Carbon Monoxide Gassing       If you have looked at the table of death versus time you will be surprised to note there was another gas used that was reported to be nearly as effective. That gas is plain engine exhaust, carbon monoxide.
      The eyewitnesses report the time to death quite at variance with the stories of the first gassings. They rather uniformly report death from Zyklon B, hydrogen cyanide as on the order of ten to fifteen minutes. On the other hand eyewitnesses to execution by carbon monoxide report with similar uniformity death in fifteen to twenty minutes.
      Of course that is totally and completely contrary to the relative toxicity of the two materials. But those are the reports so it is necessary to look further to explain this. The longest reported time to die is one hour but from a diesel engine that is about enough time to give people a mild headache.
      Unfortunately, there is nothing to look into. Every place where claims of death by carbon monoxide is claimed has been destroyed. It is unclear when they were destroyed as there are aerial photos of at least Treblinka exist after it was said to have been destroyed.
      Most commonly the claims are made for Treblinka. Treblinka is a place that would otherwise appear to be a staging area for bringing in people from one area and then separating them into groups and moving them to different destinations. This is based upon the aerial photes and some few reliable descriptions, reliable meaning that they do not report the impossible.
      And the emphasis has to be upon reliable descriptions as stories about it started circulating long before the end of the war. It was reported to be a place of mass extermination early on. Unfortunately that does not add to the credibility of the claims.
      There were four methods of extermination reported at Treblinka, electrocution, steaming, gassing, and suffocation in vacuum chambers. Testimony of all four methods was introduced at the war crimes trials. It has only been decades later that three of the four methods were dropped from consideration without stated justification.
      Unfortunately for those who "dropped" three of the four explanations, they had no basis for doing so. There was no site to examine, not to mention that it was behind the Iron Curtain in Poland and examination was forbidden. Rather one gets the impression they were dropped because they were seen as false by even the casual observer.
      There was no basis in "credibility" of the witness as testimony to all four methods was introduced and none rejected by the Tribunal judging the war crimes. There was close up and first person testimony to each method introduced into evidence. It was not the speculation of far away spies.
      So the other gas, carbon monoxide, we can not explain for several reasons. We do not know if it was used. We have no physical evidence to examine. It is completely up in the air as to whether or not it was used or if places like Treblinka even happened.