Welcome back Confused Jew, i'm glad I had the time to respond to you before you get banned again.
The biggest issue is that Rudolf assumes that the amount of cyanide found in a wall sample can directly tell us whether mass gassings happened.
You have omitted a key phrase from his conclusion because you have never read it. He writes:
Hence, the mass gassings with hydrogen cyanide (Zyklon B) in the supposed
homicidal gas chambers of Auschwitz cannot have taken place as claimed by
witnesses.
Emphasis mine. The reason the underlined part is important, is because Rudolf spends many chapters analysing the non-chemical aspects of the claims such as the introduction mechanism, the remnants of the holes, ventilation facilities, blueprints and construction orders etc.
Therefore the Chemistry findings are one of many contributing findings as to why the gassings did not happen
as claimed. You omitted this because you didn't read his book.
But he never establishes a baseline—how much cyanide should remain
This next passage is a garbled mess but we will do what we can with it. He does "establish a baseline" in that he states:
Cyanide reacting in masonry to produce Iron Blue is stable over periods of
many centuries. It disintegrates on the same time scale as the masonry it-
self. Therefore, traces of cyanide should be detectable today in almost-
undiminished concentrations, regardless of the effects of weather.
This is the "baseline" you are looking for, which you didn't know Rudolf accounts for, because you didn't read his book.
after short exposures
Non-issue, since you previously accepted that the pellets were irretrievable and laying on the floor off-gassing between the bodies. Remember?
cleaning
Water is an accelerant, not a retardant.
reconstruction
I don't know what this means, other than your AI has hallucinated and is confusing Krema I with Krema II.
and half a century of rain and decay
See above.
Even if all of his lab measurements were accurate
To my knowledge, nobody quibbles with the lab measurements from either labs. It is generally accepted from your side that the figures produced by Fresenius Institute and the Institute for Environmental Analytics Stuttgart stand on merit. If you or your AI are implying the results are wrong, you should have something significant to offer.
they cannot answer the historical question he poses because he didn’t model expected residue levels
Here is where your argument completely crumbles. You didn't read the book, or the results. Rudolf's analysis is the only analysis which measured total iron content and thus, where applicable, percentage conversion to Prussian Blue. These percentage conversions range from a low of 17% (outside wall, sample 16) to a high of 75% (inside wall, sample 9).
Specifically on the expection of conversion of total iron, Rudolf writes:
In pure Iron Blue, there is approximately 0.82 gram of iron for each gram
of cyanide. The iron analysis, assuming that the cyanide is present completely
in the form of Iron Blue, shows that, in Sample 9, approximately 3⁄4 of all iron
was converted to pigment. If one considers that not all iron can be reached by
the hydrogen cyanide, then one can speak of a near-saturation of the upper
layer of material with the pigment. The drop in the concentration from the
topmost layer to the lower layers is explained, for one thing, by the linear gra-
dient of the HCN concentration which must be expected in non-isolated walls
(see Paragraph 7.3.2.3). Furthermore, as with the blue pigmentation of the
exterior of the walls, the effect of accumulation of cyanides on the surface
through evaporation of water carrying soluble cyanide compounds must be
considered, even though this effect was certainly smaller on inside walls than
on outside walls due to lack of air exchange in these rooms after the war (high
relative humidity of the air, no wind). That is particularly true for the room
equipped with windows facing northwards only, see Figure 143 (Room 4 in
Figure 40). - section 8.3.3.3
But you didn't read this, did you?
he didn’t use proper controls (similar buildings never exposed to gas)
Samples 5 - 8 and 23 and 24 were taken from an inmates barracks. Samples 25 - 30 were non-Auschwitz building material test controls. I'm not sure what you are getting at here, but it's clear you didn't read this report.
and he didn’t document sampling locations well enough for replication
The sampling locations are clearly documented visually, verbally, and photographically.
The study’s limitation is built into its design. The data are chemically under-defined and historically over-interpreted.
