Editing Fred A. Leuchter (section)

==Zündel trial and investigation at Auschwitz==
In 1988 Leuchter was hired by [[Ernst Zündel]], who was being tried in Canada for publishing works of [[Holocaust denial]], to investigate and testify as an expert witness at his trial, for a fee of $30,000.<ref>"... is said to have paid $30000 for Leuchter's report and his testimony." {{cite news | url=https://docs.newsbank.com/g/GooglePM/BG/lib00065,0EADDF0670860877.html | title=Death Machine Builder Under Scrutiny For Nazi Gas Report | newspaper=[[Boston Globe]] |date=October 1, 1990 | author=Staff | access-date =March 11, 2008}}</ref> Leuchter was recommended to Zündel by Bill Armontrout, warden for [[Missouri State Penitentiary]] in [[Jefferson City, Missouri]]. In his capacity as warden, Armontrout was personally responsible for carrying out executions by the use of [[cyanide]] gas.<ref name="transcript"/> Leuchter traveled to [[Auschwitz]] and [[Birkenau]] to examine the structures identified by former guards, former prisoners, and investigators as [[gas chamber]]s, and concluded that they could not have been used for [[mass murder]].

Zündel's ''Samisdat'' ''Publications'' published his findings as ''The Leuchter Report: An Engineering Report on the Alleged Execution Chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Majdanek Poland'' (published in England as ''Auschwitz: The End of the Line: The Leuchter Report – The First Forensic Examination of Auschwitz''), which the court accepted only as evidentiary display and not as direct evidence. Leuchter was therefore required to explain it and to testify to the validity of his conclusions under oath during the trial. His report was republished and translated by various denial organizations, and he has since lectured on it and his subsequent experiences.<ref name="transcript"/> Protests were organized in response to his lectures.<ref>{{cite news | url=https://docs.newsbank.com/g/GooglePM/WO/lib00067,0EADE828220303D7.html| title=Case Of Holocaust Revisionist Brings Protesters To Malden | newspaper=[[Worcester Telegram Gazette]] |date=January 23, 1991 | agency=Associated Press | access-date =March 11, 2008}}</ref>

In 1988, prior to writing the report, Leuchter had traveled to several sites of structures identified as gas chambers, where, without permission, he collected samples from walls, ceilings and floors, using a chisel and hammer to chip and scrape off pieces of the masonry. He took copious notes about the floor plans and layout, and all of his actions were videotaped by a cameraman. (Leuchter, who had married only about one month before the trip, told his wife that the trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau was their honeymoon.<ref name="transcript"/>) Leuchter then brought the samples back to [[Boston]], where he presented them to Alpha Analytical Laboratories, a chemical laboratory, for testing. Leuchter told Alpha only that he would use the samples as evidence in a court case about an industrial accident. The lab tested them for exposure to [[cyanide]] and found trace amounts in the crematoria, which Leuchter dismissed in his report:

{{blockquote|text=It is notable that almost all the samples were negative and that the few that were positive were very close to the detection level (1mg/kg); 6.7&nbsp;mg/kg at Krema III; 7.9&nbsp;mg/kg at Krema I. The absence of any consequential readings at any of the tested locations as compared to the control sample reading 1050 mg/kg supports the evidence that these facilities were not execution gas chambers. The small quantities detected would indicate that at some point these buildings were deloused with [[Zyklon B]]—as were all the buildings at all these facilities.}}

Leuchter compared the low amounts in the Krema to the higher readings in his positive control sample.

Lab manager James Roth testified under oath to the results at the trial. It was only after he left the stand that Roth learned what the trial was about. In an interview for Morris's film, Roth states that cyanide would have formed an extremely fine layer on the walls, to the depth of one-tenth of a human hair. Leuchter had taken samples of indeterminate thickness (he is seen in Morris's film hammering at the bricks with a [[rock hammer]]). Not informed of this, Roth had pulverized the entire samples, thus severely diluting the cyanide-containing layer of each sample with an indeterminate amount of brick, varying for each sample. Roth offers the analogy that the tests were like "analyzing paint on a wall by analyzing the timber that's behind it."<ref name="transcript"/>

Leuchter did not examine the walls of the gas chambers until 50 years after they had been used; his critics note that it would have been virtually impossible to discover any cyanide at all using his method. In fact, tests conducted on ventilation grates immediately after the end of the war showed substantial amounts of cyanide. The chambers were demolished by the [[Nazi]]s when they abandoned Auschwitz, and the facilities Leuchter examined were, in fact, partially reconstructed. Leuchter was unaware that parts of the camp and chambers had been reconstructed, so he had no way of knowing if the bricks he was scraping had actually been used in the original gas chamber.{{citation needed|date=March 2018}}

