Hi folks, if I may chime in, I was wondering if we could try to really establish the both un-and disputed specifics about the Dresden Altmarkt pyres, given that they are constantly cited as arguments?
If starting with the main documents cited (by Bombsaway/Muehlenkamp/Taylor/Acht) claiming 6865 bodies cremated on the Dresden Altmarkt in 2 weeks to 8-10 m3 ash:
"The document StAD, Marstall- und Bestattungsamt, Nachtrag I - Schreiben, 4.3.1945, referred to in Matthias Neutzner, Martha Heinrich Acht, pp. 91, 93 and 221, partially quoted in the excerpt from Martha Heinrich Acht transcribed and translated here (emphasis added): For two weeks the old market place in the city center became a crematorium. On 5 March the corpses collected in the streets had been retrieved, the pyres gone out. »By my estimate, 8 - 10 cubic meters of ash lay on the Altmarkt«, was reported to the city administration the day before. »The Brigadeführer wished that this ash be loaded into recipients (boxes or sacks) and transported to the Heidefriedhof, where it is to be sunk into the earth at the place marked in lead on the map. It is not necessary to leave the boxes or sacks in the soil"
Strangely, given that
A) The average ash-amount left after a human adult body`s cremation apparently is around (3.5% of original weight=)
2.4 kg/5.3 lb (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cremation) and
B) The cited original official report states explicitly that "
8-10 m3 ashes"
was the total amount resulting after the 2 weeks long Altmarkt operation and
C) HC/Muehlenkamp them/himself give as human ash density
0.5g/cm3:
https://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot ... .html#more
"The specific weights of human ash and wood ash I’ll consider are the same that Mattogno considered Mattogno & Graf’s book about Treblinka[300]: 0.5 g/cmᶟ for human ashes, 0.34 g/cmᶟ for wood ashes. "
The thus resulting inevitable mathematical conclusion is actually:
0.5g/cm3= 500kg/m3 x 9 m3 divided by 2.4 kg = 1875
proving that this can only have been at the most actually the ashes of
1875 corpses.
That is not even
28% of the claimed total of 6865 corpses with
72% unaccounted for and must mean either that less than 28% of those 6865 bodies were actually burned/reduced to the degree/state of "ash" or that not even a third of that figure were actually ever burned on pyres in the Altmarkt? (If the latter that would in turn mean that 500 corpses/day cannot be correct either.)
Even if compensating for the fact that some of those bodies were children(the pictures show only few of those though it seems), there is no way to even remotely account for even half of the claimed corpse-numbers allegedly reduced to ash.
I wondered whether the average 2.4 kg/human body could contain a significant part of casket-wood-ash counted in and thus ev. distort the figure (IF we just for arguments sake accept that on the Altmarkt more liquid than wood-fuel was employed compared to "normal" cremation), but then I learned that in fact the whole concept of "ash" as cremation-remains is largely false, at least when referring to closed fully heat-controlled crematory chambers, the mentioned 2.4 kg average "ash" is not ash as in our woodstoves at all, but pure mechanically ground (calcium)bone-fragments, which are the only elements resistant enough to be left after full 1-2+ hours exposure to constant 700-900 degrees C in a closed chamber, all else is burned off, as several longtime funeral-home-directors personally explain in this very informative thread:
https://www.quora.com/After-a-cremation ... the-coffin
So, no, not only does this mean that the 2.4 kg average of at least 90+% pure human ash principally, and thus the math that the mentioned 9 cm3 on Dresden Altmarkt can`t account for more than at best 2000 corpses remains, but the basic fact that "ash" did remain on the Altmarkt which apparently was normal ash, not mechanically ground bone-fragments (or has anyone found evidence/reports that they involved mechanical grinders/grinding on site?) raises the question to what percentage/degree were the 9 m3 alleged thousands of corpses "completely reduced to ash" and to what degree not fully burned wood/solid-fuel ash?
Can someone explain this?