Sunday, April 23, 2006

A note on UKAR. "Barry the Terrible of Wherever".

[Also see this update.]

Some of you may know the ukar.org website. It was run by Lubomyr Prytulak, a retired Ukrainian-Canadian psychology professor. It contained lots of Holocaust denial materials, written mainly by Prytulak himself. Unfortunately, LP decided to close his site for the reasons stated in the letter posted at the Cesspit.

I say "unfortunately", because for a long time UKAR has been a rich source of comic relief for anti-deniers. Prytulak's pompous style, coupled with silly conclusions he derived from evidence were a perfect example of "revisionism". Fortunately, the copies of UKAR have been saved by the Wayback Machine, so we can still savor those unintentionally funny pieces. One of them is entitled "Barry the Terrible of Wherever", and it gives us a chance to analyze "revisionist" methodology (i.e., tricks) once more.

Prytulak's thesis is simple. Both Sobibor and Treblinka survivors describe in similar terms the dog "Barry", St. Bernard, which was trained to bite prisoners at its master's command. Therefore:
the most plausible explanation is that a story of Barry the Terrible was floating around among prosecution witnesses, and the two Sobibor witnesses Dov Freiberg and Moshe Bahir became confused as to which camp the dog was supposed to have been at, and appropriated him to bolster their stories of Sobibor.
So survivors' testimony is unreliable, case closed. Or is it?

First, here are the undisputed facts:

1) There indeed was Barry at Treblinka, though it was not a pure St. Bernard, but rather a hybrid. It is pictured in Kurt Franz's album Schoene Zeiten ("Good times").

A significant part of the verdict of the Duesseldorf Treblinka trial is devoted to Barry. It states that Barry was brought to Treblinka at the end of 1942 or in the beginning of 1943. After Treblinka was dismantled, Barry was given to some "Dr. Stru." (the names in German verdicts are usually abbreviated because of privacy laws). Later, Dr. Stru.'s brother took care of Barry, and the dog was killed in 1947 because of old age.

Kurt Franz himself did not deny that he had Barry, but, of course, he disputed witnesses' testimonies. The defense argued that the stories couldn't be true, because later, under Dr. Stru.'s supervision Barry was a good-natured dog. Prosecution summoned the famous Austrian zoologist, animal psychologist and future Nobel laureate Konrad Lorenz, whose specialty was animal aggression. He explained that Barry and Franz had a special bond, and, basically, Barry's behavior was mirroring Franz's own behavior. When Barry was given to another man, its behavior also changed.

Perhaps one of the earliest mentions of Barry is contained in Oskar Strawczynski's (presumably) still unpublished memoir Ten Months in Treblinka, which he wrote in early 1944 after escape from the camp (the copy is in YIVO). He was writing it in the forest, where he resided with the partisans of Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa, so his account should be relatively free of any cross-pollination:
Untersturmfuehrer - Lalka is the representative of the Camp Commander. He is tall, strong, athletic and good looking, with a round doll-like face and a pair of gleaming eyes. He walks rolling from side to side, haughty and self-satisfied. Barry, his big hairy dog trots behind him lazily. But woe to the person that Lalka points to, saying: "Barry, get him". Many a Jewish behind has been tasted by Barry’s teeth...
Note the missing "man, get the dog" and "bitten genitals" motifs. This signifies that it is indeed an independent account, although the motifs themselves are not necessarily false or embellished.

2) There are indeed testimonies about St. Bernard Barry belonging to a Sobibor SS-Unterscharfueher Paul Groth. In addition to the testimonies cited by Prytulak, Sobibor survivor Thomas (Toivi) Blatt also mentions Barry, which belonged to Groth, although only from hearsay. (T. Blatt, Sobibor. The Forgotten Revolt, 2004, 5th edn., p. 52).

Given the undoubtable presence of Barry in Treblinka, what are we to make of Sobibor testimonies and Prytulak's conclusions?

First of all, let's note the usual "revisionist" innuendo:
After having sent off the letter to Eli Rosenbaum below, it came to my attention that Barry might be a favorite name given in children's stories of brave St. Bernards, as evidenced for example in Amazon offering the following two books for sale:

B. Hurlimann, Barry the Story of a Brave St. Bernard, and

Lynn Hall, Barry: The Bravest St. Bernard, whose cover is shown on the left.
Oh gee. So what is that supposed to mean? We know for a fact that Barry was in Treblinka. How are children's books relevant here? Note that Prytulak never explicitly says that survivors just applied the common St. Bernard name to the Treblinka dog, but merely implies that they did.

