Markiewicz Report in 1994

[ConfusedJew]

Are there any more substantive responses here?

You don't have to accept that homicidal gassings occurred, but what I'm arguing is that IF they occurred, they would have obviously washed the chambers which would have prevented the Prussian Blue from forming.

Does anybody dispute that argument?

Please no ad hominems or mockery. It just suggests that you guys don't have strong enough evidence and arguments for those to speak for themselves.

[ConfusedJew]

Contemporary accounts...

Also, gas vans? Really?

Yes, there is contemporary testimony that the mythical gas vans were washed out.

Overwhelming? I don't think that's an accurate assessment.

You've got 1 testimony from 2002 in there, how contemporary is that to you? It's not even from the same century as the event.

A lot of those go back further than 2002 but you guys are following a red herring.

Just answer these two hypotheticals, if you were going to kill people using cyanide gas in a chamber, would you or would you not clean the room after hundreds of people died?

Post mortem effects of bodies that were killed from cyanide poisoning show foam at the mouth or nose and bleeding. As the brain dies from lack of oxygen (asphyxiation), control over muscles—including those controlling the bladder and bowels—is lost. This leads to urination and defecation at or shortly after death. Victims often vomited due to panic, trauma, or the effects of the gas itself. Zyklon B (hydrogen cyanide) is a cellular poison that can cause nausea, dizziness, and convulsions before death. People gagged, choked, and coughed up saliva or mucus, which accumulated on the floor and bodies.

Secondly, do we agree that washing a room after exposure to cyanide gas would prevent the formation of Prussian Blue staining?

[ConfusedJew]

https://holocaustencyclopedia.com/witne ... enryk/676/. I simply ask, again, how are we supposed to take any of this testimony seriously when he tells blatant lies after being interrogated by the Soviets?

The website that you are sharing fully affirms the Holocaust.

Why an Encyclopedia on the Holocaust Matters
Nearly everyone knows something about this topic, and yet everyone’s knowledge is also partial and incomplete. This is inevitable, given that the Holocaust is such a vast topic. It stretches over many years, encompasses almost an entire con­tinent, and includes hundreds, if not thousands of in­dividual locations and events, involving millions of people – perpetrators, victims and bystanders.

https://holocaustencyclopedia.com/introduction/

We can agree to disagree if you think that people who lived in concentration camps and most certainly had severe PTSD should have perfect memories and recollection of such events. Do you expect their memories should be perfect down to every detail or would you expect that there would be mistakes and even exaggerations along the way?

I am very confident than nearly all normal people would think you are crazy for expecting perfection from survivors.

[Stubble]

Contemporary accounts...

Also, gas vans? Really?

Yes, there is contemporary testimony that the mythical gas vans were washed out.

Overwhelming? I don't think that's an accurate assessment.

You've got 1 testimony from 2002 in there, how contemporary is that to you? It's not even from the same century as the event.

A lot of those go back further than 2002 but you guys are following a red herring.

Just answer these two hypotheticals, if you were going to kill people using cyanide gas in a chamber, would you or would you not clean the room after hundreds of people died?

Post mortem effects of bodies that were killed from cyanide poisoning show foam at the mouth or nose and bleeding. As the brain dies from lack of oxygen (asphyxiation), control over muscles—including those controlling the bladder and bowels—is lost. This leads to urination and defecation at or shortly after death. Victims often vomited due to panic, trauma, or the effects of the gas itself. Zyklon B (hydrogen cyanide) is a cellular poison that can cause nausea, dizziness, and convulsions before death. People gagged, choked, and coughed up saliva or mucus, which accumulated on the floor and bodies.

Secondly, do we agree that washing a room after exposure to cyanide gas would prevent the formation of Prussian Blue staining?

I mean, if we are dealing in hypotheticals, I would have diverted the water from the storage tanks at the water treatment plant a couple hundred yards away and drown the condemned in the death chambers, then pumped the water back to the water treatment plant holding tank.

