A Brief History of Forensic Examinations of Auschwitz

Germar Rudolf
Source: Archives, Institute for Historical Review

“Auschwitz” has come to symbolize the greatest crime in human history. The significance of the alleged murder of a million or more persons, most of them Jewish, by gassing at the German concentration camp of that name has elicited endless discussion among philosophers, theologians, and litterateurs as well as jurists and historians, and evoked numberless platitudes from journalists and politicians. The focus of this article, however, is on the following questions:

1. Should the alleged monstrous crime be subject to careful scrutiny by means of thorough forensic analysis?
2. What forensic examinations of the purported crimes scenes at Auschwitz have been conducted thus far, and with what findings? How are we to assess the results?

The Moral Obligation of Forensic Examination

In late spring 1993, the Max Planck Institute in Stuttgart issued an internal memorandum informing its employees that a doctoral candidate there had been dismissed for research he had done on Auschwitz. The institute explained that in view of the horror of the National Socialists’ crimes against the Jews, it was morally repugnant to discuss the specific manner in which the victims had been killed, or to try to determine the precise number of the dead. That one of the world’s leading scientific research institutes stated to its personnel that to determine accurate quantities is not only unethical, but reprehensible, and cause for dismissal, is not without its own irony.

Does it really matter just how many Jews lost their lives in the German sphere of influence during the Second World War? Is it so important, after so many years, to attempt painstakingly to investigate just how they died? After all, it is surely morally correct that even one victim is one too many; and nobody seriously denies that many Jews died.

To affirm these things, however, is not to raise a valid objection — moral or otherwise — to the scientific investigation of a crime held to be unique and unparalleled in the history of mankind. Even a crime that is alleged to be uniquely reprehensible must be open to a procedure that is standard for any other crime: namely, that it can be — must be — subject to a detailed material investigation. Further: whoever postulates that a crime, alleged or actual, is unique must be prepared for a uniquely thorough investigation of the alleged crime before its uniqueness is accepted as fact.

If, on the other hand, someone sought to shield so allegedly unparalleled a crime from investigation by erecting a taboo of moral outrage, the creators of that taboo would, at least morally, themselves commit a singular offense: imputing an unparalleled guilt, beyond any critique and defense, to an entire people, the Germans. To demonstrate just what kind of double standard is being applied to “the Holocaust” (the definition of which usually includes the purposeful annihilation of millions of Jews by the Third Reich), let us note the international reaction to several recent examples of “crimes against humanity.” After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, numerous mass graves, containing hundreds of thousands of victims of the Soviets, were discovered and investigated. Not only was the number of victims determined, but in many cases the specific cause of death as well. In the same regions where many of these mass graves were found, one million or more Jews are said to have been shot by the Einsatzgruppen: yet no such grave has ever been reported found, let alone dug up and investigated, in the more than half a century during which these areas have been controlled by the USSR and its successor states.

During the conflict in Kosovo in 1999, rumors about mass killings by Serbs spread around the world. After the fighting was over, an international forensic commission arrived in Kosovo, searching, excavating, and forensically investigating mass graves. These graves proved to be not only fewer than the Serbs’ Albanian opponents had alleged, but to contain small fractions of the numbers of victims claimed.

Did the Allies attempt, during the war and in the years immediately following, to find and to investigate mass graves of persons said to have been victims of the Germans? So far as is known, only once: at Katyn. But the findings of the Soviet forensic commission, which blamed the mass murder of several thousand Polish officers buried there on the Germans, are today generally considered a fabrication. The report of the international forensic commission invited by the Germans in 1943, on the other hand, which found that the Soviets had carried out this mass murder, is today considered accurate even by the Russian government.

A Definition of Forensic Science

Forensic science is generally seen as a supporting science of criminology. Its aim is to collect and to identify physical remnants of a crime, and from these to draw conclusions about the victim(s), the perpetrator(s), the weapon(s), and the time and location of the crime, as well as how it was committed, if at all. This science is relatively new, and entered the courtrooms only in 1902, when fingerprint evidence was accepted, in an English court, for the first time. The 1998 CD-ROM Encyclopaedia Britannica writes of forensic science:

