Resistance

GERMAR RUDOLF, RESISTANCE IS OBLIGATORYroutine. Going from one camp to the other, several times a day, we had,each time, to go through them.” 41 And “in Buchenwald, everybody hadto go to the showers. Even the sick, who were instructed to go last.” 42He does not acknowledge, or perhaps he did not then know, that theclothing given up by prisoners was treated in gas chambers with ZyklonB, the German substitute for DDT, which was used by the Americansand British to combat lice and bed bugs.These gas chambers were designed to hold clothing. Metal cans containingZyklon B pellets were opened automatically (with machines, notmanually) to release the gas. Exhaust fans drove the gas out of thechambers when the cycle was completed and the clothing fully fumigated.Today such gas chambers can be seen at Dachau where their operationis described in detail.But these gas chambers were not homicidal gas chambers; they werefumigation machines for clothing. Right next to the fumigation machinesat Dachau are two rooms where prisoners disrobed, handing backtheir clothes to be put into the machines, and then waited. The thirdroom is the shower room where, like Wiesel and others have described,prisoners were given hot showers. In the next room they were givenother clothes that had already been cleaned or at least fumigated.But the shower room at Dachau has been altered. The ceiling hasbeen lowered; the shower heads and pipes have been removed or covered,and phony showerheads have been stuck in the ceiling. The UnitedStates government used to claim that this room was a homicidal gaschamber where prisoners were murdered on an industrial scale. Todayvisitors to Dachau are still told that this is a homicidal gas chamber, butthat it was never used. The question the reader of Night might well askis where did Dachau prisoners take hot showers that were part of everycamp’s mandatory hygiene routine as described by Wiesel? Are we tobelieve that the Nazis gave Dachau prisoners no showers after gettingthem to disrobe and after fumigating their clothes? Why would the Nazislower the ceiling in the shower room and stick phony showerheadsinto it? Could it be that the Americans modified the real shower room atDachau to create a homicidal gas chamber because they had none toshow to the mass media and to the congressional commission visitingvarious camps in Germany at that time?414224Night, p. 41.Night, p. 106.