Is this the best study that you have to put forth or is there a more up to date document that we should discuss?
The irony in all of this is that all of your critiques are far more applicable to the Markiewicz study, but you wouldn't know because you haven't read that either.
I continue:
1. It is a non sequitur. If results are near detection limits and possibly ambiguous, the only valid conclusion is “inconclusive data”, not “absence of residues.” Equivocal or low-signal measurements don’t demonstrate nonexistence — they just mean you can’t tell.
This is only partially true. The part you are missing, is that it's presence is
expected far above the detection limits, by orders of magnitude.
2. Rudolf claims “lack of reproducibility” as grounds for dismissing the results but then uses those same results to reach a definitive conclusion (“no residues”). That violates basic scientific logic. If data are unreliable, they can’t support any conclusion, especially a sweeping negative one.
I think you are getting confused here. What the lack of reproducibility means in this instance is that the Fresenius Institute detected anomalous low-levels of HcN below the detection limit. The correct thing to do, is to corroborate these results and see can a positive be found again. When repeated by the Institute in Stuttgart, these false positives
were not found again. This means Rudolf is very likely to be right, in that they were false positives, as they were, as described, non-replicable.
HCN is highly volatile and water-soluble; it disperses and hydrolyzes rapidly
Congratulations, you have just explained why the Markiewicz study is flawed, and that looking for non-bound cyanides are not a reliable fingerprint into the past because it is not stable across time.
5. Analytically, being near a detection limit means signal-to-noise is low — not that the signal is false. Standard lab practice would report such results as trace detected, repeat tests, or improve sensitivity — not declare that nothing meaningful exists. The book offers no replicate data, calibration curves, or blank controls to justify calling these values “near detection limit” in the first place.
See above, Rudolf DID repeat the tests. Once in Fresenius Institute, and once in Stuttgart Institute. It is Markiewicz who didn't reproduce anything. Again, you simply didn't read the report.
That’s simply not true. Rudolf’s The Chemistry of Auschwitz does not include any quantitative or mechanistic model for how Fe–CN compounds form
Yes he does. It's given in section 6.5.1:
a. Ad-/absorption of hydrogen cyanide (HCN);204
b. Ionic splitting (electrolytic dissociation)221 of hydrogen cyanide in water
to the cyanide ion, which alone can form complexes with iron;
c. Complexing of trivalent iron (Fe3+) to the complex iron(III) cyanide
–(hexacyanoferrate(III)), that is, the displacement of oxygen and/or OHions in rust by cyanide ions;
d. Reduction of iron(III) cyanide to iron(II) cyanide;
e. Precipitation of iron(II) cyanide with trivalent iron as Iron Blue.
or degrade in masonry over time
He does. It degrades at the same rate as it's host masonry.
There are no diffusion equations
no reaction-rate constants
Because it's a variable.
no weathering half-lives
comparable to its host masonry
and no error propagation
Rudolf includes some photos of sample sites, but they’re general wall shots, not mapped to architectural coordinates or depth measurements. There’s no independent verification, no standardized grid, and no record of whether the samples came from intact 1940s plaster or postwar concrete repairs. Forensic replication requires detailed, geolocated documentation — which he did not provide.
You are really scrambling here. Where is the above for the Markiewicz report?
They (Markiewicz) tested whether cyanide residues of any kind remained in the walls
This is another inversion of the truth. They omitted long term stable cyanides, ie the only cyanides that can be trust to persist across decades.
Saying residues are “not reproducibly detectable” means his own sampling was inconsistent — not that cyanide was never there.
See above re reproducibility.
They did not specifically "exclude" iron blue
Yes they did.
but if you don't understand the reason that they did this
The reason as expressed by Markiewicz why Prussian Blue was omitted is because he claims not to know what it is or how it formed.
Its very unlikely you will survive without being banned again, so goodbye Confused Jew - Thanks for the exchanges and platform to explain these results and what they mean to lurkers and newcomers!
