TREBLINKA: - Holocaust Handbooks

Chapter IV: The Alleged Extermination Facilities in Treblinka 149
Quantity of wood needed for the cremation of one kilogram of animal
flesh: 3.5 kg of seasoned wood (plus 0.1 liter of ethyl alcohol).
Time required for the incineration of one kilogram of animal flesh: approximately
6 minutes.
Amount of wood burned per square meter per one hour (until flames extinguish):
approximately 80 kg.
Wood ashes resulting: approximately 8% of the total weight.
Specific gravity of wood ashes: approximately 0.34 g/cm 3 .
On the basis of this data one can calculate that the cremation of one body
of 45 kg requires approximately 160 kg of seasoned wood. Consequently, in
order to incinerate 3,500 bodies, (3,500×160=) 560,000 kg of wood is necessary,
but there was room for merely 30.780 kg under the grate, therefore one
seventh of that required. Therefore, no more than (30,780÷3,500=) 8.8 kg of
wood would have been allotted to one body, a ridiculously insufficient
amount.
Let us even suppose that it were feasible in some way or other to constantly
pack new wood under the grate. In what period of time would the
560,000 kg of wood have been consumed by burning?
In fires with fixed grate and more natural ventilation, 150 to 190 kg of seasoned,
chopped wood can be burned per square meter of grate per hour. 439 But
this applies only to an actual cremation apparatus with burning chamber,
grate, a more adjustable air supply for burning, and chimney. With a pyre in
the open, these values decline markedly. We therefore assume a sustainable
value of 80 kg per square meter in our experiment.
This means that (90×80=) 7,200 kg of wood could be burned under the pile
of bodies in one hour. In order to burn the 560,000 kg of wood necessary for
incineration of the bodies, (560,000÷7,200=) approximately 78 hours is required,
thus more than three days. If one adds the time needed for cooling
down of the pyre, one cremation session can take place every five days.
Therefore, the 122 cremation sessions of 7,000 bodies each – the prerequisite
for the disposal of 860,000 bodies using two grates – requires a time period of
(122×5=) 610 days.
The burning time computed here corresponds to (78÷29=) 2.5 hours per
layer of bodies. In the case of a pyre with 29 layers of bodies, however, this
time period is not sufficient, as a comparison with the crematorium furnace of
the Gorini type shows: with this furnace from the nineteenth century, the body
lay upon a grate, beneath which a wood fire of 100 to 150 kg burned. With
this type of furnace, a cremation lasted from one-and-a-half to two hours. 440
439 Enciclopedia Curcio di Scienza e Tecnica, Curcio Editore, Rome 1973, vol. 5, p. 1916.
440 G. Pini, La crémation en Italie et à l’étranger de 1774 à nos jours, Ulrico Hoepli, Milan
1885, p. 151. In the Brunetti apparatus, in which the body lay on an iron sheet over a wood
fire, the cremation process lasted six whole hours; ibid., p. 132.