Dividing the Dead – or not (Part 1)

1. Introduction

In an earlier article^[1], I suggested that one of the reasons why the Soviet Union held back until 1963 the report dated 1.12.1941 by SS-Standartenführer Karl Jäger, commander of Einsatzkommando 3 (the 2nd Jäger Report)^[2], notwithstanding the document’s damning explicitness, was its incompatibility with a Soviet policy against "dividing the dead" when documenting crimes committed by Nazi Germany on the territory of the USSR.

This policy, as characterized in the secondary sources referred to in my earlier article, did not imply concealing the mass murder of Jews on Soviet territory. It did, however, imply presenting it as part and parcel of no-holds-barred, systematic violence directed against the Soviet population in general. Jews were to be seen not as the targets of the Nazis’ most concentrated violence, an extermination program that was a breed apart from the occupiers’ terror in general, but as victims of Nazi mass murder just like all other peoples of the occupied Soviet territories.

This series is about that policy, with a focus on the Soviet prosecution case at the Nuremberg Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal.

Unz, Roberts, and Irving

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how Paul Craig Roberts, a former Reagan administration Treasury official, was dancing tantalizingly close to flat-out Holocaust denial. He's back again, now defending the choice of libertarian activist and one-time California gubernatorial candidate Ron Unz to publish David Irving's Hitler's War on his website, Unz.com, which publishes a variety of libertarian materials, as well as "race realism," anti-Zionist polemics, and other generally far-right materials.

For his own part, Unz is a bit of a cipher. For instance, he is Jewish himself, although we have seen in the cases of Gilad Atzmon, Paul Eisen, and others that being Jewish isn't always a guarantee against anti-Semitism. For a while now, Unz has drawn suspicion for his willingness to publish blatantly anti-Semitic material, although he has generally been able to defend his editorial judgment on the basis of his libertarian leanings. This orientation has generally led to the comments threads at Unz.com being something of a free for all, as I'd noted in the past. Sergey Romanov has also commented here on Unz's activites in this regard.

Jürgen Graf's lie about the Hungarian Jewish children.

In Jürgen Graf's article "What Happened to the Jews Who Were Deported to Auschwitz But Were Not Registered There?" (in which he incidentally fails to explain what happened to the 320,000 Hungarian Jews deported to Auschwitz in 1944 and found unfit for work; they disappeared without a trace and since no transit theory can even begin to seriously account for them, it's the death knell  of the Holocaust denial - one of many, actually) we see the following claim:

I am referring in particular to a 217-page report written in early 1945, shortly after the Soviet liberation of Auschwitz. It was written, in German, under the auspices of the Soviets by four former camp inmates, the Jewish physicians Lebovits, Weil, Reich and Bloch. It contains more than a thousand names of Auschwitz prisoners, nearly all of them Jews, with information about each one's age and date of imprisonment. These prisoners had been in the Auschwitz hospital on January 27, 1945, when the Red Army took control of the camp. Among those patients are 97 boys and 83 girls in ages ranging from a few months to 15 years.[note 56] One was a three-year-old Hungarian Jewish boy, J. J. Malek, and another was an eleven-year-old Hungarian Jewish girl, R. M. Salomon.[note 57] The former had arrived at Auschwitz in May 1944, the latter in July of the same year. According to the official "Holocaust" story, these two Jewish children would never have lived to see the year 1945; they would have been gassed immediately upon arrival.
[...]
56. Gossudarstvenny Archiv Rossiskoi Federatsii (Moscow), document 7021-108-23.
57. Gossudarstvenny Archiv Rossiskoi Federatsii (Moscow), document 7021-108-23, pages 181 and 183.

Carlo Mattogno later published the list of names contained in the report.

There we find Jakob Malek (camp number A-7738), a 3 year-old Hungarian Jewish boy who arrived in Auschwitz in May of 1944. An 11 year-old R. M. Salomon who arrived in July of 1944 is nowhere to be found, but a 9 year-old Rozalia Salomon (camp number A-11) who arrived on May 21, 1944, is on the list - we will assume Graf meant her.

What Graf is silent about is that these were so-called Mengele's twins. Indeed, it is obvious already from the report (most of the children listed there were twins): alongside Jakob Malek (A-7738) we see the 3 year-old Elias Malek (A-7737). Alongside Rozalia Salomon (A-11) we see the 9 year-old Sarolta Salomon (A-10). Indeed, Mattogno published another list, specifically of Mengele's twins, and all of these children are on the list.

