Zyklon-B and the German Delousing
Chambers

Friedrich Paul Berg

TODAY AT THE FORMER German concentration camp at Dachau,
it is no longer claimed that Jews or anyone else were ever killed in the
gas chamber there. In the room that is supposedly a gas chamber, one can
clearly read a sign written by the museum authorities in five languages
which says, “THE GAS CHAMBER disguised as a 'shower room'-never used as a
gas chamber.”[1] Although the room was completed in 1942, it was never
used for its intended purpose-presumably, it was used for other purposes;
perhaps it was used as a shower room after all.

At the western end of the crematorium building which
houses the so-called gas chamber “disguised as a shower room,” one can
today see and walk through four delousing chambers which were used to
fumigate clothing.[2] The only explanation regarding these chambers is a
sign above them, also in five languages, which simply says “Fumigation
cubicles” in English and Desinfektionskammern in German. There is
no mention anywhere within the camp of the important fact that these
chambers used Zyklon-B to fumigate clothing as well as other articles
placed within the chambers.

The “shower room” is not a gas chamber at all, but the
so-called “fumigation cubicles” are gas chambers. Moreover, the
“fumigation cubicles” are extremely well-designed gas chambers which
represented, and may still represent, the state of the art in gas chamber
design. They were the product of more than 20 years of research and
development into the application of hydrocyanic acid (often referred to
simply as cyanide) for the extermination of vermin. This is clearly shown
by the extensive German technical literature from the end of World War I
through World War II on this subject.[3]

The delousing chambers at Dachau were far superior in
design to the gas chambers which are still used in this country for the
execution of criminals. As a consequence of their design, the operating
procedures for the delousing chambers at Dachau were quite simple; for
example, although gas masks had to be available, the operators were only
required to use them in emergencies or in special situations. By contrast,
the American gas chambers for executions still require the use of gas
masks during the normal post-execution procedures. Compared to the
American gas chambers, the German delousing chambers at Dachau were also
safer to operate and far less expensive to construct.[4]

At the end of this article I have added a translation of
one of the many articles that can be found in the German wartime technical
and medical literature discussing the proper use of Zyklon-B for the
control of typhus through the extermination of its principal carrier, the
body louse. (See appendix.) The article by Emil Wüstinger is especially
important because of the numbers it gives to show the extent to which the
Zyklon-B delousing technology was actually used by the Germans to save
people from the ravages of typhus. According to Wüstinger, 25 million
people had already had their clothing and personal belongings fumigated
from the start of the war until the beginning of 1944. This number is,
interestingly enough, the same as the one which appears in the Gerstein
statement as the number of people who had been “killed” in gas chambers.

Figure
l:
One of the four delousing chambers as it can be seen today in
Dachau. (Note the heater, wire-mesh basket and other equipment
visible through the open
doorway.)

The delousing chamber represented by the drawing in
Wüstinger's article is the standard ten-cubic-meter model which seems to
have been used most often. It is essentially identical to the four
chambers - “fumigation cubicles” - that one can still see today in the
Dachau crematorium building. Even the interior dimensions are the same:
The interior length is four meters, the interior height is 1.9 meters and
the interior width is 1.35 meters, which gives a total interior volume of
about ten cubic meters. The only significant difference between the
delousing chamber portrayed in the drawing and the four chambers that one
can still see in Dachau is that the cutouts in the walls containing some
of the circulatory system apparatus are in the upper left corners of the
chambers instead of in the lower left corners. The blowers above each
chamber, a separate blower for each chamber, are no longer present
although most of the piping, including the vent piping, remains.

The blowers, in effect, drove the entire fumigation
process. Initially, each blower would accelerate the evaporation of
hydrocyanic acid out of the porous Zyklon-B granules placed inside the
chamber by forcing warm air through the granules and then circulating the
resulting air and hydrocyanic acid gas mixture throughout all of the
clothing and articles within the chamber. Finally, each blower
force-vented the lethal gas mixture out of the chamber up a vent pipe
through the roof to atmosphere and replaced the lethal gas with fresh air
so that the chamber doors could be opened without endangering the
operator.

Each chamber was designed so that it would normally be
operated without the operator having to wear a gas mask except in an
emergency. According to Dr. Gerhard Peters, writing in 1940 about the
recently perfected gas chamber design:

Last but not least, it is an essential requirement that
the operating personnel not come into direct contact with the
hydrocyanic acid and also not be hindered unnecessarily with gas masks.
The new design therefore provides that the entire process and even the
venting occur behind closed doors; the equipment can be controlled from
outside without anti-gas protection (ohne Gasschutz) since the
hydrocyanic acid container is opened automatically only within the
chamber. (Gas masks need only be available for special situations.)
[emphasis as in the original][5]

The most significant feature of these designs is that a
chamber so equipped for generating the gas and for controlling
circulation can be operated without anti-gas protection. Thanks to the
special arrangement of the equipment, one can ventilate with the doors
closed which can be regarded as an especially great advantage . . .
[emphasis as in the original]

Without doubt this design has had the greatest
significance on the mass application of hydrocyanic acid fumigation
facilities for mass delousing since it is only with such installations
that dependable results can be achieved in unusually short periods (1
hour treatment).[6]

An accurate explanation of the role of the delousing
chambers with their blowers would, no doubt, have caused many visitors to
wonder why the Germans never used these devices for mass-murder. Each of
the four delousing chambers had an interior floor space of 5.4 square
meters and certainly could have been used to kill several dozen people at
a time. And yet such an application for these chambers has never been
alleged. One problem would have been that some of the circulatory system
apparatus-including the four-way valve, the can-opener and the heater-is
exposed to the interior and could have been damaged quite easily by anyone
trapped inside. This apparatus could, however, have been shielded by some
kind of metal grill-but there is no evidence that any such shielding was
ever present.

