3/4
of full load. To reduce the oxygen concentration to as low as
6%, which would be the fourth
stage according to Henderson and Haggard and would almost certainly
be the condition
needed to kill "all" members of any intended group of
victims, any Diesel would have to operate
at a fuel/air ratio of about 0.048, which is close to full load.
In other words, any Diesel gas
chamber relying on the reduction of oxygen as a killing method
would have to operate at more
than 3/4 of full load, but probably closer to full load.
From the above it should be obvious that over most of their
operating ranges, Diesels discharge
sufficient oxygen so that one can literally inhale pure Diesel
exhaust and survive on the oxygen
in the exhaust. From idle to at least 3/4 of full load, Diesel
exhaust contains sufficient oxygen to
sustain human life for at least half an hour.
Carbon Dioxide
If the Jews were not killed with carbon monoxide or from a
lack of oxygen, could they have
died instead from the effects of carbon dioxide?
Carbon dioxide is not really any more poisonous than ordinary
water. Most toxicology
handbooks do not even mention it. When mentioned at all, it is
generally classified as a
"non-toxic, simple asphyxiant." There are occasional
accidental fatalities where carbon dioxide is
directly involved. Death in almost all such cases is caused by
a lack of oxygen. The lack of
oxygen is caused by the fact that the carbon dioxide is much heavier
than oxygen and will,
especially in an enclosed space, displace oxygen in the same way
that water will displace air in
the lungs of a drowning man. The cause of death, chemically, in
both situations is not carbon
dioxide but rather the lack of oxygen in the blood. One symptom
of this kind of death is a
bluish appearance of the skin.
Carbon dioxide can be beneficial and therapeutic. 2-5 It is
commonly used in clinical medicine as
a harmless stimulant for respiration, for which purpose it is
supplied under pressure in cylinders
(Carbogen) containing oxygen and 7% carbon dioxide. (fn. 26) Normally,
when a person
exhales, the air leaving the lungs contains about 5.5% carbon
dioxide.
Levels of 3% carbon dioxide are quite tolerable for exposures
lasting several days. For example,
in the 1950s the U.S. Navy experimented with gas mixtures containing
3% carbon dioxide and
15% oxygen, i.e., 25% less oxygen than in normal air, for use
in American submarines with
exposures lasting up to several weeks. (fn. 27)
For Diesel engines, the carbon dioxide level at or near idle
is only about 2% and gradually
increases to about 12% at full load as shown in Figure 6. A carbon
dioxide level of 12% may
cause cardiac irregularity and may, therefore, be dangerous for
people with weak hearts.
Gasoline engines, in contrast to Diesels, produce 12% already
at idle. In general, if enough
oxygen is available, a carbon dioxide level even as high as 12%
is not likely to cause death.
However, when the carbon dioxide level is this high in Diesel
exhaust, the corresponding
oxygen level is dangerously low.
The principal danger to life from Diesel exhaust arises not
from the abundance of carbon
dioxide, nor even from carbon monoxide, but rather from the lack
of oxygen.
Diesel Gas Chamber Operation
If the exhaust pipe from a Diesel engine is connected to a
gas chamber, the carbon monoxide
concentration will initially be extremely low and the oxygen level
will initially be high. (Since the
doors of a gas chamber must be opened to allow the intended victims
to enter, fresh air must
enter the chamber also.) As soon as the Diesel starts and as more
and more Diesel exhaust is
introduced into the chamber, the carbon monoxide concentration
will gradually rise to the level
directly inside the exhaust pipe of the Diesel engine without
ever being able to exceed that
level. Exactly how long it would take before the oxygen and carbon
monoxide levels in the gas
chamber equal the levels in the engine exhaust pipe is impossible
to determine in the case of the
Gerstein account because the information about the engine and
gas chamber is so limited.
To got a better idea as to how effective-or ineffective-a Diesel
gas chamber such as that
described by Gerstein might have been in practice, we can analyze
the problem by dividing the
half-hour into two periods: a period of "rising CO concentration"
followed by a period of
"constant CO concentration." Since we do not know the
size or rpm of the engine, or the size of
the chamber, or the amount of leakage into or out of the chamber,
we cannot possibly
determine the actual duration of each of these two periods. Nonetheless,
we do know that
when they are added together, the sum must equal half an hour.
