An Accountant Poses As Cremation Expert by Carlo Mattogno
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87 An Accountant Poses as Cremation Expert By Carlo Mattogno I. Preliminary Observation In October 1999 John C. Zimmerman published a tendentious article with the title “Body Disposal at Auschwitz: The End of the Holocaust Denial”1 di- rected against my study of cremations at Auschwitz. I responded to his un- founded accusation with my article “John C. Zimmerman and ‘Body Disposal at Auschwitz’: Preliminary Observations,”2 in which I documented Zimmer- man’s historical, technical, and documentary incompetence as well as his ob- vious bad faith. He immediately reacted to my response by attacking me with another arrogant article, “My Response to Carlo Mattogno,”3 in which his im- posture was raised to a systematic level. In return I swiftly wrote a long and detailed rebuttal “Supplementary Re- sponse to John C. Zimmerman on his ‘Body disposal at Auschwitz,’”4 in which I unmasked all of Zimmerman’s lies one by one. This reply dating from August 2000 was published on the Website of Russell Granata, who unfortu- nately deceased on August 14, 2004.5 At the end of October 2000, Zimmer- man promised by e-mail that he would respond to my rebuttal within six months. Almost five years have past by now, but John C. Zimmerman re- mained silent. In 2000 he published a book6 that contains various critiques against me, but they are a mere repetition of the lies contained in his articles mentioned above. He had nothing to say about my final rebuttal. His silence equals an unconditional surrender. It is his admission that his arguments were and re- main unfounded and untenable. 1 www.holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/body-disposal/ 2 www.vho.org/GB/c/CM/jcz.html 3 www.holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/response-to-mattogno/ 4 www.vho.org/GB/c/CM/Risposta-new-eng.html. 5 See C. Mattogno, “Memories about Russell Granata,” The Revisionist 2(4) (2004), pp. 442f. 6 J.C. Zimmerman, Holocaust Denial. Demographics, Testimonies and Ideologies, University Press of America, Lanham/New York/Oxford 2000. 88 GERMAR RUDOLF, CARLO MATTOGNO · AUSCHWITZ LIES Zimmerman claimed to have written a refutation of my arguments concern- ing corpse cremations at Auschwitz; or better still, even a definitive refutation, as he makes clear from the subtitle of his article: “The End of Holocaust- Denial.” Zimmerman disputes my study “The Crematoria Ovens of Auschwitz and Birkenau,”7 regarding which he writes: “It appears that this was intended to be the definitive denier argument on the issue.” This is merely one of the grand illusions of our professor. The work he cites is a translation of my article “Die Krematoriumsöfen von Auschwitz,” which was published in the German anthology edited by Ernst Gauss (=Germar Rudolf), Grundlagen zur Zeitgeschichte.8 That work is a summary (carried out by the editor) of a text of approx- imately 80 pages, which was a synthesis summary of a larger work that I had compiled by 1993 with the cooperation of Engineer Dr. Franco Deana.9 “Omissions,” of which Zimmerman accuses me, are the result of the drastic reduction of my original text for that anthology. Whereas that work arose from a period of limited availability of sources, since 1995 I have had access to a vastly larger amount of material, therefore the article “The Crematoria Ovens of Auschwitz and Birkenau” is not a defi- nite work, as Zimmerman believes, but merely a drastically abridged point of departure. My “definitive” study concerning cremations at Auschwitz – assuming that I would speak of a “definitive study” – would be the two-volume work cur- rently being prepared for publication: I forni crematori di Auschwitz. Studio storico-tecnico, con la collaborazione del dott.ing. Franco Deana (The Cre- mation Ovens of Auschwitz. A Historical and Technical Study, with the assis- tance of Dr. Ing. Franco Deana).10 The major parts of the objections raised by Zimmerman have already been refuted with ample documentation in that work.11 But already the last updating of my above-mentioned article, which appeared in 2003,8 is sufficient to upset Zimmerman’s historical and technical fantasies. Actually, our professor has drawn a blank and therefore must start all over again with his “refutation,” but this time his task will be much more difficult. 7 www.vho.org/GB/Books/dth/fndcrema.html 8 Grabert Verlag, Tübingen 1994, pp. 281-320; an updated English version was published as C. Mattogno, “The Crematoria Ovens of Auschwitz and Birkenau,” in: Germar Rudolf (ed.), Dissecting the Holocaust, 2nd ed., Theses and Dissertations Press, Chicago, 2003, pp. 373- 412 (www.vho.org/GB/Books/dth). 9 For this reason he is cited as co-author, although I alone wrote that article. 10 The planned year of release for that publication is 2005. 