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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   30638 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023

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First ask how much wood to cremate a body. Then ask how much wood to cremate 5,000 bodies - i.e. "hundreds of cords of wood."

"When the air could be breathed again, the doors were opened, and the Jewish workers removed the bodies. By means of a special process which Wirth had invented, they were burned in the open air without the use of fuel." (I recommend reading https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2011/10/holocaust-nazi-perspective/)

As far as I understand, burning a human body is an energy-positive process (quick googling: meat energy density is about 10MJ/kg, water heat of vaporization is about 2MJ/kg, humans are 60% water), so you only need extra fuel to start the fire and due to inefficiencies. Once you figure out how to cremate 5000 bodies at a time you definitely don't get the naive answer to the question you proposed.

The suggestion that cremations were burned in the open-air without fuel is of course completely absurd, but so it goes in Holocaust lore. You are not just burning the meat, you are trying to cremate the skeleton to ashes, which requires a prolonged period of extremely high heat. Cremation is not an energy-positive process.

By means of a special process which Wirth had invented, they were burned in the open air without the use of fuel.

Is a perfect example of Holocaust mysticism. The statement "By means of a special process which Wirth had invented" is supposed to give credibility to the absurd claim. The "special process" was laying corpses on makeshift grates made with railroad rails and burned on open-air pyres.

But you can notice there is already a contradiction in the witness testimony. One says that the cremations were performed without the use of fuel (!) and the other just mentions that "dry branches" were used. Of course none of the methods attested to are remotely possible.

Here's another quick-and-dirty source:

Here's the morbid math: Cremating one corpse requires two to three hours and more than 1,800 degrees of heat

The energy from that is not coming from the body. It is a completely absurd claim but it's part-and-parcel for the sort of "witness testimony" you get when you try to account for the logistics for what is claimed.

You are not just burning the meat, you are trying to cremate the skeleton to ashes. Cremation is not an energy-positive process.

That's a "jet fuel can't melt steel beams" kind of argument. I'm pretty sure that turning bones to ashes only requires a certain temperature and is also an energy positive process by itself, or if not then a rounding error compared to the heat required to evaporate the water. You're welcome to look up the chemical processes involved, for me my back of the envelope calculations and some physics-related common sense provide convincing enough proof that cremation is in fact an energy-positive process, so your "multiply the wood amount by 5000" argument is nonsense.

But you can notice there is already a contradiction in the witness testimony.

I'm OK with assuming that the Nazi judge did not relay the boasting about the cremation process by the guy who he had shot in precise enough detail.

That's a "jet fuel can't melt steel beams" kind of argument.

It's pretty unbelievable that you make the claim that thousands of people could be cremated simultaneously without fuel (except to start the fire), and that the cremation would be net energy-positive. Then you accuse me of making a "jet fuel can't melt steel beams" argument. You are literally saying that the cremations were magical and the bodies were self-cremating.

Humanity has practiced cremation for millennia. Cremation is not net-energy positive. There are many studies and case studies, especially pertaining to the cremation of livestock during pandemics, and what you are claiming is a fairy tale. Revisionists have also studied cases where extremely hot house or car fires failed to cremate a body, the notion that a body is self-cremating once a temperature threshold is reached is completely asinine.

But just because I asked ChatGPT to weigh in since people are more likely to trust an AI to say the sky is blue than a Holocaust denier:

Is cremation net energy-positive?

The cremation process itself consumes energy, typically in the form of natural gas or propane, to heat the cremation chamber to the high temperatures required for cremation. The energy required to cremate a body can vary depending on the size of the body, the type of equipment used, and the efficiency of the cremation process. Some sources suggest that cremation can be energy-intensive, particularly if the equipment used is not well-maintained or operated efficiently. In general, cremation is considered to be an energy-intensive process, and it is not considered to be net energy-positive.

But doesn't the body-mass give off energy when it cremates? So couldn't it be cremated with its own stored energy?

The energy released during cremation is not sufficient to sustain the process. Cremation requires a significant external energy source, typically in the form of gas, propane, or coal, to reach the high temperatures necessary for complete combustion of human remains. The energy released by the body is consumed in the initial stages of the cremation process and is not enough to continue the process on its own.

How much additional external energy would be necessary for complete combustion of human remains?

The amount of external energy required for complete combustion of human remains depends on several factors, such as the size and weight of the body, the temperature of the cremation chamber, and the efficiency of the cremation equipment. On average, it takes about two to three hours to cremate a human body using a modern cremation furnace. The furnace typically operates at a temperature of about 1400-1800°C and requires a significant amount of fuel, such as propane or natural gas, to maintain these high temperatures. The total energy requirement will depend on the specific conditions and equipment used, but it is safe to say that a significant amount of external energy is necessary for complete combustion of human remains.

