Kola study

The Kola study refers to archaeological research of the Belzec camp conducted in the late 1990s. The head of the Polish archaeological team was Andrzej Kola. Historians Robin O’Neil and Michael Tregenza also participated.

The archaeological work was conducted during the following periods.

• October 12-25, 1997
• April 27-June 6, 1998
• October 25-November 14, 1998
• September 12-25, 1999

Kola published the results in 2000 in both the original Polish and in a poorly translated English version. The book is not available for sale and has never been widely available. It can generally only be found in select university or research libraries.

• Hitlerowski obóz zagłady Żydów w Bełżcu w świetle źródeł archeologicznych. Badania 1997-1999
• Bełżec: The Nazi Camp for Jews in the Light of Archeological Sources: Excavations 1997-1999

Method

A core sampling method was used. Samples were taken at 5 meter intervals. A manual drill was used, around 6-8 meters long, and 65 mm in diameter.

In total, 2,227 core samples were taken. The Kola team reportedly found human remains in 236 samples. Most samples indicated undisturbed, natural strata.

The published results present drawings of 137 of the 236 samples identified as positive for human remains.

Details of the Graves

The Kola team estimated 33 mass graves, with the number, boundaries, and dimensions being extrapolated from the core samples. The graves were estimated to have a total area of 5,490 square meters and a total volume of 21,310 cubic meters. Revisionist Carlo Mattogno has argued that Kola's boundaries are arbitrary and the extrapolation is excessive. For example, pits #11 and #21 both have only a single positive 65 mm borehole, yet Kola has assumed these represent graves of 9x5 and 5x5 meters, respectively. Mattogno favors an estimate of around 3,000 square meters in area and 10,800 cubic meters in volume.

Ten of the graves reportedly contained human corpses, found only at the bottom of the graves "as a rule," and mostly in a state of wax-fat transformation. These were graves 1, 3, 4, 10, 13, 20, 25, 27, 28, 32. The other 23 graves contained cremains.

The Kola team made no detailed estimate of the number of unburnt corpses, but O'Neil for his own part claimed "many thousands" while Tregenza has suggested 15,000 as a "conservative" estimate. Jacek Nowakowski, an associate director of USHMM to helped coordinate the research, stated that the unburnt corpses must have been those Jews were brought in to perform the cremations who were in turn killed.

The fact that there were many more people employed in burning the bodies than we thought suggests they had many more bodies to burn. We may have to revise upward the estimate of the number who died at Belzec and that only increases the huge significance of the site.

Blogger Robert Muehlenkamp has disagreed with Nowakoawski, concluding that these bodies must have been ones that were overlooked and left behind in the cleanup operation.

Mattogno has argued, contrary to the aforementioned public pronouncments, that Kola's data are consistent with only sparse presence of corpses, a few hundred "at most."

Regarding the 137 samples with cremains, Mattogno notes that more than half show only a very thin layer of sand and ash, whereas among the remainder the percentage of sand is not less than 50%, and the thickness of the sand/ash layer varies greatly.

Scans of the Kola study can be found here. Somewhat better scans of the core sample drawings can be found here.

The Initial Burials

Mainstream sources typically claim that between 434,508-600,000 Jews were killed at Belzec. The lower figure is from the deportation figure given in the Hoefle telegram which is commonly taken to be a minimum figure.

Yitzhak Arad in his standard text of the Reinhardt camps, states as follows.

The opening of the mass graves in Belzec and the cremating of the corpses removed from them began with the interruption of the arrival of transports and of the killing activities there in mid-December 1942. At that time, there were about six hundred thousand corpses of murdered Jews in the pits of the camp.

Star witness Rudolf Reder gave very large grave dimensions. "One pit was 100 meters long and 25 meters wide. One pit held about 100,000 people. In November 1942 there were 30 pits, hence 3 million corpses." The implied total area of 75,000 square meters is greater than the total area of the camp of 62,000 square meters. The number of graves claimed by Reder, 30, is coincidently similar to Kola's 33 graves, but Kola's highly irregular graves are nothing like the regular, uniform graves that Reder describes. Witness Kurt Gerstein offered similarly exaggerated grave dimensions of 100x20x12 meters. One grave that size would have greater volume than all of Kola's graves in aggregate.