Then I would have run the dead through a carcass shredder and separated the bones from the meat.

I would have run the bones through a bone mill and processed them for industrial applications and I would have turned the meat into fertilizer.

I wouldn't have jacked with hydrogen cyanide gas or crematoria, too dangerous to work with the gas, too much overhead for disposal. 33kg of coke × 1,100,000 is a lot of useful war material up the chimney. I'd have saved that to make steel, and shot.

[Archie]

Are there any more substantive responses here?

You don't have to accept that homicidal gassings occurred, but what I'm arguing is that IF they occurred, they would have obviously washed the chambers which would have prevented the Prussian Blue from forming.

Does anybody dispute that argument?

Please no ad hominems or mockery. It just suggests that you guys don't have strong enough evidence and arguments for those to speak for themselves.

Yes, I dispute this. I do not think you have established the bolded part.

1) LK1 would have been packed with bodies. I think it would have taken hours to ventilate the room and hours more to clear the bodies. The LK was in the basement whereas the ovens were on the floor above, connected only by a tiny manual corpse elevator. The process of clearing the room given this idiotic design would have been extremely slow. So there is no way you could have gotten to the walls very quickly.


2) If there were urine and feces, this would mostly be on the floor. I assume you would want to hose down the floor. And maybe the lower part of the walls. Maybe mop up. I do not think it is a given that you would thoroughly wash every square inch of surface in the whole cellar every single time, especially not the upper part of the wall or the ceiling.

3) With porous surfaces like brick, mortar, or plaster, HCN can penetrate deeply. I do not think you would be able to prevent the reaction throughout the wall by washing the surface later.

4) Washing would add a lot of moisture to the walls and the room. Everything I have read says high moisture is more favorable for Prussian blue formation. Really you should be arguing the opposite, that they kept the cellars absolutely bone dry.

5) If any Prussian blue does form, you generally cannot wash it off. You would need a very strong acid to dissolve it or something like that. Imo, it is highly unlikely that none ever formed despite many dozens or even hundreds of Zyklon gassings in these rooms.

Anyway, is this theory about the washing the walls your final answer? I have lost track of how many arguments you have cycled through on this. A little while ago wasn't it something about how there wasn't any iron in the walls? You should argue that there was too much spaghetti for Prussian blue to form (since you have thrown so much at the wall to see what will stick).

Holocaust Believers have claimed that the reason there are Iron Blue cyanide stains in delousing chambers but not in the gas chamber morgues is because:

• Dynamite destroyed them. (JC Pressac)
• The exposure time "per day" was 1/100th as long. (Pressac, with less extreme claims by others)
• They weathered away. (Pressac, Jan Markiewicz et al, Werner Wegner)
• The walls were neutral pH. (Richard Green)
• Cyanide-soaked clothing created the stains. (Green)
• The blue stains are actually paint. (Josef Bailer, also parroted by Markiewicz et al)
• The walls were sealed against it. (bombsaway, also implied by Wegner)

This cannot be called consistent. This looks like grasping at straws, or, more graciously, it is rampant speculation to find a hypothesis that fits the facts. That same ethos is applied by every Holocaust historian in interpreting documents and witness accounts. Revisionists can hardly be blamed for engaging in their own speculation. And yet it's only revisionists who have had their work criminalized.

[TlsMS93]

They simply run over any bottleneck. This idea of using moisture to remove any trace of Prussian Blue is ridiculous, as they use moisture as a catalyst. It would be easier to maintain that from time to time the plaster was removed and a new layer added; it would be less ugly.

[ConfusedJew]

I mean, if we are dealing in hypotheticals, I would have diverted the water from the storage tanks at the water treatment plant a couple hundred yards away and drown the condemned in the death chambers, then pumped the water back to the water treatment plant holding tank.

Then I would have run the dead through a carcass shredder and separated the bones from the meat.

I would have run the bones through a bone mill and processed them for industrial applications and I would have turned the meat into fertilizer.