That is, Graf lied when he wrote that "[a]ccording to the official "Holocaust" story, these two Jewish children would never have lived to see the year 1945; they would have been gassed immediately upon arrival" and did not mention the fact of these children being twins. Being useful for Mengele's "research" pretty much guaranteed them not being gassed on arrival - all in accordance with what Graf calls "the official "Holocaust" story".

Indeed, here is how the selection of Yaakov Malek took place:

In May 1944 the family was sent to Auschwitz. The father Josef disappeared immediately among the masses. The mother and her six children stayed together. Mengele called for twins to leave the line. Shlomo, Yehudit, Eliyahu and Yaakov did not respond but an acquaintance of theirs, who stood nearby, shouted, "They are twins." Mengele approached and the mother pointed out the twins. Two pairs of twins in one family was an exceptional occurrence. The two sets of twins were taken for Mengele's experiments and survived.

Jürgen Graf's reputation as a notorious liar is thus once again confirmed.

Pia Kahn Throws the Gauntlet

Just a quick note to say that, today at the cesspit, CODOH Forum member Pia Kahn wrote:

Occasionally, I try to talk with the people from the holocaustcontroversies blog because they post lots of article trying to refute the revisionists However, they are not capable of arguing rationally. When you have them cornered they start ad hominem attacks, shifting the goal past, twisting words, lying, 4 letter words,... Eventually, they block me from posting on their blog although I do not respond in kind. 

I'm not sure I'm aware of any attempt by Pia Kahn to engage us at this blog. Therefore, I invite her to appear on this thread and have her say.

Mattogno’s Marijampolė Mass Graves Controversy

One of the largest massacres committed in German-occupied Lithuania in 1941 took place near the city of Marijampolė. The victims were the following, as recorded in the report dated 1.12.1941 by SS-Standartenführer Karl Jäger, commander of Einsatzkommando 3 (the 2nd Jäger Report)^[1], under the date 1 September 1941:

Mariampole

1,763 Jews, 1,812 Jewesses 1,404 Jewish children, 109 mentally ill, 1 fem. German national who was married to a Jew, 1 fem. Russian

Techniques of Neutralization: Acknowledging Shootings but Denying Blame

The term Techniques of Neutralization was devised by Sykes and Matza in 1957 (see here) to analyze how people suppress guilt by rationalizing their actions in ways that deny or transfer blame. This posting applies their five categories to the excuses used by the Nazis and their denier apologists to evade any guilt for the shootings of Jews they carried out in the USSR.

The Final Solution and the German Press: 2. Winter 1941-1942

Continued from Part 1.

On November 16, Goebbels wrote a piece for Das Reich which stated that "The Jews are receiving a penalty that is certainly hard, but more than deserved. World Jewry erred in adding up the forces available to it for this war, and now is gradually experiencing the destruction that it planned for us, and would have carried out without a second thought if it had possessed the ability. It is perishing according its own law: "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."[1]

Stefan Molyneux Is Holocaust Denier-Adjacent

You probably missed, but there was a bit of a dust-up a couple of days ago on Twitter. What happened was that, about a month ago, New Atheist Sam Harris hosted Christian Picciolini on his podcast. Picciolini is a former leader of the Hammerskins skinhead group who reformed several years ago and now does the lecture circuit talking about how to prevent/undo the damage done by such groups. During the Q&A section of the podcast, Picciolini stated his belief that Stefan Molyneux, the very popular Irish-Canadian YouTube personality (on who much more here), is a Holocaust denier. Now, weeks later, Harris announced that he had expunged all mention of Molyneux from his podcast, apparently because Molyneux lodged a complaint with him. For his own part, Picciolini took to Twitter to complain and offered some evidence.

So what's the deal here? Is Stefan Molyneux a Holocaust denier?

No, but he is Holocaust denier-adjacent.