The four delousing chambers could have been adapted for
mass-extermination in another way which would have been obvious to many
visitors. Instead of blowing the hydrocyanic acid vapors to atmosphere
through the vent pipe at the end of a typical fumigation cycle, the same
gas could have been blown through another pipe into the “shower room”
located approximately in the middle of the same building about 60 feet
away. As soon as a sufficiently lethal concentration of cyanide vapors had
been attained inside the “shower room,” the blowers could have been shut
down for as long as needed, several minutes would probably have been
enough, to allow the gas to kill its victims. Afterwards, the blowers
could have been restarted to ventilate the shower room by blowing fresh
air into the room. Such a method would have worked, although for reasons
which will be given later on, the arrangement would have been far more
effective if it included some piping or ductwork to circulate the air-gas
mixture. Ideally, some vent piping should have also been provided for the
shower room so as to cause the potentially lethal gas to be discharged
above the roof of the building instead of into the surroundings near
ground level.

Wüstinger's article also discusses the advantages of
hydrocyanic acid gas chambers over delousing chambers which used hot air.
The hot air method and a steam method (not discussed in the article) both
relied on high temperature to kill lice and other vermin. Both methods
were somewhat safer since they did not involve the use of a poisonous
substance. However, both of these alternatives had other problems. If a
high enough temperature was not maintained long enough, particularly in
the center of the chamber, which would have been insulated somewhat by the
presence of a load of clothing, the delousing procedure would not have
been effective. In addition, maintaining a high temperature within a
chamber meant that the chamber had to be far better insulated and for this
reason required a heavier, more expensive structure. A great deal of
precious fuel also had to be consumed in order to generate the necessary
heat. High temperatures tended to damage leather goods, foods, and some
types of equipment which required fumigation from time to time.

The high temperature approach, whether it involved steam
or hot air, was used more often in Eastern regions occupied by the
Germans. This was because of the shortage of the trained specialists which
were needed whenever one worked with Zyklon-B. The Zyklon method was
generally employed within the Reich itself.

Zyklon B

Until the introduction of DDT by the Americans and by the
Germans in 1944, the delousing of not only clothing but also living
quarters, especially barracks, and~railroad trains in order to kill body
lice was the only effective means of controlling the spread of typhus.
Until the arrival of DDT, the most effective pesticide for killing body
lice, i.e., for delousing, was Zyklon-B.

Figure 1: Typical advertisement
(actual size)
by the DEGESCH Company showing large gas
chambers,
including one for railroads in the lower left
corner.

When Exterminationists claim, as Raul Hilberg did in
The Destruction of the European Jews (1961 edition, pp.
565-67) that Zyklon-B was simply the commercial name for prussic acid
(hydrocyanic acid is the chemical term generally used for prussic acid),
or that it was hydrogen cyanide solidified in pellets which passed
“immediately” into the gaseous state upon being dropped into a gas
chamber, they merely show that they have no idea as to what their great
murder weapon really was.

Zyklon-B was, and still is, essentially a porous material
with liquid hydrocyanic acid absorbed into it with a small amount of
chemical stabilizer and warning ingredient added.[7] The absorbent material was generally diatomaceous
earth but paper discs were also used, especially in the United States.
After the hydrocyanic acid had completely evaporated, the porous
material-now completely harmless-could be returned to a Zyklon dealer and
refilled.

The speed with which hydrocyanic acid evaporates out of
the Zyklon granules or paper discs is not instantaneous. Although the
hydrocyanic acid does immediately begin to leave the porous material as
soon as a can of Zyklon-B is opened, that does not mean it leaves all at
once. On the contrary, it still takes about half an hour for most of the
cyanide to leave under normal conditions and under normal room
temperature, about 68 F. Even more time is needed for all the cyanide to
leave the granules.

According to Dr. Gerhard Peters, who was the managing
director of DEGESCH and who from the early 1930's through World War II was
probably the most prolific advocate of Zyklon-B:[8]

. . . As a general rule, the material is spread out in
a layer which is 1/2 to 1 cm thick, after which most of the hydrocyanic
acid has already evolved after half an hour.[9]

Although the process begins immediately,
it is nonetheless a gradual process. It can be speeded up by dispersing
the granules in thinner layers or by using smaller granules to begin with
or-what is most important in order to understand how the standard
delousing chambers worked-by forcing air through the granules and/or by
the addition of heat.

The importance of heat not only to prevent condensation
during the venting of a cyanide gas chamber but also during the gassing
phase itself is evident from the very title of a German patent which was
granted to DEGESCH in 1940. The title of patent no. 700469 which took
effect retroactively on July 26, 1934 reads:

Method for generating the necessary heat for the
vaporization of poisonous substances for gases used for pest control
[emphasis added]

The text of the patent explains at some
length the need for heating in order to accelerate the release of
fumigating gases such as hydrocyanic acid. The patent includes a schematic
drawing showing the same circulatory equipment arrangement which was
probably used in all of the standard DEGESCH gas chambers.

The importance of heat to the venting process is spelled
out in the following text from Peters and Wüstinger.

. . . As a consequence of the extensive preheating of
the fresh air entering at D, the venting of the chamber is completed in
10 to 15 minutes. The carts can then be driven out and the articles of
clothing can be immediately returned to their owners who in the meantime
have had their bodies deloused.[10]

The Fumigation Cycle in the German Delousing Chambers

The fumigation cycle consisted of two phases: (1) a
circulation (Kreislauf) phase, known in non-technical jargon simply
as the “gassing” phase, and (2) a venting (Lüftung) phase.[11] Switching from one phase to the other was
accomplished by simply turning a crank handle 180 degrees on the outside
of the chamber. The crank handle was linked to a special four-way valve
located on the inside of the chamber (see figure 1 in the translation of
the article by Emil Wüstinger).

