Monday, July 24, 2006

Bradley Smith's selective citation of Abraham Bomba on Treblinka

Thanks to the Ugly Voice Productions videos, deniers are playing up the supposed 'absurdity' of the testimony by Treblinka survivor Abraham Bomba given to Claude Lanzmann in the documentary film Shoah. Bomba was one of the barbers at the camp, assigned to cut women's (but not men's) hair so that it could be recycled for the German war effort. Sergey has already debunked part of the video's claims by presenting hard documentary evidence of the use of human hair.

But there is a more fundamental point to be made about the 'revisionist' reading of Bomba's testimony: as you can probably guess, deniers have blatantly misrepresented it.

Chief bone of contention is the supposed 'absurdity' of having 16 barbers, benches and naked women inside a small gas chamber. Yet none of the deniers who have tried to make hay of this have cited this line from the film transcript:

We worked inside the gas chamber for about a week or ten days. After that they decided that we will cut their hair in the undressing barrack.


Do you find this acknowledged anywhere in the original article by Bradley Smith about Bomba? Of course not. That might be too honest for them.

So it seems that yet again, deniers have created a strawman for them to 'debunk' and play up. Bomba was deported from Czestochowa some time at the end of September 1942, and claims to have been picked out to work as a barber a month after arrival. The timing is also important, because it would seem that at the peak phase of Treblinka's activity, in August 1942, nobody was cutting hair. As the quote above proves, Bomba claimed that hair-cutting inside the gas chambers went on for only 7 to 10 days. The reasons are obvious: too little space, too much of a bottleneck, much more logical to carry out the shearing inside the undressing barracks. Indeed, all other testimonies and memoirs relating to the cutting of hair at Treblinka state that the barbers worked in the undressing barracks; for example, in the memoir of Richard Glazar, Trap With A Green Fence.

So,'revisionists'are busted once again engaging in quote mining and selective citation. Next time you come across a denier troll mouthing off about Bomba, do remind them of this.

Update: see this for more on Bomba.

Thursday, July 13, 2006

Open-Air Cremations in Auschwitz, August 1943

Among the many denier favourites regarding Auschwitz-Birkenau, nothing quite excites them as much as discussing the technical infeasibility of cremating so many bodies. That their arguments, mostly drawn from arch-guru Carlo Mattogno, turn out not to stand up on closer examination is, of course, no surprise. John Zimmerman's essay 'Body Disposal At Auschwitz' pointed out the most egregious flaws, and there are others that this blog will return to.

Not least among the flaws in denier arguments is the wilful refusal to acknowledge the copious evidence of open-air cremations, starting in the autumn of 1942 through to the activation of the four new-generation crematoria in the spring of 1943, and resuming in the spring of 1944 during the Hungarian action. Indeed, Carlo Mattogno's comic-book Auschwitz: Open Air Incinerations concentrates solely on the later, 1944, phase of the open-air pits, essentially ignoring the earlier phase.

A chance discovery in one of the standard works on Auschwitz, however, has revealed that there were also additional open-air cremations during the summer of 1943, long after the new crematoria were activated.

Read more...



The possibility that the open-air pits may have been in use during 1943 came up recently during a discussion of the Pegov and Pet'ko statements discovered by Sergey, which took place on Axis History Forum. Our initial confusion about the date of the escape of the two Soviet prisoners of war, since resolved, caused some to wonder if in fact Pegov and Pet'ko were not referring to an earlier phase. As it happens, the two POWs were present during the first phase of the Hungarian Action, so must be counted as (indirect) witnesses to the 1944 open-air pits.

However, while reading through Franciszek Piper's Die Zahl der Opfer von Auschwitz, I came across the following citation on p.77, taken by Piper from reports of the Polish Delegatura, i.e. the shadow government under Nazi occupation:
"Der Massenmord an den Juden geht weiter - vor allem Frauen .... Waehrend der Vergasung von 30 000 Juden aus dem Dabrowa-Gebiet kamen die Krematorien nicht mit dem Verbrennen der Leichen nach, so dass sie auf Scheiterhaufen verbrannt wurden, und die Kinder wurden lebendig ins Feuer geworfen"

Translation:
The mass murder of the Jews continues - women above all. During the gassing of 30,000 Jews from the Dabrowa region, the crematoria could not keep up with the burning of the bodies, so that they were burned on pyres and the children were thrown alive into the fire.

Piper cites the 1968 Polish publication Oboz koncentracyjny Oswiecim w swietle akt Delegatury, p.142, so there is no case to argue that this citation has been dredged up to counter 'revisionist' contentions. It is, in fact, 38 years old in its published form.

The reference to the Dabrowa region is crystal clear: it dates the respective action to the first week of August 1943, when the ghettos at Sosnowiec (Sosnowitz) and Bedzin (Bendsburg) were emptied. Piper additionally cites published reports of the Police President in Breslau to confirm the number of deportees (Bericht des Polizeipraesidenten von Sosnowitz an den IdO Breslau, 7.8.43, in Biuletyn ZIH, Nr 43-44, 1962, S-113-116). In all, 30,000 Polish Jews were deported from the Regierungsbezirk Kattowitz, also known as Upper East Silesia (Ostoberschlesien) to Auschwitz. Perhaps aware that these documents exist, not even Mattogno tries to dispute the fact that this many were deported to Auschwitz from these towns at that time.

From my own list of Sondertransporte abstracted from Danuta Czech's Auschwitz Kalendarium [large PDFs in Italian], the following transports arrived at Birkenau in the first week of August 1943:

1.8.43 Bendsburg 2000 Jews (1611 gassed)
1.8.43 Bendsburg 2000 Jews (1530 gassed)
1.8.43 Bendsburg 2000 Jews (1548 gassed)
1.8.43 Sosnowitz 2000 Jews (1582 gassed)
1.8.43 Sosnowitz 2000 Jews (1552 gassed)
2.8.43 Malignes (21. tpt) 1553 Jews (1087 gassed)
2.8.43 Drancy (58. tpt) 1000 Jews (727 gassed)
2.8.43 Sosnowitz 2000 Jews (1615 gassed)
3.8.43 Sosnowitz 3000 Jews (2148 gassed)
3.8.43 Sosnowitz 3000 Jews (2346 gassed)
3.8.43 Sosnowitz 3000 Jews (2234 gassed)
3.8.43 Berlin 200 Jews (all gassed)
5.8.43 Berlin 100 Jews (selected with Sosnowitz tpt)
5.8.43 Sosnowitz 3000 Jews ( 2686 gassed)
5.8.43 Sosnowitz 1000 Jews (974 gassed)
5.8.43 Dresden 125 Jews (all gassed)
6.8.43 Sosnowitz 3000 Jews (2514 gassed)

In this instance, the figures really do begin to exceed the theoretical capacity of the four new Topf crematoria (nominally, 4,756 bodies per day). On August 1st, five transports arrived, from which 7,823 people were not registered and were gassed. That might have been manageable, had all four crematoria been in working order, and had there been no further transports for the subsequent few days.

Yet the transports continued to roll in from Ostoberschlesien. For the succeeding five days, the following breakdown can be calculated: August 2nd, 3429, August 3rd, 6928, August 5th, 3785, August 6th, 2514, for a total of 24,479. In the whole of August 1943, 50,960 Jews arrived on Sondertransporte, of whom 13,537 were selected for labour and registered, while 37,243 were gassed or had died in transit. Nearly two-thirds of all unregistered gassing victims in an entire month were killed in just six days.

The potential bottleneck was exacerbated by the fact that of the four new crematoria, at least two and possibly three were most likely out of action during the first week of August 1943. According to Rudolf Hoess, whose comments are cited by Pressac:
“Number III [Kr IV] failed completely after a short time and later ceased to be used altogether."

Krema IV was activated on June 25, so very likely was out of action by August 1.
"Number IV [Kr 5] had to be repeatedly shut down, since after its fires had been burning for from four to six weeks, the ovens or the chimneys burnt out. The gassed bodies were mostly burnt in pits behind crematorium IV [Kr V]”

Krema V was activated on June 26, which places the first week of August almost precisely in the middle of the 'four to six weeks later'. Indeed, the final failure may have been the direct result of the overstrain in the first six days of August.

We are further told from other sources that Krema II, the showpiece, was also out of action at this time. Modifying an old Nizkor calculation, it would seem that by the end of the first week of August, no more than 2,000 bodies could have been cremated each day, accepting the Topf calculations as accurate. This would not have posed a bottleneck for the subsequent 24 days of the month, since not more than 2,000 deportees were gassed on any subsequent day, while the downtime in between arriving transports sufficed to cremate the death toll among registered inmates, which ran to at least 2,380 deaths reported to the WVHA, though unreported deaths, especially among the Jewish inmates, would have made this number somewhat higher.

Taking all the above considerations into account, somewhere around 12,000 gassing victims killed in the first six days of August 1943 were most probably cremated on the reactivated open-air pits at that time.

Ah, you might say, but the underground report is hearsay. Yet we also have Hoess's own testimony, which I quote again:
"Number IV [Kr 5] had to be repeatedly shut down, since after its fires had been burning for from four to six weeks, the ovens or the chimneys burnt out. The gassed bodies were mostly burnt in pits behind crematorium IV [Kr V]”

In his magnum opus, Pressac reinterpreted this as a reference to the resumption of open-air cremation during the Hungarian Action; in fact, it should now be read as also referring to the earlier, August 1943 stop-gap use of the open-air pits. Both common sense as well as the underground report corroborate this interpretation.

A re-examination of SS and Sonderkommando testimonies may yet reveal further corroboration to this, though it is more likely to come from the SS than the SKs, since of the 58 known survivors of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Sonderkommandos, the majority arrived only in the spring of 1944.

That there were additional open-air cremations in 1943 only further undermines the contentions of deniers regarding the supposed 'impossibility' of such large-scale cremations in the four new crematoria. A subject to which future posts on this blog will, of course, return.

