“There is a principal which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance — that principal is contempt prior to investigation.”
— Herbert Spencer

Ok, video 2 out of 2.  Not as long as the first one, so hopefully this will be the last post I make on this.  Let’s do it.

 

Point #4: Auschwitz was not a Tropical Resort (at least not for the Jews)

So getting past some of the frivolous bullshit, Myles mentions how German Commandant Arthur Liebehenschel replaced Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer as commander of Auschwitz on December 1, 1943 (ok, it was Rudolph Hoess, but now I want a fucking Santa Clause crossover with Nazis).  He was commander for 5 months, and during that time he expanded a water reservoir into a pool for people to swim in.  This is to attack the notion brought up by the documentary that the Jews were treated so well in these camps that they had a pool to swim in during their stay.  2 problems with this according to Myles:

1.) The pool not being built until Arthur’s arrival implies the Jews were treated like shit because they didn’t have a pool to swim in at a concentration camp, and thus goes against the message of the documentary that they were treated borderline luxuriously.

2.) The pool could only be used by SS men and privileged Aryan prisoners.

I’m not going to get into point 1 for now, other than to say he’s right about Arthur being responsible for improving the reservoir into a pool (and at the very least constructing some diving boards).  But regarding point 2, that is also a deceptive statement.

When I visited Auschwitz in 1998, I asked to see the swimming pool, but I was told that it was not on the tour. My tour guide told me that there were two swimming pools, one for the prisoners and one for the SS men, but she would not show me either pool. When I returned in 2005, the swimming pool for the prisoners was still not included on the tour, but I found it myself as I wandered around on my own in the early morning.

The swimming pool is now called a water reservoir on a sign board that was erected some time after my visit to Auschwitz in October 2005. The words on the sign board are in Polish, English and Hebrew; the sign reads as follows: “Fire brigade reservoir built in the form of a swimming pool, probably in early 1944.”

— Source

So the (Jew) prisoners eventually got their own pool.  Seems a little strange they would even bother making the effort if they were in the middle of the genocidal version of the Final Solution (which was proposed in 1942, so I would imagine the slaughter would be underway by that time).

That stuff aside, now we get to the good stuff.  Crematorium I in Auschwitz.  And this is finally the point where Myles makes some very strong (counter) arguments.  After Toben points out how the Crematorium wasn’t built to be a gas chamber and is incapable of being used as a gas chamber for various reasons:

Likewise, Crematorium I did not always contain a gas chamber. Originally it was equipped with two (later three) cremation ovens with a morgue room behind them. It was not until late in 1941 that this morgue room was sealed up and five holes were cut into the roof, allowing Zyklon-B to be dropped in so it could be briefly used as a gas chamber.

Ok, so it needs to be determined if Crematorium I was ever used as a gas chamber to kill people (and not to disinfect clothing and bed sheets, to also eliminate lice and typhus and whatnot).

It helps to get a visual image of this place:

So this is the chamber the prisoners were put in (supposedly they were convinced it was a shower room when going in here), where they would be locked in, and have Zyklon-B (made up of HCN, hydrocyanic acid; prussic acid) pellets dropped in.  And where were they dropped in from?  From the chimneys/vents on the roof.

And how does Zyklon-B work?  Well, apparently, there seem to be differing opinions on this.

Zyklon-B is a powerful insecticide which serves as a carrier for the gas Hydrocyanic acid, or HCN. It usually comes in the shape of small pellets or disks. (See Breitman, 203, for more detail about the early use of the gas at Auschwitz) HCN is the cause of death following the application of Zyklon-B. While interacting with iron and concrete, it creates Hydrocyanic compounds, which Leuchter admitted were found in the ruins of the gas chamber in Krematoria II. His finding was confirmed by findings of the Polish government.

HCN is extremely poisonous to humans. It is used in execution gas chambers in the US; the first was built in Arizona in 1920.

• Holocaust denial often includes the claim that Germany in the 1940’s could not handle the “technical difficulties” inherent in using HCN for execution.

As noted above, these “difficulties” were easily solved in 1920. Moreover, the Germans had a lot of experience with HCN, as it was extensively used for delousing.

There were two types of gas chambers in Auschwitz: those used for delousing clothes (“delousing gas chambers”) and those used for killing people on a massive scale (“extermination gas chambers”). The delousing gas chambers were a standard feature, and were left intact by the SS (the extermination gas chambers were dynamited in an effort to conceal criminal traces).

• Holocaust denial asserts that because more Hydrocyanic compounds were found in the delousing chambers in Auschwitz than in the ruins of the extermination gas chambers, mass murder using the gas could not have taken took place within, because the reverse would be true.

