Cyanide Chemistry at Auschwitz

[astro3]

The Polish Investigation

David Irving informed The Times on 21st March, 1991,[1] about

a copy, improperly obtained, of the Polish forensic laboratory report commissioned secretly in February last year by Franciszek Piper, the new non-Communist director of the Auschwitz museum and archives, following my publication of the Leuchter Report (an American team's clandestine laboratory analysis of the purported gas-chambers).

That copy soon appeared in The Journal of Historical Review.[2] Concentrations from 9 - 147 micrograms per 100g of cyanide residues were reported in ten samples taken from the walls of the rooms and chambers “where cyanide gas was used for disinfecting the slave-labourers' clothing,” Irving explained, whereas there was “none whatever in ten samples taken from rooms identified in countless war crimes trials as the lethal gas chambers also using this Zyklon B (hydrogen cyanide) gas, apart from a " vanishingly small" trace in one column in Birkenau, compatible with routine disinfectant operations.” "The implications are obvious," he added.

Of this leaked September 1990 Report, which might have intended to be confidential, the director of the Institute of Forensic Research Dr. Jan Markiewicz commented, diplomatically: ‘our investigations aiming at the confirmation, if possible, of the use of cyanic preparations in the rooms that survived whole or only in the form of ruins, were rather preliminary in nature and incomplete.’[3] His Institute would make a more thorough study, he explained.

The Polish approach had the key characteristic that (to quote Rudolf),

99.9% of the cyanide presently detectable in the walls of the delousing chambers of Auschwitz is bound in a way that is not detectable by the method of Markiewicz and party.[4]

Let’s suspend our incredulity that they would want to do such a thing.

Their report, published in 1994,[5] endorsed what Irving had written three years earlier concerning the pilot-study of 22 samples taken from Auschwitz walls: there were significant level in the DC walls but virtually none in any others. It did not, however, reach Irving’s view that any implications were ‘obvious.’ They had gone on to take a further sixty samples, from areas ‘best sheltered and least exposed to rainfall.’ That is a considerable amount of labour, with over eighty samples taken from the Auschwitz walls! Each of these samples were then subdivided and measured to give three independent determinations, so a lot of careful, hard work was involved. They measured various other elements, and also acidity (Ph) – everything except the one thing that really mattered, viz iron cyanide.

We here summarise their results, taking just the mean from each set of 7 or 8 samples (each measured thrice) from each AHGC (alleged human gas chamber): the Polish report called these ‘Krema,’ a deliberately vague term, whereas in the German plans these were leichenkellar or morgues. From their Table III:
Krema I: 67 ppb (n=21) Krema II: 160 ppb (n=21)
Krema III: 26 ppb (n=21) Krema IV: 117 ppb (n=15)
Krema V: 76 ppb (n=21)
The overall mean here is 90 parts per billion of cyanide, or about one part in ten million (0.09 ppm).

Their Table IV gave cyanide levels of a set of eight samples from a de-lousing chamber, or as they put it: ‘concentrations of cyanide ions in samples collected in the facilities for the fumigation of prisoners clothes, (Birkenau Bath-House Camp B1-A)’. This gave a mean value three times higher than the ‘Kremas,’ viz. 273 ppb (n=24). I haven’t previously seen this conclusion drawn, and suggest that this is the one moderately important conclusion which to emerge from all the hard work that went into this study. In their paragraph beginning ‘The results of analyses are presented in Tables I-IV,’ one seeks in vain for a mention from the Polish authors of the Birkenau delousing-chamber wall cyanide values given in their Table IV as being remarkably elevated – to a high level of statistical significance - as compared to the five ‘Krema’ walls. Why have they not mentioned this important finding in their own data?

The Rudolf Report gives us a brief summary of the Polish study, using what it calls ‘orders of magnitudes’ (ie approximate) results:
DC walls 0-0.8 ppm, AHGC walls, 0-0.6 ppm (mg CN-/kg).[6]
The trouble with these figures is (a) they are an order of magnitude too high - it is important to apprehend how very low are the levels which the Polish team were measuring, in parts per billion – and (b) they don’t show the substantial difference between the DC (what the Germans called ‘gas chamber’) and the AHGC levels.

Comparing these values, in Table IV the DC wall samples gave a mean of 0.27 ± 0.30 ppm (n=8), while in Table III the Krema II AHGC walls gave 0.16 ± 0.21 ppm (n=8), the latter being the highest cyanide value of the Kremas sampled. It had this high value, the authors explained, because ‘many fragments of the gas chamber were to a great degree protected from precipitation,’ i.e., the chamber was less exposed to the elements. That is an interesting possibility, which could be considered by any further investigation. The authors grant in a general sense that the DC wall cyanide values might have been higher, as Leuchter found, because ‘being undamaged, these facilities were not exposed to the action of weather conditions.’

The Polish study did careful research, in two separate stages, but then evaded the conclusion which ought to follow from it by a mere conjecture. It should have been their business to show, from their detailed on-site inspection, that the cyanide concentrations vary according to the degree of exposure to the elements, if that's what they believe, and not just allege such. Also we are disappointed that they made no comment upon the deep blue colouration of the DC walls from which they sampled: what about measurable differences in iron, in cyanide level and in acidity between the blue and non-blue samples? One senses a timidity in the Polish approach as if they were nervous of any pathway which might have lead them in a ‘wrong’ direction.

1. www.stormfront.org/solargeneral/library ... 10391.html
2. vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 207-216: www.ihr.org/jhr/v11/v11p207_Staff.html; IHR Newsletter, April 1991.
3. Ibid. (letter of June 7th 1991)
4. www.vho.org/GB/Books/cq/leuchter.html
5. www.holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/che ... port.shtml and www.nizkor.org/hweb/orgs/polish/institu ... -research/
6. Rudolf Report 2003, Table 23, 8.4.2, p.272.

