Holocaust evidence

No holes have ever been found in the roofs of the gas chambers in Cremas 1, 2 and 3 in Auschwitz through which the Zyklon-B was supposedly introduced, therefore there was no mass murder of Jews in Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Holocaust deniers claim that if there were no holes in the roofs then the structures could not have been gas chambers and Auschwitz was not an extermination camp. If Auschwitz was not an extermination camp, then the Holocaust did not happen.
"No holes, no Holocaust!" David Irving, whom the High Court in London declared to be a Holocaust denier, racist and antisemite, advanced this slogan as part of his libel accusation against Professor Deborah Lipstadt during David Irving v. Penguin, UK and Deborah Lipstadt in London (2000). During the cross-examination of Professor Robert Jan van Pelt, who wrote the expert witness report on Auschwitz for the trial, Irving asked: "And do you accept . . . that if you were to go to Auschwitz the day after tomorrow with a trowel and clean away the gravel [from the ruins of Cremas 2 or 3] and find a reinforced concrete hole . . . this would make an open and shut case and I would happily abandon my action immediately?"1
Robert Faurisson, a French denier, said about Crema 2 at Birkenau: "The caved-in roof of this supposed mass extermination 'gas chamber' has visibly never had any of the four special holes . . . through which, we are told, Zyklon B pellets were poured in. This being the case, how, simply, could an execution gassing operation have even begun here at Birkenau, the core of the so-called Holocaust'?"2

What are the holes in the roof?

When Heinrich Himmler, the Reichsführer of the SS, ordered that Auschwitz was to become the center of the Final Solution, Cremas 2 and 3 were in the process of being built in Birkenau. In both buildings (which are identical), two existing underground rooms originally designed to be used as morgues were easily adapted to become an undressing room and a gas chamber room.
On the flat roofs of the gas chamber rooms, four holes were chopped in the concrete and a chimney was built over them, which was covered with a gas-tight lid. It was through these holes that the Zyklon-B was dropped into the gas chamber.

Zyklon-B

Zyklon-B was the product name for the blue-green chalk pellets which were soaked with a highly poisonous liquid called hydrogen cyanide (HCN). It was a powerful pesticide and was also used in industrial applications. The chalk pellets were kept in a vacuum-sealed can because when they were exposed to the air poisonous HCN gas was released. After the HCN dispersed into the air, only the harmless inert pellets were left to be collected and disposed of later.

Zyklon-B was introduced into the gas chambers at Auschwitz through holes in the roof in three of the gas chambers (Crema 1 in Main Camp and Cremas 2 and 3 in Auschwitz-Birkenau) or through windows covered with gas-tight shutters in the other four facilities (Cremas 4 and 5 and the two peasant cottages at the back of Birkenau).

Why is it difficult to spot the holes in the roof today?

Crema 1 in Auschwitz I (the Main Camp)
Crema 1 is still intact. It was restored by the Museum authorities to its appearance when it was used as a gas chamber in early 1942 and today is a memorial and reflection space. The Museum authorities located the clear scars of five holes in the roof and knocked out four of them for the restoration. Why they didn't knock out the fifth as well is unknown but the scar that shows where it was located and then patched can be clearly seen on the roof.3 You can see pictures of this building at: http://www.scrapbookpages.com/AuschwitzScrapbook/Tour/Auschwitz1/Auschwitz08.html.

Cremas 2 and 3 in Auschwitz-Birkenau

Cremas 2 and 3 were originally built as cremation facilities. Each crema had two underground rooms which were intended to be used as morgues in anticipation of a large population increase in the camp and therefore more deaths. When the mission of Auschwitz was changed to become an extermination center for European Jews, the two existing underground morgue rooms in both Cremas 2 and 3 were adapted to become one undressing room and one gas chamber room. Both buildings were identical in design.
In late 1944, both Cremas 2 and 3 were blown up to cover the Germans' genocidal activities. Today all that remains of these buildings are the outlines of the underground rooms into which the ceilings and walls have collapsed. They look like a dry swimming pool full of concrete and rubble. The part of the buildings where the ovens were housed is just a heap of crushed concrete, masonry and metal. You can see what these buildings look like today at: http://www.scrapbookpages.com/AuschwitzScrapbook/Tour/Birkenau/RuinsII01.html
So what evidence do we have for the holes in the roofs of the gas chambers in Cremas 1, 2 and 3?

Hans Stark, a member of the Auschwitz Gestapo, testified at the Auschwitz trial in Frankfurt in 1963 that in the Main Camp gassings were carried out "in a room in the small crematorium which had been prepared for this purpose." Stark told the court that the roof above the gas chamber room was flat with openings through which "Zyklon B in granular form" was poured. On at least one occasion Stark himself poured the Zyklon-B in the holes.

Stark recalled after the war that the Zyklon-B "trickled down over the people as it was being poured in. They then started to cry out terribly for they now knew what was happening to them . . . After a few minutes there was silence. After some time had passed, it may have been ten or fifteen minutes, the gas-chamber was opened. The dead lay higgledy-piggledy all over the place. It was a dreadful sight."4

Filip Müller, a Slovak Jew who arrived in Auschwitz in April 1942, was put to work as an oven stoker in Crema 1. Müller's job was to drag the corpses from the morgue-turned-gas chamber to the ovens and sort and remove valuables from the abandoned clothing. Later, he was transferred to Birkenau to work in the crematoria and burning pits there.

Müller gave a detailed description of the process of murder in both the Main Camp and Birkenau. He recalled one such gassing in Crema 1: "When the last one had crossed the threshold, two SS leaders slammed shut the heavy iron-studded door which was fitted with a rubber seal, and bolted it . . . the Unterführers on duty had gone onto the crematorium roof . . . They removed the covers from the six camouflaged openings. There, protected by gas-masks, they poured the green-blue crystals of the deadly gas into the gas chamber."5

Photographic evidence of the existence of the holes in the roofs in the gas chambers in Cremas 2 and 3

In the fall of 1944, Allied planes flew over Auschwitz and on August 25 they captured the cremas and gas chambers at Auschwitz on a reconnaissance film.
The underground gas chambers in Cremas 2 and 3 are visible from the outline of the berm of earth and grass that covered them. The introduction chimneys are clearly visible on the roof as four dark squares staggered side to side down the length of the room.6 You can see this picture at: http://www.mazal.org/Auschwitz%20Aerial/08-25-44%20001.htm.

Holocaust deniers claim that these aerial photos have been tampered with and the black spots on the roof were added later.7 In 1996, experts at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, one of the world leaders of the analysis of aerial and satellite images, examined the negatives carefully. The JPL experts found no evidence of forgery or tampering. The markings on the roof were on the original negative.8

The Germans themselves also documented their construction work around the camp with cameras. In December 1942 they took a picture of the construction work underway on Crema 2. The picture included the roof of the gas chamber room shortly before its completion and before it was covered with dirt and grass. On the flat roof there are clear images of the protruding chimneys over the holes. You can see this picture at:

http://www.holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/intro-columns/.
Further scientific evidence regarding the holes in the roofs of the gas chambers in Cremas 1, 2 and 3:

A properly authorized and rigorously conducted forensic study was done in 2000 by qualified experts. The experts unearthed a photograph of the roof of Crema 1 that clearly shows five holes in the roof which had been resealed after the building was abandoned as a gas chamber and turned into an air raid shelter in late 1944.9 Adam Zlobnicki recalls the restoration of the holes in the roof: "Those who reconstructed them had an easy task because the erstwhile introduction holes and had distinct traces . . . Thus, they constructed in the same places again the openings for the little chimneys."10 The fifth hole was not reopened.
The same study identified the location of three of the four holes in the badly damaged roof of Crema 2. The study found "clear signs of openings; straight cast edges in the concrete of the roof; rebar cut cleanly (i.e., not stretched by the explosion); the absence of rebar in the area within the holes; and the presence of rebar bent inwards at the edges of the holes."11 The fourth hole is partly hidden by a fold in the rubble created by the explosion and only the edge of it can be seen.

