Dr. Markiewicz Responds
In late April, IHR Associate Editor Mark Weber wrote to Dr. Jan Markiewicz, director of the Institute of Forensic Research, to ask for a comment on his agency's September 1990 report. He was specifically asked to comment on the significance of his institute's report in light of Leuchter's 1988 investigation and report. A copy of the April
IHR Newsletter, which told about the Krakow Institute's investigation and report, was mailed along with Weber's inquiry. In a letter dated June 7, 1991, Dr. Markiewicz responded:
I received your letter with enclosure on 16 April 1991. I agree with you that a commentary should necessarily be affixed to our report of 24 Sep. 1990, which is called for by the straightforwardness of information, so essential to any scientific studies. Our Institute of Forensic Research is a scientific-research establishment attached to the Ministry of Justice. Investigations of material evidences are carried out in it independently of the parties to the suit and expert opinions are expressed in civil and criminal cases for the purposes of the administration of justice.
In a letter of 17 May 1989 the then Director of the State Museum at Auschwitz, Mr. Kazimierz Smolen, asked me to make "an analysis of plaster samples from the walls of the gas chambers for the presence of hydrogen cyanide." In connection with the question posed in that letter I qualified the chances of detecting hydrogen cyanide in such samples as nearly none. As a chemist engaged in forensic chemical toxicology for 45 years, I am familiar with the properties of this volatile substance. Hence my reply. Anyway, I stated that, if only such investigation was considered to be expedient, I was ready to undertake it. As my partner in further talks and possible study I named Dr. Wojciech Gubala of the Forencis Toxicological Laboratory of our Institute. At the same time I referred to the expert appraisal made by Dr. Jan Robel in this Institute in 1945, closely connected with the problems in hand ...
Having communicated by phone with the Management of the Museum at Auschwitz, Dr. Gubala went there together with his co-worker, Mr. Jerzy Labedz on 10 Feb. 1990. Both these workers were taken round the Camp territory by the curator, Dr. Franciszek Piper, and toward the end of their visit by Mr. Piotr Sethkiewicz and they took samples of plaster in places indicated to them, in compliance with the wish expressed by the Director earlier. I was not informed then about the so-called "Leuchter's Report" or about the publications coming out at that time, and nor were my co- workers. Their investigations and results are known to you from the expertise the copy of which is in your possession. I'd like to mention that the Management of the Museum did not inform us about the copying of this expert appraisal and its propagation.
Now, in the light of letters and publications coming to us from different countries, I have arrived at the conclusion that our investigations aiming at the confirmation, if possible, of the use of cyanic preparations in the rooms that survived whole or only in the form of ruins, were rather preliminary in nature and incomplete. We are bent on widening and deepening these investigations and have already been preparing for them. It is only now when suitable materials from literature have become accessible to us that we see the purpose and sense of such studies. Naturally, we shall publish their results and make them accessible to you and your Institute.
The IHR is naturally gratified by Dr. Markiewicz's open-minded and cooperative attitude, which serves the cause of honest scholarship and historical truth.
We are pleased that the Krakow Institute will continue its investigation into this very important aspect of the Auschwitz extermination story, and we appreciate his pledge to keep us informed of the results.
In response to a couple of issues raised in this letter:
- As Dr. Markiewicz mentions -- and as Dr. Faurisson and others have repeatedly stressed -- hydrogen cyanide is indeed a volatile substance. However, this point is not directly relevant to the investigations conducted by Leuchter or the Krakow Institute. In contrast to the volatility of hydrogen cyanide, the ferro-ferric-cyanide compounds ("Prussian blue") produced as a result of the interaction of hydrogen cyanide and iron are remarkably stable, as authoritative chemistry reference works confirm.
- The IHR is familiar with the 1945 forensic report referred to by Markiewicz in his letter, and more will be said about it in a forthcoming issue of the Journal.
[A letter similar to the one sent by Weber to Dr. Markiewicz was also sent to the Auschwitz State Museum. So far, though, no response has been received to that inquiry.]
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