The Bischoff Letter

Holocaust Denial on Trial (HDoT) claims that there is a document shows us the capacity of the cremation ovens at Auschwitz/Birkenau.

This capacity of 4,756 bodies a day would theoretically be enough to dispose of all the alleged gassing victims in Auschwitz/Birkenau. It is important to note that Bischoff was the head of the Central Building Administration. He was not an engineer or an employee of Topf and Sons, the company that manufactured the cremation ovens.

Just because a document says it, forgery or not, doesn’t necessarily make it possible in real life. Even though the argument for this letter being authentic is not a good one (as you will see later) I will, for the sake of argument, pretend that it is genuine.

The engineers of Topf and Sons were interrogated by the Soviets. During the interrogation they stated that one individual ovens (muffle) was meant for one person and it took one hour to cremate one body.

Bisschoff was working under the assumption that 4 bodies in one muffle could be cremated in one hour. Perhaps you are thinking that maybe the Topf engineers were lying to the Soviets to cover for the Nazis. It is certainly a possibility. There are mountains of rubbish testimony surrounding the Holocaust.

Thing is, the Topf testimony conforms with reality. To illustrate this I will present two images (regular readers will have probably seen these pictures and heard this explination before). The first is a recreation of the crematory ovens from Auschwitz. The second are original ovens found at Buchenwald. As you can see in the first picture, the idea of four bodies going into that oven is ridiculous. Even if they did somehow fit there is the matter that cramming the muffles full of bodies would have caused problems. As you can see in the second picture there are square holes between the muffles. This is for heat distribution. If these holes were blocked it would hamper the exchange of heat between the muffles and slow down the cremation process. There is also the matter that an overfilled muffle would eventually get too hot and cause damage to the equipment.

An empirical study conducted in 1975 determined that the minimal duration to cremate an adult was 63 minutes. That’s one body in one muffle. (Here is the citation for those interested: Jones, E.W., “Factors Which Affect the Process of Cremation. Third Session.” Extract from the Cremation Society of Great Britain’s Annual Cremation Conference Report, 1975, pp. 77-87)

As I said before, a document can not change reality. Just because a piece of paper says something is possible that doesn’t always make it so.

Next we have HDoT’s terrible argument for why the document is not a forgery. Why would the Soviets forge a letter that confirmed less than 1/4 their own calculations? Maybe because they knew their figures were exaggerated and needed a document that was more believable. I personally have no way of proving if the document is a forgery or not. However, HDoT’s pathetic argument makes me quite suspicious.

In conclusion, even if the document is authentic it matters not. A document can not dictate reality and Bischoff’s letter is clearly at odds with the realm of possibility.

If you like to learn more about Bischoff and the Central Construction office there’s a Holocaust handbook for that! Carlo Mattogno’s The Central Construction Office of the Waffen-SS and Police Auschwitz—Organization, Responsibilities, Activities. One thing that I find interesting is the fact there were 49 private firms working in Auschwitz which had civilian employees. These employees were in such close contact that they had to sign a declaration that they would not infringe the disciplinary standards of the camp in their relations with the inmates. However there was no indication that the employees had to sign any sort of nondisclosure agreement. This really makes one wonder how the Nazis did a top secret murdering of over a million people when the crematoriums were in plain sight. Hmmm….