A nightmare with no way out

In just 100 days in 1994, some 800,000 people were slaughtered in Rwanda by ethnic Hutu extremists targeting members of the minority Tutsi community as well as their political opponents. According to the Kigali Memorial Centre, the number was even higher, about one million dead. Either number makes the Rwandan genocide one of the swiftest mass killings in history, with an average of at least about 8,000 victims per day, its matches in the 20th Century including the mass murder, mostly by starvation, of Soviet prisoners of war in the custody of the German Wehrmacht between October 1941 and March 1942 (according to German historian Christian Gerlach, the number of Soviet prisoners who died is likely to have been around 300,000 to 500,000 in each of the months October, November and December 1941). The Gendercide Watch site's page Case Study:Genocide in Rwanda, 1994 includes the following comparison:

Together with the mass murder of Soviet prisoners-of-war during World War II, it was the most concentrated act of genocide in human history: "the dead of Rwanda accumulated at nearly three times the rate of Jewish dead during the Holocaust." (Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda [Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998], p. 3.) (Gérard Prunier provides an even higher estimate: "the daily killing rate was at least five times that of the Nazi death camps." Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide [Columbia University Press, 1995], p. 261.)

June 22, 1944

On this day 70 years ago, three years to the day after the beginning of Nazi Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union, the Soviet army launched an offensive codenamed Operation "Bagration", which led to the Wehrmacht’s greatest defeat on the Eastern Front.

Nazi Propaganda: "Who Should Die - Germans or Jews?"

From July 1941, the Nazis waged a fierce propaganda campaign to convince the German people that either Germany would have to exterminate the Jews or the Jews would exterminate the Germans. The campaign utilized Kaufman's "Germany Must Perish", an obscure tract that called for the sterilization of all Germans. The Nazis became convinced that "kill or be killed" should be the message that their antisemitic propaganda would carry from that point on. This message was most explicitly spelled out in a pamphlet published in September 1941 by Wolfgang Diewerge, which asked:

Hitler 1920

On April 6, 1920, Hitler declared:

We don’t want to be emotional anti-Semites who seek to create a mood for pogroms. Rather, we are driven by a pitiless and fierce determination to attack the evil at its roots and to exterminate it root and branch. Every means is justified to reach our goal, even if it means we must make a pact with the devil. (Herf, The Jewish Enemy, The Belknap Press, 2006, p.3).

Thus, although the Final Solution arose slowly and was contingent on many events, especially related to war, and could only be a distant dream in 1920, Hitler's core motivation to defeat the Jews by any possible means was established at an early point.

Was the Auschwitz Survivor Benedikt Kautsky a Holocaust Denier?

This is suggested in a recent CODOH Revisionist forum thread "Survivors" who deny the Holocaust. 

The claim that the former Auschwitz prisoner Benedikt Kautsky did not know about homicidal gas chambers goes back to the classic Revisionist work "Geschichte der Verfemung Deutschlands" (Volume 4, published in 1967) by Franz Scheidl and was recycled in 1988 in "Freispruch für Hitler?" by the Austrian right wing extremists Gerd Honsik. Germar Rudolf adopted the claim in his book "Vorlesungen über Zeitgeschichte" (1993, p. 223), but it was dropped in the revised/rewritten edition (Lectures on the Holocaust, 2010).

So did Kautsky know about gassings or not? 

Auschwitz-Birkenau selection list of 21 August 1943

If you've never heard a phrase like "give the name of just one gassing victim" - you are lucky enough that you did not come across Revisionist extremists such as Gred Gerdes yet. Their obsession, that only evidence for individual gassings victims known by name establishes the reality of homicidal gassings, aims to exploit the anonymous nature of the mass murder. 

Most victims were treated as an anonymous mass and only total number of people killed were recorded, but not the individual names anymore. In some cases, however, name lists of Jews sentenced to the gas chamber were actually produced in Auschwitz.