I wouldn't have jacked with hydrogen cyanide gas or crematoria, too dangerous to work with the gas, too much overhead for disposal. 33kg of coke × 1,100,000 is a lot of useful war material up the chimney. I'd have saved that to make steel, and shot.

Will you answer the questions?

The Nazis chose hydrogen cyanide because it was cheap, quick, and scalable to a ton of people. There was a functional reason for it while your suggestions aren't serious.

[Stubble]

The water was absolutely free and it was right there. Kill time would have been the relatively close, and disposal costs are way lower, also, post process the material generated is usable.

Just as scalable, and free. Also, much less hazardous kill process.

I'm dead serious.

Note, there were pumps being produced at the time with a capacity of 1,000 cubic meters per minute, this would have been 1) safer 2) faster and 3) cheaper.

[TlsMS93]

Carbon monoxide was far superior and was allegedly used in Action T4, so why use Ziklon B? It didn't pose the same handling and dissipation risks, and it was easy to manufacture, without the need to drill holes in the reinforced concrete ceiling, build wire mesh, or even worry about Prussian Blue. What's the basis for claiming it was better?

That's why Irving rejects extermination at Auschwitz but accepts it at the Reinhardt camps. Even given so many absurdities of the Holocaust, the events at the Reinhardt camps are more credible to me than at Auschwitz.

[ConfusedJew]

You don't have to accept that homicidal gassings occurred, but what I'm arguing is that IF they occurred, they would have obviously washed the chambers which would have prevented the Prussian Blue from forming.

Does anybody dispute that argument?

Yes, I dispute this. I do not think you have established the bolded part.

Thank you for actually answering my question.

1) LK1 would have been packed with bodies. I think it would have taken hours to ventilate the room and hours more to clear the bodies. The LK was in the basement whereas the ovens were on the floor above, connected only by a tiny manual corpse elevator. The process of clearing the room given this idiotic design would have been extremely slow. So there is no way you could have gotten to the walls very quickly.

I'm not sure what your argument is here. How does this relate to the formation of Prussian Blue?

2) If there were urine and feces, this would mostly be on the floor. I assume you would want to hose down the floor. And maybe the lower part of the walls. Maybe mop up. I do not think it is a given that you would thoroughly wash every square inch of surface in the whole cellar every single time, especially not the upper part of the wall or the ceiling.

OK, this is a fair point. Let's say that washing the walls didn't necessarily clear away 100% of the ferrocyanide ions. It is safe to say that they most likely would have washed the room somewhat and it would have reduced some of the ferrocyanide ions which would at least reduce the chance of Prussian Blue forming. Let's say that the washing argument does not prove the prevention of Prussian Blue but it definitely decreased the chances of it forming relative to the delousing chamber. Can we agree on that?

3) With porous surfaces like brick, mortar, or plaster, HCN can penetrate deeply. I do not think you would be able to prevent the reaction throughout the wall by washing the surface later.

Another fair point. HCN is a small, volatile molecule that readily diffuses into porous materials. Over time, repeated exposure increases the depth of penetration. Washing with water or even scrubbing with cleaning agents might remove surface residues but will not remove bound ferrocyanides inside the walls or reverse chemical reactions or extract deeply absorbed gas molecules.

While it is true that HCN can penetrate porous surfaces deeply, it would still be unlikely in the conditions of a homicidal gas chamber. Forensic research found significant cyanide residues (including Prussian blue) in delousing chamber walls, mostly in surface layers but in the alleged gas chambers, lower concentrations were found, limited mostly to outer millimeters.

To penetrate more deeply, more intense and frequent exposure is required. In a homicdal gas chamber, you would hypothetically expect there to be much less exposure than a delousing chamber. Especially if the gas chamber was rinsed off which would remove or at least reduce surface residues.

We can go deeper on this concept if you like.

4) Washing would add a lot of moisture to the walls and the room. Everything I have read says high moisture is more favorable for Prussian blue formation. Really you should be arguing the opposite, that they kept the cellars absolutely bone dry.

