TREBLINKA: - Holocaust Handbooks

136 Carlo Mattogno, Jürgen Graf: Treblinka
but was even less efficient? As always in such cases, the stupidity lies not with
the SS, but rather with the eyewitnesses.
8. The Problem of Air Pressure in Gas Chambers
According to the official historiography, the gas chambers possessed no
vent for removal of gas. As we have seen in Section 2, the Soviet Examining
Judge Jurowski drew in an opening for gas outflow in the ceiling in both of his
drawings of the gas chambers of Treblinka. In 1947, Elias Rosenberg stated
for the record: 387
“A small window, sealed air-tight, was fitted to the ceiling, which could
not be opened and through which the man who regulated the gas supply
was able to observe.”
This small window, therefore, had nothing to do with any system for gas
removal. But such a window, or, to be more exact, such an opening, for the
purging of the air-gas mixture would have been absolutely indispensable for a
mass killing employing the exhaust gases of a powerful engine. Graduate engineer
Arnulf Neumaier emphasizes that diesel engines emit their combustion
gases with a pressure of 0.5 atmospheres (which corresponds to 500 g/cm 2 ),
and explains: 388
“[…] this means that there would have been a force equivalent to the
weight of 5 metric tons pushing outward against each square meter of surface
area.”
In the first installation, such a pressure would have exerted a force corresponding
to the weight of 80 metric tons upon the ceiling of each chamber, of
52 metric tons on each of the walls, of 8.1 metric tons upon the entrance door
and of 22.5 metric tons upon the door serving for the removal of the bodies. If
the masonry of the walls had withstood this powerful pressure, then the engine,
approaching a state of equilibrium between the pressure of the interior of
the chambers and the pressure of the engine exhaust gases, would have broken
down.
When would this equilibrium have been reached? The gas pressure in a
hermetically sealed container or room doubles if the amount of gas in it is
doubled (provided the temperature is constant).
A diesel engine works like a compressor. Within the parameters of the data
given previously, an engine of 38,860 cubic centimeters (38.86 liters) at 2,000
RPM emits 38.86 m 3 of gas per minute with an outlet pressure of 0.5 atmospheres.
387 E. Rosenberg, op. cit. (note 188), p. 136 (p. 4 of the report).
388 A. Neumaier, op. cit. (note 220), p. 485.