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Blame it on the Germans …

… or add another faked document to Sergey’s list of forgeries that those oh-so-critical "Revisionists" uncritically fall for.

Monday, July 10, 2006

Polish investigations of the Treblinka killing site were a complete failure …

… in what concerns evidence to the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of people.

Or so "Revisionist" guru Carlo Mattogno would like his readers to believe.

Read more!


On page 89 and following of the screed headed "Treblinka Extermination Camp or Transit Camp", which is co-authored by Mattogno and his fellow “Revisionist” guru Jürgen Graf and can be downloaded online, one reads the following:

Even the investigations performed by Lukaszkiewicz proved to be a complete failure in terms of this central question. He arranged excavation at a quite definite spot in the camp where, according to the witness S. Rajzman, a mass grave was located, but discovered nothing of the kind. He had trenches dug, 10-15 m long and 1.5 m deep, at the places where, according to witnesses, the two alleged buildings for gassing had stood, yet merely encountered "undisturbed layers of earth." To be sure, he did find skulls, but without wounds from shooting. All the evidence examined by him (coins, documents, rags, containers, remnants of various objects) show merely that there was a camp at that place, and the human remains as well as the ashes prove only that bodies were buried or cremated in the camp. Nothing produced even the trace of evidence for a mass murder, to say nothing of such a crime committed against several hundred thousandpeople.


Now let’s have a look at the reports of those supposedly failed investigations, which Mattogno did us the favor to have translated from Polish and transcribed on pages 84 ff of his book:

For the purpose of performing an official investigation of the scene of the crime, Judge Lukaszkiewicz had gone to Treblinka. As he later explained, he acted206 "[…] at the request of the State Prosecutor of the District Court in Siedlce of September 24, 1945, further induced by a letter of September 18, 1945, of the Main Commission for the Investigation of the German Murders in Poland."
After bidding farewell to the visitors, Lukaszkiewicz set to work with a group of workers. Between November 9 and 13, he undertook a thorough examination of the grounds as well as a series of excavations. Afterwards he composed an official protocol, which we reproduce in full in view of its significance:207
"Protocol of the tasks performed on the grounds of the death camp Treblinka, which forms the object of the judicial examination.
From November 9 to 13, 1945, the examining magistrate of Siedlce, Z. Łukaszkiewicz, together with the State Attorney for the District Court of Siedlce, J. Maciejewski, performed the following tasks on the camp grounds:
November 9, 1945
Excavations were begun on the grounds using the services of 20 workers who had been mustered by the village administration for carrying out roadwork. The excavations began at the location described by the witness Rajzman on November 6, where the so-called ‘camp hospital’ had stood and where, according to the witness, a mass grave is supposed to exist.
Since a bomb crater 4 to 5-meter deep is present at the said location – two bombs still lie at a slight distance from this crater – the digging was begun in this crater. In the course of this work numerous Polish, as well as Russian, German, Austrian, and Czech coins as well as broken pieces of various kinds of containers were discovered. At the end of the work, at approximately 3 pm, at a depth of 6 meters, we encountered a layer which had not been reached previously. There were no human remains found.
November 10, 1945
The work was continued, with 36 workers assigned who had been commandeered for roadwork. At a depth of 6 meters begins a layer which has never before been uncovered by anyone. It consists partly of all sorts of kitchen utensils and different kinds of household objects; there are also pieces of clothing. At a depth of 7 meters, we reached the floor of the pit – a layer of yellow sand which is not mixed with gravel. By means of expansion of the excavation we succeeded in determining the shape of the pit. It has sloping walls, and the bottom measures about 1.5 meters [sic!]. The pit was presumably excavated with an excavator. During the course of the excavations, numerous more or less badly damaged Polish documents were discovered, further a badly damaged personal identity card of a German Jew, as well as several more coins: Polish, German, Russian, Belgian, and even American. After we had made certain that this pit, filled with broken pieces of the containers mentioned, ran in a north-south direction on the grounds of the camp area – 2 meters more [in a northerly direction] had been excavated – the workers started work at this location.
November 11, 1945
A series of test excavations were performed at the place where the [gas] chambers had to have been located, in order to find their foundation walls if possible. Pits 10 - 15 meters in length and 1.5 meters deep were dug. Undisturbed layers of earth were uncovered by this.
The largest of the craters produced by explosions (numerous fragments attest to the fact that these explosions were set off by bombs), which is at maximum 6 meters deep and has a diameter of about 25 meters – its walls give recognizable evidence of the presence of a large quantity of ashes as well as human remains – was further excavated in order to discover the depth of the pit in this part of the camp. Numerous human remains were found by these excavations, partially still in a state of decomposition.[208] The soil consists of ashes interspersed with sand, is of a dark gray color and granulous in form. During the excavations, the soil gave off an intense odor of burning and decay. At a depth of 7.5 meters the bottom was reached, which consisted of layers of unmixed sand. At this point the digging was stopped here.
November 13, 1945
With the assistance of 30 workers employed for roadwork, the opening of a pit was begun – a site where refuse was deposited in the northeastern section of the camp. In this location, as the workers from the nearby hamlets explained, a very large number of documents were found up till now. Work was begun at this location where the people [of that area] had dug a three-meter-deep pit in a search for gold. During the course of the digging, broken pieces of all sorts of kitchen containers as well as a large number of rags were continually found. Aside from the coins discovered so far, Greek, Slovakian, and French ones were found, as well as documents in Hebrew and Polish and remnants of a Soviet passport. At a depth of 5 meters the work was stopped due to the steadily worsening weather conditions.
The Examining Judge The State Attorney
Lukaszkiewicz Maciejewski
Decision:
The Examining Judge of Siedlce, on November 13, 1945, rules in consideration of the fact that with great probability no mass graves are any longer to be found on the grounds of the former camp today, as is to be concluded from the witness testimonies examined so far and from the results of the works carried out at the site, and in consideration of the oncoming autumn, the present rainfall and the necessity of a rapid conclusion of the judicial preliminary investigations, in view of all these facts to stop the work on the territory of the former death camp Treblinka.
The Examining Judge
Lukaszkiewicz."

On December 29, 1945, after the conclusion of his preliminary investigations, Lukaszkiewicz issued a protocol with 14 paragraphs, which – as already mentioned – was presented by the Soviets at the Nuremberg Trial as Document USSR-344. In the third paragraph, which bears the title "Current condition of the camp terrain", it says the following:209
"With the assistance of an expert land surveyor and witnesses, I made an exact inspection of the terrain. According to the measurements, the area of the camp is approximately 13.45 hectares and had the shape of an irregular quadrilateral. No remnants of facilities of the former death camp exist any longer. The only things that remain of the structures are: a ditch with remains of burned wooden poles protruding up, which lead into the cellar, wall bricks from the foundations of the camp’s domestic economics building and the site of the well. Here and there one finds traces of the burned-out wooden poles of the fence and remains of barbed wire. There are also some sections of paved walks that remain. Nonetheless, there are still other traces that hint at the existence and functions of the camp. In the northwestern section of the area, the surface is covered for about 2 hectares by a mixture of ashes and sand. In this mixture, one finds countless human bones, often still covered with tissue remains, which are in a condition of decomposition. During the inspection, which I made with the assistance of an expert in forensic medicine, it was determined that the ashes are without any doubt of human origin (remains of cremated human bones). The examination of human skulls could discover no trace of« wounding. At a distance of some 100 m, there is now an unpleasant odor of burning and decay. In the southwestern direction, a portion of the camp terrain is covered by aluminum – enamel – glass and porcelain dishes – kitchen utensils – hand luggage – rucksacks – pieces of clothing, etc. There are innumerable holes and craters on the property."
Lukaszkiewicz summarized the investigations carried out a month earlier at that location as follows:210
"During the work on the terrain, I found no mass graves, which, in connection with the statements by the witnesses Romanowski and Wiernik, leads to the conclusion that nearly all of the bodies of the victims were burned, all the more so since the camp was liquidated early and the murderers had much time. The ground of the camp was ploughed and sown. Ukrainians were settled there, who fled before the arrival of the Red Army (witnesses Kucharek and Lopuszyński)."


The passages I bolded in the above quote make me wonder if Mattogno did not, to put it politely, forget some very important results of these investigations when proclaiming them to have been a failure. For the Polish investigators found an area of ca. 2 ha = 20,000 square meters covered by "a mixture of ashes and sand", the mixture containing "countless human bones, often still covered with tissue remains, which are in a condition of decomposition".

Mattogno’s silly speculations about Soviet manipulations of evidence aside, where could these human ashes and bones covering an area of 20,000 square meters reasonably have come from, other than from underneath that area, from where they were brought to the surface by the activity of robbery diggers looking for valuables left behind by the murdered Jews?

And what do these traces covering said area tell us, especially if coupled with the fact that – as is mentioned in the 11 November 1945 entry of the Protocol of the tasks performed on the grounds of the death camp Treblinka, which forms the object of the judicial examination, signed by Examining Judge Lukaszkiewicz and State Attorney Maciejewski – human remains were found in that area to a depth of 7.5 meters?

The likeliest conclusion is that this area of 20,000 square meters was the mass graves area, or one of the mass graves areas, of the "death camp" sector of Treblinka extermination camp, and that 7.5 meters was the depth, or the minimum depth (there are eyewitness testimonies mentioning graves 10 meters deep, and the modifications of the area’s surface by first the killers’ attempts to hide the traces of their crimes and then by robbery digs suggest the possibility of some difficulty in accurately determining the original depth) of the grave pits in that area.

