Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Supplement 3: A Response to a Major Critique of Holocaust Revisionism
paper. 593 While it is true that the normal German term for a homicidal or delousing
gas chamber would be “Gaskammer,” “Vergasungskeller” is linguistically
possible.
As noted by others, Pressac is in the strange position of claiming that a room
consistently designated Leichenkeller 1 on all engineering drawings was to be
used only temporarily as a Leichenkeller, either instead of normally as a gas
chamber, or simultaneously as a gas chamber and a morgue. In the latter case the
unsuspecting victims must presumably stand on the corpses. In the former case
(the only interpretation worth considering), the implied delay in the use of the building
for extermination was “unimportant,” a major contradiction if one claims, as
Pressac does, that the primary role of the building was for mass gassing.
Because this document confirms that in January 1943 the Germans were working,
under great pressure, to make this installation operational as an ordinary crematory,
I regard it as further evidence against the claim that it had been decided in
the summer of 1942 that the primary purpose of these crematories was extermination
by lethal gassing.
The use of the Vergasungskeller as a morgue not only did not interfere with
bringing Crematorium II into operational status, it advanced it. Here I am arguing,
in passing, for a focus on what the document says rather than on the term Vergasungskeller
mentioned in it. I suspect that the realization of what the document
really says is the basis for Hilberg’s failure to make more than a hurried and superficial
reference to it. 594 Pressac, in effect, would have us ignore what the
document says.
In any case, Pressac’s logic in interpreting the Vergasungskeller as a gas
chamber depends entirely on the assumption that there was a gas chamber in
Crematory II. Without that assumption we have the following situation:
1. One (and apparently only one) document concerned exclusively with the
operational status of Crematory II makes reference to a Vergasungskeller to
be temporarily used, in support of the crematory, as a morgue and not for
its intended or normal function,
2. in the many engineering drawings of the crematories that Pressac has examined,
there is no mention of a Vergasungskeller, Gaskammer, or anything
similar, 595 and
3. nothing in those engineering drawings implies or calls for something describable
as a Vergasungskeller. For example, the cremation ovens have
been shown to be of a design not calling for such a facility.
The appropriate conclusion, I believe, is that the Vergasungskeller was not in
Crematory II at all. I assume that it was somewhere in the vicinity, but in the light
of current knowledge the only basis for inferring that it was in the crematory
building is an assumption that there was a gas chamber there. In the absence of
the massive documentation presented by Pressac, it seemed logical to assume that
the Vergasungskeller was located in Crematory II. I made just that assumption in
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594
595
Pressac, p. 217.
R. Hilberg (1985), p. 885, n. 67. (1961: p. 566, n. 52.)
Pressac, p. 429.
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