Defending Against the Allied Bombing Campaign: Air Raid Shelters
and Gas Protection in Germany, 1939-1945
Part 2
Part 2: Civil Defense in the Camps
 HREE
DOCUMENTS should be kept in mind when we try to evaluate the role of
civil defense in the concentration camp administration. The first is
the LS-F�hrerprogramm of November, 1940, which stipulated that
all existing structures had to be modified for air raid shelter use
and that all new structures, particularly in the armaments industry,
had to have bomb shelters.
The second document
is an order from Oswald Pohl, head of the SS economic administration,
dated October 25, 1943, and marked Secret (Geheim!) to 19 concentration
camp commandants, including Rudolf H�� at Auschwitz, concerning the
care and feeding of prisoners. The importance of this document for our
purposes lies not in the fact that Pohl goes into pedantic detail about
how the prisoners should be clothed and fed, even to the point of emphasizing
that hot meals should not be overcooked [7], but the reasons given for
the document. Pohl begins:
- In the past two years the labor in the concentration camps
on behalf of the armaments industry has become a factor of decisive
importance for the war.
- Im Rahmen der deutschen Rustungsproduktion stellen die KL.
dank der Aufbau-Arbeit, die in den vergangenen 2 Jahren geleistet
wurde einen Faktor von kriegentschiedender Bedeutung dar.
The claim is specific; the prisoners are, and have long been, necessary
for the armaments industry. Therefore it is not only natural that they
would eventually fall under the rubric of the F�hrerprogramm
but also that the camps would eventually be targeted for air attack,
as indeed they were. Thus raids on the Buchenwald complex (including
Nordhausen) killed thousands of internees, but in the immediate aftermath
of the war the deaths were incorrectly understood. [Z222, 223, n13]
The final document, whose existence could be inferred from the above,
is an order issued by Heinrich Himmler on February 8, 1943. The order
enumerates a number of measures that are to be carried out in the concentration
camp system to prevent mass escapes in the event of air raids. [8] Thus,
no later than early February, 1943, there was a heightened awareness
at the highest ranks of the SS that the concentration camp system was
vulnerable to air attack. It should also be noted that it was precisely
at this time that the construction office of Auschwitz Birkenau began
to receive a flurry of work orders for gas-tight fixtures. The conclusion,
absent presuppositions, would seem to be obvious.
Developing the idea of bomb shelters in the concentration camp system
is not easily achieved today. Many of the records for the camps are
not widely available and most records for the Eastern camps are still
in Russian or Polish archives. But there are still a variety of ways
in which we can uncover clues to the existence of bomb shelters in the
concentration camp system, above and beyond the documentation already
noted.
In the first place, we can inspect
the documents that are available and look for objects and descriptions
of objects that correspond to materials in the civil defense literature.
For example, references to "gas-tight doors" or "gas-tight windows"
as well as "Blenden" or "Holzblenden" correspond to common
civil air defense terms. Jean Claude Pressac, at the very least, should
be credited with unearthing no less than 39 documents that provide strong
documentary evidence that each of the Birkenau crematoria was equipped
with a gas-tight bomb shelter.[9]
A second
method would be to inspect the physical evidence, most often through
photographs. For example, a number of the small "gas-tight" doors for
Crematoria IV and V were photographed, and there is no doubt that these
are identical to the wooden shutters that are discussed extensively
in such periodicals as Gasschutz und Luftschutz. [ATO426ff,
Ibid.]
Graphic 1: A Blende, or protective window for Krema IV
or V
Perhaps the strongest
example of such correspondence concerns a steel door to a medium sized
room at Majdanek concentration camp. Equipped with the characteristic
round peephole with perforated steel cover, this is unambiguously a
bomb shelter door, although it has never been recognized as such. Instead,
it is usually claimed as the door to a delousing chamber [ATO557], and
yet, in spite of this, a replica of this door was later made and is
currently on
display at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, where it sits as a
representation of a door to an extermination
gas chamber.