Why did Mattogno not address these data? The apparent reason is that these data suggest that, contrary to what Mattogno tries to sell his readers, there was enough room in the killing area of Treblinka extermination camp to bury the bodies of at least the 713,555 Jews who, according to report sent by SS-Sturmbannführer Höfle in Lublin on 11 January 1943 to Obersturmbannführer Heim in Krakow, were delivered at Treblinka until 31.12.1942. For if on this area of ca. 20.000 square meters

• there were only ten graves with the measurements 50 x 25 meters, or a smaller number of larger graves covering an equivalent area, still leaving 7,500 square meters to enable movement in between the graves,

• each of these graves was only 7.5 meters deep, and

• no more than 8 bodies per cubic meter (a density considered possible by Mattogno, which seems rather conservative considering the calculations of Alex Bay and the experiment of Charles Provan, mentioned in my article on episodes 11 and 12 of the Ugly Voice Productions video) were buried in these mass graves,

the capacity of said graves was 50 x 25 x 10 x 7,5 = 93,750 cubic meters or 93,750 x 8 = 750,000 human bodies.

Of course this is a simplified calculation, which does not consider the presumable sloping of the mass graves and the thin layers of sand or quicklime that were scattered in between or above the bodies on the one hand and the volume reduction of the bodies in the lower layers due to the effect of decomposition and/or quicklime on the other (after all the bodies were not all thrown into the graves at the same time, and those in the lower layers can be expected to have considerably shrunk due to decomposition and/or quicklime by the time those in the upper layers were added, as was also pointed out in Section 4.1 of my article Carlo Mattogno on Belzec Archaeological Research ).

But I think it sufficient to show how Carlo Mattogno, though less shy than other "Revisionists" to show evidence that goes against his articles of faith, only sees or addresses those parts of such evidence that said articles of faith allow him to see or address.

In keeping with this tendency is Mattogno’s interest in the bomb craters mentioned by Examining Judge Lukaszkiewicz, around which Mattogno constructs the following funny conspiracy theory (pages 92/93):

Yet this is not the end of the curious aspects. Lukaszkiewicz found several bomb craters on the camp grounds and even two unexploded bombs. The largest crater was 6 m deep and possessed a diameter of approximately 25 m. Therefore the camp must have been bombed, and most surely not through an error. The Germans, who according to official historiography had wiped away all the traces of their crimes by dismantling the barracks, tearing down the walled structures, leveling, plowing the terrain and planting it with lupines, would have had no interest in bombing the camp, for in the first place there was nothing left to destroy, and in the second place, the craters produced by the bombs would have rendered visible the traces of the alleged mass murders.
From an aerial image of the camp Treblinka II taken in November 1944, it is
further revealed that the camp at that time – therefore after the area was taken by the Red Army – had not yet been bombed.219
Thus, the bombardment must have been caused by the Soviets. But the camp Treblinka had already been liquidated in November 1943, and there were no military targets in its direct vicinity. Treblinka I, which was still in operation in May 1944, was not bombed. Why, therefore, did the Soviets drop bombs on Treblinka II? Perhaps in order to obliterate the many traces left behind by the SS, traces which could in no way be made compatible with the thesis of mass extermination, and to lay false tracks that seemed to confirm this thesis?228


One wonders what "false tracks" those manipulating Soviets of Mattogno’s fantasies could possibly have expected to lay by bombing an area which the SS had made all efforts to give the look of innocuous agricultural or forest land, and how they could possibly have expected to lay such "false tracks" by bombing the area unless the human remains later found by Lukaszkiewicz, over an area of 20,000 square meters and to a depth of 7,5 meters (the excavation work having been made much easier by the presence of a bomb crater 6 meters deep, in which the Polish investigators only had to dig a little further «in order to discover the depth of the pit in this part of the camp», see the above-mentioned entry of 11 November 1945 in the Protocol of the tasks performed on the grounds of the death camp Treblinka, which forms the object of the judicial examination) were already there when the bombs fell. For I hope for Mattogno that he’s not trying to tell us that bombardment could have displaced human remains (especially in such amounts that they would cover an area of 20,000 square meters and saturate a pit 7.5 meters deep) from the comparatively tiny mass graves of the Treblinka I labor camp, which was somewhat removed from the Treblinka II extermination camp, to any part of the Treblinka II extermination camp.

One also wonders why Mattogno didn’t consider the much likelier possibility that these bomb craters resulted from the activity of robbery diggers, who may, for instance, have obtained such devices from a corrupt Soviet commander’s stock or even included members of Soviet artillery or engineer units who themselves took part in the "Treblinka gold rush", equipped with the necessary hardware to make big holes and thus facilitate the search for valuables presumed to have been left behind by the victims of Treblinka. The use of bombs by robbery diggers was actually mentioned expressly by Rachel Auerbach, who is quoted in this sense on pages 379/380 of Yitzhak Arad’s book Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. The Operation Reinhard Death Camps :

Rachel Auerbach, who visited Treblinka on November 7, 1945, as part of a delegation of the Polish State Committee for the Investigation of Nazi War Crimes on Polish Soil, described what she saw:

Masses of all kinds of pilferers and robbers with spades and shovels in their hands were there digging and searching and raking and straining in the sand. They removed decaying limbs from the dust [and] bones and garbage that were thrown there. Would they not come upon even one hard coin or at least one gold tooth? They even dragged shells and blind bombs there, those hyenas and jackals in the disguise of man. They placed several together, set them off [my emphasis – RM], and giant pits were dug in the desecrated ground saturated by the blood and the ashes of burned Jews ...

Scenes of this kind took also place in the fields of Belzec and Sobibor. The search for treasures continued. The area was dug up again and again, and each section of the land was checked thoroughly by local people and people from afar who tried their luck. These acts ceased only when the Polish government decided to turn the camp areas into national memorial sites.


On pages 83/84 of his book, Mattogno quotes, from Rachel Auerbach’s report translated into English under the title In the Fields of Treblinka, excerpts containing Auerbach’s description of the Treblinka site as found during a site inspection carried out on 6 November 1945. A part of this description is omitted, as signaled by […] at the end of page 83, and in the second sentence of the following section, on page 84 of Mattogno’s book, the reader is surprised by the sudden reference to «The bombs» that «had revealed the contents of the desecrated soil». These bombs had obviously been mentioned by the author before, but nowhere in the quoted text on page 83 is there a reference to them.

So could it be that the first reference to these bombs is contained in aforementioned part omitted by Mattogno, in which these bombs are expressly linked to the activity of robbery diggers?

If so, Mattogno has purposefully withheld from his readers information contradicting his pet theory of the Soviet bombardment. This would be another example of "Revisionist" intellectual (dis)honesty at its finest.

So much for now, and in case some anonymous "truth seeker" wants to tell me that these are apparently the only "mistakes" I have found in a book 371 pages long, I would like to make the following very clear: I have so far just had a brief look at Mattogno’s screed and picked out some of the claims that caught my attention. Yet even what I have seen so far shows that these are just a few of the whoppers that will make Mattogno’s Treblinka book a gratifying subject for further blog articles.

Sunday, July 09, 2006

Documents about the murderous purpose of SK Lange

In addition to Roberto's posting about Arthur Greiser's letter [NO-246], I should note that there is a whole series of documents dealing with "special treatment" of tubercular Poles.

One of the more interesting documents is Wilhelm Koppe's letter to Karl Brandt of 02.05.42 [NO-247]. As the only possible solution to the problem of Poles incurably ill with tuberculosis, it recommends that they be:
... admitted to the detachment (Kommando) Lange for special treatment (Sonderbehandlung).
(You may remember the expression "zur Sonderbehandlung zugefuehrt" from this posting.)

From further correspondence we learn that Himmler granted permission to subject tubercular Poles to Sonderbehandlung (see his letter of 27.06.42 [NO-244]) and that Chief of Security Police and SD had no scruples about Sonderbehandlung of incurable Poles [NO-245]. In a reply to Himmler's permission to specially treat the incurable Poles, Greiser says that it is not necessary to inform Hitler, since the latter had given him permission to do as he sees fit [NO-249]. Attached to this reply is a letter from Dr. Kurt Blome with objections to Sonderbehandlung of the incurably ill Poles [NO-250]. Blome lists two other alternatives - isolation of seriously ill persons, and creation of reservation for all TB patients. It was Blome who wanted Hitler to give explicit permission for this "radical procedure" of Sonderbehandlung, if it was necessary after all:
I could imagine that the Fuehrer, having some time ago stopped the program in the insane asylums, might at this moment consider a "special treatment" of the incurably sick as unsuitable and irresponsible from a political point of view. As regards the Euthanasia Program it was a question of people of German nationality afflicted with hereditary diseases. Now it is a question of infected sick people of a subjugated nation.
Blome then warned that this action couldn't be made secret, as they knew from experience with the "euthanasia" action. He was worried that the news of this action would be used in enemy propaganda.

Himmler was impressed by Dr. Blome's arguments. In a subsequent letter he withdrew his permission and asked to search for another way to proceed [NO-251].

It seems, however, that at least 2,000 tubercular Poles were "sonderbehandelt", as follows from Greiser's 27.06.42 letter to Brandt [NO-252].

From this set of documents it inevitably follows that in this case "Sonderbehandlung" was murder, that Sonderkommando Lange was used to perform this "Sonderbehandlung", that at one time there were plans to use Sonderkommando Lange to murder tens of thousands of incurably ill Poles, and that Sonderkommando Lange had already been used for "Sonderbehandlung" of at least 100,000 Jews in Warthegau.

And indeed, we know from many other sources that Herbert Lange's Sonderkommando was engaged in murder of Jews and incurably sick persons in Chelmno and other places [cf. also NO-2908; NO-2909].

Saturday, July 08, 2006

Holocaust "revisionism" and forgeries

"Revisionists" are fond of dismissing the documents they don't like as forgeries, under flimsiest pretenses. Yet do they fall for forgeries themselves? The answer is an emphatic "Yes!".

One of the most famous forgeries related to "revisionism" is the so-called Mueller document, also known as the Lachout document. For details about this fake see "The Lachout Document. Anatomy of a Forgery". Emil Lachout testified as a witness for the defence at the Zuendel trial in 1988.