There are multiple forms of evidence -- both material and documentry -- which prove the existence of gas chambers in Auschwitz. Crema 1, 2 and 3 had holes in the roof for the introduction of Zyklon-B into the gas chamber below. Both perpetrator and survivor eyewitness testimony document their existence and use.
Contemporary photographs taken in 1944 by Allied aircraft also show the chimneys over the holes in the roof.

Further, a rigorous and authorized forensic study conducted in 2000 on the roofs of Crema 1 and Crema 2 (which is identical to Crema 3) have located and proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that these holes existed. The Holocaust deniers' claim of "No Holes, No Holocaust" is only wishful thinking.

There is no physical or documentary evidence in existence today that confirms that there were holes in the roof of the gas chambers.

Brian Renk, of the deniers' Institute for Historical Review, claims that no one has been ". . . able to find physical evidence of Zyklon-induction holes at the site, or a single reference to them in the camp's voluminous design and construction records . . ."1
What are these wire-mesh columns?

Four hollow wire-mesh introduction columns, extending from the floor to the ceiling, were placed underneath each hole in the gas chamber roof in Cremas 2 and 3 in Birkenau. Installing these four columns in each gas chamber room permitted the even distribution of the gas throughout the entire room.2 The wire columns also prevented the people inside the gas chamber from interferring with the gas pellets.

The underground room itself extended a few feet above ground, similar to the foundation of a house with a basement, and it was banked up with dirt on which grass was planted. This made it easy for the SS men to climb the gentle hill and walk from chimney to chimney with the cans of Zyklon-B.3

Eyewitness evidence for the existence of the wire-mesh columns
Michael Kula, a prisoner at Auschwitz, worked in the metal workshop where he helped to build the wire-mesh columns. Each column was made of three 3 wire screens nested one within the other. The core of the inner column contained a collection basket for the used pellets so they could be lifted back to the roof for disposal.4 A picture of what these columns looked like can be seen at: http://www.holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/intro-columns/.

Ota Kraus and Erick Kulka were Czech inmates in Auschwitz. They were both employed as locksmiths and so had the run of the camp. In 1946, they published a book called Factories of Death about their experiences in which they confirmed the existence and use of the wire-mesh columns: "Between the concrete pillars where two iron pillars, 30 cm by 30 cm, covered in thickly plaited wire. These pillars passed through the concrete ceiling to the grassy terrace mentioned above; here they terminated in airtight trap-doors in which the SS men fed the cyclone gas. The purpose of the plaited wire was to prevent any interference with the cyclone crystals. These pillars were a later addition to the gas chamber and hence do not appear in the plan."5
David Olére, a Parisian artist, was arrested and sent to Auschwitz in March 1943. There he was assigned to the Sonderkommando of Crema 3. He lived in the attic of that building and observed its operations. After the war, in 1945 and 1946 he drew a series of 50 pictures of what he had seen in the camp. One of Olére's drawings shows a cutaway elevation of Crema 3. Olére shows the four wire-mesh columns. They are identified in the lettered key as "Grille pour Bombes a Gaz" (Gas Introduction Columns.)"6 You can see this drawing at:

http://holocaust-info.dk/auschwitz/k3_side.htm.

Rudolf Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz, also confirmed the existence of the wire-mesh columns, in his memoirs written after the war: "The door would be screwed shut and the waiting disinfection squads would immediately pour the gas [crystals] into the vents in the ceiling of the gas chamber down an air shaft which went to the floor. This ensured the rapid distribution of the gas. The process could be observed through a peep hole in the door."7
Evidence in German documents about the wire-mesh introduction columns
The wire-mesh columns were not part of the master blueprints kept in the files in the building office outside of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Non-structural changes were made on the working plans on site. These on-site drawings were later destroyed before Auschwitz-Birkenau was abandoned.8 In an inventory dated March 3, 1943, written at the time Crema 2 was formally completed, listed "4 Drahtnetzeinschiebvorrichtung." This compound German word translates as "wire-mesh insertion device" or "wire-mesh introduction device."9

The fact that the wire-mesh introduction columns can't be found today is easily explained. They were dismantled and discarded before the crema facilities were blown up by the Germans to cover their crimes. Their existence however, is confirmed by eyewitness accounts -- both perpetrator and survivor -- and by a surviving German documents that lists them in an inventory.

Auschwitz-Birkenau was not a killing center. Collections of camp death certificates (Auschwitz Death Books) list a total of only 69,000 deaths -- all from natural causes.
Holocaust deniers argue:

    * Auschwitz-Birkenau "was a camp for Jews who were not able to work, including the sick and elderly . . ." 1
    * "Not murdered, not gassed----far more than half of the inmates of the concentration camp of Auschwitz died of natural causes that means, of diseases, of epidemics, of typhus ever, of typhoid, of hunger, of cold or of being overworked or of various other natural causes . . . perhaps 30,000 people at most were murdered at Auschwitz."2
    * The Death Books certificates list about 69,000 deaths, many of which were not even Jews, and who died of typhus, the "weakness of old age," "influenza," "heart failure," "pneumonia," and other natural physical ailments. These books "discredit a central pillar of the Holocaust extermination story."3

The Auschwitz Death Books:

The Death Books(Totenbücher) compiled the death certificates of those prisoners who were registered, tattooed and died in Auschwitz between July 29, 1941 and December 31, 1943. Although several volumes did not survive the war, 46 of them had been kept by the Gestapo office in Auschwitz and were released from Russian archives in 1989. Each volume is a collection of hundreds of death certificates. As they record only those prisoners who were chosen for slave labor rather than immediate death, they do not list the nearly one million Jewish men, women and children who were sent directly to the gas chambers from the transports. These people were sometimes not even counted.

The death certificates record the date of issue, first and last names, date, time and place of death, date and place of birth and cause of death. The cause of death was apparently often fictitious. In January 1945, when the Russians liberated Auschwitz they took the Auschwitz Death Books back with them to Moscow where their existence was unknown until they were released in 1989 for use by researchers. In 1991 they were repatriated to the Auschwitz Museum. Deniers say that since the death books only list 69,000 people, they prove that Auschwitz was never a killing center, much less the place where over a million Jews lost their lives.
How do we know that vast numbers of Jews were murdered in gas chambers without their deaths ever listed in German records?