HCN is much more effective on warm-blooded animals, including humans, than it is on insects. The exposure period (to HCN) is much greater in delousing operations than in homicidal gassings. This means that a much lower concentration is necessary to kill people than to get rid of lice, etc. In delousing, concentrations of up to 16,000 ppm (parts per million) are sometimes used, and exposure time can be up to 72 hours; while 300 ppm will kill people in fifteen minutes or so.

[…]

For HCN, a concentration of 300 ppm (parts per million) kills humans within a few minutes.

— Source

 

‘Zyklon B is known as prussic acid. Only one in two people can smell the cyanide – but it has the smell of bitter almonds and marzipan.

‘It is lighter than air and penetrates by inhalation into the smallest branches of the lungs. There it blocks cellular respiration.’

He went on: ‘The brain and the heart are first attacked. It begins with a stinging feeling in the chest, then it can cause spasmodic pain – similar to epileptic seizures. Death by cardiac-circulatory arrest occurs usually within seconds. Cyanide is one of the fastest-acting poisons.’

[…]

Dr Anders said it was unlikely that the poison worked at the same speed in all areas given the size of the gas chamber and the unfortunate people who were breathing lower concentrations would suffer much more.

He added: ‘A lower intoxication leads to a blockage of blood in the lungs and thereby causes shortness of breath.’

‘Commonly one speaks of water in the lungs, breathing will then always deeper and stronger, because the body craves after oxygen. The agony could last more than half an hour.’

[…]

‘The gas is lighter than air… It ascends in space, width first under the ceiling. In closed rooms, you must specify height as a risk factor.’

This meant that taller individuals died in agony first while smaller people, and children, could see the suffering taking place over their heads.

— Source

So, because a lower concentration would be enough to kill humans compared to the higher concentration needed to sanitize clothing and sheets, less was used in the gas chambers that allegedly killed thousands (or hundreds of thousands), which accounts for their being little to no trace of Zyklon-B in these chambers.  Their traces are usually marked by a blue hue stained into the walls, indicating the Zyklon-B reaction to the iron in the walls.  Plus much of their traces would dissipate after the 40+ years before the first revisionists came to inspect and test these chambers for traces of Zyklon-B. The earliest of these tests is known as the Leuchter Reports, named after Fred A. Leuchter.  And it apparently didn’t help that the chamber they inspected wasn’t used that often:

In 1944, the building was converted into an air raid shelter.  […]  Its ovens were dismantled, the holes that were once used to drop Zyklon-B into were filled in, toilets were installed, and the gas chamber was subdivided with strong walls to support the ceiling. This is probably one of the reasons why it remained after the war when attempts were made by the Nazis to destroy all evidence of these gas chambers.

After the war, the camp was turned into a museum and, using blueprints dated September 25, 1941 and eyewitness testimonies, the gas chamber in Chamber 1 was restored. This is why it looks like the holes in the roof of the gas chamber have been smashed – because they have been, just like the originals were.

[…]

The [Leuchter] report analyzed multiple pieces of brick and the remains of the crematoria and gas chambers at Auschwitz (without the camps permission). The report stated that it was unable to find evidence of any cyanide-based compounds in the homicidal gas chambers and, therefore, they could not have been used to kill people. It goes on to say that it was able to find evidence of these compounds in Auschwitz’s delousing chambers.

This is a huge cornerstone of the revisionist conspiracy theory. They believe that Zyklon-B was only used for delousing infested clothing, and that it was not used to murder people. In the documentary, this section is even called “real gas chambers made for saving lives”.

There are multiple crippling errors with the Leuchter report, starting with the fact that the synthesis of these iron-based cyanide compounds is by no means a categorical sign of cyanide exposure. It requires a very high concentration of cyanide over a large period of time, and a source of iron.

There was also a problem with sampling in the Leuchter report. Rather than just testing the surface of the gas chambers, entire chunks of brick and mortar were smashed and ground up, then analyzed. This diluted these cyanaide-based compounds to below the detectable amount for the lab they hired.

The reason why they were able to decide the compounds using the same method in the walls of the delousing chambers was for two reasons. The first is that they survived the war, and were not exposed to the elements.  The second is that Zyklon-B was used in these rooms in a much higher concentration, and for a far longer time, in order to kill the parasites. Because of crackpots like Töben and the unnamed Australian narrator, competent scientist have tested the walls and found, under double-blind conditions, evidence of cyanide-based compounds.

In my opinion the “fake gas chamber” and the lack of cyanide-based compounds detected in the rubble of the gas chambers is the best evidence these “revisionists” have that the holocaust was faked. None of it stands up against even the slightest bit of scrutiny and, most of the time, it takes a massive leap of faith to believe in.