Leuchter claimed that the relatively low concentration of cyanide residue measured in his samples of the remains of the gas chambers in Auschwitz, compared to his samples of the "delousing chambers" in which clothes were deloused using the same gas, hydrogen cyanide, excluded the possibility of them being used to kill humans. His report assumed that lower concentrations are required for delousing than to kill humans and other warm-blooded creatures; in fact, with their simpler structures and slower metabolisms, insects are more resistant to such gross metabolic poisons than mammals. Both [[toxicological]] study and practical experience demonstrate that it takes a much higher concentration of cyanide (16,000 parts per million) to kill insects than to kill humans (300&nbsp;ppm), as well as an exposure time of many hours rather than only minutes.<ref><!-- Possible malware infected site: https://www.nizkor.org/faqs/auschwitz/auschwitz-faq-06.html --> ["Zyklon B"], The [[Nizkor Project]], undated.</ref><!--add scholarly source--> Leuchter also failed to explain his belief that [[Zyklon B]] was used only for delousing, in view of his belief that the product would present technical difficulties in ventilating and decontaminating such as to make it impractical for use in a gas chamber. Nor did he explain why such large chambers would be needed for delousing clothes.{{citation needed|date=March 2018}}

Leuchter also wrongly assumed that it would take 20 to 30 hours to air a room disinfected with Zyklon&nbsp;B. Since far lower concentrations are required when gassing people than for delousing, it would take only 20 to 30 minutes to ventilate the room; therefore, the forced-ventilation systems used would be more than adequate to allow the gas chambers to be operated without endangering the executioners.{{citation needed|date=March 2018}}

Leuchter's report also made claims about the capacity of the crematoria, although he admitted he had no experience with cremation technology. When questioned in court, Leuchter admitted he had never seen a document by the [[Waffen-SS]] Commandant for construction issued when the crematoria were constructed, which estimated they had a 24-hour capacity of 4,756 people, more than 30 times Leuchter's estimate of 156.<ref name="LipLeuchaswitness">{{cite web |url=https://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/l/leuchter-fred/qualifications-as-witness.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120504050344/http://nizkor.org/hweb/people/l/leuchter-fred/qualifications-as-witness.html |archive-date=May 4, 2012 |title=Lipstadt on Leuchter's Qualifications as a Witness |last=Lipstadt |first=Deborah |author-link=Deborah Lipstadt |work=from: Denying The Holocaust |publisher=The Nizkor Project |quote=He did not know of a report filed in June 1943 by the Waffen-SS commandant of construction at Auschwitz on the completion of the crematoria. The report indicated that the five crematoria had a total twenty-four-hour capacity of 4,756 bodies. Leuchter had stated that the crematoria had a total capacity of 156 bodies in the same period of time.|access-date=March 6, 2018}}</ref>

===Repeating of Leuchter report's tests===
In February 1990, Professor Jan Markiewicz, Director of the Forensic Institute of [[Kraków]], [[Leuchter report#Polish follow-up investigation|redid the analysis]]. Markiewicz decided that the [[Prussian blue]] test was unreliable because it depended on the acidity of the environment, which was low in the gas chambers. Markiewicz and his team used microdiffusion techniques to test for cyanide in samples from the gas chambers, from delousing chambers, and from living areas elsewhere within Auschwitz. The [[negative control]] samples from the living quarters tested negative, while cyanide residue was found in both the delousing chambers and the gas chambers. The amount of cyanide found had a great variability, possibly due to 50 years of exposure to the elements to varying degrees,<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.nizkor.org/hweb/orgs/polish/institute-for-forensic-research/table-seven.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070606220306/http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/orgs/polish/institute-for-forensic-research/table-seven.html |archive-date=June 6, 2007 | title=A Study of the Cyanide Compounds Content in the Walls of the Gas Chambers in the Former Auschwitz & Birkenau Concentration Camps, Table VII. Results of Examination Concerning the Effect of Water upon the Concentration of Cyanide Ions in Plaster. Cracow: Institute of Forensic Research|publisher=[[Nizkor Project]]| date=March 8, 1994 | first=Jan | last=Markiewicz | access-date = March 4, 2007}}</ref> but even so, the categorical results were that cyanide was found where expected in both the gas chambers and the delousing facilities, and not found in the living quarters, supporting the hypothesis that the gas chambers were exposed to high levels of cyanide like the delousing facilities, and not low levels for routine fumigation, like the living quarters.<ref name="instforresearch">{{cite web | url=https://www.nizkor.org/hweb/orgs/polish/institute-for-forensic-research/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070607011910/http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/orgs/polish/institute-for-forensic-research/ |archive-date=June 7, 2007 | title=A Study of the Cyanide Compounds Content in the Walls of the Gas Chambers in the Former Auschwitz & Birkenau Concentration Camps. Cracow: Institute of Forensic Research|publisher=[[Nizkor Project]]| date=March 8, 1994 | first=Jan | last=Markiewicz | access-date = March 4, 2007}}</ref>