The second forgery is the so-called Tagesbefehl-47 and it concerns the number of victims of the Dresden bombing. While it is not directly related to the Holocaust, the famous "revisionist" David Irving relied on it. And after him, many deniers relied on the bogus Dresden death toll, contained in this "document". In fact, deniers shamelessly embellish the death toll even further:
Zundelsite:

Once again, the German death tolls are downplayed - in contrast to eternal Jewish victimhood. The real number of victims in Dresden alone were in excess of 350,000, possibly as high as 500,000! This in one German city alone!
More than 260.000 bodies and residues of bodies were counted. But those who perished in the centre of the city can't be traced. Appr. 500.000 children, women, the elderly, wounded soldiers and the animals of the zoo were murdered in one night.
The true established number is actually 25,000.

Of course, the very next moment after they have spouted these lies, deniers turn around and criticize the exaggerated extermination camps death tolls, implying that their revision downwards indicates that "we've been lied to", and that no current Nazi death toll can be trusted. Of course, by the same logic Dresden bombing never happened.

It is notable that, like with the fake Hitler's diaries, Irving at first doubted the authenticity of TB47, and then accepted it.

The third forgery is in a report by "revisionist" Myroslaw Dragan concerning the Demjanyuk's ID card (namely, the stamp on that card, falsified by Dragan). While kudos should go to "revisionist" Prytulak for exposing this forgery (though at the same time he branded Demjyanuk's authentic ID card a forgery too; but that will be discussed later), it should be noted that Dragan is quite a well-known personage on a "revisionist" scene.

The whole array of forgeries was made by Gregory Douglas aka Peter Stahl. Some of them concern the Holocaust. Douglas forged a letter from Heinrich Himmler to Oswald Pohl, "proving" that Hitler was unaware of the "Final Solution". He also forged some documents about Odilo Globocnik. Douglas himself is a "revisionist". And he is accepted by the leading "revisionist" Germar Rudolf, and also by Willis Carto (or at least he was, until recently).

Ironically, Rudolf also relied on Dragan in at least one article and thanked him in his Report. Not surprisingly, Rudolf also defends Emil Lachout and also thanks him in his Report.

When Douglas' forged "letter of Ischinger" was exposed as a fake, Rudolf defended Douglas thus:
[S]trictly seen, [this document] isn't even a forgery. It is just an essay, like Orson Wells 1938s play "War of the World" ... I think this is really funny. ... What a joke! Who ever did that should become king of jesters!
Such is "Dr." Rudolf's attitude to truthfulness. Notably, the fake report is still presented as authentic on Douglas' site "TBRNews.org".

On the same site we see this article by "Dr." Germar Rudolf, apparently based on Douglas' fakes. In fact, there are many articles with Rudolf's byline on Douglas' site, including this one about Talmud. [Rudolf later clarified that he did not write those, so it's a double fake. 13.05.2017]

And the last fraudulent "document" I wish to discuss, relied on mostly by the "revisionists" of antisemitic bend, is Stuart Kahan's The Wolf of the Kremlin, the fabricated "biography" of Lazar Kaganovich. Who has been taken in? Pierce, Oliver, Rimland (and, presumably, Zuendel), Hoffman, Irving, Heddesheimer and, without doubt, many others (including a non-denier, but certainly a sympathizer Kevin MacDonald).

It is also highly ironic that in the very first issue of the Journal for Historical Review the fake "Tartakow report" was published.

So, next time when a "revisionist" will whine about "Holoforgeries", remember about this list.

Friday, July 07, 2006

Learn English, "Claudia"!

At the Cesspit we see yet another ignorant neo-Nazi posing as an expert. It is a German denier "ClaudiaRothenbach" (don't assume that it is a female).

"She" writes:
In his affidavit for the trial of Irving against Deborah Lipstadt Dr. Green, the chemist, cites Mazal. As Green writes in a footnote:
Mr. Mazal is the President of the Holocaust History Project and has conducted onsite forensic investigations of Auschwitz.
Now let us read what Mr. Mazal writes:
As may be observed in the eight photographs above, penetration of Prussian Blue into either the wall material inside of the building, or the bricks on the exterior, is minimal, corroborating previous reports. It is possible that very porous materials such as plaster might permit a slightly greater penetration of the stain, but not to the degree claimed, without proof, by Holocaust deniers.
This guy (he is OBE *) tells us that Prussian Blue only moves minimal in wall material. And Dr. Green (chemist and expert) cites Mazal without commenting this bullshit.

Prussian Blue is solid and one of least soluble substances in the universe. So it does not move at all - least at all in wall material.

"Holocaust deniers" know that ant they won't prove that "very porous materials such as plaster might permit a slightly greater penetration of the stain". Never.

I ask again: Where did brainless Green purchase his "Dr. of Chemistry"?
Now, to every person who has both a basic knowledge of English and a brain, it is clear that Mr. Mazal is talking about the depth of the stain. Nowhere he wrote or implied that Prussian Blue somehow "moved".

So is "revisionism" a product of stupidity coupled with the language barrier?

Anyway, down the thread the Cesspit pond life claims that Mr. Mazal is "less than honest" for not accepting an unproven denier claim that HCN can somehow penetrate the wall. Of course, as usual, deniers ignore Mr. Mazal's observations on Prussian Blue in Auschwitz:
There is an as-yet unsolved mystery of how Prussian Blue made its way through apparently solid brick walls leaving it's tell-tale blue stains on the exterior of both bath and delousing chambers in BIa and BIb in Birkenau.
In a still unpublished report, Mr. Mazal gives more details about this mystery. Namely: how did HCN get from the delousing chamber and across several meters onto the inner and even outer walls? For example, the second photo of Germar Rudolf in that thread was not taken in a gas chamber. This wall is separated from the gas-tight door of the delousing chamber by 5.2 meters of space and (partially) by walls of a small room (the walls which don't exhibit Prussian blue staining, by the way). How did that happen? We don't know, but HCN-soaked mattresses might be the answer. Deniers surely have not offered any alternative explanation. So why do the Cesspit nitwits scoff at Mr. Mazal's explanation, without offering any of their own?

Because they are dishonest.

PS: liar "Claudia" (see the comments) doesn't stop. E.g. "she" writes:
What this "expert" wants to tell us is that "penetration" has nothing to do with "move".
Of course, I never wrote such a thing.

PPS: And some pond scum projects:
I already got the impression those Holocaustians like to play with words. This way they can avoid dealing with hard facts. They live in their own world and get gullible others into believing in it.
Of course, it is "Claudia" who plays semantic games, all the while knowing that Mr. Mazal wrote nothing about "moving" Prussian Blue. And of course it is deniers who won't address the point raised above.

Why deniers are generally despised

Here's why.

Thursday, July 06, 2006

Steven Plaut Eats Words, Pays Out $20,000

I don't know how this one slipped under my radar, but here goes...

About three weeks ago, Haifa University professor Steven Plaut was found guilty of committing libel against Professor Neve Gordon of Ben-Gurion University.

OK, whatever. A libel suit half way around the world (from me, anyway -- the other three guys on this blog are considerably closer). So why is this relevant to this blog?

Because Plaut had called Gordon, among other things, a Holocaust denier, which he decidedly is not. He also called him a "fanatic anti-Semite" and a "Nazi wannabe," but Gordon said he decided to sue Plaut when the denier smear came back at him. Thus the relevance.

"Once someone is labeled as a Holocaust denier that person becomes illegitimate, and rightly so," Gordon said. "Israeli society tolerates a relatively wide range of political views and that is why Plaut had to resort to this Holocaust mechanism to try to shut me down."

He's right, of course. Oh, and by the by, Gordon is also a disabled Israeli combat veteran.

So why would Plaut say such inflammatory things? Well, for one thing, he's a robo-Zionist who is violently opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state. In Plaut's world, any person who supports a Palestinian state must be an anti-Semite, and any Jew who does so must be self-loathing. Gordon had struck up a friendship with anti-Israel shill Norman Finkelstein and had been a very visible supporter of Yasir Arafat, which, granted, doesn't say much for Gordon's choice of friends and acquaintances, and this apparently was enough guilt by association to earn Gordon a reaming from Plaut.

Now Plaut et al. on the right are attacking Gordon for filing his suit in Nazareth, Israel's largest Arab city, in hoping to get an Arab judge, which he got. And she ruled well, in my opinion, as cultivating a reputation for your enemies as Holocaust deniers when they are not is beyond the pale -- something no one should ever do. That a Jew did this to another Jew makes it all the more disgusting.

If I could ask Plaut one question, I suppose it would be this one: Dr. Plaut, don't you think it's dangerous to call people anti-Semites, Nazis, and Holocaust deniers who aren't, given the risk that when real Jew-haters appear on the scene, Jews in general are far less likely to be taken seriously because you've cried wolf once too often?

Or maybe a shorter version of that question. But you get the picture.

Ugly Voice is completely ignorant about documentary evidence

Let's continue with our debunking of the Ugly Voice Productions' videoclips at http://zamphir.litek.ws. The third "episode" is called "Haircut" [YouTube version]. There aren't many claims in this "episode" - only that it was absurd to cut women's hair before gassing.

The Ugly Voice never explained why it was absurd. He scoffed at Samuel Rajzman's explanation that the hair was used by the Germans to stuff the mattresses. But in the true denier fashion, the Ugly Voice didn't mention the voluminous evidence that human hair was used by the Nazis.

Read more...

1)
SS-Wirtschaftsverwaltungshauptamt

Oranienburg,
August 6. 1942

Amtsgruppe D - Concentration Camps
D II 288 Ma./Ha. Tgb. 112 geh.

SECRET!
Copy 13

Re: Use of hair cuttings

To the Commandants of the Concentration Camps Arb., Au., Bu., Da., Flo., Gr.Ro., Lu., Maut/Gu., Na., Nie., Neu., Rav., Sahs., Stutth., Mor., SS SL Hinzert.