The same method can be applied
to still other gas-tight fixtures. For example, a number of photographs
of gas-tight doors with peepholes from Auschwitz-Birkenau have survived,
these closely match diagrams for such doors in the contemporary literature,
although, here again, such doors are usually said to have functioned
as delousing chambers [10]. Pressac has argued that the doors to the
crematoria morgues were identical, but there is no proof of this.
Another way in which photographs
can be analyzed involves looking for tell-tale fixtures and features
outside of a building. For example, a photograph of H��' residence at
Auschwitz clearly shows a gas tight shutter affixed to the right of
the entrance, with a narrow L�ftungsrohre just to its left,
from which we may safely conclude that the cellar to this building had
been converted to air raid use.
Graphic 3: A side view of Block 1
Another example concerns the so-called
delousing chamber to Block 1. The bricked in window with a smaller bricked
in aperture is very similar to the outside window indentations of ordinary
above ground shelters, and the gas-tight door parallels the kind found
in the literature. On the other hand, the fact that this space has been
described as a delousing intallation makes us cautious about identifying
this space as a bomb shelter, and reminds us that photographic analysis
on its own is not always conclusive.
On the
other hand, there are a handful of work orders, which, in their abstracts
from Jan Sehn's court, make reference to gas-tight fixtures, and these
not only appear to cover the additions to Block 1 but make other references
to materials which, while adequately explained in a bomb shelter context,
are inexplicable in an extermination context. [ATO456f, ATO27ff]
For example, work order #516 for June 17, 1943 makes reference to the
fittings for a gas tight door, which was completed 10/6/43 [sic!]. But
under either date the door makes no sense in terms of the claimed operation
of the extermination gas chambers.
Another
work order, dated July 12, 1943, contains a number of misspellings.
Again, in the Polish transcript it reads: " 1 Schl�ssel. f�r Gaskammer/Melden
bei H.stuf der Apotheke im 44-Revier" Pressac has made the assumption
that the "44" is a misspelling for "SS" in its runic form, and therefore
translates it as follows: "1 key. for gas chamber. Report to SS captain
of the SS-hospital [i.e., SS-Revier] pharmacy." But this translation
seems inadequate. In the first place, Revier does not mean hospital,
normally it means district or area (although in a military sense it
can mean dispensary.) "SS-Revier" therefore makes little sense,
but if we are going to interpolate spellings for "44-Revier"
we could just as easily interpolate "LS-Revier" which makes perfect
sense, this being a common term for a civil defense district. "Gaskammer",
by the same token, could be a bracket form for "Gas[schutz]kammer"
a common civil defense term. Furthermore, neither delousing chambers
nor "gas chambers" have keys: but gas-tight bomb shelter doors, if and
when they were locked from the outside, were supposed to have a key
inside of a locked glass box nearby [CD153f]. It is perhaps also relevant
that medical supplies in air raid shelters were usually kept in a small
cabinet called a "Schutzraumapotheke."
The final work order appears to be directly relevant to Block 1. It
reads, again in the Polish transcript, "Entwesungskamer [sic!]
Die Beschl�ge zu 1 T�r, luftdicht mit Spion f�r Gaskammer, 2/1 Lattent�r"
(i.e., "Disinfection Chamber. Fittings for 1 door, airtight with peephole,
for Gaskammer, 2/1 lath door") The first thing we note is that
Entwesungskammer has been misspelled: this is chronic in the
Polish transcripts. Now it is supposed that Block 1 was at one time
a disinfection chamber (Entwesungskammer) yet the order refers
to an air tight door with peephole for a Gaskammer. But why the
use of two distinct terms for what was supposedly the same operation?
It is true that Gaskammer can also be used to describe disinfestation
facilities, the drawings for BW 5A and 5B are very clear about this,
and we stress that no one has ever claimed homicidal gassings in any
of these locations, and therefore there is nothing sinister about the
word "Gaskammer" per se. But one possible explanation
would be that the Entwesungskammer, superseded in its use by
other facilities, was being converted to a gas tight air raid shelter,
i.e., Gas[schutz]kammer. In this respect the bricked in window
and the smaller shutter-sized aperture inside to serve for emergency
exit or ventilation, along with the gas-tight door with a peephole which
required bricking in below the old door's lintel, tend to support the
bomb shelter thesis. As to the opposite interpretation, there has still
been no convincing explanation for the need of a peephole in the gas-tight
door of a delousing facility.
