In today’s news, I read an article here about how British teachers are planning to “convey the Holocaust to teens.” This quote is from the article:
Fresh from a visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau, teachers from Furness College, Barrow, Sandside School, Ulverston, and The Lakes School, Troutbeck Bridge contemplated how to bring the contemporary relevance of the Holocaust into the classroom.
With the haunting horrors of the former Nazi concentration and death camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau still at the forefront of their minds, teachers gathered together to discuss how they will present the complexes of the Holocaust and its modern day messages to young people.
It was this quote, from the middle of the article, which caught my attention:
The educational body says a challenging element for teachers and students will be re-humanising the Nazis, as they were humans and not monsters.
The introduction of gas chambers was a method which made killing more humane for the perpetrators.
If the British teachers try to re-humanise the Nazis by telling the students that it was more humane to gas the prisoners at Auschwitz-Birkenau, they will be making a big mistake. Gassing could be more humane than other methods of killing — if it is done the right way, so as to give the prisoners a quick and easy death without suffering. But that is not the way it was done at Birkenau.
In 1988, Fred Leuchter, an American gas chamber expert, climbed down into the ruins of Krema II at Auschwitz-Birkenau and observed that there was no way to heat the Zyklon-B gas pellets to 78.3 degrees Fahrenheit, which is necessary to release the poison gas. Leuchter pointed out in his Report that it is necessary to heat the pellets before the poison gas will be released. With no quick way to heat the pellets, the prisoners were crowded together in the dark while they waited for hours for their body heat to release the gas and put an end to their suffering. After the prisoners were packed into the gas chamber like sardines, the babies were thrown in on top of their heads. We know this because when the Sonderkommando Jews came into the gas chamber minutes later to remove the bodies, the babies were always at the top of the pile.
It would have taken 10 hours to ventilate a room after Zyklon-B was used. Krema I, the location of the gas chamber in the main Auschwitz camp, did not have a fan to air out the room, so it would have taken even longer until the Sonderkommando Jews could have safely entered the gas chamber to remove the bodies.
No way could this be called a humane way to murder the Jews. This was not even humane for the perpetrators who probably had nightmares about killing babies in such an ignominious way.
On this web site, you can read this quote about the lack of a heating device in the Krema II gas chamber at Auschwitz-Birkenau:
Temperature (too low)
[Krema 1 & II] There was no heating capability in any of the facilities which would have been required, firstly, to drive the gas from the Zyklon B and mix with the air, and secondly, to avoid condensation of the gas on the walls, floor and ceiling. When the hydrogen cyanide condensed into a liquid, it was absorbed by brick and by mortar. Condensation would have made the area very dangerous for anyone who came into the facility to remove corpses. (32-9088)…….During the time he had inspected the facility in February, 1988, the temperature in the room was 10 or 12 degrees Fahrenheit. In Leuchter’s opinion, if Zyklon B pellets had been dropped into the chamber in such circumstances, with no heating capabilities, it would have taken more than several hours for the gas to leave the pellets and permeate the room. Holocaust literature alleged that gassings took place in winter.
If the Nazis had wanted to be humane, they would have built the Auschwitz gas chambers the proper way, using a machine to heat the pellets. The photo below shows a machine that was provided by the Degesch Company, which manufactured and sold the Zyklon-B pellets, along with their machine which was designed to heat the pellets to the proper temperature. This machine automatically opened a can of Zyklon-B and dumped the pellets into a wire basket, so that they could be retrieved and sent back to the manufacturer to be filled with Zyklon-B and used again.
Degesch machine used to heat Zyklon-B pellets
Oh sure, the British teachers can show their students photos from the famous Auschwitz Album, which might suggest that the SS men at Auschwitz were human, but you can’t get around the fact that the Nazis were not humane because they allowed the Jews to suffer for hours in the Krema I and Krema II gas chambers which definitely did not have a way to heat the Zyklon-B pellets. It would have been more humane to just shoot the Jews.
The photo below is from the Auschwitz Album.