The circulation phase lasted about an hour and the
ventilation phase lasted at least fifteen minutes. In practice, however,
it seems to have taken longer. There is, for example, a well-known
photograph of an American soldier in Dachau looking at one of the
delousing chamber doors upon which there is a notice in German which says
that the fumigation time (Gaszeit) was from 7:30 until at least
10.[12]

To start the delousing process, a can of Zyklon-B inside
the chamber was opened from outside the chamber by means of the specially
designed can-opener with the chamber doors shut. Once the can was opened,
the next step was to turn the crank handle on the outside of the chamber
180 degrees to the “Kreislauf” (circulation) position which in turn
caused the Zyklon-B can inside the chamber to be turned upside down,
thereby dumping the Zyklon-B granules through a chute into a wire-mesh
basket. Meanwhile, air was circulated by the blower through a closed loop
which consisted of the chamber itself as well as the four-way valve, the
basket and a heater. The air was heated before it passed through the
granules in the basket. The heated air drove the hydrocyanic acid out of
the granules so that the circulating air became mixed with an increasingly
lethal dosage of cyanide. The resulting lethal gas mixture was circulated
throughout the chamber-hence the name: “circulatory gas chamber”-to insure
thorough penetration into all possible hiding places within the clothing
and articles being fumigated.

After at least an hour, the operator could begin the
venting phase by turning the crank handle 180 degrees to the
“Lüftung” (venting) position. The blower continued to operate as
before. The four-way valve would now allow fresh air to be drawn into the
chamber from the opening surrounding the crank handle stem in the outside
wall of the chamber. As the fresh air passed through the valve and then
the heater, it was heated above the boiling point of hydrocyanic acid,
which is 78.6 °F.[13] The warm air then continued on through the Zyklon-B
granules in the basket and drove any remaining traces of hydrocyanic acid
out of the granules. The air then entered the chamber as a whole and
eventually left the chamber from an opening at the extreme end of the
opposite side of the chamber, returned to the blower, and then went down
into the four-way valve once again, but this time instead of going around
again in a closed loop, the gas mixture was directed up the vent pipe by
the four-way valve and discharged into the atmosphere. The gas mixture was
discharged high enough so that the otherwise lethal gas was so diluted by
fresh air that people in the vicinity were not affected. In the process,
the temperature of the entire chamber, including the chamber walls, was
raised above the boiling point of hydrocyanic acid in order to prevent any
subsequent condensation of the cyanide vapors either in the clothing, in
any other articles, or on the walls. The walls, floor and ceiling were
specially coated to minimize absorption of cyanide into the structure
itself.

One final step which was sometimes stressed in the German
technical literature was that the articles that had been fumigated still
should be aired in the open for at least five minutes before they were
returned to their owners

The Circulation Principle (Kreislaufprinzip)

The importance of good circulation to the proper
operation of the German delousing chambers cannot be overemphasized. In
the German literature, especially the material from the DEGESCH company
itself, circulation of the air-cyanide mixture was always and still is
emphasized as a major feature of all of the standardized gas chambers and
of good gas chamber design in general.

As recently as 1979, the DEGESCH company was still
promoting its own design of fumigation chambers for Zyklon-B with the
following information in English:

Whether the fumigation chamber is a permanent
installation or mobile, a DEGESCH circulatory device makes it
possible to operate safely and quickly, and ensures success. [emphasis
added]

Mobile fumigation chambers are of great advantage: As
they can be attached to any tractor or lorry, their possibilities for
use are almost unlimited. They are economical in price and running. The
standard sizes are 2 ml, and 20 m3, other sizes can be constructed
according to special requirements.

Stationary chambers are made from steel, bricks or
concrete. If constructed from bricks or concrete they must be sealed by
applying a suitable coating.

Neither service personnel nor unauthorized persons come
into contact with the gas; one person alone can operate the fumigation
chamber; a gas-mask need not be worn. The gas-air-mixture is
circulated, thus accelerating penetration and reducing exposure
time. [emphasis added] After treatment, the gas can be cleared
quickly and safely.[14]

The terminology “DEGESCH
circulatory device” was used to identify the mechanical equipment such as
the four-way valve, heater, can-opener and blower which DEGESCH sold.[15] The structure-walls, floor and ceiling-without the
mechanical equipment seems to have generally been built by the customer
himself or by an independent contractor.

Zyklon-B and cyanide do not
have magic properties. The cyanide does not hunt down living creatures
“like radar” as has been advertised for at least one currently popular
insecticide. On the contrary, cyanide must obey the same laws of nature
that steam or hot air have to obey in a similar situation. The advantage
cyanide has as far as its distribution is concerned is due primarily to
its low boiling point and its small molecular size. Although cyanide does
indeed have great penetrating power, the penetrating rate is severely
reduced by obstructions such as clothing unless those obstructions are
overcome by some means such as forced circulation through a well-designed
chamber with good flow patterns for
the gas.

Figure 2:
Development and distribution of the gas concentration in a filled
gas chamber with and without circulation

a.
with circulation, i.e., with exchange of the air-gas mixture,

b.
without circulation, the gas must find its own path.

(the
heavy lines represent concentrations in the center of the chamber
while the other lines represent concentrations in various corners of
the chamber.)(original source: DEGESCH) [16]

Figure
2 shows just how essential good circulation is to the design of an
effective gas chamber. It was apparently based upon careful tests in which
cyanide concentrations in various parts of a standard gas chamber were
measured over at least two separate, four-hour periods. One group of tests
was made with the blower operating and with the four-way valve in the
“circulation” position. The second group of tests was made with the blower
idle.

The test results in Figure 2 are not at all surprising.
They are generally just about what common sense would tell us to expect.
It is a pleasant surprise, however, to be able to see the importance of
proper circulation illustrated so clearly. The test results were obviously
published first by DEGESCH and then by others in order to re-emphasize the
importance of circulation as clearly as possible.

With circulation, the cyanide levels are relatively high
and uniform throughout the chamber within about one hour. Without
circulation, the cyanide levels are relatively high after one hour in only
one corner, presumably the corner nearest to the basket with the Zyklon-B
granules. Without circulation, comparable cyanide levels are achieved in
the center of the filled chamber only after three hours; after only one
hour, the gas hardly penetrated at all to the center of the chamber.