Chemically speaking, moisture (H₂O) does promote the formation of Prussian blue so it is fair to say that a humid or wet environment, including walls that are damp from washing, could theoretically enhance the reaction that forms Prussian blue.

But there were offsetting factors.

Homicidal gassings lasted only 20–30 minutes per cycle. Prussian blue formation is a slow process and generally requires prolonged exposure to both cyanide and iron ions. Delousing chambers, in contrast, had hours-long exposures and no washing, allowing buildup and slow formation over time.

Washing adds moisture, but if it's done soon after gassing, it could dilute and remove unreacted cyanide compounds and prevent localized accumulation of cyanide ions near surface iron sources which would hinder the formation of stable blue pigments. Washing won't reverse the reaction but it might prevent it from fully occurring.

I'm still not sure about this aspect, but not all concrete, plaster, or brick has sufficient free Fe³⁺ to participate in Prussian blue formation. I'm not sure whether or not the crematorium basement walls had as much free Fe³⁺ as the delousing chambers. We can come back to that one too but it also still doesn't matter if any one of the other necessary conditions wouldn't have existed.

5) If any Prussian blue does form, you generally cannot wash it off. You would need a very strong acid to dissolve it or something like that. Imo, it is highly unlikely that none ever formed despite many dozens or even hundreds of Zyklon gassings in these rooms.

This is right, Prussian Blue is an extremely stable compound. It also takes a long time for Prussian Blue to form so washing could have prevented that from happening, although it might not have been enough.

Anyway, is this theory about the washing the walls your final answer? I have lost track of how many arguments you have cycled through on this. A little while ago wasn't it something about how there wasn't any iron in the walls? You should argue that there was too much spaghetti for Prussian blue to form (since you have thrown so much at the wall to see what will stick).

No this isn't my final answer. We have to thoroughly examine all of the paths. I think we can agree that washing most likely would have occurred and it would have reduced the likelihood of the hydrogen gas from deeply penetrated the porous surfaces on the walls. But it is still theoretically *possible* to wash and still allow Prussian Blue to form. We have to look at the other factors and weigh those. Washing provides evidence against Prussian Blue formations but washing would not be fully conclusive.

[ConfusedJew]

Holocaust Believers have claimed that the reason there are Iron Blue cyanide stains in delousing chambers but not in the gas chamber morgues is because:

• Dynamite destroyed them. (JC Pressac)
• The exposure time "per day" was 1/100th as long. (Pressac, with less extreme claims by others)
• They weathered away. (Pressac, Jan Markiewicz et al, Werner Wegner)
• The walls were neutral pH. (Richard Green)
• Cyanide-soaked clothing created the stains. (Green)
• The blue stains are actually paint. (Josef Bailer, also parroted by Markiewicz et al)
• The walls were sealed against it. (bombsaway, also implied by Wegner)

This cannot be called consistent. This looks like grasping at straws, or, more graciously, it is rampant speculation to find a hypothesis that fits the facts. That same ethos is applied by every Holocaust historian in interpreting documents and witness accounts. Revisionists can hardly be blamed for engaging in their own speculation. And yet it's only revisionists who have had their work criminalized.

1. Even if dynamite destroyed a wall with Prussian Blue on it, you'd still probably be able to find Prussian Blue in the rubble. That doesn't explain why they didn't find PB.

2. Delousing chambers used Zyklon B for hours per session, while homicidal chambers used it for 15–30 minutes per gassing, with cleaning in between. Cumulatively, this meant far less total HCN contact time. This is a very strong argument for why you would not expect to find Prussian Blue in a homicidal gas chamber.

3. Prussian Blue is very insoluble and wouldn't have been washed away once it formed. But the debate is whether or not it might have formed in the first place.

