The “reconstruction” of the gas chamber in the main Auschwitz camp…

A regular reader of my blog made a recent comment, which I am going to discuss at length in my blog post today.  In the comment, there was a quote from this revisionist website: http://codohfounder.com/robert-faurisson-on-david-cole-three-pieces/

Begin quote:
It was in 1975 that [Robert] Faurisson succeeded in having a man in charge at the Auschwitz State Museum, Jan Machalek, admit that this so-called “gas chamber” was not “genuine” (in German: echt) but “reconstructed” (in German: rekonstruiert). Consequently, Faurisson asked: “Reconstructed according to the original plan?” and Machalek replied “yes”. Therefore, coming back to Auschwitz in 1976, Faurisson asked Tadeusz Iwaszko, Director of the archives, whether Machalek had been right or not in saying that the so-called “gas chamber” was “reconstructed according to an original plan”. And Iwaszko replied “Yes”.State 1 – From 1940 to 1943, a Leichenhalle (a cold storage room for bodies, with a washroom, etc.);

State 2 – From June 1944 to January 1945, a Luftschützbunker für SS-Revier mit einem Operationsraum (an air-raid shelter for the SS-hospital with an operating room).

The Leichenhalle was a dead-end room: there was no door on the S/E side.

The Luftschützbunker was a room with an opening on the S/E side: a typical anteroom with two doors and, inside, there were typical partition walls in zig-zag as in any air-raid shelter.
End Quote

Note that the Auschwitz Museum Director told Robert Faurison that “From 1940 to 1943” the gas chamber was a “cold storage room for bodies, with a washroom” and that “there was no door on the [southeast] side.”

On my first trip to Auschwitz, in 1998, I was told by my tour guide that the door on the southeast side was the original door into the gas chamber. You can see this door in my 1998 photo below.

This door was added to the Auschwitz “gas chamber” when the morgue was converted into an air raid shelter for the SS men in 1944

The original blueprint of the Auschwitz “gas chamber” building is shown below.

Original blueprint of the Auschwitz gas chamber building

The photo above shows the original blueprint for the “gas chamber” building in the Auschwitz main camp. The morgue, shown on the bottom right of the blueprint, has a door into the oven room and another door into the washroom. The gas chamber was in the same location as the morgue and it did not include the area of the washroom [but it does now].

Note the door from the vestibule into the washroom; this door no longer exists and the area of the former wash room is included in the reconstructed gas chamber.

According to a guide book, which I purchased at the Auschwitz Museum in 1998, the gas chamber in the main camp was only used from September 1941 to March 1942 and after that, the gassing of the Jews was done in “the little red house” and “the little white house” just outside the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp.

However, Danuta Czech wrote that the last victims were members of the Sonderkommando, who were gassed in Krema I in December 1942. The ruins of “the little white house,” also known as Bunker 2, can be seen behind the Sauna building outside the Birkenau camp.

Filip Müller was among the first Jews brought to Auschwitz; he arrived in April 1942 and began working in the crematorium in the main camp in May 1942. Regarding the gassing of prisoners in the main camp, he wrote that “From the end of May 1942 one transport after another vanished in this way into the crematorium of Auschwitz.”

The following quote is from Müller’s book, “Eyewitness Auschwitz“:

At the same time, the siting of the crematorium in the immediate vicinity of the camp was fraught with danger: there was the distinct possibility that The Secret Matter of the Reich could not remain hushed up forever, notwithstanding its top-secret classification. It was for this reason that the columns of deported Jews were conducted to the ‘showers’ either at daybreak when the camp inmates were still asleep, or late at night after roll call. On these occasions a camp curfew was declared. To break it meant to risk being shot. For that same reason those of us prisoners who had been forced to participate in preparations for the extermination of Jews as well as in covering up all traces of the crimes were divided into two groups. This was to prevent us from pooling our information and obtaining detailed knowledge of the extermination methods. Prisoners of the second working party, the crematorium stokers, turned up only after we had swept and thoroughly cleaned the yard. By the time they arrived the chamber had already been aired and the gassed were lying there as if they had just fallen naked from the sky.

Original entrance into the gas chamber building in the main Auschwitz camp

The entrance into the gas chamber in the main Auschwitz camp is through an outside door, shown in the photo above, which opens into a vestibule that is about 6 feet by 8 feet in size. Inside the vestibule, there is a door straight ahead, which opens into the oven room, and another door on the right, but out of camera range, that opens into a small room which was a “laying out” room when this building was used as a mortuary.  The door into the “laying out” room is shown below.

Door into the “laying out” room

When the “gas chamber” building was converted into an air raid shelter, the “laying out” room became the “surgery” room; it has a floor drain and was previously furnished with wash basins.

According to the Auschwitz Museum, the “laying out” room “was used to store spare gratings” when the morgue was converted into a gas chamber in September 1941.

Door into the washroom, which is now included in the gas chamber

The “gas chamber” in the main Auschwitz camp, which is now shown to tourists, includes the former washroom. In the photo above, the washroom is in the foreground.

“Days of Anger” in France, as thousands call for Jews to “get out”

You can read about the “Days of Anger” in France, in an article, written by Ian Tuttle, a William F. Buckley, Jr. Fellow at the National Review Institute.

This quote is from the article:

…. Jewish leaders blame the upswing in anti-Semitic attacks on four factors, the Post reports: “classic scapegoating amid hard economic times, the growing strength of far-right nationalists, a deteriorating relationship between black Europeans and Jews, and, importantly, increasing tensions with Europe’s surging Muslim population.”

It is this last cause that helps to explain how thousands of citizens in a country oppressed by the Third Reich not even 75 years ago has come to dally, at least rhetorically, with the notion of a Final Solution. […]

Nationalistic tripe is one thing. But the protesters also took to proclaiming “Faurisson is right! Gas chambers are bulls**t!” Robert Faurisson is a French academic with a history of World War II revisionism. In 1978 he published an article entitled “The Diary of Anne Frank — Is It Authentic?” and he has declared, “Never did Hitler order or permit the killing of a person because of his or her race or religion.” For his “courage” he received an award in 2012 from Iran’s then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. That French anti-Semites have landed on Faurisson for an intellectual leader is alarming, to put it mildly.

I agree that Robert Faurisson is not the best of the revisionists, but he is French, so I think that is why he is admired by the French people who want the Jews out of France.

In my humble opinion, Faurisson was completely wrong in his analysis of the Diary of Anne Frank.  I wrote about this on a blog post at https://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2010/02/19/the-dairy-of-anne-frank-is-it-authentic/