The emphasis upon circulation or Kreislauf, not
only in the DEGESCH literature but also in countless articles in the
German wartime literature on Zyklon-B and delousing, is apparent even in
the terminology: Kreislaufkammer, Kreislaufanordnung,
Kreislaufapparatur, Kreislaufleitung, Kreislaufgeräte, Kreislaufanlagen,
Kreislaufprinzip, etc. But even more than that, the front of each
DEGESCH circulatory chamber was usually marked with the word Kreislauf
to identify one of the two positions of the four-way valve.

The operating phase during which cyanide was applied
during the two-phase fumigation cycle was known as the Kreislauf
phase. The point is that it would have been impossible to have any
expertise at all in the use of cyanide and/or Zyklon-B without being well
aware of the advantages of proper circulation for any application of this
technology. How then could any would-be mass murderers have possibly been
unaware of the need for circulation in their cyanide gas chambers for
mass-murder? How could they have been oblivious to the significance of
Kreislauf? And yet, they must have been oblivious-that is precisely
what must have happened if one is to take the “Holocaust” literature at
all seriously.

In any event, the would-be mass murderers even if they
had been totally illiterate amateurs, wholly ignorant of the importance of
circulation-would have seen that something was seriously wrong with their
method after one or more botched attempts at exterminating people with
cyanide in chambers without circulation.

Hydrocyanic Acid Gas Chambers for Mass-Murder?

Although the murder weapon is the focus of a great deal
of investigation and analysis in any ordinary murder case, alas, when one
is dealing with the “Holocaust” story one finds nothing comparable
regarding what were supposedly the greatest murder weapons in history.

In the main camp of the Auschwitz concentration camp
complex, a gas chamber was supposedly used until the end of 1942 to murder
about 76,000 people. That room can be visited today in its “reconstructed
state.” In design and appearance it is nothing more than a dreary cellar,
just like most cellars, except for some holes in the ceiling.[17] Zyklon-B granules were supposedly dumped through
these holes into the chamber where they would have fallen upon the heads
and among the feet of the intended victims. The room is separated only by
a door from another room containing crematorium ovens and has no
ventilating equipment at all. For these reasons as well as for others
which are beyond the scope of this article, many of which have however
been given in the past by Dr. Robert Faurisson and Ditlieb Felderer, the
claim that this room was a gas chamber for mass murder is pure rubbish.

Probably the most plausible description of a gas chamber
using cyanide for mass murder is the following description from Filip
Müller of the cellar in Krematorium 2 in Auschwitz-Birkenau in which 3,000
people were supposedly killed at a time:

We left the mortuary and came to a huge iron-mounted
wooden door; it was not locked. We entered a place which was in total
darkness. As we switched on the light, the room was lit by bulbs
enclosed in a protective wire cage. We were standing in a large oblong
room measuring about 250 square meters. Its unusually low ceiling and
walls were white-washed. Down the length of the room concrete pillars
supported the ceiling. However, not all the pillars served this purpose:
for there were others, too. The Zyclon B gas crystals [sic] were
inserted through openings into hollow pillars made of sheet metal. They
were perforated at regular intervals and inside them a spiral ran from
top to bottom in order to ensure as even a distribution of the granular
crystals as possi ble. Mounted on the ceiling was a large number of
dummy showers made of metal. These were intended to delude the
suspicious on entering the gas chamber into believing that they were in
a shower-room. A ventilating plant was installed in the wall; this was
switched on immediately after each gassing to disperse the gas and
expedite the removal of corpses.[18]

Although a “ventilation plant” is
mentioned by Müller, that does not mean there was anything even remotely
comparable to the kind of ventilation and circulation which would have
been needed.

According to Müller, the “Zyclon B gas crystals”[19] were dropped, presumably from the outside of the
chamber, into hollow perforated pillars with spirals. The Zyklon granules
(not crystals at all) would have slid down the spirals to the bottom of
the pillars.

The ventilation plant was supposedly “switched on
immediately after each gassing.” [emphasis added] In other words,
during the gassing itself, the ventilation plant must have been off; there
could have been no circulation of the air-gas mixture through the gas
chamber during the gassing itself.

Although cyanide vapors would have gradually left the
granules, their path would have been obstructed first by the “perforated”
sheet metal pillars and then by those intended victims who were crammed
into the spaces around the pillars. If one takes at all seriously the
accounts of three thousand victims being killed at a time, the perforated
pillars would have been surrounded rather tightly by the intended victims.
Those who were in the immediate vicinity of the pillars would have
probably been affected by the cyanide in just a few minutes but-on the
basis of figure 2-many, if not most, of the others would have been
unaffected by the cyanide until hours later.

But let us give the benefit of doubt to the
Exterminationists for the sake of this analysis. Perhaps Müller was
somewhat mistaken and perhaps the “ventilation plant” had been switched on
during the actual gassing. What then?

Even if the ventilation plant had been switched on during
the gassing phase, there is no evidence that the necessary piping or
ductwork was present to permit proper circulation. On the contrary, the
bottom of each “perforated” pillar would have been, in effect, a
cul-de-sac through which there could not possibly have been the kind of
air or gas flow which circulated through the wire-mesh baskets in the
standard delousing chambers even if there had been some provision for
returning the ventilation plant discharge back to the gas chamber through
some kind of closed loop arrangement. Any conceivable closed loop could
not possibly have included the Zyklon granules themselves since they would
have been isolated at the bottoms of the perforated pillars. The
evaporation of the cyanide out of the Zyklon-B granules would have taken
hours rather than minutes. And yet, according to the so-called confession
of Rudolf Höss, the former camp commandant of Auschwitz, the gassing
process was so short that after only half an hour the gas chamber doors
were opened, the ventilating machinery was turned on, and workers without
gas masks immediately began to remove the bodies.

Obviously, the Müller account and the Höss “confession”
are nothing more than badly contrived horror stories. The mechanics,
reminiscent of Rube Goldberg inventions, may seem plausible at first
glance but simply do not stand up to critical examination.