And to my surprise, Myles actually makes a visual reference to one of the more popular (though banned from Amazon) Holocaust revisionist book series, the Holocaust Books (yeah, I know, original title for a series), volume 16, the Leuchter Reports.

Anyway, that’s a lot to take in, and it doesn’t seem like these points can be refuted.  At least not easily.  So I’ll start with a small one that’s borderline tangent.  So earlier I quoted a source stating the first gas chambers (used for executions) were built in Arizona, USA in 1920.  And the first executions in those chambers were carried out in 1924.

The gas generator consisted of a crockery pot filled with a dilute solution (18%) of sulfuric acid with a mechanical release lever. The chamber had to be scrubbed with ammonia after the execution, as did the executee. Some 25 — 13-gram sodium cyanide pellets were used and generated a concentration of 3200 ppm in a 600 cubic foot chamber.

[…]

All systems employed the gas generator technique because it was the most effective and simplest procedure available up until the late 1960’s. No system ever was designed to use, or ever used, Zyklon B. The reason for this is quite simple. Zyklon B takes too long to evaporate (or boil off) the HCN from the inert carrier and requires heated air and a temperature controlled system. Not only is the gas not instant, but a danger of explosion always exists.

The overall gas mixture is generally below the lower explosion limit (LEL) of the gas air mixture of 0.32% (since the mixture should not normally exceed 3200 ppm), but the concentration of the gas at the generator (or as in the case of Zyklon B, at the inert carrier) is much greater and may well be 90% to 99% by volume. This is almost pure HCN and this condition may exist at points of time in pockets in the chamber. The ambient air temperature or the heated air temperature must be considerably higher and artificially controlled for Zyklon B (since evaporation is strictly a physical process), where, with the gas generator, the temperature can be lower and uncontrolled since the chemical reaction in the generator is self-catalytic after starting. Electrical contacts and switches must be kept at a minimum, explosion-proof and outside the chamber. Technology available only since the late 1960’s has enabled the Missouri system, which will be the most advanced system ever built, to utilize a gas vaporizer and delivery system for liquid HCN, eliminating the dangerous of handling and disposal of the prussic acid residual after the execution.

Zyklon B, which would seem on the surface to have been a more efficient means of supplying gas and eliminating the prussic acid residue problem, was not the solution to the problem. In fact, the use of Zyklon B would have increased the execution time and therefore lengthened the time for handling the dangerous gas and, also, because of the heater requirements, caused a risk of explosion. An alternate solution would have been to heat the gas externally and circulate the gas/air mixture through plumbing outside the chamber and back into the chamber as the DEGESCH delousing equipment did, but this would only have caused a greater risk of leakage and hazard to the users. It is poor design and extremely dangerous to allow the gas outside the pressurized chamber. The DEGESCH equipment was intended to be utilized in the open, or in a well-ventilated area, and only in the presence of trained personnel and not with untrained people present.

— Source

So there’s a potential problem.  So if we are to believe that Zyklon-B was very potent towards killing humans (so potent that it’s said to work better against humans than it does against insects and clothing, which I find to be strange), even to the point that not too much needed to be used to get the job done (thus leaving less of a trace of it in the death chambers over these years), then what exactly did they do to air out these rooms once everyone was dead?  How did they air it out well enough and safely enough to where Germans (it would have to be German guards who went in there, otherwise Jewish prisoners would blow the whistle on the whole think shouting, “Jesus titty fucking Christ!  These are gas chambers, not showers!  Everyone rise up and revolt before they kill another few hundred of us!”) could go in and drag out the bodies and cremate them in another chamber in another building across the way, without any prisoners noticing (lest these fit labor workers start a prison riot; because they were used for labor work while in these camps, thus they were fit enough)?

Myles explains:

According to the book, ‘Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp‘, a large fan was installed to remove the gas after it was used to murder people. However, the proximity of nearby buildings was still a problem. For this reason and more, the gas chamber in Crematorium I was only used for a small amount of time – from February 15, 1942, until sometime in the fall of 1942.

[So] only about 100,000 people were killed in this gas chamber.

So why isn’t that large fan at the Auschwitz camp today?  Because it was reconstructed using blueprints from 1941, before the fan was installed.  Regardless, this doesn’t address the other issue of needing warm temperatures to evaporate the HCN from the carriers (ie the pellets), especially considering it was almost always cold in those places.  Then again, perhaps the room warmed up enough with all those bodies huddled together.  Maybe they also had a heater to keep it warm?  Maybe warm shower water was used in combination?  At a temperature that reached over 78.3 degrees (the required temperature to vaporize HNC out of the pellets).  Doubtful.  Besides, it’s very dangerous to have anything electric and heat-generating near this stuff unless it’s in a controlled environment (gas chambers filled with living people do not count).

