Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day011.03 Last-Modified: 2000/07/20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is the undressing room on the right, is it? A. This will be then the undressing room and then the alleged gas chambers would be seen here, but you will see in more detail. You already can see here the two chimneys, the chimney of the beiluftung and the entluftung, of fresh air coming in, foul air coming out. We see in green where the systems are sitting. This is one of the pipes, that is one of the pipes, and this is then a probable reconstruction where that hot air would have come in, but again we do not have any blueprints for that. Then one would have come into this little corridor and then into this large morgue No. 2. If one takes that entry right under the autopsy rooms, this is what one would have seen. But was here at the site, based on the drawing of Olaire, we knew there was a ventilation . P-19 system in that thing, but we did not know how it looked like because it is not in the blueprints. It was brought in later. But Olaire depicted to, I have used Olaire as, basically, the depiction of the undressing as room as the basis for this thing. I am very sorry for the way the lighting has been depicted. This has been, basically, standard 1999 kind of light fixtures, and this is certainly not how it would have looked, the kind of way these light fixtures would have looked, but one gets a sense of how much light would have been in this room. This is the later staircase. This is the staircase which goes to the outside which was constructed in late 1943. What I am going to do now is actually go around the undressing room morgue No. 2, and take the second entrance which was the entrance which was used in the Hungarian action after it was constructed to get a more logical flow of people into the underground space. This entrance is also still there. You can see it. One would go down here and then enter in this underground space and, of course, see it then from a different perspective. Now you come into this large underground space and now, of course, the ventilation is on the right side instead of on the left side. MR IRVING: My Lord, can I ask occasional questions while we . P-20 have him on a particular picture? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Try not to interrupt the flow otherwise we will get lost, but, yes, I think that is not unreasonable. It is cross-examination. MR IRVING: If we could just go back to the previous picture? Can you go back? What kind of door would have been on that entrance? A. We do not know because there is one -- the door is not there and the entrance is available in two blueprints called "Zeichaufnahme" which means a picture, a description, of the actual situation, but these two blueprints do not show actually what kind of door. Q. So it could have been an air raid shelter door? A. I do not know. Q. Very well. A. So we are now in this underground space, what became the undressing room, as the Defence maintains. Now we go outside -- sorry, I will just go back. We go -- actually behind the columns there is an exit door and comes out in the little vestibule, and originally where I stand was the original entrance into this vestibule from above. That is the first staircase when we went down, and we see here the chimney going up, the entluftung chimney, taking the foul air out, and we see here a kind of computer model, this computer model, we see here basically the pipe coming off the undressing room going into that chimney, and we see . P-21 the second, we see a second pipe -- actually, I do not know why it is red right now, but in some way the ventilation system of the gas chamber would also have connected to this. We see here an elevator. Again I have to tell you they took kind took 1990's language for it, and then here the entrance into the morgue No. 1. Now, at that point again we have something of a difficulty, and the difficulty is that you see that there is one panel of the door is open, but the second one actually is closed. It is fixed. The blueprint shows, the last blueprint we have shows basically the double panelled door opening. But there is at a certain moment an order for this particular door, and from that order it is clear that only one of the panels moves and that the second thing was actually either closed by masonry or by the fixed panel. We can interpret that later, but in some way again I just want to point out at the moment what is in the blueprints, what is in inferred out of other documents and what, ultimately, is on the basis of eyewitness testimony. So this particular reconstruction is made on the basis of a combination of the blueprint and a particular order for this gastur, as it is called, of one metre by 100 -- one metre by almost two metres high, 192 centimetres high. We are now in the gas chamber or in morgue . P-22 No. 1. We have just walked in and this was the space one would have seen. There are, basically, the entluftung system, the foul air is being taken out at the bottom connected to that chimney, and we have here the fresh air being brought in from the top. Now, I will show you the blueprints in a moment because this only is to aid interpreting the blueprints. And then added in this particular thing which is not in the blueprints are three of the four Zyklon-B insertion columns. Now, so there is none at first column, at third column, right there in the fifth column, they are alternating on the left and the right side. I just want to go back for a moment. The sub-division of this room in two rooms which happened later in 1943 would have occurred on this line here, on the fourth column, halfway. Again, there is no blueprint for that. Then we go back into this elevator space and we see here the elevator, there were actually doors brought in. There were no doors and we see here this platform going up. MR IRVING: It is a bit like a builder's hoist, is that correct? A. Yes. That is what they actually used because they were not