SS Obergruppenfuehrer Pohl, Chief of the SS Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt has ordered that the hair of concentration camp prisoners is to be put to use. Hair is to be made into industrial felt or spun into yarn. Woman's hair is to be used in the manufacture of hair-yarn socks for 'U'-boat crews and hair-felt foot-wear for the Reichs-railway.

It is therefore ordered that the hair of female prisoners be disinfected and stored. Men's hair can only be put to use if it is longer than 20 mm. SS Obergruppenfuehrer Pohl therefore agrees for an intial trial period to the growing of the prisoners hair to a length of 20 mm before it is cut. Long hair could facilitate escape and to avoid this the camp commandants may have a middle parting shaved in the prisoners' hair as a distinguishing mark, if they think it is necessary.

It is planned to set up a hair processing workshop in one of the concentration camps. Further details as to the delivery of the accumulated hair will follow.

The total monthly amount of male and female hair is to be reported to this office on the 5th of every month beginning from September 5, 1942.

signed: Gluecks
SS-Brigadefuehrer und
Generalmajor der Waffen-SS

(Translation of a report from IMT, Band XX, Nurnberg 1947, taken from Concentration Camp Dachau 1933-1945, ISBN 3-87490-528-4, p. 137; Plate 282 with translation.)

(Graphics of the document here and here.)

2) A later (04.01.1943) directive by Gerhard Maurer is in PS-3680. It concerns the "use of hair cut from male prisoners". The hair was sold to the Alex Zink factory. This may be the same directive as quoted here:
The prisoner's hair is to be sent to Alex Zink, Fur Manufactures, Ltd., Nuremberg. The company will pay 0.50 marks for every kilogram of hair.
It depends on whether the date is correct.

3) The document on p. 247 of Czech's Auschwitz Chronicle:
[...]
Angekommen: 30.9.42
[...]
Ich genehmige hiermit die Fahrt mit einem PKW. des SS-Oberstuf. S c h w a r z von Auschwitz nach Friedland zur Besichtigung des Haarverwerungsbetr. Held in Friedland, Bez. Breslau.

gez. G l ue c k s
SS-Brigadefuehrer und Generalmajor
der Waffen-SS in der Dienstellung
eine Generalleutenants.
[...]
Gluecks permits the journey of SS-Obersturmfuehrer Schwarz of Auschwitz to Friedland, to inspect hair processing at Held company.

4) NO-1257: report of 6 February, 1943 "on the realization of textile-salvage from the Jewish resettlement up to the present date":
[...]
women's hair 1 car 3,000 kg
[...]


5) Invoice for 250 kg of hair sent from Majdanek to Paul Reimann company in Friedland can be found here.

6) Invoice for 400 kg of hair sent from Treblinka to Paul Reimann company in Friedland can be found here.

7) Invoice for 200 kg of hair sent from Majdanek to Paul Reimann company in Friedland can be found here.

8) Part of invoice for unknown quantity of hair sent to Alex Zink firm can be found at the page "Die Haare der KZ-Opfer". This is a page of a project to investigate the use of hair in Roth, near Nuremberg. (If you have the article in electronic form, I will be grateful to receive it).

9) Stutthof camp records contain the following documents, according to USHMM's online finding aids:
[...]
Correspondence concerning sending hair cut of prisoners.
[...]
Correspondence regarding sales of hair and other related belongings of prisoners to local businesses.
[...]


10) Further Majdanek records, as described here:
A separate group consists of files concerning the dispatch of hair from the camp in 1942–1944. From this correspondence, we learn that, from September 1942 to the first quarter of 1944, 730 kilograms of human hair were sent from Majdanek

11) Finally, the Soviets found lots of hair right after the liberation of Auschwitz. The photos are here, here and here

Given such a large amount of evidence, it is clear that the Ugly Voice is either a gross ignoramus, who has undertaken such am ambitious project without learning the basics. Or he is just a liar.


Click here to read refutations of other Ugly Voice Productions videoclips.

Doesn't look like a girl to me.

This has been posted at the Stormfront by one of the most demented deniers out there, who goes under names "The_Skunk" and "Mark_Twain" at the Cesspit and elsewhere.

That "removed soil" problem

In part 4.4 of his debunking of Mattogno's rant about Belzec, Roberto quotes Mattogno thus:
This enormous quantity of sand could neither have been piled up in the camp nor transported out of the camp, therefore it was never actually extracted, and thus the respective mass graves were never dug.
Roberto rightfully notes:
... why the sand could not have been transported out of the camp, as he claims, Mattogno does not explain ...
It so happens that an early document, quoted by Mattogno in his and Graf's book about Treblinka, states (emphasis mine):
Dozens of witnesses attest to have seen how up to three transports of Jews, with 60 cars each, arrived in the camp on a daily basis. The trains left the camp either loaded with sand or empty.
So, Mattogno knows about sand-removal claims for Treblinka. Belzec was analogous in all respects (except there were less witnesses left), so how can Mattogno claim that sand could not have been transported out of the camp? Um, hello? Helloooo?

<crickets sfx>

38th Skeptics' Circle

Here.

Meet Joe Bellinger

An author Joseph Bellinger is hailed at the Cesspit for writing an allegedly serious research book about Himmler's death. Interestingly, Jonnie "Pinky Smooth" Hargis quotes a passage from Bellinger that doesn't show his writing skills in a favorable light:
Once upon a time there were three targets selected for assassination. There was the 'BIG H' –Hitler, the 'little H' – Himmler, and the 'littler H' – Heydrich, as dubbed by England's SOE, and then, there was the 'littlest h' – Höss.

The first three needed to be put out of the way and the 'littlest h' was reserved as a 'defence' witness for Kaltenbrunner, as well as for other purposes. Of course Kaltenbrunner – 'little K' – also was in no position to speak for 'little H’ – Himmler, which is of course exactly why he was chosen.
Ugh. Did you manage to read through this babble? Imagine a whole book written in this style.

Anyway, Bellinger did manage to publish a German version of his book, which is strange, considering that he is a vulgar Holocaust denier. He's been known on Usenet by many names, such as fafner13, debunks, jbelling, rblackmore. Quick search establishes that Bellinger clearly shows a Stormfront-like mentality, mindlessly parrotting antisemitic memes, and posting antisemitic ditties. Such is yet another "revisionist" hero. And deniers really expect to be taken seriously?

Postwar Polish-Jewish relations

Our constant reader from Poland Roman Werpachowski offers an interesting perspective on this topic, and some preliminary comments on Jan T. Gross' new book.

New strategy, indeed

In this posting I expressed my opinion that deniers have a new strategy - appealing to racial minorities. Well, whaddaya know, in response to LaShawn Barber's posting, a neo-Nazi related to National Vanguard and a friend of April Gaede, writes:
If a coalition of non-White conservatives really puts some energy into taking the “Hitler blood libel” off of White nationalists, and actually succeeds getting us an “amnesty” into mainstream politics I think you’ll see that we aren’t monsters.
"Hitler blood libel" is, of course, the Holocaust.

PS: Interestingly, it is an old denier strategy to cite fake numbers of Communist/Allied victims to show that Hitler wasn't that bad. This freak writes:
Jews accuse White Gentiles of being “exterminationists,” but there are both ancient and modern examples of Jews committing genocide. Communism was a Jewish movement that murdered 40 million Christian Slavs.
Of course, Bolshevism/Communism wasn't a Jewish movement (even Stalin called Bolsheviks a Russian faction and Mensheviks a Jewish faction, jokingly mentioning a possibility of pogrom; and during Stalin's time, at the height of terror, most leading Jewish Bolsheviks were murdered anyway), and the number is pulled straight from the liar's butt, and, besides, how would he know that all "40 million" of these imaginary Slavs were Christians? But that's Revisionist History for you - minimize the Jewish genocide, invent or embellish other genocides to "balance" the Holocaust out.

PPS: As to LaShawn's taunting instead of accepting that she made a mistake, and her gloating that she rose in ranks - I can only say, the scum also rises.

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Someone should get a brain

Orac says almost all there is to say about LaShawn Barber's attempted redefinition of neo-Nazi scum known as Prussian Blue as a mere "white pride" group. Of course, it is painfully obvious what they're up to, when their official site links to the denier screed Dissecting the Holocaust (lookie here or here), edited by Germar Rudolf, known primarily for pushing ... "Prussian Blue" arguments; or when we know that their mommy is a columnist for one of the largest neo-Nazi websites out there. Interestingly, it's not the first time these "bad" racists are mistaken for... how to say it... "good" racists.

Dr. Kaukab Siddique Bites Off More Than He Can Chew

There are several points to make with regard to the manner in which Dr. Kaukab Siddique of Lincoln University (Pa.) has chosen to characterize my exchange with him of last week. Thanks to a friend who, by coincidence, happens also to teach at a traditionally black college, I was tipped off that Dr. Siddique had published our exchange, as well as his "final response." I was only apprised of this a few days later by Dr. Siddique himself. One must wonder whether Dr. Siddique planned to publish his response to me without letting me know he had. Anyway...

As is my wont, I'll be quoting directly from Dr. Siddique and then responding in kind.

Read more...

(1) "For Muslims, it's important that they listen to views opposed to those of the victors of the Second World War. The emergence of Israel as a terrorist entity implanted by force of arms in the heartland of Islam is directly connected to the Jewish version of WWII. The attack on Darfur is coming out of the Jewish Holocaust Museum."

So, to put it more plainly, it is important for Muslims to listen to the views of Holocaust deniers. Really? Why's that? Would it be, say, to cover up for the shame that certain Muslims from Bosnia and Albania should feel for having enlisted in the Waffen-SS? For the knowledge that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem himself was responsible for setting up these SS units and was a visitor in Berlin at the Führer's pleasure during the war? Is that why?