The reason for this is quite simple. Zyklon B takes too long to evaporate (or boil off) the HCN from the inert carrier and requires heated air and a temperature controlled system. Not only is the gas not instant, but a danger of explosion always exists.

— Source

But I know what you might be thinking.  “Couldn’t they just ventilate the area after 30 minutes (to ensure everyone was dead) and wait an entire day or two before going in there to drag the bodies out and cart them to the next building to incinerate them (or just put them in a pit that got dug and burn the bodies there, which I guess no one would notice either)?”  Well apparently, during the 1942 time period, they would air the room out for just a few hours before emptying it out.  Later on, they would get more efficient after installing ventilation units, only needing to air it out for just 1 hour.

After this time had elapsed, the prisoners of the crematorium squad proceeded to burn the corpses. All of this took place in the deepest secrecy, with participation limited to the minimum number of SS men from the camp command and the Political Department.

— Source

That, or…

Sonderkommando prisoners dragged the corpses out of the gas chambers.

— Source

Who the hell are Sonderkommando prisoners?  Basically Jewish prisoners.

Now, you see, I’m having a hard time believing they could pull this off without others in the camp knowing about it.

And even that aside, there’s the issue of the technology required to properly ventilate this stuff in such an environment (as stated earlier with such technology only really existing once the 1960s came about).  And even worse, there are studies that indicate it would take longer than 1 hour, even if there was proper ventilation and proper temperatures to get rid of traces HNC.

Fumigation takes a minimum of 24 to 48 hours.

After the fumigation, the ventilation of the area must take a minimum of ten
hours, depending on the location (and volume), and longer if the building has
no windows or exhaust fans. 58 The fumigated area must then be chemically
tested for the presence of gas before entering. 59 Gas masks are sometimes
used, but are not safe and should not be used for more than ten (10) minutes. 60
A complete chemical suit must be worn to prevent skin poisoning. 61 The
warmer the temperature and the drier the location, the faster and safer the
handling will be.

[…]

This value is recommended by DEGESCH for fumigations in rooms without special heating and ventilation devices. Minimum ventilation time is set to be 10 hrs. or even 20 hrs

— Source: Fred A. Leuchter, Robert Faurisson, Germar Rudolph, The Leuchter Reports: Critical Edition.  5th Edition.  Holocaust Handbooks Vol.16.  Castle Hill Publishers. Uckfield, TN22 9AW, UK.  March 2017.  page 29

— That’s right, I’ve got the Leuchter Reports.  Let’s see how effective Myles’ attacks on them really are.

So basically the official witness testimony stories would try to have us believe that they would use Zyklon-B on up to about 300 people in gas chambers, initially in non-ventilated chambers before upgrading to chambers that could be ventilated, spend less than 10 hours (sometimes as little as 1 hour) ventilating those chambers, hoping the temperatures would reach and stay above 78.3 degrees (and hoping the ventilated gas doesn’t make anyone nearby sick, especially if the ventilated air isn’t being dispersed 40 feet above the building, in an area that isn’t sheltered from the wind by other structures), and then have either some Nazis dressed up in special suits with gas masks to go in and take out these bodies, or have Sonderkommando prisoners come in (I don’t recall them ever saying they would be wearing protection), take these bodies to a pit or another crematorium where they would be burned, and all the while keep up the pretense that all the other prisoners in the camp wouldn’t figure out that these weren’t shower rooms?  In a place where they bothered to keep them alive long enough to enjoy swimming in a pool, have sports, and some live music played every now and then?  And Myles Power says the revisionist story is more far-fetched than the official one?

And the decontamination procedures get worse from there (not to mention people puking and shitting themselves):

The temperature of the walls and the air within the facility, and the intake
air, must be kept at least 10 degrees above the boiling point of the hydrocyanic
acid (78.3 degrees F) to prevent condensation of HCN on the walls, floor and
ceiling of the facility, as well as in the exhaust system. If the temperature is
below 79 degrees F and condensation occurs, 63 the facility must be decontaminated with chlorine bleach or ammonia, the former being the more effective.
This is accomplished by spraying the walls either automatically or manually.
If done manually, protective suits (generally neoprene) must be worn and the technicians must utilize air breathing cylinders, as gas masks are unsafe and
dangerous. 64 The interior of the building must be evacuated longer to allow
the chlorine bleach vapors to neutralize the liquid HCN in the exhaust system.
The interior of the building must be washed with water and thoroughly
mopped and dried before the next use.