The Final Solution and the German Press: 1. September-October 1941

On September 10-12, 1941, several German language newspapers across Nazi-occupied Europe announced that Stalin was going to exterminate the Volga Germans after deporting them to Siberia. This announcement played an important role in making loyal Nazis more willing to contemplate a fatal deportation of Jews, especially when viewed as a justifiable form of vengeance and as a fulfillment of Hitler's Reichstag prophecy of January 30, 1939, that a world war would result in the extermination of Jews. The following article analyzes that process with links to primary sources.

Paul Craig Roberts Crosses the Line

If you've never heard of Paul Craig Roberts, don't feel bad. As a public figure, he seems to have hit his high water mark during the Reagan Adminstration as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, where he stridently defended supply-side economic policy. Since 2001, he has been a rather loud voice among the 9/11 truth movement, which dovetails nicely with his Buchanan-esque paleoconservative views of Israel. Perhaps unsurprisingly, his writings over the last decade or so have walked a very fine line between perhaps overly vehement but otherwise justifiable attacks on Israel's role in American foreign policy to overtly anti-Semitic rhetoric. I want to be clear before continuing that I don't know whether Roberts is an anti-Semite and am not saying that he is. But with his latest column, he has crossed over a divide -- whether he knows it or not -- into plain Holocaust denial. And for this, he needs to answer.

Dirlewanger to an SS Investigator on Poisoning of Jews

In 1942, the SS Main Office "investigated" charges launched by the SD and the SS and Police court Cracow against Oskar Dirlewanger, the commander of the infamous SS penal unit Sonderkommando Dirlewanger, which included racial defilement, abuse of his own men, extortion, illegal hunting, illegal confiscations, illegal arrests and illegal killings in the Generalgouverment. 

During his interrogation of 1 September 1942, Dirlewanger explained to the SS court martial officer (Gerichtsoffizier) that the SD could not cope with the killing of the Jews caught violating Nazi regulations and that therefore in November 1941, the SS and Police Leader of the Lublin district Odilo Globocnik ordered they are to be handed over to Dirlewanger for execution. Initially, the Jews were just shot, but later they had to undress in a cellar under the pretense vaccination against typhus and were killed by injection of the poison strychnine. Their gold teeth were broken out to be used for the SS dental station and the clothes were provided to Russian POWs.

It is noteworthy that Dirlewanger tried within his sphere of influence and on a small scale what were to be basic elements of large scale Nazi mass extermination sites: disguise, poison and robbing of dead people.

Debunking the YouTube denial.

This post will be updated from time to time with short debunkings of the more or less popular denier videos from YouTube.

A (not so) short debunking of the "Holocaust Deprogramming Course".

The archived website.

The first sentence (after the title) is a lie:

"Free yourself from a lifetime of Holo-brainwashing about “Six Million” Jews “gassed” in “Gas Chambers Disguised as Shower Rooms”"

The claim is not that 6 million Jews were gassed. Only about a half or so of all Holocaust victims were gassed, the rest were murdered through mass shootings, starvation, death marches and so on.

There. We are done. The author of the site did not even bother to learn the basic claim that he has set out to debunk. He doesn't have the slightest clue. Dismissed.

But just for fun, let's go further.

"Is genocide necessarily evil?"

Someone on Quora asked this question.

My answer is rendered below.

How many people were killed at Ponary?

In the community Rudamina, in the small forest Paneriai^[1],near the railway station of Paneriai, a neighborhood of Vilnius, the largest killing site in Lithuania during its occupation by Nazi Germany was located. Known as Ponary to Poles and as Paneriai to Lithuanians^[2],the place was mainly used for killing Jews from the Vilna Ghetto, but Jews from other places, non-Jewish civilians and Soviet prisoners of war were also shot there. In this article the Polish name Ponary will be used.

Wehrmacht Involvement in Extermination Actions in the Crimea

The Wehrmacht's role in the extermination of Jews in Crimea can be summarized in three forms of evidence. Firstly, Manstein gave an order on November 20, 1941, that was clearly incendiary, filled with biological racism and indicating a willingness to condone mass killing on racial grounds. Secondly, the fourteen command HQ[1]subordinated to Korueck 553 (11th Army Rear Army Command) issued killing reports that showed a willingness not just to hand over Jews to the SD but also to kill them using their own military police. Thirdly, documents and testimonies describe the involvement of the command HQ and their soldiers in providing transport and manpower to the Einsatzkommandos.

What Did Reginald Paget Deny and Accept?