[Sailor]

The French mainstream historian and opponent of revisionism Jacques Baynac broke his silence on September 2, 1996. In a learned study about revisionism, he wrote that the past scandal had “altered the atmosphere to the favor of the revisionists,” while among their opponents perplexity, dismay, and terror prevailed. He made the point that the historians up to now had retreated from the revisionist challenge and instead had left the subject to the amateur historian Jean-Claude Pressac.
Baynac stated:330

“For the scientific historian, an assertion by a witness does not really represent
history. It is an object of history. And an assertion of one witness does
not weigh heavily; assertions by many witnesses do not weigh much more
heavily, if they are not shored up with solid documentation. The postulate of
scientific historiography, one could say without great exaggeration, reads:
no paper/s, no facts proven […].
Either one gives up the priority of the archives, and in this case one disqualifies
history as a science, in order to immediately reclassify it as fiction;
or one retains the priority of the archive and in this case one must concede
that the lack of traces brings with it the incapability of directly proving the
existence of homicidal gas chambers.”

Added:
Baynac admitted, that historians shy away from a confrontation with revisionist arguments, and he disclosed that there is no scientifically tenable proof of homicidal gas chambers.

[330] Jacques Baynac, “Comment les historiens délèguent à la justice la tâche de faire taire les révisionnistes,”
Le Nouveau Quotidien, Lausanne, Sept. 2, 1996, p. 16; Baynac, “Faute de documents probants sur
les chambres à gaz, les historiens esquivent le débat,” ibid., Sept. 3, 1996, p. 14; cf. R. Faurisson, “An
Orthodox Historian Finally Acknowledges: There is No Evidence for Nazi Gas Chambers,” JHR 17(4)
(1998), pp. 24-28.

Source:
Rudolf "Lectures on the Holocaust", p. 150

[astro3]

Geography of the Leuchter Samples

When Fred Leuchter secretly took his wall-samples back in 1998, this was a Pre-Pressac era so to speak. Books about 'the Holocaust' were all stories, horror-tales with fairly unspecified physical locations, as if describing some Hades-type Underworld [1]. Amongst the old ruins, what was a 'gas chamber'?. When Leuchter arrived with hammer and chisel, who was there to tell him? Had any book or expert explained that the de-lousing chambers were marked in the well-hidden design plans as 'gaskammer' i.e. gas chambers? Hardly! [2]

The Leuchter Report is web-available on three or four separate sites [3,4]. I've never seen a hard copy because no major London library seems to have one. This seems odd, for a document which made history and achieved a world-wide cult status. Alas, the sections of its Appendix 5 on the web-versions are rather garbled and will confuse people.

Leuchter was able to peruse the Auschwitz camp archives during his historic visit of February 1988: 'I obtained information from the Museum as to what areas were alleged gas chambers in their archives.' [5] He was surely the first person since WWII to really see the buildings as they had functioned. No doubt, this was much owing to the weekend he had spent with Zundel and Faurisson in Toronto before the visit, poring over maps and plans [6] . Upon returning home, he and his draughtsman prepared seven or eight precision-drawn maps, in March of 1988, demonstrating the locations of 31 of his samples. He handed over these original diagrams to the judge at the Zundel Trial in April 1988, held in Toronto, together with his measurements, co-ordinates of the sample sites, and his travel log for the journey, and they have never been seen since. For legal reasons, the court refused to allow them to be introduced as an exhibit. [7]

Let us hope that Canadians will request the court to make these valuable documents publicly available. They ought to be in a museum now as hallowed, original documents. We sense the originality of his perception from his cross-examination at the Zundel trial [8], where he explained to the startled Court about the different chambers and how they would have worked, eg, the ventilation system involved, and the open door between the morgue and crematorium at 'Krema I'. That's why these maps matter, they document that remarkable act of perception [9].

The Leuchter Report contained no discussion of his sampling sites! The maps are all we get, in Appendix 5, and these are only copies of copies of his maps. They locate all his sampling site locations except for his most important one: 'Sample 32 was from a Delousing facility (a small brick building the size of a room} which was way out in a remote area of Birkenau. It is known as Delousing #1 on maps of the Camp?[4] This is the one which Rudolf alludes to as BW 5a [10]. Friedrich Berg's website shows these on a map of Birkenau [11].

Leuchter report, Appendix 5
DESIGN PLANS WITH DETAILS OF SAMPLING (dated 23rd March, 1988).
Titles as given on the websites are in green [12].
Krema I Delousing chamber bath & Disinfection Building 1 in Majdanek ' no samples taken from here.
Krema II Floor plan of the delousing wing of Bath & Disinfection Building 1 at Majdanek ' no samples from here.
Krema III This is 'Krema I,' its 'morgue (presumed gas chamber),' as Leuchter has written beside the map. Sample sites of Numbers 25-31 are marked.
Krema IV This is a map of Krema II, Birkenau -samples 1-7
Krema V This is a map of Krema 3, Birkenau, samples 8-11
Delousing Chamber and Experimental Gas Chamber for Delousing; Unknown Heater Circulator (Majdanek) No way! These two diagrams are of the cremation-oven rooms in Birkenau (Krema IV for samples 13-20; below is Krema V for samples 21-24). They are definitely not the delousing chambers. [13]

Thus the third of these subsections locates Leuchter's first set of samples - whose analysis so startled the French pharmacist Jean-Claude Pressac: 'Out of seven samples obtained from the Crematorium II gas chamber ruins, not a single one was shown upon analysis to contain cyanide. This amazing result is contrary to everything known about the building's history.' [14] Too right!

Let us hope that, 'Time and reason will vindicate the Leuchter Report.' [15] To help this happen, scholars do need to know of the major libraries holding copies of this vital document, in its three different imprints. It might help if the sites displaying the texts of this historic document corrected their somewhat misleading sub-headings for its site diagrams.


