Path: news.voyager.net!clmx10.dial.voyager.net!user
From: jamie@voyager.net (Jamie McCarthy)
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: An open letter to Dr. Toeben
Date: Sat, 08 Jun 1996 02:17:21 -0400
Organization: Absence Software
Lines: 188
Message-ID: 
NNTP-Posting-Host: vixa.voyager.net

An open letter to the Director of the Adelaide Institute,
Dr. Frederick Toeben:

Hello, Dr. Toeben.  I have just stopped by your home page:

   http://www.adam.com.au/~fredadin/adins.html

...and I would like to make two initial comments on behalf of the Nizkor
Project.  Our home page, by the way, is:

   http://www.almanac.bc.ca/

My first comment:

You make a claim in your very first sentence that I would like to see
documented.  You write about the "allegation" that four million Jews
were killed at Auschwitz.  Now, you and I both know that the figure of
four million _people_ is one which has not been borne out by research,
and has been rejected by historians for quite some time, going back to
Reitlinger in the 50s (and perhaps earlier, I don't know).

But in all my investigation of Holocaust history, I have yet to encounter
the claim that four million _Jews_ were killed at Auschwitz.

The four-million figure was created by the Soviets, derived from
"rectified coefficients," and kept alive by their Polish puppet state
until the fall of the Iron Curtain.  It was maintained that about _one_
million Jews were killed at Auschwitz, plus about _three_ million Poles
and Soviet POWs, in an effort to spread the myth of Auschwitz as a
Polish and Communist, not a Jewish, place of mourning.

Yet you claim that it is an "allegation" that "four million [Jews]
alone" were killed "at the Auschwitz concentration camp."  Would you
please present your documentation showing where this was alleged?

There are other claims on your home page that I think should be
documented, but this one struck me as especially in need, because it
was in the very first sentence.

My second comment:

You write that Professor Deborah Lipstadt "claims that mortuaries were
converted into homicidal gas chambers."  I was not aware that this was
her claim;  I was under the impression that Jean-Claude Pressac advanced
this theory and was more or less alone in his belief.  But perhaps she
has endorsed Pressac's claim.  I don't know.

In any case, you go on to write that you have made a request of her and
the "Holocaust Museum" -- presumably the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
You write that you have asked them to provide you "with copies of such
conversion plans," for the mortuaries, the morgues -- and that you are
"still waiting for them to provide [you] with these plans."

Well, I'm happy to announce that your wait is over.  There are quite a
few plans which document the conversion process, according to Pressac in
his 1988 work, _Auschwitz: Technique and operation of the gas chambers_.

It should be pointed out that Pressac's theory about the morgues having
had non-homicidal intent at the outset, and only having had criminal
intent designed into them in summer 1942, is considered rather
controversial, and has yet to be adopted by the historical community. It
is more widely believed that the designers had criminal intent from the
outset.  Nevertheless, I will present his theory and allow you to make
up your own mind.  It is somewhat irrelevant, because your question, of
course, is whether those facilities had criminal intent _at_all_, not
when the earliest date is that such intent can be proven.

Nizkor has digitally scanned two of the most important of those plans
from their reproduction in Pressac's book, and has made them available
on the world-wide web.  I would like to present you with the URLs.

At these first URLs, you will find a detail of the central part of Krema
II at Auschwitz-Birkenau, as drawn in the blueprint known as Bauleitung
Drawing 932.  This was drawn on January 1, 1942.  According to Pressac,
it contains no proof of criminal intent.  It shows a corpse-chute leading
down into the basement, to directly in front of the the room labelled
"morgue," so that the bodies could be slid down into that chamber.  It
shows double-doors to that "morgue" opening inward.  And it shows no
opening leading to the morgue from the outside.

Here we have the detail of that critical section of Bauleitung Drawing
932, showing the the corpse chute, the doors opening inward, and no
other entrance nearby:

   http://www.almanac.bc.ca/cgi-bin/ftp.pl?camps/auschwitz/documents/pressac/bau-0932-detail.jpg

Here we have a transcript of Pressac's commentary on that blueprint:

   http://www.almanac.bc.ca/cgi-bin/ftp.pl?camps/auschwitz/documents/pressac/bau-0932-commentary

At these next URLs, you will find an overview and two details of the
same part of Krema II, but this time as rendered in the blueprint known
as Bauleitung Drawing 2003.  This one was drawn on December 19, 1942.
The double doors for the "morgue" have been changed to open outward
instead of inward.  The corpse-chute into the basement has been removed
(and this is confirmed in the blueprint for the ground floor:  the space
above it is another room, so it is really gone).  And there are stairs
that have been added.

