More Fun With Ugly Voice Productions (addendum)

This posting is a an addendum to Roberto's and Andrew's postings rebutting the Ugly Voice's clip no. 5 [YouTube version], which concerns the Nuremberg trial.

1) Near the end of the clip the Ugly Voice presents us with the following table:

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka at Nuremberg

Samuel Rajzman        | 15 min.
Rudolf Hoess          | 3 1/2 min.
Yankel Wiernik        | 1 1/2 min.
Belzec Electric Floor | 30 sec.
Sobibor 2 sentences:  | 30 sec.

21 minutes

Again and again the Ugly Voice shows us his ignorance. Here here omitted Nazi judge Konrad Morgen's testimony. Konrad Morgen was investigating the corruption and other crimes in Nazi camps, and here's what he had to say about Aktion Reinhard(t) camps (emphasis mine):

Read more!

Q. How did you come on to the track of mass killings? You have just spoken of individual killings.

A. I found traces of mass killings also by accident. At the end of 1943, I discovered two trails at the same time, one leading to Lublin and the other to Auschwitz.

Q. Please describe the Lublin trail first.

A. One day I received a report from the Commandant of the Security Police in Lublin. He reported that in a Jewish labour camp in his district a Jewish wedding had taken place. There had been 1,100 invited guests at this wedding.

As I said, 1,100 guests participated in this Jewish wedding. What followed was described as quite extraordinary owing to the gluttonous consumption of food and alcoholic drinks. With these Jews were members of the camp guard, that is to say some SS men or other, who took part in this function. This report only came into my hands in a roundabout way, some months later, as the Commandant of the Security Police suspected that the circumstances indicated that some criminal acts had occurred. This was my impression as well, and I thought that this report would give me an indication of another big case of criminal corruption. With this intention, I went to Lublin and I went to the Security Police there, but all they would tell me was that the events were supposed to have happened at a camp of the "Deutsche Ausrustungswerke." But nothing was known there. I was told it might possibly be a rather peculiar and "opaque" (this was the actual term used) camp in the vicinity of Lublin. I found out the camp and the commandant, who was Kriminalkommissar Wirth.

I asked Wirth whether this report was true and what it meant. To my great astonishment, Wirth admitted it. I asked him why he permitted members of his command to do such things and Wirth then revealed to me that on the Fuehrer's order he had to carry out the extermination of Jews.

Q. Please go on, witness, with what you did.

A. I asked Wirth what this had to do with the Jewish wedding. Then, Wirth described the method by which he carried out the extermination of Jews and he said something like this: "One has to fight the Jews with their own weapons, and one has to cheat them."

Wirth built up an enormous deceptive manoeuvre. He first selected Jews who would, he thought, serve as column leaders, then these Jews brought along other Jews, who worked under them. With those smaller or medium-sized detachments of Jews, he began to build up the extermination camps. He extended this staff, and with them, Wirth himself carried out the extermination.

Wirth said that he had four extermination camps, and that about 5,000 Jews were working at the extermination of Jews and the seizure of Jewish property. In order to win Jews for this business of extermination and plundering of their brethren of race and creed, Wirth gave them every freedom and, so to speak, gave them a financial interest in the spoliation of the dead victims. As a result of this attitude, this extraordinary Jewish wedding had come about.

Then I asked Wirth how he killed Jews with these Jewish agents of his. Wirth described the whole procedure that went off like a film every time. The extermination camps were in the East of the Government General, in big forests or uninhabited waste lands. They were built up like a Potemkin village. The people arriving there had the impression of entering a city or a township. The train drove into what looked like a railroad station. The escorts and the train personnel then left the area. Then the cars were opened and the Jews got out. They were surrounded by these Jewish labour detachments, and Kriminalkommissar Wirth or one of his representatives made a speech. He said: "Jews, you were brought here to be resettled, but before we organize this future Jewish State, you must of course learn how to work. You must learn a new occupation. You will be taught that here. Our routine here is, first, everyone must take off his clothes so that your clothing can be disinfected and you can have a bath so that no epidemics will be brought into the camp."

After he had found such calming words for his victims, they started on the road to death. Men and women were separated. At the first place, one had to give his hat; at the next one, his coat, collar, shirt, down to his shoes and socks. These places were set up like check-rooms, and the person was given a check at each one so that the people believed that they would get their things back. The other Jews had to receive the things and hurry up the new arrivals so that they would not have time to think. The whole thing was like an assembly line. At the last stop they reached a big room, and were told that this was the bath. When the last one was in, the doors were shut and the gas was let into the room.

As soon as death taken place in, the ventilators were started. When the air coup be breathed again, the doors were opened, and the Jewish workers removed the bodies. By means of a special process which Wirth had invented, they were burned in the open air without the use of fuel.

Q. Was Wirth a member of the SS?

A. No, he was a Kriminalkommissar in Stuttgart.

Q. Did you ask Wirth how he arrived at this devilish system?

A. When Wirth took over the extermination of the Jews, he was already specialist in mass destruction of human beings. He had previously carried out the task of getting rid of the incurably insane. On behalf of the Fuehrer himself, whose order was transmitted through the Chancellery of the Fuehrer, he had, the beginning of the war, set up a detachment for this purpose, probably composed of a few officials of his, I believe, the remainder being agents and spies of the criminal police.

