The Pyres of Dresden

[Callafangers]

EDIT: This photo is dated 02.13, twelve days before Hahn photographed the pyres. The most-photographed pyre would later be built roughly in the center of the photo. You can see how well the street was already cleared out by then.

I think this provides the best establishing shot of the area. You can also see wagons with boxes in them. Coffins, ash containers, or something else?

Very interesting. Given how clear the area is at this time, I am inclined to think the piles we see adjacent to the pyre are indeed ash/materials (overwhelmingly wood) from the cremation process. What we do not see there is charred human remains, and these piles represent a very small amount of ash relative to the amount of wood that would be needed to fully reduce corpses down to anywhere near the level of bone fragments. From Mattogno's work, we find that one ton (1,000kg) of wood reduces to about 0.34m³ of ash. The three piles in this photo below seem to amount to around ~3m³, allowing up to ~9,000kg of wood having been used in the process by the time of this photo (less than 0.5% of what would be needed to reduce the total number of ~6,800 corpses to coarse fragments).

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Of course, we can infer that there may have been multiple pick-ups to retrieve and dump the ash piles but what we see in the photo much more reflects very incomplete (sanitation-focused) cremation. Reducing corpses even to large bone fragments (as is done in Hindu pyres) would require 200+ times the amount of wood ash shown in these piles above, not to mention corpse remains/ash which itself adds volume.

Hence, the "miracle" of cremation at Dresden (and by extension, Reinhardt camps) remains bunk.

[Stubble]

How do you know it is accelerant

I think that was Stubble's attempt to give you a charitable concession, given that it would thus far be the only visual evidence of any liquid fuels at all. But alas, it looks like you may be totally empty-handed, as these may not even be a tank/hose.

The reason I brought it up was Stubble seemed super confident it was accelerant, now that has been determined not to be the case. This is how bias works.

I don't see fuel sources anywhere other than a small amount of wood in the pyres. Why not? There should be way more wood visible than bodies, it doesn't make sense.

I was being charitable.

Given the new revelations, still no trace of accelerant, just wood.

If I may, the ashes were pushed out by fresh solid fuel (wood), collected into piles, then cooled. Any stray bone was picked out, the ashes were carted away.

There do appear to be vertebrae and other small bones in the collected ash piles surrounding the pyre.

Lack of any carbonized wood in the ash indicates to me that the pyre was allowed to self extinguish before fresh fuel was added, or that any carbonized wood was winnowed out and fed back through to be reduced to ash.

Had I been doing it, and any of the coal bed been pushed out, I would have shovelled the embers on top of the pyre.

The only ppe used appears to be foundry sleeves.

[bombsaway]

I think that was Stubble's attempt to give you a charitable concession, given that it would thus far be the only visual evidence of any liquid fuels at all. But alas, it looks like you may be totally empty-handed, as these may not even be a tank/hose.

The reason I brought it up was Stubble seemed super confident it was accelerant, now that has been determined not to be the case. This is how bias works.

I don't see fuel sources anywhere other than a small amount of wood in the pyres. Why not? There should be way more wood visible than bodies, it doesn't make sense.

I was being charitable.

Given the new revelations, still no trace of accelerant, just wood.

If I may, the ashes were pushed out by fresh solid fuel (wood), collected into piles, then cooled. Any stray bone was picked out, the ashes were carted away.

There do appear to be vertebrae and other small bones in the collected ash piles surrounding the pyre.

Lack of any carbonized wood in the ash indicates to me that the pyre was allowed to self extinguish before fresh fuel was added, or that any carbonized wood was winnowed out and fed back through to be reduced to ash.

Had I been doing it, and any of the coal bed been pushed out, I would have shovelled the embers on top of the pyre.

The only ppe used appears to be foundry sleeves.

If wood was the primary fuel, and it takes 10-15x wood (in terms of volume compared to bodies) to reduce bodies to this state, then why aren't there aren't any piles of wood in any of the numerous pictures we have of the burning, and no wood ash. The assumption here is fresh wood is constantly being fed into the bottom of the grates, and the burnt wood pushed out.


Also this should put to rest Archie's notion of the impossibility or impracticality of separating body ash from wood ash.

[Stubble]

The reason I brought it up was Stubble seemed super confident it was accelerant, now that has been determined not to be the case. This is how bias works.

I don't see fuel sources anywhere other than a small amount of wood in the pyres. Why not? There should be way more wood visible than bodies, it doesn't make sense.

