Yes folks, Mikal Lawrence has apparently overturned eighty years of Holocaust history after noticing a wooden door in a photograph.
Lawrence asks whether Zyklon B was used in “the chamber with the wooden door that has gaps,” implying that a wooden door makes homicidal gassing impossible.
Wood isn’t automatically permeable to poison gas. Wooden doors were also used in Zyklon B disinfection chambers, proving they could be made sufficiently airtight. Surviving SS construction documents specifically refer to gas-tight doors manufactured for the Birkenau crematoria.
A gap visible today in an altered, damaged or reconstructed site says nothing about how a sealed door functioned during the war. Buildings deteriorate, components are replaced and ruins don’t remain frozen in their original operating condition for eighty years.
Lawrence’s investigation began with a Facebook photograph and ended before he reached the hinges. The door survived; his argument didn’t.
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