4. The pH of a surface would affect ferrocyanide stability and precipitation. Concrete and plaster are usually alkaline, not neutral. I need to look more into this factor, but it seems like the surfaces would not have been neutral. Prussian Blue forms more readily in alkaline or iron rich conditions and concrete/plaster are usually alkaline, so that probably does not explain why the PB would not have formed.

5. I don't understand your argument about the cyanide soaked clothing.

6. I don't think the Prussian Blue found in the delousing chamber was paint. I think we can ignore that argument.

7. ChatGPT says there is no hard evidence that the walls were specifically sealed to prevent cyanide penetration. ChatGPT says that even sealed walls would not completely prevent the formation of Prussian Blue if the exposure to cyanide was very high and prolonged.

I'm personally not grasping at straws, I am look at all of the straws to see what actually makes sense.

In my opinion, we can rule out most of those arguments except we need to still investigate:
1. Whether the frequency and intensity of HCN gas would have been enough to form Prussian Blue
2. Whether the alkalinity of the walls was conducive to the formation of Prussian Blue
3. Whether the walls were of sufficiently high porosity to allow for the formation of Prussian Blue

If any one of those factors is not sufficient for the formation of Prussian Blue, the chemical reaction would not have taken place. We'll go deeper on those fronts but I'll wait to see if there are any objections and whether or not people are still following this approach.

[ConfusedJew]

They simply run over any bottleneck. This idea of using moisture to remove any trace of Prussian Blue is ridiculous, as they use moisture as a catalyst. It would be easier to maintain that from time to time the plaster was removed and a new layer added; it would be less ugly.

It can work both ways. Water may wash away surface level cyanide ions while also making the surface more moist and conducive to the formation of Prussian Blue.

One thing to clarify, washing away cyanide ions would have potentially prevented the formation of Prussian Blue from ever happening. It would not have washed away Prussian Blue if it had already formed.

The chemistry is not so simple which is why I am breaking it down into smaller parts.

[Callafangers]

Here is just a quick handful - redundant but it's there

Nope.

Dario Gabbai - "Once the gas chambers were cleared out they had to be hosed down from all traces of blood and quickly white-washed with quick-dry paint. This step was crucial and done after each transport to keep up the deception so that the next batch of victims would not suspect that they were about to be gassed. The whole process took between 2-3 hours each time."

https://www.normandy1944.info/holocaust ... ach%20time

This is not before the 90s (came after Rudolf's work).

Jankiel Wernik - "It was a room. The floor was somewhat sloping when the people inside were suffocated, they used to wash the floor with a hosepipe or a bucket of water. When they removed the bodies, they had been suffocated."

https://holocaustresearchproject.net/tr ... res%20wide

This isn't even the right kind of camp or 'chamber', CJ -- he's speaking of an alleged diesel engine 'gassing', presumably at a 'Reinhard camp'. And he also only mentions the floor, not ceiling/walls:

It was a room. The floor was somewhat sloping when the people inside were suffocated, they used to wash the floor with a hosepipe or a bucket of water. When they removed the bodies, they had been suffocated.

Here was the gas engine, the engine what forced the gas in. And there were pipes with valves. They would open the valve into the chamber where the people were.

Abraham Dragon - "After the bodies were taken out we were forced to clean the shack, wash the floor with water, spread sawdust and white-wash the walls. The shack was divided inside into four cells: the largest could contain up to 1,200 people, the second 700, the third 400, and the fourth 200 to 250 people. In the wall of the largest cell there were two lattices. The other three had but one lattice."

https://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/zuromin/zure014.html

'Dragon' is here referring to what he calls a "straw-roofed shack" which was never tested in any of the 'chamber' samples tested for cyanide, neither by Markiewicz nor anyone else. His testimony also features laughable crap like entering a chamber just minutes after dumping still-outgassing cyanide pellets therein, then finding a baby allegedly surviving the 'gassing', only to have it stomped by a mean and angry SS man:

During this period we took the bodies out of the cell a shorter time after the poisoning than before. Therefore it sometimes occured that when we entered the cell we could still hear moaning, especially when we grasped the bodies with our hands to drag them outside. In one case we discovered a live baby who was wholly encased in a pillow. Its head was also covered, and after removing the pillow it turned out that the baby's eyes were open, and it seemed alive. We brought the baby to Oberscharfuhrer Moll, announcing that the baby was still alive. Moll took the baby to the pit's edge, put it on the ground, trod on its neck and threw it into the pyre. With my own two eyes I have seen that when he trod on his neck, the baby moved his arms.

