41. Can bodies be burned in pits?

Ernst
Zündel Replies:

Rebuttal # 41:

This is an extension of QA #40 which I
have already answered. It is akin to asking whether screws can be driven in
with a hammer. Perhaps it is possible, but why would anyone want to do it?

There are problems with burning in pits that make it impractical.
Traditionally, open air cremations are done on a pyre, with wood most
frequently used as fuel. In India, where open air cremations are still widely
practiced for religious reasons, it takes approximately 480 kg of good quality,
dry wood to cremate a body. It should also be indicated that after massive
civilian casualties caused by the Allied bombings, the Germans also used pyres
to incinerate corpses. They did not do so in pits.

A pit adds nothing but unnecessary work. It actually complicates the combustion
process by severely restricting the flow of air to the bottom, which is
essential for combustion. Holocaust propagandists should take a good look at a
barbecue set. There are always holes at the bottom of the pan that holds the
charcoal to allow air to come in.

It is often claimed that burning of bodies in pits in concentration camps was
allegedly done throughout the year, which included winter months. In the warm
climate of India it takes almost half a ton of dry wood to cremate a body, but
in subzero temperatures of Poland in the winter months it would only be natural
to assume that cremation would require even more energy than in India, to
account for the fact that the rate of heat loss into the atmosphere would be
considerably greater. It would take plenty of energy just to melt the ice on
and in the bodies! Human bodies, as is well known, contain at least 60 percent
of water.

Worse yet, the bulk of "cremations in the pits" had allegedly been
performed at Birkenau, but that is simply impossible because of the high level
of the ground water table, where it is often just a foot or two from the
surface of the earth and the entire area is practically flooded when the snow
begins to melt in the spring.

As stated in
#40, Filip Muller, a Jew who claims to have been a member of the Auschwitz
prisoner working brigade and whose task included disposal of the dead, insists
the pit cremations were done in spite of the water. In the movie Shoah, Muller
presents an even more absurd story in that a fire truck had to be used to pump
the water out of a pit near Birkenau, so that the dead bodies could be cremated
in it! How absurd can the stories get?

They do get pretty crazy. The subject of burning pits have been dealt with
extensively during the first Zundel trial. An "eyewitness", Rudolph
Vrba, claimed he saw them, so I am treating you with an excerpt from his
testimony under cross-examination by defense attorney, Doug Christie:

Q: Mm-hmmm. Would you say, sir, that you told us yesterday about burning
pits?

A. Yes.

Q: Would you say that yesterday you told us there were pits that were six
meters wide, six meters long and six meters deep?

A. I also made the remark that I didn't make a measurement with a tape, but it
was my judgment of that measure.

Q. You gave us an example by referring to the panels on the wall, and you
pointed up to, I think, the top of the first panel; didn't you?

A. Yes, that would be it.

Q. Mm-hmmm. Well, how do you explain the method by which the Germans could burn
bodies under water in this marshy ground where the water level was about -
well, you described it as marshy ground. Tell us how they did that.

A. Well, they didn't invite me for technical consultations. And if you accept
that I'm not speaking only as a witness, I saw only when it was finished; but
if you want my technical advice, I would think, without having seen how they
have done it and without me having consulted how they have done it, that I
could have to do it myself given three, four hundred slave laborers. There's no
problem.

Q. Well, tell me how - you agree you described the ground all around there as
marshy ground, or do you say otherwise?

A. The ground all around was marshy. This means as a countryside.

Q. Because it was between two rivers.

A. It was between two rivers, but as you probably have been in your life in a
marshy countryside, you know that even in marshy countryside there are
occasional visitors around and fishermen. So in marshy land I would say that
there are some quite dried out, well-prepared pieces of land by the
administration of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp which were not marshy or which
were not to be considered too marshy especially when (it) was in winter 1942 it
was heavy frost, and you know it was sort of solid earth.

Q. Mm-hmmm. It was frozen earth?

A. Frozen earth.

Q. Well, how does the fire keep the water from melting?

A. How does fire. . .

Q. How is the fire arranged so that the water in this marshy ground did not
melt and fill up the pit that was as high as that top panel on the wall over
there? That's a long way down, isn't it?

A. Yes. Well, you are asking me again something which I do not know, neither
from eye witness acount, nor have I consulted on technical problem, and I
suppose that anybody with a slight technical education will explain to you that
if you are in a marshy land and dry out that marsh on, say, one kilometer
square, then you get completely different conditions within that kilometer
square than in the rest of the marsh. I would think so. . . .

Q: Six meters.

A. Yes. At the bottom of the pit.

Q: Six meters down?

A. Yes. But it was only four meters and not six meters. because I didn't have a
tape, and my measures would be very sort of lost, and perhaps in view of the
awesome situation it might have appeared to me bigger than it was, you see,
within a meter or two.

Q. Within ---

A. I know you will blame me that I didn't use a yardstick, but it wasn't
technically possible.

Q. No, I don't blame you at all. I am just asking you questions, and perhaps if
you will answer them, that will be a good idea.

A. I will be pleased.

Q. So, if I understand you correctly, the six by six by six meters might be out
by one or two meters?

A. Might be out by one or two meters.

Q. Mm-hmmm. You don't understand or know any reason why there would be no water
in the bottom of this pit; you have no explanation for this at all.

A. Of course I have an explanation. If the pit was heated up, and if there was
a lot of bodies burning, everything - and if it was not used once but many
times, then the water from around would have long dried out.

