The Gusen Cremation Time Sheet

[Stubble]

https://phdn.org/archives/holocaust-his ... timesheet/

Blake requested someone start this thread. Here you go Blake, you asked, I answered.

[blake121666]

I had actually quite forgotten what was in that tally sheet. Now that I see it again, it looks like 94 corpses were cremated for the 7.11.41 date in a timespan no larger than 22:00 to 07:00 one day later - or (9 + 24 = 31 hours). So (31 hr * 60 min/hr)/ 94 corpses / 2 muffles = 39.58 min / corpse / muffle.

A Gusen oven muffle averaged no more than 40 min / corpse in that timeframe. There's nothing else that can be said of this tally sheet.

Maybe I should look over the Westerbork ones?

The point is that one can achieve less than a 1 hour per corpse average when using a procedure rather than simply loading a new corpse into the muffle after the first had fully incinerated. This Gusen oven most likely had an incineration rate which could only fully incinerate 1 corpse in over an hour.

There's not much else that can be gleaned from this tally sheet w.r.t corpse throughput. Does anyone see anything in there to refute what I have just said?

One certainly cannot claim that 40 minutes is any "minimal duration". 40 minutes is the maximum average here given that I used the maximum time interval that those 94 corpses could have been cremated in (31 hours). An average consists of above and below time intervals. 40 minutes is no "minimal" of any kind. This 7.11.41 entry belies that claim of Mattogno's on its face. He's mixed up in his thinking on that. If he means averages for an ensemble of cremations, 40 minutes is the maximum average for 7.11.41. What time it took each member of the ensemble (each corpse) to fully incinerate on 7.11.41 is anyone's guess. 40 minutes is not any minimum for that (or anything else).

If he means that 40 minutes is the least of the ensemble maximums in this sheet as a whole, that's screwy thinking. That doesn't really say anything. Since 40 minutes is an average, I could pick an ensemble within this one (this day of 7.11.41) which would be lower than 40 minutes since 40 minutes is the average for the larger ensemble.

His "minimal duration" claim is simply nonsense.

[blake121666]

And iirc, he claims somewhere in his book that the Gusen oven was an old 1930s oil-fueled mobile oven converted into a stationary coke-fueled oven. That oven was not even designed to use coke. The Auschwitz ovens were all designed from the start to use coke.

Gasified coke has very very low energy density. It takes alot more of it than if oil were used to get the same incineration power. I quite doubt they reamed out the fuel channels in the thing. They more likely simply chained gasifiers off it and used the existing fuel channels to the muffles. Incineration power would be less and cremations would take longer on that alone. It would less efficiently utilize that coke as well.

Mattogno deludes himself with the 40 minute "minimum duration" nonsense. He needs to fully realize that he is dealing with throughput data for an ensemble and that individual incineration data cannot be determined. IOW, he cannot say anything along the lines of (C corpses x M minute/corpse = CM minutes) for an ensemble. It doesn't work that way. But even if he wants to do that, he needs to better refine his way of looking at that matter.

[blake121666]

On perusing through Mattogno's TCFOA again I've come across the following on pp319-320 regarding the Gusen tally sheet:

As far as the Gusen Furnace is concerned, we possess, for the period of its
continuous operation (30 October through 12 November 1941), the actual number of corpses cremated (677), the actual consumption of coal (20,700 kg) for these cremations, and the minimum duration of the cremations (221 hours and 30 minutes, or 13,290 minutes). At that time, all the conditions favoring multiple cremations in one muffle existed at Gusen,

...

The basic data set out above can refer only to two possible scenarios: Either only single cremations were carried out or multiple cremations.

1. In the first case, we would have 677 cremations in 13,290 minutes in two muffles, i.e., in rounded figures, 338 cremations in 13,290 minutes in one muffle, hence some 40 minutes for one cremation in one muffle.

2. In the second case, assuming that two corpses were loaded jointly into each muffle in each case, 338 such double cremations would have taken place in the two muffles and lasted 13,290 minutes altogether, i.e. 169 double cremations in single muffle over 13,290 minutes, the equivalent of a double cremation lasting 80 minutes in a single muffle. The same reasoning is valid for the coke consumption.

Thus, if the above data refer to double cremations, the duration of the cremation
of each such load would have required 80 minutes and the capacity of the furnace would not have been affected.

I claim that he left out the option that one-at-a-time-until-fully-incinerated cremations at the Gusen oven would have averaged much higher than 40 minutes. And the 40 minute average is from staggered cremations.

My contention is that the 40 minute average applied to staggered cremations and that it would take an average of something like 60-90 minutes to fully cremate a single corpse in a Gusen muffle.

Furthermore, it should be noted that all Gusen cremations were of adult males. Females and young cremate faster than adult males.

[fireofice]

By "minimal" it's just meant the minimal average if the people operating it are going as fast as they can. They were going as fast as they could, therefore 40 minutes is the minimal average. Also women do cremate slightly faster than men, but barely.