Perpetrators say:

Rudolf Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz from mid-1941, was in December 1943 promoted to the administrative office that supervised all of the camps. In early May 1944 Höss returned to Auschwitz to once again supervise the camp. After the war, Höss was arrested, tried, convicted and put to death for his role in the Final Solution. Before he was executed he wrote his memoirs in which he provided evidence that most of the people killed at Auschwitz were not "registered" in death books or on death certificates:

Höss wrote: "Originally, all the Jews transported to [Auschwitz]. . . were to be destroyed without exception, according to Himmler's orders." But in 1942 because of the steadily growing arms industry which was being developed in the camps that used the slave labor of the prisoners, some able-bodied Jews were ordered to be saved as workers. According to Höss: "The railways cars were unloaded one after another. After depositing their baggage, the Jews had to individually pass in front of an SS doctor, who decided on their physical fitness as they marched past him. Those who were considered able-bodied were immediately escorted into the camp in small groups. Jews selected for gassing were taken as quietly as possible to the crematories." Höss explained the fate of those taken to the crematoria: "In the undressing rooms the Jews were told to take off their clothing and leave it neatly so they could find it again later. After undressing, the Jews went into the gas chamber . . ."4

Pery Broad, an SS-Unterschaführer in the Gestapo office in Auschwitz said that those from the transports who were inducted into the camp underwent a different process. He provided this information in a series of reports on Auschwitz he wrote for the Allies when he was their prisoner after the war.5

Broad described the registration process for a group of women selected from a transport: "Once fashionable and lively women and girls, they now had their heads shorn and a prisoner's number tattooed on their left forearms; and they were clothed in sack-like, blue and white striped smocks." Once a number had replaced their identity, these prisoners would be the ones accounted for in the Death Books. Like the inventory for a business, they were now property of the Reich and needed to be tracked and that their number be able to be assessed at any given time.
Since Broad worked in the Gestapo office in Auschwitz he had valuable information on the record-keeping process, including the preparation of the Death Books. He wrote: "When information was requested by the Reich Main Security Office concerning a past transport, as a rule nothing could be ascertained. Former transport lists were destroyed. Nobody could learn anything in Auschwitz abut the fate of a given person. The person asked for 'is not and never has been detained in camp,' or 'he is not in the files'--these were the usual formulas given in reply. At present, after the evacuation of Auschwitz and the burning of all papers and records, the fate of millions of people is completely obscure. No transport or arrival lists are in existence any more."6

Survivors say:

Stanislaw Jankowski was a member of the sonderkommando at crematorium/gas chamber 5 in Auschwitz-Birkenau in July 1943. Jankowski gave a deposition to the Russian authorities after the war in which he wrote: "I have to stress here that only persons destined to do various kinds of work were included in the registers of prisoners' strength and were given camp numbers. No camp numbers were given and no registering was effected both in the cases of all those who went straight on to the gas from the transports . . . "
Jankowski further noted: "Circa 30% of the then arriving transports (of Hungarian Jews) . . . were selected to be put in the camp . . . The rest were gassed and cremated in the crematoria ovens."7

Historical Records say:

Francizek Piper, director of the Museum and Archives at the Auschwitz Museum conducted extensive research on the total number of people that were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau from all over Europe from 1942 to 1944. According to Piper's research, the total number of people who arrived at Auschwitz was at least 1,305,000. Of this total figure about 1,095,000 were Jews and 900,000 of them were sent directly to the gas chambers. The remaining number of deportees were Poles, Gypsies, Soviet POWS and prisoners of other nationalities (non-Jewish).
That left, over three years, about 405,000 people who were registered in the camp. About 202,000 died there of starvation, execution, hard labor, etc. Another 188,000 were transferred to other camps over the course of several years. These included Anne Frank, who died in Bergen-Belsen, and Elie Wiesel, who was liberated in Buchenwald. In January 1945, those who could still walk were driven on death marches into Germany, during which many died on the road. The 8,000 people found in the camp when it was liberated were those who were sick or too weak to walk.
Using research that tallied the total numbers of Jews who had been deported from various countries to Auschwitz, Piper discovered that the following countries sent thousands of victims: Hungary (438,000), Poland (300,000), France (69,000), Holland (60,000), Greece (55,000), Bohemia and Moravia- Theresienstadt (46,000), Slovakia (27,000), Belgium (25,000), Germany and Austria (23,000), Yugoslavia (10,000), Italy (7,500), Norway (690). From Poland alone, Piper details 154 separate transports with an estimated number of deportees for each (the original lists were destroyed) between 1942 and 1944.(54-57)8

Piper relied on exhaustive research done at the Auschwitz Museum that accounted for every day's events throughout the operation of the camp. Using this method, he was able to trace the fate of these transports once they arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau. For instance, the transport listed by Piper on August 10, 1943 consisted of about 3,000 Polish Jews from Sosnowitz. The daily account shows that: "Following the selection, 100 men, given Nos. 136303-136412 and 195 women, given Nos. 54332-54526, are admitted to the camp. The other almost 2,700 people are killed in the gas chambers.

Auschwitz Museum officials have confirmed that the alleged gas chamber in Auschwitz I (the Main Camp) is a fake

Holocaust deniers argue:

    * In January 1995, L'Express, a French news magazine, marked the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau with an article about preservation challenges at both Auschwitz I (now the Museum) and Birkenau.1
    * Eric Conan, the author, noted that the current crematorium building in Auschwitz I (the Main Camp) had been restored after the war to the appearance it had had when it was used as a gas chamber in 1941/1942.
    * David Irving hailed the article as a breakthrough, adding ". . . L'Express has admitted that the gas chamber shown to tourists at Auschwitz is a fake—built by the Polish Communists three years after the War."2

Crema/Gas Chamber 1 During the War:

    * Originally Crema 1 was equipped with three ovens with a morgue room behind them. In late 1941 the morgue room in Crema 1 was sealed up, five holes were punched in the roof and capped with small chimneys through which the Zyklon-B was dropped, a large fan was installed, and the doors were made gas tight.3
    * On February 15, 1942, the first transport of Jews from Upper Silesia was gassed in Crema 1. The gas chamber had been in use since the fall of 1941 when it was used to murder Soviet prisoners-of-war. The gassings continued until the fall of 1942 when the murder operation was moved out to Birkenau.4
    * When the building was transformed into an air raid shelter in 1944, the ovens were dismantled and the holes in the ceiling were filled in. The rooms were subdivided with strong walls to support the ceiling and contain the effects of a direct hit by a bomb.

