Open Letter to the Max Planck Society

29 March 1994

Esteemed ladies and gentlemen,

I must assume that none of your doctoral candidates has ever caused so much stimulating thought in your exalted scientific circle as has been the case with me. In order to provide you with some more mental puzzles and to exercise your brain cells so they will stay young and fresh, I present you with the following considerations.

First, on reading your declaration of 28th March 1994, the question occurred to me, whether you had read my expert report at all. Certainly you assert that I claim to have proven from chemical analysis of samples taken from masonry at Auschwitz, that in these gas chambers in Auschwitz “no mass killing of human beings with Prussic acid” was carried out. Let us examine your statement more closely.

For example, the conclusion in the carefully chosen words of my expert report states that the mass gassing scenarios testified to by witnesses were not possible because they were not consistent with the technical capabilities of the time and because the natural scientific evidence is against it. Naturally, in the expert report I avoided discussion of anything not testified to which might theoretically have been possible. But let us not quibble.

Then it appears that you simply slide by some of the main points of my expert report. For example, the first part of my expert report consists of considerations of building technology, completed with the help of credentialed and very experienced construction professionals. In that part I come to the conclusion that the Zyklon B insertion hatches in the claimed main gas chamber of Auschwitz-Birkenau could not have existed, and therefore the murders could have not been carried out in the way testified to, because the witnesses state unequivocally that the Zyklon B poison agent was tossed in through such hatches. Do you have nothing to say to this, or is it that you do not want to say anything?

In the next part I attend to the question, under what conditions traces of cyanide of the type I was studying (iron blue) form and what their stability is over time. Thanks to research previously undertaken by other well-known research institutes the conclusion here is unambiguous: iron blue is stable for decades, even centuries. On this also, I hear no word from you.

In the newspapers on 29.3.1994 there was a notice from the dpa (Deutsche Presseagentur) to the effect that, according to expert technical opinion, cyanide compounds disintegrate in only a few weeks. The dpa press office that released this notice to the world claimed to telephone inquirers that their report was based on statements of the Max Planck Society (MPG). Since I can not find such an assertion in your declaration given above, the question occurs to me whether statements to the contrary were ever provided from your group. Right now, I would like to officially challenge your exalted scientific group to either repudiate this representation of the dpa energetically or to provide proof of its correctness. Should you decide on the latter course, I would like to remind you that you will then have to explain to me the presence of cyanide compounds in the delousing chambers of Auschwitz and also in the contaminant-soaked grounds of aged and long-abandoned municipal gas works.

Next, the third part of my expert report is concerned with the question, whether the mass killing scenarios as testified to are technologically and natural scientifically possible. I conclude that they were not. Again, on this point I hear from you only a painful silence.

In the fourth part I examine the collection of samples at Auschwitz, experimentation with gassing, the analysis of the samples and the correct interpretation of the analytic results. Apparently, this part is the only one that has caught your attention, and therein only the tables of analytical results. Questions of interpretation, the evaluation of opinions and counter-opinions given in open discussion, the careful investigation of arguments and influences do not seem to interest you.

And you call yourselves scientists?

In your wonderful Corporation there are scientists who think that no cyanide compounds appear perhaps because the victims trapped inside inhaled all the Prussic acid. My doctoral supervisor Prof. von Schnering is one such. I have discussed this argument thoroughly in the current version of my expert report. A year ago, my doctoral supervisor preferred not to acknowledge the arguments I presented and instead threw a hysterical fit. His colleague Prof. Simon felt called upon to apologize to me on behalf of my doctoral supervisor for his frightful behaviour. You are some scientists!

It is true, von Schnering’s thesis is possible. Then the question to him and his fellows is this: Why does one find large quantities of cyanide residues in the gas chambers of Majdanek, which supposedly operated in the same way as those of Auschwitz? They could not come from gassings of humans, because then we would find them also in Auschwitz. In Majdanek, therefore, these must have been clothes delousing facilities, and the witness statements to the contrary must be false. But – horrors! – how can we now trust statements to the same effect concerning Auschwitz? Or does the cyanide in Majdanek come from gassing of humans? In that case the same thing could not have happened in Auschwitz, because there the cyanide is missing. Thus the witness statements must be false here. But – horrors! – how can we now trust statements to the same effect concerning Majdanek?

