https://x.com/ppow84/status/2091359676923359662There are plenty of reasons, to the point where there's no reason to infer that blue would have formed at all. Dachau and Buchenwald had zero blue in their Zyklon delousing (p. 183). Rudolf calls the formation "an exception" (p. 181), something you posted yourself above.
First reason, the dose where (using Rudolf's very conservative numbers here) it was 2-19x higher. In reality it was probably way more than this. Like 80x or more.
Second, the chemistry where his church case needed 2 years to materialize. The morgue only had 20 months, and was dynamited then covered in rain. We know water washes away cyanide. Krakow's wash test reduced cyanide concentration by 82.5% and 98.7% with a single liter of water.
Third, Rudolf straight up admits it. He says "it's not inconceivable that... the masonry of the alleged 'gas chambers' was not, or was only slightly, inclined to the formation of Iron Blue, or that possible residues were destroyed for unknown reasons. CO2 could be one such compound not factored in so far."
The Value of Dachau and Buchenwald as Counterexamples
This is Rudolf's explanation:
He gives two reasons 1) the type of paint, 2) the hot dry air. Compare this to the description he gives of the walls of the morgues of Kremas II and III.From the remarks of a Polish team of researchers who conducted investigations on behalf of the Auschwitz Museum, we also know that the disinfestation chamber in the Auschwitz Main Camp is stained with a blotchy blue (Markiewicz et al. 1991, 1994). To my knowledge, only the Zyklon-B-disinfestation chambers at the Buchenwald and Dachau camps (Degesch circulation chambers) exhibit no blue pigmentation, probably because first of all the walls were professionally coated with a paint impermeable to gas and water, and facilities of this type were moreover operated with heated dry air. Warm, dry walls, however, don’t tend to absorb hydrogen cyanide and to accumulate them as cyanide salts, as we shall see further below. (CoA, pg 182-183)
He says the walls were plastered rather than painted, and elsewhere argues that this material would have been suitable for Prussian blue formation. Multiple people on both sides have examined the ruins of the Kremas and I'm aware of no one who has claimed there was any special paint. (Forum member bombsaway has suggested this but only as a hopeful speculation).The walls of the morgue consist of double brick masonry with a layer of waterproofing in between for insulation (ibid., pp. 325, 327). The interior walls are plastered with a hard, cement-rich material, the ceiling and support pillars of reinforced concrete show the marks of wooden planking and are therefore not plastered. The roof, made of reinforced concrete, is insulated on the outside by a layer of tar, which is protected from environmental and mechanical damage by a rather thin, screed-like layer of cement covering it. The layers of tar both on top of the roof as well as between the two brick walls were indispensable as a water barrier due to the high groundwater in the swampy region of Birkenau. Both morgues had several drains. (CoA, pg. 114)
Rudolf's argument here makes a lot of sense, though I do think there is room for more work to be done on the the fumigation chambers beyond Auschwitz. This would be an extension of Rudolf's Auschwitz work.
I'll add here that the Dachau fumigation cubicles are of a very different design than the Auschwitz chambers. Note the accelerated evaporation and immediate ventilation.
https://ihr.org/journal/v07p-73_Berg.htmlThe blowers, in effect, drove the entire fumigation process. Initially, each blower would accelerate the evaporation of hydrocyanic acid out of the porous Zyklon-B granules placed inside the chamber by forcing warm air through the granules and then circulating the resulting air and hydrocyanic acid gas mixture throughout all of the clothing and articles within the chamber. Finally, each blower force-vented the lethal gas mixture out of the chamber up a vent pipe through the roof to atmosphere and replaced the lethal gas with fresh air so that the chamber doors could be opened without endangering the operator.
Clearly the Dachau design and procedure differed significantly from both the fumigation chambers and the alleged gas chambers at Auschwitz, reducing its value as a counterexample. The argument could still be attempted but these differences would need to confronted.
Zyklon Quantity and Exposure Time
With the first point, I'm reading this is saying the fumigation chambers had much greater exposure to Zyklon B than the homicidal gas chambers. We can separate this into two point. 1) the quantity of Zyklon B used (and the associated concentration), 2) the ventilation time.