Implied Burial Densities

Metric	Low (434K)	High (600K)
Bodies Per Sq Meter	79.1	109.3
Bodies Per Cu Meter	20.4	28.2

This issue is never addressed by Arad and other traditional Holocaust historians. Mattogno argues that these densities are completely unrealistic and gives 170,480 bodies as a theoretical maximum (8 bodies per cubic meter) if the graves were filled to the brim, with the actual number bodies likely being far less than that.

Muehlehnkamp in his rebuttal to Mattogno argues that Mattogno assumes too large of a body size and he also posits that the Germans allowed the bodies to decompose before adding subsequent rounds of bodies in order to carefully minimize grave space.. Under these more aggressive assumptions, Muehlenkamp argues that 20+ bodies per cubic meter was not impossible.

To give a sense of scale here, 20 people per cubic meter would correspond to 0.05 cubic meters per person. Human body density is approximately 985 kg per cubic meter (slightly less than water), which would mean you could fit 20 people only if they averaged 49.25 kg each. And that ignores dead space since humans are not shaped like blocks.

If we consider real world data on mass graves, we find that the densities are often far less. At Treblinka in 1944 a joint Soviet-Polish, data was provided for 3 excavated graves found at the camp.

• Grave #1: 10x5x2m, 105 corpses
• Grave #2: 10x5x1.9m, 97 corpses
• Grave #3: 10x5x2.5m, 103 corpses

In total, this is 305 corpses with grave space of 150 square meters of area and 320 cubic meters of volume. This corresponds to 2.03 bodies per square meter and 0.95 bodies per cubic meter. At these densities, the Kola graves would contain only 11,145 to 20,245 bodies.

At the Katyn massacre site, the graves containing over 4,000 Polish officers at approximately 8.69 bodies per square meter. This greater concentration of bodies reflects the orderly layering of bodies. Even this would correspond to only 47,708 bodies given the area of the Kola graves, less than a tenth of the traditional figure.

Revisionist Thomas Dalton has argued that the characteristics of the Kola graves are not consistent with a well-designed mass execution site.

The irregular shape and layout of the pits suggests something other than an orderly SS-planned burial site. It is haphazard, ad hoc, unplanned--precisely what one might expect if there had been no grand strategy of extermination.

If this point is correct, then we should expect something far below the 47,000 based on Katyn densities. Mattogno concludes that the most likely count would be "an order of magnitude of several thousands, perhaps even some tens of thousands."

Ash Volume

Mattogno estimates that the cremation of 600,000 corpses would have generated around 1,350 metric tons of human ash and 7,680 tons of wood ash for a total of 9,030 tons. This would correspond to 25,300 cubic meters of volume, about 19% than Kola's estimated grave volume. The problem gets even worse when we consider that the samples were mixed with sand and were by no means pure ash. That is assuming they were able to cremate all those bodies to begin with.

Muehlenkamp again tries to make the math work by using the lower death toll (434,000), by assuming the bodies were small, and that the amount of wood needed was far, far less.

Supplements

Map of Kola Samples

The Kola Graves

Summary by Mattogno.

Extrapolated Grave Dimensions

#	Dimensions [m]	Depth [m]	Surface [m²]	Est’d. volume [m³]
1	40×12	4.80	480	1,500
2	14×6	2.00	84	170
3	16×15	5.00	240	960
4	16×6	2.30	96	250
5	32×10	4.50	320	1,350
6	30×10	4.00	300	1,200
7	13–14×27	4.50	364.5	1,600
8	28×10	4.00	280	850
9	8×10	3.80	80	280
10	24×18	4.25–5.20	432	2,100
11	9×5	1.90	45	80
12	6×16×11.5×18	4.00	~132	400
13	12.50×11×17×18	4.80	~200	920
14	37×10	5.00	370	1,850
15	13.50×6.50	4.50	87.75	400
16	18.50×9.50	4.00	175.75	700
17	17×7.50	4.00	127.5	500
18	16×9	4.00	144	570
19	12×12	4.00	144	500
20	26×11	5.00	286	1,150
21	5×5	1.70	25	35
22	9×15	3.50	135	200
23	16×8.50	4.00	136	550
24	20×5.50	5.00	110	520
25	13×5	4.00	65	250
26	13×7	4.00	91	320
27	18.50×6.00	5.00	111	450
28	?	?	~17.5	70
29	25×9	4.50	225	900
30	5×6	2.70	30	75
31	9×4	2.60	36	90
32	15×5	4.00	75	400
33	9×5	3.00	45	120
Total:			5,490	21,310