1. See, eg, Imagining the Holocaust by Daniel Schwartz, 1999 for more of this.
2. www.ihr.org/leaflets/inside.shtml
3.www.zundelsite.org/english/leuchter/report1/index.html,www.ihr.org/books/leuchter/leuchter.toc.html and http://tworca.org/LeuchterReport.pdf
4. Rudolf prepared a Critical Edition of all four Leuchter reports: http://vho.org/dl/ENG/tlr.pdf
5. Personal communication from Fred Leuchter.
6 Preface to Leuchter Report by Faurisson, p.14 of ref. (3).
7. www.stormfront.org/solargeneral/library ... index.html
8 www.ihr.org/books/kulaszka/33leuchter.html
9. The diagrams are given as Figs 12-20 in Rudolf?s Critical Edition, ref. (3).
10 Rudolf's footnote 111 in ref (3).
11 www.nazigassings.com/index2.html
12. In checking through these diagrams with sampling sites, it is helpful to have The Rudolf Report?s Table 17 available (203, section 8.3.1)
13.T Thanks to R.W. for guidance on this and other matters.
14. J. Pressac, Truth Prevails: Demolishing Holocaust Denial: The End of the Leuchter Report, p.68.
15 Fred Leuchter: www.ihr.org/jhr/v12/v12p421_Weber.html

Relevant Dates: 3 Feb 1988 Faurisson visits Leuchter, 26th Feb Leuchter visits Auschwitz, 23rd March, the design-plans are drawn up showing sampling sites, then 20th April Leuchter testifies at Zundel trial. Later that year the 'Samisdat' edition of the Report was published by Zundel, then the next year Irving?s 'Focal Point' London publishing house produced its copy.

[Sailor]

Leuchter was personally heavily attacked by the holocaust believers and finally destroyed. His business was ruined, he himself was criticized for not having the proper academic degrees and self-apointing himself to a registered engineer.

Leuchter worked as a consultant for government penitantiaries for the specification, design and manufacture of execution gas chambers.
I am a registered engineer myself in several states of the US and I hired myself many times consultants for special jobs. These people were specialists for a very narrow area (hydro-generators, large power transformers, special bus duct connections inside plants) and none of them was registered engineer.

I have asked holocaust believers whether a PhD doctorate is required to take wall samples for a chemical analysis. I received no answer.

I have asked believers what kind of engineering degree was required to work as a execution chamber consultant acceptable to believers. Again no answer.

I have asked believers for the name of a person who would be more suitable than Leuchter to review independently the Auschwitz/Birkenau alleged gas chambers. Again no answer.

Holocaust believers object to the way the samples were taken, and that the CN+ content was diluted because the CN+ ions only formed only within the first mico-millimeters of the walls.
In that case the samples taken from the fumigation walls should also be diluted, instead the analysis indicated 1000 mg/kg CN ions for the fumigation walls against 0 to 6 mg/kg CN ions for the alleged gas chamber walls.
And why did Alpha analytical Laboratories accept the Leuchter samples and not reject them as unsuitable right from the start?

Believers object to the fact that Leuchter designated in his report the samples of the fumigation room as his control sample. Who cares? This is completely irrelevant. Leuchter took the samples according to his instructions which he received from Faurisson.

Believers object to Leuchter's comment that the alleged gas chambers had no explosion proof lighting fixtures, and that their possibly could not be an explosion.
Then why did US execution gas chambers have explosion proof lighting fixtures?

The Leuchter report is overall a report written by a down to earth technically trained person, a "bolt and nut" man. Leuchter was not an academic and never claimed to be one.


Etc, etc.

fge

[astro3]

Depth of wall penetration

In 1988, the analytical chemist Dr A. Roth lost his job at Alpha Laboratories, in consequence of his having analysed the Leuchter wall samples, and further giving testimony about them at the Zundel trial. Some years later, he strove to backtrack on the conclusions that had been drawn from this, by alleging that the sampling procedure had been invalid. This was because, he explained, any trace of cyanide remaining would be only on the very top surface of the wall:

Cyanide is a surface reaction, it's probably not going to penetrate more than 10 microns - a human hair is 100 microns in diameter … If you are gonna go look for it you are going to look on the surface only. There's no reason to go deep because it is not going to be there.[1]

This testimony of Dr Roth was presented as damning evidence at the David Irving libel suit [2]. The prosecution attorney (a Mr Rampton) quoted the above words of Roth, and then added, derisively:

‘Despite the absolutely hopeless methodology that Fred Leuchter used to obtain his samples, the fact is that the sample from the Leichenkeller in crematorium 3 still produced traces of hydrogen cyanide, did it not? …. Dr Roth says that it is less than one tenth the thickness of a human hair that the cyanide will penetrate into the brickwork.
Q. Exactly. If you are going to do the test scientifically, you need carefully to scratch or scrape the surface and put it in a plastic bag, take it back and have it analysed. What Fred Leuchter did was to hack great lumps out of the fabric, did he not?
Irving: My Lord, we have photographs taken of the outside of some of these buildings, I emphasise the word "outside", and the blue stain from the cyanide has gone right through the brickwork, inch after inch after inch. You can see the outside of the building is stained blue with a stain that turns out to be Prussian blue from the cyanide that has come right through the brickwork.
Q. That is the delousing chamber, is it?
Irving: The delousing chamber, my Lord, yes and also a gas chamber at Stutthorf outside Dansig…
Q. You have never publicly acknowledged any of these reports, critiques and so on which cast doubt, sometimes 100 per cent doubt, on your utterances about the gas chambers at Auschwitz.
Irving: I do not agree. I think that the central chemical conclusions of the Leuchter report, although flawed, have now been substantially confirmed by a whole string of other reports in the meantime, both the one kept secret by the Auschwitz authorities and the earlier 1945 one, and the Germar Rudolf one, and other reports that have been conducted since then. Obviously the numbers do not exactly match, and you would not expect them to, but the broad trend is the same, very large quantities in the fumigation clambers, cyanide residues and not the quantities you would expect in the buildings where allegedly hundreds of thousands of people have been gassed to death with cyanide.

It is interesting to hear a historian David Irving pointing out how the chemist Dr Roth was in error. Roth’s ‘ten microns’ of penetration is pure baloney.[3] Both prosecution and defence here gave a central significance to the chemical evidence, and one regrets that no chemist was present to evaluate matters, or to present Germar Rudolf’s evidence on this question[4]. Let’s now see how Rudolf’s findings, published in 1993, affect this chemical argument used in that spectacularly-lost trial.

Iron Blue versus cyanide.
It is in general a surface reaction which produces the iron blue, in contrast with the cyanide gas which seeps right though the brickwork. The mortar of brickwork is spongy and porous, eg steam can pass through it. Water evaporates while the mortar sets, and a spongy texture thereby results. We’ve seen how the blue patterns on the outside of the DCs are similar to those within, and Irving correctly pointed out that this alone refuted Roth’s view.