Manstein's defence attorney Reginald Paget has been used by deniers, such as Mattogno and Graf here, to support their claim that there was no extermination policy in the Crimea. Below I will show that Paget's opening speech to the Manstein trial regarding extermination policy was far less convenient to modern deniers than they assume. On the one hand, Manstein supported denial to the extent of claiming that killing numbers in Operational Situation Reports were massively exaggerated and that the SD did not have the manpower or time to carry out that volume of killing. He also denied that the Wehrmacht shot Jews because they were Jews rather than because of partisan warfare. On the other hand, however, Paget accepted that the SD had received "an assignment to exterminate the Jews" and that "resettlement" was a camouflage term for execution.

Rubin and Schwanitz can't tell Ukraine from East Prussia.

While researching the topic of the Mufti's collaboration with the Nazis I stumbled upon a really embarrassing series of mistakes in Barry Rubin's and Wolfgang G. Schwanitz's Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Yale University Press, 2014).

The authors zealously struggle to pin as many crimes on the Mufti (surely an execrable Nazi collaborator) as they can get away with, specifically they try to show the plausibility of him having visited some extermination camps including Auschwitz (even though there is no credible evidence of such a visit). And so they write on p. 164:

Did Wisliceny claim that the Mufti visited Auschwitz and was one of the initiators of the Final Solution?

The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Mohammed Amin al-Husseini was without a doubt a vicious Nazi collaborator. On 28.11.1941 he met with Hitler who personally promised the following to him:

Germany’s goal would then be solely the extermination of the Jewry living in the Arab sphere under the protection of British power. In that hour the Mufti would be the most competent spokesman for the Arab world. It would then be his task to set off the Arab operation secretly prepared by him.

Das deutsche Ziel würde dann lediglich die Vernichtung des im arabischen Raum unter der Protektion der britischen Macht lebenden Judentums sein. In dieser Stunde würde dann auch der Mufti der berufenste Sprecher der arabischen Welt sein. Es würde ihm obliegen, die von ihm insgeheim vorbereitete arabische Aktion auszulösen.

In 1943 he was trying to block the transfer of 4000 Jewish children from Bulgaria to Palestine, suggesting to Ribbentrop they should be sent to Poland instead. In 1944 he was calling onto Arabs to "kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history and religion. This serves your honor, God is with you".

According to his own memoir (published in Damascus) he was privy to the information about the extermination of Jews. He tells about a meeting with Himmler in the summer of 1943 during which he was told by the latter:

up to now we have exterminated around three million of them.

In the memoir the Mufti feigns surprise at this revelation. He admits though:

Their losses in the course of the Second World War represented more than thirty percent of the total number of their people...

So at least he was not a Holocaust denier. Now, all this aside, let's look at some widespread claims about the Mufti.

Evidence of Extermination in Pyatigorsk, North Caucacus

Back in 2011, Roberto included this image of a child called Svetlana in his excellent article The Atrocities committed by German-Fascists in the USSR (1). By comparing the image with this Yad Vashem page, I was able to establish that her full name was Svetlana Rudinskaya, she was killed on December 31, 1942 (or the following day), at the Mashuk Mountain overlooking Pyatigorsk in Stavropol Krai of the North Caucacus, and her body was exhumed on January 13, 1943.

The killing of the Jews of Pyatigorsk began on September 6-8, 1941, at the glass factory of Mineralnye Vody, according to the testimony of Pfeifer at his Soviet trial in 1968, after Jews from Essentuki and Zheleznovosk had been killed on September 2-5 and before Kislovodosk Jews were killed on September 9 (source: The Complete Black Book of Soviet Jewry). This was followed in October by murders in gas vans, according to testimonies here. The final action of the New Year was just prior to the German retreat and seems to have targeted professionals.

How the Fate of the Krymchaks Refutes Mattogno

Mattogno claims repeatedly that Soviet Jews were shot for security reasons rather than on racial grounds. In Treblinka, for example, he and Graf paraphrased Mayer's formulation to claim that "the massacres of the eastern Jews was not part of a comprehensive plan of extermination, but occurred as the result of the inexorable radicalization of the war in the east and because the eastern Jews were classified by the SS as carriers of Bolshevism." However, Kiril Feferman's work has shown how German killing policies for Krymchaks directly reflected changes in racial policy. To demonstrate this, I will discuss two documents in my possession. Feferman originally cited these documents from different archives than those from which my copies are sourced, so the references below are mine, not his.

