Typhus and the JewsFriedrich Paul BergIn my article about the German delousing chambers in the Spring 1985 issue of this journal, I included a brief discussion of the large, well-designed gas chambers which were used to fumigate entire railroad trains, one or more railroad cars at a time, with Zyklon-B. Those chambers would have been ideal for the mass-extermination of people if the Germans had ever intended to commit mass-extermination of Jews or anyone else. At the end of this introductory discussion I have included two articles from the German technical literature which discuss these remarkable gas chambers in some detail. Those articles are only two among many that can be found in the German literature of that period. Delousing TunnelsThe history of large gas chambers (more than 200 cubic meters in volume) goes back to at least the early 1920's, when tunnels were used by the British to fumigate railroad trains in Russia and Poland, when the British had a military presence there during the chaotic post World War I period. The standard procedure then was to fumigate an entire railroad train at one time within a sealed tunnel with hydrocyanic acid (also referred to simply as cyanide or cyanide gas). Zyklon-B had not yet been invented and so the cyanide had to be introduced into the tunnels either from gas-filled tanks or else generated within the tunnels by the dropping of cyanide salt into barrels filled with sulfuric acid (the so-called "barrel method"). The British experience with typhus in Poland and Russia during that period was described many years later in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine as follows: [1]
In spite of the difficulties, the delousing of entire railroad trains was absolutely essential to prevent the spread of typhus from infested areas to non-infested areas. Railroads could otherwise carry typhus-infected lice throughout all of Europe within a few days. Not only the railroad trains themselves but even the railroad stations were important sources of contagious disease, particularly typhus, because it was there that people would spend hours and even days in close contact, often huddled together -- an ideal environment for the spreading of lice from "lousy" persons to otherwise clean persons. By contrast, busses, trucks and automobiles were still relatively unimportant for public transportation. The invention of Zyklon-B in 1923 was a major step forward because delousing methods employing this product could handle furs and leather goods without damage as easily as they could handle all other types of clothing. By the late 1930's (see Appendix A), the delousing of. railroads had been greatly improved with specially-constructed delousing tunnels or gas chambers. These facilities were subsequently improved even further with blowers and ductwork to circulate air and gas, and with space heaters to raise interior temperatures above the boiling point of hydrocyanic acid (78.60;). [2] Heating was especially necessary during winter -- precisely the time of the year when typhus was generally most severe and when delousing was most needed -- in order to be sure that all of the hydrocyanic acid from Zyklon-B would evaporate and fill the chamber interiors. DEGESCH as an Information Source for a Technology of Mass-MurderThe technology which was employed for fumigating entire railroad trains was hardly a secret. On the contrary, before the war and throughout most of the war, the DEGESCH company had placed large advertisements for its products and technical expertise in many technical journals which were distributed throughout the entire world. Many of these advertisements clearly showed large gas chambers for fumigating railroad trains and trucks with Zyklon-B. The half-page advertisement which follows appeared in dozens of issues of Der praktische Desinfektor just as an example. [3]
Any German official seriously interested in using Zyklon-B for almost any purpose would have been well aware of this superb technology. The people responsible for the "Final Solution," about whom it is generally conceded that they were otherwise intelligent and in many cases well-educated, would have surely read the German technical literature also. Any German official responsible for the purchase of large quantities of Zyklon-B would have surely seen the DEGESCH advertisements, not just once but many times, showing large, well-designed gas chambers about which numerous technical discussions could be easily found. The importance of circulation and heat are clearly emphasized in the relevant German literature and much of the English language literature as well. The absence of any means for circulating and heating the air-gas mixture in cellar rooms which were supposedly used for mass-murder in Auschwitz is strong and clear evidence that the extermination claims, at least with regard to Zyklon-B, are sheer nonsense. [5] Disease in War and its AftermathA standard feature of the Holocaust story is the reliance upon photographs of thousands of dead bodies found in some of the German concentration camps at the end of World War II. For people who are unfamiliar with the horrors of war, which includes most of us fortunately, those photographs are more than sufficient proof of a genocidal policy on the part of the German regime. Even for many veterans from the Western Allied armies who may have spent years reading the generally available literature, those photographs constitute convincing evidence of genocide. The claims of revisionists that the bodies were the result of catastrophic epidemics of typhus, typhoid, tuberculosis, dysentery, etc., are readily scoffed at as the foolish ravings of Nazi apologists. After all, how could disease alone have possibly caused such misery as one sees in those photographs? The bitter reality is that the photographs tell only a small part of the horrors of modern warfare. How many Americans have any idea that for every Union soldier who died during the American Civil War from combat, including those who died from wounds and injuries, there were approximately two Union soldiers who died from disease? Despite all that has been written and said in a hundred years about the Civil War and shown on film, it would be surprising if one American in a hundred has any idea as to the relative size of these numbers even though the Civil War was fought on American soil and is a major part of America's history. Out of a total of 359,5z8 Union deaths from all causes, 110,070 were killed and mortally wounded but 224,586 died from diseased. [6] Of the deaths from disease, 44,000 were from "diarrhea and dysentery, acute and chronic" and 34,883 were from Typhoid, typho-malarial, and continued fevers." [7] By contrast, the total number of deaths arising from combat at the Battle of Gettysburg for the Union army is only 3,155 and for the Confederate army is only 3,903.[8] Conditions in the Confederate armies were probably worse generally than those for the Union army but the statistics were apparently destroyed in a fire in Richmond. [9] As to civilian casualties from disease during the Civil War, especially in the South where most of the fighting occurred -- no one seems to know. In a well-written and moving book entitled Civil War Medicine, the author Stewart Brooks wrote:
A major cause of the high incidence of disease was the failure to take hygiene and sanitation seriously. The prison camps were, of course, terrible but apparently the camps where regular soldiers, i.e. not prisoners, spent months in the field were not much better. Brooks gives the following description of conditions in the camps generally:
It is hardly a surprise that Americans know even less about a foreign war, albeit one in which America had a major role, but where Americans were generally far removed from the areas of greatest misery except at the very end. Those who moralize about the piles of dead at Bergen-Belsen and Dachau should consider Andersonville, where 7,712 men died in six months out of an average of only 19,453 held. The Northern prison camps were also terrible. The "average number" of Confederates held in prisons by the North is 40,815 of whom 18,784 died. [12] Only 252 Confederates held in Northern prisons died from wounds whereas 5,965 died from diarrhea and dysentery. [13] For the Mexican War (1846-48), the ratio of fatalities from disease to fatalities from wounds is even worse. 