Germar Rudolf's True Feelings about Jews

Can be read on page 39 of this report, which quotes Germar thus:

If the Holocaust is seen as a unique collection of lies, then the sole pillar supporting international Judaism's legitimacy will collapse. The idol of substitute religion will disintegrate. The possibility of extorting more billions from Germany on account of its alleged obligation will likewise collapse. The possibility of obligating America to eternally rescue the Jews from new Holocausts through endless donations of money will likewise collapse. World sympathy for the greatest liars and swindlers in the history of mankind will likewise collapse. Europe's second attempt to establish a lasting enclave in Palestine against the will of the Arabs, similar to the crusades, will likewise collapse. And finally, the future Arabia, which will be unified and self ruling without Jewish, American or European occupiers and colonial powers, will develop irresistibly. This explains why the Jews and Jewish dominated media and politicians everywhere defend these (Holocaust) lies and repress the prophets of truth by all means possible.

"The Tide is Turning"

It seems in recent years that deniers have increasingly proclaimed victory and congratulated themselves for... well, nothing.

They like to trumpet an increasing skepticism towards the Holocaust as an indication of their success. Nearly a decade ago Robert Faurisson clamored that a "serious calling into question of one of the greatest lies in history" was underway, and that in the West the "the scales are falling off some people's eyes." The moderator of the CODOH Revisionist Forum, Jonnie "Hannover" Hargis, has declared that the "tide is turning" nearly three hundred times in the last year, nearly once a day.

The problem with all of this? The tide is not turning for them, as shown by the recent ADL global antisemitism survey.

Nazi Policy Timeline: August 1941

This timeline is a work-in-progress and will be regularly updated and revised. Comments and suggested additions are welcome.

August 1st, a): Himmler order to the SS cavalry regiments: "Ausdrücklicher Befehl des RFSS. Sämtliche Juden müssen erschossen werden. Judenweiber in die Sümpfe treiben"; "Explicit order of the RFSS. All Jews must be shot. Jewish women to be driven into the swamp." (VEJ 7 Dok 51 p.228, n.10; Longerich, 3.1.1).

Nazi Policy Timeline July 1941

This timeline is a work-in-progress and will be regularly updated and revised. Comments and suggested additions are welcome.

July 2: Heydrich passes on a summary of his instructions to the four HSSPF. He explicitly lists “Jews in party and state positions” as a group to be executed, and also called for the incitement of pogroms, euphemistically dubbed "self-cleansing attempts", but "without trace" of German involvement (Klein, pp.323-328).

July 7th: Fritzsche depicts Barbarossa as a war in which "culture, civilization, and human decency make a stand against the diabolical principle of a sub-human world" and thus infers that "It was only the Fuehrer's decision to strike in time that saved our homeland from the fate of being overrun by those sub-human creatures, and our men, women, and children from the unspeakable horror of being their prey." (Official B.B.C. translation of radio speeches of Hans Fritzsche, monitored by the British Broadcasting Corporation, p.2069 and p.2070, 3064-PS, NCA, vol. V, p.879).

Nazi Policy Timeline January-June 1941

The evidence presented below clearly shows that that the USSR was chosen as the 'resettlement' destination for European Jews from January 1941 onwards. More importantly, the aim of resettlement was to decimate the Jews; decisions after June 22, 1941, were simply changing the nature of this mass murder to other means and to during the war with the USSR not after a final victory.

Violence and Threats against Jews 1923-1931 as reported by the JTA

In the 1920s, a steady stream of antisemitic threats, some of an exterminatory nature, were made across central Europe, as reported by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. On February 4, 1923, the JTA reported from Bucharest that: 

Wholesale pogroms on Jews are urged as a means of providing corpses [for] the dissection rooms of the Klausenburg University, in an article appearing in the students’ publication there. The writer predicts that the pogroms will serve a two-fold object: the extermination of the Jew, and the supply of corpses. The University authorities have taken the student publication’s assertion under advisement. 

