 |
Document
29.
|
|
| Document 29. |
| Indian
ink sketch by David Olère, dated 1950, showing women and children just
before their extermination in the gas chamber of Krematorium III. Leaving aside
the emotive aspect, this sketch is TOO LATE to be historically acceptable. It
has become allegorical and contains obvious errors that can be identified by
comparison with “The extraction of the gassed”, dating from 1946. The
gas chamber door is shown opening inwards, whereas in fact it opened outwards.
Even the position of the door is incorrect. The lamps are incorrectly placed
— they were actually located on either side of the central supporting were
beam, which is not even shown. No pillars are visible, either structural or
latticed.The faces of the SS men,with their shaved necks, are caricatures as
compared with the young “pure bred” SS man with wavy hair shown on
the 1946 drawing, and contrast with the angelic faces of the women, the
majority of whom are of “Aryan” appearance. according to the criteria
of the Third Reich. I present this scene to show how the visual memories of a
survivor deteriorate with time. Only Olère's early pictures, from 1945
to 1947, are historically valid, having the truth of photographs, even if not
their absolute precision. Oléres paintings of Birkenau, produced much
later, reflect this deterioration of the visual memory. |
|
| Document 30
(sketch) |
 |
| |
Document 30
(sketch) (above) and 30a (photo): (below) |
| |
|
| Sketch
by David Olère, dating from 1946, showing bodies being removed from the
Kematorum III gas chamber. As confirmed by known photographs, the door is
correcttly hung and located. The fragment of furnace shown on the left, beyond
the two arrows, is purely symbolic (there was no furnace in the basement) and
spoils a scene which would have been irreproachable without this addition
“to make it better”. Between the door and the prisoner in the
foreground there was a wall of planking blocking off the corpse chute (still
visible in the ruins of Krematorium III. The photo by the author, below the
sketch. shows its upper extremity), not used because it was built to serve real
morgues, not what had become: an undressing room and gas chamber. The total
absence of this chute even in David Olères early memories confirms that
it was never used. |
|
 |
Document 30a (photo) |
|
| Document
31 |
 |
|
| Document 31: |
| Sketch by David Olère, dating from 1946,
showing a “barber” (in the the Foreground) and “dentist”
(in the middleground) at work on bodies INSIDE the Krematorium III gas chamber,
as shown by a wire mesh Zyklon-B introduction column [C] in the background. It
should be noted that the SS probably considered that the extracction of gold
teeth should be done immediately on opening the gas chamber in order to avoid
the “organized losses” that could occur over the short distance from
the basement to the ground floor |
|