Killing of Jews and Krymchaks in Karasubazar, Crimea

A report by Ortskommandantur II/937 on February 14, 1942, included a survey showing that, of 8,789 people counted in Karasubazar (today Bilohirsk), only one was a Jew and one a Krymchak (NOKW-1688, BArch B 162/657, p.76). Other documents show how the killing of the rest had occurred in stages.

On December 14, 1941, Ortskommandantur Karasubasar Stab Wachbatl. (B) 49 had reported that 76 Jewish men, women (referred to as "Weiber") and children had been taken to a field four days previously and not seen again (BArch B 162/657, p.163); a Soviet Commission report from 1944 shown here collected testimonies about the shooting of the adult Jews and poisoning of the children; killings at this location were also noted in the West German indictment against Johannes Schlupper, 1971. A Soviet testimony from 1973 is shown here. On January 2, 1942, EM 150 recorded Karasubazar as one of the locations in western Crimea that was "free of Jews" due to 17,645 having been liquidated in the region between November 16 and December 15, 1941.

The Krymchaks (numbering 468) were killed in two gas vans on January 17-18, 1942, according to the testimonies given here and here.

Georg Leibbrandt and the Killing of Jews in the USSR: A Case Study of Mattogno's Methods

Georg Leibbrandt was one of two members of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories (RMfdbO) who attended the Wannsee conference. Mattogno has discussed him on numerous occasions, most recently in the Italian edition of volume 1 of his forthcoming Einsatzgruppen Handbook where Mattogno cites him seven times, six of which are duplicated from his response of 2013 to our White Paper. The one new reference in the Italian edition is the false claim, as shown below, that Leibbrandt regarded Soviet Jews as only a political and partisan enemy rather than a race that had to be eliminated on biological grounds. The six recycled references entail a misrepresentation of Leibbrandt's correspondence with Hinrich Lohse of the Reichskommissariat Ostland in the Autumn of 1941 as supporting resettlement of Jews eastwards. An analysis of Leibbrandt's involvement in anti-Jewish policy can therefore form a useful case study of how Mattogno manipulates sources on German perpetrators.

Sonderkommando Kulmhof in German Documents - Farewell (1943)

Mass Killing Unit of Warthegau

Sonderkommando Lange in German Documents:

 Euthanasia 1940/41

Sonderkommando Kulmhof in German Documents:

Part I: Origin and Foundation

Part II: The Extermination of 100,000 Jews

Part III: Body Disposal (Appendix)

Part IV: Pabianice Sorting Camp

Part V: Funding

Part VI: The Polish Working Detail

Part VII: Motor Pool and Fuel (Appendix)

Part VIII: Drinks and Tobacco (With Excursus on the Extermination of the Sinti and Roma)

Part IX: Farewell (1943)

Until 31 December 1942, the Sonderkommando Kulmhof had systematically murdered about 4,400 Sinti and Roma and 145,301 Jews  (Document 234). The Jews of the Warthegau had been wiped out except for the "labour ghetto" in Litzmannstadt and Jews loaned to outside work-sites. Since life as a Sonderkommando member was comparable pleasant and beneficial - with bonus payments, free tabacco and alcohol, no front duty, absence of military discipline, access to cheap goods from the rich warehouses of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto Administration - and facing the prospect of front-line service, the Kulmhof commandant Hans Bothmann seemed to have stretched the dismantling and closing of the camp over the whole Winter 1942/43. ^[1]

Correction Corner #7: false Stuckart quote about the "extermination of Jews".

Sometimes the following alleged quote is ascribed to Wilhelm Stuckart (a Wannsee conference participant):

Die Judenvernichtung findet ihre Rechtfertigung daher nicht nur in der Andersartigkeit, sondern auch in der Anderswertigkeit des Judentums. 

The extermination of the Jews is therefore justified not only by the otherness, but also by the different value of the Jewry.

This allegedly comes from Stuckart's and Schiedermair's book Rassen- und Erbpflege in der Gesetzgebung des Reiches, 3rd edition, 1942.