SS men and women auxiliaries having fun at Solahutte, near Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1944
Scrapbookpages Blog 
Does this not fly in the face of the holocaust denial laws. I mean if I’m wanting those laws to be a 100% accepted,I’m gonna make sure nothing like this pops up. Say what you will,but this comes down to changing the perception of a group of people. F**k the jews! I want kids to be taught about our good Pol Pot. How the Mayans were Vics of genocide. Tell these kids how Hanoi was putting a price tag of each head of the Montagnards . Screw the Jews! I want these kids to learn about these other minority groups . Tell you another thing. Jews act like they racist. BS ! I’ve lived in South Florida. You can’t swimg a car without hitting a Jew. You outta here how they talk about blacks .
Comment by Tim — May 30, 2015 @ 10:37 am
You have misinterpreted ‘rehumanisation’. The point of rehumanising is to show that the perpetrators were not ‘monsters’ or ‘psychopaths’. The point is to show that they were human beings who carried out appalling atrocities. If you simply describe such people as ‘monsters’ or ‘psychopaths’ then you will need to explain what happened to them all after the war. Why did they become psychopaths for only a few years (or less in some cases). Why were they not psychopaths before the war? And as for monsters… they only exist in children’s stories not real life.
What we learn from rehumanising the perpetrators is that the veneer of civilisation is very thin and can be easily broken. This can be seen by looking at the perpetrators of every genocide.
You reveal a lack of historical knowledge and understanding in your comment about the rationale for the creation of the gas chambers. The rationale behind the gas chambers was twofold (and this is amply supported by documentary evidence, which like most of the evidence for the Holocaust was created by the perpetrators, cf. the millions of documents stored at Bad Arolson for example). Simply put, firstly the gas chambers could kill more people more quickly then the other forms of killing used by the Nazis and their collaborators and, secondly, as the entire process was carried out by Sonderkommando prisoners, with the one exception of introducing the gas (different types were used in different death camps) into the gas chamber, which was done by an SS soldier. As this separated the SS soldier from the victims is was seen as less psychologically damaging than close up shooting. It was never claimed that it was more humane for the vicitm.
As for citing the Holocaust denier Fred Leuchter as a gas chamber expert, this is simply wrong. Leuchter was in fact an ‘expert’ on the electric chair, supplying them to US execution chambers in prisons. His report is so flawed as to be laughable. We have the blueprints for the crematoria at Auschwitz II Birkenau showing exactly how they were constructed. These blueprints are corroborated by eyewitness testimony from both survivors and perpetrators. Leuchter did not (and indeed could not) climb into the gas chamber (watch the film he made of his visit) as it was underground and covered in rubble. He also could not know from which part of the building that contained the gas chamber, crematoria and undressing room he was taking his samples. Given the siting of the gas chamber it is extremely unlikely that any of his samples did in fact come from the gas chamber itself. The gas in the gas chamber would only penetrate a few microns into the paint on the walls and would also be subject to deterioration over time. Any reputable scientist will be able to explain that this would make it impossible for Leuchter to take any samples from which he could draw rigorous, accurate conclusions as to the use or otherwise of gas. Even Holocasut deniers don”t both with the Leuchter report anymore as it is so ludicrous.
And by the way, the gas used in, for example, Treblinka and Chelmno, was carbon monoxide, introduced into the chamber via exhaust pipes. So a specific temperature was not needed. As for the temperature needed to relase the hydrochloric acid from the Zyklon-B pellets, this is body temperature. A crowded, sealed room will very quickly reach the required temperature to release the gas. Basic physics and chemistry really.
Comment by Tom — August 5, 2011 @ 3:40 am
You wrote: “We have the blueprints for the crematoria at Auschwitz II Birkenau showing exactly how they were constructed.” The blueprints for Krema II show that the two rooms that were five feet below ground are labeled “Leichenkeller” which is German for corpse cellar. The corpse cellars were put under ground in order to keep the bodies cool until they could be burned. They were only five feet underground (and three feet above ground) because the ground water at Birkenau was too close to the surface for normal basement rooms. There was no way to heat the underground rooms because there was no need to ever heat a corpse cellar. The original design for Krema II called for a “corpse slide” to roll the bodies down into one of the corpse cellars. How do you explain that?