A broad range of scientific techniques is available to law enforcement agencies attempting to identify suspects or to establish beyond doubt the connection between a suspect and the crime in question. Examples include the analysis of bloodstains and traces of other body fluids (such as semen or spittle) that may indicate some of the characteristics of the offender. Fibres can be analyzed by microscopy or chemical analysis to show, for instance, that fibres found on the victim or at the scene of the crime are similar to those in the clothing of the suspect. Hair samples, and particularly skin cells attached to hair roots, can be compared chemically and genetically to those of the suspect. Many inorganic substances, such as glass, paper, and paint, can yield considerable information under microscopic or chemical analysis. Examination of a document in question may reveal it to be a forgery, on the evidence that the paper on which it is written was manufactured by a technique not available at the time to which it allegedly dates. The refractive index of even small particles of glass may be measured to show that a given item or fragment of glass was part of a particular batch manufactured at a particular time and place.

Hence, forensic research is exactly what revisionists, starting with Robert Faurisson, have called the search for material evidence. The revisionists’ demand for such material evidence is entirely consistent with the normal practice of modern law enforcement. And, as is generally acknowledged, forensic evidence is more conclusive than eyewitness testimony or documentary evidence.

Forensic Science and Auschwitz
The 1946 Krakow Auschwitz Trial

In 1945, the Krakow Institute for Forensic Research (Instytut Ekspertyz Sadowych) prepared a report on a forensic investigation of Auschwitz that was submitted in evidence in the 1946 Auschwitz trial in Krakow, Poland. [see note] This expert report should be treated with caution, because forensic examinations and judicial procedures under the Communists have been anything but trustworthy, and Poland was in 1945 a Stalinist satellite. One need only point to the example of Katyn, the Soviet account of which was fully endorsed by Poland’s Communist regime. [see note]

The Krakow forensic investigators took hair, presumably cut from inmates, and hair clasps from bags found by the Soviets in Auschwitz. Tested for cyanide residues, both hair and clasps showed positive results. Additionally, a zinc-plated metal cover was tested for cyanide and found to have a positive result as well. The Krakow Institute claims that this metal cover once shielded the exhaust duct of a supposed homicidal “gas chamber” at Birkenau.

The tests conducted by the institute were qualitative, not quantitative, analyses. In other words, they could only determine whether or not cyanide was present, not how much of it was there.

As to whether or not homicidal gassing with hydrogen cyanide took place in Auschwitz, these analyses are worthless, for three reasons:

1. There is no way of determining the origin and history of the hair and hair clasps obtained from bags in Auschwitz. Assuming that the analytic results are correct, from a chemical point of view the following can be noted: A positive test for cyanide in human hair proves only that the hair has been exposed to HCN (hydrogen cyanide). But that result does not suffice to establish that the persons from whom the hair came were killed by cyanide. It is a good deal more likely that the hair had already been cut when it was exposed to the gas: in German as well as Allied camps, it was standard to cut off prisoners’ hair for hygienic reasons. When hair over a certain length was later recycled, [see note] it had to be deloused beforehand (often with Zyklon B, the active ingredient of which is hydrogen cyanide). Hence, positive cyanide results from loose hair do not prove human gassings.

2. We face a similar problem with the zinc-plated covers allegedly used to cover the ventilation ducts of the supposed “gas chambers”: their exact origin and history is unknown. It would have been much preferable for the Krakow Institute to have analyzed samples from the walls of the alleged “gas chambers” instead of obtaining samples from pieces of metal:

a. Whereas the origin and history of these metal covers was uncertain, the origin and (at least partly) the history of the walls of the morgues allegedly used as “gas chambers” was known.

b. In contrast to cement and concrete, zinc-plated metal covers prevent the formation of stable iron cyanide compounds. [see note] The developing zinc cyanide compounds are relatively unstable and must be expected to vanish in a short period of time. [see note]

c. The tendency of porous wall material in moist underground rooms to accumulate and to bind hydrogen cyanide, physically as well as chemically, is hundreds of times higher than that of sheet metal.

d. As a matter of fact, the letter accompanying the samples sent to the Krakow Institute actually mentions that a mortar sample allegedly taken from a so-called “gas chamber” is enclosed as well and should also be tested for cyanide. However, for unknown reasons, the Krakow Institute did not mention this mortar sample in its report, perhaps because it did not show any positive result