For the "constant period," the deadliest arrangement
would use an undivided chamber Diesel
which could give a carbon monoxide concentration as high as 0.4%.
For the "rising" period, the carbon monoxide concentration
would be near zero initially and no
more than 0.4% at the end. When we average these two numbers together,
we get a maximum,
average concentration for the "rising" period of 0.2%
assuming a steady rise in carbon
monoxide.
The combined average over the entire half-hour cannot be determined
precisely because we
simply do not know the duration of the "rising" and
"constant" periods respectively. But we can
be sure that it would always be some number less than 0.4%. If
the "rising" period had only
been of short duration, the combined average for half an hour
would be only slightly less than
0.4%.
If the "rising" period had been longer, the combined average would be lower.
If the "rising" and "constant" periods
had each lasted for fifteen minutes, the combined average
concentration for the entire half hour would be less than 0.3%.
According to our previous
analysis of toxic effects, 0.3% of CO (for half an hour) is only
"dangerous" which means that it
could have killed no more than a portion of any group of intended
victims.
Without knowing the type and size of the engine, and the amount
of leakage into the gas
chamber, we cannot possibly determine the exact carbon monoxide
concentration in the gas
chamber. We do know, however, that the average would always be
less than 0.4%. It would
always be less than the benchmark number which was established
previously as the minimum
amount required in the Gerstein-Diesel gas chamber. In other words,
the carbon monoxide
from any Diesel ever built would by itself never have been able
to kill more than a portion of
any group of intended victims even if the Diesel were of the undivided
chamber design and
even if it were operated at full load.
A similar analysis of the effects of reduced oxygen would show
that one would have had to
operate any Diesel ever built at some indeterminate level above
3/4 of full load before the
arrangement could have been even marginally lethal due to lack
of oxygen.
An analysis of the combined effects of carbon monoxide, carbon
dioxide and reduced oxygen
might be possible on the basis of the research of Haldane and
Henderson, but it would not give
any significantly different results than what has already been
concluded on the basis of
reduced oxygen acting alone. The reason is that the carbon monoxide
and carbon dioxide levels
are just too low to make much difference.
In any event, any Diesel ever built would have had to operate
at a minimum of 1/4 of full load
in order for the Diesel gas chamber to have been even marginally
effective from any possible
combination of toxic effects.
Noise and vibration
In addition to their smoke and smell, Diesel engines are also
notorious for their intense noise
and vibration. Because of their higher compression ratios, lower
rpm's, and the type of
combustion, the amount of vibration that Diesels produce is substantially
greater than that of
any comparably sized gasoline engines. The noise and vibration
are among the major reasons
why Diesels have not generally been used in automobiles.
If the 12 cylinder, V-type Diesel engine from a typical Soviet
T-34 tank with a rated capacity of
500 HP had been mounted on the floor of a small building and had
been operated for half an
hour at more than 3/4 of full load, i.e., at more than 375 HP,
the noise and vibration would
have been at least as noteworthy and as wildly spectacular as
the wailing of any Jews-and yet,
there is no mention of any such noise or vibration in the Gerstein
statement or in any of the
postwar trial testimony.
Diesels for Mass-Murder?
Without some understanding of the basic characteristics of
Diesel engines, the method that
would have come to mind most readily for any would-be mass-murder
would have been to
simply mount a Diesel on the floor of a building and direct the
exhaust into some adjoining
rooms without any provision for artificial load on the engine.
Such an arrangement would have
annoyed the hell out of any group of intended victims, but would
have given them nothing
worse than a headache. The headache would have been due to the
stench and smoke and
noise but certainly not to carbon monoxide or lack of oxygen.
As a method for committing
mass-murder, it would have been a fiasco.
For any Diesel arrangement to have been even marginally effective
for mass-murder would
have required an exceptionally well-informed collection of individuals
to know and do all that
was necessary. They would have had to be familiar with the carbon
monoxide and oxygen
emission curves for their particular engine. Such information
is probably not known even today
by most engineers, despite all the popular concern over air pollution.