No, Dr. Siddique tells us, the reason that Muslims should "listen to views opposed to the victors" of WWII is because Israel arose as a state as a result of WWII and because the "attack on Darfur" is "coming out of the Jewish Holocaust Museum."

I would remind Dr. Siddique that partition plans for Palestine, which the Zionist movement accepted, were floated as early as 1936 (by the Peel Commission), long before any mass murder of Jews had taken place in Europe. Partition of Palestine was going to happen regardless of what happened in Europe. The Holocaust was certainly a factor in speeding up recognition of Israel by the superpowers, but Israel's existence did not depend in 1948 and does not depend now on the historiography of the Holocaust.

Furthermore, I find it deeply distressing that Dr. Siddique seems to have a moral blindspot where genocides committed by Muslims are concerned. Perhaps we can put him in the shoes he would like to place Europe's Jews and suggest, e.g., that Muslims were not executed en masse by Serbian nationalists throughout the second half of the twentieth century? After all, don't we, in fact, have a large community of Serbian historians suggesting that these massacres are nothing but propaganda? Should we be affording to the deniers of the genocide against the Balkan Muslim communities equal consideration with those that affirm the atrocities committed against the Muslims of Yugoslavia?

If Dr. Siddique is only willing to look at "both sides" of the Jewish Holocaust and not of other genocides, then he is applying a double standard and, by definition, is evincing prejudice against Jews.

(2) I'll deal with Irving, Zündel, and Rudolf in greater detail below, so I won't go into specifics right now, except to say that Dr. Siddique plays the same stupid game that Jew-haters in the Muslim community have been playing since the publication of the "Muhammad cartoons" last year, i.e., he plays an equivalency game between freedom of the press with regard to religious matters, on one hand, and freedom of the press (or lack thereof) on political matters, on the other. He mistakenly attributes religious standing to the Holocaust and suggests that, if the Prophet Muhammad may be lampooned in the European press, then the Jewish Holocaust should be fair game as well.

I, for one, have a hard time with the idea of criminalizing any form of expression that is not a violation of laws against libel, sedition, or immediate breach of the peace. So I do not have a program from a legal standpoint with people like Dr. Siddique casting doubt on the Holocaust. I just find his reasoning, i.e., that it is OK and right to do so because his prophet has been attacked, as specious at best.

(3) "I wrote back to Dr. Mathis that I would find it no problem to refute his views but first I need to know what is his religion [mine is Islam], how often he goes to Israel and how much he donates to Israel. His refusal to to touch the Zionist Connection gave him away..."

Yeah, my refusal "gave me away," whatever the hell that means. Note that Dr. Siddique published my initial answer to his query -- "Before (and if) I choose to answer those questions, how is that at all relevant to the truth or falsity of the normative history of the Holocaust?" This is a question he never answered, I suppose because he couldn't.

(4) "I asked Dr. Mathis not to write to me any further after I saw that he has put me on the 'untrue_madhouse blogspot.'"

Yes, I republished Dr. Siddique's letter to me on my personal blog. Why he found this distressing, I have no idea, as he went and republished the correspondence between us on his "newsletter."

(5) "He however did write again and claimed that he is 'Jewish' but has no connection to Israel. [Try to imagine a Jew unconnected to Israel. Even a critic of Israel like Chomsky supports Israel.]"

One must wonder what would constitute proof to Dr. Siddique that I have no connection to Israel. I have never been to Israel. I have never given money to Israel. I own no property there. The same three answers go for my wife and my in-laws. None of them have been to Israel. (I mention my wife's family because her family is entirely Jewish, while mine is not -- mine is predominantly Catholic, with a few Muslims and Unitarians in the mix.)

As a Jew (and one must wonder here why Dr. Siddique sees fit to put the word "Jewish" in sneer quotes), my only connection to the land that is currently called Israel is spiritual, as, I assume, as a Muslim but not an Arab, Dr. Siddique feels a connection to the holy sites of Islam.

(6) "Dr. Mathis ended by insulting me, calling me names and claiming that I must be teaching the wrong things to my students. Do Jews have a special way of knowing how those who disagree with them teach class? Go figure!"

Well, in all fairness, and as his republished e-mail from me indicates, Dr. Siddique did insult me first, saying, "Your arguments are extremely weak and easily refutable."

(7) "Educated people do not dismiss a person's arguments by putting a label on that person. I am interested in views opposed to those of the establishment, especially as I have seen the established powers tearing the world apart with their lies and propaganda. A journalist must know both sides of the story."

Indeed, a journalist, who by the definition of his/her own job description, must be objective, should know both sides of a story -- provided there actually are two sides. In the case of the Jewish Holocaust, there are not two sides. The Nazi government of Germany, quite simply, sought to exterminate the Jews of Europe using, among other means, gas chambers, and racked up a death toll of between five and six million Jews, not to mention millions of other innocent victims, including Muslim victims, primarily from within the Roma communities of Eastern Europe.

This historical truth has been so thoroughly proved that only a fool would consider that there are "two sides." I am happy to discuss the physical evidence with Dr. Siddique, and I am happy to do so in public debate with him. We both teach at universities in Delaware County. So I invite him to meet me face to face with his best evidence.

(8) "Dr. Mathis does not know that David Irving is the greatest historian of the Second World War and meticulously documents his facts."

This is so wrong a statement as to be laughable. Here is Irving himself, talking about how he "meticulously documents his facts," here with regard to the interrogation of Adolf Eichmann:

"Well, if you look just at that sentence, we can say that you've only got to change one or two words and you get a completely different meaning. If it wasn't "The Führer has ordered the PHYSICAL DESTRUCTION of the Jews," but rather "the extirpation of Judaism," you've only changed the words by a fraction and yet you've got a totally different meaning."

As Holocaust History Project contributor Jamie McCarthy commented on this statement by Irving put it, "Historians shouldn't change words if their documents contradict their claims."

More evidence of Irving's dishonesty can be found here:

http://www.holocaust-history.org/pamphlets/irving/pamphlet.shtml

(9) "HE [Irving] HAS NEVER TRIED TO JUSTIFY HITLER or anyone else. That's not the task of the historian. In fact his greatest books are not even about Hitler but about Churchill."

Actually, which books are Irving's "greatest" is a matter of opinion. The book that made Irving famous as an apologist for Hitler was Hitler's War, which was among his earlier books.

Regarding the question of whether Irving is an apologist for Hitler, he may want to check the judgment against Irving in Irving v. Lipstadt, or, for that matter, the declaration by Britain's House of Commons that Irving is a "Nazi propagandist and long time Hitler apologist."

(10) "Germany and Austria are not controlled by Zionist Jews? You gotta be kidding, Dr. Mathis! Germany has given BILLIONS of dollars to Israel and even sold Dolphin class submarines at throwaway prices to that terrorist entity."

And Israel has sold arms to Germany. Did you know that, Dr. Siddique? Did you also know that the reparations payments given by Germany to Israel are based not on the number of people killed in the Holocaust but on the number of survivors? Would it not stand to reason, therefore, Dr. Siddique, that if Israel were out to fleece Germany over the Holocaust, they would have inflated the number of survivors -- not victims?

That point aside, you have engaged in a simple non sequitur fallacy with regard to arms sales, aid, and "Zionist control." You have not shown causation.
By the way, you should be aware, Dr. Siddique, that the number and power of Zionist Christians far outweighs that of Zionist Jews.

(11) "As for Austria, go to the site of the Austrian embassy in Washington, DC and you will be amazed at the self-humiliation and 'lick spittle' attitude towards Jewish power exhibited by that "democratic" country."

Without a URL, I cannot evaluate the Austrian embassy's Web site.

However, I will ask of Dr. Siddique to explain something about laws against Holocaust denial: Along with Germany, Austria, and Israel, eight other countries have criminalized Holocaust denial: France, Belgium, Switzerland, Romania, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, and Poland. Assuming, as you assert, that "Zionist Jews" are behind these laws, why would such a law exist in Poland, a country both without a Jewish population to speak of and with a long history of nationalist anti-Semitism?

(12) "If you think you or any supporters of the holocaust story can stand up to Rudolf or Zundel in a forum where both can get equal time, why have they been put in prison? If their arguments are weak, why would Jewish organizations be hounding them from country to country, trying to silence them through THOUGHT CONTROL laws?"

I don't know, Dr. Siddique. Perhaps you should ask someone who supports such laws. You are employing a straw man fallacy here -- imputing to me views that I do not hold.

(13) "Evidently Dr. Mathis doesn't know much about Germar Rudolf's work. He was a scientist at the Max-Plank-Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart, Germany, and certainly not a Nazi. When he cast doubt on the holocaust story, his entire career was ruined and he was hounded out of his homeland and finally imprisoned. Anyone who has read DISSECTING the HOLOCAUST. THE GROWING CRITIQUE of 'Truth' and 'Memory' edited by Germar Rudolf [612 pages], would know that the holocaust story cannot withstand scientific criticism."

Answer me a question, Dr. Siddique: If Rudolf's "anthology" is so impressive, then why were there so few contributors? Did you know that Rudolf wrote the vast majority of articles in that anthology? As you are apparently already aware, Ernst Gauss is Germar Rudolf, as that is the name of the putative editor of Dissecting the Holocaust. In fact, of the twenty-plus "contributors" to Rudolf's "anthology," Rudolf is actually Ernst Gauss, Manfred Koehler, Karl Siegert, and Anton Maegerle as well. Rudolf is among the most dishonest "scholars" of the Holocaust with regard to his use of sources. Further information can be found here:

http://www.holocaust-history.org/denial/nym.shtml

You defend this sort of "scholarship," Dr. Siddique?

(14) "David Irving's challenge is that the entire holocaust industry cannot come up with an order from Hitler for the mass gassing and extermination of the Jews. Is it physically possible to gas six million people without Hitler's orders going through the entire German system in writing? The German's are known for their desire to record and write everything."

