The Bunkers Auschwitz - aaargh

4. The Origin of the Propaganda Story of the ‘Bunkers’ – Wartime Rumors 53
small and not very practical. [Then] an installation of 5 modern chambers
was built at Brzezinka, some 7 km from the camp. Construction was finished
in April 1942. It comprises 6 [sic] blocks (windowless, with double
doors and modern apparatuses for feeding the gas and for ventilation),
each one for 700 persons. Between the buildings there is a narrow-gauge
railway which takes the corpses to graves, each 4 km long, in the woods
nearby. The entire area of the D-kammer is off limits, anyone found there,
unless on assignment, faces the death penalty (this goes also for the SS, the
Wehrmacht, civilians and detainees) Gassing of 3,500 persons takes two
hours.”
In an earlier study 151 I have already demonstrated that the alleged first use
of the “Degasungskammer” is gossip without historical foundation. It is
worthwhile, though, to follow up on how Polish historiography transformed
this gossip into historical reality.
In the first version of the Auschwitz Chronicle, Danuta Czech asserted that
on July 28, 1941, 575 invalids, cripples, and chronically ill, selected by an ad
hoc government commission, were sent to the Königstein hospital for the
mentally ill in Saxony, where they were gassed with carbon monoxide. 152 In a
later article, entitled “The first selection for the gas at Auschwitz – the transport
to the Dresden sanitarium,” Stanis�aw K�odzi�ski took a closer look at
this alleged event: he stated that the gassing of these detainees did not take
place at Königstein but “near Sonnestein [sic] some 20 km from Dresden.” 153
Consequently, Czech corrected “Königstein” to “Sonnestein” in the second
edition of the Auschwitz Chronicle. 154 However, there is no document supporting
the reality of this alleged event: it is based on second-hand testimonies
only, in particular on the declarations of Rudolf Höß. There is no direct testimony
by persons who had witnessed the alleged massacre, or its preparations,
or who had seen the corpses of the alleged victims, or who had merely seen
the transport arrive at Königstein, Schloß Sonnenstein in Pirna, or Dresden.
All the testimonies collected by K�odzi�ski refer exclusively to the departure
of the transport from Auschwitz; thus, even if it really did leave, there is no
real proof of the gassing. During his trial, Höß, the only (indirect) witness to
the alleged event, declared that the alleged homicidal gassing at Königstein
had been reported to him by his subordinate, Franz Hößler, at that time SS
Obersturmführer. 155
151 C. Mattogno, op. cit. (note 1), pp. 119-121.
152 D. Czech, “Kalendarium der Ereignisse im Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau,” Hefte von
Auschwitz, no. 2, Staatliches Museum Auschwitz, 1959, pp. 106f.
153 Stanis�aw K�odzi�ski, “Pierwsza o�wi�cimska selekcja do gazu. Transport do ‘Sanatorium Dresden’,”
Prezgl�d Lekarski, no. I, 1970, p. 40; this probably refers to Schloß Sonnenstein in Pirna,
20 km southeast of Dresden.
154 D. Czech, Kalendarium… , op. cit. (note 13), p. 106.
155 S. K�odzi�ski, op. cit. (note 153), p. 40.