TREBLINKA: - Holocaust Handbooks

126 Carlo Mattogno, Jürgen Graf: Treblinka
Wilhelm Pfannenstiel, professor and director of the Hygienic Institute at
the University of Marburg/Lahn, who also had served as hygienic adviser
to the Waffen-SS, were sent to Lublin in the middle of August 1942. [328]
Gerstein’s main mission was to check the possibility of introducing the gas
Zyklon B [329] into the gas chambers. Zyklon B had already been successfully
used in Auschwitz, instead of the engines that were still supplying the
monoxide gas in the death camps of Operation Reinhard.”
Later, Arad explains that Gerstein had “submitted a written report of his
mission when he was incarcerated in an American [330] army prison at the end
of the war in April-July 1945”, 326 cites an excerpt from this ‘report’, and concludes:
331
“Gerstein’s mission did not bring about any changes in the gassing system
in the Operation Reinhard death camps. Carbon monoxide, supplied
by truck or tank engine, as introduced by Wirth, remained the means of
killing used in these camps. The fact that in Belzec Gerstein witnessed a
breakdown of the diesel engine that supplied the gas and during which
people were locked inside the gas chamber for almost three hours until the
engine started working did not cause any change in the procedure. Wirth
refused to give up the gassing system he had developed. His professional
pride did not permit him to admit that the use of Zyklon B for mass killings,
as developed by Rudolf Höss, the commander of Auschwitz, was preferable
to carbon monoxide. He asked and subsequently persuaded Gerstein not to
propose any other gas chamber type for Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka to
Berlin. Gerstein did not even carry out any killing experiments with the
Zyklon B he had brought with him from Kolin. [332] The gas was buried on
the pretext that it had been spoiled in transit.”
5. The ‘Mission’ of Kurt Gerstein
The tale related by Arad is totally absurd. First of all, let us summarize
Gerstein’s mission in the way he described it:
328
In reality, Pfannenstiel had nothing to do with Gerstein’s mission and accompanied him “by
accident” (see section which follows).
329
Zyklon B was not gaseous, but rather liquid hydrogen cyanide absorbed on a porous carriersubstance.
The gross error committed by Arad here frequently surfaces in the official historiography.
330
In reality, this was a French military prison, that of Cherche-Midi: Document T-1306, report
of the prison physician Dr. Trouillet of July 25, 1945.
331
Arad, op. cit. (note 72), p. 104.
332
According to his own statements, Gerstein had taken along no Zyklon B, but rather liquid
prussic acid. See following section.