There is an old argument saying that only 300 ppm is needed to kill humans vs some much higher concentration needed to kill lice. And there is an unstated assumption that the Germans used the theoretical minimum. This argues fails for several reasons.
1) The 300 ppm comes from toxicology which by the very nature of the field sets limits conservatively. These are not good limits to use for a deliberate execution where you want to be conservative in the other direction (i.e., you want to use extra to make sure you finish the job).
2) Other data suggests 300 ppm is not necessarily always fatal. See the Barcroft an McNamara studies for example.
viewtopic.php?p=1806&#p1806
3) Data on American gas chambers - The concentration used was much higher than 300 ppm. More like 3,000-5,000 ppm. The gas was sublimated directly beneath the prisoner (dissolved in acid for immediate release of gas) and the prisoner was coached to breathe in deeply. Even in these chambers designed to efficiently gas one person the average execution was around 9-10 minutes and there are instances of people surviving upwards of 18 minutes. See Christiansen, The Last Gasp and the materials from the second Zundel trial.
4) In Krema II, we are not dealing with a tiny one-man chamber but a large 7x30 meter cellar filled with up to 2,000 people. There were only four entry points with very suboptimal dispersion of pellets (clumped together in a mesh column). Yet the testimonies, while varying substantially in the execution times given, generally claim very fast execution times, often much better than the 9-10 minutes achieved in the American gas chambers with a greatly superior procedure.
5) Most importantly, there is no support whatsoever for the idea that they targeted 300 ppm or any other specific concentration. The few testimonies that do comment on this indicate a significant amount of gas was used. Rudolf (7.3.1.3) cites testimony from Hoess that says how much Zyklon B was used.
Rudolf calculates a corresponding concentration of 13,000-14,000 ppm for seven cans. That's if all the HCN were released. The current is that they removed the pellets with the Kula columns, which would suggest only some of the HCN had been released (which would mean they were wasting Zyklon B).5 to 7 cans of Zyclon B with 1 kg each were needed for gassing 1,500 people; the number of cans varied depending on the size of the gas chamber, and the weather conditions, which is to say, during cold weather 2 or 3 additional cans were needed.
The low concentration is not supported by anything. Testimonial evidence points toward a high concentration, as do the claimed execution times.
Re: Ventilation
See here
viewtopic.php?t=162
And see here for problems with the "Kula columns"
https://www.codohforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=774
For our purposes here, we interested in knowing what the time would be. It is difficult to say exactly, but Rudolf has estimated a few hours due to the obstructed air flow and vents. And that assumes that the Kula columns would have worked which imo is a very generous assumption. If the pellets were not removed, then it would be potentially much longer.
So based on the testimonies the concentration should have been similar. The exposure time would have been lower but not super fast as is sometimes claimed.
Supposed Two Year Minimum for PB to Form
I have a few objections to this argument. This is very much a Muehlenkamp-style argument where you are stacking multiple assumptions on top of each other based on convenience.
-It took two years with the church
-The Kremas were partially destroyed at 20 month
-Therefore PB could not have formed
There is no two year minimum. In controlled experiments, Rudolf reports he induced PB "after a few minutes" (see 6.5.2.2). As far as what's observed in practical settings, I don't have that data off the top of my head, and it might be hard to determine when exactly PB formed in the camp fumigation chambers, but I have no reason to think two years is a minimum.
Furthermore, the assumption that the dynamiting of the Kremas put a hard stop to things is I think very questionable. For one thing, we see PB even on the exterior walls of some buildings, despite exposure to the elements. And as we can see from photos, the roof of the Kremas was partially intact. Rain would have gotten in and pooled at the bottom, sure, but it would not have washed all the walls top to bottom. And even if it had, the gas would have penetrated more deeply.
On Uncertainty
The argument here is essentially
-It's possible you are wrong
-Therefore you are wrong
I would say that the lack of iron cyanides, given the wall material and other factors, strongly suggests that Zyklon B was not used extensively in the rooms in question. Is it 100% conclusive? No, because we can never know the exact conditions. But so what? Things about the past usually can't be absolutely proved. The question is which explanation and assumptions are the most plausible and likely. The suppositions made on the other side could also be wrong.
Yes, when you find false positives it's a good indication that the detection limit has been set too low.