I was being charitable.

Given the new revelations, still no trace of accelerant, just wood.

If I may, the ashes were pushed out by fresh solid fuel (wood), collected into piles, then cooled. Any stray bone was picked out, the ashes were carted away.

There do appear to be vertebrae and other small bones in the collected ash piles surrounding the pyre.

Lack of any carbonized wood in the ash indicates to me that the pyre was allowed to self extinguish before fresh fuel was added, or that any carbonized wood was winnowed out and fed back through to be reduced to ash.

Had I been doing it, and any of the coal bed been pushed out, I would have shovelled the embers on top of the pyre.

The only ppe used appears to be foundry sleeves.

If wood was the primary fuel, and it takes 10-15x wood (in terms of volume compared to bodies) to reduce bodies to this state, then why aren't there aren't any piles of wood in any of the numerous pictures we have of the burning, and no wood ash. The assumption here is fresh wood is constantly being fed into the bottom of the grates, and the burnt wood pushed out.


Also this should put to rest Archie's notion of the impossibility or impracticality of separating body ash from wood ash.

Wood delivered by truck when the pyre was cooling, flames restoked, no wood pile.

Keep in mind, wood would have been used up fairly quickly. Requirements are, honestly pretty staggering.

Competing hypothesis;

Scenario a)

One fuel load was deemed sufficient for desiccation. Charred bodies deemed insufficiently reduced were put back on the pyre and reignited.

Scenario b)

A 'rolling' coal bed was employed by using solid fuel to push the spent ash out from under the pyre.

A 'rolling' coal bed indicates a huge fuel load and complete reduction of remains, later sorted from the ash.

This is at odds with findings from the studies, which are more in line with 1 fuel load and bodies insufficiently reduced put back on with a fresh load.

Honestly, hard for me to call one way or the other from my house. Neither scenario is out of the realm of possibility.

[Callafangers]

Also this should put to rest Archie's notion of the impossibility or impracticality of separating body ash from wood ash.

Incorrect. The corpse ash falls down into the wood ash, which would eventually have to be pushed out from under the narrow space beneath the pyre. This inherently combines all of the ash/remains. But much of the human/corpse remains would not become 'ash' at all since reducing the bones requires extreme amounts of wood which, as you mention, there doesn't appear to be strong evidence of. Hence, the simplest explanation is that these corpses were not reduced fully, only as much as needed for sanitation purposes. Notice that none of the photos seem to show the pyre still burning yet fully reduced (i.e. burning and yet much shrunken/shorter in size, indicating the corpses being fully reduced to fragments+ash). We instead see wood being used to char and sanitize the corpses with some modest reduction, with any ash (overwhelmingly wood ash for an apparently not-so-huge amount of wood) collected alongside.

Think for a moment about the volume that 6,800 human beings occupy. Ever been to a location with even just 2,000 people? That's a lot of people. Now more than triple it. That's the volume of corpses we need to deal with, here. And then, yes, we must account further for the wood, which would be some tenfold by kg weight per corpse required. If we assume an average 55kg per corpse, that is:

• 6,800 corpses x 550 kg = 3,740,000 kg

That's a lot of wood. How much ash would it create?

• 3,740,000 kg / 1000 x 0.34 = 1,271.6m³

And since we only see a few m³ in the photo (let's say 4m³), that means that we would need [1,271.6 / 4 =] 318 times as much wood ash (or more if we include corpse ash) by volume as what is visible in the ash piles at the Dresden cremation photographs.

But all of this is taking us off-track. The corpses alone, when cremated thoroughly, occupy about 0.008m³. This means that for 6,800 corpses, we are looking at around 54.4m³, which already far exceeds the relevant estimate from the HC blog, quoting Frederick Taylor:

Between February 21 and March 5, when the last pyre was lit, 6,865 bodies were burned on the Altmarkt. Afterward, when the fire cooled down, it was estimated that between eight and ten cubic meters of ash covered the cobbled surface of the medieval square.

Clearly, Taylor or his sources are not in any way claiming that the Dresden cremations entirely reduced these corpses down to 8-10m³. It is physically impossible by almost an order of magnitude, even if fully reduced and if wood ash were somehow perfectly separated from corpse ash. Thus, he's simply describing how much ash was literally on the surface in that moment, having nothing to do with any technical estimate of corpse reduction. Hence, nothing whatsoever applicable to 'Aktion Reinhardt'.