Graphic 4: Gas-tight door, Block 1
To sum up the issue with respect to Block 1, the inference that it was
converted to bomb shelter use has significant corroboration but not
proof. To put it another way, the bomb shelter thesis explains Block
1, its physical features and its relevant work orders. The gas chamber
thesis, which holds that references to gas-tight fixtures usually have
a sinister connotation, does not. And that underlines another characteristic
of the bomb shelter thesis versus the gas chamber thesis: the bomb shelter
thesis explains where the gas chamber thesis is left with strange clues
that cannot be made to fit the model. All three of the documents noted
above fit easily into an explanatory model keyed to bomb shelter construction.
None of them can be made to fit the extermination model. Of course,
one could ask where the original documents are today, since they were
obviously in the hands of the Polish authorities at the time of the
H�� trials, and their emergence would help resolve these ambiguities.
But in this case we have an unprecedented situation where the original
documents have not yet been made available to Western scholars more
than 50 years after their discovery.
Graphic 5: Probable bomb
shelters at Birkenau
Another particularly striking example of photographic evidence concerns
the existence of long low mounds in front of the barracks in Birkenau,
which appear in both aerial photographs and ground shots. These correspond
to the Splittergrabe that are described in other concentration
camps, for example, in Buchenwald, and which were designed for internees.
Graphic 6: Plans
for simple underground shelter
The United States Strategic Bombing Survey describes them as follows:
- The trench shelter was slightly below ground and usually
covered by a concrete slab from one foot to three feet thick
on which one foot to five feet of earth had been placed. The
trench was usually about seven feet high on the inside and about
six feet wide. The walls were of either concrete or wood. The
length of the trench varied seemingly with the available space,
but sections or off-sets usually divided it into galleries for
some 50 persons each, and minimized a longitudinal blast. At
each end of the trench there was an entrance usually through
a wooden door, although some had steel. With few exceptions,
wooden benches had been provided for each side of the trench.
Forced ventilation, toilet facilities, and running water were
not available. Little if any protection could be had from a
direct hit of the smallest bomb although they were, in most
cases, splinter-proof. The advantages of the trench type were
rapidity of construction and low cost. This type of protection
was standard for slave labor or foreigners but was used by others
in emergencies. [CD156]
Still another category of evidence to be evaluated concerns the design
drawings for facilities. The Central Sauna at Birkenau, for example,
which was constructed after the four crematoria and which stood to the
West of Crematoria IV and V, was equipped with a basement which also
clearly shows the typical configuration of an emergency exit. [ATO70,
Schnitt C-D]
Graphic 7: Details of bomb shelter emergency exit
Another characteristic of bomb shelters
which is commonly shown in the drawings are the presence of small rooms
that lead into larger rooms, that is, gas locks that are sealed with
gastight doors (e.g., Vorraum, Gasschleuse) . The floorplan to
the Auschwitz Crematorium I, in drawings from its role as an air raid
shelter clearly show these squarish closetlike entries. [Z253] The drawings
for BW 5A and 5B in some versions have clearly marked "Gasschleuse"(gas
locks), [ATO57] and the intact Bath and Disinfection Center at Majdanek
has three such entries, whose doors are clearly air raid shelter doors.
[Z 276]
Graphic 8: The entry space 6 is the gas lock for
this layout of Krema I.
Graphic 9: Disinfection Bldg. Lublin-Majdanek
Some further remarks concerning
Majdanek seem appropriate. Most of the alleged gas chambers in that
camp were supposed to have been part of the Bath and Disinfection Complex
II, whose floor plan is reproduced above. There is no doubt that this
structure originally served the purpose of showering arrivals in its
still operable shower room, and delousing clothing in other rooms, by
a variety of methods, including the use of Zyklon B. [Z 276, and n125
referencing Marszalek] Thus the question concerns the nature of further
adaptations.