The gas chamber
designers would also have had to know how to impose and maintain
an engine load of more
than 3/4 of full load on their engine since anything less would
just not have been enough. If
they had overloaded the engine or operated it for too long at
or near full load (more than 80%
of full load is generally considered unsafe for continuous operation),
they might after each
gassing have had to overhaul and, perhaps, replace the engine
because of fouling and damage
from engine smoke. Merely to gather and properly assemble the
appropriate equipment,
including the equipment for imposing and controlling an artificial
load, would have been a major
undertaking which would have required the expertise of experienced
engineers, not just
ordinary auto mechanics. The mounting of the engine on the floor
of the building would have
required a proper foundation with some provision to isolate vibrations
so as to avoid tearing
the building apart.
The all-important question is: if any persons had been smart
enough and resourceful enough to
know and do all that was necessary to make a workable Diesel gas
chamber, why would they
have bothered to try to use a Diesel engine in the first place?
For all their efforts they would
have had a gas chamber which at the very worst would still have
been only marginally effective
at its morbid task. For all their efforts they would have had
an average concentration of less
than 0.4% carbon monoxide and more than 4% oxygen. Any common,
ordinary gasoline engine
without any special attachments would easily have given them ten
times as much carbon
monoxide at idle as any comparably sized Diesel at full load.
Any common, ordinary gasoline
engine would easily have given them 7% carbon monoxide and less
than 1% oxygen. If one had
tampered with the carburetor, one could probably have had as much
as 12% carbon monoxide
by merely turning one small screw, namely the idle-mixture adjustment
screw.
Comparing the two types of engines, with both operating at
idle or under light load, the
difference is even more dramatic. At idle or under light load
any common, ordinary gasoline
engine without any special attachments would easily have given
more than one hundred times
as much carbon monoxide as any comparably sized Diesel.
The Diesel gas chamber story is incredible on these grounds
alone. However, the story
becomes even more incredible when one discovers that far better
sources of carbon monoxide,
better even than gasoline engines, were readily available to the
Germans. Those other sources
did not require either Diesel fuel or gasoline.
The Gaswagons
During World War II all European countries relied for most
of their non-military vehicular
transport needs upon vehicles which burned neither gasoline nor
oil, but burned solid fuels
such as wood, charcoal, or coal instead. The solid fuel, which
was generally wood, was first
converted into a mixture of combustible gases by burning in a
generator, usually mounted at
the rear of the vehicle. The gases were then withdrawn from the
generator and burned in a
modified gasoline or Diesel engine located at the front of the
vehicle. The combustible gas
produced in this way always contained between 18% and 35% carbon
monoxide.
In English-speaking countries, these vehicles were generally
called "producer gas vehicles."
However, they could just as appropriately have been called "poison
gas vehicles" because that is
precisely what they were-the gas which they produced was extremely
poisonous. The
operation of these vehicles required special safety procedures
as well as special government
approved training and licensing of the many thousands of drivers
who drove these vehicles
daily throughout most of the war in German-occupied Europe. (fn.
29)
In German-speaking parts of Europe, the producer gas vehicles
were called "Gaswagen." If
they burned wood, which most of them did, they were generally
called "Holzgaswagen," which
literally translated means "wood gas wagons." The abundance
of the gaswagons throughout
German-occupied Europe and the intensity with which the Germans
were developing ever
newer vehicles and applications of the producer gas technology
is a fact which undermines the
olocaust story in general. Had the Germans ever intended to commit
moss-murder with carbon
monoxide, they certainly would have employed the producer gas
technology long before they
would have ever used anything as idiotic as Diesel exhaust. Surely,
Eichmann and the other
"transportation experts" involved with the "final
solution of the Jewish problem," which was to a
great extent a transportation problem, would have been well aware
of these vehicles and of
their unique features. Surely, they would have used the "gaswagons"
to kill the Jews had there
ever been any intent to kill the Jews with poison gas.
The gaswagons are not the "gas vans" which were allegedly
used for mass-murder in Chelmno,
and by the Einsatzgruppen in Russia, despite the fact that the
terminology is identical in
German.