Wirth very vividly described how he went about carrying out this assignment. He received no aid, no instructions, but had to do it all by himself. He was only given an old, empty institution in Brandenburg. There he undertook his first experiments. After much consideration and many individual experiments, he evolved his later system, and then this system was used on a large scale to exterminate the insane.

A commission of doctors previously investigated the files, and those insane who were considered to be incurable were put on a separate list. Then the institution one day was told to send these patients to another institution. From this institution the patient was transferred again, often more than once. Finally he came to Wirth's institution. There he was killed by gas and cremated.

This system which deceived the institutions and made them unknowing accomplices, this system which enabled him with very few assistants to exterminate large numbers of people, this system Wirth now employed with a few alterations and improvements for the extermination of Jews. He was also given the assignment by the Fuehrer's Chancellery to exterminate the Jews.

Q. The statements which Wirth made to you must have surpassed human imagination. Did you immediately believe Wirth?

A. At first Wirth's description seemed completely fantastic to me, but in Lublin I saw one of his camps. It was a camp which collected the property or part of the property of his victims. From the quantity - there were an enormous number of watches piled up - I had to realize that something frightful was going on here. I was shown the valuables. I can say that I never saw so much money at one time, especially foreign money - all kinds of coins, from all over the world. In addition, there were a gold-smelting furnace and really prodigious bars of gold.

I also saw that the headquarters from which Wirth directed his operations was very small and inconspicuous. He had only three or four people working there for him. I spoke to them too.

I saw and watched his couriers arrive. They actually came from Berlin, Tiergarten Strasse, the Fuehrer's Chancellery, and went back there. I investigated Wirth's mail, and I found in it confirmation of all this.

Of course, I could not do or see all this on this first visit. I was there frequently. I pursued Wirth up to his death.

Despite some understandable inaccuracies (e.g. the mention of ventilators), in general judge Morgen's account is corroborated by other evidence. The "four camps" were Aktion Reinhard(t) camps Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor and Lublin (Majdanek), just as in Hoefle's telegram (they could be said to have been Globocnik's camps, but Globocnik made Wirth an Inspekteur der SS-Sonderkommandos Aktion Reinhard). So why didn't the Ugly Voice mention this testimony? Ignorance or deception?

2) It has already been explained previously why Rajzman's incorrect descriptions of the methods of killing don't discredit him in the least - he wasn't a direct eyewitness.

The Ugly Voice often quotes Carlo Mattogno's books. In his (and Juergen Graf's) book about Treblinka the Ugly Voice should have been able to read the following excerpt from a testimony by Rajzman given on September 26, 1944:

Dr. Horonschitzki likewise had no admittance into the cabins, but of what was known to him, he told me the following: the people were driven in large parties into the cabins of the so-called 'baths.' These cabins were hermetically sealed. In the first period, the killing occurred by means of pumping out the air from the cabins; then one resorted to other methods - poisoning by chlorine gas and Cylon-gas. On the camp territory there was a special store of materials with a large amount (up to 15 tons) of so-called Chloren. Externally, Chloren was constituted of blocks white in color. Every day before my eyes, barrels of this Chloren were carried into the second division. I did not see containers with Cyclon, but rarely and periodically various crates arrived with the transports, which were taken over by the guard staff of the 2nd division without delay. The engines in the 'bath rooms' ran 24 hours without interruption. Whether poisoning by means of gas mist occurred, I have not heard.

This only underscores my point - neither Rajzman, nor Dr. Chorazycki had "admittance into the cabins". They made some incorrect conclusions from the incomplete information they had, but that doesn't mean that as eyewitnesses they were unreliable.

Rajzman's "gas mist" is probably a reference to steam chambers rumor. Note that Rajzman does not confirm it. Rajzman's mention of the engines, on the other hand, should be interepreted as a reference to the killing with the engine exhaust.

It is also significant that in his report of late August or early September 1944 Rajzman wrote to the commander of the Soviet 65th army (Dokumenty obvinyayut, Moscow, 1996, pp. 103, 104):

I am one of 10-12 persons who survived a Tremblinka [sic] camp no. 2. I worked in the camp from September, 1942 to August, 1943. In the camp there was a secret committee, which more or less registered everything that happened. In these 11 months about 1 million of people were brought in. For work, they had been told. Then they were undressed, suffocated in gas chambers, their corpses were burnt. These unfortunates' property was brought to Germany by train.
On August 2, 1943, seizing weapons, some of inmates liquidated the guards consisting of Germans and Vlasovites, set the camp on fire and escaped. During this about 800-900 persons died. 100-200 persons escaped. But in September, before the Red Army advanced, Germans caught and shot almost everybody. Of us 10-12 people survived.
I request to create a commission to investigate the activity of the "cultured" German people, and to proclaim around the world that they're such bandits.
S. Rajzman.

