THE RUDOLF REPORT

5. AUSCHWITZmacher on the one hand 182 and Carlo Mattogno on the other hand 309have shown, with a vast amount of contemporary German documentsdealing with the camp authorities’ problems caused by the high watertable, that between the end of 1941 and middle of 1944, the water tablein Birkenau in general and outside the camp perimeter in particularwas very high, coming close or even reaching the surface and turningthe entire area into a swampy region. All three authors showed thatconstruction on buildings with basements was possible only by permanentlypumping off ground water, and Mattogno even found documentsexpressively forbidding the digging of pits for outhouse latrines,because this would contaminate the drinking water of the entireAuschwitz region. Mass incinerations of corpses in deep pits, ofcourse, would have contaminated the drinking water as well, hencewould never have been permitted.5.4.4.3. Open-Air Incineration in PitsIn general, it is of course possible to burn corpses in open-air pits,though it certainly takes more time and fuel than any cremation in acrematorium, and it also leaves many more traces due to incompletecombustion. In 1999, Dr. Myroslaw Dragan conducted an experimentalincineration of an 80 lb. deer in a pit roughly 1 m deep, 70 cm wide,and 1.2 m long. This incineration with a relatively small amount ofwood lasted some 4-5 hours and was almost completely successful. 310Dr. Dragan found out that for open-air incinerations, small, narrowholes are advantageous over large, wide holes or, even worse, cremationson ground level, since the soil walls of a pit act like the walls of acrematorium oven, storing and reflecting a great deal of the heat producedby the fire—provided that the soil has a considerable amount ofclay stabilizing the wall of the pit, and, of course, that no ground waterflows into the pit and extinguishes the fire.The situation in Birkenau, however, was drastically different fromthat. Not only did the witnesses claim that those pits were very wide,309 “‘Verbrennungsgruben’ und Grundwasserstand in Birkenau”, VffG 6(4) (2002), pp. 421-424(online: www.vho.org/VffG/2002/4/Mattogno421-424.html); Engl.: “‘Incineration Pits’ andGround Water Level in Birkenau”, The Revisionist, 1(1) (2003), pp. 13-16 (online:www.vho.org/tr/2003/1/Mattogno13-16.html).310 Only small pieces of the skull were left over which were located in a corner of the pit. Communicationsof Dr. M. Dragan, whom I helped to investigate the carcass’ remains in June1999.143