Press release: dpa falsifies news article on the Rudolf Expert Report

On 28.3.1994 the Max Planck Corporation (MPG) released a press declaration on the Rudolf Expert Report on the gas chambers of Auschwitz and Birkenau. The declaration concerned internal affairs of the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research, the former employer of the expert witness Diplom Chemist G. Rudolf. The MPG pointed out that inasmuch as it concurred with the rulings of the Federal Constitutional Court and the Federal High Court that the Holocaust is a matter of common knowledge, it did not desire to enter into a discussion of the merits of the Rudolf Expert Report.

The report from the dpa Press Office Stuttgart, which appeared the following day in most newspapers and also in radio broadcasts, contained the following passage:

"According to its spokesman, the Max Planck Corporation has no proof that the samples really come from Auschwitz. Even if they are from there, according to expert opinion, it is certainly no wonder that no traces of Prussic acid were found, because cyanide compounds disintegrate quickly. In earth this takes six to eight weeks and in stone the compounds can only be preserved by 'absolute conservation conditions, including complete exclusion of air and bacteria'."

Süddeutsche Zeitung, 29.3.1994, p. 5, with falsified dpa notice

Süddeutsche Zeitung, 29.3.1994, p. 5, with the falsified dpa notice. For enlarged German original, click here).

On inquiry to the dpa about the supposed expert opinion, Albert Meinecke, the person apparently responsible for the notice, first claimed that the press declaration from the MPG was the source. When it was pointed out to Meinecke that the MPG press declaration did not contain any comment on the expert report nor any comment on the stability of cyanide compounds, he retreated to various positions, depending on the caller and the time of day:

  1. he did not know who was responsible for the notice;
  2. he did not have the source for the expert opinion at hand;
  3. the person responsible for the notice was out of the office;
  4. the person responsible for the notice was possibly suddenly on vacation;
  5. even he made mistakes sometimes;
  6. when he had more information on who was responsible and what the source was, he would call back.

He has never called back with the information on who was responsible and what the source was. This fact and the fact of his entanglement in completely contradictory claims convict Mr. Meinecke of having fabricated this passage from whole cloth and having put it into the mouths of non-existent technical experts.

The connection between the MPG and the unnamed expert opinion created by the phraseology of the dpa notice would suggest to the reader that the expert opinion was that of the MPG, which was provably false, however much Meinecke might wish it were so.

In fact, remnants of Prussic acid of the kind studied in the Rudolf Expert Report, that is, iron cyanide compounds such as iron blue, exhibit high resistance to disintegration over time. Here are three of the best examples taken from among many others that can be found in technical reference works:

  1. The walls of the clothing delousing facilities in Auschwitz, in which lice were killed with Prussic acid under the the trade name Zyklon B, are today, 50 years after the facilities were last used, thoroughly saturated with Prussic acid remnants, that is to say, traces of cyanide, even in areas which have been exposed to the weather. [13]
  2. In a test of stability carried out in a London industrial suburb in which the dye iron blue was spread on alumininum plate without coating and exposed to the harsh London air for more than 20 years from the end of the decade of the '50's to the beginning of the decade of the '80's, it was found that the iron blue was not destroyed. It is possibly one of the most stable dyes. [14]
  3. The grounds of an old and long ago decommissioned municipal gas works contain high concentrations of iron blue several decades after the decommissioning, because the compound is a by-product of the generation of natural gas and was strewn there to fight weeds. The iron blue has not disintegrated and it has not dissolved or been washed away by the rain, since it is insoluble. [15]

Therefore, not only was the dpa notice wrong with respect to the impression it gave that it had been provided by a technical expert, it is technically untenable. No technical person would have lent his name to such an absurd comment.

Moreover, even the Polish Auschwitz Museum, while it was still under communist administration, was not in doubt of the truth of the fact determined by Rudolf that there were no significant traces of cyanide in the supposed gas chambers of Auschwitz. [16]

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