The cause of the iron-blue may be somewhat mysterious. The great cyber-clashes between Germar Rudolf and Dr Richard Green on this obscure chemical issue concerns reduction-oxidation and how alkali and damp the wall has to be, which we needn’t go. After percolating right through the wall, the cyanide accumulates to become a surface iron-blue. The topic has been fairly well resolved by Rudolf’s through sampling of several DC walls: ‘Underneath the first layer of wall plaster, only approximately 1 mm thick, the material appears, by contrast, pale blue, just like the entire east wall of the wing…[5] The blue is seen below the surface. ‘Sample 15b is a fragment of brick, the blue layer of which was separated with a spatula (Sample 15c).’[6] These two samples had the very different values, of 56 and 2,400 ppm of cyanide, showing how the cyanide accumulates by bonding with iron, on the surface: to a depth of one millimetre or so - nothing resembling Roth’s ten microns. In the context of Roth’s comment, Rudolf alluded especially to his samples 11, 13, 17, 19b, and 23, which showed ‘that hydrogen cyanide can rather easily reach deep layers of plaster and mortar.’ [7]

Again, ‘an extremely high concentration of cyanide on the surface of the material must generally be expected… The difference between Samples 1 and 2 [in Krema II morgue] may indicate that a depth profile is actually prevalent in the concrete’ [8]. Other samples of his were also divided according to their depth of penetration, and tended to show a gradient of the cyanide diffusing through the wall.

Summarising, the cyanide gradient according to depth of penetration of the mortar in the wall (i.e. in between the bricks), is not very great, certainly not enough to cast doubt upon Leuchter’s sampling. Cyanide gas has penetrating power, which is why it was so good for de-lousing mattresses - also, why most of the alleged homicidal gas chambers claimed in the literature would have poisoned the operators. Wishing to restore some dignity to Professor Roth, let us conclude with his truthful remark made at the Zundel trial, about cyanide’s penetrating power:

In porous materials such as brick or mortar, the Prussian blue [recte: hydrogen cyanide] could go fairly deep as long as the surface stayed open, but as the Prussian blue formed, it was possible that it would seal the porous material and stop the penetration. [9]

1. www.fpp.co.uk/Auschwitz/Leuchter/Roth.html (interview in 1999 film by Errol Morris, ‘Mr Death’)
2. www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/people/i/irving. ... /day008.28
3. Rudolf described Roth’s comment as ‘a new corny joke’: Dissecting the Holocaust, 2003, www.vho.org/GB/Books/dth/fndgcger.html
4. For a court case costing thirteen million dollars, one would have thought somebody could have bothered to get a chemist to testify, if a chemical argument was the issue.
5. The Rudolf Report, 2003, p261.
6. Ibid, p.259.
7. Dissecting the Holocaust 2003 (ref 3)
8. Ibid, p253
9. Kulaszka (ed.), Did Six Million Really Die? Report on the Evidence in the Canadian "False News" Trial of Ernst Zündel - 1988, Samisdat Publishers Ltd., Toronto 1992, p. 363 (quoted by Rudolf in Grundlagen Ibid.

[astro3]

Wikipedia on Zyklon-B

Anyone can contribute to Wikipedia, and it may therefore be worth challenging the biased and misleading comments in this section [1].

This article is about the cyanide-based gas used during the Holocaust. Suggested correction: This article is about how Germany used cyanide gas in WWII.

Modern Holocaust deniers assert that Zyklon B gas was not used in the gas chambers,

Correction: They assert that it was so used. It was used ‘in the gas chambers,’ i.e. the designated gas chambers as shown in the original design plans, viz. the delousing chambers. Zyklon-B was never a gas, it was a liquid form of cyanide absorbed into pellets.

….relying as evidence on the low levels of Prussian Blue residue in samples of the purported gas chambers found by Fred A. Leuchter, which Leuchter dismissed as the results of general delousing of buildings.

Correction No-one has measured levels of ‘Prussian blue residue’ in AHGC walls. Leuchter’s work looked at total cyanide present, this being largely in the form of iron cyanide. No Prussian blue was visible in walls of the ‘purported gas chambers’ he visited - that's the whole point.

However, Leuchter's negative control, a sample of gasket material taken from a different building in the camp, registered as having no such cyanide residue.

Correction: Two ‘control’ samples were taken by Leuchter: Sample 28 from the wall of a wash-room adjacent to the morgue in Krema-I, and sample 12 of ‘gasket material’ from elsewhere. The first had a level of 1.3 ppm and the other was undetectable, i.e.below 1 ppm. Thus one could reasonably say that Leuchter’s two control samples hovered around one part per million of total cyanide.

The manager of the analytical laboratory hired by Leuchter states in an interview in Errol Morris' film Mr. Death: the Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr., that Leuchter's thick samples of brick would have greatly diluted the cyanide residue, which forms only an extremely fine layer on the walls and cannot penetrate.

Correction It is frivolous to quote a mere film-interview – quite apart from the inherent absurdity of his comment. The Rudolf Report contains some thorough investigation of the ‘depth profile’ of the cyanide, i.e. how it varied throughout the mortar of the Auschwitz walls, and needs here to be cited.

In 1994, the Institute for Forensic Research in Kraków reexamined this claim on the grounds that formation of Prussian blue by exposure of bricks to cyanide is not a highly probable reaction.

Correction The Institute for Forensic Research in Cracow hardly re-examined Leuchter’s claims, because it solely measured cyanide not bound to iron. This un-bound cyanide is very labile, i.e. likely to come and go, and it is far from evident that the cyanide they measured is a memory of that which was present fifty years ago. The central weakness of the Polish study lay here, as well as in the low levels they measured (parts per billion). They did indeed make a comment about the Prussian Blue being ‘improbable,’ the relevance of which remains enigmatic.

I suggest this Wikipedia article should give some estimate of the total for all Zyklon-B used in the Auschwitz complex, of around 40 tons 1940-45 [2], and should also cite estimates made of the relative proportions of this used for lice versus (allegedly) humans! (Eg, Jacques Pressac put this at around 95% used for de-lousing with merely 5% for exterminating camp members). I suggest this article ought to state what was being de-loused by Zyklon-B, viz. all clothing and bedding materials. Immediately after the war DDT replaced Zyklon-B as the preferred method of delousing clothes, so that the latter became obsolete, which needs to be stated.