The murderous "gas vans" were, as can be seen in
all of the "evidence" pertaining to the gas van
story, conventional trucks which supposedly used "only"
the exhaust of the engines as the
killing agent. The basis of the "gas van" story is a
strange document known as "PS-501" which is,
in my opinion, a forgery based on an innocuous letter from SS
Untersturmführer (First
Lieutenant) Becker to SS Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant
Colonel) Walter Rauff, discussing
some of the many problems that must have occurred with gaswagons.
(fn. 30) The letter was
apparently rewritten and the text partially changed so as to give
it a sinister meaning. A
thorough analysis of the gaswagons and PS-501 is, however, beyond
the scope of this article.
(fn. 31)
The gaswagons, which would have been far superior for mass
murder to any conventionally
powered vehicles, including the "gas vans," traveled
on all the roads of Europe and into and
from the concentration camps daily. And yet, these potentially
perfect mass-murder devices
have never been implicated by the promoters of the holocaust story
in even a single murder!
The gas van story is merely an adaptation by the holocaust
propagandists of some
documentary materials related to the perfectly innocent use of
producer gas vehicles,
supported of course by appropriate "eyewitness" testimony
generated after the war. It is
within the gas van story that one clearly sees in miniature the
evolutionary process of the
larger, general holocaust story.
Coal Gasification
In addition to the producer gas technology, the Germans had
the world's most advanced coal
gasification technology. (fn. 32) One of the first steps in most
of the coal gasification processes
was to produce carbon monoxide from coal. The carbon monoxide
could then be used either as
a fuel or as an intermediate step in the synthesis of other products.
Because of Germany's isolation from adequate sources of petroleum
and natural rubber, she
had converted much of her industry already during World War I
to use coal as a substitute
source of hydrocarbons for making synthetic liquid fuels as well
as a vast assortment of
chemical substances, including synthetic rubber. The quantities
of carbon monoxide that were
produced as part of this technology measured in the millions of
tons and would have been
more than enough to kill the entire population of Europe many
times over.
Coal gasification plants were located in all of Germany's industrial
areas. One region containing
several such plants was Silesia, where the abundance of coal had
for more than a century been
the basis of that region's industry. One Silesian facility was
the I.G. Farben plant at Auschwitz,
a small portion of whose
carbon monoxide could easily have been diverted through a small
pipeline to
Auschwitz-Birkenau only a few miles away. Of course, no one alleges
that carbon monoxide
was ever used for mass-murder at Auschwitz although that would
have been an ideal place for
it. For mass-murder at Auschwitz, the Germans supposedly used
a completely different
substance, yklon B.
Conclusion
Although it would be most convenient for the revisionist camp
in the holocaust controversy to
be able to say that mass-murder could not possibly have been committed
with Diesel exhaust in
half an hour, that simply cannot be said with total accuracy.
It must be conceded that it would
have been remotely possible to commit the deeds in question with
Diesels. However, it would
certainly have required an inordinate amount of expertise and
determination and, for all their
efforts, the would-be murderers would have had an arrangement
which at best (worst?)
would still have been only marginally effective at its morbid
task. From a practical perspective
the whole idea of perfecting a Diesel arrangement for such a purpose
would have been
contrary to all common sense.
One is sometimes told in the Holocaust literature that the
reason the Germans used gas
chambers to murder the Jews was to avoid the emotional strain
on soldiers who would have
otherwise had to kill the Jews by shooting them by the thousands.
It is suggested that the gas
chamber method was more efficient somehow. No doubt, an efficient
killing method could have
been developed- but not with Diesel exhaust. From au the evidence
we have seen regarding
Diesel exhaust and its effects, a more hideously clumsy, and inefficient,
method of committing
mass-murder would be hard to imagine. Although it is conceivable
that some deranged minds
may have tried for a time to commit murder with Diesel exhaust,
after a few tries it would have
become apparent to even the most demented fiend that something
better was needed. And
yet, Christian Wirth supposedly asked Gerstein not to propose
in Berlin any other kind of gas
chamber. (fn. 33) Supposedly, it was not just a few people who
were killed with Diesel exhaust,
but millions. To have used such a clumsy method to kill Jews,
especially when far better
methods were readily available, is incredible enough, but that
the same clumsy method would
have also been used by the Germans on their own people as part
of a euthanasia program is
even more incredible.