1,549 were killed or died from their wounds; 10,951 died of disease. [14] During the Crimean War (1854-56), 12,604 men in the French army died from wounds whereas 59,815 died from sickness. For the English, 4,602 died from wounds whereas 17,225 died from sickness. By contrast, although 35,671 Russians died from wounds, only 37,454 died from sickness. [15] Unfortunately, when war has ended, the misery of disease and its full extent is quickly forgotten. Medals for diarrhea and fever will not inspire new generations of young men to risk their lives for their country. Diarrhea and dysentery, as well as typhoid, are all spread through contaminated water. Revisionists have generally not been aware of the importance of water contamination except for typhoid. In reality, all three of these diseases are extremely dangerous, especially in wartime when large numbers of people often live in camps with primitive sanitation and water supplies. During peacetime, one can afford the luxury of burial in sealed caskets or perhaps even the kind of watertight "body bags" that were used in the Vietnam War. However, in World War II this was a luxury which the Germans could not afford as a rule, even for their own people. As a preventive measure, the cremation of the dead was entirely appropriate to protect against all three of these deadly diseases. In addition, elaborate water purification measures were employed at Birkenau, for example, where one can still see nine large water treatment tanks within 200 yards of Kremas 2 and 3. The life-saving purpose of these tanks is deliberately misrepresented by the Auschwitz Museum authorities today by a nearby placard stating that these facilities were "intended to produce driving gas from human excrements." The seriousness of any such intent on the part of the Nazis is refuted by the absence of roofs over these tanks either today or during the war as well as by the elaborate internal structures for filtering and the settling of solids within the tanks. The bodies of men who have died or are near death from diarrhea or dysentery do not look any different if they were in a German concentration camp or in a Civil War prison camp or were part of a disease-ridden army under Grant or Lee or Napoleon. They are not a pleasant sight. There are, unfortunately, relatively few pictures of sick soldiers from before World War lI but they are available if one searches, even for the Civil War, and they are every bit as awful as anything from Bergen-Belsen. TyphusTyphus during the Civil War was apparently not the great problem that it has been historically in Europe. To get some idea as to the historical importance of typhus, one should read Prinzing's Epidemics Resulting from Wars [16] or some of the French or German works of the last century about Napoleon's Russian campaign. One discussion which is particularly meaningful for this analysis is by Dr. Wilhelm Pfannenstiel, who accompanied Kurt Gerstein to Belzec and Treblinka in August of 1942. Pfannenstiel was Director of the Institute for Hygiene at the University of Marburg an der Lahn and a major (Obersturmbannführer) in the SS. According to the "Statement of Kurt Gerstein," Pfannenstiel made a speech while in Treblinka in which he said the staff had performed "a great duty, a duty so useful and necessary" and "Looking at the bodies of these Jews one understands the greatness of your good work!" That Pfannenstiel made a speech complementing the staff at Treblinka is hardly surprising. However, the meaning and content of his speech in Treblinka was probably quite similar, to the speech he gave only a year and a half later in Bremen on January 10, 1944 from which the following is an excerpt.
Germany at War's End -- the Wild West and the Hordes of Genghis KhanAlthough great progress had been made in military medicine as well as medicine in general between the American Civil War and World War II, what use was all that amidst the chaos which reigned on the territory of the loser, particularly in Eastern Europe, near the end of the war? Should anyone be surprised that after years of intense bombardment of civilian targets, to the extent that journalists agreed that Germany's cities looked like the face of the moon, the conditions to which people had been reduced were comparable to those from which the world had supposedly advanced in only eighty years? Perhaps the best discussion of conditions at the end of World War II in Germany is by John E. Gordon, M.D., Ph.D., Professor of Preventive Medicine and Epidemiology at the Harvard University School of Public Health. I hesitate to give so many details about an author, but it is probably necessary to establish the fact that the excerpts which follow are not from someone who can be easily branded as another pro-German revisionist. The passages which follow were published in 1948 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science:
Because of their overwhelming air power, the Western Allies had been able to wreak enormous havoc upon Germany, particularly her cities, long before any ground troops had been engaged near those cities. Cities which had taken a thousand years to build were destroyed in a few hours long before a single Allied tank or infantryman appeared. In a recent best-selling book by the first man to break the sound barrier, entitled Yeager: An Autobiography, the author described how in the Fall of 1944 his fighter group was ...
This was, incidentally; at a time when there was no reasonable doubt about the eventual outcome of the war nor any danger to the United States. The farmer tilling his potato field might have also been feeding concentration camp inmates or prisoners of war - how could one possibly tell the difference? How can Americans condemn Germans for not giving enough food to prisoners when they themselves were deliberately killing farmers growing potatoes in their fields? One can well imagine that during the last months of the war -- when entire German cities were destroyed almost daily - many German medical or supply personnel, who would have otherwise gone to perform assigned duties at concentration camps, simply felt that Germany's enemies could fend for themselves. How can anyone realistically blame them? How can anyone imagine that they would risk their lives under almost constant air attack to get to the camps, there to face death from disease and, sooner or later, the vindictiveness of the inmates and the liberators who had a major part, at the very least, in bringing about the atrocious conditions in the first place? By the winter and early spring of 1945 in Germany, tens of millions of people were fleeing west into an area so small that, even in the best of times, enough food could not be produced to sustain the normal population. Casualties were in the millions. The fact that Germans facing extinction neglected the health and nutrition of many of their most bitter enemies in concentration camps should not be surprising. Typhus in Eastern EuropeTyphus in recent centuries has afflicted primarily the countries of Eastern Europe during wartime, especially during cold weather when soldiers and civilians are least inclined to give up the warmth of their clothes to bathe or clean their clothes. The misery that arises from such personal behavior is, of course, compounded by the social upheaval and movement of large masses of people that war tends to bring with it. The misery is probably unimaginable to a Western European or an American. Some idea may be derived, however, from the following text from the same British doctor who described the makeshift delousing tunnels:
But there is still more horrors. During the early 1920's in Russia, for example cannibalism liad become widespread. Mothers were murdering and eating their children, adults were murdering and eating their parents. 26 people who had resorted to cannibalism and 7 others who had sold human flesh were identified by one Russian doctor alone on the basis of his own personal observations. In the town of Samara, the entire mental hospital was set aside for people who had committed cannibalism. The German doctor who reported such incidents in 1923 wrote that such acts were not unusual and attributed the practice to the psychological deterioration of people suffering from protracted hunger and disease. One mother, for example, had gone into a rage as her murdered child was taken away from her and had cried out that it was her child, she had borne it, and that no one had the right to eat it except for her. Interestingly enough, the German doctor thought it significant that the people who had committed such acts were all native Russians from the lower social strata and that "there were no German colonists, no Jews and no members of any other nationality among them." [21] Typhus VaccineOne interesting fact which Pfannenstiel discussed in the text quoted earlier was that in 1944, the Germans still did not have a totally effective anti-typhus vaccine but only a vaccine which "protected against death from the typhus" -- in other words, they only had a vaccine which reduced the severity of typhus when a vaccinated person contracted the disease. American troops were repeatedly inoculated against typhus which suggests that the American vaccine was not totally effective either. The major line of defense against typhus, for the Americans as well as for the Germans, was thorough and repeated delousing. The SS personnel records for Dr. Josef Mengele show that he contracted typhus while at Auschwitz even though he, as a doctor, would certainly have been given preferred access to any available vaccine. There were probably some bad experiences with the German anti-typhus vaccine which is illustrated by the fact that even after the war at Belsen where a German Army medical team had been put to work caring for the sick at the "human laundry," at least one German doctor had refused to let himself be vaccinated by the British against typhus and had apparently told the German nurses not to take the vaccine either. About a month later, 32 of the 48 German nurses were in bed with typhus. [22] The German wartime medical literature abounds with articles about German research into the development of anti-typhus vaccines and treatment. No doubt, there were many experiments upon concentration inmates in this regard which did provide some basis for some atrocity stories after the war. The principal beneficiaries of this research, however, were the inmates themselves, since it was they who were in the greatest danger from typhus. Typhus and the JewsThe German wartime medical literature makes it quite clear that many Germans in positions of authority regarded the Jews as a major source of typhus infestation in Poland. Of course, because this literature is highly critical of Jews as a group and was written by Germans living under National Socialism, many readers will simply dismiss it as anti-Semitic propaganda. In any event, regardless of the motivations of the German authors, confirmation of many of their observations can be found in credible non-German sources. In a lengthy article published by the Royal Society of Medicine, E. W. Goodall, one of the most highly regarded British epidemiologists, described his experiences in Poland in the Summer of 1919:
