Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. Page #5

with a spy hole...

"with double

eight-millimeter glass.

"This order

is particularly urgent.

Signed,

S.S. Major Bishof. "

There was a code.

The Germans

had a coded language.

You never talk

about extermination.

You always talk about

"special action"...

or "special treatment. "

There was

a very clear policy.

Words like " gas chamber"

would not be used.

The letter of Bishof

of the 29th of January...

is a kind of exception

in this...

because it is a letter

which is written by a person who

manages the whole operation...

and who himself had established

a policy that you would never

use the words "gas chamber."

Somebody

in the architecture office...

underlined the word

"Vergasungskeller,"

literally,

" gassing basement, "

and put on top a note--

"S.S. Untersturmfuhrer

Kierschnecht,

exclamation mark. "

This means Kierschnecht

should be informed...

about this slip.

It doesn't occur after that.

The Nazis were the first

Holocaust deniers...

because they deny

to themselves...

that it's happening.

When my doubt

about the Holocaust

first came to me,

it took me

two and a half years.

I was like

a reforming alcoholic.

I was like one yo-yo...

back and forth--

believe, not believe;

maybe believe;

false belief;, true belief.

Fred was able

to purge his own mind...

within a matter of a week.

That's amazing to me.

So I said,

"Fred, what convinced you?"

He said, "Ernst,

it wasn't what I found.

"It's what I didn't find

that blew me away.

"It never, ever

occurred to me...

that a man could be convinced

by something that is not there. "

That's what Fred said.

[ Coughs ]

[ Leuchter ]

Before I went, I had no idea

of their purpose.

I just knew that

they were concentration camps.

I knew because

I was taught that they had

gas executions there.

But I subsequently

found out...

that the concentration camps

were, in effect,

slave labor camps.

It doesn't make much sense

that they would take an

entire force of slave labor...

and execute them.

You get into a situation

where you start thinking

about what happened,

you look at the facilities,

none of it seems to make

any sense.

If I were to take

any one of the facilities...

and attempt to conduct

a gas execution in them today,

and the facilities

haven't changed at all

since 1942 or 194 1,

then what, in effect, I'd do is,

I'd kill myself and everybody

helping me do the execution.

I certainly don't have

a death wish,

and I don't think

the German S.S.

had a death wish.

If those facilities

could be made competent

for an execution,

I would be the one

that would be able

to do that.

I assure you that nobody could

do that better than I could.

[ Van Pelt ]

Leuchter has said

a number of times...

that the place

wasn't touched.

Just open your eyes.

You realize that

this is utter nonsense.

Virtually every brick,

which was located in 1944

in one place,

has been relocated

to another place.

Where are all the bricks

of the crematoria?

It's an interesting question.

There's some mountain of bricks

in Crematorium Five,

but for the rest

there are no bricks.

I think I know

where they are.

The real places to sample

are the farmhouses to the west

of the crematoria,

the farmhouses

where people are living,

children are playing,

dogs are barking.

These were rebuilt after the war

with bricks of the crematoria.

This site

has been turned inside-out.

What was inside the camp

is now outside the camp.

And inside,

you have a big void.

We're standing at

Krema II...

at one of

the alleged holes...

where the S.S. officers threw in

the hydrogen cyanide material.

As you can see,

it's a rough-cut opening...

with metal

reinforcing rods.

I'm about to descend through

a hole in the roof...

in the gas chamber

at Krema II...

to retrieve samples

from...

below the structure.

I was saying to myself,

"Fred, do you really want

to go down in there?"

It came with the territory,

so I had to go down in the hole.

Excellent.

Excellent.

Can't actually

stand up in here.

Not sure if the whole thing

is gonna come down on me.

[ Man ]

Where are you?

Oh, there you are.

Beautiful.

Got a beautiful

piece of a roof.

I guess you thought--

I guess you're getting me.

A sample from the roof...

that I am now bagging.

Okay? Now I will find

another sample...

of brick...

from the wall we were not able

to get at from the surface,

which is over here.

I am again

going out of view,

and I will see

what I can find.

[ Leuchter ]

It was cold. It was wet.

It was kind of spooky.

It must feel like

the same way somebody feels

when they go into a tomb...

that they've opened after

a couple of thousand years,

and you don't know

what you're gonna see.

I didn't know

if I was gonna see

somebody's skeleton or bones...

or whether or not

there were gonna

be animals in there.

That would not have been

a particularly good place...

to encounter

some kind of a wild animal.

I have a sample

of the concrete...

from the alleged pillar...

that carried

the hydrocyanic acid...

into the chamber.

It would be nice

if I could obtain

a floor sample,

which I will seek...

in the lowest spot.

[ Scraping ]

I am at floor level.

And the floor

is covered with water.

I will obtain

some of the material

from the bottom,

bottom of the--

the sediment

from the bottom...

which should contain

residual cyanate.

Okay, there not being

much more I can do down here,

I will ascend to the surface.

Aah !

[ Van Pelt ]

Okay, let's go

slightly back.

[ Audio Rewinding ]

So Krema Tomb II was

the most lethal building

at Auschwitz.

In the 2,500 square feet

of this one room,

more people lost their life

than in any other place

on this planet.

Five hundred thousand people

were killed.

If you would draw a map

of human suffering,

if you create the geography

of atrocity,

this would be

the absolute center.

Every year remains

of human beings are found.

Bones, teeth.

The earth doesn't rest.

[ Leuchter ]

What happened

in all of these facilities...

is undoubtedly a mystery.

Whether or not

these facilities

were used for gas execution--

That's not a mystery.

I don't believe they were.

Because in my best

engineering opinion,

I don't think

they could've been.

It's a tough job...

to execute several

hundred people at once.

We have a hard job

executing one man.

I think it would be easier

to shoot them or hang them.

I probably could do

a reasonably good job by

building a multiple gallows...

and hanging 50 people

at once.

I probably could execute

more people...

within a shorter time frame.

Why didn't they

just shoot them?

Bullets would've been cheaper

than doing this.

Why didn't they

just blow them up?

Why didn't they take them

down into a mine

and seal the mine off?

Maybe we're gonna find

an execution chamber

under Berlin...

with 3,000 electric chairs

lined up.

I don't know.

It just doesn't seem

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