The citation or a mention of it appears e.g. in Christian Gerlach's The Extermination of the European Jews, 2016, p. 146 (with a reference to U. Herbert, Best: Biographische Studien über Radikalismus, Weltanschauung und Vernunft 1903-1989, 1996, p. 286); in Hans-Christian Jasch's Staatssekretär Wilhelm Stuckart und die Judenpolitik, 2012, p. 364 and in the article "Civil service lawyers and the Holocaust" in A. Steinweis, R. Rachlin (eds.), The Law in Nazi Germany: Ideology, Opportunism, and the Perversion of Justice, 2013, p. 52 (both times with a reference to D. Majer, Grundlagen des nationalsozialistischen Rechtssystems, 1987, pp. 142ff.; in the first source Jasch points out that this sentence is not found in the 2nd and the 4th editions); in Mark Roseman, "Beyond Conviction? ...", in F. Biess, M. Roseman, H. Schissler (eds.), Conflict, Catastrophe and Continuity: Essays on Modern German History, 2007, p. 95 (with a reference to Herbert, 1996);  et cetera.

However Horst Dreier points out (among other places, in Die deutsche Staatsrechtslehre in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus, 2001, p. 40n150 and in Staatsrecht in Demokratie und Diktatur, 2016, p. 217n150) that the word "Judenvernichtung" (extermination of Jews) does not appear in the 3rd edition (or in the whole 3rd Reich literature on the constitutional law that he had read). Rather, the following does appear there:

Die Judenvorschriften finden ihre Rechtfertigung daher nicht nur in der Andersartigkeit, sondern auch in der Anderswertigkeit des Judentums. 

The Jewish regulations are therefore justified not only by the otherness, but also by the different value of the Jewry.

The third edition of Stuckart's and Schiedermair's book is available online, so we can see that Dreier is correct:

It would seem that the incorrect quote was first used by Diemut Majer. Thus, we see it in "Fremdvölkische" im Dritten Reich: ein Beitrag zur nationalsozialistichen Rechtssetzung und Rechtspraxis in Verwaltung und Justiz unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der eingegliederten Ostgebiete und des Generalgouvernements, 1981, p. 121 and Majer's subsequent 1987 book and Herbert's 1996 book (that must have relied on Majer) are the main sources for the spread of the false version.

The latest publication of the English translation of Majer's book - “Non-Germans” Under The Third Reich: The Nazi Judicial and Administrative System in Germany and Occupied Eastern Europe, with Special Regard to Occupied Poland, 1939–1945, 2013, still contains the quote.

Herbert corrected the quote in the 2016 edition of his book (p. 306).

Book chapter "Holocaust denial in the age of web 2.0" by Nicholas Terry Available Online

The multi-author book Holocaust and Genocide Denial: A Contextual Perspective edited by Paul Behrens, Olaf Jensen and Nicholas Terry (2017) is a more recent publication on the development, incidence and encountering of Genocide Denial in general and Holocaust Denial specifically. The chapter Holocaust denial in the age of web 2.0 by Holocaust Controversies' Nick Terry is online available at google books. Its conclusion points out these seven reasons which "can be adduced for the decline of Holocaust denial":

1 Consistent social disapproval
2 Its political ineffectiveness
3 The ease of finding other ways of expressing anti-Semitism or delegitimising Israel
4 Loss of 'market share' to other conspiracy theories
5 Inability to cope with the volume of recent Holocaust research
6 Lack of novelty
7 The ageing of the 'movement'

(Behrens et al., Holocaust and Genocide Denial: A Contextual Perspective, p. 53)

Sonderkommando Kulmhof in German Documents - Drinks and Tobacco (With Excursus on the Extermination of the Sinti and Roma)

Mass Killing Unit of Warthegau

Sonderkommando Lange in German Documents:

 Euthanasia 1940/41

Sonderkommando Kulmhof in German Documents:

Part I: Origin and Foundation

Part II: The Extermination of 100,000 Jews

Part III: Body Disposal (Appendix)

Part IV: Pabianice Sorting Camp

Part V: Funding

Part VI: The Polish Working Detail

Part VII: Motor Pool and Fuel (Appendix)

Part VIII: Drinks and Tobacco (With Excursus on the Extermination of the Sinti and Roma)

Part IX: Farewell (1943)

The fate of the about 5,000 Sinti and Roma deported from the Reichsgaue Niederdonau (Lower Danube) and Steiermark in annexed Austria to the Litzmannstadt Ghetto in early November 1941 and forced to vegetate in the most inadequate conditions was sealed when a typhus epidemic broke out in early December 1941 ^[1] and, incidentally, an extermination camp was established 70 km North-West of Litzmannstadt: Kulmhof. The liquidation of the Sinti and Roma from the Ghetto by the Sonderkommando in December 1941/January 1942 was going beyond its initially assigned task to exterminate 100,000 Warthegau Jews and marked another escalation of the type of victims targeted after mental patients and unfit Jews.