The percentages given above for the incidence of typhus among Jews are actually quite close, almost identical in some instances, to the figures given by Zimmermann a generation later. It is, therefore, more than likely that the German authors were accurate also. A possible explanation for the high incidence of typhus among Jews may be their role as merchants of old clothing. For example, in Prinzing's classic work Epidemics Resulting from Wars, the author discusses the possible cause for the spread of bubonic plague and typhus in Eastern Europe during the Russo-Turkish War of 1769-72. After every trace of the pestilence had disappeared except for military hospitals, the reemergence of the plague later on was traced to the purchase by a Jew of a fur coat in a military hospital in Jassy. [24] Later again, in Transylvania during the same war, Jewish pedlars, who purchased clothes, furs, and war-booty in the Russian camp, likewise helped to spread the disease." [25] At the end of Napoleon's Russian campaign, Prinzing tells us about the typhus epidemic in Vilna in 1812-13 which "In a short time spread throughout the city, not so much because the soldiers were quartered in private houses, as because the Jews got possession of the clothes of the dead. Of some 30,000 Jewish inhabitants, no less than 8,000 died." [26] Jewish Resistance and the Torture of BathingThe intense resistance by the local population, by Poles as well as Jews, to the public health measures that responsible authorities intended for their welfare is also evident in a remarkable recent book, entitled Typhus and Doughboys, about the American military expedience in post World War 1 Poland. The book is based largely upon the internal correspondence of the American Polish Typhus Relief Expedition from 1919 to 1921. The book deals at great length with the difficulties American troops encountered when they tried a variety of methods to induce people simply to bathe and have their clothes deloused either with steam or cyanide. The difficulties were illustrated by the following passage about the efforts of one American officer in what appears from the context to have been a predominantly Jewish community.
The book is quite valuable for its insights based upon an analysis of the actual correspondence of American officers. However, one should recognize that the book was written recently in an age when the foulest rubbish can be written about Poles, Germans, Austrians and even Americans with almost no hesitation at all but when criticism of Jews is inevitably accompanied with deep apologies. The following passage is informative nonetheless, [28]
Except for Dixon's charge that Jews bribed the police, there seems no reason to believe he was biased; he seems to be simply reporting what he saw. The same intense resistance to the most minimal measures which any civilized society can impose for its own survival -- the simple act of accurately reporting cases of a highly contagious disease - is evident in Lucy Dawidowicz's The War Against The Jews for 1939-42 for the Warsaw ghetto:
The intensity of the Jewish resistance to the simple act of bathing, for the 1920's at least, is illustrated in Typhus and Doughboys by the following passage about American efforts in the town of Wlodowa:
Another passage tells us just how often the people in a largely Jewish community took baths even under American administration.
Confirmation of the general unsanitariness of the Polish Jews was even given by the Jewish Chairman of the Warsaw Judenrat, Adam Czerniakow. In his diary, which has been highly praised by Raul Hilberg among others, Czerniakow wrote for May 29, 1942:
After World War II, General George S. Patton described Jews living under his military authority in southern Germany. Martin Blumenson the editor of The Patton Papers regarded these remarks as indicative of a growing anti-Semitic attitude. For September 17, 1945 -- five months after the liberation of the last of the German concentration camps -- Patton wrote:
Clearly, on the basis of the preceeding passages, there was general agreement among German doctors, British doctors, Polish doctors, American military officers and even some Jews as to the frequent aversion to cleanliness of Jews in and from Poland. To some extent, the backwardness of the Polish Jews can be explained by poverty and persecution. But, whatever the cause, it is still difficult to comprehend the hysterical resistance to minimal standards of hygiene and civilized living when a modest amount of common sense should have told them that it was necessary for their own survival. An attachment to a traditional lifestyle going back centuries, if not millenia, may have been regarded as vital to their religious and ethnic identity. In any event, it should be understood that Jews from Western countries were generally quite different in their personal habits. When these Jews were placed in camps with Polish Jews, they were as appalled as any other Westerners would have been. It does not seem fair to attribute the behavior of the Polish Jews to religion alone -- but, religion may be important, nonetheless. Regardless of the true extent of the Jewish contribution to the spread of typhus, it is certainly safe to say that the German authorities were absolutely sincere in their statements that the Polish Jews were a major contributing factor in the spreading of the disease. They had not only the evidence of their own doctors to support this view but that of British and Polish doctors as well. They can hardly be blamed for applying severe measures to the Jews in order to control the epidemic. The severe measures included restrictions on the movements of Jews and eventually to the construction of a wall around the entire Warsaw ghetto. These measures during wartime were entirely reasonable to control the spread of typhus, and to prevent catastrophes like those which had already occurred in Poland and Russia during and after World War One should realize also that although medicine had made great progress in the years between the world war, not much progress had been made with regard to typhus. There was still no truly effective vaccine or treatment. The means for detection of typhus had been improved but that in itself did not go very far in preventing catastrophic epidemics except to alert authorities to be more stringent in their delousing of people, or of contaminated areas or trains coming from or passing through those areas. The real breakthrough came only near the end of the war with the availability of enormous quantities of DDT from the Americans for delousing. In any event, it is quite clear that the high incidence of typhus among Jews was not simply the result of persecution by the Germans, or of the confinement of Jews first in ghettoes and then in concentration camps. One of the main objectives of the camps was to maintain strict enough control upon the inmates so that typhus would at least subside if not disappear altogether. During the last months of the war, however, when typhus reappeared with a vengeance, the Germans had no choice but to maintain as tight control as they possibly could upon the inmates, to keep any of them from escaping, even if they could do little to help them. When the British took Bergen-Belsen at the request of the SS, they were appalled at what they found and considered simply moving the inmates out of the camp into neighboring dwellings. [34] They quickly realized, however, that that would have only compounded the disaster. Delousing as a Cover for Mass-Murder?It is often claimed in the Holocaust literature that the Germans disguised their extermination facilities as delousing stations with showers and barbers and laundries in order to lull Jews into the gas chambers. From the material already quoted, it should be obvious that a more unlikely arrangement to lull Polish Jews into doing anything would be hard to