Room "A" noted above, has occasionally
been cited as an extermination gas chamber, but it has a plate glass
window with some blue staining around it, which means that the window
must have been in place at the same time as any Zyklon usage. But Room
"A" also has extensive wooden strutting, as well as a square wooden
opening in the ceiling that leads into the roof crawl space. It should
be emphasized that this opening was plastered after construction: but
this plaster, unlike that around the window, shows no blue staining.
[Z 277] Therefore it would apparently not have been exposed to ambient
cyanide. The characterization of this room as a homicidal gas chamber
is difficult to substantiate in view of the window, the nature of the
two inward opening doors, and other characteristics that have been commented
on in David Cole's "46 Unanswered Questions About the Gas Chambers".
However, the strutting accords with typical expedient adapatations for
bomb shelter use, and the wooden opening looks very much like a typical
emergency exit. Moreover, the absence of iron berlinate on the plaster
around the ceiling opening would accord with the concept that this room,
once used for delousing, was converted later to an air raid shelter.
It should be noted that Room "A" and Room "B" are both equipped with
boiler rooms, which, in their original configuration, would have been
equipped with fans for blowing hot air. However, under bomb shelter
adaptation, the removal of these fans would convert these rooms into
instant gas locks. Further, on the far left of the diagram, we can see
another gas lock [Vorraum] in a part of the building with no
known sinister connotations.
Rooms "B", "C"
and "D" are also alleged to have been gas chambers. But interestingly,
all three are equipped with steel doors with peepholes covered with
perforated steel plate -- in other words, typical German bomb shelter
doors -- and the glass of these peepholes is exposed to potential breakage
from inside. Finally, these steel doors can be opened from inside or
outside [Cole, op. cit.], and appear to have latching mechanisms
both inside and outside [ATO, 557]: Michael Berenbaum's The World
Must Know (p. 138) provides a reverse image of one of these chambers
(Room "B"), and there is apparent smudging precisely at the points on
the door where the latching mechanisms would be visible.
Finally, and returning now to Birkenau, there is a further characteristic
of Morgue #1 for both Crematoria II and III which is significant. Morgue
#1 of Crematorium II has a vertical passageway along its western wall
which features a concrete lid and metal rungs.
Graphic 10: Steps to manhole cover, Morgue 1
While Pressac describes this as
a sewer, it is unclear why a sewer entrance that would allow people
to climb in and out would be necessary next to Morgue #1.[ATO228,229]
According to the bomb shelter thesis, this would be an emergency exit.
It should be noted that Crematorium III's remains are similarly equipped.
There is also oral testimony and other records.
Numerous testimonies describe air raids at the Auschwitz complex, including
testimonies concerning seeking shelter in below ground spaces. Danuta
Czech's Auschwitz Chronicle [11] enumerates several raids on
the Auschwitz complex, including a raid that ended up dropping bombs
on Birkenau by mistake (this destroyed a "dugout" in Czech's words,
clearly a reference to a trench shelter.) The testimony of Dr. Nyiszli
specifically describes the use of Morgue #1 of Crematorium II as a bomb
shelter, although he also claims the same space was used for a gas chamber.
[12] Other testimonies from Buchenwald, for example, describe trench
shelters, while some subcamps of Buchenwald (i.e., Nordhausen) clearly
describe Stollen.
To sum up, we can
reconstruct the existence of bomb shelter facilities from a number of
different sources. The two most prominent are words that correspond
to the civil defense literature, and photographs or drawings that depict
ordinary civil defense features, such as gas tight doors, shutters,
wire screens or other protected apertures, emergency exits, ventilation
ducts, camouflage, bricked in windows, ventilation chimneys, and cellar
spaces that suggest adaptations or are equipped with the characteristic
zigzag construction of emergency exits.