able to get the right elevator. Then this would have been the incineration room, of which we actually also have . P-23 photos. These are the incinerators, these triple muffle incinerators. At the back is the coke supply. This is also the fire grate and this is where the ashes are taken out. So at a certain moment there is a description in Tauber. What happens is that he has put in here, but what he says is that actually they start to fire, not that they put a fire in the ash muffle. So he is not actually being burned directly, and so, if you read his description, this is the ash kind of muffle. One drawing which is important is this. Could you see from the inside of the incineration room, the roof of the morgue No. 1? We have introduced on here, I think a little high, I must admit, these alleged insertion points, but certainly, because Tauber says that he is inside the incineration room, and I asked my student to actually step back a few steps from the window, so he does not stand right at the window but, if he was standing back at say a metre and a half into the space, look through the window, would he have been able to see anything? He actually describes the situation and this is what he could have seen at those points. MR JUSTICE GRAY: There is another witness who describes looking out from the incineration room, is there not? A. I think that only Tauber does that. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I thought there was another one. A. There is another one who sees it from the outside. . P-24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Maybe I am confused. A. This is the question. It is, from the inside of the incineration room, what do you see? We go now back to the diagrams and I am going to turn the diagrams around in four basic exposures, every 90 degrees we turn around, first without the heating duct and then with the heating duct. So again, we have here the incineration room, the flues going to the chimney. We have here the entluftung, which is all green, going from the bottom of the gas chamber or morgue No. 1, and we have here the one system, only one pipe attached to the ceiling of morgue No. 2, all connected to this one chimney. It is clearly indicated in the blueprints except this one which was constructed later. We have here the chimney house, so to speak. We have here the Beiluftung going from the second little chimney going in. Then we have here the staircase with that slide in between, just indicated again rather vaguely. We tried to create a wall transparent so that you can get some sense of what is happening there. Then I am going to show the same thing. I am going slowly to rotate it every ten seconds or so. One can look at from a different perspective. Now we are looking at it from the west almost, and one can see very clearly again the size of the undressing room. If I am going too fast, please tell me because . P-25 I will stop. Here we have the staircase going into the basement, second staircase added later. Underground flues again. It is important of course in relationship also to crematorium 1 where there was an underground flue connecting the building to the chimneys. The chimney seems to be standing separately, does it mean it is not connected? OK, so that was the reconstruction. So, with that in mind, I feel that we can go to the actual blueprints and so this is a heading of one of the typical ones. Is there anything you would like to see again before we go in here? MR JUSTICE GRAY: No but one thing did occur to me as you were going through. Was there any heating in the undressing room? A. There was no heating in the undressing room. MR RAMPTON: Could I ask one question before we leave the picture? It is out of order, I know. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I think that is sensible, do you not? MR IRVING: Perfectly, my Lord. MR JUSTICE GRAY: We are not exactly playing by the rules at the moment. MR RAMPTON: Professor van Pelt, can I do it now before you come to the plans and the documents? You showed us the . P-26 new entrance to the undressing room in 43. A. Yes. Q. Do you know of any document which refers to gas tight doors for Leichenkeller 2? A. No, I do not. The only document which refers to a gas door quite literally is in relationship to morgue No. 1, not to morgue No. 2. MR RAMPTON: It arose out of what your Lordship asked. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, thank you. A. So this is a typical heading. This is one of the original blueprints in early 1942 because we are dealing here with an adaptation. What is very important -- I am going now to introduce, and I am very sorry, I do not think they are actually in my expert reports, and I do not really know how to do it, but this is the very, very first sketch which was ever made. It was made in October 1941. It is in my book. It shows basically the same arrangement. The crematorium is slightly different. They are a number of things, but we are here at the ground floor. You see incineration hole. You see here you the autopsy rooms, the elevator more narrow than in the final one but there is the elevator. There is the entrance to the side which is the one with the slide and the two stairs, the coke storage. We have the office here, we have some bathrooms and so on, and then here we have the sauzuanlage as it says, which means the ventilators, not three around the . P-27 chimney but one system preceding the chimney, the chimney standing asymmetrically, and here the trash incinerator. So this is the very first design. As you probably realize now, the design was changed a little bit. What is quite important in this first design is the particular arrangement of the underground space. The only access to the underground space at this moment, and we do not know what has happened here or there, but I do not think there is any access on that side, but we have here the stairs going down with the slide, and then of course the elevator coming down right there.
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