CARLO MATTOGNO · THE REAL CASE AUSCHWITZ

364 CARLO MATTOGNO · THE REAL CASE FOR AUSCHWITZ
semi-basements (1989, p. 284). As I will explain in chapter 10.2.15., the
ground water at Birkenau stood at less than 1.2 m below the surface, so
that the alleged “furnace-pit” would have been two thirds full of water.
The project of Crematorium VI was most probably based on the
principle of a field oven (Feldofen) imagined by Friedrich Siemens,
which Prüfer as an expert must have been familiar with: a rectangular
brick oven. 578 By splitting the individual fires as in that project, Crematorium
VI would have had 60 hearths with a total effective surface area
of 144 m², enough for the simultaneous cremation of 150 corpses.
Pressac was led astray by another project whose significance he did
not understand. The Topf letter to ZBL of February 5, 1943, speaks, in
fact, of a “cost estimate for the large annular incineration oven,” 579
which certainly was the “Continuously operating corpse cremation oven
for mass applications” invented by Sander (see chapter 12.2.2.). This
project had, in fact, a cylindrical, hence annular, combustion chamber,
but had nothing to do with a round “cremation pit.” Another project for
a mass cremation device comes up in a “cost estimate of the Topf Co.
for an incineration oven” dated April 1, 1943, of which R. Schnabel
shows only the last page (p. 351). Pressac confuses it with the “Crematorium
VI” project and asserts that it was “based on the principle of
open-air incineration” (1993, p. 69). The device offered in this estimate
was a proper crematorium oven, although somewhat special. The presence
of “1 cast iron flue duct vane with rollers, cable, and winch” bears
this out. This estimate, too, probably referred to the oven invented by
Fritz Sander, which did possess a single flue duct.
All these devices were never built, no doubt because circumstances
changed in the succeeding months. From April onwards, the mortality
at Auschwitz dropped considerably, and that was probably the reason
why ZBL gave up on these projects. Such an explanation is reasonable
and in keeping with the available documents.
Let us now look at the significance of these projects, assuming that
the alleged mass exterminations did actually take place. According to
the Auschwitz Kalendarium, open-air cremations of corpses at Birkenau
began on September 21, 1942 (Czech 1989, pp. 305f.). At the end of the
campaign, on December 3, 1942, a total of 107,000 corpses are said to
have been cremated (ibid., p. 349). This means that, over 75 consecu-
578 Drawing of the device in Küchenmeister, pp. 82f.
579 Letter from Topf to Zentralbauleitung at Auschwitz dated February 5, 1943. APMO, BW
AuII 30/4/34, D-Z-Bau/2544/2 (page number illegible).