There is another man who feels the need to question facts. Fred Leuchter is a man with no formal training in either chemistry or toxicology (he obtained a BA in history in 1964), and yet he claims to be a professional engineer. In 1988, at the request of Canada’s Ernst Zundel, Mr. Leuchter went to Poland and visited the site of the Auschwitz extermination camp. The result of this journey was the “Leuchter Report.” This report claimed to demonstrate that there was not enough cyanide residues in the Auschwitz gas chambers to be consistent with mass gassings. Here’s what Mr. Leuchter had to say about his investigation:
“The purpose [of the investigation and subsequent report] does not include a determination of any numbers of persons who died or were killed by means other than gassing or as to whether an actual Holocaust occurred. It, further, is not the intent of the author to redefine Holocaust in historical terms, but simply to supply scientific evidence and information obtained at the actual sites and to render an opinion based on all available scientific, engineering and quantitative data as the purpose and usage of the alleged execution gas chambers and crematory facilities at the investigated location.” (Fred Leuchter)
The “Leuchter Report” purports to “scientifically demonstrate” that people were not killed by Zyklon-B at Aschwitz. Leuchter claims that as it takes a certain amount of cyanide to kill a little insect like lice, it would take just as much if not more to kill humans. He also claims that since the delousing gas chambers have blue stains (from a cyanide salt called Prussian blue) the gas chambers would have had the same staining. There are problems with these two theories.
The fact is; lice take much more cyanide to kill and they need to be expose to it for longer. While a concentration of up to 16,000 PPM (parts per million) is sometimes used, with exposure of up to 72 hours, to kill insects, as little as 300 PPM will cause death in humans within fifteen minutes or so.
Another fact proves that cyanide has to sit undisturbed for a fairly long time to form Prussian blue. That happened with the delousing chambers due to the greater amount of cyanide and the resistance of the lice. In the homicidal gas chambers, a small concentration was used for only half and hour or less before the ventilation fans were turned on.
Fred Leuchter -Fred Luechter's webpage