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Raul Hilberg   Letter 02   18-Jul-1999   Surprising activity from mass graves
"The blood was shooting out of the earth like a fountain." — Adolf Eichmann
July 18, 1999

Raul Hilberg
236 Prospect Parkway
Burlington, VT
USA         05401

Dear Professor Hilberg:

I appreciate your taking the time in your letter to me of 15Dec97 to outline instances of anti-Jewish violence in Western Ukraine around the time of the German occupation in 1941.

In the present letter, I would like to bring to your attention a phenomenon that I have trouble comprehending, and that you might be able to throw some light on.  The phenomenon is the description of surprising activity relating to mass graves.  I have come across three such descriptions:


(1) Adolf Eichmann's fountain of blood

But I also remember today driving through Lemberg, on the outskirts, and seeing for the first time something I had never seen before, namely a fountain of blood.  I passed a site where Jews had been shot some time before and where — apparently as a result of the pressure of the gasses — the blood was shooting out of the earth like a fountain.
Adolf Eichmann, in The Trial of Adolf Eichmann: Record of Proceedings in the District Court of Jerusalem, Keter Enterprises, Jerusalem, 1992, Session No. 87, p. 1561.

No matter how I ponder Eichmann's statement, I cannot bring myself to credit it.  A spurt of blood can come from a living person with a severed artery, because his heart is pumping the blood and making it spurt.  Once a person dies, cutting him leads to much reduced bleeding, and to no spurting.  Furthermore, I do not believe that gases within a decomposing body would be trapped and build up to the point of explosion, but if they did, then I cannot believe that the explosion could be so powerful as to throw up the one or more feet of soil that might be expected to cover a mass grave, and in any case, the explosion would produce a throwing up of soil and not a fountain of blood, as a decomposing body does not contain a pool of blood to feed such a fountain, and in any case, blood being exploded up through soil would be absorbed by the soil, and so would not emerge above ground level as a fountain.

How to account for Eichmann's testimony?  I can imagine five possibilities — perhaps you will be able to suggest others:

(1) Eichmann did see a fountain of blood.  Although Eichmann's account may strike some laymen as incredible, experts have come forward to explain how such a fountain of blood does indeed lie within the realm of the possible.

(2) Misperception.  Eichmann reports seeing this fountain of blood while driving, which suggests that he saw it briefly, from a distance, and did not stop to examine the phenomenon closely.  Thus, he may have mistaken some natural movement for a fountain of blood.

(3) Mistaken memory.  Eichmann's memory may have played a trick on him.  Perhaps he saw the fountain of blood only in a dream, and later mistook the dream for reality.  Who among us has not been certain in thinking he remembered something, only to have it proven that such could not have been the case?

(4) Hallucination.  That Eichmann could have hallucinated the fountain of blood seems implausible, as the most striking characteristic that appeared to emerge during his trial was his stability and normalcy.

(5) Ingratiation.  Perhaps Eichmann wished to ingratiate himself with his Israeli judges by demonstrating a readiness to corroborate even one of the more fantastic details relating to the Holocaust, or to present a strongly corroborative detail invented by himself and which attested to the Holocaust.

Perhaps surprisingly, the Israeli court seems not to have shared my incredulity, as in its decision, the fountain of blood story is repeated without reservation:

And on his way back, he saw blood spurting as if from a fountain out of another pit which had already been covered over....
Court judgement, in The Trial of Adolf Eichmann: Record of Proceedings in the District Court of Jerusalem, Keter Enterprises, Jerusalem, 1992, Session Nos. 115-116-117-118-119, p. 2147.

(2) Albert Hartel's small explosions

Eichmann's fountain of blood brings to mind a similar story concerning Babyn Yar, related by Nora Levin in her The Holocaust (I take "Blobel" to be Dusseldorf architect Paul Blobel, leader of Einsatzgruppe C Commando 4a):

After the war, Blobel admitted to killing only 16,000 Jews; to a Gestapo expert on church affairs, Albert Hartel, he seemed more proprietary.  While the two men were driving together near Kiev early in 1942, they approached the ravine.  Hartel noticed small explosions which threw up columns of earth.  The March thaw was releasing gases from thousands of bodies.  "Here my Jews are buried," Blodel explained.
Nora Levin, The Holocaust: The Destruction of European Jewry, 1933-1945, Thomas Y. Crowell Company, New York, 1968, pp. 254-255.

I find this story of small explosions equally implausible, and note that it too appears to be based on a brief look from a distance and from a moving vehicle, and apparently involving no stop for close examination.

(3) Eliyahu Rosenberg's sudden upheavals

Eliyahu Rosenberg's testimony at the trial of John Demjanjuk provides a third variation on this theme:

ROSENBERG:  As we were filling up the pits with the corpses, I'm speaking about these vast pits.  The pits somehow rose up and this — as we had covered it — the whole thing would suddenly rise up and it served as a kind of volcano from which a thick, viscous sort of material rose-colored and it was bubbling.  It was a sort of vulcanized type of matter and the pit and the earth on top of the pit would rise up and then would suddenly drop, would subside.  I don't understand anything about the chemistry of this, but this is how it happened.  And in these pits, to the extent that it had subsided, it had sunk, well we would top it up again.  There was a man, one of the inmates — Moshe Lodger — he was carrying a bucket and he was pouring chlorine onto the pit.  That's all I know.  And this is, as I say, what happened to the pit and the corpses in the pit.
Testimony of Eliyahu Rosenberg at the Jerusalem trial of John Demjanjuk, 25Feb87, pp. 1008-1009.


My expectation is that forensic experts would testify that Adolf Eichmann's fountain of blood and Albert Hartel's small explosions and Eliyahu Rosenberg's volcanic upheavals were impossibilities.  Mass graves are not a rarity in today's world, and one never hears reports either of fountains of blood gushing from them, or of small explosions marking their location, or of volcanic unheavals and subsidings disturbing them.  Rather than announcing their presence by means of such striking activity, mass graves appear able to elude notice for extended intervals of time.

I wonder if you would be able to direct me to other references concerning either blood fountains or small explosions or volcanic unheavals and subsidings in the vicinity of mass graves, or if you would be able to yourself comment on the phenomenon of extraordinary activity being reported in connection with mass graves?


Yours truly,



Lubomyr Prytulak
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