THE RUDOLF REPORT

5. AUSCHWITZdle and safer form: porous materials soaked with hydrogen cyanidewith the addition of a stabilizer and an irritant warning material, intendedto warn people of low concentrations of hydrogen cyanide,which in lower concentrations has only a slight odor and that manypeople cannot even smell at all. This product, called Zyklon B, wasthen packed in tin cans, which can only be opened with a special tool.The number of patents filed for the additives to Zyklon B shows thatthere was no simple, clear solution to the problems relating to thestabilizers and irritant warning materials. 105 Legally, there was a greatdifference between the stabilizer for Zyklon B and the irritant warningmaterial. A stabilizer for Zyklon B was required by German law, 106while an irritant warning material, by contrast, was not legally required.107Zyklon B was licensed and produced by the DEGESCH 108 corporationresiding in Frankfurt. 109 Until the end of the Second World War,it played an extraordinarily important role in the struggle against insectpests and rodents 110,111 in food warehouses, large-scale means of trans-105 See also, in this regard, Wolfgang Lambrecht, Otto Karl, Das Handelsprodukt Zyklon B, soonto be published on the internet at www.vho.org/D/Beitraege/Zyklon.html.106 Deutsche Reichsbahn Eisenbahnverkehrsordnung (EVO, German Reich railway regulations),annex C to §54 EVO, Vorschriften über die nur bedingt zur Beförderung zugelassenen Gegenständevom 1. Okt. 1938 (Regulations on Objects Permissible for Restricted TransportOnly, dated 1 October 1938), p. 50:“Die Blausäure muß durch einen von der Chemisch-Technischen Reichsanstalt nach Artund Menge anerkannten Zusatz, der zugleich ein Warnstoff sein kann, beständig gemachtsein.” (The hydrogen cyanide must be stablized by an additive, which may also be an irritant,in the manner and quantity recognized by the Chemical-Technical Reichs Foundation.)107 L. Gaßner, “Die gesetzlichen Bestimmungen der Anwendung hochgiftiger gasförmiger Stoffezur Schädlingsbekämpfung in Deutschland” (The legal provisions relating to the use of highlypoisonous gaseous materials for pest control in Germany) in Karl Greimer, Handbuch despraktischen Desinfektors, Th. Steinkopf, Dresden 1937, pp. 185f. The fact that Auschwitzconcentration camp received Zyklon B without an irritant is therefore not so unusual as sometimesrepresented in the literature, i.e., as a ‘criminal trace’. The well-known exceptional regulationsfor the Waffen SS are no exception; they merely referred to the applicable Reichs regulationsand implementation provisions regulating the use of Zyklon B; see Deutsches Reich,“Anwendung von hochgiftigen Stoffen zur Schädlingsbekämpfung durch die Waffen-SS”,Rund-Erlaß des Reichsministers für Ernährung und Landwirtschaft vom April 3, 1941, quotedacc. to Zeitschrift für hygienische Zoologie und Schädlingsbekämpfung, 33 (1941), p. 126.108 Deutsche Gesellschaft für Schädlingsbekämpung (German Society for Pest Control), a subsidiaryof the I.G. Farbenindustrie AG.109 On the history of the firm, mixed with Holocaust story telling, see Jürgen Kalthoff, MartinWerber, Die Händler des Zyklon B, VSA-Verlag, Hamburg 1998; much more factual andtechnically correct is the work by Wolfgang Lambrecht, Otto Karl, op. cit. (note 105).110 O. Hecht, “Blausäuredurchgasungen zur Schädlingsbekämpfung”, Die Naturwissenschaften,16(2) (1928), pp. 17-23.61