Marek Bem (synthesized research) - "An extremely significant issue to discover (inextricably connected with the construction of the whole building) is how the chambers in Bełżec, Sobibór and Treblinka were cleansed after each gassing of victims. There was no practice of throwing out of the building all sorts of waste matter (which had to be washed off the walls and the floor) that remained after victims were gassed. Supposedly, waste matter trickled down under the floor, which necessitated using a special floor and a special construction of the foundations in the building."

https://www.sobibor.org/wp-content/uplo ... %20removed

This is Sobibor, and it is also tells of "special foundations" made for collecting waste matter and for which no evidence exists (according to your reference provided, this is an inference based solely on a couple witnesses mentioning a pit or bridge involved in the alleged Sobibor 'chamber' construction). Even if true (LOL), this has nothing to do with Auschwitz hundreds of kilometers away and under different administration. In other words: it has nothing to do with Markiewicz or anyone else's cyanide testing (the topic of this thread).

Mandelbaum mentioned that when he saw his colleagues transporting corpses in the heat, covered in sweat, exhausted and breathless; they simply switched to lighter work, such as cleaning the gas chamber, and those who had cleaned the room up to that point replaced them during the transport of the corpses.

https://www.auschwitz.org/en/education/ ... prisoners/

This is a recent interview (note: post-Rudolf's work) and the opinion of an 'expert' who does not provide the source for his unsubstantiated claim.

In conclusion: you have provided no relevant examples challenging my previous assertion. Please try again.

[EDIT: I just noticed that Cowboy also already responded to these points from CJ - well done.]

[ConfusedJew]

Carbon monoxide was far superior and was allegedly used in Action T4, so why use Ziklon B? It didn't pose the same handling and dissipation risks, and it was easy to manufacture, without the need to drill holes in the reinforced concrete ceiling, build wire mesh, or even worry about Prussian Blue. What's the basis for claiming it was better?

That's why Irving rejects extermination at Auschwitz but accepts it at the Reinhardt camps. Even given so many absurdities of the Holocaust, the events at the Reinhardt camps are more credible to me than at Auschwitz.

Carbon monoxide (CO) was used earlier, especially during the Aktion T4 "euthanasia" program and then later at Operation Reinhard camps (Bełżec, Sobibór, Treblinka).

While Zyklon B carries significant risks, it was logistically easier to use. Zyklon B was already being used at Auschwitz to delouse clothing and was readily available in large quantities. It was a lot easier for the SS to repurpose it from a delousing chemical to a killing agent.

Additionally, CO requires combustion engines running continuously, with proper seals to prevent leakage. HCN, once released in a sealed room, required no active machinery to maintain a fatal concentration. Zyklon B did not require fuel, engine parts, or mobile gassing vans.

Auschwitz was also a forced labor camp, a logistics hub, and a medical experimentation site. The infrastructure was already more industrialized so Zyklon B would have fit better with a "factory" model of mass murder.

I don't understand why you think extermination would have been more credible at Reinhard camps? Do you believe that exterminations did occur there?

[ConfusedJew]

In conclusion: you have provided no relevant examples challenging my previous assertion. Please try again.

I disagree with you that I did not provide proof to you but the testimonies don't matter here. It's pretty obvious that if anyone were to conduct mass homicide in a gas chamber, they would wash up afterwords.

Washing the walls would not have necessarily completely prevented the formation of Prussian Blue, but it would have reduced the likelihood of it happening. Can we agree on that point?