11 Documents cited here, except were indicated otherwise, are published and discussed in this book. AN ACCOUNTANT POSES AS CREMATION EXPERT 89 In this overview, I shall limit myself to raising some preliminary observa- tions. 1. Zimmerman’s Competence First of all, let us assess the competence of this critic who presents himself as “Associate Professor, University of Nevada, Las Vegas” (p. 1). The first qualification required of one who wants to seriously occupy him- self with the alleged Holocaust is knowledge of the German language, but our professor does not know German, and for interpretations of texts written in that language he has to trust translations by others. He in fact declares: “The author wishes to thank Judith Jenner and Karola Raab, both of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, for their translations of the German language material used in this study.” It is as though a professor wanted to explain obscure passages of the Bible without knowing Hebrew and Aramaic! This already qualifies Professor Zimmerman as a dilettante. From the historiographical point of view, Zimmerman relies for the most part on second-hand information filtered through various authors such as Pres- sac, Piper, van Pelt, Czech, etc. The original documents known to our profes- sor are few and irrelevant. We shall subsequently show what blunders result from such documentary ignorance. From the technical point of view, Zimmerman walks in the dark. He has not the faintest idea of the structure and function of crematory ovens in gener- al and those of Auschwitz in particular, going off into absolutely unfounded conjectures as if they were sacred truths. This fact shall be illustrated with ap- propriate examples. As to methods and professional honesty, Zimmerman demonstrates a truly worrisome deficiency, and while he charges that Mattogno “basically reverts to the common denier tactics of omission and misrepresentation” – an accusa- tion of specious methods against me – we are about to see just how honest Zimmerman’s “refutations” are. 2. Zimmerman’s Fabrications and Deceptions. We begin with the case of air photos. First of all, Zimmerman claims that I changed my mind about certain photographs of Auschwitz, which had been published in books. This is absolutely ridiculous. Being a dilettante, he evi- dently believes that I act like he does by looking for the documents in books and not in the archives. 90 GERMAR RUDOLF, CARLO MATTOGNO · AUSCHWITZ LIES I possess all the Auschwitz air photos he mentioned (and many others he does not even know or is unaware of), and already since 1989 I also own cop- ies of the surface photos he mentioned. If I change my opinion concerning interpretation of specific points, then this resulted only from the progression of my studies, and was not due to the fact that later books have published documents, which I had already in my possession. I will now examine in more detail Zimmerman’s “definitive refutation”: 1. Zimmerman writes that Mattogno “claimed in 1995, the year following the publication of the May 31 pho- to, that the smoke was not from burning bodies but most probably from trash.” Zimmerman cites as a source my booklet Auschwitz Holocaust revisionist Jean-Claude Pressac: The “Gassed” People of Auschwitz: Pressac’s New re- visions.12 Zimmerman’s claim is false. I never wrote such a thing; not in that booklet nor elsewhere.13 2. Our professor claims that “Mattogno simply had no explanation for the presence of this smoke (p. 41).” This is also false; anyone may read my “ex- planation” on page 43 of my book My Banned Holocaust Interview.14 3. Regarding the photographic note, which Zimmerman reproduces in his article, he declares that “it is possible to see 14 Sonderkommandos in uni- form.” This too is false. The photograph in question shows only 8 persons (almost certainly prisoners) standing, and a 9th [person] on the left, who is probably a guard. As I have explained in My Banned Holocaust Interview (pp. 41-44), this photograph does not only fail to demonstrate, but also refutes the story of mass cremation of “gassed.” This lie serves to advance the number of prisoners in that photograph of “25 Sonderkommandos” declared by Filip Müller. 4. Still, Zimmerman writes that “Mattogno never addressed this photo” (p. 46), to which I respond once again: See My Banned Holocaust Interview (pp. 41- 44). 5. He furthermore declares that 12 Granata Publishing, Palos Verdes 1995. 13 An online Internet version (www.vho.org/GB/c/CM/gcnewrev.html) includes these words, which had been added without the author’s consent: “The small column of smoke rising from the courtyard near Crematory V which appears in the aerial photographs of May 31, 1944 is consistent with outside trash incineration in an open-air container where lower level combustion air is able to enter; we know of no aerial photographic evidence of pit incinera- tion where burning would have been very slow because of poor air circulation.” Editor’s remark.