THE RUDOLF REPORT

5. AUSCHWITZtion, reference is made to the trial of the builder of the cremation installationsin Birkenau camp. In 1972, the court acquitted the two defendants,master builder W. Dejaco and master builder F. Ertl, sincesuspicion of aiding and abetting in mass murder could not be corroborated.177 An expert report drawn up during this trial on the survivingplans and documents on the construction of the crematoria led to theconclusion that these buildings could not have been used or modifiedso as to serve as instruments of mass murder. 85 In an eyewitness statementmade recently, one of the master builders at Auschwitz, WalterSchreiber, stated as follows on the planning of these crematoria: 178Question: In which positions were you active?Answer: As supervising engineer, I inspected the Huta Corporationand dealt with the Zentralbauleitung of the SS. I also auditedthe invoices of our firm.Q.: Did you enter the camp? How did that happen?A.: Yes. One could walk everywhere without hindrance on thestreets of the camp and was only stopped by the guards uponentering and leaving the camp.Q.: Did you see or hear anything about killings or mistreatment ofinmates?A.: No. But lines of inmates in a relatively poor general conditioncould be seen on the streets of the camp.Q.: What did the Corporation build?A.: Among other things, crematoria II and III with the largemorgues.Q.: The prevalent opinion is that these large morgues were gaschambers for mass killings.A.: Nothing of the sort could be deduced from the plans madeavailable to us. The detailed plans and provisional invoicesdrawn up by us refer to these rooms as ordinary cellars.Q.: Do you know anything about introduction hatches in the reinforcedconcrete ceilings?A.: No, nothing more from memory. But since these cellars wereFachverlag, Frankfurt 1962, pp. 423f.177 Proceedings against master builders W. Dejaco and F. Ertl (note 84).178 Schreiber was the Supervising Engineer at the Kattowitz agency of the Huta corporation,which built the crematoria at Birkenau. See also Werner Rademacher, “In memoriam Dipl.-Ing. Dr. techn. Walter Schreiber”, VffG 4(1) (2000), pp. 104f. (online:www.vho.org/VffG/2000/1/Rademacher104f.html). He died in 1999.89