It
should be stressed that the identification of features in photographs
does not prove bomb shelter use. However, the photographic evidence,
supplemented by the documentary evidence and drawings, seems fairly
conclusive -- the crematoria at Birkenau were adapted to added bomb
shelter use at a time when several other locations in that camp were
also being adapted for that purpose. Keeping in mind the stipulations
of the LS-F�hrerprogramm, which mandated that all buildings old
and new should provide bomb and gas protection, the claim that the Birkenau
crematoria contained gas tight bomb shelters should arouse no further
controversy. The question, why would there be bomb shelters in crematoria
is incorrectly framed: the crematoria were buildings, buildings were
supposed to have bomb shelters, and therefore they had them. The real
question is that, given that the crematoria had bomb shelters, why has
this fact never been recognized?
Conclusions
The primary impetus for this article arose out of the desire to explore
the claim that the Birkenau crematoria were equipped with gastight bomb
shelters. But in the course of exploring this issue we found out much
about the experience of the German people in the air war. Therefore
it seems fitting that our conclusions begin and end with remarks on
the bombing campaign, and the defense against it, among the civilian
population.
We have found that the civil defense
establishment in Germany was huge. With a 1939 enrollment in the
RLB of 12 million, we are describing a body that embraced about
1/7 of the population: it seems likely that there were as many people
involved in civil air defense at least part-time as in all three branches
of the Wehrmacht.
At a cost that would project
to billions of marks, we have found that tremendous sums were expended
on shelters of all types, including what we would conservatively estimate
to be hundreds of above and below ground public shelters of reinforced
concrete, thousands of public access shelters (�LSR), and tens
of thousands of air raid cellars (LS-Keller) and home shelters.
The regulations stipulated that all of these shelters were to
be equipped for chemical warfare defense, and the references to gas
or air tight steel doors in the literature and testimony are so frequent
as to scarcely deserve further comment.
Supporting
these structures was the clearly articulated supporting staffs of the
SHD, numbering thousands, which included decontamination crews
especially equipped for chemical warfare, and specially designated locations
(laundries, public baths) that in the event of gas attack would have
their normal function subordinated to the role of chemical warfare decontamination.
The decontamination crews, in addition, were specially trained and equipped,
which soon led to their involvement in corpse handling and other sanitation
procedures. The sanitation service was in turn engaged in all kinds
of sanitation prophylaxis including disinfection, pest control, and
delousing of citizens to prevent the spread of infectious diseases including
typhus. The fundamental identity of the decontamination, disinfection,
and delousing paradigms could hardly be more clear.
Running throughout this service and its wartime operation was an intense
awareness of the possibilities of gas warfare. Not merely the decontamination
squads are evidence of this, but also the gas testing centers, the locations
earmarked for decontaminating belongings, the special trucks loaded
with decontamination equipment, the 12 million gas masks issued, the
demands for gas tight doors, and ventilation systems that could filter
poison gas. And, as we have seen, the fear of poison gas even entered
the popular mind, such that the grotesque appearance of the victims
would lead many to rashly assume that the enemy had decided to use this
terrible weapon.
It would take a philosopher
or a psychologist to appreciate what happened next. For the documentary,
forensic, and photographic evidence clearly shows that the majority
of the hundreds of thousands of German men, women, and children indiscriminately
killed in the air war perished from the inhalation of poisonous carbon
monoxide gas and were in many cases at least partially cremated. Yet
their plight was totally submerged in the postwar period by even more
horrifying claims of gassing and burning made against them. One begins
to wonder whether the suffering of the German people was forgotten,
or whether it was simply inverted.
Contrasting
the situation among the civilian population with that in the concentration
camps, we find ample reason to expect analogous levels of bomb and gas
protection. The camps were important to the war effort. Himmler expressed
concerns about prisoners escaping from the system during air raids,
including Auschwitz Birkenau, at precisely the time when Auschwitz Birkenau
began to make numerous requests for gas tight doors and other gas tight
fixtures such as were common for civil defense in other parts of Germany.