[Callafangers]

I claim that he left out the option that one-at-a-time-until-fully-incinerated cremations at the Gusen oven would have averaged much higher than 40 minutes. And the 40 minute average is from staggered cremations.

My contention is that the 40 minute average applied to staggered cremations and that it would take an average of something like 60-90 minutes to fully cremate a single corpse in a Gusen muffle.

Furthermore, it should be noted that all Gusen cremations were of adult males. Females and young cremate faster than adult males.

None of this is relevant to the fact of the Topf furnaces at Auschwitz having a vertical grate design which prevented the cremation of corpses (no matter how they are staggered) at a rate beyond about one per hour. The amount of coke which could be burned in a given hour puts a hard limit on how fast corpses can be cremated. The three and eight muffle Topf furnaces were slightly more efficient than the double-muffle version but still at approximately one hour per corpse.

You have not addressed this fundamental limitation.

[blake121666]

I claim that he left out the option that one-at-a-time-until-fully-incinerated cremations at the Gusen oven would have averaged much higher than 40 minutes. And the 40 minute average is from staggered cremations.

My contention is that the 40 minute average applied to staggered cremations and that it would take an average of something like 60-90 minutes to fully cremate a single corpse in a Gusen muffle.

Furthermore, it should be noted that all Gusen cremations were of adult males. Females and young cremate faster than adult males.

None of this is relevant to the fact of the Topf furnaces at Auschwitz having a vertical grate design which prevented the cremation of corpses (no matter how they are staggered) at a rate beyond about one per hour. The amount of coke which could be burned in a given hour puts a hard limit on how fast corpses can be cremated. The three and eight muffle Topf furnaces were slightly more efficient than the double-muffle version but still at approximately one hour per corpse.

You have not addressed this fundamental limitation.

I have addressed it. What you say is not true. Show me this "vertical grate design". You are mis-imaghining the situation for the Buchenwald triple-muffle ovens which Mattogno has pictures of in his book. And we don't know that Birkenau had identical internals to the Buchenwald ovens anyway. The Birkenau ovens could, for instance, have had a larger array of fuel inlets and a larger grate spacing to allow for a larger space of direct-flame incineration on the corpses and for larger pieces to drop through the grate, respectively.

The cremation of a corpse happens in rough stages:

1. Initial evaporative cooling stage where fluids rapidly evaporate out of the corpse. The muffle area rapidly cools in this stage and most likely eats up the most fuel.
2. Main combustion stage of the largest fat stores now free to ignite and combust, kaboom, combusting the corpse into pieces and allowing room for more corpses to be inserted. There is then a resultant heat surge in the muffle from the combusting and burning of the fats.
3. A more steady-state fuel usage as the smaller combustibles are further freed to ignite and burn. But with a process as described, this is also where the next corpse is inserted and starts its stage 1.

In a continuous procedure these 3 stages exist at the same time with the corpses inside the muffle at their varying stage of the process. The prior corpses are fuel for the added corpses. One cannot therefore simply act as if these corpses are not interacting with each other in the ensemble incineration.

Overall, you'd like to maximize corpse throughput. The resultant individual corpse incineration rate is whatever it turns out to be. It is not simply the case that you can just say C corpses times some expectant incineration rate for each corpse. Their incinerations are entwined. The dynamic is as I described here for 11 corpses.

[blake121666]

Here are Mattogno's pictures of the Topf triple-muffle ovens at Buchenwald:

https://archive.org/details/The-Cremati ... 1/mode/2up

Please show me the vertical grate you are so concerned about.

He has SS pictures of Birkenau's ovens mixed in there too. I don't recall having seen at least one of them before, actually - photograph 113 there.

[Callafangers]

Here are Mattogno's pictures of the Topf triple-muffle ovens at Buchenwald:

https://archive.org/details/The-Cremati ... 1/mode/2up

Please show me the vertical grate you are so concerned about.

He has SS pictures of Birkenau's ovens mixed in there too. I don't recall having seen at least one of them before, actually - photograph 113 there.

It is clear you're thinking of the wrong grate, see here: https://www.codohforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=3339#p3339

[blake121666]

Here are Mattogno's pictures of the Topf triple-muffle ovens at Buchenwald:

https://archive.org/details/The-Cremati ... 1/mode/2up

Please show me the vertical grate you are so concerned about.

He has SS pictures of Birkenau's ovens mixed in there too. I don't recall having seen at least one of them before, actually - photograph 113 there.

It is clear you're thinking of the wrong grate, see here: https://www.codohforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=3339#p3339

Please stop posting when you don't understand the matter you are posting about.

[Callafangers]

Please stop posting when you don't understand the matter you are posting about.

Is this what you always say once you have been demolished on a given topic?

[fireofice]

And iirc, he claims somewhere in his book that the Gusen oven was an old 1930s oil-fueled mobile oven converted into a stationary coke-fueled oven. That oven was not even designed to use coke. The Auschwitz ovens were all designed from the start to use coke.