I fear that you find yourselves in a logical impasse from which you can not escape. Yet, of course, the possibility is open to you to free yourselves through intellectual jugglery.

You, my esteemed Max Planckers, claim that my doctoral supervisor found my research results from 1991 not suitable for publication. Now it is clear to me why Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Hans Georg von Schnering spent two hours of his very precious time discussing with me in which journal my research would best be published: he held it not worthy of publication! Did Prof. von Schnering tell you that or is that a subsequent statement to protect yourselves?

And again the drama with the letterhead: “If we now have to see who used Institute letterhead without permission and when we will have to go through the Institute from bottom to top, because everybody has done it.” These are the words of Prof. von Schnering in April 1993. This little misdeed of “improper use of Institue letterhead” was declared a negligible offense by agreement of the Administrative Office and the Governing Board of the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart (MPI FKF), because if this were grounds for dismissal, there would be no more employees at MPI FKF.

But a commission to the Institute Fresenius using the letterhead, that is particularly bad! But my good ladies and gentlemen! Why these continued false pronouncements? We have agreed that the Institute Fresenius was never retained in the name of the MPI FKF and also that its analyses were not performed under the impression that they were dealing with a commission of the Max Planck Institute! The letter with MPI letterhead which surfaced here, which contained only sample descriptions, was only given to the Institute Fresenius when it was already doing the analyses. Or does anyone believe that the famous Institute Fresenius would not have defended itself in court if I had deceived it by pretending to untrue facts. It could have sued me for harm to reputation and asked for damages of several hundred thousand deutschemarks. But that has not happened, probably because the commission was privately given.

Why, dear Max Planckers, do you pretend that the commission for analytic procedures without giving the source of the samples and the purpose of the analysis is something so unusual, so reprehensible? Does Fresenius always need to know from which sewage canal a particular muck sample came? Perhaps it should trim its analytic results according to the desires of the company that owns the sewage canal, because maybe they are an important client of Fresenius? At the MPG is this the way to pursue research: First know for whom it is being done and what the consequences might be? Is that scientific independence? No: concealing the source of samples is usual procedure in analysis and is necessary to guarantee the independence of the analyses.

Your next to last paragraph is most interesting. There you state that in Spring 1993, the Institute “distanced itself from this expert report”. In the previous press statement you had said that the Institute would distance itself from the published expert report. Since the expert report in the then published form contained a prickly commentary by General-major O. E. Remer, retired, I can understand your statement. I myself distanced myself from this commentary at the time and also from the expert report in the form Remer published it. Now you refer to this former expert report. Therefore it is clear that you do not understand that the current version of the expert report differs substantially from the former pirated version distributed by Remer. This confirms my suspicion: You do not have sufficient knowledge of the matter at hand, such as one would expect from scientists of your (still present) reputation. Yet, does anyone know that the then Executive Director of the MPI FKF, Prof. Dr. A. Simon, told me in the presence of my doctoral supervisor that no one expected of me that I distance myself from the contents and assertions of my expert report. Does anyone know that Prof. Simon thoroughly understood that I had tackled this project as a member of the younger generation. Does anyone know that he had no objection to anything in the expert report itself, but only objected to the conclusions I came to? Note well: One may pursue independent research, but he must not come to any independent conclusions!

However, the real “clincher” comes at the end of your declaration of 28.3.1994, which I quote here at length:

“The [German] Federal Constitutional Court and the Federal High Court have determined that the mass murder of Jews in gas chambers in the concentration camps of the Third Reich is a commonly known historical fact no longer in need of proof. The Max Planck Society concurs with this determination.”