Three Hitler Speeches from 1942

January 30, 1942 [Domarus, p.2574]

We are fully aware that this war can end either in the extermination of the Aryan people or in the disappearance of Jewry from Europe. I said as much before the German Reichstag on September 1, 1939. I wish to avoid making hasty prophesies, but this war will not end as the Jews imagine, namely, in the extermination of the European-Aryan people; instead, the result of this war will be the annihilation of Jewry. For the first time, the old, truly Jewish rule of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” will obtain.  

Rosenberg on Reprisals

It seems clear to me that his diary entry of September 12, 1941 (pdf posted by Irving here), can only mean that Rosenberg wished for central European Jews to be killed in reprisal for the "murder" of Volga Germans. Note also that Rosenberg clearly sees Siberia as a place of murder for deportees not resettlement:

12.9.41 Als die Mitteilungen eintrafen, dass Stalin nun auch die noch verbliebenen 400 000 Wolgadeutschen nach Sibirien verschleppen, d.h. morden lassen wird, da ist in uns allen der Hass gegen Moskau erst recht wieder emporgestiegen. Ich gab Anweisung, für eine sehr scharfe Stellungnahme u. sandte sie formuliert an den Führer. Der sie noch verschärfte. Gestern liess ich einen Vorschlag ausarbeiten, durch Rundfunk nach Russland, England u. USA mitteilen zu lassen, dass wenn dieser Massenmord durchgeführt werden sollte, Deutschland die Juden Zentraleuropas dafür büssen lassen würde. Dies mit vollster Berechtigung, da soeben noch der Jude Schertok auf einer Palästinakonferenz erklärt habe, an dem Bündnis zwischen Moskau – London – Washington hätten die Juden besonderen Anteil, da sie stets dafür gearbeitet hätten.

Mattogno's Deceptions on Nazi Policy: An Updated Analysis

We are currently preparing the 2nd edition of our White Paper, which will update our analysis of the lies, distortions, evasions and pro-Nazi rhetoric in the work of MGK on the policy and camps of Aktion Reinhard. This current blog series previews some of the arguments in my contribution, which will primarily be my response to the ludicrous claims by Mattogno in Chapter 5 of MGK's 'riposte', published in September 2013, which can be read here.

Lying about the dating of Orders: the Wisliceny Testimonies

Mattogno began writing about Nazi policy in the 1980s. A recurrent theme in that writing has been his attempts to demonstrate that Hitler could not have given an order to exterminate Europe's Jews by the dates claimed by what he calls the "orthodox historiography." Two of the sources he has repeatedly used to make this case are the testimonies provided by Wisliceny at Nuremberg and from prison in Bratislava. Mattogno's devious sleight of hand with these sources shows a long-term technique being perfected of "bait and switch", whereby a testimony is quoted by Mattogno but then an entirely different précis of its contents is given afterwards.

Mattogno's Failure to Evolve, 2000-2010

Mattogno was hyperactive in the first decade of the new century, producing a body of work that included his 'trilogy' on the Aktion Reinhard camps. On the subject of policy, I would identify four developments, which are really indicative of Mattogno's failure to adapt in an evolutionary way to how historians were discussing the Final Solution. Firstly, Mattogno began to tackle shootings in the East, but these were framed against a straw man which assumed that the "orthodox historiography" regards the Einsatzgruppen as forces that only shot Jews because they were Jews, and for no other reason. Secondly, Mattogno elaborated a theme, which he had introduced back in the 1980s, that there was continuity between the emigration policies of 1939-1941 and the Final Solution, and the only change was the destinations of the 'emigrants' and the manner of their emigration. Thirdly, Mattogno set out to neutralize the statements of leading Nazis such as Hitler, Himmler and Goebbels, prompted seemingly by the use of those statements in Shermer and Grobman's Denying History and perhaps by Irving's defeat in the Lipstadt court case. Finally, Mattogno in Sobibor reignited his discussion of the Hitler Order by confronting historians whom he had largely ignored to that point, such as Gerlach, Browning and Kershaw. This attack would continue in his riposte to our White Paper in 2013.