Crema I After the War

    * After the war, when the Main Camp was turned into a museum, the authorities felt that a crematorium was required at the end of the memorial journey for visitors. Since the four cremas/gas chambers where most of the mass murder of the Jews took place lay in Birkenau two miles away, they couldn't be used for that purpose.
    * Crema 1 was restored using eyewitness testimony and blueprints dated September 25, 1941 to speak for the history of all the cremas/gas chambers at Birkenau.5
    * The chimney, the gas chamber room, the doors, and four of the openings in the roof which had been used to pour in the Zyklon-B were restored. Two of the three ovens were rebuilt. The ovens were not hooked up to the chimney as it was not an operating facility.6

Crema 1 Was a Gas Chamber Say Nazis, Survivors and Historians:

    * Pery Broad, who was a member of the camp Gestapo, was captured by the British after the war. Broad wrote a detailed report on Auschwitz in which he described the first gassing in the Main Camp.
    * Broad detailed how Jews from one transport were herded into the former morgue room where they expected to get showers: ". . . the covers had been removed from the six holes in the ceiling . . . With a chisel and hammer they [the SS] opened a few innocuous looking tins . . . [they] were filled to the brim with blue granules the size of peas. Immediately after opening the tins they were thrown into the holes which were quickly covered."7
    * Hans Stark, also a member of the camp Gestapo, gave evidence at the Auschwitz trial in Frankfurt in 1963. He testified that gassings were carried out "in a room in the small crematorium which had been prepared for this purpose."
    * Stark recalled that the roof above the gas chamber room was flat with openings through which "Zyklon B in granular form" was poured. On at least one occasion Stark himself poured the Zyklon-B in the holes. Stark recalled after the war that the Zyklon-B, "trickled down over the people as it was being poured in. They then started to cry out terribly for they now knew what was happening to them . . . After a few minutes there was silence. After some time had passed, it may have been ten or fifteen minutes, the gas-chamber was opened. The dead lay higgledy-piggledy all over the place. It was a dreadful sight."8
    * Filip Müller, a Slovak Jew who arrived in Auschwitz in April 1942, was put to work as an oven stoker in Crema 1. Müller's job was to drag the corpses from the morgue-turned-gas chamber to the ovens and sort and remove valuables from the abandoned clothing. Later, he was transferred to Birkenau to work in the crematoria and burning pits there.
    * Müller gave a detailed description of the process of murder in both the Main Camp and Birkenau. He recalled one such gassing in Crema 1: "When the last one had crossed the threshold, two SS leaders slammed shut the heavy iron-studded door which was fitted with a rubber seal, and bolted it . . . the Unterfü;hrers on duty had gone onto the crematorium roof . . . They removed the covers from the six camouflaged openings. There, protected by gas-masks, they poured the green-blue crystals of the deadly gas into the gas chamber."9
    * Finally, a rigorously conducted and authorized forensic study of the gas chambers done in 2000 unearthed a photograph of the roof of Crema I that clearly shows five holes in the roof which had been resealed after the building was abandoned as a gas chamber and turned into an air raid shelter in late 1944.10
    * Adam Zlobnicki recalls the restoration of the holes in the roof: "Those who reconstructed them had an easy task because the erstwhile introduction holes and had distinct traces . . . Thus, they constructed in the same places again the openings for the little chimneys."11 The fifth hole was not reopened.

Crema 1 in Auschwitz I (the Main Camp) is not a "fake" but a restored space meant to be a memorial and symbolic representation of all the gas chambers and crematoria in the Auschwitz complex.

No order signed by Adolf Hitler authorizing the 'Final Solution' has ever been found. Since Hitler as supreme ruler signed other orders, the absence of a "Holocaust" order proves that it never happened.
Holocaust deniers argue:

    * That if the genocide of the Jews was an official policy of the Nazi government then a document signed by Adolf Hitler ordering their annihilation would have been found by now. There is a document signed by Hitler authorizing the T-4 [euthanasia] program. How come there is no Hitler-signed order authorizing the 'Final Solution'?
    * David Irving has "offered a thousand pounds to any person who could produce even one wartime document showing explicitly what Hitler knew, for example, of Auschwitz . . ." [Hitler's War, Introduction, p. xxvii] On his web site Irving states that "nobody has yet claimed the widely publicized $1,000 reward . . . for even one page of wartime contemporary evidence that Hitler was even aware of Auschwitz ('the Holocaust'), let alone gave the order for the Final Solution."
    * John Weir, writing on CODOH [Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust], a prominent American Holocaust denial web site, argues that if such an order was issued "it would have been located... Since none has been found, the conclusion is inescapable: There was no policy to exterminate Jews by the Nazi government."2

Holocaust historians respond: It is very unlikely that Hitler ever signed such an order for the following reasons:
Secrecy

    * Hitler and the Nazi regime were very secretive about the 'Final Solution.' Hitler didn’t want to leave an evidence trail that would inflame his own population or the leadership of other countries.
    * Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, in a speech given at Poznan (Posen, Poland) to a meeting of SS Major Generals on October 4, 1943, acknowledged how secret the Final Solution was: "We will never speak of it publicly. . . I mean the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish race. ... The Jewish race is being - exterminated...that's quite clear, it's in our program elimination of the Jews and we're doing it, exterminating them . . . This is a page of glory in our history which has never been written and is never to be written . . ."

Expediency

    * Hitler often transmitted his important instructions orally. Peter Longerich, a University of London historian and Germanist who has written about Hitler, notes that "Hitler avoided giving a clear written order to exterminate Jewish civilians. He avoided speaking openly about killing in his entourage."
    * Hitler signed an order for the T-4 euthanasia program in which perhaps as many as 100,000 German citizens who were thought to be 'unworthy of life' were murdered. That order was found after the war. When the German population caught on to what the Nazis were doing they protested and Hitler was forced to publicly back down and cancel the program (although it continued in secret). Having been embarrassed by a written order once, Hitler would be wary of doing it again.
    * As there were over 11,000,000 Jews in Europe at the outbreak of World War II spread throughout Europe, the "Final Solution" was actually many partial solutions. The Nazis went about accomplishing their task through a wide variety of means in many countries. In Poland, they set up ghettos in which large numbers of Jews were systematically starved to death or allowed to die of disease. In the Soviet Union, we know that the Einsatzgruppen, or mobile killing squads, rounded up over 1,000,000 Jews from villages and towns and shot them right on the spot. In Poland, the remaining Jews were transported to the death camps of Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, and Chelmno. Jews from other countries in German-occupied Europe were shipped to Auschwitz-Birkenau where they were murdered. Therefore, one "Final" order would not make sense; instead, each individual operation was preceeded by many individual orders.
    * Hitler, for instance, specifically asked that he be kept abreast of the Einsatzgruppen's actions in Eastern Europe. The Einsatzgruppen were mobile killing squads arriving in villages as soon as the Wehrmacht conquered them. They then rounded up and shot entire communities of Jews, often forcing them to dig their own mass graves before lining them up. Reports detailing the activities of the Einsatzgruppen were regularly submitted for Hitler's review. They chronicle with clinical precision the numbers of Jews these special killing squads "liquidated."
    * Einsatzgruppe D reported on November 5, 1941 that it had killed 11,037 Jews and 3 communist officials in the previous two weeks. For the period from November 16 to December 15, 1941, Einstazgruppe D reported executing 17,645 Jews, 2,504 Krimchaks (categorized racially as Jews), 824 Gypsies, and 212 communists. For the last two weeks of December 1941, Einsatzgruppe D reported shooting 3,176 Jews, 85 partisans, 12 looters and 122 communists. Einsatzgruppe C in late October 1941 also reported that it had "liquidated" some 80,000 people of which 75,000 were Jews.3
    * Another Einsatzgruppen report, "Report to the Führer on Combating Partisans," ( No. 51, December 1942) reported that 363,211 Jews had been executed. The report had been typed in large type favored by Hitler (who hated to wear his reading glasses) and was signed by Himmler. It was included in the select documents placed before Hitler and marked "Shown to the Führer."
    * Christopher Browning, Professor of History at Pacific Lutheran University, in his report prepared for the Irving v. Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt trial (1996-2001), referenced 8 additional Einsatzgruppen reports detailing another 18,000 Jewish deaths. Other reports reference 44,125 people murdered in August, "mostly Jews." (Browning, pages 12, 13)

Fear

    * As Germany’s defeat became inevitable the Nazi regime began to systematically destroy any and all evidence trails leading to their murderous activities. When the SS abandoned Auschwitz-Birkenau, they destroyed all the paperwork and the gas chamber building, but they forgot about one collection of documents that related to the gas chambers that was stored off-site. These documents reveal many of their murderous activities.
    * The Nazis also destroyed much of the physical evidence of their crimes. They destroyed the death camps of Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, and Chelmno. They dug tens of thousands of bodies from the mass graves, burned them, crushed the bones and returned them to the ground as ash and dust. Finally, the sites were camouflaged as farms.

