THE RUDOLF REPORT

GERMAR RUDOLF · THE RUDOLF REPORTthese rooms allegedly possessed gas-tight hatches with wooden shuttersapproximately 1.50 m from the floor and measuring 30×40 cm, inthe exterior walls, for the introduction of Zyklon B, 278 which are latersupposed to have been widened to 40×50 cm. 279Both rooms had heating furnaces that needed to be fired from thevestibule, which, according to Pressac, was allegedly also used as a‘gas chamber’ (for the heating, see Fig. 56). No ventilation installationis known to have existed. Pressac assumes ventilation by natural convection.279Franciszek Piper, Director of the Auschwitz Museumagrees: 164 “There were plans for mechanical ventilation of the Zyklon B, butthese were not put into effect. Evacuation of the gas was instead achievedby convection, that is, by merely opening the doors.”Pressac alleges the later incorporation of a door in the corridor fornatural ventilation support, but without proving it. 280 Since it wouldhardly have been any more expensive for the SS to provide for mechanicalventilation in these rooms, and since this solution would havebeen considerably more effective, Pressac’s argument of the installationof a door for ventilation can be rejected as unrealistic. It is alsoobvious that the morgue and oven room possessed ventilation chimneys.The rooms which purportedly served as ‘gas chambers,’ however,are the only rooms which, apart from the coke room and doctor’soffice, 281 possessed no ventilation chimney!According to an older Pressac publication, 282 these ‘gas chambers’were not planned and built as such either, which he bases, among otherthings, on the fact that the absence of a ventilation installation wouldhave led to a need to evacuate the entire building for many hours duringa gassing. 283 It is, in fact, inconceivable for a gas chamber not to277 J.-C. Pressac, op. cit. (note 67), pp. 379ff., chapter on crematoria IV and V.278 Ibid., p. 384. For an illustration of the gas-tight door and hatches, see pp. 46-49, 425-428, 486,500.279 Ibid., p. 386.280 Pressac points to a photo of crematorium IV, ibid., p. 417, as proof of his hypothesis. Butsince the photograph was taken from the south side while the corridor lies on the north side ofthe building, the door shown in the plan is the access, drawn on the plan, to one of the undesignatedrooms. If he means to refer to crematorium V, hidden in the forest in the background,then it is impossible to claim seriously that anything can be recognized on this photo.281 A doctor’s office in crematoria, by the way, is quite normal, even today; see also E. Neufert,op. cit. (note 176).282 J.-C. Pressac, Le Monde Juif, no. 107, Juli-September 1982, pp. 91-131.283 Pressacs argues this way in his new book as well, op. cit. (note 90), pp. 67, 89.136