Now, does Prytulak offer alternative explanations to his hypothesis about lying survivors? Yes, in passing:
Although it is possible to imagine that two almost-identical dogs existed, one at Sobibor and one at Treblinka, or that a single dog Barry spent some of his time at Sobibor and some at Treblinka, perhaps the most plausible explanation is that a story of Barry the Terrible was floating around among prosecution witnesses...
The first explanation is implausible. But what about the second one - that Barry was both at Sobibor and Treblinka at different times? Did Prytulak cite any evidence to refute this alternative? No. He just brushed it off as implausible. But what is so implausible about Barry first living in Sobibor, and then being transferred to Treblinka?

Indeed, Thomas Blatt states in his book, in a footnote:
Barry was later taken to Treblinka by Stangl.
We know that there was a rotation of Aktion Reinhard(t) men between the camps. Thus, Stangl served in Sobibor and Treblinka, Kurt Franz served in Belzec and Treblinka, Groth served in Belzec and Sobibor.

That Barry belonged to Stangl before it belonged to Franz was confirmed by SS-Unterscharführer Franz Suchomel (G. Sereny, Into That Darkness, p. 202):
"Stangl did improve things", Suchomel said later. "He alleviated it a bit for people, but he could have done more, especially from Christmas 1942; he could have stopped the whipping post, the 'races', 'sport', and what Franz did with that dog, Bari - he was Stangl's dog originally. He could have stopped all that without any trouble for himself.
So the most plausible explanation is that Barry originally belonged to Paul Groth in Sobibor. Later Stangl, then at Sobibor, adopted Barry (probably after Groth had been transferred elsewhere for drunkenness) and brought it with him to Treblinka. Later it became Kurt Franz's dog.

When I pointed out this simple explanation to Prytulak, he replied (February 9, 2005, 3:46 am):
As we know that witnesses testifying about their experiences at such death camps are lying, then it becomes much more likely that they are passing along a fantasy that they have heard, and have become confused about which camp to attribute the fantasy to, than that the dog was moved from one camp to another.
I replied as follows:
you seem to be arguing in circle. Why are witnesses' testimonies discredited? Because they placed Barry in a wrong camp. Why assume they placed Barry in a wrong camp? Because their testimonies are discredited.

The simple truth is that whether AR camps were extermination centres or not,witnesses' testimonies are not contradictory on this particular point. At first Barry was with Paul Groth at Sobibor (and possibly Belzec), then it was with Kurt Franz at Treblinka.

To repeat - one can assume, of course, that it is the instance of one motif repeated in different stories, but _only_ if one assumes that testimonies are already discredited. One cannot then prove that Bahir's or Freiberg's testimonies are discredited _because_ they repeat this motif.
Prytulak's suprising (... well, OK, not suprising) reply (February 9, 2005. 12:33 pm):
You have a point if you disregard the vast amount of evidence on ukar.org that these and similar witnesses were lying.
So, the witnesses were lying in this case because allegedly they had been lying in other cases, no matter that the contradiction between the testimonies about Barry existed only in Prytulak's imagination. How can one argue with such "logic"?

Prytulak's treatment of Barry story has been hailed by a Cesspit member as "the best anywhere". I can't add much to that.

16 comments:

  1. Thanx Sergey, for presenting the Barry story to the public. It simply shows that the behaviour of a beast depends on its owner's character.
    It really is "a pity" that another denier's site was closed because it was very amusing sometimes, especially when one could read those simple-minded rank and file's conclusions, also sometimes at the AHF.

    Mike

    ReplyDelete
  2. Talk about comic relief? You link to a couple of nebulous photos of a generic dog and claim proof that "Barry" is as true as the rest of the suspect holocaust evidence.

    Anyway, you are making considerable progress; at least Mike and I read your post-- although I only found it because I Googled Dr. Prytulak.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Notice that the anonymous coward hasn't addressed any evidence proving both Barry's presence in Sobibor and silliness of that idiot Lubomyr Prytulak (unless one can call his/her impotent quacking about authentic photos of Barry from Kurt Franz's photo album "addressing the evidence").

    Ah, but perhaps I'm demanding too much from this feeble denier lemming? :-)

    As for progress - our blog currently has more than 100 unique hits per day on average, which is not bad for such a highly specialized site. And yes, we do get quite a lot of hits from people searching for UKAR and Prytulak. Which is good, for this bigoted fraud is exposed here for everybody to see :-)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thank you for your typically Jewish ad-hominem attack. Which is, in effect, "proof" of the majority of evidence you use (the rest being out and out fabrication).