Postscript: More Surprises to Come!
A marvelous metamorphosis is already taking place in the holocaust
story. Several leading
Holocaust proponents are now taking great pains to drop the Diesel
claim and replace it with
the view that the engines were not Diesels but conventional gasoline
engines which simply
burned Diesel fuel, presumably to make the engines more deadly
than if they had only burned
regular gasoline. This amazing transformation has appeared in
a recent book in Germany
entitled Nationalsozialistiche Massentötungen durch Giftgas.
(fn. 34) The book was a joint
project of 24 of the most eminent scholars on the subject, including
such notables as Eugen
Kogon, Hermann Langbein, Adalbert Rueckerl, Gideon Hausner, Germaine
Tillion and Georges
Wellers. The book represents the current state of the art of holocaust
mythomania and has
already been recommended by the World Jewish Congress in London.
(fn. 35) The new,
"revised" version of the holocaust says, in effect,
that Gerstein and others were mistaken when
they had claimed that Diesels were used to kill Jews at reblinka,
Belzec and Sobibor. The claim
now is that gasoline engines were used.
The clumsy juggling of evidence which characterizes this book
is exemplified by the fact that
although the Gerstein statement refers to Diesel engines four
times, the portion of the Gerstein
statement which is quoted in this supposedly definitive rebuttal
of the revisionists does not
mention Diesels at all, nor does it even describe the alleged
killing process. (fn. 36) For a
description of the killing process that Gerstein supposedly witnessed,
the book gives a piece of
postwar testimony by Dr. Pfannenstiel in which there is also no
mention of the use of Diesels,
but only of the use of Diesel fuel in the engine. How one could
possibly have operated a
gasoline engine with Diesel fuel is, of course, left to the imagination.
The fact is that any gasoline
engine simply would not operate with Diesel fuel (and vice-versa).
A fatal flaw in the new, non-Diesel, version is the retention
of the recurrent claim that the
corpses were "blue." Although any possible death from
Diesel exhaust would have been due to
lack of oxygen, which would in turn have caused a bluish appearance
of the corpse, death from
gasoline engine exhaust would "only" have been due to
carbon monoxide and could "only" have
caused a distinctive "cherry red" or "pink"
appearance. Although Pfannenstiel's postwar
testimony is generally less wild than the Gerstein statement,
nonetheless he and other
"eyewitnesses" also repeated the claim that the corpses
were "blue." (fn. 37)
That the Gerstein statement, although in a severely abbreviated
form, is included at all in such a
scholarly work, despite the problems for the "revised"
version of the holocaust
story which should be obvious to anyone looking at the complete
text of that statement, only
shows how desperate the holocaust scholars are to scrape together
everything they have in
support of their monstrous fantasy. They have precious little,
and the Gerstein statement is still
the best evidence they can present.
The new "revised" version of the holocaust story
is actually more absurd than the old version.
Although it might be remotely possible for an engineer to have
mistaken a gasoline engine for a
Diesel engine, how could anyone possibly have mistaken "red"
for "blue"? Perhaps they were all
color blind-we will just have to wait and see. No doubt, we will
see many more attempts by
desperate men to hold together a crumbling patchwork of lies.
The Diesel gas chamber claim is rubbish-apparently some of
the exterminationists themselves
recognize that now. However, the alternate claim that gasoline
engine exhaust was used
instead is rubbish also.
Notes
1.The "gas chambers" that one is shown today in Dachau,
Auschwitz and elsewhere are
practically nothing more than ordinary rooms which could not have
been used to kill in
the manner alleged. The Diesel gas chambers in Treblinka. Belzec
and Sobibor were all
supposedly destroyed long before the end of the war.
2.Raul Hilberg. The Destruction of the European Jews (Chicago:
Quadrangle Books, 1961).
p. 572.