imagine. The prospect of bathing could have only had the opposite effect. In addition to their fear of showers and bathing generally, it was inevitable that there would have also been many false rumors which could have only compounded the Jewish resistance. Was the visit of a highly respected professor of hygiene, Professor Pfannenstiel, to Belzec and Treblinka only for the sake of putting on a convincing disguise? His visit makes no real sense unless the purpose of these camps was to do precisely what all other Durchgangslager or transit camps were intended to do, i.e., to delouse and medically examine and possibly quarantine people who were being moved to a new location. Although specific details about Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor may no longer be available, the planning and organization in general was not a secret. The planning and organization was thoroughly described in German wartime; technical journals such as Gesundheits-Ingenieur and Arbeitseinsatz und Arbeitslosenhilfe. [35] Basically, each transit camp or Durchgangslager was divided into a "clean" zone and a "dirty" zone with a strictly enforced barrier between the two zones. A delousing station straddled the boundary between the two zones at some point. Each camp was arranged so that new arrivals could only enter the "dirty" zone. To get over to the "clean" zone, they had to pass through the delousing station. Inside the delousing station, each person had to remove all of their clothing and belongings which would then be fumigated with cyanide, or steamed, or else heated with hot air while they took a shower and underwent a thorough medical examination which might include X-rays to determine -- their state of health and whether or not they had any contagious diseases such as typhus and tuberculosis. If they failed to pass the exam, they might be sent back to wherever they had come from originally or they might simply be kept in a quarantine area for several weeks. If they passed, they would eventually be sent on, usually to another camp and put to work. Some additional details for handling people riding the trains in Eastern Europe were given by a German doctor:
The drawings that one occasionally sees in the Holocaust literature of Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor and which we are told were drawn from memory, usually by "survivors," do bear some resemblance to the drawings in the German technical literature, especially with regard to the separation of dirty and clean zones and some kind of facility with gas chambers straddling the boundary between the two zones. What has apparently happened over the years is that a certain amount of truth has filtered its way through the lies and nonsense. For example, when it was claimed that the Jews were killed at Treblinka with steam -- at least until the Diesel method was supposedly developed -- there was probably some truth to that story. The truth is that steam was used, but for delousing of clothing and not for murder. When the Germans referred to Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor as Durchgangslager, it was precisely because those places actually were Durchgangslager in the sense in which the Germans always used that term; the Durchgangslager were places which people had to "pass through" on their journey to some other destination. Were the trains for the deportation of Jews fumigated?As bad as the hygienic and sanitary conditions were in the Jewish ghettoes, conditions on the trains carrying Jews must have been even worse. We are assured of this by the "Holocaust literature" itself. That literature abounds with stories of misery and filth on crowded railroad cars, in many cases freight cars, which were indeed used to move many Jews to the East. On the return trips to the West, these same railroad cars would logically have been used to transport freight and people, German troops prisoners and Eastern European workers. Is it conceivable that railroad cars used on one occasion to transport Jews in conditions that were even worse than those in the Jewish ghettoes would be subsequently used to transport non-Jews back to the West without thorough delousing and cleaning? The answer must be -- no! It would have been madness for the Germans not to delouse these trains. If there was ever a need to delouse a train, that need would surely have been greatest for trains that had carried Polish Jews. The mere fact that a train had come from the Warsaw ghetto where typhus had been rampant would, in itself, have been reason enough for a thorough delousing of the entire train afterwards, before using it for any other purpose. The Budapest Fumigation Plant for Mass Murder?How then could the knowledge of the operation of those superbly designed gas chambers, which used Zyklon-B as a matter of routine to delouse railroad trains, have been unknown to the very same Nazis who were supposedly exterminating the Jews? Furthermore, once the existence and the locations of the railroad delousing tunnels would have been known to the mass-murderers, why would they have ever again bothered to use anything else for mass-murder? The fact that neither the Budapest gas chamber nor any other railroad delousing tunnel, either in Hungary or anywhere else, has ever been implicated by any of the Holocaust "scholars" merely shows how twisted the Holocaust story really is. Surely, the SS would have seen the logic in using the gas chamber in Budapest to exterminate the Hungarian Jews, if extermination had ever been their intent, rather than transport these same Jews to Auschwitz in mid-1944 when Germany was desperately trying to move troops and supplies to the Normandy invasion area. Surely they would have used the Budapest gas chamber rather than trying to use "gas chambers" which were hardly more than ordinary cellars with small holes in the ceilings through which the Zyklon-B granules were supposedly dumped either onto the heads of intended victims or else down perforated sheet-metal false columns with internal spirals. Those claims are absurd for technical reasons alone. However, they are also absurd because of the superb technology which they could have easily been employed to do the terrible deed properly. Surely, Adolf Eichmann and at least some of the people around him with their expertise in railroad transportation and scheduling would have known -- the Final Solution of the Jewish Problem was, after all, largely a problem of transport even on the basis of what the Holocaust "scholars" write themselves. Can anyone believe that the Nazi murderers shipped hundreds of thousands of Jews away from a gas chamber which was one of the most advanced large gas chambers in the entire world, designed specifically for Zyklon-B, to kill them instead in cellar rooms which had been designed as cold-storage mortuaries but subsequently disguised as showers? ConclusionsDespite great progress in hygiene and sanitation in the last century and despite German efforts throughout most of the war to practice good hygiene and sanitation in the concentration camps, conditions by the end of the war had deteriorated horribly. The history of the American Civil War and other wars of the last century shows that conditions in the regular military camps of that era, not just prison camps, were appallingly similar. Anyone seriously interested in possible applications of Zyklon-B would have certainly read the DEGESCH advertisements showing large gas chambers for the fumigation of railroads and trucks. Surely, anyone reading the relevant technical literature about Zyklon-B would have also read the detailed discussions of the same gas chambers and how they were constructed with blowers and ductwork for circulation, specially coated interior walls as well as heaters to raise the interior temperatures above 78.6 F. The very idea that the Germans would have constructed showers and delousing facilities in order to lull Polish Jews into gas chambers is ridiculous. Polish Jews were probably the least likely people in all of Europe, if not the world, to react calmly or peacefully to the prospect of bathing under any circumstances. Polish Jews lived in highly unsanitary surroundings, in which typhus had, in fact, already reached epidemic proportions and from where typhus was more than likely to spread despite a strict quarantine imposed by the Germans. Polish Jews accounted for roughly 3/4 of all known cases of typhus for all of Poland not only during the early part of World War II but also during the years following World War I after German troops had left. The Germans would have been especially meticulous in fumigating or delousing precisely those trains which were used after 1941 to move large numbers of Polish Jews to the East. On the basis of the "Holocaust" literature itself, even the Polish Jews regarded those trains as appallingly filthy. If there were ever a need to fumigate railroad trains, then it would have certainly been those trains. Regardless of the ultimate fate of the Jews at Treblinka or Belzec or Sobibor once they had stepped off the trains, the Germans would have certainly fumigated those trains afterwards before using them to carry German troops or prisoners or freight on the return trips to the West. To do less than that would have been totally inconsistent with numerous Jewish comments that the Germans were "obsessed" with cleanliness and fear of typhus. German officials involved with the scheduling of railroads in Eastern Europe would have been well aware of the need to also schedule fumigations of railroad trains which had carried lice-infested cargo or people or which had simply passed through areas in which typhus was present such as the Warsaw ghetto area. Adolf Eichmann and many others involved with "The Final Solution of the Jewish Problem" would have been well aware of the need to delouse those trains. They would have certainly had the good sense to also recognize the obvious: that the gas chambers which were being used to fumigate empty trains with Zyklon-B could just as easily be used to fumigate trains filled with Jews. They would have certainly had the good sense to recognize that the same gas chambers used to fumigate empty trains after the Jews had stepped off could just as easily be used to fumigate trains before the Jews stepped off. What could have been simpler or more logical. What greater cover or deception could one imagine -- and no fake showers or delousing stations or transit camps either. For these reasons, and many others, the Holocaust story is absurd. Notes