Do you usually defer to the rulings of the BVG (Federal Constitutional Court) or BGH (Federal High Court) when undertaking a complex research problem? Have you even looked at the reasons given by the respective courts in the decisions you refer to? Apparently not, because if you had, you would have noticed that the courts based their decisions only on the decisions of other courts. At the end of this chain of citations one usually lands at the Nuremberg Trials following the war, a proceeding which violated the standards of the rule of law. But, even if we had landed at a Federal German trial, one can quickly see that the basis of their decisions has been almost entirely witness testimony. What would Prof. von Schnering say to a researcher doing post-doctoral research under him who gave as evidence for an assertion a statement of a fellow researcher in another division? Here I quote Prof. von Schnering word for word:

“You are not allowed to believe that! Everyone here has his own personal scuttlebutt!”

Therefore, esteemed Max Planckers, what has happened to the duty of the scientist to not simply accept witness testimony as given, but to subject it to a critical analysis and test it against experiment, logic and the laws of nature, and to subordinate it to these? Does this suddenly no longer apply with reference to the present subject?

The old, honorable MPG distances itself from taking on any natural scientific or technical research on certain historical themes. That, esteemed Max Planckers, is an unconditional capitulation to ignorance on the part of the once most well-respected research institute in the world. That was the bankrupt’s declaration of the MPG as to its own complete scientific incompetence.

Or should the last sentence of your declaration be taken to mean that it has nothing to add to my research? That there is nothing that can be said against it?

I was quite amazed recently that, in its letter of 22.6.1993 to the President of the MPG, Prof. H.F. Zacher, the Central Council of Jews in Germany did not request from you a counter expert report to expose my expert report as false. Certainly, the MPG would be the first place to go to for that! No, they “expected” from you, that my work as an expert witness should be hindered. Does the Central Council, representing only 35,000 people, have some claim on the MPG that gives them power to issue diktats to you? Naturally, in its letter of 14.7.1993 answering the Central Council, the MPG hoped that they would understand that the MPG had no control over my further activities. In his farewell greeting, Prof. Zacher then wrote, “Mit schönen Grüßen Ihr” (“With beautiful greetings”). Has anyone seen such a greeting in a German letter? No “lieber” (dear), no “freundlicher” (kind), no “herzlicher” (hearty). “Let me kiss your ass” would have hardly been more clear …

Prof. Trouhet of Hoechst AG was more definite than you last year when he wrote that he did not want to be bothered by my expert report any more, since the Federal High Court had forbidden such writing. Indeed: the German researcher no longer asks what is scientifically correct, but what is commanded him. So it has been in Germany, so shall it remain!

Or is it not fear of the judge, but fear of your foreign-born colleagues, such as MPI FKF researcher Prof. M. Cardona, who wrote on 24.5.1993, claiming he was deeply concerned by this (my) case and who thought he should be able to make demands that I and other unsuitable contemporaries should be driven from the house in a “retreat to the front” (attack in defense)?

DEGUSSA AG has shown what is the real state of affairs in the matter. Since this firm had provided me with useful data on the stability of iron blue, I thanked them in the appendix to the expert report, as a scientist should. Guess what happened next. A year later four attorneys for DEGUSSA presented themselves to the publisher who was publishing my expert report with the help of two editors, and demanded that the acknowledgement should be removed from the expert report as otherwise DEGUSSA would lose all its business from the USA due to pressure from Israel. Does DEGUSSA mean to say that Israel has such power in the USA that it can determine who may give business to whom? Is this not a case for the State Attorney (race persecution) or for the psychiatrist (undue fear of persecution)? Or have we now arrived at the core of the matter?

Let me summarize as follows the possible grounds for your comic unscientific behaviour:

1. Fear of the State Attorney.
2. Fear of the power of foreign pseudo-moralist lobbyists.
3. Fear of the power of Jewish organizations in Germany.
4. Fear of the power of Israel and other Jewish lobbyists worldwide.

In closing, let me ask a confidential question: Is there a single man or woman in your organization who knows how to spell “civil courage”?

In view of the statement Prof. Simon made to me, that German scientists needed to respect social taboos and that they had fewer rights than foreign scientists, I am confident that German science can only advance upward.

with friendly greetings, your

/s/ Germar Rudolf