THE RUDOLF REPORT

5. AUSCHWITZsealed with tar. Such poor workmanship reflects neither the care requiredin handling a poisonous gas, nor standard German craftsmanship.If the SS had put these holes in the concrete during the war, onemust assume that they would have taken care to evenly distributedthese holes in the ceiling of the original(!) morgue in order to ensure aneven distribution of the Zyklon B inside the room. The stacks today,however, are only evenly distributed in the ceiling of this room if oneconsiders the washing room, which was only incorporated after thewar(!), as an integral part of the morgue (‘gas chamber’.) (See Figs. 21and 23). Thus, the arrangement of today’s introduction holes onlymake sense if they were created especially for its present status as afalsely dimensioned “reconstruction for Museum purposes” (B. Bailer-Galanda) 169 after the war. This by itself is strong circumstantial evidencethat those holes were chiseled in after the interior walls of theformer air raid shelter—one too many of them—had been torn downby the Soviets or the Poles. This is also supported by the fact that it hasbeen generally assumed until the present day—without contradictionby any side—that the introduction holes visible today were indeed createdafter the war without recourse to the alleged remains of old,walled-up holes. 174The flat roof of the crematorium, like all flat roofs, is not watertight.Due to decades of erosion by rain water and the steel reinforcementrods, lying near the surface, rusting over time and splitting theconcrete, 175 the interior of the room exhibits clear signs of decay; seeFigs. 24f. The Museum administration has, of course, attempted toplaster these places, but the plaster is immediately destroyed by thecrumbling of rust from the steel reinforcement rods. Janitors from theMuseum are compelled to sweep away falling pieces of crumblingmortar and concrete. It would be entirely incorrect to explain thesesigns of deterioration as the remains of former introduction holes174 See, in this regard, the interview with D. Cole, op. cit. (note 88).175 Steel reinforcement rods in concrete are only practicable when the iron is deeply embedded inthe concrete and therefore protected for decades against corrosion by the very durable alkalineenvironment of the concrete, since concrete is only slowly carbonated by the carbon dioxide(CO 2 ) in the environment, resulting in a neutralization of its pH value. The reinforcement rodsin the ceiling of the morgue in question lie directly on the surface, where the pH value wouldfall very quickly (i.e., would become less alkaline), particularly when rain water containingCO 2 penetrated the concrete; see the crack in Fig. 25 which would quickly allow the entry ofrain water.87