Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Chapter 4: Auschwitz
There is also a secondary meaning of Vergasung, established by military usage
in World War I: attacking an enemy with gas. Why the word Vergasung was used
in this sense is not clear; it may be because the gases used in that war were really
dusts and were generated by exploding some chemical into the atmosphere: Vergasung.
The translation “gassing cellar” is thus not absolutely incorrect; it is just overhasty
and presumptuous. A “gas oven” requires some sort of gasification or carburetion.
In the case of the gas-fired ovens of Utting and Rogers in 1932: 242
“Burners set in the crown and sole of the furnace are fed by a mixture of
air and gas under pressure; the mixture is regulated by fans, housed in a separate
building. Separate control of both air and gas provides better regulation
of the furnace temperature.”
That building is just a big carburetor. Oil-fired crematories are so similar in
design that most gas-fired ovens can be easily adapted for use with oil.
The ovens at Birkenau seem to have been coke or coal-fired, 243 and with this
type there is an extra stage of fuel processing due to the initially solid state of the
fuel. The two most common methods of producing fuel gases from coal or coke
are, first, by passing air through a bed of burning coke to produce “coke oven gas”
and second, by passing steam through the coke to produce “water gas.” 244 The
first coke cremators employed what amounted to coke oven gas. 245 Processes for
generating such gases are termed Vergasung in German, as well as processes of
mixing them with air. The coal-fired crematory ovens that W. H. Lawrence saw at
the Lublin camp after its capture by the Russians employed equipment, including
fans, very similar to that described in the above quotation. Lawrence, incidentally,
termed a “gas chamber” what was obviously a steam bath. 246
In any case, it is obvious that the crematories at Auschwitz required equipment
for doing Vergasung in order to inject a fuel-air mixture into the ovens and that
the translation of NO-4473 should be revised, possibly to “gas generation cellar.”
I have confirmed this interpretation of the Vergasungskeller with the technically
competent sources in Germany. The reasons for installing such equipment in special
separate rooms or even buildings are most probably the considerable noise
that must be made by the fans and, in coal-fired ovens, the heat of the burning
coal.
The primary meaning of the word Vergasung is of necessity applicable to
document NO-4473. It is written in a technical context; it is a letter from the chief
of the Auschwitz construction management to the head of the SS engineering
group. It makes reference to a process, Vergasung, which is standard with all
crematories, and the wording of the letter is such that it is implied that it would
normally be peculiar to find bodies in the Vergasungskeller, because bodies are
normally stored in what is correctly translated as the “cellar used as a mortuary.”
242
243
244
245
246
Polson, 142.
008-USSR; Central Commission, 89.
Johnson & Auth, 259-261.
Polson, 141.
New York Times (Aug. 30, 1944), 1.
155