Fred Leuchter was located to testify in a Holocaust denier trial when someone contacted the person in charge of the gas chamber in Missouri which was one of the few states in America that was still using a gas chamber for execution. Leuchter was the one and only gas chamber expert in America and probably in the world. He was an expert in all forms of execution, including the electric chair. He knew what was necessary to make a gas chamber workable. In fact, Leuchter DID descend into the “gas chamber” in Krema II through a hole in the ruins of the roof. He walked into the “gas chamber” in Krema I and took samples. Germar Rudolf also descended into the “gas chamber” in Krema II and took samples which showed the same results.
Normal body temperature is 98.6 Fahrenheit or 37 C. The temperature needed to release the gas from the Zyklon-B pellets is 78.3. Germany had the best engineers in the world, so why didn’t they design the gas chambers with a way to heat the pellets, instead of putting people into a room and waiting for the room to heat up from their body heat? As I wrote in my blog post, the Degesch company would have instructed the SS men at Auschwitz in how to use their product and the Nazis would have purchased the machine designed for the proper use of Zyklon-B.
You wrote: “It was never claimed that it was more humane for the vicitm.” I did not say that it was more humane for the victim; I specifically said that it was more humane for the perpetrators.
Comment by furtherglory — August 5, 2011 @ 7:13 am
You wrote: “The point is to show that they were human beings who carried out appalling atrocities.”
You can make up new words like “re-humanise” all you want. (BTW, it should be spelled re-humanize.) The end result is that you are teaching students to hate the German people. Teaching that they were “human beings” who carried out “appalling atrocities” is worse than teaching that the Nazis were “monsters.” Teaching that the Nazis were “monsters” would at least have provided a reason for what they did. Teaching that the Nazis were “intolerant” is wrong. They had a reason for what they did and I don’t think that this is being explained.
Students are taken to Auschwitz by the HET and shown a mountain of hair that is deteriorating. The students are told that this is proof that the Jews were gassed because the hair has obviously been treated with Zyklon-B. No, this is proof that the hair was treated, at some point, with Zyklon-B, not that the hair was cut from the heads of Jews who were killed in a gas chamber, using Zyklon-B. If the hair was cut from the heads of the Jews after they were gassed, why isn’t it covered with blood and feces that would have been on the floor of the gas chamber after the Jews died. No, this is hair that was cut from the heads of live Jews in an effort to control the lice that spreads typhus. Are the HET students told about the two typhus epidemics at Auschwitz?
The students are shown thousands of leather shoes that are deteriorating, and leather suitcases that are not deteriorating. What can we conclude from that? The students are told that these are the shoes of the Jews who were gassed. Did they wear their shoes inside the gas chamber? No, the shoes were treated with Zyklon-B in preparation for being sent back to Germany to be given to the people who had lost all their clothing when their homes were bombed by British planes. This would be a great time to teach the students about the “appalling atrocities” committed by the Allies in the bombing of civilians.
The students are shown Krema I in the main camp. Are they told that this is a reconstruction, done by the Soviet Union, and that the tour guides lied to tourists for 50 years, telling them that this “gas chamber” was original? This would be a great time to tell the students about the lies told by the Allies for the purpose of putting all the blame for World War II on the Germans.
Comment by furtherglory — August 5, 2011 @ 8:22 am
You wrote: “A crowded, sealed room will very quickly reach the required temperature to release the gas. Basic physics and chemistry really.”
The gas chambers at the Majdanek death camp had a way to blow hot air into the rooms in order to raise the temperature so that the gas would be quickly released from the Zyklon-B pellets. The Majdanek gas chambers were not underground, like the Birkenau gas chambers. According to a sign at the Majdanek camp, when I visited it in 1998, the Jews were first forced to take a shower, in another room in the gas chamber building, so that the bodies of the Jews would be warm and that would make the gas act faster to kill them. Why wasn’t the same method of warming up the bodies used at Birkenau? Why weren’t the Birkenau gas chambers built above ground, so that it would not have been so cold in the gas chamber? As a matter of fact, there were two gas chambers (Krema IV and Krema V) at Birkenau, which were above ground and disguised as shower rooms. I’m not sure if the shower faucets were fake, as at Dachau, or if the prisoners were forced to take a shower first in order to warm up their bodies, as at Majdanek.
