THE RUDOLF REPORT

5. AUSCHWITZted. 211 Based on the ruins, it must be possible even today, to establishwhether the door was possibly walled in to make it narrower andwhether there are any traces of door frames. Excavations would benecessary to determine this.The engineers Nowak and Rademacher have shown that the ‘gastight’doors manufactured at Auschwitz by inmates from woodenplanks could not have been gas-tight in a technical sense, the planksdid not close hermetically, the fittings were simply fastened throughthe wood by means of bolts, and the seals consisted of felt strips. 212One has to consider that a hypothetical homicidal ‘gas chamber’door would have to open outwards—a door opening inwards would beblocked by inmate bodies lying in front of the door. Such doors wouldrequire an especially stable arrangement as the locks and hinges wouldhave to be capable of resisting the pressure of hundreds of panickingpeople. The pressure exerted by such masses of people becomes apparentwhen one recalls the photographs of panicky spectators at football/soccermatches. Separating fences and partitions between individualspectator blocks are commonly trampled down like mere blades ofgrass in such situations. In any case, a simple wooden door, renderedprovisionally gas-tight, as has been found in Auschwitz, a photographof which is reproduced by Pressac in his book (see Fig. 33), 213 couldnever have resisted such pressure.The camp administration could actually have ordered solid, technicallygas-tight steel doors (air-raid shelter doors, Fig. 34) since theywere offered such doors but it can be proven that they did not orderthem. One must assume that they had no serious need for them. 212In this context, a comparison of the flimsy wooden doors as foundin Auschwitz (used for delousing purposes only) with technically gastight, massive iron doors as used for executions in U.S. homicidal gaschambers is revealing, compare Fig. 33 with Fig. 5 (page 24).The installation of a door with felt seals in crematorium II mayhave been temporarily considered either in connection with the temporarilyconsidered expansion into a hygiene center or because it was211 Ibid., pp. 227, 311, 312.212 H.J. Nowak, W. Rademacher, “‘Gasdichte’ Türen in Auschwitz”, VffG 2(4) (1998), pp. 248-261 (online: www.vho.org/VffG/1998/4/NowRad4.html); Engl.: “‘Gas-Tight’ Doors in Auschwitz”,in: E. Gauss (ed.), op. cit. (note 43), pp. 324-336 (online:www.vho.org/GB/Books/dth/fndNowak.html).213 J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (note 67), pp. 46-49, 425-428, 486, 500.105