Pressac's main question is:  why was the corpse-chute replaced by stairs
-- how were the corpses then supposed to get into the morgue?

The answer is:  the "corpses" walked down the stairs.

Of course, at the time, they were not corpses -- yet.

A few minutes after they entered the "morgue," the "corpses" tried to
get out, and pressed up against the locked door.  A few minutes after
that, they were indeed corpses.  They were then removed through the same
door they came in, which, on the new plans, opened outward to facilitate
that removal. They were then put onto the elevator next to that door,
which goes up to the furnace level.

In short, with only the previous blueprint and this next one, we have
the plans you asked for:  plans for the conversion of a morgue into a
room for killing.

Here we have an overview of the basement floor of Bauleitung Drawing 2003:

   http://www.almanac.bc.ca/cgi-bin/ftp.pl?camps/auschwitz/documents/pressac/bau-2003-keller.jpg

Here we have a detailed view of the critical section, showing the doors
opening outward, the corpse-chute removed, and the stairs added:

   http://www.almanac.bc.ca/cgi-bin/ftp.pl?camps/auschwitz/documents/pressac/bau-2003-keller-detail.jpg

Here we have a detailed view of the same section of the ground floor,
confirming that the corpse chute was indeed removed:

   http://www.almanac.bc.ca/cgi-bin/ftp.pl?camps/auschwitz/documents/pressac/bau-2003-erdgeschoss-detail.jpg

And here we have Pressac's commentary on that blueprint:

   http://www.almanac.bc.ca/cgi-bin/ftp.pl?camps/auschwitz/documents/pressac/bau-2003-commentary

In conclusion:

Dr. Toeben, you write on your home page:

   If I offend anybody because I show poor taste in my sometime blunt
   and honest questioning, then I apologise.

Since you realize that the nature of this matter is offensive to many
people, I hope you will forgive me if I am also blunt.  I must ask a
question that may seem offensive, especially since you and I don't know
one another:

Is your questioning really honest, Dr. Toeben?

An honest researcher on an "intellectual adventure," having been shown
the plans he asked for, would remove his request for those plans, and
begin the analysis process.

And if you are willing to begin such analysis, I would like to ask you
to share your opinion of these plans with me.  I'm fairly well-versed in
the history of the Birkenau Krema and their homicidal gas chambers in
particular, and I hope you and I might discuss them.

And, of course, you would remove your request for those plans, on your
home page, because to keep that request in place would imply that you
had not seen them, which would be dishonest.  That goes without saying.

So -- if you are interested, we can discuss the plans, and the other
proofs of criminal intent which Pressac mentions at the bottom of his
commentary on drawing 932:  the gas-tight door, the gas detectors, the
separation of the "morgue" drainage system from the main drainage
system, the wire mesh Zyklon insertion devices, and the dummy
showerheads.  As well as the various other pieces of physical evidence
that prove or corroborate the fact that the "morgue" was in fact a
homicidal gas chamber.

Are you interested, Dr. Toeben?

This open letter has been posted to alt.revisionism, and archived at
Nizkor as:

   http://www.almanac.bc.ca/cgi-bin/ftp.pl?people/t/toeben.fredrick/open-letter-960608
   http://www.almanac.bc.ca/cgi-bin/ftp.pl?orgs/australian/adelaide-institute/open-letter-960608

It has also been emailed to Dr. Toeben at fredadin@adam.com.au, and
Cc'd to the other three major Holocaust-denial sites on the web
(Greg Raven's IHR web site, Bradley R. Smith's web site, and Ernst
Zuendel's Zuendelsite) and to my colleagues at Nizkor.
-- 
 Jamie McCarthy          http://www.absence.prismatix.com/jamie/
 jamie@voyager.net     Co-Webmaster of http://www.almanac.bc.ca/
 Unless you specify otherwise, I assume pro-"revisionism" email
 to be in the public domain.            I speak only for myself.

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