There were 59,000 Jews that died at Majdanek, according to the latest figures given at the Museum. An estimated 900,000 Jews died at Auschwitz (out of the total of 1.1 million that died), but the number of gas chambers at each of these camps was the same. How do you explain that to the students? The Germans are famous for being efficient and for having engineering skills. How do you explain to the students that, when it came to killing the Jews, the Germans did everything in a sloppy, non-scientific inefficient way? And they left plenty of witnesses behind, instead of killing them!
Comment by furtherglory — August 6, 2011 @ 7:29 am
Trading on Guilt: Holocaust Education in the Public Schools
By Philip Eugene Glidden
http://www.amazon.com/Trading-guilt-Holocaust-education-schools/dp/0739203223
From a Amazon customer review:
“This book describes the many tribulations and short lawsuit of a well-educated man who refused to buckle under to the political power of Jews in Florida. In reading the book, one quickly picks up on his anger at the way Jews were able to have a law passed that required school children to be taught about the Holocaust. (It is now required in most states.) His objections are many; here are a few of them:
(1) The law was passed hurriedly, without notice to the public and without consideration of any opposing views, and the same was done during implementation of the law.
(2) The law benefits a religious group, Jews, by creating guilt and sympathy for their suffering, thereby inducing non-Jews to “protect and venerate” Jews.
(3) While the Jews benefit, the children of the rest of us may suffer life-changing trauma from the pictures and stories that are told. (Jews present the teaching of the Holocaust as a benefit to humanity as it supposedly instills tolerance, but the author sees it as only for the benefit of Jews.)
(4) Not only are the Germans in WWII cast as the bad guys, but so are the Germans today, who somehow “inherited” their guilt, and all European and American white people as well for not intervening and saving the Jews.
(5) Students are taught only about Jewish suffering, although other groups have also suffered, many much more than the Jews did. Even today, the author describes how whites are often attacked or raped by blacks with little or no cry of racial hatred from Jewish “anti-hate” groups, though if the victim was Jewish and the perpetrator was white there would be a hell-of-a-ruckus. (As a black gang initiation that required bashing a whitey, the author was smashed in the face with a table leg while riding a bicycle.) It is this “speciality” of the Jews, that they are not the same as everyone else, but are more important because they were chosen by God, that is deeply resented by the author and fuels his anger.
(6) Students are told only the version of the Holocaust that the Jews believe, which is that Jews were wholly innocent victims, in no way responsible for what happened to them; those who believe that the Jews were not entirely innocent, or that the Holocaust has been exaggerated or did not occur as described by the Jews, cannot present their views to the legislature, the implementation committee, and certainly not to the students.
(7) Healing and normalcy cannot be achieved when there are constant reminders of the Holocaust; “a kind of statute of limitations on being reminded of the Holocaust” is needed.”
Point number seven is almost what I meant when I suggested “a moratorium on Holocaust hubub.” I guess my idea of a vaccine or microchip implant to bio-engineer a proper perspective on the Holocaust in teenagers wasn’t absurd enough. How about a new badge for Eagle Scouts who have passed a Holocaust character building test?
Comment by who+ dares +wings — August 2, 2011 @ 8:17 pm
Perhaps a parallel line of teaching can illustrate to these young scholars the deeds their own flesh and blood grandfathers in Bomber Command perpetrated on the civilian population of central Europe. special emphasis on Napalm, phosphorus, and the use of incedieries should be explained in detail, and how they interact with human flesh. reading thoughtful passages from the written orders of the politicians who cynically misused their aircrews by specifically targeting civilians should also be highlighted. Perhaps they will actually learn what mass murder really looked, felt, and above all smelled like.