That is a common misconception and one that is based on a stereotype of German people, generally speaking. First and foremost, Irving's demand for a Fuehrerbefehl is a red herring. He knows there isn't one, and he knows that normative Holocaust historians stopped looking for one decades ago. Several people, notably Adolf Eichmann on more than three occasions, including before his abduction by the Mossad, stated that the order was oral, given via Goering to Reinhard Heydrich.

There is no reason why we should consider this strange: Hitler wanted the extermination of the Jews to be carried out with the uttermost secrecy and, in fact, SS-men who discussed the program with anyone outside the SS were subject to the death penalty. Hitler did not sign any order because he had been badly burned by having signed the T-4 order several years earlier. He had learned his lesson not to leave a paper trail.

(15) "No doubt the Jews suffered at the hands of Hitler in many ways. Germans suffered likewise at the hands of the allies. German civilians, including vast numbers of women and children, were literally INCINERATED in the allied bombings of German cities. Vast numbers of German civilians were raped and/or starved to death by the allies. If we believe humanity is one, it doesn't make sense to have an entire holocaust industry [Finkelstein's term] about the Jews, and the scholars who look at the war evenhandedly are locked up."

A straw man, again, Dr. Siddique. You should consult a logic primer sometime.

(16) "Imagine a historian like Irving being locked up for saying something 16 years back! Is that Austrian democracy, with no Jewish influence behind it?]"

Non sequitur again, Dr. Siddique. You're not looking very good here.

(17) "Dr. Mathis: The people of America are not going to accept a one-sided version of the war forever. Israel is a terrorist state. When this representative power of the Jews, tells bare-faced lies about its victims, the Palestinians, almost on a daily basis, what do you expect it and its supporters to say about Germany which actually persecuted the Jews."

I don't know, but once again, because of your utter lack of logic in constructing these questions, I can't see a connection between cause and effect in your question.

(18) "Finally, we must seek an understanding of the Jew-German conflict not in an amorphous, conceptual, "evil" of the German race, or in Hitler as the devil incarnate [somewhat like Sharon], but in the conflict between Hitler and the Soviet Union. The Jews were part of Stalin's 'revolution' as well as leaders of his dreaded secret police. In Germany, the communists and the nazis were locked in a fight to the death."

It's interesting that you are willing to cast Ariel Sharon as devil incarnate, but you'll give Hitler the benefit of the doubt. It speaks to your outstanding prejudices against Jews.

Anyway, it is a vile myth that Jews controlled the secret police in the Soviet Union, and even if they did, it would not be an excuse, valid or otherwise, for mass murder of Jews. And you should know that while it's true that a large number of Jews played roles in the Bolshevik Revolution (which was Lenin's, not Stalin's -- have you ever taken and passed a history course?), it was Stalin who purged the large majority and, in fact, was planning a major anti-Jewish action when he died. Stalin was no friend to the Jews, and trying to depict him as such merely exposes what your hatreds are.

(19) "Depiction of one side as angels and the other side as devils is simplistic, medieval moralism."

I agree, but perhaps you can explain how 1.5 million Jewish children were "devils"?

I want to return to two points here: (1) Zuendel as "scholar," and (2) the question of Rudolf's affidavit in the application for leave for appeal in Irving v. Lipstadt. Ernst Zundel is not a scholar; he is a photo retoucher and amateur artist. He has no experience in writing history and, when I called him a National Socialist in my initial correspondence with Dr. Siddique, I was speaking the truth, not libeling the man. He himself would not shrink from the title, so I don't see why you do.

As for the Rudolf affidavit, I find it curious indeed that you avoided the question. For a "scholar" such as Rudolf to have his expert testimony withdrawn by a plaintiff doesn't speak well to his credentials, does it?

My invitation to debate you in person remains, Dr. Siddique. If you are so sure of your positions, then you will take me up on this invitation.

ADC's pro-censorship opinion

Read this shameful defence of anti-HD laws and weep. True, freedom of speech can't and shouldn't be absolute. It doesn't follow that denial can or should be silenced legally. Illogical mumbo-jumbo about "imbalance of power" does not change this fact.

Freak show

Take a minute to look at Dave Neiwert's site for the photos of what today passes for "Nazis". Somehow I suspect that, probably, under authentic Nazi rule this scum would be quickly eliminated as degenerates.

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

Ugly Voice Productions and the Holocaust

Roberto has already debunked a couple of items from a collection of short videoclips trying to "refute" the Holocaust. I decided to take a look too. Well, the videos are quite ugly - it must be both the voice (yuck) and arrogant stupidity, so usual for deniers. I think in time we will comment on all these little masterpieces of idiocy.

Let's take a look at "episode" 14 [YouTube version], "Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation and Sobibor witness Alexander Pechersky".

Read more!

The first "argument" is that if Pechersky learned so much about the camp while preparing for an escape, why did he prepare such a rough sketch of the camp.

Oh please, what's the point? We know that there was an escape (if only because it is mentioned in several German documents, including the one informing us that a couple of German planes, looking for escapees, crashed (great!)) and that Pechersky led it. So what if this accurate post-war sketch is not very pretty? Compare it to Kurt Bolender's sketch. Or maybe the point is that it is not very detailed? Well, why should it have been? According to Pechersky's comment on the sketch, it was done during interrogation. I.e. it probably was just a visual aid.

Such is the "revisionist" "logic". But it gets better.

Skipping absolutely irrelevant blather about the movie Escape from Sobibor, let's move to the part where the owner of the ugly voice claims that Pechersky loses all credibility because of his incorrect description of the murder process.

It so happens that I have already discussed this claim here, at this blog. I don't have much to add, except that Mattogno, whom the Ugly Voice quotes approvingly, is also exposed as a liar for the same reason that Graf is a liar. I.e., the Ugly Voice and his videos have lost all credibility.

Next the Ugly Voice jumps from Pechersky to another witness, Yaakov Biskowitz. This witness has also been discussed by L. Prytulak in his article about Barry, which I have debunked. The Ugly Voice probably took this line of argument straight from Prytulak.

Even though the witness was wrong about the collapsing floor, he explicitly stated that he "did not see that". So, again, what all the fuss is about? There's nothing wrong with Arad using those parts of Biskowitz's testimony which are based on what he had seen with his own eyes. And, to repeat, he said that he did not see the collapsing floor. Just because he repeated a rumor, the rest of his testimony does not suddenly become discredited. Many witnesses would repeat rumors, and when they distinguish what they have heard from what they have seen, their testimonies may be used.

Forgetting all about Sobibor and Pechersky, the Ugly Voice tries to make some point about something (?) from the fact that Israelis failed to preserve most tapes from the Eichmann trial. The Ugly Voice says:
In an article in The Nation we read what Israel's Holocaust Museum did with the footage...
But the article does not even contain the word "museum"! And according to this site the tapes were dispersed among institutions, around the world. What is the Ugly Voice's source for his claim that it was exactly "Israel's Holocaust Museum" (presumably, Yad Vashem) that did not care about the tapes?

Finally, the Ugly Voice drags out that old, tired canard about crematoria chimneys not being able to produce flames. Um, but even denier guru Mattogno concedes that chimneys can produce flames:
The above arguments do not mean that no flames would ever have come from these chimneys; we merely argue that the phenomenon is not directly related to the incineration, i.e., to the burning of corpses. As opposed to this aspect, the phenomenon may well occur as an indirect side-effect of the incineration, i.e., as a result of the combustion of the coke used as a fuel for these furnaces.

It is well known that under conditions of incomplete combustion carbonaceous fuels will produce carbon particles, which will deposit on the walls of the smoke ducts in the form of soot. Under appropriate conditions (if the soot layer is sufficiently thick and the temperature sufficiently high) the soot will ignite and flames will indeed emanate from the chimney.

In pre-war times, when the average European household was using wood, coke, or coal almost exclusively for home-heating, such cases were so common that the phenomenon was, on occasion, produced intentionally for scientific studies. For instance, in early 1933, such experiments were carried out in a nearly abandoned four-story building in Berlin. A diagram shows that 95 minutes after the ignition of the soot on the first floor one meter above ground level the combustion temperature of the soot in the smokestack reached 1060°C. This is not really surprising, for soot consists of carbon having an ignition temperature of 700°C.

Obviously, this phenomenon will not occur continuously, but only at times, because it depends essentially on the accumulation of a sufficiently thick layer of soot, and that requires some time. It is clear that this phenomenon is unrelated to the reports of eyewitnesses who speak of flaming smokestacks as a direct consequence of the incineration of corpses.
Of course, Mattogno is being disingenuous when he implies that witnesses' wrong interpretations of what they saw, somehow discredit their testimonies. So, some witnesses thought that flames from the chimneys were directly related to the incineration process. They were wrong. Does that somehow mean that they did not see the flames? No. But, to repeat, Mattogno confirms that the flames could have appeared from the crematoria chimneys. And that's all what we need to debunk the Ugly Voice (who did not get the memo).

I should note some tricks that were used in this clip - it was obviously designed to appeal to racial/ethnic minorities, such as African-Americans and Native Americans. That seems to be the new strategy of denial, as expressed by Patrick H. McNally in a letter to Adelaide Institute mailing list on June 28, 2006:
Fredrick,
I am very saddened that a law professor would make such a serious and
silly mistake as Fraser made. Why is he picking Blacks out of a clear blue
sky and attacking them?

Is he so blind that he does not see that elite Joory just delights when
people make this "David Duke" kind of mistake. As his defense, he should
study Israel Shahak`s book, "Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel." There he
will learn that there was no fiercer anti-Black than the the Rabbi
Maimonides.

When will we learn to focus on our one real enemy, our one serious threat,
the one pseudo-religion of Talmudic racism that hates all humans. We
urgently need all the allies we can find: Black, White, Brown, Yellow,
Green, Red, whatever. There are even some honest Jews who are outraged by
the crimes being committed in their name.