In their own words, Nazis say:

    * Rudolf Höss, the Commandant of Auschwitz, wrote after the war that Adolf Eichmann, the bureaucrat in charge of organizing the deportations of Jews to the death camps, was "the only SS officer who was allowed to keep records concerning these liquidation operations, according to the orders of the Reichsführer-SS [Himmler]. All other units which took part in any way had to destroy all records immediately."
    * Adolf Eichmann, in his memoirs, which were taped by a reporter named Willem Sassen and then turned into a book, Ich: Adolf Eichmann, published in 1980, said: "Around the end of 1941 or the beginning of 1942 Heydrich, the Chef of the SIPO [Security Police] and SD [Security Service], told me in conversation that the Führer had ordered the physical destruction of the Jewish opponent."
    * Elsewhere in his memoirs, Eichmann offered a virtually identical version of the content of Heydrich's message: "The Führer has henceforth given the order for the physical destruction of the Jews;" and "The Führer has ordered the physical destruction." Eichmann asked for no written order; Hitler's wish as expressed through Himmler and Heydrich was good enough for him.

Historians point to the convergence of evidence from all levels of the Nazi hierarchy including diary entries from prominent Nazis including Josef Goebbels and Heinrich Himmler; letters and reports that circulated between bureaucrats, generals, and upper level Nazis including Hitler; and primary documents that survived Nazi attempts to destroy all the evidence.
Further, it is an accepted historical axiom that "absence of proof is not proof of absence." This means that even if Hitler did sign an official order it would have been one of the first documents destroyed and would be unlikely to have been found after the war. The Holocaust deniers want you to believe the opposite reasoning that does not hold up under scrutiny and the preponderance of evidence.

Scientific tests prove conclusively that there were never any gas chambers in Auschwitz.

Holocaust Deniers Argue

The claim that objective science proves the non-existence of the Holocaust began with the Leuchter Report. In his introduction to that report, David Irving writes: "Unlike the writing of history, chemistry is an exact science. . . . The truly astounding results are as set out in this report: while significant quantities of cyanide compounds were found in the small de-lousing facilities of the camp . . . no significant trace whatsoever was found in the buildings which international opinion--for it is not more than that--has always labeled the camp's infamous gas chambers . . . Forensic chemistry is, I repeat, an exact science."1
The Leuchter Report

First published in 1989 and submitted as evidence during the trial of German-Canadian Holocaust denier and neo-Nazi, Ernst Zündel, the Leuchter Report is one of the cornerstones of Holocaust denial. For his trial, Zündel commissioned self-proclaimed execution-chamber specialist Fred Leuchter to conduct a forensic examination of the gas chambers in Auschwitz. Leuchter went to Auschwitz, where without any official permission, he chipped away samples of brick and stone, which he then sent to a forensics laboratory for investigation.
His report concluded that, "There were no execution chambers at any of these locations." He continued by saying that, in his opinion, "the alleged gas chambers at the inspected sites could not have then been, or now, be utilized or seriously considered to function as execution gas chambers."2

Zündel submitted the Leuchter Report as evidence in his trial and wanted Fred Leuchter to be a witness for his defense. However, when Leuchter was questioned by the court about his credentials as an expert witness it was discovered that he wasn't licensed as an engineer, his degree was in the humanities, and he had no expertise in chemistry, toxicology or incineration--all subjects he had weighed in on in the Report. The court, therefore, did not let the report be entered as the work of an expert.

The Major Falsifications Of The Leuchter Report

    * "The exposed porous brick and mortar would accumulate the HCN [hydrogen cyanide] and makes these facilities dangerous to humans for several years."3
      Zyklon-B was the product name for the blue-green chalk pellets soaked in hydrogen cyanide (HCN). In addition to its uses as a powerful pesticide and in other industrial applications, the Nazis used it to administer death in death camp gas chambers.
      The walls and ceilings of the gas chambers were plastered and whitewashed as numerous eyewitnesses have testified. By the time Leuchter arrived at the camp to take his samples, the plaster was gone and the exposed brick had been exposed to 40 years of rain, sun and snow. As HCN leaves only a thin blue chemical residue on surfaces, any "Prussian Blue" residue from the HCN would have collected on the surface of the plaster and would not have left a substantial presence on the bricks and mortar or concrete underneath.
      Leuchter's Sample Collection Process, Although Touted As "Scientific," Was Deeply Flawed
      Leuchter collected 31 handful-sized samples of bricks and mortar from the cremas and one control sample from the delousing chamber in Birkenau. By the time he crawled into the ruins of Crema 2, the plaster was long gone and only the bricks and mortar and concrete remained. Cremas 4 and 5 were constructed entirely of brick. They were totally destroyed before the end of the war. Only the concrete foundations remain and bricks have been gathered from around the area and loosely stacked up to show the general outline of the floor plan of the buildings. The bricks that Leuchter sampled did not necessarily come from anywhere near the gas chamber rooms.
      The Testing Of The Samples Was Also Flawed
      In the laboratory the individual samples were ground up into powder. Any trace of the HCN residue that might have been there became a miniscule part of the entire sample. A more appropriate method would have tested only the surfaces of the sample.
      Testing the total amount of the ground up powder was like trying to analyze the color and chemical structure of paint on the inside of a wall by looking for it in the boards and masonry behind the drywall. In the case of Cremas 4 and 5, it would like analyzing the materials from another room entirely.
      The Leuchter Report Announced That the Results of the Tests Showed an "absence of any consequential readings" Of Hydrogen Cyanide [HCN].4
      Leuchter concluded that the small amounts of HCN residue that did show up in the samples could be accounted for by an occasional delousing of the buildings using Zyklon-B, a common procedure to kill the lice that contributed to typhus epidemics in the camp. Given Leuchter's unscientific collection and testing processes, it is remarkable that even "inconsequential traces" of HCN were found.5
      The Tests On The Samples From The Delousing Chamber Showed Significantly Higher Amounts Of HCN Residue.6