[pilgrimofdark]

The pyre in Hahn's photos isn't the only pyre that was built.

It's not clear that one single pyre was refilled with wood and corpses over two weeks, then all the ash transported to the cemetery.

On 20 February 1945, with the approval of Gauleiter Martin Mutschmann and the Dresden city council, the decision was made to cremate the recovered corpses as a supplementary measure to the on-going burials at the Heidefriedhof. Through 5 March, 6,865 bodies were burned on the southern side of the Altmarkt.
...
"There was no other choice left but to stop the burials and to allow the cremation of the bodies, which took place in the Old Market Square, where huge grates were built from iron girders, on each of which around 500 bodies were stacked in pyres, soaked with gasoline, and burned." (translated from German)

‘A Blemish on the History of the Twentieth century’? Legends and Fabrications Surrounding the Mass Cremations in the Wake of the Dresden Air Raids, February 1945
https://doi.org/10.1080/00787191.2018.1548126

Irving's main source seems to be Hahn, who took photos on only one day, February 25. Irving writes the pyre was moved, and echoes the 400-500 corpses per pyre of the above eyewitness quoted in the journal article.

On top of the grill were heaped the corpses, four or five hundred at a time, with more straw between each layer.
...
In the late hours of the evening the grill was re-erected over a different part of the square. Nazi Party officials saw to it that the ashes and charred bones were collected and taken to the cemeteries to be buried too.

Apocalypse 1945, p. 235.

So that's 14-18 pyres of 400-500 corpses each to get to the total, with transports to the cemetery of ashes and charred bones.

Between February 21 and March 5, when the last pyre was lit, 6,865 bodies were burned on the Altmarkt. Afterward, when the fire cooled down, it was estimated that between eight and ten cubic meters of ash covered the cobbled surface of the medieval square.

Clearly, Taylor or his sources are not in any way claiming that the Dresden cremations entirely reduced these corpses down to 8-10m³. It is physically impossible by almost an order of magnitude, even if fully reduced and if wood ash were somehow perfectly separated from corpse ash. Thus, he's simply describing how much ash was literally on the surface in that moment, having nothing to do with any technical estimate of corpse reduction.

Taylor is very unclear. "When the last pyre was lit" indicates this wasn't the same as the "first pyre."

So when the "last pyre" cooled down, there were 8-10 m³ of ash? With all the pyres, that would be 112-180 m³ of ash.

He could also be referring to residual ash from the two weeks of burning that had "covered the cobbled surface," which had been blown by wind.

Spoiler

The pyres themselves are certainly too small to cover the entire cobbled surface of the square.

[Callafangers]

He could also be referring to residual ash from the two weeks of burning that had "covered the cobbled surface," which had been blown by wind.

Spoiler

The pyres themselves are certainly too small to cover the entire cobbled surface of the square.

"Are you listening to The Dude's story, Donny?"

[Nessie]

No photo shows anyone at the pyres. They are not being tended. They are being left to burn. That means the amount of wood shown, once it has caught alight and then the fire has spread to the corpses, is enough for the pyre to burn.

[Nessie]

Link to and quote the witnesses who said that wood was added. Thanks.

Does this mean that the amount of wood deposited beneath the 1-meter-high tracks, lined with supporting pillars limiting the space, was enough to cremate the 800,000 people at Treblinka and the other camps?

Even the laws of physics apply to the Nazis; we know the calorific value of wood or other flammable material and how much would be needed to turn human bodies to ash.

If you think Reinhardt was like Dresden, and it hasn't even been proven that only benzene was used, I can do nothing. Perhaps this fits the Jewish psyche of bushes burning by themselves, sticks turning into snakes, the sea parting, and walls falling with screams—not for rational minds.

IOW, there is no such witness. The photos show no one tending the the pyres. They are set, lit and left to burn. The spreading of the flames and smoking pyres show that the corpses themselves have enough flammable material in them, plus the clothing, that once they catch fire, they burn. So there is no more need for wood to be added.

[Callafangers]

No photo shows anyone at the pyres. They are not being tended. They are being left to burn. That means the amount of wood shown, once it has caught alight and then the fire has spread to the corpses, is enough for the pyre to burn.

Fair enough. Then this simply means that the corpses were barely charred, just enough to dry them out a bit and kill off odor and spreading disease somewhat, before burial. The bottom-line is that if the goal or outcome were ever to cremate them completely, it would require orders of magnitude more wood... thus, the situation at Reinhardt camps remains a big problem for exterminationists.