Queries:the Wikipedia article avers that two different forms of Zyklon-B were used in the labour camps: one with a warning smell, as used for de-lousing, and that used for murder, 'deliberately made without the warning deodorant.' Was this the case? This article nowhere states that Zyklon-B was liquid hydrogen cyanide, and it surely ought to. Instead, it claims that it was crystalline - it wasn't, was it?

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zyklon_B
2. The Rudolf Report 2003, p.212

[Hannover]

Queries:the Wikipedia article avers that two different forms of Zyklon-B were used in the labour camps: one with a warning smell, as used for de-lousing, and that used for murder, 'deliberately made without the warning deodorant.' Was this the case? This article nowhere states that Zyklon-B was liquid hydrogen cyanide, and it surely ought to. Instead, it claims that it was crystalline - it wasn't, was it?

- There was no order to remove the odor from Zyklon-B, no order has ever been shown, nor can it be shown.

- The removal of the warning scent was decided upon by the DEGESCH firm and not by the SS. This came out during testimony given by Mr Breitweiser during the course of the Auschwitz Frankfurt trial in 1961. Breitweiser was in charge of disinfestation at Auschwitz. He was never charged with or convicted of a crime.

- By 1944 Zyklon was being supplied to Auschwitz without the warning ingredient, but the reason for this exceptional practice was a supply shortage rather than any desire, as alleged by Exterminationists, to deceive potential murder victims. One cause of considerable concern to some of the German technicians at the time was that since the warning ingredient also contributed to the chemical stability of the Zyklon-B, its removal could present a serious hazard to the end-user. One result of the removal of the warning ingredient seems to have been the shortening of the shelf-life of even properly sealed cans of Zyklon-B. ( footnote 7)
http://vho.org/GB/Journals/JHR/7/1/Berg73-94.html

- Zyklon-B was not crystalline, it was a pesticide made of cyanide impregated granular/earthen chunks requiring hours to fully outgas; another insurmountable problem for the ridiculous storyline.
Gassings are said to have taken mere minutes, chamber doors are said to have been opened immediately after alleged gassings, but the Zyklon-B would still be outgassing ... there goes the neighborhood.

- The 'crystals' claim has been made by 'eyewitnesses', which once again, proves the fact that 'eyewitnesses' lied.

Hannover

[Sailor]

The choice of Zyklon-B with or without a warning smell was a matter of cost.

Zyklon-B with a warning smell was still patented and therefore more expensive. Zyklon-B without warning smell was not anymore protected by a patent and anyone could at any cost manufacture it legally.

Zyklon-B without warning odor was originaly planned to be used for food stuff in order to prevent unpleasant tastes..

And I don't believe that for a group of 2000 people it would have made a difference whether they were gassed with or without warning odor, they were trapped inside a building with 4 ft thick walls and 70 cm thick ceiling.

The article in Wikipedia is clearly a political article and not a chemical essay. The term "Holocaust denier" has no business in a chemical study.

And be careful with the term "penetrating power" with regards to CN. This term is not defined for a gas or vapor anywhere. At least I did not find anywhere a definition. I believe that Faurisson came up with this. I don't know what he meant with it. Maybe "viscosity"?

fge

[David Phillips]

British "liberated" some Zyklon B from Lille in December 1944 and by that time there was sufficient interest to get it analysed.

According to the chemical analysis they found no warning halogenic compounds in it.

So Zyklon B without halogens was not solely produced for Auschwitz. I have a photo of the report from 1944 somewhere.

[Hannover]

Here is something from NIZKOR about the warning odor canard:

http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/orgs/germ ... farben.001

There was still another episode that gave the officials of Degesch
more than a hint of the dread purpose to which their Zyklon B was
being put by the S.S. When manufactured as a pesticide Zyklon B
contained a special odor, or 'indicator,' to warn human beings of
its lethal presence. The inclusion of such a warning odor was
required by German law. When the S.S. demanded that the new,
large order of Zyklon B omit the 'indicator,' no one familiar with
the workings of the S.S. could have failed to realize the purpose
behind the strange request. The Degesch executives at first were
unwilling to comply. But compassion was not behind their refusal.
What troubled them was the fact that the S.S. request endangered
Degesch's monopoly position. The patent on Zyklon B had long
since expired. However, Degesch retained its monopoly by a patent
on the warning odor. To remove the 'indicator' was bad business,
opening up the possibility of unwelcome competition. The
S.S. made short shrift of this objection and the company removed
the warning odor. Now the doomed would not even know it was
Degesch's Zyklon B. (Borkin, 122-123)

As usual, no SS order can be shown. Anyone see one?

Sailor:

And I don't believe that for a group of 2000 people it would have made a difference whether they were gassed with or without warning odor, they were trapped inside a building with 4 ft thick walls and 70 cm thick ceiling.

Exactly. What difference, other than practical economic reasons, would the removal make anyway if the standard storyline was true? None. The needs of wartime cost cutting in typhus abatement certainly rendered any patent unimportant.

- Hannover

[astro3]

Thanks, Hannover. We need now to press for major corrections to the Wikipedia article, if someone here is into doing that. As regards the 'penetrating power' of HCN, Rudolf writes that the gas 'is highly mobile. This mobility is highly welcome when it comes to killing vermin: wherever fleas and bugs try to hide, the gas will still reach them!... it indiscriminately seeps into the smallest cracks and even pentrates porous substances such as felt sealing materials and thin walls'. (The Rudolf Report, p.16) This is why, he argues, its use for execution is unlikely in rooms not especially designed for containing it.

[astro3]

The Decisive Test

The Leuchter and Rudolf data-sets always need to be evaluated together. Each separately may have certain weaknesses, and it is in their conjunction together that the great force of the argument resides.

We have seen how the delousing chamber walls have a mean of 5,600 ppm total cyanide (Rudolf’s data) of which only 0.27 ppm on average is not bound with iron (Polish data, see 20th March section above ), giving a factor of about 20,000 between these different levels. That is a remarkable differential! In contrast, the AHGCs of Kremas I and II had somewhat over 1 ppm of total cyanide, of which around 0.09 ppm was iron-free. That gives a much smaller ratio, of about one order of magnitude. Let’s here quote Germar Rudolf:

After 50 years, considerably less than one part per thousand of the total cyanide in the walls of the delousing chambers is not bound as iron cyanide. In the alleged homicidal gas chambers, this ratio is only 1:10, maximum. [1]

Thus the ratio of bound to unbound cyanide differs greatly between the two types of chamber.

