Holocaust-denier provided the following math:
Average time to cremate a body--2 to 2.5 hours.
6 million x 2 = 12 million cremation hours.
12 million/24 = 500,000 cremation Days (Assuming 24 hour operations)
500,000/365 = 1,369 cremation years
WWII lasted 6 years.
1,369/6 = 228
To accomplish this there would have to be 228 incinerators running 24/7 burning bodies assuming jews were in camps with incinerators for the entire time (which they weren't).
I could tell that these assumptions were absurdly narrow, I was still curious.The Wikipedia article on "Cremation" quotes a primary source document:
At present there are four crematoria in operation at BIRKENAU, two large ones, I and II, and two smaller ones, III and IV. Those of type I and II consist of 3 parts, i.e.,: (A) the furnace room; (B) the large halls; and (C) the gas chamber. A huge chimney rises from the furnace room around which are grouped nine furnaces, each having four openings. Each opening can take three normal corpses at once and after an hour and a half the bodies are completely burned. This corresponds to a daily capacity of about 2,000 bodies... Crematoria III and IV work on nearly the same principle, but their capacity is only half as large. Thus the total capacity of the four cremating and gassing plants at BIRKENAU amounts to about 6,000 daily.
This means that the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp alone, operating for 365 days a year at 6000 people per day, would be able to cremate 365*6000 = 2.19 million individuals in a single year, or 6 million individuals in 6M/6K = 1000 days (2.7 years).
While other camps had crematoria, it's important to note:
Many bodies of holocaust victims were disposed of by burning in open-air pits, or just plain buried, and practices varied greatly from camp to camp and over the course of ww2.
Many victims' bodies were dug up and cremated only after they had been buried, in an effort to hide what had happened.
The 6 million Jews weren't the only ones either.
So...