In addition to the morgues in the Crematoria, which show evidence of
having been converted from morgues to also serve as anti-gas shelters
and decontamination centers in the event of gas attack, we find that
the dormant morgue in Crematorium I in Auschwitz was in fact converted
to a bomb shelter. And, given what we have found out about the need
for cleanliness in the handling of corpses when discussing the bombing
victims, the original presence of showers for corpse handlers in any
crematoria should not surprise us.
The blueprints
for the Central Sauna also show evidence of dual purpose, and the characteristic
aperture of an emergency exit can be clearly seen in its cellar. The
disinfestation blocks BW 5A and BW 5B, which were no longer used for
that purpose after late 1943, are equipped with gas locks and thus could
have been easily converted, if, indeed, they were not built with a dual
purpose in mind. Block 1 at Auschwitz provides visual evidence of having
been converted to a bomb shelter in late 1943. The Commandant's house
was clearly converted for bomb shelter use. Finally, it appears that
the prisoners themselves were equipped with splinter trenches in front
of every barrack. Apparently there were dozens, if not hundreds, of
air raid shelters at Auschwitz Birkenau; and again, bomb protection
in the German scheme of things also meant gas protection.
Turning now to Majdanek, we find that the Bath and Disinfection Complex
II was equipped with no less than three gas lock entries as well as
standard steel bomb shelter doors with peepholes. In addition, the interior
rooms had added wooden strutting for reinforcing the roof, and at least
one wooden emergency exit. In the context of the documents, the contemporary
civil defense literature, and the photographic evidence, it should be
obvious that the Bath and Disinfection complex at Majdanek was converted
at some point in its career to also provide bomb and gas protection,
and that its showers were meant to serve as a decontamination center
for gassing victims.
We should note here that
this same complex was claimed by the Soviets in a Special Commission
report from 1944 as having been the site where 1.5 Million people were
gassed with Zyklon B. Yet, while no one claims more than 1/10 of that
number of victims for Majdanek today [Z 277, n129 surveys contemporary
downward revisions], neither has anyone explained how these manifest
bomb shelter features could have been misunderstood or misinterpreted
for so many years.
The nature of the German
people's plight in the air war has also been misunderstood. Although
doubtless thousands perished in utter helplessness, hundreds of thousands
more survived, thanks to the skillful preparations of the people and
the RLB, and due to the courage and resourcefulness of the sergeant
majors, fire wardens, and countless others. We recall that the twin
objectives of the air war were the destruction of German industry and
the breaking of German morale. But neither of these twin objectives
was achieved, and it is tragic that more than 50,000 brave British airmen
perished in a fruitless venture that left a blot on Britain's conduct
of the war. Far from being mere passive martyrs, the German people won
the air war because they, too, did not "flag or fail." Even so, their
sacrifice remains unmourned and unremembered.
Unremembered and unmourned: except for a curious and ironic artifact.
If you travel to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington,
DC, you will find many reminders of the terrible ordeal of the Jewish
people in the course of their persecution by the German National Socialists.
These objects serve as memorials to the many Jews who suffered, died,
and were killed in what has come to be known as the Holocaust. But in
another part of the building, alone, and dimly lit, we find a silent
sentinel, who, by its presence, serves as an admonishment to those who
insist on the most narrow interpretation of history, an Eulenspiegel-ish
reminder that remembrance is irrepressible, and a memorial to those
German women and children who perished in the gas and flames of the
air war holocaust: a steel door, with handles, a peephole, with a perforated
steel cover -- a German bomb shelter door.
  
Left: USHMM replica
displayed as "gas chamber" door.
Right: German ad for
bomb shelter doors.