APPENDIX AA Modern Railroad-Disinfecting Plant (Eine moderne Eisenbahn-Entwesungsanlage) by Dr. G. Peters Translated by F. P. Berg and E. Kniepkamp from Anzeiger für Schädlingskunde, Vol. 14 (Berlin: Verlagsbuchhandlung Paul Parey, 1938), Heft 8, pp. 98-9. In Heft 3 of this journal from the previous year, we summarized the development over the years of methods for fumigating railroad trains with hydrocyanic acid. Within that discussion, several fumigation tunnels were also mentioned, some of which are in operation in the Balkans and some in Central America. Finally, the application of vacuum plants (Vakuumanlagen) for this purpose was also discussed. In the meantime, another quite interesting, larger fumigation chamber for railroad cars which deserves a special discussion has been built and brought into operation in Budapest.
The facility which was proposed by the Hungarian State Railways and constructed in collaboration with the German Company for Pest Control, G.m.b.H. [DEGESCH], Frankfurt on the Main, is special because it is the first time that a fumigation chamber on the largest scale has been created and tested with a circulatory system. The circulatory arrangement (Kreislaufführung) for mixing air and gas is known to have great advantage[s]: on the one hand, the gas evolves [is driven out of the granules in the cans of Zyklon-B] more easily and, on the other hand, the gas is distributed faster. [1] We need not examine the construction of such circulatory plants in great detail-it is sufficient to point out that: circulatory gas-generating equipment (Kreislaufvergnsungsapparaturen) allows one to easily and safely handle even the most poisonous substances; furthermore, by means of a repeated exchange of the entire air-gas mixture during the first hour of fumigation the concentration of the air-gas mixture is ideally distributed so that the losses [of cyanide] due to adsorption are minimized; and finally, because of the special design of such chambers, they can be vented with the doors closed. In this way the circulatory principle (Kreislaufprinzip) encompasses technical improvements which increase the likelihood of success of the fumigation procedure while, at the same time, significantly reducing the safety hazards. ft was these advantages which apparently also motivated the Hungarian State Railways to make the first attempt at the construction of such a facility in Budapest. Already after several months of almost uninterrupted use of the chamber, the elegance and safety of this facility have been clearly recognized.
The plant is used for fumigating railroad passenger coaches as well as for disinfecting freight cars. For the first type of application, one is concerned with bugs (Wanzen) and vermin whereas for the second type of application, one is especially concerned with the extermination of chicken mites (Hühnermilben). The transport of chickens in Hungary leads to a heavy accumulation of mites in the cars used for this purpose which are, as a result, frequently infested, not only within the railroad cars themselves but, also, on the exteriors of the railroad cars. It was precisely for this reason that one had to construct a fumigation tunnel; otherwise the fumigation of only the interiors of the railroad cars would simply not have eliminated these pests. The accompanying photographs give some idea as to the exemplary manner in which the fumigation plant was actually constructed, structurally as well as technically. (Only the construction of the large doubled door with countless screw joints is unnecessarily cumbersome.) The gas-tightness of the steel- reinforced concrete chamber is so great that when the blowers are turned on inside the closed chamber, the pressure drops almost 200 mm H2O which is truly remarkable for a room with a volume of 350 cubic meters. The venting as well as the circulation of the air-gas mixture is achieved by a powerful medium-pressure blower which is sized large enough to permit 30 complete air-exchanges per hour. For this purpose, the supply and return ductwork are arranged diametrically, one above the other, (see Figure 1 left) with appropriate registers or louvers. For a single fumigation, two cans of Zyklon are sufficient The cans are opened in the "apparatus room" inside special gasifiers which are built into a bypass (Nebenschluss) of the circulatory system so that in just a few minutes, all of the gas is drawn out of the cans so that the cans can be removed totally free of poison. During the cold months of the year, the facility is heated by four furnaces so that the minimum temperature of 20-25 C. (68-78.2 F.) which is necessary for rapid penetration can be achieved quickly and maintained for weeks at a time. The furnaces were specially designed by the Hungarian Korompai, a member of the Board of Public Works (Baurat). They require no service or maintenance for days at a time and are unusually economical to operate. The chamber operates almost without interruption and is at this time probably the most modern facility of this type. APPENDIX BTransportation Hygiene and Disinfestation (Verkehrshygiene und Schädlingsbekämpfung) by Dr. Ludwig Gassner, Frankfurt on the Main translated by F. P. Berg and E. Kniepkamp from: Gesundheits-Ingenieur, Vol. 66 (1943) Heft 15, pp. 174-76. One special area within the field of pest control for the control of carriers of disease pertains to the disinfestation of transportation vehicles. In this category, the most important above all else are the railroads. Practically all of the civilized nations in the world have dealt with the problem of disinfecting railroad cars, but generally only in a theoretical sense. As a rule, it is less often disinfection, in other words, the sterilization or killing of bacteria which is meant than the extermination of vermin for which, since it is primarily insects and their brood which is involved, the word "disinsection" was coined. Even in Russia, this question was discussed more than 20 years ago [1] and one arrived at the only correct conclusion that, on the basis of an experience up to that time, the disinfestation of railroad cars could only be done thoroughly if one used hydrocyanic acid. Ever since World War I, this substance, which is gaseous at room temperature, was used as a standard issue preventive substance (flour moth control in large flour mills). Thanks to thorough preliminary studies and the receptiveness of the responsible German authorities one could no longer disregard this gas for use in the food industry. The prejudices and above all the great fear of the "devastating poison" disappeared. During this period (1916) the first hydrocyanic acid fumigation of a military-hospital train took place in Germany and in a rather makeshift manner which was replaced several years later by the German Zyklon method (absorbed liquid hydrocyanic acid) which reduced the danger for well-trained technicians to an absolute minimum. It was and still is true that of all the methods for the killing of clothes lice, bugs and fleas with larvae, pupae and eggs -- the goal is achieved most ideally with hydrocyanic acid gas. For the practical implementation of such a disinfestation, various approaches to the problem come to mind:
Within Germany proper there was very little reason for intensive pest and vermin control of railroad coaches and freight cars. [2] But the necessity for this was extremely great in several Balkan countries, Spain, Africa and South America where, incidentally, the German methods became predominant. The elimination of disease carriers in the coaches and sleeping compartments often goes hand- in-hand with the extermination of vermin that infest foodstuffs and provisions in freight cars. Of the three methods which have been mentioned, the method which is preferred almost exclusively employs fumigation chambers.