We have earlier ignored those Leuchter samples, over half of them, that were unmeasurable, as lying below 1 ppm. We here give them an estimated value of 0.5 ppm, since their cyanide level has to lie between 1 and zero, and that will enable us to combine together the Leuchter and Rudolf data-sets. They both measured the same thing in the same walls, so let's combine them. The six Leuchter samples from Krema 1 are {3.8, 1.3, 1.4, 7.9, 1.1, 0.5] plus his seven samples from Krema II are {0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5 }ppm. The three Rudolf samples from Krema II are {7.2, 0.6, 6.7}. Combining these gives us

2.2 ± 2.9 (n=16) ppm total cyanide in the AHGC walls.

We do the same for the ‘control’ samples. Let's define that term, because there has been some confusion here since Leuchter alluded to his single DC sample as a ‘control.’ A control we here define as a sample from any wall that is neither a DC nor an AHGC. In other words, if any book or person has averred, ‘that was a gas chamber,’ then it can’t be counted as a control. Fred Leuchter took many samples from a cremation-oven room in Krema IV, those numbered 13-24, also a door seal (12) and Krema-I wash room (29). That gives us 11 'controls' altogether: {0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 2.3, 1.4, 0.5, 1.4, 4.4, 1.7, 0.5, 1.3}. Rudolf took his controls from two lots of barracks (samples 5-8 and 23-24), i.e. residential areas, giving 6 altogether: {0.6, 0.1, 0.3, 2.7, 0.3, 0.1} [2]. Combining these gives us

1.1 ± 1.1 (n=17) ppm total cyanide in ‘control’ Auschwitz walls.

Are you ready for a shock? The difference between these two groups is not statistically significant (t = 1.4). There has been discussion in the literature, about how the Kremas may have had a single treatment of cyanide, to de-louse them at some stage (Is there evidence for this having happened?). Fred Leuchter made some such conjecture in his cross-examination at the Zundel trial. These results show, that no such conjecture is needed. There is no significant difference in total cyanide between the control samples and the AHGC samples – period. That comes from an impressive total of 17 control samples and 16 AHGC samples.

The only assumption here made, in order to combine the two data-sets, is that of setting Leuchter’s too-low-to-measure samples at 0.5 ppm. That is a reasonable assumption. The difference between these two groups may look significant because one mean is double the other, however the large standard deviation (bigger then the mean) counteracts this and has deprived this difference of any statistical significance.

Believers [3] may prefer not to read what follows, because their entire case must disintegrate if they merely absorb the following facts. Mean values for the DC walls are 5,600 & 0.26 ppm, for both the cyanide total & that not bound to iron, while for AHGC walls the figures are 2.2 & 0.09 ppm likewise for cyanide total & that not bound to iron. Persons of rational disposition must surely agree with David Irving, who said at his trial that the implication of these differences was ‘obvious.’ We have merely sharpened up the figures a bit, they are now more exact.

There is one straw that Believers have clung to: the notion, that the Krema values are somehow ‘raised.’ The analysis here indicates that this is not so. The around one part per million level of cyanide could have come from anywhere, maybe from atmospheric nitrogen, but that need not concern us. The Null Hypothesis here is that there is no significant difference between controls and the AHGCs – which clearly ought to be the case, if hundreds of thousands of persons had been lethally gassed there. The aim of a scientific test is to disprove the Null Hypothesis. That has failed, in this case. The Null Hypothesis is still intact. So the hypothesis of mass extermination goes out of the window. It was just a fairytale – a Fairy Tale from Hell.

Postscript - The analysis here presented predicts that the cyanide in any domestic (barracks) or cremation-oven room wall, unbound with iron, ought to fluctuate around 90 ppb (parts per billion) or may be somewhat less, maybe as low as 30 ppb. That is a testable prediction and it is work that needs to be done. The phoney, bogus claim made by the Polish team, is that they took 8 samples of such from a residential area and that their values were {0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0} parts per billion. As we have earlier discussed, one would not expect to find any chemist who would believe these ‘control’ levels as measured in parts per billion. Its an absurd claim but one endlessly repeated, on Wikipedia, by Richard Green, in fact wherever Believers want to find some kind of straw for ignoring the iron cyanide, which is what counts. It counts because it lasts. It happens to be insoluble. It has endured for half a century. It tells us where the cyanide was used – and where it wasn’t.


1. www.vho.org/GB/c/GR/Green.html
2. Check out these figures, from Tables 17 and 19 in The Rudolf Report 8.3.1 and 8.3.2 www.vho.org/GB/Books/trr/8.html#8.3.1 Rudolf's version of Leuchter's data misses out a few duplicate readings, but is otherwise identical.
3. I prefer this word rather than ‘exterminationists’ – if we are deniers, they can be believers.

[Hannover]

In regards to the hollow attempt to claim that the removal of the warning odor in the pesticide Zyklon-B had criminal implications, the fact is that Zyklon-B was occasionally sold commercially in Germany and abroad before the war without this odor.

- Hannover

[astro3]

THE STRANGE LOGIC OF RICHARD GREEN

Dr Richard Green, the Holocaust chemist, has his own Wikipedia section [1]. His anti-Rudolf polemics on the web include The Chemistry of Auschwitz [2] Leuchter, Rudolf and the Iron Blues [3] and Rudolf, Rhetoric and Reduction [4]. We'll here allude to these as CA, LR and RR, respectively. In these texts, weak chemical arguments alternate with strong invective. The arguments are saturated with venom, as are the delousing-chamber walls of Birkenau with cyanide. He scoffs at the practical labour and conclusions of others, himself a mere armchair theorist.

A lot of his argument is about the Iron Blue, so let's remind ourselves with a quote from Rudolf:

The walls of the delousing buildings are saturated through and through with cyanide compounds, of which only a part becomes visible as iron blue, predominantly in damp areas and at the surfaces due to accumulation processes [5].