�Copyright 1997, Samuel Crowell
Key to Sources Used:
A = Astor,
Gerald, A Blood-Dimmed Tide, (NY:1992)
ATO = Pressac,
Jean Claude, Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers,
(NY:1989)
B = Vogt, Helmut, Das 5. Luftschutzrevier
von Bonn, (Bonn:1994)
CD = United States Strategic
Bombing Survey, Civilian Defense Division Final Report, 2nd edition
(n.p.:1947)
D = Irving, David, The Destruction of Dresden,
(NY:1964)
DD = H��, Rudolf,
Death Dealer: The Memoirs of the
SS Kommandant at Auschwitz (ed. Steven Paskuly), (NY:1996)
G = Musgrove, Gordon, Operation Gomorrah: The Hamburg Firestorm Raids,
(London:1981)
H = Hastings, Max, Bomber Command,
(NY:1989)
I = Iserson, Kenneth V., Death to Dust: What
Happens to Dead Bodies? (Tucson,AZ:1994)
N = Schramm,
Georg Wolfgang, Der zivile Luftschutz in N�rnberg, 1933-1945
(N�rnberg:1983)
P = Steiner, Walter, Die Parkh�hle von
Weimar: Abwasserstollen, Luftschutzkeller, Untertagmuseum (Bremen:1996)
S = Stahl, Joachim, Bunker und Stollen f�r den Luftschutz im Raum
Siegen (Kreuztal:1980)
SF = Vonnegut, Kurt, Slaughterhouse
Five, (NY:1993)
US = United States Strategic Bombing
Survey, The Effect of Bombing on Health and Medical Care in Germany,
(Washington, DC:1945)
V = Steinhoff, Johannes, et al.,
eds., Voices From the Third Reich, (NY:1994)
Z =
Gauss, Ernst [Rudolf, Germar],
Grundlagen zur Zeitgeschichte,
(T�bingen:1994)
End Notes:
1) "Vergasungskeller"
was first published on August 6, 1996, revised on November 7, 1996,
in which form it was published by the Adelaide Institute in January,
1997, and then again revised on January 7, 1997 and June 26, 1997. The
article may be found on Dr. Butz' web site at: http://pubweb.acns.nwu.edu/~abutz/di/dau/vk.html
2) "Technique and Operation of German Anti-Gas Shelters: A Refutation
of J. C. Pressac's 'Criminal Traces'" was first published on the
CODOH website on March 23, 1997, revised April 7, 1997, further revisions
April 30, 1997. It is located at http://www.codoh.com/incon/inconpressac.html
3) Pressac's magnum opus, Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the
Gas Chambers, (NY:1989) is hard to find. His The Crematoria of
Auschwitz (NY:1993) is more accessible. Beginning with an article
in Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp (NY:1994), Gutman, Berenbaum,
and Gutman, eds., he has been assisted by Robert Jan van Pelt, who has
also written, with Deborah Dwork, Auschwitz: 1270 to Present
(NY:1996) The general thrust of all of these interpretations is consistent.
4) An excellent treatment of the evolution of British strategic bombing
thinking may be found in Hastings, op. cit., supra, esp. pp. 37-58;
106-122.
5) The Reichsluftschutzbund is usually
rendered ARP or A.R.P. by British historians, apparently on the analogy
with their own Air Raid Protective services. Its members would extend
all the way down to the operation of each shelter: the SHD, on
the other hand, worked from centralized locations.
6) On
municipal disinfection centers in Germany, see "Die Umgestaltung
und Vergrosserung der Desinfektionanstalt der Stadt Dortmund" in
Gesundheits-Ingenieur, 27.IX.41, p. 523ff
7) Friedlander,
H. and Milton, S., Archives of the Holocaust, vol. 20, Document
169, p. 462ff, 463.
8) Hilberg, Raul, The Destruction
of the European Jews, (NY:1960), p. 584
9) See the
extensive discussion of the "Criminal Traces" in "Technique and Operation
of German Anti-Gas Shelters"
10) Ibid.
11) Czech, Danuta, Auschwitz Chronicle: 1939-1945, (NY:1997),
p. 692, 697n, p. 708. These entries fairly well explode the claim that
Auschwitz was never bombed. My thanks to Richard Widmann for these references,
and for other editorial suggestions.
12) Nyiszli, M.
Auschwitz (NY:1993), p. 128
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