Probably the oldest published work on this subject was by Schumacher and is entitled "The Disinfection of Railroad Coaches in Repair Shops." [3] In Europe such chambers exist in Potsdam, Cologne-Nippes, Posen, Zagreb, Budapest, Bucharest, Sarajevo, Skoplje. The most ideal arrangement is a circulatory system, which can handle even the most poisonous substance with ease and safety. There are also fumigation tunnels, as in Sarajevo for example, which can handle two railroad cars at a time. Of importance is the rapid and uniform distribution of the gas by means of circulation ducts or blowers, at least partly because the speed of the operation is the very key to its efficiency. Only relatively small amounts of the gas are necessary for this work. A Zyklon container with 500 grams of hydrocyanic acid is already sufficient to delouse a modern express passenger railroad car (approx. 200 cubic meters); larger containers are used in the fumigation tunnels where 500 to 1000 grams of hydrocyanic acid, depending upon the temperature, are used per 100 cubic meters of interior volume-the higher the temperature, the greater the effect of any given amount of the gas. [4] Another hydrocyanic acid method which has recently been used here and there is the spreading of Calcid, a powdery cyanide of calcium (zyanwasserstoffsäurem Kalzium), which reacts with the moisture in the air and gives off quantities of hydrocyanic acid but which leaves traces behind whose removal is time-consuming. Because of the greater amounts of material which are needed to achieve an effective gas concentration, one must also expect longer fumigating periods (längere Arbeitsbelastung).
It should also be emphasized that the use of hydrocyanic acid gas, on passenger railroad cars for example, has absolutely no effect on upholstery, leather, fabrics, metals, paints and interior furnishings of any sort. On June 23, 1942 the Reich Ministry of Transport issued an unpublished decree to plant managers and others which specifies the measures to prevent the spread of typhus (disinfection of passenger cars and freight cars). Only a small number of disinfection substances are mentioned. In 1941 a decree was published regarding the removal of contagious substances from trains and ships engaged in the transport of livestock within the Generalgouvernement [those parts of German-occupied Poland that were not annexed] [5] which specified precisely when and under what circumstances trains had to be immaculately cleaned and disinfected; and also, which chemicals could be used for this purpose. The chemicals which were permitted were primarily a mixture of cresol and sulfuric acid, caustic soda solution, concentrated watersoluble chloride of lime preparations or raw chloramin (Rohchlorumin). It can be noted also that a single certifiable cleaning and disinfestation made within the German Reich, would be sufficient [to meet the regulation].
Dry heat together with vacuum (Unterdruck) has been used to disinfest railroad cars. This hot air process has, however, not proven itself successful in the long run; furthermore, it only works in stationary chambers, as long as sufficient fuel is available for heating. For all practical purposes, the best method for the fumigation of small spaces on ships is probably with T-gas (ethyloxide). No less important, but particularly during peace time, are the methods for exterminating rats on ships. It is well known that the rats which exist on every large ocean liner can spread the plague bacillus, the germ of this terrible disease, which lives on or in the rat flea. One used to try to kill off the ship rats with makeshift methods. In America one tried at first to use poison gas. Ever since the International Sanitary Convention which was ratified on June 21, 1926 in Paris by most countries of the world [6] this despicable dangerous parasite has been fought in an organized fashion. Of course, one has tried to get rid of the rats, as already mentioned, from ships arriving from countries which may be plague-infested. At this point, the method which comes to mind is the very practical Nocht-Giemsa process (producer gas) which was formerly used in the harbor of Hamburg. The fight against ship rats became a universal responsibility only with the implementation of the international treaty mentioned above which provided for uniform procedures for the control of contagious disease and, of special importance, even went so far as to specify the actual measures for controlling the spread of diseases that are a public menace because of international shipping. In Germany one worked a great deal with sulfur dioxide (according to the Clayton Method or through the generation of SO2 from carbon disulfide, Salforkose, and sulfur preparations, etc.), but this was steadily replaced by hydrocyanic acid over the years. The spreading of poisonous bait had only limited success on ocean-going vessels because the rodents within the cabins, galleys, and cargo bays were able to find more suitable food elsewhere. The "rat-proofing" system which was introduced sometime ago in the United States of America did not prove itself over the long run. This method relied upon simple devices to prevent rats from climbing onto ships at dockside without considering the fact that these animals could also be brought on board with the cargo. Regarding ship disinfestation in general, hydrocyanic acid won hands down over the competition. Appropriate personnel for the intended tasks are the exterminators, health inspectors and fumigation companies. The certification of the fumigation results is the responsibility of the harbor authorities.