Railroad Delousing Tunnels

Figure 3:
Railroad delousing tunnels. [22]

The abundance of Zyklon-B delousing chambers, even within
concentration camps, is in itself a major problem for the accepted
“Holocaust” story because here were well-designed pilot plants for
committing mass-murder on a relatively small scale before attempting to
kill on a massive scale; here were the ideal models to follow in order to
construct scaled-up versions for mass-murder. Here was the proper
technology for mass-murder with cyanide-but this technology, the delousing
chamber technology, was supposedly never used for such a purpose.

More surprising is the fact that large, scaled-up
versions of the small delousing chambers actually did exist in locations
which were far more accessible than any of the so-called extermination
camps. Those chambers employed the same circulatory principle and used
Zyklon-B to fumigate railroad trains-but, those chambers were never used
for mass-murder either.

Larger chambers for fumigating entire railroad trains
existed throughout German-occupied Europe in about a dozen different
locations including Cologne, Poznan (Posen), Potsdam, and
Budapest.[20] They had become a standard feature of the railroad
network in order to prevent the spread of typhus, particularly from
Eastern Europe, where typhus had always been endemic.

The would-be murderers could have simply brought railroad
cars filled with Jews into these large chambers, one or two cars at a
time, killed the intended victims and then ventilated the cars within just
a few hours. Each gassing, including venting of one or two railroad cars,
would have still taken at least one-and-a-half hours-far longer than the
half-hour which is all that was supposedly needed at Auschwitz according
to Höss and others.[21]

By using the railroad delousing tunnels, which ranged in
size from about 400 cubic meters to as much as 1700 cubic meters, the
mass-murderers would not have had to transport their intended victims
halfway across Europe in the midst of a war in which Germany was
desperately trying to conserve meager resources such as railroads and
fuel.

Typhus

Throughout World War II severe outbreaks of typhus
occurred in the German-occupied East. Especially in the last year of the
war, with disaster falling upon Europe and with millions of people fleeing
to the West from parts of Europe where typhus had always been endemic,
Zyklon-B became the great life-saver. Although DDT and some other
substances such as the IG Farben product “Lauseto” had become available,
the quantities were severely limited by the bombing of German chemical and
pharmaceutical plants. Without Zyklon-B carrying on in the role it had
established for itself in the early years of the war, the horrible scenes
in isolated places such as Bergen-Belsen in the spring of 1945 would have
certainly been repeated on a far more spectacular scale. What actually
happened was bad enough.

There could have been a repeat of what had happened
during and after World War I in Eastern Europe. The situation in Russia
during that period had been described by the eminent American medical
historian Hans Zinsser as follows:

. . . Will historians of this period remember that,
throughout the struggles which led to the establishment of the Soviet
Republic, Russia suffered-in addition to war and armed revolution-from
two cholera epidemics, from a famine unequaled since the Thirty Years
War, from typhus, malaria, typhoid, dysentery, tuberculosis, and
syphilis to an ex tent unimaginable except to those who were helpless
spectators? Tarassewitch estimated (statistics of accuracy were
impossible) that be tween 1917 and 1923 there were 30,000,000 cases of
typhus with 3.000.000 deaths in European Russia alone.[23]

The losses in the Ukraine, the
Balkans and Poland were probably comparable to those suffered in Russia
but the historians have forgotten.

During World War II, the losses in Eastern Europe may
have been even worse than those indicated by Zinsser and Tarassewitch for
the earlier period. However, the true statistics would not serve the
interests of the Soviet Union and for this reason they will probably never
be available.

In the West the true statistics are also kept quiet but
for a different reason: they would diminish the sense that Jews had been
the victims of an extermination policy. The proof of this statement is in
the speeches of President Reagan and Chancellor Helmut Kohl and in the
news coverage in 1985 regarding Reagan's visit to Bitburg and
Bergen-Belsen. At that time, the truth as to what had happened in
Bergen-Belsen at the end of the war should have been made public as part
of the media coverage which began several months before the visit-but it
was not. Although it has long been conceded that the true horrors of
Bergen-Belsen had nothing whatever to do with an extermination policy, the
President, the media and even the chancellor of West Germany did their
best to portray Bergen-Belsen to the general public as proof of an
extermination program against the Jews.

There is a substantial body of statistical evidence which
shows that during the first two years of the war more than three-fourths
of all cases of typhus in Poland occurred among Jews and that the
remaining cases arose in large part from contact with Jews.[24] It was on the basis of this evidence that special
regulations were introduced to restrict the movement of Jews. The wall
around the Jewish Warsaw ghetto was one such measure. A thorough
discussion of this subject is, however, beyond the scope of this article.
In any event, Jews in concentration camps after 1941 certainly benefited
from the presence of the delousing chambers in the camps.

Rather than having been the victims of Zyklon-B in
murderous gas chambers, the Jews were probably the principal beneficiaries
of Zyklon-B and its proper, life-saving application in well-designed
German delousing chambers such as the ones which can still be seen in
Dachau.

Conclusions

We have been blinded by our tears of sympathy for the
supposed victims. We have been blinded by our tears of shame for deeds
which people just like ourselves might have committed. But if we dare to
wipe those tears away and look at the “Holocaust” evidence critically with
sober heads, we find that there are no grounds for any such tears at all.

The mass-murder technology that was supposedly used to
kill millions of people would not have worked. However, a mass-murder
technology based upon the hydrocyanic acid delousing chambers would have
worked quite well indeed. The SS certainly had an abundance of expertise
in this technology since they were employing it themselves, daily, with
their own specially trained personnel-and even had their own school for
pesticide specialists.[25]

Surely Adolf Eichmann and some of the people around him
must have had considerable expertise in railroad transportation. How could
they have been unaware of the existence of the railroad delousing tunnels
and their potential for mass-murder?

The purpose of the delousing chambers was to save
lives-and that is not denied except by the most passionate
Exterminationist. No doubt, many hundreds of thousands of people, possibly
millions, including countless Jews, owe their lives to these chambers and
the German technology based upon Zyklon-B.