In addition there are very small traces of cyanide not bound to iron, mainly calcium cyanide, Ca(CN)2, water-soluble. The Polish 1991 study looked at this, and Dr Green is concerned to extol this survey, dismissing the others.

The Burden of Proof
The terminology used in Green's essay can be confusing. Thus, we find statements like: 'The burden of proof that Prussian blue must have formed under the conditions present in the gas chambers is on the deniers' [LR]. and again: 'In order for Leuchter or Rudolf to demonstrate the significance of their findings, it is necessary for them to prove the necessity of Prussian blue formation under the conditions that the homicidal gas chambers were operated. [LR]' Clearly, (a) Leuchter and Rudolf don't believe in the existence of any such homicidal gas chambers, and (b) no Prussian blue ever formed in such alleged chambers. Let's try one more time to follow Dr Green, here:

Yet the burden of proof here lies with the deniers. They claim to prove that gassings could not have occurred in the gas chambers. To make such an argument, they need to demonstrate that their proposed mechanism of Prussian blue formation must be operative in the gas chambers under the precise conditions under which they were operated. Their task is daunting. [LR]

We ('the deniers') are affirming the simple fact that Prussian Blue never appears in the AHGCs - which Dr Green here calls 'the gas chambers' - for the simple reason that cyanide wasn't used in them; whereas, it is present in the DC walls. We are not obliged to explain any 'proposed mechanism' whereby this blue complex forms [6]; it suffices to point out that it does form, it is there, is permanent, and those parts of wall having it, contain high iron and cyanide levels.

Jean Pressac may have been correct, that the deep blue only matured slowly, appearing there after the War [7]. Mother Nature was thus pointing out something, which turned out to be vitally relevant. Green correctly states, that 'Yet the burden of proof here lies with the deniers. They claim to prove that gassings could not have occurred in the gas chambers. [LR]'
We do, indeed: chemical proof, Dr Green. One needs to add a caveat that his terminology can mislead: Pressac's hard-to-find magnum opus showed diagrams of rooms labelled 'gas chambers' (gaskammers) that were clearly the delousing chambers and that is not Dr Green's meaning.

Where is the Prussian Blue located? Dr Green tells his readers, that 'Some of the delousing chambers exhibit blue-staining, whereas the homicidal gas chambers do not,' [CA, V] whereas the truth is, that all of the DC walls exhibit blue-staining while none of the AHGCs do so. The sole exceptions here are (a) the AHGC at Majdanek which has blue walls, easily explained by the fact that what is shown there was, in reality, a delousing gas chamber [8], and (b) the Dachau DC walls have no blue pigment, because their walls were coated with paint that was impermeable to gas and water. [9]

He doesn't want conclusions to be drawn from the blue hue, nor indeed from Leuchter and Rudolf's measurement of their ultra-high iron cyanide levels:

The bulk of the cyanides detected by Leuchter and Rudolf were in the form of Prussian blue and/or related compounds. That there is a discrepancy between the amount of Prussian blue between some of the delousing facilities and some of the homicidal facilities is clear from inspection of the prominent blue staining on some of the delousing chambers (and the chemical work of Leuchter and Rudolf, even if honestly conducted, shows no more than is evident from inspection). The important question is whether such staining is an accurate marker for exposure to HCN. Must it always be present in buildings exposed to HCN? ... These measurements (of iron cyanide) are essentially meaningless. The information content is not more than the fact that some of the delousing chambers have blue-staining and the homicidal chambers do not. [RR]

Dr Green seeks to persuade his readers, that the contrast between the DC walls glowing with deep blue and the AHGCs which have absolutely none, is merely 'a discrepancy between the amount of Prussian blue between some of the delousing facilities and some of the homicidal facilities.' Sophistry can be carried no further! The Prussian blue has appeared, he explains, for complicated reasons, but one cannot say that it is caused by the cyanide gas of half a century ago. He then dreams up the notion that Leuchter and Rudolf measured cyanides 'in the form of Prussian blue and/or related compounds' - whereas what they measured was total cyanide. The conclusion he draws from all this, is that the Polish approach has the advantage, because it avoided the Prussian Blue issue:

Cyanide residues, not in the form of Prussian blue are far more susceptible to weathering away. The IFRC researchers experimented with exposing building materials to HCN and found that the cyanides were easily removed with exposure to water. The samples that they found containing cyanides from the Kremas were carefully taken from places in the chambers that were as sheltered from the elements as possible. Leuchter and Rudolf, collecting their samples illegally, could not afford that luxury. [CA,V]

We agree that the 'cyanide residues not in the form of Prussian blue' are more susceptible to 'weathering away', which could be why Ball, Leuchter and Rudolf didn't measure them.

Blue Church Walls
The connection between fumigation with Prussic acid for de-lousing treatment and the development of Prussian blue, has been demonstrated by Rudolf's survey of the latter forming in an old church (a Protestant church of Wiesenfeld) after it received this treatment. A report found that:

Several months after the building was opened to the public, small ink-blue spots appeared at various places on the newly plastered surfaces. Little attention was paid to them at first; it was assumed that they were ink stains or the like. But the spots grew larger, and in some parts of the building discolored patches up to about a square meter (10 sq.ft.) in size developed. Even after one-and-a-half years new blue discolorations still formed in some places. No-one could remove the blue and so all of the plaster had to be removed. [10]

Here Dr Green complains 'The fact that blue staining occurred in this church is not sufficient to demonstrate that the same mechanism is responsible for the blue staining in the delousing chambers.' Isn't it? What more does he want? [11] Let's listen carefully:

buildings that were exposed to HCN but did not form Prussian blue stains (as Gauss's fumigation experts attest is the normal state of affairs). A building in which Prussian blue formed would have much higher levels of detectable total cyanides than a building in which Prussian blue did not form. We must therefore conclude that Prussian blue is not a good marker for exposure to hydrogen cyanide. Because of the fact that Prussian blue is much less susceptible to weather, a building that has Prussian blue stains will have a total cyanide content much greater than one in which Prussian blue did not form. Because of these facts, we must conclude that judging exposure to cyanide by means of the total cyanide content is inappropriate. A fair marker for exposure to hydrogen cyanide is to measure the remnant cyanide content when iron compounds are excluded. Such an experiment was actually performed by the Institute for Forensic Research in Cracow.? [RR]

Did you follow that? He is endeavouring to avoid the plain-as-day conclusion that massive cyanide gas infusions caused walls to turn a deep blue due to the formation of iron cyanide, which endure for half a century! He is irked by the simple force of the argument. This effect does not always happen, to be sure, and some churches have not turned blue after de-bugging with cyanide gas (a procedure still used today in Germany).

