Chimneys belched fire and smoke. Oh really?

[TMoran]

As to this passage from Van Pelt's book pasted up by Hebden:

"One detail of particular importance which cannot be found on the blueprints recovered from the Auschwitz building archive is the staggered arrangement of the four hollow wire-mesh columns (marked 10) in the gas chamber (marked 3) through which the Zyklon B was inserted into the room. As we will see below, there are various eye-witness accounts of these hollow columns, but they do not appear in the original blueprints because they were only added to the building shortly before completion. Olere’s staggered arrangement is confirmed by air photos of Birkenau taken by the Americans on August 25, 1944, ..."

What the Allied photo of Aug.25, 1944 shows is staggered black blobs for Crema III and the black blobs on Crema II more or less in line.

Going by the photo of Crema II as it was undergoing construction showing its cellar with the stacks on top we would have the stacks in line and going by the Allied photo we have the blobs showing up in a straight line but for Crema III they are staggered?

So when were the photos in the National Archives tampered with? Who knows. But evidently the guilty party would have known about the photo of the Crema II cellar and would have to have shown the stacks in a straight line to conform to that but where did the tamperer(s) get the staggered for the images on Crema III?

Van Pelt says as to the appearance of Olere's drawings, "These sketches remained unknown until they were first exhibited in 1976. They provide a very important visual record of the design and operation of the gas chamber and the incinerators of Crematorium 3, and they were made before information about that building was published."

Tricky wording by Van Pelt. "... made before information ... was published". But then again the 'information' which would be the plans that Pressac came to publish would have been in the Polish archives all along. Since Olere's drawings are in reality a reproduction of the plans we would have to assume Olere had access to the plans before they were published.

[Snafu]

Very interesting you should bring up Oleres drawings.
Here's a something I noticed a few months ago relating to Krema III:

Compare this drawing:




with this photo:




Take note of the scale. The Sonderkommandos, loading several dead into the muffle in Olere's drawing, could according to the photo be no more than about 1 m (3 ft) tall!

Talk about midget Sonderkommandos!

On the other hand, if the gnome or dwarf inmate workers were normal size, they wouldn't be able to push an entire family of their kin into the hopelessly oversized muffle door opening in Olere's drawing. About one normally built adult male seems to be what could practically fit into the oven according to the photo (which of course, is no surprise since we are speaking about perfectly normal creamation ovens after all).

Now, behold the immensely accurate and extensive detail in Olere's drawing compared with the photograph.

Look at the near similar angle of perspective.

I have an awful suspicion that Mr Olere made his drawing on the basis of this very photo!


Many thanks to Hebden for looking up the origin and publication of Olere's work!

[TMoran]

Sailor came up with something from Zimmerman who is or was a contributor to The Holocaust History Project:


Zimmerman's treatment on THHP is about forty pages long and is totally desperate. You can almost feel his agony as he typed out his nonsense. But as things go members of the Holocaust community have great endurance and tenacity for pumping out such nonsense and Zimmerman eventually wrote a book. I would imagine it is nothing more than an extension of what there is on the website. The funny thing about it is not even his own partners refer to his book as an authority or even refer to it at all. I know this from personal experience from exchanges with a number of the members of the THHP. It's almost as if Zimmerman never wrote the book.

Sailor's extract from Zimmerman's treatment on the website included this -

"One of the issues that has arisen in connection with the Holocaust is the reliability of eyewitness testimony. Holocaust deniers are forever attacking eyewitnesses as liars or people prone to exaggeration. ...

The main problem with such testimony, however, is that there will often be inconsistencies with regard to details. This is not unusual. Any prosecuting attorney knows that there are differences in the way witnesses view an event. ..."

Prosecutors may have their own specifications but you will not find a prosecutor willing to prosecute a case that has witnesses that tell things that are not consistent as to events because they know that juries are very sensitive to finding a guilty verdict unless there is some reasonable certainty.

Zimmerman wouldn't be thinking about any cross examination of witnesses when he blurts out whatever he blurts out. If some witness said they could pack some 20 persons into an area of one meter/yard square the defense would be all over it. If a witness, or even ten witnesses said that bodies could burn like wood without the need for external fuel the defense would attack it vigorously. Fact is, if the witnesses gave their testimony of such things to a prosecutor before any proceedings were started the prosecutor wouldn't even file the case.

In the end run it doesn't matter what Zimmerman wrote since his book seems to be an embarrassment which even his own associates avoid referring to. As far as I can tell from the THHP site it does not offer or refer to Zimmerman's book other than one place where it refers to 'his forthcoming book'.