The 'Whitewashing' of Daniel Bennahmias, Sonderkommando

[Callafangers]

The question of whether the 'gas chamber' walls at Birkenau were washed and whitewashed after each 'gassing' was raised again, so I found it worth making a separate thread (there were a few threads on this at the old CODOH forum).

What I find most interesting about this claim of 'whitewashing' is that, as user Stubble has pointed out recently, it arrived quite late. I had recalled the early 2000s as being the date this claim first came about however, upon closer review, it turns out it was actually in 1993, which was an interesting year...

"Once the gas chamber had been cleared, it must be hosed free of all traces of blood and excrement-but mainly blood-and then it must be whitewashed with a quick drying paint. This step is crucial and it is done each time the gas chamber is emptied, for the dying have scratched and gouged the walls in their death throes. The walls are embedded with blood and bits of flesh, and none of the next transport must suspect that he is walking into anything other than a shower. This takes two or three hours."

p.46, Holocaust Odyssey of Daniel Bennahmias, Sonderkommando (first edition in late April 1993)

The timing of this book was just after another remarkable publication, which was published a year prior (1992) and which had just started receiving significant media attention in the same year Bennahmias' book was published. Can you guess which one?

Here's a hint (this is a review on the 1992 publication in question):

"I am extraordinarily impressed. To my knowledge, you are the first expert in Germany who has addressed this particular topic in a scholarly impeccable and well-founded way. It is not for me to attribute an ice-breaker function to your expert report. It is easy to see which political-historical effects will originate from it, though its entire dimension cannot yet be estimated."

- Prof. Dr. Hellmut Diwald, Historian, January 22, 1992

If you guessed The Rudolf Report (now known as 'The Chemistry of Auschwitz')... you are correct!

Yes, Bennahmias just coincidentally published a book claiming -- for the first time ever -- that Jews 'whitewashed' the 'chambers' after each gassing, about one year after Rudolf's report which showed impossibly-low (if 'gassing' occurred) iron-cyanide levels in all of the alleged 'chamber' walls.

Thank goodness that honest Jews like Bennahmias are out there, keeping the world informed of the true horrors of the 'Holocaust'. There is no question that these walls were indeed whitewashed (and NO evidence that Bennahmias conjured a timely lie) and so we can be grateful that we obtained this important 'corroboration', just in time.

[Stubble]

What a cohencidence, OY VEY!!!

[TlsMS93]

The Holocaust is an arrow that was first shot and then they drew the target around where it fell.

[Archie]

The Kula columns is another one of these. As far as I know, this was not part of the story until Pressac (late 80s). They came up with it after the Leuchter report to try to deal with the ventilation problem. The primary sources they rely on for this do go back earlier but very few accounts mention anything akin to "Kula columns," and the ones that do are not consistent. It was arbitrarily worked into the story decades after the fact. This way they can pretend that the Zyklon would have only been in contact with the walls for a relatively brief time.

This "there's no blue because they washed it off after every gassing" is an even more desperate and embarrassing attempt to patch up a story that's full of holes. Josef Sackar is another Sonderkommando witness who, suddenly in the 90s, started saying they washed down the walls.

[Stubble]

Kula spoke of his columns 'at the time'. It became 'common knowledge' after 'technique' by Pressac.

His testimony was June 11th 1945.

[Callafangers]

Josef Sackar is another Sonderkommando witness who, suddenly in the 90s, started saying they washed down the walls.

I think this adds further to the suspicion of it all. What are the odds that not one but two 'Sonderkommando' held in their secret about this crucial technical 'gassing' detail for half a century until at just the right moment when the entire myth was being blown wide open?

Moreover, even this claim of 'washing the walls' doesn't hold up scientifically, for reasons Rudolf has also addressed (adding moisture/water to the room via 'washing' between gassings actually increases the absorption of cyanide into the walls in the hours where cyanide gas is present; also, no one claims ceilings were also [white-]washed in any case, and Rudolf also tested samples from the 'chamber' ceiling*).

*Edit: Not to mention the hundreds of layers of paint which we should expect (in the case of whitewashing/painting), which are clearly, visibly not there in any alleged 'chamber' or ruins thereof.

[Archie]

Kula spoke of his columns 'at the time'. It became 'common knowledge' after 'technique' by Pressac.

His testimony was June 11th 1945.

The testimonies are so diverse and variable it's like a buffet.

You are right that Kula's testimony is fairly early. That's why I acknowledged that "the primary sources for this do go back earlier." But the vast, vast majority of gas chamber witnesses don't say anything about mesh columns or pulling the pellets back out. The "official story" (for lack of a better term) is a harmonization of all of the many individual stories. The early harmonization was rudimentary. They filtered out the most embarrassing and contradictory stuff like electric floors and came up with something consistent. But they didn't go too far with scientific plausibility since they just hadn't considered any of that yet. Objectively speaking, if you were surveying all of the gas chamber stories and had to come up with a single story from it, it's not obvious that Kula's novel twist should be in the final cut. And it seems it wasn't for many decades.

[Stubble]

Kula spoke of his columns 'at the time'. It became 'common knowledge' after 'technique' by Pressac.

His testimony was June 11th 1945.

The testimonies are so diverse and variable it's like a buffet.

You are right that Kula's testimony is fairly early. That's why I acknowledged that "the primary sources for this do go back earlier." But the vast, vast majority of gas chamber witnesses don't say anything about mesh columns or pulling the pellets back out. The "official story" (for lack of a better term) is a harmonization of all of the many individual stories. The early harmonization was rudimentary. They filtered out the most embarrassing and contradictory stuff like electric floors and came up with something consistent. But they didn't go too far with scientific plausibility since they just hadn't considered any of that yet. Objectively speaking, if you were surveying all of the gas chamber stories and had to come up with a single story from it, it's not obvious that Kula's novel twist should be in the final cut. And it seems it wasn't for many decades.

Fair, Muller had 30+ years to get it right and still screwed it up.

[Fred Ziffel]

Archie wrote
This "there's no blue because they washed it off after every gassing" is an even more desperate and embarrassing attempt to patch up a story that's full of holes. Josef Sackar is another Sonderkommando witness who, suddenly in the 90s, started saying they washed down the walls.


I wrote this a while ago on washing GC walls BS. see attached
Sorry I forgot the two photos

[Nessie]

It is not coincidental, that Jews who helped the Nazis murder other Jews, so they could live, were slow to come forward and then did so, as they saw the claims Holocaust deniers were making.

[HeiligeSturmV2]

The Grey Zone (2001) depicts this claim.

tide-gzonea.ac3.avi_000550480.jpg (94.15 KiB) Viewed 353 times

tide-gzonea.ac3.avi_000569480.jpg (74.14 KiB) Viewed 353 times

(Good old [impossible] belching chimney...)

tide-gzonea.ac3.avi_000574320.jpg (99.9 KiB) Viewed 353 times

This is supposedly happening during the busy "Operation Höss".

If sonderkommando washed and painted the "gas chamber" walls, wouldn't it slow down the whole process?
Even if you burn the bodies meanwhile you are washing and painting.
You need to wait the walls to dry before you paint.
Then you need to wait for the paint to dry.

[HeiligeSturmV2]

Another picture from The Grey Zone (2001)

tide-gzonea.ac3.avi_000578760.jpg (114.31 KiB) Viewed 353 times