Q: I see. Is it true that what you said earlier was the case that it was marshy
ground?

A. The marshy ground was general around Auschwitz. In other words --

Q: Not around Birkenau?

A. Around Birkenau. In other words, how marshy Birkenau was, I, the first time
realized only after I left Birkenau and had to cross the common camp area. In
other words, Birkenau was built up in a marshy area, but Birkenau itself was
not marshy any more.

Q. Oh, you say that it was built up above the level of the land.

A. I do not say that it was built above the level of the land, but proper and
simple ameliorative measures were taken so that Birkenau and the Birkenau
installations will not be succumbed by the swamps. The swamps were there,
otherwise you will have to ask for the technical administration of Auschwitz
camp house. I am not a builder, but I knew how to build things.

Q: What ameliorative measures do you say were taken?

A. Yes, ameliorative measures, which translated means measures to regulate
unexpected flood of water. It is used quite frequently by great agricultural
enterprises when they want a piece of their agricultural dry, and a piece wet.
This is achieved by amelioration.

Q. What ameliorative measures do you say were taken to prevent water from being
a problem in Auschwitz? Do you say that they raised the level of the land. . .
?"

Now, class. Compose yourselves!

Back to more serious matters. When a body is cremated in a furnace, the heat of
combustion is contained within the retort and the burning continues all the way
to the smoke stack, making it the most economical method of cremation. But when
a body is cremated in the open, plenty of heat escapes without coming into
contact with the body, which, obviously, makes it an extremely wasteful method
of cremation. And the pit would not improve things at all, even if dug on a
high ground, with no water seeping in. Just look at what it takes to prevent
losses of energy in a normal furnace - special high-temperature resistant
bricks, afterburners with multiple baffles to create turbulence in the flue gas
and thus to facilitate combustion of small particles, forced draft, very high
smoke stacks! Why in the name of plain common sense, burning pits?

And finally, a few gems from Nizkor.

Nizkor: "A high-energy, refined fuel like gasoline was not required.
Cheap and relatively plentiful inflammables like motor oil and methanol were
used instead."

It is not clear what they mean by "motor oil". If they mean
lubricating oil, then it was just as precious as gasoline. Theoretically those
"evil nazis" could, of course, have been using the old motor oil. All
they had to do was to issue an order to the frontline and other troops to save
the old motor oil each time they did an oil change and to send it to Auschwitz.
Tanks, trucks, ships, submarines, airplanes, steam engines do consume plenty of
lubricants, and the Germans, being so frugal, would, no doubt, have found a way
to collect it from the Afrika Corps, from the Eastern and Western fronts, from
Italy, Norway, Finland, the shipyards, ports and airfields - just to make sure
that all those hundreds of thousands of bodies would be disposed of.

As for the methanol, it is not cheap; it takes a rather involved technological
process to produce it in industrial quantities, and that kind of a plant cannot
be hidden in an underground factory. Whatever facilities to produce methanol
Germany had were busy supplying the needs of the underground Dora factories
producing V-2 rockets.

Nizkor would be well advised to talk to the car racing aficionados and to find
out the main reason why alcohol and not gasoline is used as fuel in formula car
racing. It is done for safety sakes, as alcohol fires, which can take place
during a crash or a spill in a pit, are not as "hot", since methanol
releases less heat during combustion. Such fires, obviously, are easier to
contain. They do not burn as well.

Nizkor again: "Hoess describes the open air burning process..."

It is common knowledge that Hoess was severely tortured in order to obtain his
"confession" and to make him write his "memoirs". I have
discussed this elsewhere. As a result of the torture, Hoess came up with
amazing details, such as a nonexistent camp "Wolzek", as well as
other things which could not have possibly been taking place. He also gave an
absurdly high number of victims in Auschwitz-Birkenau which is not taken at
value even by the most hard-core Holocaust researchers.

Nizkor: "It was only toward the end of the summer of 1942 that
cremation began to be used - first by means of a wood pyre of about two
thousand corpses..."

Come on. Take your calculator. If it takes about 480 kg of dry wood per corpse
to accomplish a cremation in the hot climate of India, can you imagine how much
wood it would take to process the number of bodies mentioned by Nizkor? In the
winter it would have taken even more.

To sum up the above, I would like to quote Carlo Mattogno.

"... exterminationist historiography, which predominates in this
field, is rooted in dogmatism. The virtually theological nature of this
dogmatism is pointed up in a declaration by 34 French "scholars"
published in the French daily newspaper Le Monde on February 21, 1979, in which
they stated:

"The question of how technically such a mass murder was possible should
not be raised. It was technically possible because it occurred. This is the
necessary starting point for all historical investigation on the subject."

("My Banned Holocaust Interview")

In the traditions of our civilization we examine physical evidence. We call for
expert analysis. Even in a case of a simple break-in, not to mention a murder,
police forensic experts would be all over the scene of the crime, scouring it
for evidence. But in the case of this so-called "Holocaust", six
million people have allegedly been murdered and yet the side that is making
that claim does everything possible to obstruct the introduction of the
forensic evidence into the "proceedings"!

Their eye-witnesses make absurd claims, which are completely removed from
reality, but anyone who points that out becomes a "neo-nazi", a
"Hitler apologist" and so on.

It's very simple, really: To know that milk is sour, you do not have to drink a
quart. It is enough to take a sip. You do not have to eat a lamb to know what
mutton tasts like. It's quite enough that you consume a cutlet.