Comment by schlageter — August 2, 2011 @ 5:03 pm
I think the Education Trust should teach the students about the Irish famine, which was not a famine. There was plenty of wheat available to feed the Irish when the potato crop failed, but the wheat was exported by the British while the Irish starved to death. My Irish ancestors died in a ditch; they have no graves for me to visit. I think the students should be taken to see the ditches where the Irish died of starvation. My Irish ancestor was an orphan who was put on a “coffin ship” by the British and sent to America; he had no choice in the matter.
The Holocaust Education Trust should teach the students about the bombing of civilians in Dresden for starters. The book Churchill’s War by David Irving should be required reading for British students. The British have committed so many Crimes against Humanity and Crimes against Peace that they have no right to teach their students anything about the Holocaust. What about teaching the students why the Jews were kicked out of England in 1290 and not allowed back in for around 400 years? Remember the old proverb: “Sweep before your own door first.” This should be the motto of the Holocaust Education Trust.
Comment by furtherglory — August 3, 2011 @ 12:04 pm
The Holocaust Educational Trust is what it says, the Holocaust Educational Trust. Not the Irish Famine Educational Trust, nor the British War Crimes Educational Trust. If the Trust educated about the Irish Famine it would be called the Irish Famine Educational Trust. What makes you think that the Trust doesn’t teach about the Jews being expelled from England in 1290, and being invited back in by Oliver Cromwell?
Comment by Tom — August 5, 2011 @ 3:55 am
You are correct that a Holocaust educational organization should teach about the Holocaust. What I meant to say is that students in the UK should be taught UK history, not a biased version of Holocaust history. I don’t think that the students are taught about Jews being expelled from England in 1290 because the Jews were expelled for a reason and then invited back for a reason. It seems to me that the students are not being taught why the Jews have been hated for years; they are being taught that the Jews are hated because people are racist and intolerant. The justification for the existence of the HET is that students should be taught tolerance. I think the students should be taught history, not taught to worship the Jews and hate the Germans. Two world wars are enough; students in the UK should not be taught hatred that could start another world war.
Comment by furtherglory — August 5, 2011 @ 6:37 am
schlageter,
You always come up with the best ideas. You’re right, how can the British stand their own hypocrisy of damning the Germans for the “Holocaust” while ignoring their own REAL holocaust of firebombing civilians in so many German cities that had no military value. Talk about monsters!!!! Could this be why they want to “humanize” the Nazis?
If there were a real German govt. instead of the occupation ‘Federal Republic’ that is in place, I could remark that Germany ought to send its students to its own cities to see displays of horrible photos of torturously burned alive men, women and children … and have them talk to survivors of Dresden, Hamburg, Berlin, and many smaller cities. And explain to them how and why the British did what they did.
If that were done, the Brits would be crying “Foul” … “You’re teaching your children to hate us! You can’t do this !!”
This fellow Tom really doesn’t get it at all. He’s probably from the HET.
Comment by Skeptic — August 6, 2011 @ 7:28 pm
Can’t a society that put a man on the moon develop a vaccine, or a microchip that will provide its teens the proper perspective on the Holocaust without a hew and cry and a great gnashing of teeth from educators the world over? We got rid of polio, after all. Yellow Fever and AIDS seem to have been brought under control so why doesn’t science tackle the Holocaust next? I’m a bit tired of reading news stories like this. Let’s have a moratorium on Holocaust hubub until we nail it down like we nailed down the Peloponnesian War and the moon landing.
Comment by who+ dares +wings — August 2, 2011 @ 9:47 am
If you follow the link in the first sentence of my post and read the whole article, you will see that the British educators are planning to re-humanise the victims. The Nazis had de-humanised the victims by giving them numbers, shaving their heads and taking all their possessions from them. The main objective of the teachers is to teach tolerance, which means that they must also teach the students to tolerate the Nazis, not to hate them. So they are going to explain to the students that the Nazis used gas chambers instead of some other method of mass murder because it was more humane — not more humane for the victims, but more humane for the perpetrators. I think that this will actually cause the students to hate the perpetrators and to hate the children and grandchildren of the perpetrators for hundreds of years. Taking teen-aged students to Auschwitz really teaches hatred and intolerance, and this practice should be stopped.