3.It was at these camps that many photos were taken of dead bodies,
many already in
advanced states of decay. These photos are still being presented
as proof of Jewish
extermination. No comparable photos were taken in Auschwitz, for
example. Already in
1960 Dr. Martin Broszat of the Institute for Contemporary History
in Munich wrote in a
letter to Die Zeit (19 August 1960), p. 16, stating that there
had been "no gas chambers in
the Altreich," meaning Germany within its pre-1937 borders,
but rather "gassings took
place only in German-occupied Poland." The exclusion of Dachau,
Bergen-Belsen and
Buchenwald from the current litany of extermination camps in the
serious literature is a
tacit admission that at least a "mini-hoax" had been
perpetrated earlier.
4.Hilberg, pp. 561-62.
5.William B. Lindsey, "Zyklon B, Auschwitz, and the Trial
of Dr. Bruno Tesch," Journal of
Historical Review Vol. 4, No. 3 (Fall 1983).
6.In a trial in France in 1982 in which Dr. Robert Faurisson had
been sued for slander by
Poliakov for having described him as a "falsifier of history,"
Poliakov had explained that
he had simply misread a poor quality copy of a copy, several times
removed, of the
original Gerstein document.
7.Leon Poliakov, Harvest of Hate, Holocaust Library (New York:
Schocken Books, 1979),
p. 195.
8.Dr. Wilhelm Pfannenstiel was a professor at the Institute for
Hygiene at the University of
Marburg an der Lahn. An article by him on the effectiveness of
vitamin K was published
in Deutsche Zeitschrift für Chirurgie, 257 Band (1943) pp.
639-42. Also, an answer by him
to a reader's question was published by the Muenchener Medizinische
Wochenschrift (4
July 1941), p. 766, with his home address: Pilgrimstein 2, Marburg
an der Lahn. He was
apparently sent to Belzec as well as other camps as a medical
consultant to improve camp
sanitation. After the war he was interrogated every few years
with regard to his visit to
Belzec with Gerstein and on two occasions was prosecuted, the
last trial being in April
1970 in Marburg. Essentially, his testimony was always to support
the Gerstein statement
while at the same time avoiding or denying anything which would
incriminate himself.
9.S. Kaye, Handbook of Emergency Toxicology, 4th ed. (Springfield:
C.C. Thomas, 1980)
pp. 187-88. For a more detailed discussion of toxic effects of
CO see: C.J. Polson and R.N.
Tattersall, Clinical Toxicology (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1969),
pp. 604-21.
10.Poliakov, p. 196.
11.Y. Henderson and H.W. Haggard, Noxious Gases (New York: Reinhold
Publishing,
1943), p. 168.
12.W. Baker and A.L. Mossman, Effects of Exposure to Toxic Gases,
(East Rutherford,
New Jersey: Matheson Gas Products, 1970), p. 12.
13.F.E. Camps, Medical and Scientific Investigations in the Christie
Case (London: Medical
Publications Ltd., 1953), p. 170,
14.P.S. Myers, "Automobile Emissions-A Study in Environmental
Benefits versus
Technological Costs," Society of Automotive Engineers Transactions
Vol. 79 (1970),
Section 1, paper 700182, p. 662.
15.A Russian submarine engine is mentioned, without any details,
in Jochen von Lang,
Eichmann Interrogated (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983)
p. 76. Since World
War I, gasoline engines have as a rule been excluded from submarines
because of the
toxicity of their exhaust and the flammability of their fuel.
Thus, any submarine engine,
even from a Soviet submarine, would have been a Diesel and would
probably have been
as powerful as the engine from any tank.
16.David F. Merrion, "Effect of Design Revisions on Two Stroke
Cycle Diesel Engine
Exhaust," Society of Automotive Engineers Transactions Vol.
77 (1968), paper 680422, p.
1535.
17.J.C. Holtz, "Safety with mobile diesel-powered equipment
underground," Report of
Investigations No. 5616, U.S. Dept. of the Interior, Bureau of
Mines, Washington, 1960,
p. 67,
18.Figure 3 and Figure 5 have been used repeatedly over the last
forty years in the technical
literature by numerous engineers thereby demonstrating the reliability
of the data on
which these figures are based and the extent to which they represent
the worst possible
carbon monoxide emission levels from all Diesels. Two of the early
examples of articles
using Figure 3 are: H.H. Schrenk and L.B. Berger, "Composition
of Diesel Engine
Exhaust Gas," American Journal of Public Health Vol. 31,
No. 7 (July 1941), p. 674, and
Martin A. Elliott, "Combustion of Diesel Fuel," Society
of Automotive Engineers Quarterly
Transactions Vol. 3, No. 3 (July 1949), p. 509.