Mattogno's 'Riposte', 2013

In December 2011, we published the first edition our White Paper, exposing MGK's dishonesty, antisemitism and fallacious reasoning concerning the Aktion Reinhard camps. One of our motives was to compel Mattogno to discuss documents that he had previously ignored or minimized. His contributions to MGK's 'riposte' of 2013 did discuss these documents at inordinate length, but primarily in a mode of obfuscation interspersed with blatant lying. I now turn to a detailed discussion of his Chapter 5 of that riposte.

Mattogno: Conclusion

Our White Paper obliged Mattogno to discuss sources that he usually prefers to ignore. When confronted with chains of documents that refer to extermination we can see him resort repeatedly to a set of tricks. Those identified above include:

1) Stating that the use of an exterminatory term was rhetorical or hyperbolic

2) Stating that a proposal was only hypothetical, or the opinion of one person

3) False emphasis on a non-operative part of a phrase

The Ustasha and Vatican's Silence - Part 3

Read the Part 1 and Part 2. This text was originally translated into Portuguese here. The book was originally written in Spanish.

The Ustasha and Vatican's Silence - Part 3
The crimes of the Croatian Ustashis (NDH)

HASTILY ESCAPE. THE VATICAN IN THE END OF WORLD WAR II

Far from being a historical mystery, the escape of thousands outlaw Nazis to South America and other parts of the world is a fact broadly documented in what the Holy See took part actively. Sinister Characters such as Pavelic, Klaus Barbie or Joseph Mengele went into exile making a prior scale in Vatican. Meanwhile, in Croatia, the last Ustasha men hoped that a timely intervention of Vatican diplomacy propitiated the creation of an independent Croatian state off of Yugoslavia.

Ustasha soldier displays proud his macabre trophy, the decapitated head of a Serbian Chetnik. (Photo)

Viewer's Guide to "Auschwitz - The Surprising Hidden Truth" (Minute 38 - end)

Viewer's Guide to "Auschwitz - The Surprising Hidden Truth" 

Minutes 0 - 10

Minutes 10 - 16

Minutes 16 - 22
Minutes 22 - 38
 Minute 38 - end

Viewer's Guide to "Auschwitz - The Surprising Hidden Truth" (Minutes 22 - 38)

Viewer's Guide to "Auschwitz - The Surprising Hidden Truth" 

Minutes 0 - 10

Minutes 10 - 16

Minutes 16 - 22
Minutes 22 - 38
Minutes 38 - end

Viewer's Guide to "Auschwitz - The Surprising Hidden Truth" (Minutes 16 - 22)

Viewer's Guide to "Auschwitz - The Surprising Hidden Truth" 

Minutes 0 - 10

Minutes 10 - 16

Minutes 16 - 22
Minutes 22 - 38
Minutes 38 - end

Jürgen Graf keeps on giving

Apparently beside himself with rage about our contemptuous reaction to MGK’s monster pamphlet ([large PDF]) in the blogs Jürgen Graf at his best and The Steaming Pile of MGK Manure is Here, Jürgen Graf let fly in some publication of the extreme right with this stuff (not sure how to categorize it, maybe it was meant to be a satire), which will be translated hereafter for what it further reveals about the intellectual level, mindset and character of one of the world’s leading "Revisionists".

Graf isn’t stated to be the author of this pearl, but the rank stupidity of it alone would point to him even if it were not for the puerile bragging about the aforementioned monster pamphlet and for another of Graf’s "Lieber Esel" e-mails, which I received last Friday evening.

