Website notes to The Independent, April 12, 2000

 

1. Professor Robert Jan Van Pelt admits that there are no wartime holes through the roof of Leichenkeller 1 of Krema II now (our picture shows the underside of its still intact reinforced-concrete roof, which has pancaked downwards). He speculates that the Nazis might have had time to fill in the ("27cm square") holes with cement in the last days. But if they were going to dynamite the building, why bother? And the non-architect Pelt had to admit under cross-examination (Transcript: Day 9, Jan 25, 2000, at page 189) that holes could never be "cemented" in such a way that the evidence of this could not be seen years later. But the "eye-witnesses" all testified that they had seen SS officers remove the manhole covers from the holes ("using two hands") and pour Zyklon B cyanide crystals in. mr irving said that the eye-witnesses were lying. Judge Charles Gray said in his judgment, in effect, that the concrete roof is lying.

2. When the Red Army came the father of Anne Frank and hundreds of other sick prisoners were in the Auschwitz camp hospital, convalescing.

3. It is not known who dynamited the buildings. They were very effectively demolished, except for the underground chambers, as the photographs now show.

4. No autopsies have ever been carried out on bodies at Auschwitz to test for cyanide poisoning. Why not?

5. Readers will recall the mock horror of Richard Rampton QC at the ditty that Mr Irving was alleged to have sung to his infant child, "poisoning her mind" for ever.