3. There is no evidence that either analysis has been successfully reproduced.

The 1964-1966 Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial

Several expert reports were prepared during the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial, the best known being those of the Munich Institut für Zeitgeschichte (Institute for Contemporary History). [see note] However, none of these reports was forensic in nature. They addressed legal, historical, or psychological topics. Throughout this mammoth trial, neither the court, nor the prosecution, [see note]. nor the defense [see note] ever suggested that material traces of the alleged crime be secured and investigated. The prosecution had at its disposal numerous statements by eyewitnesses and confessions by perpetrators, and it considered this material entirely sufficient to establish beyond doubt the existence of a program to exterminate Jews in Auschwitz and elsewhere during the Third Reich. [see note] The abundance of such evidence has since been used to argue that the lack of documentary and material evidence was irrelevant. [see note] That no material evidence was presented during the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial was freely conceded by the court in its ruling:

The court lacked almost all possibilities of discovery available in a normal murder trial to create a true picture of the actual event at the time of the murder. It lacked the bodies of the victims, autopsy records, expert reports on the cause of death and the time of death; it lacked any trace of the murderers, murder weapons, etc. An examination of the eyewitness testimony was only possible in rare cases. Where the slightest doubt existed or the possibility of confusion could not be excluded with certainty, the court did not evaluate the testimony of witnesses.

The 1972 Vienna Auschwitz Trial

Between January 18 and March 10, 1972, two architects responsible for the design and construction of the crematoria in Auschwitz-Birkenau, Walter Dejaco and Fritz Ertl, were put on trial in Vienna, Austria. [see note] During the trial, an expert report on the possible interpretation of the blueprints of the alleged gas chambers of the Auschwitz and Birkenau crematoria was presented to the court. The report concluded that the rooms in question could not have been gas chambers, nor could they have been converted into gas chambers. [see note] Thanks to this first methodologically sound expert report on Auschwitz, the defendants were acquitted.

In Search of Mass Graves

In 1966 the Auschwitz State Museum commissioned the Polish company Hydrokop to drill into the soil of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp and to analyze the samples. It is not known whether this research was done in the context of the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial. The results, however, vanished into the museum’s archives: they have never been released, which by itself is revealing enough. Years later, however, several pages from this report were photocopied and sent to the German revisionist publisher Udo Walendy, who published them with commentary in an issue of his periodical. [see note] Traces of bones and hair allegedly found at several places might indicate mass graves. The few pages published by Walendy, however, do not reveal whether these findings led to an excavation or a subsequent forensic study of the traces. It is not even evident whether the bone and hair samples collected are human or animal remains.

Faurisson Pulls the Trigger

It took a professor of French literature to inform the world that determining whether mass murder took place at Auschwitz is a matter for forensic evidence. Robert Faurisson, professor of French, and an analyst of documents, texts, and witness statements at the University of Lyon 2, began to doubt the standard historical version of the Holocaust after much critical study of the eyewitness testimony and intensive scrutiny of documents said to support the claim of mass murder. Faurisson first asserted the thesis that “there was not a single gas chamber under Adolf Hitler” in 1978. [see note] Thereafter he buttressed his position with numerous physical, chemical, topographic, architectonic, documentary, and historical arguments. He described the existence of the homicidal gas chambers as “radically impossible.” [see note] At the end of 1978 Le Monde, the leading French newspaper, afforded Professor Faurisson the opportunity to present his thesis in an article.  [see note]

It took almost a decade, however, for the first expert to accept Faurisson’s challenge and to prepare the first forensic report on the alleged homicidal “gas chambers” in Auschwitz: Fred Leuchter’s now famous report of 1988. [see note] The background and history of the Leuchter Report are well known to readers of the Journal of Historical Review and need not be repeated here. [see note] Suffice it to say that the Leuchter Report was a pioneer work that initiated a series of publications, the scope of which broadened more and more into various fields of forensic science [see note] and soon encompassed many interdisciplinary studies of material and documentary evidence. [see note]

Reaction of the Jan Sehn Institute

The reaction of the Krakow Institute which had carried out the faulty 1945 investigation — by 1988 named after the Communist judge who presided during the Polish Auschwitz and Rudolf Höss trials — to the Leuchter Report has caused much confusion in revisionist circles. To this day, many believe that in 1990 four investigators from this institute corroborated the Leuchter Report, [see note] but this is quite incorrect. Clearing up the misunderstanding requires that the post-Leuchter findings of the Krakow Institute be treated in some detail.

Go to Conclusion of A Brief History of Forensic Examinations of Auschwitz

See also: Truth,  History and Integrity