    Subsequent readers (you out there Mike?) can make their own decision on exactly who the fraud is.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thanks to anonymous scum for showing that (s)he is nothing but an antisemite ("typically Jewish ad-hominem attack") who cannot address any evidence. :-)

    The fact remains that the anonymous coward hasn't addressed any evidence proving both Barry's presence in Sobibor and silliness of that idiot Lubomyr Prytulak (unless one can call his/her impotent quacking about authentic photos of Barry from Kurt Franz's photo album and antisemitic ad hominems "addressing the evidence").

    Poor brainless creature failed to prove that Lubo isn't a fraud :-)

    ReplyDelete
  6. And here's today's info about our anonymous scumbag:

    "Host Name ip68-224-203-231.ri.ri.cox.net
    IP Address 68.224.203.231
    Country United States
    Region Connecticut
    City Enfield
    ISP Cox Communications
    Returning Visits 3
    Visit Length 3 hours 56 mins 8 secs"

    I'm glad you're interested in our site enough to have spent at least 4 hours reading it, dumbo!

    :-))

    ReplyDelete
  7. PS: here's a clue, genius: if you don't know how to use Anonymouse properly, don't.

    "Referring Link http://anonymouse.org/anonwww.html
    Host Name ip68-224-203-231.ri.ri.cox.net
    IP Address 68.224.203.231
    Country United States
    Region Connecticut
    City Enfield
    ISP Cox Communications
    Returning Visits 5
    Visit Length 22 mins 16 secs
    VISITOR SYSTEM SPECS
    Browser MSIE 6.0
    Operating System Windows XP
    Resolution 1280x1024
    Javascript Enabled

    Navigation PathDate Time WebPage
    4th September 2006 01:29:15 anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2006/04/note-on-ukar-barry-terrible-of.html
    anonymouse.org/anonwww.html
    4th September 2006 01:51:31 anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2006/04/note-on-ukar-barry-terrible-of.html
    anonymouse.org/anonwww.html"


    :-)))))

    ReplyDelete
  8. Come on Sergey, play fair!

    Four hours at your website? Bull! Part of the time I was watching the Georgia Tech/Notre Dame football game -- though I probably did leave the browser open -- and part of the time I was visiting your other sites, One Third Of The Holocaust and Codoh Watch (that didn’t really take very long because, as you know, there are no comments over there) and a good deal of the time I was at codoh.com (thanks for the link, by the way) so in fact I was probably only at your site 1.5 hours instead of the four you claim.

    To put it in perspective, it’s like changing the official death count at Auschwitz from 4 million to 1.5 million and thinking no one will notice. You have to be careful with numbers.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I see our yellow friend returned. Why, I wonder?

    Oh, and I don't allege anything, kiddo :-) That's what the logs showed. In effect, 1.5 hours, you say? Not bad, not bad. Read more, enlighten yourself further.

    ---

    Meanwhile the fact remains that the anonymous coward still hasn't addressed any evidence proving both Barry's presence in Sobibor and silliness of that idiot Lubomyr Prytulak (unless one can call his/her impotent quacking about authentic photos of Barry from Kurt Franz's photo album and antisemitic ad hominems "addressing the evidence").

    Poor brainless creature didn't even try to prove that Lubo isn't a fraud :-)

    ReplyDelete
  10. Sergey,

    So the missing three-million Jews are incidental to the atrocities of “Barry”?

    Here’s where I think we are with this thing. Any reasonably person reading this exchange would conclude that I have pretty much shoved it up your ass. But ... you did bust me on the proxy deal, so we’ll call it a draw.

    I don’t really think you’re much interested in debating anyway. All you ever did to me was name-call and when you picked out a possible discrepancy among the thousands and thousands and thousands of pages Dr. Prytulak published -- namely the art work he chose to depict “Barry” (which, by the way, most people would have seen as tongue-in-cheek) and the location of a fucking dog -- you confronted him on it and he gave you the very reasonably answer:

    “You have a point if you disregard the vast amount of evidence on ukar.org that these and similar witnesses were lying.”

    [And the gross inconsistencies of the eye-witnesses have repeatedly been demonstrated]

    But you somehow took that to be an acquiesce on his part?? He would have debated you as much and as long as you liked (contrary to the thousands of letters he’s written to (mostly) Jews who by and large cowered. You’re not much of a logician, just another strident Jew -- and Lord knows we have enough of those (and that’s not even counting the three million missing from Auschwitz!).

    Even you will have to acknowledge that it’s difficult to spend much more than 1.5 hours your site(s) -- there is nothing there! Certainly not compared to other sites that are less interested in name calling and more interested in facts.

