CARLO MATTOGNO · THE REAL CASE AUSCHWITZ

CARLO MATTOGNO · THE REAL CASE FOR AUSCHWITZ 163
tight, 4 doors (two per room) and 6 windows (3 per room), one being
INSIDE the corridor giving access to the chambers, unlike the
five others that are on the outside). The victims would take the route:
gas chamber 1 OR gas chamber 2, corridor, vestibule, morgue [central
room] and furnace room. This sequence is linear, thus LOGI-
CAL.
In industrial terms, 2 manufacturing units [gas chambers 1 and
2] alternately supply a product [corpses] to be held in a store
[morgue] while waiting to be consumed [in the cremation furnaces].
In human terms, people walk in on their own two feet at the western
end of Krematorium IV and go out in the form of smoke from the
chimneys at the eastern end.
The position of the two gas chambers and their corridor, at the
western end, permits natural ventilation without danger to the people
working in the morgue or the furnace room. But the building has
no undressing room. The victims have to get undressed outside. The
Bauleitung could alleviate this problem by erecting a ‘stable type’
hut for this purpose on the other side of the ‘Ringstraße/ring road,’
just opposite Kr IV.” (Pressac’s emph.)
But in this context, the two gas chambers could just as easily be disinfestation
chambers without anything else having to be changed, because
their homicidal character does not result from any such indication.
Pressac himself, on the other hand, calls attention to an incongruous
aspect of the matter which renders his hypothesis not very convincing:
the absence of an undressing room. It is quite true, obviously, that
ZBL could have remedied this inconvenience by placing an undressing
barrack in front of the crematorium, but it is a fact that such a barrack
does not appear on the Birkenau map drawn on February 17, 1943
(Pressac 1989, p. 220), one month after the alleged decision to install
two gas chambers in Crematorium IV. Such a decision would have to be
the basis for the order of January 18 concerning the construction of 4
gas-tight doors, because otherwise this order would have no basis.
5.4. Crematoria IV & V: Second Operating Concept
Let us look at Pressac’s second hypothesis (1989, pp. pp. 447f.):
“Second design: based on the letter of 31st March 1943 and the
testimony of S. Dragon with the creation of a gas-tight unit comprising
the two gas chambers and the corridor. Three doors and six or