Viewer's Guide to "Auschwitz - The Surprising Hidden Truth" (Minutes 10 - 16)

Viewer's Guide to "Auschwitz - The Surprising Hidden Truth" 

Minutes 0 - 10

Minutes 10 - 16
Minutes 16 - 22

Minutes 22 - 38 
Minutes 38 - end

The Steaming Pile of MGK Manure is Here

Many of our readers will be aware that, nearly two years ago, the members of this blog produced a substantial “white paper” critique of three antisemitic Holocaust deniers named Carlo Mattogno, Jürgen Graf, and Thomas Kues (hereafter MGK) concerning the subject of the Aktion Reinhard camps. Our critique focused on three of their collective books: Mattogno and Graf’s Treblinka (2004), Mattogno’s Belzec (2004), and MGK’s Sobibor (2010). This weekend MGK posted this response consisting of ludicrously bloviated diatribes and arguments based on logical fallacies such as Argumentum Verbosium, which is a common feature of conspiracist cranks like MGK. We are currently reading through the PDF file like men forced to walk through an endless river of manure. It will take us a long time to digest the whole pile of rotting vegetables, but here is a taster of its antisemitic contents. Mattogno writes:

An Italian writer troubled himself to count the number of persons exterminated according to the Bible by virtue of the “cherem”: 2,120,182. The biblical Jehudim were therefore real forerunners of the Einsatzgruppen, actually even worse, because besides men, women and children, they even exterminated the animals! Is pointing this out “anti-Semitic” too?

This is the level and tone to which Mattogno has sunk, abetted by his pet monkeys Graf and Kues. We will reserve our full response to the maniacal work until we have had time to read through the verbiage and recover from both our laughter at its fallacies and our migraines from its tedious length. However, a few preliminary remarks are necessary here in order to forewarn our readers of the crap they will encounter when reading MGK's work.

Jürgen Graf at his best

When I looked into my mailbox yesterday night, I found an e-mail from Jürgen Graf sent last Wednesday, touting the imminent publication of MGK’s repeatedly delayed response ([large PDF]) to our paper Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. A Critique of the Falsehoods of Mattogno, Graf and Kues.

This e-mail will be transcribed and translated hereinafter, for what I think it reveals about Graf’s mind and character and about the expectable contents of a publication co-authored by this gentleman.

Viewer's Guide to "Auschwitz - The Surprising Hidden Truth" (Minutes 0 - 10)

Viewer's Guide to "Auschwitz - The Surprising Hidden Truth" 

Minutes 0 - 10

Minutes 10 - 16

Minutes 16 - 22
Minutes 22 - 38 
Minutes 38 - end

Introduction

Humor in connection with the Holocaust can work, see Roberto Benigni's tragicomedy "La vita è bella". But it went painfully wrong when sometime in 2011, the twenty minutes video clip "Auschwitz: The Comedy" was released on youtube (now down) produced by the usual suspect for argumentum ad youtubium denierbud aka Mike Smith aka Dean Irebodd (aka Ugly Voice among HC authors). A couple of flat and tasteless jokes on the Holocaust and some misconceptions and distortions mostly copycated from the Revisionists Carlo Mattogno and Germar Rudolf were the main ingredients.

Revisionist Article on Hydrogen Cyanide Chemistry Rejected by Peer Reviewed Journals

Germar Rudolf and Nick Kollerstrom recently released an article Differential Exposure of Brickwork to Hydrogen Cyanide during World War Two in Richard Widmann's non-peer reviewed Revisionist journal "Inconvenient History". The paper was previously rejected by the peer-reviewed journals "Analyst" and  "Chemistry - a European Journal".

Open Letter to Nick Kollerstrom on the Auschwitz Death Books

Dear Nick,

We (that is me) are glad to hear that you have expressed your commitment for free speech and against "arresting people for their beliefs”, and trust that this is not limited to your own beliefs but meant universally, also applying to, say for example, denial of crimes committed against Germans.

We entirely support the concern that spreading historical claims should not be punished in an open society – and would like to add – also when these are utterly absurd, offensive to members of the society and mainly a vehicle of political extremism (such as Holocaust denial).