Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day010.14 Last-Modified: 2000/07/20 Q. Normal means standard, does it not, in that context? A. Yes. The SS produced standard designs for concentration camps which were handed out to people who were building in the field. What happens is that these sheets were produced in 1941 to give a local concentration camp kommandant some guidelines of where to start when he was ordered to create a concentration camp. These designs include two designs for delousing facilities and in those designs these spaces are called Gaskammer, for example. Q. Would there be very much talk of these gas chambers amongst the prisoners, do you think? Would there be a lot of gossip about them? A. May I complete the answer because we were talking about the name of the thing? They use Gaskammer. Then in 1944 at a certain moment in Auschwitz they started to use the cells specially in relationship to the building where these four cells are being adjusted to the Siemens procedure. They start to call them normal Gaskammer, which means standard or normal gas chambers. So then the question is in relationship to what? Is it in relationship to an abnormal one, which is a homicidal one, which some people have concluded, or is it in relationship to some other gas chamber? Q. Professor van Pelt, you are familiar with the fact that the German world "normal" is not translated as "normal", . P-117 it is translated as "standard"? A. Standard. Q. "Normalfilm" is 35 millimetre film, for example. A. I think the first translation I give was "standard". Q. In other words, you cannot draw adventurous conclusions from the fact that they called something a standard gas chamber? A. I said some people have done that. I did not say I did myself. Q. Would it not be just a standard piece of equipment delivered by Degesch or by Tesh who actually manufactured gas chambers for precisely this purpose and they had standard sizes? A. You interrupted me. My own conclusion was indeed that "normal Gaskammer" probably referred to the ten cubic metre standard Degesch gas chambers. Q. That has nothing to do with the fact that, because we are calling this one the normal one, therefore there were abnormal ones somewhere else in the camp. This was misleading for you to state that, was it not? MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. He said to the contrary. He does not himself subscribe to the theory that normal Gaskammer implies an abnormal Gaskammer where homicidal events took place? A. If I can just finish this in one sentence, then another word is being used in Auschwitz at the time. We find it . P-118 on many bills and also documents by Degesh at the time in 1944 which actually is about the Zyklon-B gas chambers in Auschwitz I, and they used the word Begasungskammer. This is very unusual, but there are a number of documents which use the word Begasungskammer. MR IRVING: The sense of that would be the gassing chamber, would it not? A. Yes. It is almost like adding gas, like applying gas to, the gas supplying chamber, maybe that would be a translation. Q. I agree with that, yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry, I am interrupting as well. A. I have finished. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is there any significance in the V E R at the beginning of Vergasungskammer as a German speaker? A. I am not a German. I am not a native German speaker. Dutch is still ---- Q. You seem fairly familiar with it. A. I would say no. Vergasung seems to be a transitive verb. I do not attach any particular significance to the fact that it is used like that. MR IRVING: My Lord, I will be putting to your Lordship a number of documents with the word Vergasung in, which obviously are completely innocent, in an attempt to persuade your Lordship in that direction. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Good. . P-119 MR IRVING: Professor van Pelt, have you seen invoices or delivery notes from the Degesch company relating to supplies of Zyklon-B shipments to the concentration camps at Auschwitz and at Oranienburg? A. Yes. I think 12 of these invoices were submitted in the Nuremberg trials. Q. The original documents are there, are they not? A. Yes. I have seen a number. All the invoices are for the same one amount, except one,, which is a slightly higher amount, so I have seen a copy of the standard amount and one for the higher amount. I have not seen all the invoices in the original. Q. Had you seen these at the time you wrote your book, or just between writing your book and writing your expert report? A. No. I have seen these earlier. Q. Before you wrote your book? A. Yes. Q. Yes. Did you do any kind of analysis of those invoices to see the rate at which these supplies were being delivered to Auschwitz as compared with Oranienburg? A. No. The invoices themselves, and I have made a particular comment on it once you raised the issue in your letter of December, I do not think are particularly important as evidence one way or another about the use of Zyklon-B in Auschwitz, because there are actually much better sources . P-120 available to us if one wants to raise that issue, which is the Tesh and Stabanov accounts of total deliveries of Zyklon B to Auschwitz in 1942 and 1943. Q. Am I right in saying that the chief accountant of the Tesh company had a pocket notebook in which he entered all the amounts that he supplied to Auschwitz and to various other armed force branches and so on on a monthly basis? He kept this notebook and it was introduced in evidence in that trial? A. It was introduced as evidence. I think there were also supporting documents for that. Q. But am I right in suggesting that these invoices to which I refer, the delivery notes which were introduced in Nuremberg, the 12 delivery notes, relating to the supply of Zyklon-B quantities to Auschwitz concentration camp and to Oranienburg concentration camp, they are relatively random? In other words, first of all, they are sequentially numbered, and the deliveries are sequentially numbered? A. Yes, but ---- Q. They are in sequence so there is nothing missing? A. Yes, but these particular invoices come with a very particular history. Q. Are you implying that there is anything suspect about the integrity of these documents? A. No, I do not imply that at all, but I think the way they . P-121 were generated -- these were an appendix. They were handed over together with an account of how they came in the possession of the man who had it. Q. We will come to the man to whom they are addressed in a minute. A. This man gives a record of the background of these particular invoices which had to do with a particular request which came to him from a certain Sturmanfuhrer Gunter in Berlin. Q. Who was Eichmann's assistant, am I correct? A. Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, can I ask you for my benefit because remember this is a completely new point to me. Can you put what you suggest one gets from the Oranienburg invoices in relation to the quantity of use of Zyklon-B there? MR IRVING: It is my very next question, my Lord. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Good. Thank you. MR IRVING: Am I right in suggesting that identical quantities, broadly speaking, of Zyklon-B were delivered to Auschwitz and Oranienburg over the time covered by those 12 invoices? A. The invoices talk about identical quantities to Oranienburg and Auschwitz. But the important question is, is this all the deliveries of Zyklon-B to Auschwitz? Then we have to go back to actually the origin of these . P-122 documents. Q. We are looking just at these 12 documents to start with? A. If we only look at these 12 documents. Q. Can you remember my question, please, Professor van Pelt, where I said is it correct to say that the deliveries are numbered in sequence and that there are no missing numbers? A. I do not remember, but I will take your word for it. Q. Thank you very much. Am I right in saying that it has never been suggested that there were mass homicidal killings by gas chambers in Oranienburg? A. No, there were some experimental probably, accounts of experimental gassings of some Russians in Satzenhausen which was in fact a concentration camp in Oranienburg, but apart from that ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: In 1944? A. 1942. MR JUSTICE GRAY: We are talking about 1944? A. I just want to be precise. The general question was posed and I do not want to say that there was never any Zyklon-B gassing. There are reports of that in that city. MR IRVING: Am I correct in saying that these invoices to which you are referring are from the early months of 1944? My memory says that. A. Yes. Q. Can you tell the court to whom these invoices were . P-123 personally addressed? A. They were addressed to a man named Kurt Gerstein. Q. G E R S T E I N. What is on the next line of the address, can you remember, at Auschwitz concentration camp? A. I have a copy somewhere. Q. It seems important. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Berlin? A. I have it in my report after page 11. MR IRVING: Your Lordship will remember that Professor Evans said that I had not the slightest reason for saying that these were going for fumigation purposes in the camp. What does the next line read? A. After his name? Q. Yes. Does it not say that it is going to the Entwesungsabteilung or words to that effect? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Not in my copy. A. No, it is not in the next line. It is actually in the invoice bit itself. MR IRVING: Yes? A. It says we did send at the 8th March from Dessau with a Wehrmacht Vorbrief, which means an army kind of transportation voucher, of the jedestatt Verwaltung Dessau. Q. Administration? A. At Dessau to the concentration camp in Auschwitz, the department of disinfestation and anzeufer is a plague. . P-124 Q. It is tortology, really. They are both the same thing are they not? A. No they are not exactly. Q. Disinfecting and disinfestation? A. Seuche is an epidemic so anti-epidemic department. Q. Epidemic control? A. Epidemic control department, yes. Q. This was in fact Kurt Gerstein's position, was it not? A. Not in Auschwitz. He was employed at the Hygienic Institute in Oranienburg. Q. Is it not significant that these huge quantities of Zyklon pellets are being sent to the office in charge of epidemic control at Auschwitz? What use is made of them subsequently of course is another matter. But this deals with the system again? A. What is significant is who will receive Zyklon when it arrives in Auschwitz. Again, from my witness testimony, we know that it was exactly that department which controlled all Zyklon in Auschwitz, and ultimately that was one of the reasons also that doctors always had to be present when Zyklon was applied one way or the other. Q. Now that we are with the person of Kurt Gerstein, will you tell the court if he is one of your eyewitnesses in any respect when you write your report? A. No. Kurt Gerstein has made no statement whatsoever about Auschwitz or the gas chambers of crematoria 1, 2, 3, 4 and . P-125 5. Q. Have you placed any reliance on Kurt Gerstein in your report? A. I did not need to place any reliance in my work on Auschwitz since he has never made any testimony about Auschwitz. Q. Although he made some very detailed allegations about how many people were killed in the gas chambers elsewhere, and he gave figures for the quantities killed in the other gas chambers in the other camps, you are not prepared to draw conclusions about the general reliability of this kind of eyewitness? A. No. I do not think that at the moment the statement you made can be supported. I think that Kurt Gerstein has made a detailed account of a visit to Treblinka where he came in the summer of 1942. He made a detailed description of that.
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