Aside from pest rats -- laboratory experiments in Algiers have shown that a single rat may at times carry as many as 2500 fleas and each flea can be the host to 5000 pest bacilli [7] -- one must also mention mice (Weilsche disease), lice (typhus), mosquitoes (malaria, yellow fever), and flies (typhoid, dysentery) as carriers of disease on ships. [8] With the regular control of the most dangerous parasites, the rats, one is also controlling all other vermin on board as well; of course, this includes bed bugs, fleas and cockroaches. Hydrocyanic acid gas kills all vermin including the brood and, because of its great ability to penetrate, is able to fill every space as well as all cracks and hiding places as no other gas available for pest control purposes and, as has already been mentioned, is harmless to furnishings and cargo because of its chemical inactivity. [9] Even foodstuffs need to be removed only if they happen to be uncovered liquids. But, live animals and plants, photographic products, raw coffee and tea must all be removed from aboard ship. For years hydrocyanic acid has been applied in the form of Zyklon. The ship being fumigated must be cleared of all people except for the ship's watch and must be distinguished until the ship is released by means of a special flag by day and by a particular light by night. A few words are still necessary regarding rat elimination from decks with Calcid. On the basis of experience, rats are often present, for example, in the steampipe insulation, under the winches, in the potato bins, lifeboats and similar equipment. For the procedure to be successful, it is necessary to exterminate these as well. Whereas when one is working with Zyklon one simply spreads out the contents of a can upon pieces of paper, on deck one normally uses Calcid tablets [instead] which are ground into a fine powder in a pulverizer and blown onto the locations to be disinfected. Regarding the hygienic treatment of ocean-going vessels in German harbors, there is a regulation from the Reich Minister of the Interior dated December 21, 1931 [10] in which the extermination of rats is regulated in Paragraph 12. That the field of hygiene for transportation vehicles has been extended just recently to include airplanes is not really surprising since it has been established that dangerous disease carriers can even be carried by aircraft. The danger is especially great when the airplanes land in regions which are still today a constant source for disease. [11] In the International Sanitary Treaty for Air Travel of April 12, 1933 (The Hague) a series of preventive measures have been established for the removal of vermin and rats as well as for sanitary services in airports and the possible quarantine of travelers, the treatment of the sick and-under certain circumstances -- the pest control of goods and mail. Foremost among the diseases which can be carried are: plague, cholera, yellow fever, typhus and smallpox. In the treaty just mentioned, the controlling substances are not specified. However, at the conference of the International Sanitary Office in Paris in May of 1937 a report from the Quarantine Commission for Air Travel discussed pyrethrum powder, hydrocyanic acid and other fumigating substances for killing mosquitoes on aircraft and also indicated the toxicity of these gases for humans. In reality, it is very difficult to disinfect aircraft with gas even though it has been done in the past and will continue to be done again many more times. A fumigation of a covered aircraft (often practically impossible because of the often immense proportions of the wings) or an aircraft in a hangar is possible. However, it is necessary to protect the expensive, important, often oil-enclosed and not hermetically sealed instruments in the cockpit, oils can absorb gas -- they can even combine chemically with them. Aedes and anopheles, the carriers of yellow fever and malaria, are most effectively destroyed with gas but these species of mosquitoes can also be exterminated with pyrethrum-based insecticides.. In the United States one is less particular.. Griffiths and Michel [12] recommend without any reservations the use of hydrocyanic acid preparations and Carboxide, a mixture similar to the German Cartox which is made from ethyl oxide and carbon dioxide. In South Africa and even North America, airplanes were already treated without any hesitation with Zyklon with special care for the wing interior spaces which could not be sealed. Nonetheless, the use of highly toxic gas (by the natives) in transcontinental air traffic has not yet established itself; similarly, it has not been possible, at least for the ffme being, to implement the plan to build mosquito-free aircraft. Before World War II Germany had no special reason to disinfest aircraft for hygienic reasons. However, many experiments had been initiated which could not be completed under the circumstances - otherwise, German discoveries would have certainly pioneered in this field once again. It is hardly necessary to mention the de-mothing of automobiles (passenger vehicles) and the fumigation of trucks for the extermination of vermin that infest foodstuffs. Clothes moths including their brood, as well as other vermin which infest foodstuffs and provisions can be easily neutralized with sulfur dioxide (difficult to remove), T-gas and, most of all, hydrocyanic acid. The methods are, as is apparent from the above, simple and safe; but, these measures play almost no role as far as hygiene is concerned. Delousing of passenger vehicles (carriages, streetcars, boats) is regulated by a decree from the Reich Minister of the Interior of February 13, 1941. [13] In closing, it should be added that [supposedly] louse-infested railroad trains, airplanes, etc., are in reality often quite harmless because there simply may not even be a single louse present. As Rose [14] explains, it is not the suspected means of transportation but quite often it is the louse-infested people themselves in close proximity to one another in overcrowded vehicles who are the true source of the lice. In other words, one should not overestimate the benefits to be derived from disinfesting a totally lifeless transport vehicle.
Notes
APPENDIX CThe Epidemiology of Typhus in the Generalgouvernement by Assistant Physician Prof. Dr. E. Zimmermann (deceased at the front) translated November 22, 1986 by F. P. Berg and I. Steinwarder from Zeitschrift für Hygiene und Infektionskrankheiten, Vol. 123 (Berlin Springer Verlag, 1942), Heft 5, pp. 552-7. Typhus has always reigned as an endemic disease in the Eastern and Southeastern provinces of the former Polish state. This was especially true for the provinces of Wilna, Nowogrodek and Stanislawow. Here during severe outbreaks, about 5-10% and more of the population would fall ill annually whereas in the Western parts of Poland, the disease declined steadily over the years so that it was virtually unknown in the present Warthegau or else occurred only in isolated cases or clusters without any tendency to spread. During the last years before the present war, the pestilence had almost been eradicated within the central parts of the country, just as conditions in the Eastern parts were also improving. That the present wartime dislocations would again increase the frequency of typhus was to be expected since it had always been a typical plague of war, but the magnitude of the reoccurrence in 1940 was many times less than had been expected. If we adjust the number of previously reported cases [for all of Poland] in order to try to get numbers that only apply to the area of the present day Generalgouvernement - obviously, these values will be only rough approximations in order to be able to make comparisons with those for 1940 -- we get the following..
Obviously, the statistics cannot show all occurrences which took place because it can be assumed that, at the very least, the undiagnosed, mild cases were not reported. It is quite possible that the true morbidity rates are actually double or triple the values which have been reported. It is well-known that previously during the world war [World War I], typhus had been widespread on the Eastern front and had caused sickness among our own troops. Then in 1919-1920, the Russian- Polish war came again with great troop movements, refugee treks, food shortages, great poverty and from 1921-1922, the Poles returned in great waves from plague-infested Russia. And so, it is not at all surprising that Typhus exanthematicus developed dramatically at that time. With the gradual consolidation of the political situation, which resulted in an improvement in the general hygienic conditions, the pestilence subsided quickly and steadily until the general economic crisis of 1930-33 with its unemployment interrupted the favorable progress and brought with it another peak in typhus mortality in 1934. After that, conditions improved once again. Although many attempts have been made to try to relate the reduction of the epidemic to the anti-typhus inoculations given by Weigl after 1930, the contribution of these inoculations to the favorable development could only have been rather modest since the decline of the typhus had already begun earlier. According to Weigl, 67,893 persons had been vaccinated but these were predominantly doctors, sanitary personnel, civil servants, people close to patients and others who might be endangered by close contact. It was inevitable that troop and refugee movements, in addition to economic difficulties arising from the developments in 1939, would lead to a reemergence of the epidemic but an ever-increasing number of cases in strength could only be expected at the beginning of 1940 since the usual course of the typhus epidemic would produce many cases. At any rate, since the morbidity rate did not increase more than usual in 1940 and since our troops were practically unaffected by the disease, a number of favorable factors were cited: on the one hand, ideological beliefs of our troops resulted in less fraternization with the Jewish population, i.e. the carriers of the epidemic, than during the world war. On the other hand, this war was over too quickly to allow the disease to establish itself and to spread. Additionally, this time the refugee treks came, in contrast to the years after the world war, not from a center of contagion (Seuchenherd), but from the West, from a region which was free of the pestilence. Although it was in the nature of earlier population figures and epidemiological statistics in Poland that there are no exact numbers available, nonetheless the Jewish share [(Anteil der Juden) -- emphasized as in the original] in the typhus phenomenon has obviously always been rather high. Normally it seems to have been about 70%-80%, but in 1940 the Jewish share in some communities was 95% or even more of all typhus cases. We personally had the opportunity to study an outbreak of the epidemic in greatest possible detail in one town with approximately 30,000 inhabitants of whom about 11,000 were Jews. Of the 303 cases of the illness, 295 were among Jews, i.e., 97% among Jews and only 3% among Poles. For our further investigations it was important that we examined the significance of age of the people in the homes affected by typhus. A total of 3,464 Jewish persons, living more or less without any non- Jewish intermingling, were evaluated statistically. The mortality of the disease in all these years seems to be surprisingly low. For the years following the world war. the rate was 7%-9% with the exception of 13.4% for 1920. Thereafter, the mortality rate decreased to 5.2% in 1938 and in 1940 to 5.6%. However, many mild cases may not have been reported so that the hazards of the illness might, in fact, be even less. If it seemed as if Jews were especially resistant to typhus, that picture changed as soon as age was taken into consideration (Table 2, Column a). More than half of all the cases of illness which were observed by us were of persons less than 20 years of age, and one quarter of the total number of cases occurred among persons between 16 and 20 years of age. It should not be necessary to explain any further that the usually favorable course of the disease for this age group lessened the mortality rate in general. Contrary to the widespread opinion that Jews are less susceptible to typhus, the mortality rate of approximately of 5% for the 16 to 20 year old group and 25-30% for middle-aged adults (Table 2, column C) is absolutely normal. This fact appears favorable only because the typhus of 1940 affected primarily children and adolescents. Perhaps this had also been the case in former years with the exception of 1920 and its higher death rate.