      This is not surprising. Although, Leuchter calculated that it required 3,200 parts per million (ppm) to kill a human being,7 In reality, it requires a maximum of only 300 ppm 8 whereas, to kill lice, beetles, etc. requires at least 16,600 ppm of HCN. It is understandable, therefore that the walls of the delousing chamber are heavily stained with "Prussian Blue" because of the much higher concentration of HCN that was needed and by the much longer periods of time it took to kill insects.
      The gas chambers used much lower concentrations of HCN, were quickly aired out and were not always in continuous use. After each gassing, the walls and floors were washed down with water. Furthermore, Cremas 2, 3, 4 and 5 are in ruins and had been exposed to the elements of sun, rain, ice and snow for 43 years when Leuchter took his samples. The delousing building, on the other hand, is still standing so the walls with the "Prussian Blue" residue are protected from the elements.
      A properly authorized and meticulously conducted, rigorously scientific study done by Polish authorities in 1994 found that "in spite of the passage of a considerable period of time (over 45 years) in the walls of the facilities which once were in contact with hydrogen cyanide the vestigial amounts of the combinations of this constituent of Zyklon B had been preserved. This is also true of the ruins of the former gas chambers."9
    * "There is no provision for gasketed doors, windows or vents . . . no evidence of doors or door frames has been found."10
      The Auschwitz Museum archives, which Leuchter did not visit, contain proof to the contrary. A letter from Karl Bischoff, the head architect at Auschwitz, to the German Armament Works dated March 31, 1943 orders "three gas tight doors" for Crema 3 following "exactly the size and construction of those already delivered" for Crema 2. Bischoff reminded the manufacturer that the doors had to have a spy-hole of double 8-mm glass "with a rubber seal and metal fitting." The order was characterized as "very urgent."11
      In the archives there is also a request for a "handle for the gastight door" (Order No. 162, 6 March 1943) and a request for "twenty-four-gastight anchoring screws for gas tight doors" for Cremas 4 and 5 (Order No. 280, 6 April 1943).12
      Finally, there are also many photographs of actual gas-tight doors that were found all over Auschwitz immediately after the war. One, which had been used in either Crema 4 or 5, had a peep-hole covered with a heavy mesh screen and still had a gas-tight seal still around the edge, just as Bischoff's letter requested.13
    * "There were no exhaust systems to vent the gas after usage . . ."14
      The blueprints for Crema 2 show ventilation ducts in the walls (labeled 'Entlüftung') and the remains of the ducts can still be seen in the ruins.15 Henryk Tauber, a member of the Sonderkommando in Crema 2, testified after the war that "ventilation was installed in the walls of the gas chamber. . . . This ventilation system . . . was driven by electric motors in the roof space of the crematorium."16
    * ". . . those throwing Zyklon B in the roof vents and verifying the death of the occupants would themselves die from exposure to HCN."17
      Researchers have determined that rooms the size of the gas chambers in Crema 2 and 3 (both of which had a ventilation system) would have been able to have been entered after only 30 minutes without any adverse symptoms. Therefore, the Sonderkommando wouldn't have needed masks in these facilities unless the room was opened very soon afterward.18
      In Cremas 1 (in the Main Camp) and 4 and 5 and the two peasant cottages in Birkenau, the Sonderkommando did wear gas masks when removing bodies from the rooms because they had no ventilation system. Shlomo Dragon, a member of the Sonderkommando for Bunker 2 (one of the peasant cottages at the back of the camp) reported after the war about his work clearing the bodies from the gas chambers: "We were all given masks, and were led through the door into the cottage."19

Henryk Tauber arrived in Auschwitz on January 19, 1943. He was assigned to a Sonderkommando which burned the bodies and assisted in the gas chamber operations in Cremas 1, 2, and 4. Tauber recalled the gas chambers in Crema 4 after the war: "The gas chambers were about two meters high and had an electric lighting installation on the walls but they had no ventilation system, which obliged the Sonderkommando who were removing the bodies to wear gasmasks."20 The SS guards regularly wore gas masks when pouring the Zyklon-B pellets into the gas chambers.
Filip Müller, a Slovak Jew who arrived in Auschwitz in April 1942, was put to work as an oven stoker in Crema 1. Müller's job was to drag the corpses from the morgue-turned-gas chamber to the ovens and sort and remove valuables from the abandoned clothing. Later, he was transferred to Birkenau to work in the crematoria and burning pits there.
Müller gave a detailed description of the process of murder in both the Main Camp and Birkenau. He recalled one such gassing in Crema 1: "When the last one had crossed the threshold, two SS leaders slammed shut the heavy iron-studded door which was fitted with a rubber seal, and bolted it . . . the Unterführers on duty had gone onto the crematorium roof . . . They removed the covers from the six camouflaged openings. There, protected by gas-masks, they poured the green-blue crystals of the deadly gas into the gas chamber."21

The Leuchter Report is junk science. Furthermore, the small traces of HCN found in Leuchter's samples from Cremas 1 through 5 actually demonstrate the opposite of what Leuchter supposedly "proved"--that is, the traces of HCN proves that the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau did exist.

No evidence of open-air burning pits has ever been found in Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Carlo Mattogno, an Italian Holocaust denier, used complicated calculations to allegedly 'prove' the ovens at Auschwitz-Birkenau couldn't possibly have cremated some 1.1 million bodies. But ultimately all of these complex calculations were irrelevant because when there were too many bodies to be handled by the crema ovens, they were burned in open-air pits behind Crema 5 and by the White Bunker (one of the two cottages adapted into gas chambers at the back of Birkenau.)
The deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz in late 1944
Between May and November 1944, more than 400,000 Jews from Hungary were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau where about 90% of them were murdered.

During the Hungarian action, the White Bunker (which had been closed down when the ovens came on line in 1943) was re-opened to handle the overflow.
Filip Müller was put to work, along with 150 of his fellow Sonderkommandos, digging pits behind Crema 5 and in the woods by the White Bunker. The pits were 40 to 50 meters long, about 8 meters wide and 2 meters deep. Eventually they dug a total of nine large pits "making it possible to burn an almost unlimited number of bodies."1

Dr. Charles Sigismund Bendel was a Jewish physician who was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau where he was assigned to the crematoria Sonderkommando. At the Bergen-Belsen trial in 1945 Bendel confirmed how quickly and efficiently these burning pits worked after a transport of Jews from Lodz, Poland had been murdered: "I came at seven o'clock in the morning with the others and saw white smoke still rising from trenches, which indicated that a whole transport had been liquidated or finished off during the night . . . behind the crematorium they dug three large trenches 12 metres long and 6 metres wide. After a bit it was found that the results achieved even in these three big trenches were not quick enough, so in the middle of these big trenches they built two canals through which the human fat or grease should seep so that work could be continued in a quicker way. The capacity of these trenches was almost fantastic. Crematorium No. 4 was able to burn 1000 people during the day, but this system of trenches was able to deal with the same number in one hour."2

Using this method - a combination of ovens and open-air pit burning - Rudolf Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz, noted that they were able to dispose of a maximum of 9,000 bodies per day: "This figure was reached in the summer of 1944, during the action in Hungary, using all installations except Crematory [4]. On that day five trains arrived because of delays on the rail lines, instead of three, as was expected, and in addition the railroad cars were more crowded than usual."3

Evidence of the open-air burning pits in aerial photographs
On July 8, 1944 the Luftwaffe (German air force) flew over Birkenau as they were taking reconnaissance photographs. The photo clearly shows a pillar of black smoke billowing out from behind Crema 5. This picture in full and as a closeup is available at: http://www.holocaust-history.org/see-no-evil/#anchor5080097.

