The Electrical-Frying-Steaming-Air-pumping-Quicklime-Trapdoor-Gas Chambers (1946)
PAGE 313, BELZEC: “The Belzec camp is built underground. It is an electric crematorium. There are two halls in the underground buildings. People were taken out of the railway cars into the first hall. Then they were led naked to the second hall. Here the floor resembled an enormous plate. When the crowd of men stood on it, the floor sank deep into a pool of water. The moment the men sank up to their necks, a powerful electric current of millions of volts was passed through, killing them all at once. The floor rose again, and a second electric current was passed through the bodies, burning them until nothing was left of the victims save a few ashes.”
PAGE 408, TREBLINKA: “The second Treblinka camp method, and the most widespread one, consisted of pumping all the air out from the chambers with large special pumps. By this method death ensued from approximately the same causes as from poisoning with carbon monoxide: man was deprived of oxygen.
And, finally, the third method, less widespread, was killing by steam, based also on deprivation of oxygen: the steam drove air out of the chamber.”
PAGE 375, SOBIBOR: “Gas was filtered into the ‘bathhouse’ through a hose. The Germans watched the process of asphyxiation through a tiny window. At a signal the supply of gas cut off, the floor of the ‘bathhouse’ opened, and the bodies dropped below. The prisoners working underground had to load the bodies and cart them away.”
PAGE 270, BREENDONCK: “One man, after having his back burned, was sent outside to work with 600 pounds of wood tied to his bare back…
“One cell… contained nothing but an air pump with a vent outside. In the wall was a hole through which the Germans forced gas. If the victim was strong enough he could pump in fresh air and keep himself alive for a while. The weak died quickly.”
PAGE 280, FRANCE: “They were poisoned in the camps. In trucks which were meant to hold twenty people, the Germans placed a hundred. Quicklime was placed on the floor about ten inches deep. The doors were sealed hermetically. These people had to pass their water – that would start the lime cooking. Gas and fumes came up and choked them to death. Bodies were thrown into special crematories…
PAGE 364, SOMEPLACE IN RUSSIA: “On the tenth day we were driven to the Lykyanovka ravine. We stood there – panic-stricken. From beneath the freshly strewn earth streamed rivers of blood, the blood of 56,000 murdered Jews. It cried out to us from beneath the earth. My hair turned gray that morning.”
See also: blackbook.htm