How could the same Germans-particularly, the SS and the
people from DEGESCH-who used a highly developed technology to kill lice in
order to save countless human lives have simultaneously tried to use a
pathetically primitive technology, which could not have even worked in the
manner alleged, to destroy millions of human lives? How could they have
used well-designed gas chambers with circulation to try to save millions
of people from typhus while at the same time trying to use badly designed
chambers without circulation to kill millions of people? How could they
have been using an advanced technology to save people who were in many
cases the very same people, namely Jews, that they were simultaneously
trying to kill but with the most primitive variations of the same
technology?

There are no answers to these reasonable questions even
after forty years nor are there ever likely to be any answers consistent
with an extermination thesis. In the absence of any proof based upon
forensic evidence of even one case of death by gassing with cyanide at the
hands of the Germans or of any other reliable evidence-the “evidence,”
such as it is, consists almost exclusively of “confessions” and fantastic
anecdotes of “survivors”-one should reject the “Holocaust” claims as
self-serving propaganda. What is clear from any careful technical analysis
of the supposed gas chambers for mass extermination is that the
“Holocaust” story is absurd.

Appendix

Increased Use of Hydrocyanic Acid Delousing
Chambers

by Emil Wüstinger, engineer Frankfurt am Main,
Gesundheits-Ingenieur, Vol. 67 (1944) on. 179-80.

Paper given at the Hydrocyanic Acid Conference of the
Labor Committee for Room Disinfestation and

Contagious Disease Prevention of January 27/28, 1944,

In delousing chambers, for reasons which are easily
understood because of their special function, one expects maximum
performance with minimum gas concentration and penetration time. A
penetration period of only one hour should have the same effect as a 16-,
20-, or 24-hour period during a room disinfestation. This is demanded
because of the pressing need to process massive quantities.

Such requirements can only be met successfully, even with
the highly effective hydrocyanic acid, when all of the conditions for
fumigation are ideal, in other words when the following conditions exist:
quickest possible release and distribution of the gas, sufficient
airtightness of the room, good room temperature and proper arrangement of
the articles to be fumigated within the chamber. On the basis of its
collected experiences with its own fumigation chambers, the German Company
for Pest Control, G.m.b.H. [DEGESCH] had already developed years ago
special vaporizers (Vergasergeräte) and circulatory systems
(Kreislaufanordnungen) which take into consideration all the
requisites: fastest gas generation, best gas penetration and sufficient
heating with simultaneous improvement in the ventilation piping.

After the first year of the war, during which a string of
hydrocyanic acid facilities had been built in several regions and equipped
with DEGESCH circulatory systems for Zyklon hydrocyanic acid
[Zyklon-Blausäure or, as it is generally abbreviated, Zyklon-B][26], some of which have already been used to delouse
hundreds of thousands of pieces of clothing, there arose a significant
increase in demand as even government bodies and industrial factories
began to take stringent measures to control lice.

The motivation for the increased use of hydrocyanic acid
delousing chambers arose primarily from an official government requirement
that the large numbers of foreign workers who were being used had to be
deloused periodically at prescribed intervals and, therefore, the
factories which employed the largest numbers of foreign workers had to
build their own delousing facilities.

This requirement was expanded by the official camp
regulation from the Reich Minister of Labor which came into effect in the
summer of 1943 regarding camp accommodations for workers for the duration
of the war. Article 9 stipulates: “All rooms must be cleaned daily. The
rooms and their inhabitants must be regularly examinedfor instances of
vermin. Proper installations for the extermination of vermin must be
available.” [emphasis added]

Recently there have even been an increasing number of
instances where hot air chambers were rebuilt in order to be adapted with
hydrocyanic acid circulatory systems. Many other large disinfestation
facilities in which only hot air has been used until now are being
expanded with hydrocyanic acid chambers in order to fumigate equipment and
clothing which could easily be damaged in hot-air chambers-for example,
fur and leather goods.

One result of these measures and the favorable judgments
about hydrocyanic acid chamber delousing is that there is a steady
increase in demand for hydrocyanic acid installations so that in just the
last year alone as many installations went into operation as in the first
three years of the war put together.

For the entire war until now, at 226
different sites, a total of 552 chambers with hydrocyanic acid circulatory
fumigation systems and an additional 100 or so chambers without such
equipment, but using hydrocyanic acid nonetheless, are either completed or
under construction almost exclusively for the purpose of delousing. 300 of
these chambers at 131 different facilities have been completed or are
still under construction just since January of the past year alone. Almost
one-fourth of these, i.e., 131 chambers, are distributed among government
and administrative district labor offices, especially in the Alpine and
Danube countries, as well as among city administrations and health
departments. 249 hydrocyanic acid delousing chambers are either completed
or under construction for the armaments industry.

And so, it becomes ever more apparent that the generally
incorrect reservations which had been previously held against the use of
highly toxic gases in delousing chambers have been thoroughly dispelled.
This is illustrated by the fact that in just the last year alone as much
hydrocyanic acid has been expended exclusively for the disinfestation of
articles in delousing chambers as had been used in all of Germany for
large area disinfestations in 1939. During the war the clothing and
equipment of approximately 25 million people have already been
fumigated with hydrocyanic acid. [emphasis added] Fortunately, there have
been no reported accidents of a serious nature while working with Zyklon
hydrocyanic acid [Zyklon-B] in the chambers equipped with circulatory
systems.