Mattogno admits the existence of these open-air burning pits but he claimed that the smoke came from burning trash.4 In fact, both Cremas 2 and 3 both did had incinerators dedicated to burning trash. Pery Broad spoke of the wholesale destruction of records. Henryk Tauber also witnessed truckloads of documents being destroyed in the incinerators of Cremas 2 and 3.5
Holocaust deniers such as John Ball at www.air-photo.com, claimed that the aerial photos had been tampered with and then just cropped the smoke out of the picture. You can see the cropped picture at: http://www.air-photo.com/english/julypic.html. However, in 1996, experts at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, one of the world leaders of the analysis of aerial and satellite images, examined the negatives carefully. The JPL experts found no evidence of forgery or tampering.

Holocaust deniers also argue that an aerial photograph taken on June 26, 1944 by the Allies when they flew over Birkenau on their way to bombing targets showed no open-air pit burning activity. In fact, the June 26, 1944 photograph doesn't show any smoke from open-air burning pits because the deportations of Hungarian Jews were suspended during this time. The list of transports shows that no trains left Hungary from June 17 to June 24. They were resumed on June 25. The transports took three or four days to get there. In addition, there was no registration of Hungarian Jews being registered from June 20 to June 27.
Finally, rare photographs taken by a member of the Sonderkommando survived the war. Taken clandestinely from the window of Crema 5, these pictures show the men of the work unit dragging bodies to the open-air burning pits surrounded by smoke. These pictures are availalbe at http://veritas3.holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/body-disposal/.

When the available ovens at Auschwitz-Birkenau couldn't handle the load, then open-air pit burning was used. Photographs from the air and on the ground show the open-air pit burning process. Eyewitness evidence from both victims and perpetrators also makes reference to the open-air pits.

The ovens in Auschwitz-Birkenau couldn't be run day and night for years without a break. They must have been out of operation for long periods of time due to breakdowns and maintenance.
The Holocaust deniers claim that the ovens were inoperable for long periods of time due to maintenance and breakdown, thereby reducing the number of bodies that could be burned in total.
German documentation about the maintenance of ovens

The letter dated June 28, 1943 from Karl Bischoff, the head of the Central Building Administration in Auschwitz-Birkenau, to Hans Kammler in Berlin, refers to ideal operations on a continuous basis. Of course, in reality that didn't happen. Oven overload was common and breakdowns were frequent.

Overuse and misuse caused the bricks in the muffles, flues and inside the chimneys to crack or break, requiring maintenance or mending. However, minor repairs could be made quickly. Filip Müller, a member of one of the Sonderkommandos who stoked the ovens, recalled that special fireclay paste was used to patch the cracks on a temporary basis.1
How many ovens were in use at any given time?
It is true that not all 52 available muffles were in use at all times. For instance, Crema 1 in the Main Camp (6 muffles) was shut down on July 19, 1943 when the four dedicated facilities in Birkenau came on line.

Crema 4's ovens (8 muffles) were destroyed in a Sonderkommando uprising in October 1944 and were never able to be used again. The other three facilities also suffered frequent breakdowns and required repairs.

German testimony about other options for body disposal
Pery Broad, a member of the Gestapo in Auschwitz, recalled these breakdowns in his confession: "The four crematoria were exploited to the utmost. Because of the over-use, the ovens were constantly in need of repair. Then only crematorium (4) would remain in working order. There was no help for it - the pyres had to be used again to dispose of the thousands of bodies lying in big heaps behind the crematoria. The gas chambers were hurriedly opened to be ventilated, as soon as the last groans stopped . . . There were no breaks."2
Thus when the number of bodies to be cremated overwhelmed the capacity of the ovens currently in use - such as in late 1944 when 8,000 to 10,000 Hungarian Jews were murdered at the peak of the Hungarian Action - then open-air pits behind Crema 5 and in the back of Birkenau were used to burn thousands of bodies at a time.


Not only did the ovens suffer breakdowns and need maintenance, the use of some ovens were discontinued by German decision, while others were destroyed in a prisoner uprising. However, when there were more bodies than could be burned in the crematoria, the Germans used open air pits which could burn thousands of bodies at once. Therefore, the claim that because of overn breakdowns, the number of bodies that could be burned was low is incorrect.

There are no authentic contemporary documents available that speak about the capacity of the ovens at Birkenau.

Holocaust deniers refuse to accept the Germans' own documentation about the capacity of the ovens. They denounce this authoritative evidence as forgeries.

German documents about the capacity of the ovens

A letter dated June 28, 1943 from Karl Bischoff, the head of the Central Building Administration in Auschwitz-Birkenau, to Hans Kammler in Berlin, summarized the ideal cremation capacity for all 52 muffles in a 24-hour period (including down time for cleaning and maintenance):
Crema 1 340 persons
Crema 2 1,440 persons
Crema 3 1,440 persons
Crema 4 768 persons
Crema 5 768 persons
Total per 24 hours 4,756 persons

Bischoff arrived at his figures by assuming that each of the 52 muffles could cremate four bodies an hour, which by definition required multiple cremations.1

This document is available at:

http://www.holocaust-history.org/~dkeren/cremation/Furn-cap.shtml.

David Irving, whom the High Court in London declared to be a Holocaust denier, racist and antisemite, argues that the letter was forged by the Russians to embarrass the Germans. But the figures which the Russians released after the war were much higher. Why would the Russians forge a letter that confirmed less than half of their own official calculations? Why would they forge a letter that contradicted their own higher calculations?2

In a letter written to the Auschwitz authorities in July 1941, Topf and Sons, the designers and makers of the ovens, stressed that continuous burning lengthened the life of the ovens between maintenances. "It is not harmful to operate the incinerator day and night, if requested, since the fireclay lasts longer when an even temperature is maintained."3

The Germans' own calculations and operating instructions reflect the ability to burn as many 4,756 bodies in a 24 hours period. This was more than enough to handle the transports that arrived with about 3,000 persons per day.

The crematoria ovens at Auschwitz couldn't possibly have disposed of the remains of the 1.1 million Jews who supposedly died there. After all, it takes several hours to burn one body in a civilian crematorium oven.

In the Leuchter Report, Leuchter theorized that since modern crematoria ovens can cremate one body in 1.25 hours, or 19.2 bodies in 24 hours that must mean it was the same at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Based on this observation and allowing for down time for maintenance and repairs, he concluded that 'only' 85,092 bodies could have been cremated.1

Carlo Mattogno, an Italian denier, built his arguments on Leuchter's amateurish speculations, in a 1994 monograph.2 To prove the ovens could not have cremated enough bodies he compared the operation of modern civilian ovens to the situation in Auschwitz-Birkenau.3
What is the cremation process in the civilian world?

In a civilian crematorium, based on laws and out of respect for the dead and their families, each body must be cremated individually so the ashes can be collected and returned to the family.

The civilian crematorium oven is heated up and cooled down for each cremation and is cleaned out after each use. The body is usually burned together with a coffin or some kind of container, which lengthens the time required to complete the process. On the average it takes between one and two hours for each cremation depending on the oven and the remains being cremated.4
The cremation process in Auschwitz-Birkenau
In Auschwitz the authorities were not burdened by respect for the dead or any need to consider civilian rules or laws regarding cremation.