There is a popular story that Heinrich Himmler witnessed the shooting of Jews by the Einsatzgruppen and some brains were accidentally spattered on his nice leather coat. It was this incident that allegedly caused Himmler to order that the Jews should be killed in gas chambers, so that the SS men who had to do the killing would not be traumatized by shooting Jews at close range and spattering brains on the bystanders. I don’t know if Himmler was the one who suggested gas chambers or not. From reading his biography, I deduced that Himmler was very prissy, not a manly man. He was like a school teacher, and it is frequently pointed out that he looked like a school teacher. He was the kind of man who would have done some research about gas chambers; he would have found out that the Zyklon-B needed to be heated and he would not have left out this small, but very important, detail.
When the Degesch company started receiving large orders for Zyklon-B from the Nazis, the engineers at the company would have talked them into buying a machine such as the one in the photo on my blog. This machine was used in the disinfection chambers at Dachau, but not in any of the homicidal gas chambers. Tourists are not allowed to see the disinfection chambers at Auschwitz, so I don’t know if they had Desgesch machines or not.
Comment by furtherglory — August 2, 2011 @ 2:35 pm
The Holocaust Trust teachers should have their students read the article at http://www.truthinourtime.com/2010/11/gordon-duff-on-holocaust.html
Comment by furtherglory — August 2, 2011 @ 3:05 pm
Why read this – it is a denial site and is full of inaccuracies, misrepresentations and exaggerations.
Comment by Tom — August 5, 2011 @ 3:50 am
They should read this because they should know both sides of the story, not just propaganda that promotes one side of the Holocaust story.
Comment by furtherglory — August 5, 2011 @ 7:20 am
Umm… tourists at Auschwitz can see the ‘disinfection chambers’ as you call them (at least those that are left). They are in the so-called Sauna building at Birkenau.
Comment by Tom — August 5, 2011 @ 3:48 am
The Sauna Building was kept locked and off-limits to tourists until 2005. The disinfection chambers in this building are steam chambers and hot air chambers, not “gas chambers” which used Zyklon-B to kill lice in the clothing. The German name for rooms that use Zyklon-B to kill lice is Gaskammer. Tourists are not allowed to see inside a Gaskammer. I found one of the Gaskammer buildings because there were blue stains on the outside of the building, caused by putting disinfected mattresses against the building to air out. This building was locked and off-limits to tourists.
Comment by furtherglory — August 5, 2011 @ 6:17 am
AND YOUR POINT IS ??
Comment by GEOFFREY SMITH — October 21, 2012 @ 2:10 pm
My point is that the victims at Auschwitz-Birkenau might have been taken to a building which they were told was a Gaskammer. These buildings had shower rooms and rooms to disinfect the clothing with Zyklon-B, as proved by the fact that there are heavy blue stains in these buildings. Some in-coming prisoners were also taken to the Sauna building, which also had a shower, as well as steam chambers and hot air chambers to disinfect the clothing.
The crematoria buildings at Auschwitz-Birkenau, which are now in ruins, had no morgue to store the bodies before they were burned. The ruins of these buildings do not have blue stains. The two morgue rooms in these buildings were allegedly used as an undressing room and a gas chamber. So where did they put the bodies when prisoners were dying in the two typhus epidemics in the camp?
Tourists are not taken to see the disinfection buildings because they would learn that Gaskammer was the German word for gas chamber.
Comment by furtherglory — October 21, 2012 @ 4:47 pm
What do you mean ‘nail it down ‘? There is still much historical debate about the Peloponnesian Wars (there was more than one if you care to read about them) just as there is about the Holocaust. However, the debates about the Holocaust, as with the debates about the Peloponnesian Wars are nuanced, they are not about the historical fact. Most of the evidence (documentary, eyewitness, artefacts of all kinds) about the Holocaust was created by the perpetrators, not the victims nor the survivors. Denying the Holocaust is not an intellectual exercise it is informed by racism, intolerance and hatred. Just as the denial of the genocide at Srebrenica is also informed by racism, intolerance and hatred.
Comment by Tom — August 5, 2011 @ 3:46 am