TREBLINKA: - Holocaust Handbooks

Chapter IV: The Alleged Extermination Facilities in Treblinka 129
not been used in Germany for extermination of vermin since the introduction
of the ‘tub procedure’ after World War One, and later of Zyklon B. 361
Why did the RSHA order Gerstein to take along such an enormous quantity
of prussic acid? If one keeps in mind that – according to the verdict of the
1965 Munich Court of Assizes – the six alleged gas chambers of Be��ec are
supposed to have had an effective volume of 145 m 3 , if one subtracts the space
taken up by the approximately 1,500 victims, 362 then 500 g of prussic acid
would have been sufficient to theoretically reach over ten times the instantly
lethal concentration in every gas chamber. Under these circumstances, the 100
kg of prussic acid, which Gerstein says he brought with him, would have sufficed
to kill 300,000 people in 200 gassings! This quantity was obviously too
large for a few simple experiments. For these, about a dozen canisters of Zyklon
B would have been enough and, if he was going to Lublin anyway, Gerstein
would have easily been able to pick these up at the Majdanek camp,
where the Tesch & Stabenow firm had just delivered 360 Zyklon B canisters
of 1.5 kg each, thus 540 kg total, two weeks before, on July 30, 1942. 363
In Lublin, Gerstein was received by SS-Brigadeführer Odilo Globocnik,
who disclosed the existence of the extermination camps of Be��ec, Sobibór,
and Treblinka to him: 364
“This secret Reich matter is currently one of the most secret, one might
say the most secret that there is.”
Thereupon Globocnik explained to him what his main mission was: 365
“Your other – even far more important – mission is the conversion of
our gas chambers, which are now working with diesel exhaust, to a better
and quicker way. I am mainly thinking of prussic acid.”
Thus Gerstein went to Be��ec with his death-dealing cargo but did not
carry out his mission, and then he coolly returned to Berlin, without having to
report to anyone about that mission, which had been an urgent, top secret mat-
361 O. Lenz, L. Gassner, Schädlingsbekämpfung mit hochgiftigen Stoffen, Number 1: “Blausäure”.
Richard Schoetz, Berlin 1934, pp. 8-10. The ‘tub procedure’ developed HCN by pouring
semi-concentrated sulfuric acid over potassium cyanide in a tub. Liquid prussic acid tends to
explosively polymerize and was therefore permitted to be transported only in its frozen state,
at night, and with a special vehicle: Frankfurt/Main Court of Assizes, session of March 28,
1949, in: C.F. Rüter, Justiz und NS-Verbrechen. Sammlung deutscher Strafurteile wegen nationalsozialistischer
Tötungsverbrechen, 1945-1966, Amsterdam 1968-1981, vol. XIII, p.
137.
362 The number 1500 at one gassing of people crammed into the ‘gas chambers’ was given in
the verdict at the trial of Josef Oberhauser (January 1965). A. Rückerl, NS-Vernichtungslager…,
op. cit. (note 62), p. 133.
363 J. Graf, C. Mattogno, op. cit. (note 271), p. 205.
364 PS-2170, p. 3.
365 T-1310, p. 9.