The high percentage of adolescents among the ill suggests an immunity of adults which might have been acquired during the epidemic years following the world war which protected them now even though typhus usually produces only limited immunity. This influence can only be examined more closely if we calculate the percentages of the affected within their respective age groups. To begin with, we can make the following estimate. The Jewish population over 20 which might have become immune after the heavy epidemics following the world war could not be more than 1.2 million in the Generalgouvernement. Assuming that 250,000 Jews had become ill at that time, then one can estimate very roughly that 25-30% of those who are 20 years old today would be immune while all the others in this age group and practically all adolescents in 1940 would have been susceptible. Our age calculations (Table 2, Column B) gave indeed few differentials which could have been appraised as partial immunity of the 20-year olds. The percentage of the 16-20 year olds is conspicuously high because 77 out of 369 from the age group fell ill, while the 15 year olds might either have an inborn immunity or the illness developed abortive, which is typical at this age, and remained undiscovered. It is, however, a fact that in the beginning of 1940 enough people susceptible for the epidemic were available to spread the ground for epidemics during the next year. In the area for which we were responsible -- about a quarter of the Generalgouvernement-according to statistics and reports from doctors, typhus had occurred only sporadically before the year 1940. This was also evident from the fact that the younger people among them were not personally acquainted with the clinical facts of Typhus exanthematicus. Only a few towns showed an unexplained slight increase of morbidity during 1938 and 1939, while only only half a dozen cases showed up in towns with 10,000 to 20,000 inhabitants. Thus, the winter of 1939/40 started at first with only a very limited number of cases. Only in 1940 did isolated cases occur at the same time or quickly following each other, mostly in small towns, in many cases in villages which had until now been untouched by the pestilence and which were far removed from each other. Of course a carrier of typhus-infected lice who might have caused the outbreak during his wanderings was suspected, but this explanation remained unsatisfactory for all practical purposes. Very often the villages affected were 100 to 200 kilometers apart and it seemed unlikely that at a time of unusually severe cold with masses of snow that a person might have gone wandering over such great distances. It seemed much more likely that several virus carriers were wandering around who had sought shelter because of the weather conditions and had left the infection behind. Beggars and tramps have traditionally been the most important carriers. But it also has to be remembered for the first cases of an epidemic that a virus can remain alive in the lice excrements on clothing for a long time and that the re-use of winter clothing might result in new infections. Experiments conducted by Weigl showed that the virus is capable of infecting for several months. After only a few individual cases had occurred in January and the beginning of February, the interconnection of which was unclear, the further course of the pestilence could be observed accurately. Sometimes the illness disappeared by itself, even without special protective measures being taken. In other cases, there were cases within the vicinity or greater outbreaks, these only in towns and often it could be verified how the typhus had been carried from one community to another. Very often, but not always, beggars and vagabonds were involved, but the principle cause was the lively Jewish wandering which still prevailed at that time. The elders of the Jewish communities were supposed to care for these wanderers; but this care often failed, since Jewish solidarity was definitely not always as dependable in crisis as it should have been (Notfest), to include practical measures of disease prevention. Arrivals were very often considered and treated as unwanted guests in the communities. They were quickly urged to go away again with a small contribution and thereby promoted the wanderings. In other cases they were housed in mass quarters which quite frequently developed into terrible epidemic hotbeds. In extreme cases only 34 square meters of floor space and even less were made available per person. Smaller communities with less than 7000 inhabitants and the flat countryside were generally at first hardly affected by the epidemic. Only in April.and May, when under the influence of counter-measures and other factors, the Typhus exanthematicus started to subside in the cities, several small farming communities were affected, even if the occurrences were limited to isolated cases. Here too, it was mostly Jews who became ill, but the Polish share was greater than in the cities. With regard to the unpleasant result that the typhus spread to the countryside and therefore evaded the measures used to combat the epidemic, this was caused to a significant degree by the fact that many Jews had succeeded in breaking out of the quarantine zones in the cities. Very often the inhabitants of a community could give very exact information as to who had brought the disease. Not infrequently, however, it was the Polish farmer who brought a typhus infection upon himself when he, as was customary, without comprehending the precariousness of his acts, took a wandering Jew along on his vehicle for a ride for part of journey. As the month of May came to an end, the illnesses in the cities decreased markedly but the countryside was still very much affected. Numerically the high point had passed but the danger that farming communities would be dangerous endemic centers of contagion was not eliminated. Contrary to expectations and without any apparent reason, the number of affected persons declined suddenly in the second half of June in the countryside. Since for a long time already, about 20-25 small towns had been identified in which new cases were reported, the number suddenly fell back to 5 or 6. Shortly before there had been an increase in the summer temperatures and perhaps the increased formation of perspiration diminished the multiplication of lice and consequently the virus. This development was of course consistent with the usual decline for the disease during the summer months but the simultaneous decline over a wide area was striking, nevertheless, on the whole, the course of the epidemic was more or less typical because the late winter and early spring months had, just as during many other typhus outbreaks, brought the peak of the illnesses. The subsequent course of the epidemic for the rest of the year 1940 was typical also. The summer months showed only isolated cases and it was only the month of November which slowly brought once again the winter rise of the pestilence. Summary
Source: Reprinted from The Journal of Historical Review, vol. 8, no. 4, pp. 433-481. |
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