As you can see, he mentioned only the gas chambers.

3) I won't stop repeating that the Ugly Voice is a gross ignoramus. His ignorance really knows no bounds. Thus, for example, he picks on Rajzman for using the term "oven", because we know that there was no oven in the Treblinka "Lazarett".

Except many survivors use the terms "oven", "furnace" and "crematorium" to describe incineration pits and pyres. This is well-known, and the Ugly Voice should have been able to found examples in the sources he used (or should have used). Let's look at page 172 of Arad's book:

Leon Feldhendler wrote about the start of the cremation of the corpses in the camp [Sobibor - SR]:

In the first period, there was no crematorium. Then, out of the soil, blood and a bad odor of gas began to surface; terrible smells spread over the whole camp, penetrating everything. The water in Sobibor became rancid. This forced the Germans to build a crematorium. It was a large pit with a roaster above it. The bodies were thrown on the roaster. The fire was ignited from beneath, and petrol was poured on the corpses. The bones were crushed into ashes with hammers. ...

Page 175:

Yechiel Reichman, a member of the "burning group," [in Treblinka - SR] writes:

The SS "expert" on bodyburning ordered us to put women, particularly fat women, on the first layer on the grill, face down. The second layer could consist of whatever was brought—men, women, or children—and so on, layer on top of layer.... Then the "expert" ordered us to lay dry branches under the grill and to light them. Within a few minutes the fire would take so it was difficult to approach the crematorium from as far as 50 meters away.... [...]

Page 232:

[Treblinka inmate -SR] Strawczinski writes:

After supper [the orchestra] plays music in the tailor shop, the largest and nicest hall in the "ghetto." The sky over and around the camp is red from the fire burning in the tremendous oven that was built lately, and the wind brings the smells of flesh and charred bones. It is almost impossible to breathe outside.[...]

Babij Jar Sonderkommandos called their pyres "pechi", i.e. "furnaces", "ovens". Many more examples could be cited (including those mentioned in Mattogno and Graf's book), but here is the text from the very 1945 article by Rajzman which the UV cites:

The oven consisted of an enormous ditch with a concrete foundation and a grate made of rails. Under the grate a strong fire blazed continually, fed by some special fuel.

Again, stupidity or deception?

4) The Ugly Voice whines about the cattle cars, and, as Andrew noted, shows a model of an American cattle car. What a crock! Why doesn't he use the page about the deportation trains from the ARC website? He uses the site in other instances.

5) The Ugly Voice again finds testimonies about hundreds of people packed into small spaces unbelievable. Apparently, he didn't know about Charles Provan's experiment.

6) UV's points about Hoess are rather lame - of course, he simply misremembered the dates and confused the chronology. It has been known for a long time. In fact, there is a whole scholarly article about Hoess inadvertently "shifting" events a year earlier (with other examples cited) - Karin Orth's "Rudolf Höß und die "Endlösung der Judenfrage". Drei Argumente gegen deren Datierung auf den Sommer 1941", in Werkstatt Geschichte, Heft 18, 6 (1997), S. 45-57.

7) Finally, the Ugly Voice is all indignant about the accusations against Nazis who were killing children.

Unfortunately for the Ugly Voice, we have documentary evidence of this.

One such piece of evidence I have already cited earlier. Here's what police secretary Walter Mattner (from Vienna) was writing from Mogilev to his wife in October of 1941 (C. Browning, The Origins of the Final Solution, 2004, University of Nebraska Press, p. 298):

When the first truckload [of victims] arrived my hand was slightly trembling when shooting, but one gets used to this. When the tenth load arrived I was already aiming more calmly and shot securely at the many women, children, and infants. Considering that I too have two infants at home, with whom these hordes would do the same, if not ten times worse. The death we gave to them was a nice, quick death compared with the hellish torture of thousands upon thousands in the dungeons of the GPU. Infants were flying in a wide circle through the air and we shot them down still in flight, before they fell into the pit and into the water. Let's get rid of this scum that tossed all of Europe into the war and is still agitating in America. ... I am actually already looking forward, and many say here that after our return home, then it will be the turn of our own Jews. Well, I'm not allowed to tell you enough.

And here's an excerpt from the 1943 judgement by the SS and Police Supreme Court against SS-Unterstrumfuehrer Max Taeubner (Klee, Dressen, Riess, The Good Old Days, p. 197):

SS-Unterscharfuehrer Mueller, who did not belong to the accused's unit, but had his permission to take part in the execution, snatched children from their mothers. Then, holding them in his left hand, he shot them and threw them into the grave. The accused took him to task about this but nevertheless did not stop him.

This, by the way is the same verdict which contains these words (p. 201):

The accused shall not be punished because of the actions against the Jews as such. The Jews have to be exterminated and none of the Jews that were killed is any great loss. Although the accused should have recognized that the extermination of the Jews was the duty of Kommandos which were set up especially for this purpose, he should be excused for considering himself to have the authority to take part in the extermination of Jewry himself. Real hatred of the Jews was the driving motivation for the accused.

I have yet to see any denier explain these words away.

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