Facilities employing circulatory systems are now being
built so that they are suitable not just for the use of hydrocyanic acid
but primarily for other evaporable liquids as well. Fortunately, these
changes can be achieved without extensive modifications in the apparatus
so that there is no increase in the already difficult procurement
problems; although the DEGESCH circulatory systems could be delivered with
relative ease during the first years of the war and, most important of
all, could be delivered on short notice, increasing demands have also led
to more and more procurement problems because of the fact that the
increasing demands have to be surmounted by an ever decreasing number of
workers. One should note at this point that hydrocyanic acid delousing
chambers have the advantage over hot air chambers of reduced construction
costs and, most important of all, require less iron and metal.
Consequently, far fewer man-hours are needed for fabrication and so it
should not be too surprising that the hydrocyanic acid chamber equipment
which has already been installed has been built despite great difficulties
by only a few companies with only a small number of workers. Of the
manufacturers, one is specialized in the delivery of the blowers, air
heaters, and piping and even installs the equipment. The other supplier
manufactures the special appliance, the so-called four-way valve with a
built-in can opener, which is the centerpiece of the entire system. This
second factory usually had only two or three skilled workers available for
these tasks who were not at all times capable of working because of
physical disabilities.

Thanks to the many delousing facilities which are already
in operation and to the other stringent preventive measures, it has been
possible, fortunately, to reduce dramatically the number of cases of
typhus and the mortality in stark contrast to the earlier years.
Nonetheless, a great many new facilities with fumigation chambers will be
necessary just for delousing because the use of foreign workers and the
crowding of these workers into common barracks is still increasing and,
especially in the East, the number of hydrocyanic acid delousing chambers
that are available is still far from sufficient.

The increasingly widespread, harmless application of
hydrocyanic acid, in itself highly toxic, in delousing chambers equipped
with DEGESCH circulatory systems is a good indication of the dependability
of this method, which is generally regarded as one of the most effective
delousing methods. This is also spelled out in a decree from the Reich
Minister of the Interior

Notes

[1] A useful source of information about Dachau as it exists
today and some of its post-war history is: Andrew Mollo, “Dachau,”
After the Battle (London: Battle of Britain Prints
Ltd., 1980), Number 27, pp. 1-29.

[2] Although the four delousing chambers are in the
crematorium building and share a common roof and foundation, they are
separated from the rest of the building by an open breezeway, i.e., a
passageway extending from one side of the building through to the opposite
side without any doors. The breezeway is a logical safety feature. If
doors had been installed, an accidental accumulation of cyanide gas could
have developed in the passageway since it was also adjacent to the
hydrocyanic acid delousing chambers and could have eventually penetrated
into other parts of the building injuring anyone present. This well
thought-out arrangement contrasts sharply with the arrangement of the
supposed gas chambers for mass-murder in Auschwitz which were far larger
than the four delousing chambers at Dachau but, amazingly enough, had no
comparable protection for the occupants of the buildings housing those
chambers.

[3] One excellent official source on the development of
hydrocyanic acid, with many technical design details about the gas
chambers themselves, is: Puntigam, Breymesser, and Bernfus,
Blausäuregaskammern zur Fleckfieberabwehr
[Hydrocyanic Acid Gas Chambers for the Prevention of Typhus] (Berlin:
Sonderveröffentlichung des Reichsarbeitsblattes, 1943). There is nothing
even remotely comparable in the English language to this classic work or
to many other German works on this subject, many of which are listed in
the extensive bibliography. That almost certainly applies to all other
languages as well.

[4] Thanks to the research of Dr. Robert Faurisson, a great
deal of information about the chambers used in this country for the
execution of criminals with cyanide and the detailed and complex
procedures for such executions is available-some of which will be
published shortly by this journal. The gas chambers for executing
criminals in the USA still used, long after World War II, the so-called
“pot” or “barrel” method to generate cyanide gas by dropping cyanide salt
tablets into a pot of sulfuric acid. This method had generally been
abandoned for industrial uses throughout most of the world, including the
U.S.A., as soon as Zyklon-B became available in the early 1920's. A major
drawback of the “pot” method, aside from the problem of disposing of a pot
of sulfuric acid containing cyanide, is that a significant amount of
cyanide gas is absorbed by the liquid in the pot itself and then released,
but only gradually, even after the rest of the chamber has been thoroughly
vented. This is probably one of the main reasons why gas masks have to be
worn in the gas chamber as part of the complex procedure for removing the
body of an executed prisoner.

[5] Dr. Gerhard Peters and Emil Wüstinger, “Sach-Entlausung
in Blausäure-Kammern,” Zeitschrift für hygienische Zoologie
(Berlin: Duncker & Humboldt, 1940) Heft 10/11, p. 194.

[6] Dr. Gerhard Peters, “Die hochwirksamen Gase und Dämpfe
in der Schädlingsbekämpfung [The Highly Effective Gases and Vapors in the
Field of Pest Control],” Sammlung chemischer und
chemisch-technischer Vorträge (Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke
Verlag, 1942), Neue Folge: Heft 47a, p. 40.

[7] 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.

[8] Peters was put on trial in 1949 for complicity in the
extermination of the Jews but was given only a five-year jail sentence.
After a second retrial he was found not guilty in 1955. His colleague Dr.
Bruno Tesch, who had shared the distribution rights for Zyklon-B, was put
on trial earlier and executed by the British. Throughout the 1930's and
until the end of the war, Peters probably wrote more articles than anyone
else on the effectiveness of Zyklon-B for the prevention of disease,
especially typhus.

[9] Dr. Gerhard Peters, “Blausäure zur Schädlingsbekämpfung
[Hydrocyanic Acid for Pest Control], ” Sammlung chemischer und
chemisch-technischer Vorträge (Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke
Verlag, 1933), Neue Folge-Heft 20, p. 64. Although this work contains no
discussion of the delousing chambers--patents for the standard versions
were granted in Germany only after 1938--the article does contain an
artist's rendering of a railroad fumigation tunnel for hydrocyanic acid on
page 41.

[10] Peters and Wüstinger, “Sach-Entlausung in
Blausäure-Kammern,” p. 196. The term “D” refers to the fresh-air inlet
just as in the diagram referred to by Wüstinger in “Increased Use of
Hydrocyanic Acid.”

[11] Peters, “Die hochwirksamen Gase,” pp. 36-41.

[12] A.R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth
Century (Torrance: Institute for Historical Review, 1976) p.
191 or Andrew Mollo, p. 17.

