The following questions and answers come from the Internet Cremation Society FAQ.
Dec. 26, 1995
Q. What's left after a body is cremated? It's
ash, but what size are the pieces? Are they fine, like dust, or
larger? Can you still see pieces of bone or teeth?
A. Tony, After the cremation process is complete, all that is left is very brittle bone fragments. Many of the bones are still distinguishable although not fully in tact. Technically, there are no ashes left at all but the term "ashes" is used to describe what is referred to as cremated remains or cremains. The pieces of bone fragments are then processed into a fine powder and placed in the urn selected. What remains after the cremation process is approximately 5 to 7 pounnds of cremated remains.
The above says 5-7 pounds so lets keep it on the low side 5 pounds.
For 800,000 (cremated at Treblinka) x 5 lbs = 4,000,000 lbs = 2000 tons of bone fragments missing. These bone fragments are, according to the story, buried in a 90 by 70 meter area. That is 300 feet by 230 feet or 69,000 square feet. That is about 58 pounds per square foot.
With 1,200,000 cremations at Auschwitz equaling 3000 tons of bone fragments.
Feb. 7, 1996
Q. Do you have standard requirements for an urn?
Someone has asked me to design and fabricate two urns for he and
his wife. I have no idea where to start.Do you have design
specifications?
A. In order to accomodate the cremated remains of an average size adult, the urn should have a capacity of at least 205 cubic inches. Beyond that requirement, any shape, size and design is acceptable and the only limitations is your imagination.
Here we have the volume of this mass of bone fragments.
This gives us roughly 3500 cubic yards of bone fragments to find at Treblinka and some 5200 cubic yards of them at Auschwitz. This latter is a cube 52 feet on a side. On the other hand it would cover three acres about one foot deep. However there a convenient river there that has never been probed.
So back to Treblinka. There we have a 45 foot cube. Thus we have enough to cover the 69,000 square feet at Treblinka to a depth of 16 inches with bone fragments. But of course they were buried so at some point coring would find a 16 inch thick layer of bone fragments.
However, note from the first Q&A that the fragments are ground to a fine powder. At Auschwitz the grinding equipment and the sieve have been found. It indicates rather than a fine powder that the fragments were on the order of 1 centimeter, or 2/5 of an inch. Thus the volume of the coarser grind would be greater than for a fine powder.
On both of the above this would be the result of a modern cremation where there is no hurry and the job is being done thoroughly. One would expect a greater volume and weight if done hurriedly and incompletely.
The question the honest person has to ask is why such a huge volume of material can not be found and the answer is obvious that no one has looked.
To compound the problem these are not the only missing ashes.