Carlo Mattogno: Auschwitz: The First Gassing – Rumor and Reality
4th expanded edition, Dallastown, PA: Castle Hill Publishers, 2022

4th, expanded edition.

Mainstream historians claim that the very first gassing of 850 human beings at Auschwitz occurred on Sept. 3, 1941, in the basement of building no. 11 of the Auschwitz main camp. It is supposed to have lasted 15 hours, followed by another two days of ventilation and removal of the corpses.

But when analyzing all available testimonies, which are the archetypes for all later gassing accounts, Mattogno comes to a quite different image in this study:

According to this, it happened either

• in spring 1941
• or on August 14, 1941
• or on August 15, 1941
• or on September 3-5, 1941
• or on September 5-6, 1941
• or on September 5-8, 1941
• or on October 9, 1941
• or in November 1941
• or in December of 1942.

• the old crematorium
• or one room…
• or all rooms…
• or even all rooms plus the hallway of the basement of building 11
• or somewhere at Birkenau.

• Russian POWs
• or partisans
• or political commissars
• or Poles
• or Russian POWs and sick Polish detainees.

• 200, or 300, or 500, or 696, or 800, or 850, or 980, or 1,000, or 1,400, or 1,663 victims.

The poison gas was administered either by

• SS-man Palitzsch
• or by Tom Mix
• or by "the strangler"
• or by Breitwieser

either into the corridor or into the cells, a total of three cans or perhaps two cans into each cell either

• through the door
• or through a ventilation flap
• or through openings above the doors to the cells.

The victims died immediately or perhaps stayed alive for 15 hours. The corpses were removed either

• the following day
• or the following night
• or one to two days later
• or three days later
• or on the 4th day
• or the 6th day.

The work took either

• a whole day
• or a whole night
• or two nights
• or three nights.

The bodies of the victims were either

• cremated
• or buried in mass graves
• or partly cremated and partly buried.

In short, it is evident that those giving the accounts of the first gassing at Auschwitz were either not there, lying or mistaken—and Mattogno exposes their obvious fabrications. This total chaos of claims regarding the very first gassing at Auschwitz is typical for all other accounts of homicidal gassings during the Third Reich. It makes it impossible to extract a consistent story. Using original wartime documents, Auschwitz: The First Gassing by Carlo Mattogno inflicts a final blow to the tale of the first homicidal gassing.

264 pages, paperback, illustrated, bibl., index (Holocaust Handbooks, Volume 20)