[13] It was sometimes recommended that the air-gas mixture
be heated to at least ten degrees above the boiling point of hydrocyanic
acid in order to compensate for the cooling through evaporation of the
liquid hydrocyanic acid. Heating was especially critical for the venting
phase when large amounts of cold air were drawn into the chambers. In hot
summer months this heating process was not always essential but of course
during the rest of the year, especially during a Polish or German winter,
when typhus was generally most prevalent, it was essential. The absence of
any provision for heating of the air-gas mixture in the alleged gas
chambers for mass-murder is further evidence that the claim is a lie.

[14] Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Schädlingsbekämpfung m.b.H.,
Zyklon for Pest Control (Frankfurt a. M.: DEGESCH, undated), p. 21.

[15] From the context, it is quite clear that the
expression “circulatory device” is a translation of
Kreislaufanordnung which I prefer to translate as “circulatory
system” just as it was translated for Wüstinger's article.

[16] Puntigam, Breymesser, and Bernfus,
Blausäuregaskammern zur Fleckfieberabwehr
[Hydrocyanic Acid Gas Chambers for the Prevention of Typhus] (Berlin:
Sonderveröffentlichung des Reichsarbeitsblattes, 1943). p. 33.

[17] According to the present-day Auschwitz authorities,
this gas chamber had supposedly been disguised as a mortuary
(Leichenkeller) until late 1942 but was rebuilt subsequently to
serve as a bomb shelter by subdividing the room with interior walls. After
the war, the room was “restored” by removing the interior walls except for
a portion needed to retain an anteroom next to a door to the outside. In a
similar manner, the supposed gas chambers in Krematoria 2 and 3 at
Birkenau were supposedly disguised as mortuaries when they were built in
1943. Although they were intended originally to serve as mortuaries, they
seem to have been modified to serve as bomb shelters also. This is
consistent with a surprising passage in Dr. Miklos Nyiszli, Auschwitz
(Greenwich, Conn: Fawcett, 1960), p. 97 in which the author describes
a brief stay, probably during August or September of 1944, in the “gas
chamber” when it was serving, at least temporarily, as a bomb shelter
during an Allied bombing raid. In other words, at least one of the four
gas chambers at Birkenau supposedly did double-duty; on the one hand, it
served as a gas chamber to kill 3,000 people every day while at the same
time being available as a bomb shelter-fantastico !

[18] Filip Müller, Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three
Years in the Gas Chambers (New York: Stein & Day, 1979),
pp. 60-1.

[19] This remark about “gas crystals” already shows that
Müller has no idea as to what he is writing about even though he
supposedly worked in the gas chambers for three years. He seems to be
confusing Zyklon-B granules with mothballs which do sublimate to a gas
directly from the solid state. Zyklon is quite different.

[20] Dr. Ludwig Gassner, “Verkehrshygiene und
Schädlingsbekämpfung [Transportation Hygiene and Disinfestation],”
Gesundheits-Ingenieur, Vol. 66 (1943) Heft 15, pp.
174-76.

[21] To those readers who believe it would have been far
more difficult to ventilate a freight car filled with dead bodies as
compared with a passenger car containing upholstery and intricate paneling
and cabinet work, I suggest that anyone using the railroad delousing
tunnels for mass-murder would have been able to provide additional
ventilation time simply by pulling out any railroad car filled with dead
bodies and parking it somewhere on a railroad siding. Furthermore, the
movement of such a railroad car, perhaps to a site some distance away for
the disposal of the corpses, would in itself have provided additional
ventilation in fresh air before anyone would have had to come into direct
contact with corpses containing potentially hazardous amounts of
cyanide.

[22] Peters, “Die hochwirksamen Gase und Dämpfe in der
Schädlingsbekämpfung," p. 52. One can also see on pp. 514 photographs of
some of the other large fumigation chambers, also known as “tunnels,” for
disinfesting railroad trains which also used the circulatory
(Kreislauf) principal with powerful blowers and heaters. In Romania
there was at least one railroad disinfesting chamber with an internal
volume of 1500 cubic meters-see p. 54.

[23] Hans Zinsser, Rats, Lice and
History (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1963), p.
213.

[24] Only one of many articles from the German literature
is: Dr. Joseph Ruppert, “Gesundheitsverhältnisse und Seuchenbekämpfung im
Generalgouvernement [Sanitary Conditions and Contagious Disease Control in
the Generalgouvernement],” Der praktische
Desinfektor, Vol. 33 (Berlin: Hygiene Verlag Erich Deleiter,
July 1941) Heft 7, pp. 72-3.

[25] R. Queisner, “Erfahrungen mit Blausäure bei
Großraumentwesungen [Experiences with Hydrocyanic Acid in the Fumigation
of Large Areas],” Zeitschrift für hygienische Zoologie and
Schädlingsbekämpfung, Vol. 36 (Berlin: Duncker &
Humboldt, 1944), pp. 130-37. The title of the article is preceded by the
note that the article was taken from the exterminator school
(Desinfektorenschule) of the Waffen-SS in Oranienburg, near Berlin,
with the name of the director: SS-Hauptsturmführer Dr. H. Grundlach.
Grundlach is identified in the Gerstein statement as the man who made
murderous experiments on women in Ravensbrück.

[26] Some readers may object to the claim that Zyklon-B was
an abbreviation for Zyklon-Blausäure. Although the “B” may have originally
been intended merely to reflect a sequential numbering of another “Zyklon”
product since there had been a Zyklon-A until about 1920 and even a
Zyklon-C for a brief period, by at least the beginning of World War II the
German literature used the terms “Zyklon,” “Zyklon-B” and
“Zyklon-Blausäure” interchangeably. The longest form was used least often
and generally only at the beginning of a piece of text in order to
identify clearly the principle ingredient. The fact that Zyklon-B and
Zyklon-Blausäure are synonymous is also shown by the fact that in German
both terms are almost always hyphenated.