[Nessie]

No photo shows anyone at the pyres. They are not being tended. They are being left to burn. That means the amount of wood shown, once it has caught alight and then the fire has spread to the corpses, is enough for the pyre to burn.

Fair enough. Then this simply means that the corpses were barely charred, just enough to dry them out a bit and kill off odor and spreading disease somewhat, before burial. The bottom-line is that if the goal or outcome were ever to cremate them completely, it would require orders of magnitude more wood... thus, the situation at Reinhardt camps remains a big problem for exterminationists.

No, since the pyre method is not to reduce corpses to ashes to return to relatives. At the AR camps, it was done to prevent body counts, identification and establishing cause of death, so it did not need to be to fine ash. The excavation photos from 1945, showing many bones, and descriptions of partial remains, show that the cremations were not that thorough. So there is no problem for the history, just for the so-called revisionists.

[Callafangers]

No, since the pyre method is not to reduce corpses to ashes to return to relatives. At the AR camps, it was done to prevent body counts, identification and establishing cause of death, so it did not need to be to fine ash. The excavation photos from 1945, showing many bones, and descriptions of partial remains, show that the cremations were not that thorough. So there is no problem for the history, just for the so-called revisionists.

Wait -- hold the phone. Are you saying that you acknowledge the cremations at AR camps were "not that thorough"?

Let's just get this on-the-record. Say it louder for those in the back.

[TlsMS93]

IOW, there is no such witness. The photos show no one tending the the pyres. They are set, lit and left to burn. The spreading of the flames and smoking pyres show that the corpses themselves have enough flammable material in them, plus the clothing, that once they catch fire, they burn. So there is no more need for wood to be added.

Photos are a record of a moment, unlike a video of the entire process, which doesn't exist. So how can you guarantee with such certainty that cremation wasn't carried out in Dresden as it was in the Reinhardt camps? Witnesses claim that cremations at Reinhardt were burned to ashes and then thrown back into mass graves.

The Australian experts' euthanized pig experiment has already proven the need for material for complete or partial open-air cremation. It's up to you to refute it with an experiment that proves that a little wood or whatever is more than enough to reduce these bodies to ashes.

[Nessie]

No, since the pyre method is not to reduce corpses to ashes to return to relatives. At the AR camps, it was done to prevent body counts, identification and establishing cause of death, so it did not need to be to fine ash. The excavation photos from 1945, showing many bones, and descriptions of partial remains, show that the cremations were not that thorough. So there is no problem for the history, just for the so-called revisionists.

Wait -- hold the phone. Are you saying that you acknowledge the cremations at AR camps were "not that thorough"?

Let's just get this on-the-record. Say it louder for those in the back.

You say that as if it is something new and interesting. The evidence, since 1945, from the excavations that found a buried mix of decomposing corpses, cremains, ashes and identifiable bones, is that the pyres did not reduce all the corpses to ashes, normally associated with cremations.

The Nazis just did enough to make body counts, identification and establishing cause of death, impossible.

[Nessie]

IOW, there is no such witness. The photos show no one tending the the pyres. They are set, lit and left to burn. The spreading of the flames and smoking pyres show that the corpses themselves have enough flammable material in them, plus the clothing, that once they catch fire, they burn. So there is no more need for wood to be added.

Photos are a record of a moment, unlike a video of the entire process, which doesn't exist. So how can you guarantee with such certainty that cremation wasn't carried out in Dresden as it was in the Reinhardt camps? Witnesses claim that cremations at Reinhardt were burned to ashes and then thrown back into mass graves.

Witnesses to the AR cremations, reported that the pyre was set, lit and then left to burn for many hours, till they went out, and the remains were buried. The photos at Dresden show the same process. The pyre was set, lit and left to burn.

The Australian experts' euthanized pig experiment has already proven the need for material for complete or partial open-air cremation. It's up to you to refute it with an experiment that proves that a little wood or whatever is more than enough to reduce these bodies to ashes.

The bodies were not entirely reduced to ashes at the AR camps, as evidenced by photos, witness descriptions of the excavations and the excavations themselves. The Dresden pyres, as shown in the photos and from witness descriptions, were more thorough, leaving ashes, with no obviously identifiable bones and decomposing body parts. That may be due to the corpses being clothed and that clothing providing more fuel for the fire.

The remians of the pyre at Ohrdruf, shows what was likely left, from a burn at the AR camps.



That small pyre, got so hot, the metal rails bent.