# Death Camp Crematoriums- Method Used? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 22, 2012, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-camp-crematoriums-method-used/641867 "2012-11-22T23:51:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Mk\_VII](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Mk\_VII](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mk_VII)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-camp-crematoriums-method-used/641867/21 "2012-11-23T21:49:50Z")
As the war went on, the Nazis began to get an idea that they might just possibly loose, and pits of shot victims were dug up again and cremated. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-camp-crematoriums-method-used/641867/22 "2012-11-23T23:39:01Z")
> [@drastic\_quench](#): > > If the Nazis where so evil and efficient and efficiently evil, why did they bother with the cost of gas chambers - why not right into the furnace? I know that’s a horrible notion, but I’ve honestly wondered about that since I first studied the Holocaust. They did exactly [that](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasenovac_concentration_camp#Systematic_extermination_of_prisoners) at [Jasenovac](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasenovac_concentration_camp) in Croatia. (They also used [gas trucks](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_van).) The majority of victims there were Serbs, rather than Jews, although there were some there, as well as Roma. Of all of the concentration camps, Jasenovac is considered to be the cruelest and most barbaric. (I read a book earlier this year about the history of the Balkans and that chapter just made want to cry and vomit at the same time) ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2012, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-camp-crematoriums-method-used/641867/23 "2012-11-24T02:59:38Z")
> [@Slithy\_Tove](#): > > and they killed more people than the Nazis. Well, the Soviets had more time to do it than the Nazis. The mass extermination period for the Nazis only lasted for about 3½ years, from the Wannasee Conference in January 1942 until the war ended in May 1945. The Soviet Gulag system operated for 30 years, from 1930-1960. But the Nazis killed as any victims in their camps as the Soviet Gulag did in 10 times as long a period. An unparalleled model of efficiency in killing. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2012, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-camp-crematoriums-method-used/641867/24 "2012-11-24T03:07:13Z")
> [@VOW](#): > > The Nazis were incredibly efficient with the business of death. By telling the people they needed to be showered and deloused, the gas chambers were filled with a minimum of fight. These were people who had traveled great distances riding in packed box cars. A shower probably sounded wonderful! …~VOW I believe this to be an incorrect description in general of the immediate activities upon arrival of the cattle cars. I know of course you’re aware; I’m just trying to clarify the picture. They weren’t really “riding” in packed cars; they were in a tortuous pack, almost without room to breath, winter or summer, and of course no room to relieve themselves and were without food or water for up to three days. Infants were often tossed in on top of the heads of those in the packed car (this was standard practice in the gas chambers). Immediately when the doors were pulled aside, the passengers would spill out, whips flew, and machine guns trained, with shouts and screams in German and, in many if not most of the large camps, Polish and Latvian; trained attack dogs were either used to rush them or attack them at the testicles; the dead and disabled were thrown out. Many people, especially women, immediately tried to get aside for an unstoppable evacuation of their bowels for fear (this is stressed, with some surprise, by a guard at Treblinka, in the documentary _Shoah_); those dogged into lanes were to be selected for immediate death or for work until death, and then sent onward (toward the end of the War the Selektions and the tattooing we’re dispensed with, and everyone was forced directly to the gas chambers); at Auschwitz-Birkenau the ramp want underground, but the chimneys and smell, of course, we’re apparent, and many were told that that was their destination, which of course made no sense to them. My point is that it was not like, “we’ve stopped, now I can get a shower,” but a continuos application of terror and channeled panic of already physically and mentally debilitated people, who could not conceive (as we barely can even now) of any further abuse. ---
**Author:** ![JLRogers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ce73a5/32.png) [@JLRogers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JLRogers)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2012, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-camp-crematoriums-method-used/641867/25 "2012-11-24T05:47:59Z")
Thank you for the totally necessary graphic description of horrors of the Holocaust, but the post you quoted is still entirely accurate. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2012, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-camp-crematoriums-method-used/641867/26 "2012-11-24T21:00:35Z")
It just bears repeating for the piling-on canard of how the Jews “went like sheep to slaughter,” which even well meaning people will assume and question from some sort of moral superiority. It bugs me (that and a few trillion other things. :)) As I said, it is by no means a negation of the quoted entry, and I appreciate that I have been provided the space for a brief note. Leo ---
**Author:** ![AuntiePam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@AuntiePam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuntiePam)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2012, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-camp-crematoriums-method-used/641867/27 "2012-11-24T21:09:45Z")
**Leo Bloom** , the “which of course made no sense to them” part of your post should be emphasized. What was happening was completely outside human experience. ---
**Author:** ![scamartistry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/919ad9/32.png) [@scamartistry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scamartistry)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2012, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-camp-crematoriums-method-used/641867/28 "2012-11-25T00:04:28Z")
> [@VOW](#): > > Once the doors were locked, however, it became obvious the shower heads were not real, and the **soap bars were rock**. > > ~VOW this sounds like a myth. Who would confuse a rock with a bar of soap. Where do you get your information from? ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2012, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-camp-crematoriums-method-used/641867/29 "2012-11-25T16:52:23Z")
Another statement in **VOW** ’s exemplary response has been rejected, I believe: the widespread notion that the fat of the murdered was used to fire the retorts. I am not disputing that the engineering minds at [Topf and Sons](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topf_and_Sons)may have entertained the notions in the interests of efficiency, and (on this I have no knowledge) whether troughs were designed specifically for the purpose of channeling the liquified fat. The most reputable article I have read on the topic, specifically on the role of the physics of human combustion–and for which, to my discredit, do not have a cite–is by, I believe, [Elayne Pope](http://www.uark.edu/~jcrose/jerryskids/popecv.pdf). Pope is a pioneer in criminal forensics of burned human remains. I clearly mustn’t add anything further to this note without additional evidence. I have an e-mail out to Professor Pope with a request for assistance. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2012, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-camp-crematoriums-method-used/641867/30 "2012-11-25T17:04:55Z")
> [@KarlGauss](#): > > …And, [the science of burning human bodies](http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.ca/2011/12/belzec-sobibor-treblinka-holocaust_8385.html). My apologies to **KarlGauss**. The cited text is quite exhaustive. I had only glanced at it, sensing incorrectly that it was a simple rejection of Revisionist trash, which can be done easily in short order. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2012, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-camp-crematoriums-method-used/641867/31 "2012-12-09T01:04:05Z")
On 12/6 I received an e-mail from Elayne Pope. She has graciously allowed me to reproduce it here: Subcutaneous fat does burn as a fuel source in fires, but muscle is a poor fuel and serves to protect bone. Muscle dehydrates, shrinks, and retracts along the shafts of long bones. However it is unlikely that bodies were burned as fuel during the Nazi concentration camp crematoriums since most were emaciated and had very little body fat. Hope this helps ---
**Author:** ![Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b38774/32.png) [@Attack\_from\_the\_3rd\_dimension](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Attack_from_the_3rd_dimension)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2012, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-camp-crematoriums-method-used/641867/32 "2012-12-09T02:56:56Z")
Please extend our thanks for helping with this difficult-to-address issue. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2012, 6:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-camp-crematoriums-method-used/641867/33 "2012-12-09T06:03:15Z")
I’ll send her this thread. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-camp-crematoriums-method-used/641867.md?page=1)