The location of the gas chambers With the steam chambers, acid baths, electrical chambers, submergible platforms, quicklime trains, etc., banished to the Memory Hole and replaced by "gas chambers", the historians then engaged in a decades-long dispute on the location of those very same "gas chambers", as follows: Phase I (from 1946): almost every camp had one or more gas chambers: In the early years after the war, it was considered to be a "proven fact" that almost every concentration camp had one or more gas chambers for the purpose of exterminating Jews. At the Nuremberg trial, the British chief prosecutor Sir Hartley Shawcross said (35): "Murder conducted like some mass-production in the gas chambers and the ovens of Auschwitz, Dachau, Treblinka, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Maidenek and Oranienburg." Also at the Nuremberg Trial, a Czech camp doctor at Dachau named Dr. Franz Blaha testified as follows (36): "The gas chamber was completed in 1944, and I was called by Dr. Rascher to examine the first victims. Of the 8-9 persons, who were in the chamber there were three still alive, and the remainder appeared to be dead. Their eyes were red, and their faces were swollen." A similar description of the gas chambers at Buchenwald was given by an unusually trustworthy "eyewitness", Charles Hauter (37): "The rapid execution of the extermination required a special type of industrialization. The gas chambers reflected these requirements in the great variety of different facilities. Many of these were cleverly built and supported by pillars of porous material, inside of which the gas formed and then penetrated the walls. Others were simpler in construction, but all looked magnificent. It was easy to see that the architects had taken pleasure in building them; they had taken great pains in planning them, allowing all their aesthetic abilities to come into play. These were the only parts of the camp which were lovingly built." The "confessions" of the accused also contributed to reinforcing general belief in the existence of the gas chambers -- for example, in the Ravensbr端ck camp, where camp doctor Percy Treite made the following confession before the court (38): "I remember that many female Poles were killed by shots in the back of the neck. Because this shooting quite often was inaccurate, and it was therefore feared that living persons would be cremated along with the dead, I took care to devise a decent sort of killing. This was the gas chambers."
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