You have not provided an explanation for how 5,000 could have been cremated every single day, you are providing evidence of how completely absurd the official story is and how detached it is from reality.

You are literally arguing against physics. Again, quick googling told me that: meat energy density is about 10MJ/kg, water heat of vaporization is about 2MJ/kg, humans are 60% water. I don't account for bones but I also don't account for fat and brains. Can you do basic math?

Your argument is that since a proper cremation of a single body requires a lot of energy, a mass cremation of 5000 bodies requires a proportionally prohibitive amount of energy. When I point out that it doesn't scale like that at all because of physics (not to mention that Nazis weren't interested in proper cremations), you make more arguments supporting that cremation of a single body requires a lot of energy.

Your argument is that since a proper cremation of a single body requires a lot of energy, a mass cremation of 5000 bodies requires a proportionally prohibitive amount of energy.

If the cremation of a single body requires a lot of external energy, then why wouldn't that scale with the cremation of 5000 bodies? It absolutely would. The external energy must have a source to sustain hours of cremation.

Your claims are literally absurd. But it's why witnesses thought it wasn't too big of a problem to say that little or no fuel was used, or particularly fat women were used as fuel. There are also witnesses who say that blood was flammable and used as fuel, but I think even you wouldn't fall for that one.

@johnfabian cited Rajchman's Treblinka memoirs. Here is what Rajchman claims in his memoirs:

“At one time we put up a roast beside a large grave, into which more than 250.000 corpses had been thrown. The roast was loaded as usual and lit in the evening. There was a strong wind, and the fire burned so intensely, that it spread to the large opened grave. The blood from a quarter of a million human beings went up in flame and burned until the evening of the following day.

All of the leading camp staff came to take a look at this wonder. They marveled at this fantastic fire. The blood rose to the surface of the ground and ignited like fuel.” (p. 119)

Pure fantasy. Just think that he witnessed these things but the OSI didn't get around to interviewing him until 1980, and his first memoir wasn't published until 2009.

Edit: There's also this laughable account from Rajchman showing the propaganda-motive for these tall tales:

“Reichman also said the Nazis had prepared a special incinerator in Treblinka for British Jews, who were to be deported under Adolf Hitler's masterplan for a Jewish-free Europe.

‘This was the incinerator for the British Jews,’ he said, pointing to a diagram of Treblinka. ‘The Germans planned to bring them there when they captured Britain. It was built in a very solid manner and could not be moved. It remained there until the end.’”

The mere notion that the Germans three months after Stalingrad would entertain hopes of defeating Great Britain and have all Jews of the island nation shipped over to Europe to be gassed is nothing else than laughable.

If the cremation of a single body requires a lot of external energy, then why wouldn't that scale with the cremation of 5000 bodies? It absolutely would.

Industrial processes when scaled up can be more efficient. Normal cremation process doesn't involve pushing a naked body into an extremely hot oven to be burned as fast and efficiently as possible.

Most of the people they were killing weren't starvation victims. Old people mostly, or very young, easily 15-20% body fat.

I'm probably not far off the mark to say the energy content of fat tissue is fairly near that of hydrocarbon fuel.. I'm not sure how much fat there is per unit of fat tissue, but I'd be unsurprised if it was say, 80%. So someone weighing 60 kg, with a 20% body fat ratio has 12 kg of fat tissue, perhaps 9.6 kgs of fat itself, which translates to 380 MJ of energy.

That's a fair bit of energy. Allegedly, people who aren't complete anorexics have enough energy in them to combust themselves.

The furnaces used were huge, thus kept the heat of the bodies that have already burned before in their brickwork.

Perhaps you can do some research and look around -surely some green zealots have come up with carbon debt caused by each corpse burned, we could derive the minimal energy needed from that.

The furnaces used were huge, thus kept the heat of the bodies that have already burned before in their brickwork.

There was no brickwork. The bodies were piled on outdoor fires because Treblinka like the other two camps did not have a crematorium with modern ovens. The plan was to bury the bodies and the plan changed only in 1943, but no crematoria were built. This was not an "industrial process", it was allegedly done with the most crude methods and none of the modern technology that were used for cremation in the concentration camp. All experience shows that these cremations require a huge amount of energy, and I continue to be surprised that so many people are claiming that the Treblinka cremations were the only cremations in human history that required no fuel. Why? "Industrial processes" or something.

The bodies were piled on outdoor fires

You're talking about the clean-up operation ( Aktion 1005) where they dug up the mass graves from the early extermination camps and then burnt the bodies.

For which as I recall reading trainloads of wood were brought in, the bodies were arranged in a huge pyre and then burnt. Firewood wasn't really in critical shortage at the time.

Auschwitz had large crematoria. Other KZs had smaller ones, but then they weren't extermination camps. If you have to burn a couple dozen dead a day, it's no big deal.

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