From mvanalst@rbi.com Wed Jun 26 21:40:17 PDT 1996
Article: 46176 of alt.revisionism
Path: nizkor.almanac.bc.ca!news.island.net!news.bctel.net!newsfeed.direct.ca!op.net!en.com!in-news.erinet.com!imci5!imci4!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.zeitgeist.net!rbi142.rbi.com!user
From: mvanalst@rbi.com (Mark Van Alstine)
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Re: THE DIESEL EXHAUST CONTROVERSY
Date: Tue, 25 Jun 1996 05:43:35 -0700
Organization: rbi software systems
Lines: 318
Message-ID: 
References: <4qjugd$el5@news-e2b.gnn.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: rbi142.rbi.com
X-Newsreader: Yet Another NewsWatcher 2.0.5b5

In article <4qjugd$el5@news-e2b.gnn.com>, Widmann@gnn.com (Richard
Widmann) wrote:

> Revisionists - I thought I would share this recent article by Mr. 
> Grieb with the book.  He has some fascinating insights.
> 
> 
> Pat Buchanan and the Diesel Exhaust Controversy
> By Conrad Grieb 
> 
> (NOTE: The original of this article is available with graphics at:
> http://www.valleynet.com/~brsmith/gcgv/gcpatill.html)
> 
> 
> IN HIS MARCH 4, 1996 column in "Newsweek"
> magazine, George F. Will attacked Patrick J. Buchanan for his March 
> 17, 1990 column about Diesel exhaust. Buchanan had written: "Diesel 
> engines do not emit enough carbon monoxide to kill anybody. In 1988, 97 
> kids trapped 400 feet underground in a Washington, D.C., tunnel while two 
> locomotives spewed diesel exhaust into the car, emerged unharmed after 45 
> minutes...."

[snip]

Now, what _did_ Buchanan actually say in his article regarding diesel
exhaust? Why, he wrote the following [1]:

================================================================================

Buchanan, Pat: "Dividing Line."  _New York Post_, Saturday, March 17, 1990.

'IVAN THE TERRIBLE' - MORE DOUBTS

"...Finally, the death engine.  During the war, the underground government 
of the Warsaw Ghetto reported to London that the Jews of Treblinka were 
being electrocuted and steamed to death.

"The Israeli court, however, concluded that the murder weapon for 
850,000 was the diesel engine from a Soviet tank which drove its exhaust 
into the death chamber.  All died in 20 minutes, Finkenstein swore in 1945.

"The problem is: Diesel engines do not emit enough carbon monoxide to 
kill anybody.  In 1988, 97 kids, trapped 400 feet underground in a 
Washington, DC tunnel while two locomotives spewed diesel exhaust into the 
car, emerged unharmed after 45 minutes.

"Demjanjuk's weapon of mass murder cannot kill...." 

================================================================================

Here we see that Buchanan plays the "innuendo card,' something also
frequently done by Holocaust deniers, to plant a seed of doubt about the
credibility of the use of gas chambers at Treblinka by saying: "...were
being electrocuted and steamed to death." While it is true that during the
war such reports were made it should also be made clear, however, that
people making these reports observed from afar or related rumors.
Treblinka was not a place were Polish partisans could casually walk up to
the (electrified) fence and snap pictures of Jews being shot in droves or
herded by the hundreds into the gas chambers. And certainly, since the war
ended, and the various war crimes trials regarding the attrocities at
Treblinka taking place, there have been numerous testimonies detailing the
methods by which hundreds of thousands of people who were gassed to death
with deisel exhaust. 

Furthermore, in saying that the "Israeli court, however, concluded"
Buchanan is being slyly disingenous- implying that the court concluded
something new- and therefore controversial. That couldn't be further from
the truth, as it has been _known_ for decades by historians and Holocaust
researchers that the gas chambers Treblinka used deisel exhaust for method
of homicidal gassing. The court simply confirmed this known fact. 

The most outrageous part of this part of his commentery is, without
question, his saying "diesel engines do not emit enough carbon monoxide to
kill anybody." and then offering the train incident Washington, DC tunnel
as evidence in comparison that deseil exhaust cannot is harmless. 

Such a statement is simply stupifying. Not only is it wrong in the
implication that diesel exhaust piped into the gas chambers at Treblinka
would not kill, but such an assertion closely parallels a similair
assertions made by Holocaust denier Fritz Berg. So where did Buchanan get
his information to make such a patently false and preposterous conclusion?
Where did Buchanan get his information about the D.C. tunnel incident for
that matter? 

Well, perhaps Jamie McCarthy can help shed some light on this? in his
article about Buchanon [2] he writes:

================================================================================

The question is, where did Buchanan get his information for the above
column?  Who told him that the deaths of 850,000 people (in fact,
between 1.5 and 2.0 million people) were imaginary?