Additionally, a check of the air inside the building must be done to determine whether all of the HCN has been removed. The test may be either by gas
detector or by the copper acetate/benzidene test. In the former, an electronic
readout is provided with detection to 10 ppm. In the other, a benzidene solu-
tion is mixed with a copper acetate solution and is used to moisten a piece of
test paper which turns blue in varying degrees if HCN is present.

— The Leuchter Reports: Critical Edition

Not to mention virtually everyone, revisionists and non-revisionists, tends to agree that these gas chambers did not start out as gas chambers.  They were remodeled to act as such.  Which means they would need to acquire and put in place air-tight doors/vents to make this all work and not risk gas leakages.  You’d think that would also be a giveaway for the prisoners.

“Why does the shower room have an air-tight doorway?”

“Because you touch yourself at night.”

And even all that aside, when Myles talks about the inefficient method by which one Leuchter Report tested for Zyklon-B traces, the most current edition addresses this very thing:

Leuchter’s sampling procedure has been criticized. For some details of his methods see Errol Morris’s documentary Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr., Fourth Floor Productions, May 12, 1999; premiered January 1, 1999 during the Sundance Film Festival in Park City (Utah); vgl. William Halvorsen, “Morris Shines a Light on Fred Leuchter,” The Revisionist, Nr. 3, 2000 (www.codoh.com/library/document/411). For example, in one case Leuchter picked up a brick fragment out of a water puddle in the collapsed Morgue 1 of Krema II. Such bricks are neither likely to form long-term stable iron cyanide compounds, nor can anyone safely determine the exact origin and history of the brick fragments that Leuchter fished out of the puddle.

— Footnote 122, page 44

It admits this potential bit of evidence is likely weak, but that’s cherrypicking compared to all the other stuff these reports contain (I suspected Myles would be cherrypicking from these reports).  For instance, one other instance of how they detected traces:

The detection level of 1 mg/kg for this method was determined for liquid samples. Because building material samples are solid and usually contain large amounts of carbonates (mortar, cement, concrete), which can disturb the method, the detection level is probably considerably higher than 1 mg/kg. Repeated analyses of mortar and concrete samples showing results of lower than 10 mg/kg have shown this to be true, since the results could not be reproduced reliably. It is therefore most appropriate to state that test results below 10 mg/kg of solid samples rich in carbonates cannot be interpreted properly and ought to be considered zero. See my expert report, ibid., pp. 253, 258.

— Footnote 129, page 45

There’s more, and the measurements and methods get more numerous and just as, if not more, complicated from there, but I’ll end it with another inconvenient fact.  The doors that were installed to try and keep people in, air-tight, and fit for gas chambers, were incapable of doing any of the above.

However, all that was ever installed, and later found, in Auschwitz were doors such as shown in Figure 26. The simple latch to close this door and the two simple hinges which held it in place would have had no chance to withstand the pressure of a crowd of hundreds of panicking people.

— page 99

There’s more I could put out to address Myles’ rebukes of the documentary (though, to be fair, Myles was right to criticize various aspects of the documentary, as it doesn’t have many of its facts straight), but this post is long enough.  And I’m tired of working on this.  And, fuck it, because Myles didn’t feel the urge to put in some extra effort to address the other points.  Besides, he said it himself, this is arguably the biggest cornerstone of revisionist conspiracy theory, that Zylon-B was used for disinfecting clothing/sheets, not for killing people.  At the very least, I’ve done enough to put some cracks into the foundation of his arguments.  Plus, I’d rather have people look up this stuff for themselves.  And hopefully overturn the ban on holocaust denial in their countries while they’re at it.

 

PS: And it turns out, after whining about how depressing it was doing this video series, and how pointless it was to do it because holocaust deniers/revisionists won’t change their minds no matter what, he goes and makes a fucking sequel video that goes after the Leuchter Reports.  Goddamnit!  I don’t want to do a long dragged out series!  It’s already a pain in the ass having unfinished work because of that with my 90s Nostalgia series, and the War on Film Culture series!  And yet, I can’t completely trust myself to finish the latter without tackling these holocaust conspiracies (and their rebuttals) in a manner I deem adequate, because that relates very very heavily to film culture.  Even to this day.

PPS: By the way, it’s not a good idea to even hint at scoffing at people who got sent to prison just for questioning whether or not an event happened, even if it is the holocaust (at this point, especially if it’s the holocaust).  Seriously, Myles has an attitude that borderline, “Good, fuck’em,” when mentioning holocaust revisionists that got sent to prison for publishing works on the subject or speaking out about it.