Gasified coke has very very low energy density. It takes alot more of it than if oil were used to get the same incineration power. I quite doubt they reamed out the fuel channels in the thing. They more likely simply chained gasifiers off it and used the existing fuel channels to the muffles. Incineration power would be less and cremations would take longer on that alone. It would less efficiently utilize that coke as well.

Obviously coke is less efficient than fuel, but it seems you are implying that fitting a coke gasifier on a previous fuel cremation oven makes it less efficient than an average coke fired cremation oven with that intended purpose based on "fuel chambers". Unless you can explain the mechanism of this, I don't find this convincing as it is simply too vague. Regardless, it seems obvious to me on the whole that the Gusen ovens were still superior in cremation time than the Auschwitz ovens.

Mattogno deludes himself with the 40 minute "minimum duration" nonsense. He needs to fully realize that he is dealing with throughput data for an ensemble and that individual incineration data cannot be determined. IOW, he cannot say anything along the lines of (C corpses x M minute/corpse = CM minutes) for an ensemble. It doesn't work that way. But even if he wants to do that, he needs to better refine his way of looking at that matter.

Complete nonsense. You can absolutely deduce an average duration for single cremations from an ensemble. It's called basic math and division. And yes, this would be a minimum as I've already explained.

[blake121666]

And iirc, he claims somewhere in his book that the Gusen oven was an old 1930s oil-fueled mobile oven converted into a stationary coke-fueled oven. That oven was not even designed to use coke. The Auschwitz ovens were all designed from the start to use coke.

Gasified coke has very very low energy density. It takes alot more of it than if oil were used to get the same incineration power. I quite doubt they reamed out the fuel channels in the thing. They more likely simply chained gasifiers off it and used the existing fuel channels to the muffles. Incineration power would be less and cremations would take longer on that alone. It would less efficiently utilize that coke as well.

Obviously coke is less efficient than fuel, but it seems you are implying that fitting a coke gasifier on a previous fuel cremation oven makes it less efficient than an average coke fired cremation oven with that intended purpose based on "fuel chambers". Unless you can explain the mechanism of this, I don't find this convincing as it is simply too vague. Regardless, it seems obvious to me on the whole that the Gusen ovens were still superior in cremation time than the Auschwitz ovens.

Mattogno deludes himself with the 40 minute "minimum duration" nonsense. He needs to fully realize that he is dealing with throughput data for an ensemble and that individual incineration data cannot be determined. IOW, he cannot say anything along the lines of (C corpses x M minute/corpse = CM minutes) for an ensemble. It doesn't work that way. But even if he wants to do that, he needs to better refine his way of looking at that matter.

Complete nonsense. You can absolutely deduce an average duration for single cremations from an ensemble. It's called basic math and division. And yes, this would be a minimum as I've already explained.

One would think that an oven designed for one fuel would be less efficient if a different fuel were used. The fuel channels are of the physical size that they are. A less energy-dense fuel going through the same sized channel would be less energy capability.

There is no "minimum duration" in that tally sheet of any interest. There is an average that can be seen which is under his 1 hour.

[fireofice]

One would think that an oven designed for one fuel would be less efficient if a different fuel were used. The fuel channels are of the physical size that they are. A less energy-dense fuel going through the same sized channel would be less energy capability.

OK well I find this utterly unconvincing. Making a vague claim that the channels wouldn't be big enough just because fuel is more efficient, as if channels for fuel can't be of decent size regardless. And then to leap to "the channels are too small for coke". Without specifics, there's really nothing to go on here.

There is no "minimum duration" in that tally sheet of any interest. There is an average that can be seen which is under his 1 hour.

The average (40 minutes) is the minimum. You think the people operating it were saying "lets see how long we can drag this out". Completely deranged.

[blake121666]

One would think that an oven designed for one fuel would be less efficient if a different fuel were used. The fuel channels are of the physical size that they are. A less energy-dense fuel going through the same sized channel would be less energy capability.

OK well I find this utterly unconvincing. Making a vague claim that the channels wouldn't be big enough just because fuel is more efficient, as if channels for fuel can't be of decent size regardless. And then to leap to "the channels are too small for coke". Without specifics, there's really nothing to go on here.

There is no "minimum duration" in that tally sheet of any interest. There is an average that can be seen which is under his 1 hour.

The average (40 minutes) is the minimum. You think the people operating it were saying "lets see how long we can drag this out". Completely deranged.

You aren't thinking very clearly in these replies. Regardless of the fuel channel size - which was just an off-hand suggestion - an oven being modified to use a different fuel than it was built for is likely to be less efficient than an oven specifically designed to use the fuel you are using. Such should at least be a reasonable possibility, don't you think? Why don't YOU tell me why that is not?

The second statement of yours is ridiculous. My very first post reasoned why the 40 minutes is no "minimum duration" in any reasonable way.

As I noted earlier, it should be kept in mind that Gusen II contained only adult males. No women or children were cremated in that oven.