After the human gassings had taken place the walls were washed down, Dr Green explains, and this would have dissolved out all of the cyanide: this 'may actually be the explanation for the presence of Prussian blue in the delousing chambers yet its absence in the homicidal chambers.'[LR] This is an argument which might work better in reverse: if the walls were kept damp by washing them down, this would facilitate their absorption of cyanide, as compared to the dry walls of the DCs.

Control samples
The polish survey (IFRC), he claims, found raised cyanide in the AHGCs as compared to 'control' samples, but not much of a difference between DC & AHGC walls:

The IFRC found traces of cyanide at levels significantly above background in all 5 Kremas as well as bunker 11. They also measured concentrations in bath-house B1-A in Birkenau, which was used for delousing prisoners' clothing ... So it is true that the highest measurements were higher in fumigation chambers ... but not by much [CA].

The DC wall values ('bathhouse B1-A in Birkenau') were, as we have seen, three times higher than the AHGC walls, using the Polish approach [12]. Measuring the iron cyanide gives at least a thousandfold difference, as three surveys have shown, whereas if, for some obscure reason, Dr Green does not want to use this, then measuring only the non-iron bonded cyanide, will give him a factor of three. Comments about 'not much' difference are here totally inadequate. Further, if he is keen on measuring soluble cyanides, as opposed to the insoluble iron cyanide complexes, can he please tell us why he believes that these are a memory of what happened sixty years ago? The iron cyanide presence is permanent - despite experts at the Zundel and Irving trials trying to scoff at Leuchter's work in this respect - but, what reason is there to assume that parts per billion of soluble cyanide hold any such memory? Scientific method should here involve starting off with the null hypothesis, that these extremely low levels of soluble cyanide in the walls merely reflect ambient conditions, eg atmospheric nitrogen somehow combining with carbon or whatever. One then has to refute this, if one is to establish that these are a record of something done to the walls in the past. Merely to say that the sample sites were 'sheltered from the elements' may not here be adequate.

Green is prone to stating that the Polish team 'took several samples from Bunker 11, and Kremas I-V. They found levels of cyanide significantly higher than background levels in all of these sites of homicidal gassing.' A concentration of 0.09 parts per million is not significantly higher than background, which as I've argued earlier the Polish team did not well ascertain (they just put it as zero parts per billion). 'Do the homicidal gas chambers contain more cyanide compounds than an ordinary barracks? The answer is yes as discussed below' [CA, III]. A more truthful answer here would be that, if the Leuchter and Rudolf data-sets are combined, they give a mean AHGC wall cyanide level somewhat elevated with respect to control levels ('ordinary barracks'), however this difference lacks statistical significance (see above, April 2nd).

As a general comment, the scientific method is used if one is not sure about an answer, and wish to be guided, by putting questions to Nature. The experiment thereby aims to test Nature, and find an answer. Dr Green, in contrast, always appears as being certain about his answers, and what he wants to believe. His essays aim to show the moral depravity of those who disagree with him, owing to their wilful pursuit of Untruth. This seems to me more a theological goal, whereby Truth is revealed (and Green quotes some not-to-be-doubted sources of What Really Happened) and an apologist like him is there to damn and dismiss doubters. If we turn to the Nizkor website (the official Polish Holocaust info site) section on Leuchter [13], it complains that, by taking his samples, Leuchter committed sacrilege, that he profaned and violated the sanctity of this site by his act of 'desecration.' Dr Green here appears as rather defending the sacred legend. Unperturbed, it must be our business to ensure that technical-scientific considerations are applied to this debate, and become its fulcrum, and not be derailed by such endeavours to ethically-damn persons of incorrect opinion.

This powerful debate, of interest to the entire human race, has never been published in any English-language chemistry journal!

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_J._Green_(chemist)
2. 1998 www.holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/chemistry/
3. 1998 www.holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/chemistry/blue/ , also http://veritas3.holocaust-history.org/a ... stry/blue/
4. By Green & J McCarthy, 2000: www.holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/che ... e-science/
5. Dissecting the Holocaust 2003 p.366, www.vho.org/GB/Books/dth/fndgcger.html.
6. Iron in the wall mortar is present in its trivalent form, whereas the Iron blue is present in both di- and tri- valent forms. Some form of reducing agent is therefore necessary to obtain the bi-valent iron, and Green and Rudolf debate this.
7. Truth Prevails: Demolishing Holocaust Denial 1990, Ed S. Shapiro, p.38
8. Thanks to F.P. Berg for this info. Jean Pressac (in Auschwitz: Technique and operation of the Gas Chambers, 1989, p.555) commented likewise upon this Majdanek DC, that its red-ochre bricks were stained dark blue because this 'gas chamber' had been a delousing installation; Green denied this (C of A), with an argument that solely involved scoffing at the 'deniers:' 'Happy to be logically inconsistent as long as they can spread a bit of confusion'.
9. The Rudolf Report p.152
10. www.vho.org/GB/Books/dth/fndwood.html
11. Iron Blue used to appear as a by-product of city gas or 'coke gas' in Germany. It was washed with iron peroxide in order that the cyanide in would be eliminated. Iron Blue was the end-product of this, so there is Iron Blue around old German city gas works. (The Rudolf Report p.179) It is regarded as non-polluting because of its great stability.
12. Reminder: I showed that the mean cyanide levels of the Polish study were, DC wall mean 0.27 ppm (Birkenau Bath-House Camp B1-A) compared to 0.09 ppm for 5 AHGCs, that's a big difference.
13. www.nizkor.org/faqs/leuchter/

[Hannover]

This powerful debate, of interest to the entire human race, has never been published in any English-language chemistry journal!

And we know why.

'THE STRANGE LOGIC OF RICHARD GREEN' indeed. The man is a charlatan.

Excellent work, astro3.

- Hannover