Majdanek this and that

[Wetzelrad]

If you go on Google Earth (Not Google Maps), someone called Surgey Rudavin, bless his heart, took a 360 of the room.

Always appreciate those. In case you haven't seen it, Wikipedia hosts a 15,000 pixel-wide panoramic photo of chamber A/III interior.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File ... r_Pano.jpg

You can see some blue staining on the B1 side, more than the “A” side [...]

I hadn't noticed it before, but you're right that there might be a faint blue patch under the viewport. Funny how there's more physical evidence for a Zyklon gassing there than on the opposite side of the wall.

Therefore, I say empty cans of Zyklon B stained the walls on the inside, and on the outside wall, “Stain 14” was due to HCN gas coming out of the “A” Chamber and because of that, “Stain A” was also a result of HCN gas escaping out the doorway of “A” Chamber.

An empty can or cans might do it. They may have had a bad procedure or someone not following the procedure once.

But the hypothetical person who backed out of the chamber with the empty cans could have left them outside next to the door as easily as anywhere else. I would still suggest that this is a more likely cause for the exterior stains (A and 14).

The Soviet report gives us some measurements that we can use. The height of a tall can of Zyklon B was 31.5 cm, the width of this wall was 1.13 m on the inside, and the height of one room on the inside was 2.2 m. Making some rough assumptions, we can visualize approximately how a can would look there.



The stain appears to line up perfectly at 31.5 cm.

[Wetzelrad]

Have you noticed this? This photo from 1946, found in B43's "Past and Present" display, seems to be missing both exterior stains. It's a blurry capture and it's black-and-white, yet there's enough detail to see and match up fainter wall details, so why don't the intense dark splotches show?

[Fred Ziffel]

I am thinking yours is a 1500gm size. 500gm size was also used

Good point on the stains not visible. I have seen it many times and wondered. Germar perhaps would be a better source than me to figure out why this is. I have no answer for you.

The only thing I can say in my defense is the Majdanek camp has been in the hands of the Pols and Soviets since July 22,1944 till today. So, if any funny business occurred, they are the ones to point to, not the Germans. That photo was taken in 1946

[Fred Ziffel]

True the height of the can does match. thanks for posting, Looks good
We have:
1. No other stains, no other cans were left in this area to stain the wall?
2. This location is outside in the open air. Excellent ventilation, Parts of the stain is quite intense
3. What caused the Stain "A"? Diffusion? HCN exposure? We at least now know it did not diffuse through the wall of Cell 14.
4. what was the cause of blue staining inside Cell 14? Cell 14 is enclosed and has blue stains, whereas your placement area was not enclosed. (I am not saying what you argue is not plausible. However, these are the conditions we have here)
Interesting for sure!
I wish I could have been a fly on the wall. but the Zyklon might kill me. LOL

[Wetzelrad]

Good point on the stains not visible. I have seen it many times and wondered. Germar perhaps would be a better source than me to figure out why this is. I have no answer for you.

The only thing I can say in my defense is the Majdanek camp has been in the hands of the Pols and Soviets since July 22,1944 till today. So, if any funny business occurred, they are the ones to point to, not the Germans. That photo was taken in 1946

We also have Soviet liberation footage of the front of the bunker in 1944. See timestamp 05:36 of reel 5 here. Again the stains are missing. Here is a side-by-side comparison.

photo comparison of missing blue stains on exterior of chamber III and cell 14, Majdanek.jpg (214.78 KiB) Viewed 35 times

This allows us to say confidently that someone used Zyklon at the Majdanek gas chambers well after the camp was liberated. For what reason? How many other stains were created postwar?

[Fred Ziffel]

plausible argument, I point my feeble finger at the Pols first and or the Soviets.
Maybe to use up all that Zyklon they found in B52

[Wetzelrad]

I'm really skeptical of any legitimate usage, though.

Is it really believable that the Soviets occupied Majdanek, investigated it, determined that 1.5-2 million people died there, declared it was a "vernichtungslager", turned it into a museum, and then decided to use the ostensible "gas chambers" for delousing rather than treating the place with the respect that would normally be allotted to a site of mass murder?

I won't say it's impossible. Since at that time the Soviets were interring a few prisoners in Majdanek they might have had a genuine need for delousing there. But if so this allows us to say:

The Soviets overtook a "death camp" and continued to use its prisoner housing facilities for housing and its delousing facilities for delousing, exactly as they were designed for. This severely limits the plausibility that they believed it was a death camp where the gas chambers were used on humans.

On the other hand, maybe they didn't use the Zyklon for delousing but for some other exploratory use. A small part of me still wonders if the stains in chamber A/III are not evidence of an attempt to try to force HCN through the pipe system. Pressac once suggested something like that. Maybe he knew more than he was letting on. Rudolf also thought the stains around the pipes in chamber A/III were consistent with piped gaseous HCN. It seems possible that many stains were created by some clumsy postwar experiment. This is as far as I'll speculate for now.

Another possibility is that flooding caused the exterior stains to form, but this seems improbable on the whole.

One other curiosity about this is what it tells us about alkalinity. Since these two stains were made four or more years after construction (1942), then it means the concrete was still suitably alkaline for that long. Four years is a long time. Rudolf wrote in TCOA: "cement mortars and concretes [...] are noticeably alkaline for many weeks, months, or even years". This example shows he is correct and in no way exaggerating.

One last thing. A third stain, the one inside the gas chamber doorway, also might be missing in the Soviet film, but it's too dark to say for certain.