Multiple bodies were cremated together. The muffles (the actual openings in the oven; there were 52 in total in Auschwitz) were filled with as many bodies as could be fit into them.
The men who worked in the Sonderkommandos quickly learned how to combine the bodies of fat people, skeletal 'Muselmänner' and children to achieve maximum results (that is, more bodies could be burned in less time).

Once the first bodies started to burn they just kept putting more bodies in to keep the fires hot. The result was continuous operation at very high efficiency in which very little fuel was needed to keep the process going for hours or days.

Eyewitness evidence about the burning of multiple bodies
Mattogno and his fellow deniers refuse to address a detailed body of survivor and perpetrator eyewitness evidence about body disposal at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Here is some of the evidence they ignore:

    * Henryk Tauber, a member of a Sonderkommando that worked in Cremas 1, 2 and 5, recalled after the war: "We worked in two shifts, a day shift and a night shift. On average, we incinerated 2,500 bodies a day."5
    * Tauber also described how the muffles were filled with multiple bodies: "The procedure was to put the first body with the feet towards the muffle, back down and face up. Then a second body was placed on top, again face up, but head towards the muffle. . . . We had to work fast, for the bodies put in first soon started to burn, and their arms and legs rose up. If we were slow, it was difficult to charge the second part of bodies . . . We burned the bodies of children with those of adults. First we put in two adults, then as many children as the muffle could contain. It was sometimes as many as five or six. We used this procedure so that the bodies of children would not be placed directly on the grid bars, which were relatively far apart. In this way we prevented the children from falling through into the ash bin. Women's bodies burned much better and more quickly than those of men. For this reason, when a charge was burning badly, we would introduce a woman's body to accelerate the combustion."6
      "Generally speaking, we burned four or five bodies at a time in one muffle, but sometimes we charged a greater number of bodies. It was possible to charge up to eight 'Muselmanns.' Such big charges were incinerated without the knowledge of the head of the crematorium during air raid warnings in order to attract the attention of airmen by having a bigger fire emerging from the chimney. We imagined that in that way it might be possible to change our fate."7
    * Filip Müller, also a member of a Sonderkommando that cremated bodies, confirmed the process of multiple cremations in his memoirs. The bodies were ". . . sorted according to their combustibility: for the bodies of the well-nourished were to help burn the emaciated. Under the direction of the Kapos, the bearers began sorting the dead into four stacks. The largest consisted mainly of strong men, the next in size of women, then came children, and lastly a stack of dead Mussulmans, emaciated and nothing but skin and bones. This technique was called 'express work,' a designation thought up by the Kommandoführers and originating from experiments carried out in crematorium 5 in the autumn of 1943. The purpose of these experiments was to find a way of saving coke. . . . Thus the bodies of two Mussulmans were cremated together with those of two children or the bodies of two well-nourished men together with that of an emaciated woman, each load consisting of three, or sometimes, four bodies."8

Evidence about multiple body burning from the perpetrators
Rudolf Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz, confirmed Tauber's and Müller's accounts of burning multiple bodies in each muffle: "Depending on the size of the bodies, up to three bodies could be put in through one oven door at the same time. The time required for cremation also depended on the number of bodies in each retort, but on average it took twenty minutes."9

Additional instructions from Topf in September 1941 advised that "once the cremation chamber has been brought to a good red heat the bodies can be introduced one after the other in the cremation chambers." This letter again cautioned against letting the ovens cool.10

The Topf instructions for their double muffle furnaces envisaged that a body would be added in the oven during the last twenty minutes before the last one was fully cremated. "As soon as the remains of the bodies have fallen from the chamotte grid to the ash collection channel below, they should be pulled forward towards the ash removal door, using the scraper. Here they can be left for a further twenty minutes to be fully consumed . . . In the meantime, further bodies can be introduced one after the other into the chambers."11

According to Topf's calculations this would result in a 25 minute burning cycle for each body.12

The authorities in Auschwitz abandoned any respect for the dead and did not abide by civilian laws of cremation. They burned multiple bodies at one time, continuously pushing in more to keep the fires hot.

Therefore, citing the civilian cremation process as some kind of proof that the ovens in Auschwitz-Birkenau couldn't have handled so many bodies is a false comparison.

There never was enough coke (coal) at Auchwitz-Birkenau for cremating over 1,000,000 bodies in the crematoria ovens.
David Irving, whom the High Court in London declared to be a Holocaust denier, racist and antisemite, made a point of the amount of coke needed to cremate one body at the 2000 trial of the libel charge he brought against Professor Deborah Lipstadt in London. During his examination of Robert Jan van Pelt, the expert on Auschwitz, he put a water bottle on the table and asked: "Do you really, sincerely believe that you can burn one body with enough coke that you could fit into one of these waters bottles, is that what you are saying?"1

The truth about the amount of coke needed to fuel the ovens in Auschwitz-Birkenau
The records of coke delivery to Auschwitz are incomplete. They run from February 16, 1942 to October 1943 with a gap in the middle. The records that survive show that 497 tons of coke was delivered in 240 deliveries.2 Therefore, it is simply futile to try to make average calculations of any kind.

Irving claims that it took between 30 and 35 kilograms of coke to cremate one body. In 1993, Irving published figures of coke shipments to Auschwitz-Birkenau that he said were based on documents in the Moscow archives. According to Irving, they show that a total of 2,188 tons of coke was delivered to Auschwitz-Birkenau between 1940 to 1944. Irving claims that even this amount of coke wouldn't have been enough to cremate some 1.1 million bodies. Carlo Mattogno, an Italian Holocaust denier, was unable to verify the existence of these records in the Moscow archives and to date Irving has refused to publish the actual documents.3

Although we don't know how much coke was shipped to Auschwitz in total, we do know some other facts. When the coke supplies did get low, Henryk Tauber, a member of the Sonderkommando that burned bodies in the ovens at Auschwitz, testified that other materials, including wood (which was very abundant in the area around Auschwitz), were used. ". . . we used the coke only to light the fire of the furnace initially, for fatty bodies burned of their own accord thanks to the combustion of the body fat. On occasion, when coke was in short supply, we would put some straw and wood in the ash bins under the muffles, and once the fat of the body began to burn the other bodies would catch light themselves."4

Further, it did not take as much coke to burn bodies once the fires were started and bodies were introduced continuously. For instance, a Topf memo headed "Estimation of coke usage for Crematorium II K L" dated March 11, 1943, stated that the coke usage could be "reduced by one third" if the ovens were used on a continuous basis.5

Finally, in late 1944 when between 8,000 and 10,000 Hungarian Jews were murdered per day at the peak of the Hungarian Action, the number of bodies to be cremated did exceed the capacities of the ovens. Then open burning pits were dug behind Crema 5 and beside the White Bunker in which the overflow of bodies were burned. Filip Müller was put to work, along with 150 of his fellow Sonderkommandos, digging pits behind Crema 5 and in the woods by the White Bunker. The pits were 40 to 50 meters long, about 8 meters wide and 2 meters deep. Eventually they dug a total of nine large pits "making it possible to burn an almost unlimited number of bodies."6

Your point being?