According to Jacob Weisberg, in his article "The Heresies of Pat
Buchanan" in the October 22, 1990 issue of The New Republic, "Buchanan
stands by his bizarre claim about the diesel engines, but refuses to
discuss it on the record.  Suffice it to say that he embraces a bolder
debunking claim than he is yet willing to endorse in print.  ...  Where
did he get the anecdote [about the children in the tunnel]?  'Somebody
sent it to me.'"

On page five is a photocopy of a Washington Post article on May 13,
1988: "5th Graders' Trip Turns to Terror in Train Tunnel."  (Why do
newspapers always insist on such stupid alliteration in headlines?)
Above the article is typed "For the inevitable victory of decency,
free speech, and historical truth!"  Below it is written (and I've
reproduced the typos and other errors exactly):

   _SCHOOLCHILDREN UNHARMED BY DIESEL EXHAUST!_
   
   Nothing surprising about this, we would say, since it has been long
   known that the exhaust from Diesel engines is, though malodorous,
   not especially toxic.  But why ist this of relevance to a
   German-American organization?  And why this mailing?
   
   Because _our_ children _are_ still being _poisoned_ by the
   loathsome Zionist "Holocaust" story, and:
   
   * Because, despite the of hundreds movies, books, TV docu-dramas,
   "eyewitness-testimonies" and warcrimes trial "evidence" -
   
   1. No one any longer claims "gassing" in the camps inside the
   German Reich (Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau, Mauthausen,
   Ravensbrueck, etc.).  In fact,a recently brought forward allied
   investigatory document reveals the authorities knew the stories
   were false as early as _1948_.
   
   2. The Auschwitz/Birkenau (and related Majdanek) "gas chamber"
   story, the very _cornerstone_ of the entire "Holocaust" legend
   (though long discounted by the sophisticated), has just been dealt
   the final death blow.  In Toronto on April 20th, 1988, Mr. Fred
   Leuchter, an American engineer with over 25 years of experience in
   the design and construction of gas chamber for execution of
   criminals...

At this point it's obvious where the article is going.  The remainder of
page five and all of page six is devoted to Holocaust-denial.  One
assumes that one particular section would have caught Mr. Buchanan's
eye, considering that his cause at the time was exonerating Nazi SS
member John Demjanjuk:

   ...that the ruthlessly efficient, evil Germans Exterminated Millions
   of Jews at three tiny (and long since virtually vanished) transit
   camps near the Polish Eastern border (Belzec, Sobibor, and
   Treblinka) - - and did so (though some early versions referred to
   "steam" or "suffocation") by means of _DIESEL EXHAUST_ "from a
   Russian T-34 tank".  (One assumes the tank was operated by John
   Demjanjuk, who no doubt clubbed the "950,000" victims of Treblinka
   into the "gas chamber", and then sprinted around the back, lept
   into his tank, and started 'er up!)

In short, it looks suspiciously like Mr. Buchanan received a
Holocaust-denial newsletter in the mail and, accepting its claims as
true, reprinted them in his nationally-syndicated column.

His column should sound very familiar to anyone who's familiar with
Holocaust-denial literature of the last decade or two:  "group
fantasies" of Holocaust survirors;  "half the 20,000 survivor
testimonies are considered 'unreliable'";  "electrocuted or steamed to
death...The Israeli court, however, concluded";  and, finally, of
course, "Diesel engines do not emit enough carbon dioxide to kill
anybody."  The chances are good that, if I looked hard enough, I could
find those exact quotes in literature published by such organizations at
the Institute for Historical Review.

Whether Patrick Buchanan is a revisionist, or merely a journalist who
let his biases convince him to pass on frothing-at-the-mouth
anti-Semitism as truth, is left as an exercise to the reader.  But
remember Jacob Weisberg's cryptic comment, presumably based on comments
made off the record, that "he embraces a bolder debunking claim than
he is yet willing to endorse in print."  And note that the only letter
to the New Republic protesting Weisbers article was written by Mona
Charen;  her letter was entirely rhetorical and contested none of
the facts.

================================================================================

But what about the claims that deisel exhaust cannot kill? 

Well, the air we breathe contains 21% oxygen by volume. If the oxygen is
reduced below 6%, the following things will happen in progression:
Respiratory distress, convulsions, cessation of breathing, and then
ventricular fibrillation of the heart and death. To reduce the oxygen
concentration in deisel exhaust to as low as 6%, the condition needed to
kill "all" members of any intended group of victims, a diesel engine would
have to operate at a fuel/air ratio of about 0.048, which is close to full
load. In fact, by adjusting the fuel/air ratio, diesel engines can
generate carbon monoxide concentrations of approximately 1% and oxygen
concentrations of less than 2% at fuel/air ratios less than
stoichiometric. This is below the lethal oxygen deprivation threshold.
Working a deisel engine like this might be hard on it, wearing it out
sooner, but in the case of the Nazis at Treblinka, they were using
salvaged deisel engines from damaged and abandoned Russian tanks. There
were plenty of those laying about.[3] 

Now, the second generation of gas chambers at Treblinka were small: 4 x 8
meters and 2 meters high. (The first generation were 4 x 4 meters and 2.6
meters high.) A _room_ was attached to the gassing building and contained
a diesel engine which piped its exhaust into the gas chambers. The
gas-chamber were also air-tight, and had hermetically sealed doors which
has a small glass windows in them. Combined the gas chambers could hold a
maximum of 3,800 people.[4] But did they work? Could the Nazis actually
kill people in them? Eyewitness testimony says so [5]:

================================================================================

EXCERPT from Stenographic Report of Interrogation of defendant YEGER',
A.I., dated April 2, 1948.

