Inaccurate means of determining death toll
I WOULD like to respond to the revisionist theories put forth by your correspondent Ronald A. MacEachan in his letter (South China Morning Post, January 31).
While he admits to the existence of the Holocaust, his means of determining the total number of deaths attributed are completely inaccurate - a direct reflection of Holocaust revisionist thinking. I would like to refute his hypothesis.
He bases his assumptions on the 'fact' that six million Jews were killed in the concentration camps. While it is a fact that six million Jews died during World War II, only three million died in the concentration camps throughout occupied Europe. The remaining three million died behind the Eastern front and in the ghettos. There were a total of 11 million Jews living in occupied Europe, but only five million were accounted for after the war.
There is proof in the form of documentation that shows that camps like Auschwitz were capable of disposing of 2,000 plus corpses a day.
If even the smaller of the camps managed to dispose of half that number, the total over all the camps would be staggering. As the Nazis strove to eliminate the Jewish population they first used mass graves to dispose of the bodies. Later they turned to open air burning on pyres of railway lines using wood as fuel. Gas was not widely used as a form of combustion, but rather motor oil and methanol were the preferred liquids and then only sparingly and to keep the fires burning. In addition, the mass graves were opened up and the bodies burned in the pits.
Crematoriums (ovens) were introduced much later in the war. One oven could cremate two corpses per hour per muffler (two mufflers per oven). Sometimes three corpses were stuffed into each muffler.
Each oven may have required three hours maintenance per day, at most.
For the sake of argument let's assume the crematoriums of two out of the five largest facilities worked full capacity 24 hours a day from April 1943 to November 1944. Simple math indicates that they would have disposed of 1.7 million corpses over that time period.
While Mr MacEachan insists that the 'ovens' that were in existence were few and inefficient, written documentation supports the claims otherwise. Eyewitness accounts indicate that the ovens were used every day during the latter stages of the Holocaust.
Mr MacEachan also states that the Jews 'complied in every way possible with the wishes of their killers'. In reality there were rebellions recorded, most notably in the Warsaw Ghetto and at the camps at Auschwitz, Treblinka and Sobidor.
Mr MacEachan also implies then that every Jew in every camp knew that they were being killed. To assume that because one person knew something does not necessarily mean that all of them did. Each camp did things slightly differently from the others. Some told their prisoners that they were being given showers prior to being shipped elsewhere, when in fact they were simply being gassed.
It is 'kind' of Mr MacEachan to admit that the Holocaust did occur, but to blindly deny that six million people perished under Nazi rule is how the revisionists want the world to see it and is a slap in the face of the truth.
THOMAS MICHAEL KRAMER North Point