Very saddened,
Patrick H.



Click here to read refutations of other Ugly Voice Productions videoclips.

Sunday, July 02, 2006

Correction Corner #3: who was Pranaitis and what did he do?

In the Correction Corner we don't deal exclusively with the Holocaust - we also deal with related topics, such as history of antisemitism. The Blood Libel, while not directly relevant to the Holocaust, is certainly a related topic, being a form of antisemitic propaganda. In fact, it is related to the Holocaust more strongly than than one might think. Take this letter from Himmler to Kaltenbrunner, in which he urges to spread the book about "Jewish ritual murder" among Einsatzkommandos dealing with the "Jewish question".



According to Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon, Justinas Pranaitis (27.7.1861-28.1.1917) was a Lithuanian Catholic priest, a lecturer of Hebrew at Imperial Ecclesiastical Academy of the Roman Catholic Church in St. Petersburg, and, later, a priest in Tashkent (where he is honored to this day, apparently). In 1892 he published an anti-Judaic tract, which is now known as Talmud Unmasked, and is wide-spread on antisemitic sites. During the Beilis trial Pranaitis was a prosecution "expert", trying to prove that Jews use Christian blood for ritual purposes. Ironically, Pranaitis had been a student of Prof. David Khvolson, a baptized Jew who had published in-depth refutations of the "Jewish ritual murder" claims.

It became customary among anti-antisemites to respond to any mention of Pranaitis' book with a link to David S. Maddison's page about him. Even ADL refers to this page in their The Talmud in Anti-Semitic Polemics.

Read more!

The page correctly points out that Pranaitis had a criminal record, namely, he was caught in blackmail in 1894. He was also accused by Tsarist officials for trying to convert Russian Orthodox people into Catholicism. Despite this, Pranaitis was quite useful for staging the Beilis trial, because he was a known antisemite, and an "academic" one, at that. As one police department official wrote:
The course of the trial will depend on how the ignorant jury will perceive arguments of priest Pranaitis, who is sure about the reality of ritual murders. I think, as a priest he is able to talk with peasants and to convince them. As a scientist, who defended a thesis about this question, he will give props to the court and prosecution, though nothing can be guessed in advance yet. I became acquainted with Pranaitis and am firmly convinced that he is the person who knows the problem, about which he will talk, in depth... Everything, then, will depend on which arguments priest Pranaitis will furnish, and he has them, and they're shattering for the Jewry.

(cited in A. Tager, Tsarskaja Rossija i delo Bejlisa, Moscow, 1934, p. 265)
During the pre-trial interrogation Pranaitis had to concede that in Jewish literature known to him there was no unequivocal evidence of bloody rituals. Nevertheless, he insisted that the rituals were a reality, a tradition passed orally, and murder of Jushchinskij should be counted as a Jewish ritual murder until proven otherwise. Despite the concession about lack of written evidence, as we have seen, prosecution was hoping to rely heavily on Pranaitis' testimony.

This is when things start to get interesting. Maddison provides a quote from Maurice Samuel's Blood Accusation: The Strange History of the Beiliss Case, which is really the crux of the page. The quote purports to be a description of a severe humiliation which happened during Pranaitis' interrogation during the trial (I omit the comments, not present in the book; punctuation partially revised):
Q: What is the meaning of the word Hullin?
A: I don't know.
Q: What is the meaning of the word Erubin?
A: I don't know.
Q: What is the meaning of the word Yevamot?
A: I don't know.

[...]

"- When did Baba Bathra live and what was her activity?" - "I don't know."
The last "clever" question was supposed to spring the trap - Pranaitis was supposed to confuse the name of the Talmudic tractate with the Russian word "baba", "old woman".

The problem here is that this exchange never happened.

3 volumes of trial transcripts are available for download here. Interrogation of Pranaitis took two days (Oct. 20 and 21, 1913) and is on pp. 317-353 of the second volume. Further comments by Pranaitis are on pp. 433-436.[1, 2, 3]

When one examines these pages, one can find only one place that vaguely resembles Maurice Samuel's description. It's on pp. 434-435:
Karabchevskij: In your expert opinion you refer to some sources from which you make conclusions. I think you mentioned tractate Hullin. Is there such [a tractate -SR]?
Pranaitis: I don't remember.
Karabchevskij: How so, you don't remember you own expert opinion?
Pranaitis: I can't remember when I have read something.
Karabchevskij: But you know about Hullin tractate? How do you translare this name, what's it about?
Pranaitis: silent.
Karabchevskij: You can't tell?
Pranaitis: silent.
Karabchevskij: Then there's something about Makhshirim. What does that mean?
Pranaitis: This is liquid. Are you testing me?
Karabchevskij: No, it's for myself, because you have Hebrew words here.
Shmakov: Defence is testing... This cannot be done.
President: Defence is interested in translation of these words and has a right to ask the expert about this.
Shmakov: It is hardly permissible to ask such questions. He doesn't have to remember. This is a test.
President: An expert is a knowledgeable person and under no circumstance he should be tested.
Shmakov: After all, he cannot remember each tractate.
Karabchevskij: You, Mr. Shmakov, don't like it when I ask expert Pranaitis; I can refrain from it.
Zarudnyj: And I think that I have a right to ask an expert for a translation, on which he relies, and I think I have a right to know the meaning of the name of the tractate on which expert relies in his expert opinion. You, by the way, refer to tractate Yevotojt [sic]?
Pranaitis: I refuse to answer.
President: If an expert doesn't wish to reply, he cannot be asked.
Zarudnyj: I obey. Maybe you would like to translate the name of the work Midrash.
Pranaitis: silent.
Zarudnyj: What about tractate Shaalot Uteshubot?
Pranaitis: silent.
Zarudnyj: I want you to write in the protocol that when asked about the meaning of names to which the expert referred, he said that he doesn't know.
President: He said that he doesn't wish to answer.
Zarudnyj: No, he said that he doesn't know. And if he knows, let him translate.
President: This is not necessary for him.
Zarudnyj: I asked him with your permission, and I wish it to be entered in the protocol that I didn't test him in any way, but just asked him a question, and received an answer that he doesn't know. And concerning the following names: Yevomojt [sic], Keseres Gagoyle[sic], Shalot-Utenubot [sic], I wish it to be entered in the protocol that he refused to translate.
Shmakov (to Zarudnyj): You cannot even read.
Zarudnyj: That's why I'm asking the expert, because I can't read Hebrew.
The real exchange wasn't as "clever" as the fake one in Samuel's book, and by itself didn't show Pranaitis' ignorance - whether he didn't know (or remember) how most words were translated, or whether he really didn't wish to be "tested" (it was a weird rule in that court that experts, as "knowledgeable people", couldn't be "tested" akin to schoolboys, but the court would decide whether they were credible) cannot be determined from the quoted excerpt. Pranaitis' negative reply to the first question probably referred to him forgetting about whether he referred to Hullin in his expert opinion (his forgetfulness even caused this opinion to be read in court in full), and not to the existence of the tractate itself. Erubin wasn't mentioned, and neither do we see any coup de grâce in the form of Baba Bathra question, when, according to Samuel, Jewish public present in the court was supposed to laugh at Pranaitis' obvious ignorance.

Indeed, even if Pranaitis forgot the meanings of most tractate names, there is no doubt that he would at least identify "Baba Bathra" and other well-known terms as Talmudic tractates, if only because 20 years before that, he published a whole book about Talmud, wherein he listed all these tractates.

The story about Pranaitis' humiliation through a clever trick was taken by Samuel from a memoir of a certain writer Ben-Zion Katz, who was present at the trial. But Samuel, who had the transcripts at hand, is also to be blamed for spreading false information - he used the transcripts extensively and knew that no such exchange took place. Why he wrote what he did is up to the reader to decide.



This is not to say, however, that Pranaitis was not an vile antisemitic ignoramus. Contrary to Katz's and Samuel's tall tale, he did know basic facts about Talmud, but beyond these, his "interpretations" and "expert opinion" were almost nothing but rubbish. Here's one example of his "scholarly" "expert" opinion (p. 318):
Extermination of Christians is the main aim of existence of Talmudic Jews.
And here's an illuminating exchange (p. 339)
Karabchevskij: So in XIth century there were confessions of Jews that they had been consuming blood of infants. How the trials were conducted - with torture?

Pranaitis: Yes, there were severe tortures.

Karabchevskij: Tortures such as used until XVIIIth century?

Pranaitis: Such tortures as were, are, and always will be. One can talk much about these tortures, but, after all, through them the truth was revealed. Of course, it is not good, but if a person does not confess, one should torture. It was bad that torture was used, but, after all, then the places were shown [by those tortured - SR] and even physical evidence was shown.

Gruzenberg: Show me any trial when torture led to discovery of a new real or physical evidence. Show me.

Pranaitis: In 1853 Zhitomir trial Jews confessed and then were convicted.

Karabchevskij: Do you know a trial when one old Jew confessed after torture, saying: "Yes, I did cut and did consume blood, but I beg to burn me as soon as possible, because otherwise you will torture me again"?

Pranaitis: I don't know.
Tsarist police agent, secretly reporting about the trial, also was not impressed with Pranaitis (Tager, pp. 266, 267):
Cross-examination of Pranaitis has weakened evidentiary value of his expert opinion, exposing lack of knowledge of texts, insufficient knowledge of Jewish literature. Because of amateurish knowledge and lack of resourcefulness, Pranaitis' expert opinion is of very low value. Professors Troitskij and Kokovtsev, who were interrogated today, gave conclusions which are exceptionally positive for the defence, praising doctrines of the Jewish religion, and not accepting even a possibility of a religious murder by Jews... Vipper thinks that acquittal is possible.
Given such an obvious ineptness of this "expert", hailed by the antisemites to this day, there is not a single excuse to distort the truth as Katz and Samuel have done.