19.Although the related tests and their purpose have been discussed
in many articles,
probably the best is in Holtz.
20.Elliot and Davis, "Composition of Diesel Exhaust Gas,"
SAE Quarterly Transactions Vol.
4, No. 3 (July 1950), pp. 345-46-discussion by E.W. Landen.
21.Ibid, p. 333.
22.Edward F. Obert, Internal Combustion Engines and Air Pollution
(New York and
London: Intext Educational Publishers, 1973), p. 361.
23.Henderson and Haggard, pp. 144-45.
24.J.S. Haldane and J.G. Priestly, Respiration (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1935), pp.
223-24.
25.L.J. Meduna, Carbon Dioxide Therapy (Springfield: C.C. Thomas),
pp. 3-19.
26.J.D.P. Graham, The Diagnosis and Treatment of Acute Poisoning
(London: Oxford
University Press, 1962), pp. 215-17.
27.L.T. Fairhall, Industrial Toxicology, 2nd ed. (Baltimore: Williams
and Wilkins, 1957), p.
180.
28.Wolfgang Oerley, "Entwicklung und Stand der Holzgaserzeuger
in Oesterreich, Maerz
1938 [Development and Status of Woodgas Generators in Austria,
March 19381," in ATZ
Automobiltechnische Zeitschrift, Heft 11 (April 1939), p. 314.
Before the war, the leading
company not only in Europe but probably in the entire world in
the manufacture and
development of "wood gas wagons" was the Vienna-based
Saurer Company. This is the
same company which is identified, oddly enough, as the manufacturer
of the murderous
"gas vans" in PS-501.
29.The German automotive technical literature of that period abounds
with material on this
forgotten subject. For an introductory survey of the subject,
two especially useful issues
of ATZ are Heft 18 from September 1940 and from 1941.
30.Rauff is now residing in Chile where he is pursued by the likes
of Simon Wiesenthal and
Beate Klarsfeld- A recent attempt by the ADL in the U.S.A. and
by others to have him
extradited to Israel was denied by the Chilean government because
of Chile's statute of
limitations and because of Rauff's faultless behavior in Chile.
31.A more thorough analysis of the gas wagons, and of Zyklon B,
may be found in the
author's taped presentation given in Los Angeles on 6 September
1983 before the
International Revisionist Conference of the Institute for Historical
Review, from which
this article is essentially an abridgement. The audio cassette
is available from the Institute.
32.An excellent discussion of the subject including extensive
lists of references, especially
German references, is: W. Gumz and J.F. Foster of the Battelle
Memorial Inst., "A Critical
Survey of Methods of Making a High BTU Gas from Coal," Research
Bull. No. 6 (New
York: American Gas Association, July 1953).
33.See the complete text of the Gerstein statement in Arthur R.
Butz, The Hoax of the
Twentieth Century (Torrance, CA: Institute for Historical Review,
1982) p. 254. The
extermination technology employed at Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor
was supposedly no
longer an experimental technology in 1942 but rather a highly
developed technology
based upon almost three years of practical experience beginning
in 1939 with the
euthanasia program.
34.Nationalsozialistische Massentoetungen durch Giftgas [National
Socialist Mass-Murders
with Poison Gas] (Frankfurt: S. Fischer Verlag, 1983).
35.Chicago Jewish Sentinel (22 December 1983).
36.Nationalsozialistische Massentoetungen durch Giftgas, p. 172-74.
37.See, for example, his testimony before the Darmstadt court
from 6 June 1950 which
appears in Saul Friedlaender, Counterfeit Nazi: The Ambiguity
of Good (London:
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967), p.18. For a thorough discussion
of the kind of mad
dilemma confronting any German who was even remotely connected
with the
concentration camps-Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor were actually
transit camps rather
than concentration camps-see the article by W.B. Lindsey.
ARTICLE 19. <Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.>The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1948, in Paris.
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