Junior Lieutenant POPOV, an investigator of the Investigation
Department of the Ministry of State Security of the Ukraine, Molotov
Region, interrogated as defendant -

      YEGER', Aleksandr Ivanovich, born in 1918, native of the village
      of Sbrodovka, Tatishchev district, Saratov Region, a German,
      citizen of the USSR.

...From August to September 1942 I served as platoon commander in a
company of guards in the Treblinka death camp.

Question: What was the purpose of the Treblinka death camp?

Answer: The Treblinka death camp was created by the Germans for the
mass extermination of citizens of Jewish nationality, brought to this
camp from all countries of Europe occupied by Fascist troops. Trains
arrived every day from this camp, bringing in citizens of Jewish
nationality from the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Poland, France,
Italy, German itself and other countries in Europe under temporary
occupation by German troops.

Question: What did the Treblinka death camp look like?

interwoven with the barbed wire. The camp was shaped like a quadrangle
and four watchtowers stood at each corner. Inside the camp there were
three more watchtowers. The camp was divided into two sections. 

[...]

The second section was the receiving point of the people destined to
die. A railroad branch came there from the station of Treblinka. The
railroad terminated with a platform and two barracks, near which
unloading of the trains took place. Here the citizens of Jewish
nationality were hustled out of the cars and into the barrack
surrounded by barbed wire. 

[...] 

Naked and shorn they then went down a narrow path bordered
with barbed wire, past the "cashiers". In the barracks where the
citizens of Jewish nationality were undressed, they were told that
they must hand over all their valuables and money to the "cashier" and
that after they leave the bath house, the valuables would be returned
to them. And so, passing by the "cashier's booth" the prisoners handed
over all their valuables to the "cashier's booth", where a German,
especially appointed for this purpose, received them. First the women
and children and then the men were hustled pas [sic] the "cashier's
booth". 

[...] 

Having passed the cashiers, the prisoners came to a special building
without windows and were led in. The inside of the building had the
appearance of a bathhouse with separate cabins on both sides of a
corridor. Here the prisoners were pushed in already by force into the
chambers. These chambers resembled a batch chamber with a shower, but
in reality, exhaust gas was fed through the pipelines and the shower
vents. About 400 people, women, children, old men and adult men were
pushed in together into each chamber. When the chambers had been
completely filled, a motor was started which fed exhaust gas into the
chamber. The doors of the chambers were hermetically closed and the
people were immured in the chambers for 15-20 minutes after which they
died. In the doors of each chamber there were portholes through which
specially appointed Germans watched the process of asphyxiation. When
they were sure that all the people in the chamber had died, the
chamber was opened on the other side and the "working crew" threw out
the bodies which were then loaded on small flatcars and brought to
pits prepared for this purpose on the territory of the camp. The pits
were fenced in with barbed wire. The bodies were thrown into the pits
and lightly covered with earth. When one pit was filled, another was
prepared, and so the process of extermination continued on a daily
basis.

[...]

================================================================================

So much for Mr. Buchanan's "authority" on deisel engines and history. Not
to mention his integrity. 

[snip]

Mark


Sources: 

1. http://www.almanac.bc.ca/cgi-bin/ftp.pl?people/b/buchanan.pat/column.0390.001

2. http://www.almanac.bc.ca/cgi-bin/ftp.pl?people/b/buchanan.pat/column.0390.002

3. Message ID <4fj0s9$r1a@nizkor.almanac.bc.ca>,
kmcvay@nizkor.almanac.bc.ca (Ken McVay OBC): "Diesel engines & toxidity."
Regarding Mike Stein's discussion of the  errors and deceptions contained
in Friedrich Berg's "The Diesel Gas Chambers: Myth Within a Myth."

4.
http://www.almanac.bc.ca/cgi-bin/ftp.pl?camps/aktion.reinhard/treblinka/treblinka.gas4

5.
http://www.almanac.bc.ca/cgi-bin/ftp.pl?camps/aktion.reinhard/treblinka/yeger.002

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes 
not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties--but
right through every human heart--and all human hearts." 

-- Alexander Solzhenitsyn, "The Gulag Archipelago"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Home ·  Site Map ·  What's New? ·  Search Nizkor