Sonderkommando Kulmhof in German Documents - Motor Pool and Fuel

Mass Killing Unit of Warthegau

Sonderkommando Lange in German Documents:

 Euthanasia 1940/41

Sonderkommando Kulmhof in German Documents:

Part I: Origin and Foundation

Part II: The Extermination of 100,000 Jews

Part III: Body Disposal (Appendix)

Part IV: Pabianice Sorting Camp

Part V: Funding

Part VI: The Polish Working Detail

Part VII: Motor Pool and Fuel (Appendix)

Part VIII: Drinks and Tobacco (With Excursus on the Extermination of the Sinti and Roma)

Part IX: Farewell (1943)

Unlike the extermination camps in the Generalgouvernement, Kulmhof was not located next and connected to a main railway line. The victims were buried and disposed not on site, but some 4 km north in a forest. The Sonderkommando had to put considerable own effort in the transport logistics to get the victims to the killing site and the corpses to the burial site. Moreover, the belongings of the killed Jews had to be transported away again. Its motor pool and fuel supply - the latter provided by the State Economic Office of the Warthegau (Gerlich) via the Gestapo Posen (Lohse) to the Kulmhof commandants (Lange, Bothmann) - were thus essential for the smooth operation of the mass murder.

Sonderkommando Kulmhof in German Documents - Motor Pool and Fuel (Appendix)

Mass Killing Unit of Warthegau

Sonderkommando Lange in German Documents:

 Euthanasia 1940/41

Sonderkommando Kulmhof in German Documents:

Part I: Origin and Foundation

Part II: The Extermination of 100,000 Jews

Part III: Body Disposal (Appendix)

Part IV: Pabianice Sorting Camp

Part V: Funding

Part VI: The Polish Working Detail

Part VII: Motor Pool and Fuel (Appendix)

Part VIII: Drinks and Tobacco (With Excursus on the Extermination of the Sinti and Roma)

Part IX: Farewell (1943)

Documents-Appendix to Motor Pool and Fuel

More on "Biological eradication (biologische Ausmerzung)"

Back in 2015, in this posting, I took Mattogno to task for his ridiculous attempt (made here, pp.281-282) to neutralize Rosenberg's press briefing of November 18, 1941. I would now like to expand upon this by citing an observation made by Alex J. Kay, in this book, which includes an excellent discussion of Rosenberg's role in the planning process for occupation of the USSR up to July 1941. On June 20, 1941, Rosenberg used the term "evacuation" to refer to the starvation, not deportation, of ethnic Russians, who Hitler had decided should not be allowed to survive the bombardment of major cities, most notably Leningrad and Moscow (and subsequently Kiev).

Rosenberg's usage came in the speech presented in the International Military Tribunal as 1058-PS; Hartley Shawcross read the following extract to the court on July 27, 1946:

The object of feeding the German people stands this year without a doubt at the top of the list of Germany's claims on the East, and there the southern territories and the Northern Caucasus will have to serve as a balance for the feeding of the German people. We see absolutely no reason for any obligation on our part to feed also the Russian people with the products of that surplus territory. We know that this is a harsh necessity bare of any feelings. A very extensive evacuation will be necessary without any doubt, and it is sure that the future will hold very hard years in store for the Russians [translation in National Conspiracy and Aggression, III, pp.716-717].

Rosenberg's use of expulsion as a euphemism for mass death therefore had a genesis in Rosenberg's contribution to the pre-Barbarossa starvation proposals, which had been initiated by Backe but not explicitly endorsed by Rosenberg until this "evacuation" speech. As Kay shows (here, p.689), Rosenberg was using "evacuation" to euphemize the deaths of 30 million people.