    You are right though, I probably have spent too much time on this (though I suspect you’ve spent the better part of the last 24 hours checking your email every 30 seconds to see if I posted), so what I’m going to do is stipulate to the existence of “Barry” and retire from your blog (talking to Jews for any length of time makes me feel a bit soiled anyway) the same way I came in: with a little comic relief.

    Here it is:

    Q: Why does “Barry” lick his ass-hole?”

    A: To get the taste of Jew out of his mouth.

    Shalom

    ReplyDelete
  11. Congrats! You've outdone yourself with this posting. Such smut can come only from a Nazi.

    Gosh, what is it with you Nazis and anal fixation?

    Anyway, here's something from the posting above:

    ---

    "When I pointed out this simple explanation to Prytulak, he replied (February 9, 2005, 3:46 am):

    'As we know that witnesses testifying about their experiences at such death camps are lying, then it becomes much more likely that they are passing along a fantasy that they have heard, and have become confused about which camp to attribute the fantasy to, than that the dog was moved from one camp to another.'

    I replied as follows:

    'you seem to be arguing in circle. Why are witnesses' testimonies discredited? Because they placed Barry in a wrong camp. Why assume they placed Barry in a wrong camp? Because their testimonies are discredited.

    The simple truth is that whether AR camps were extermination centres or not,witnesses' testimonies are not contradictory on this particular point. At first Barry was with Paul Groth at Sobibor (and possibly Belzec), then it was with Kurt Franz at Treblinka.

    To repeat - one can assume, of course, that it is the instance of one motif repeated in different stories, but _only_ if one assumes that testimonies are already discredited. One cannot then prove that Bahir's or Freiberg's testimonies are discredited _because_ they repeat this motif.'

    Prytulak's suprising (... well, OK, not suprising) reply (February 9, 2005. 12:33 pm):
    You have a point if you disregard the vast amount of evidence on ukar.org that these and similar witnesses were lying.'

    So, the witnesses were lying in this case because allegedly they have been lying in other cases, no matter that the contradiction between the testimonies about Barry existed only in Prytulak's imagination. How can one argue with such "logic"?"

    ---

    I think it is all very clear. You've failed to find any fault in my proof that Prytulak is a raving idiot.

    And please, don't go away. Personally we don't like Nazis who lick their asses, or dogs' asses - or whatever is it you do - here at HC. But your comments serve as such a great illustration to the generally antisemitic (seeing Jews where there aren't any) and vulgar (your comment above) nature of Holocaust denial!

    :-))

    ReplyDelete
  12. It constantly amazes me how neo-Nazis are obsessed with anal sex, homosexuality, and bestiality.

    This guy feels "soiled" when he talks to Jews? I guess he's just another one of these, "It never happened but the Jews got everything they deserved" types.

    Notice the pride with which he makes his case...hiding behind anonymity.

    ReplyDelete
  13. I wonder if any of you guys here, have the balls to go to CODOH.com and throw down a challenge to the people over there to debate you regarding the Holocaust. From what I have read briefly here on your site, it seems to me that you wouldn’t stand a chance.

    If you are brave enough to make the challenge, NO NAME CALLING! Try and debate sensibly and in an adult manner.

    Good Luck!

    ReplyDelete
  14. You are not very informed.

    Andrew, Roberto and I were kicking CODOH asses until we were simply banned. How can one debate when one is censored? Deniers whine about censorship, but some of them are the biggest censors around.

    If CODOH crowd has any responses to the ass-kicking we're giving the deniers, let them deal with the arguments.

    E.g.:

    http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2006/08/cesspit-just-keeps-on-giving.html

    http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2006/08/unbearable-stupidity-of-cesspit.html

    http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2006/05/dumbos-try-to-tackle-arguments-fail.html

    http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2006/05/ah-these-codoh-gentlemen-and-nafcash.html

    etc., etc., etc.

    Can't deal with it? Afraid? Thought so.

    ReplyDelete
  15. HOLOCAUST MYTH

    http://www.polskawalczaca.com/viewforum.php?f=36

    Jerzy Ulicki-Rek

    ReplyDelete
  16. Personally I think its pretty ridiculous that deniers are so desperate to discredit holocaust testimony that they have to debate the existence of a damn dog (dont get me wrong- i love dogs!!). This is beyond black-and-white simple: theres a photo of the dog in Franz’s album matching the description of Barry. There is testimony from both survivors and SS men about the dog being moved from camp to camp (in fact, wasnt Suschomel’s testimony taped in secret, without him knowing it?). Finally, what would be the point about making up stories about an evil dog? What the SS did is evil enough to almost be beyond belief...almost

    ReplyDelete

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