A recent lecture by Mark Weber, and the riposte by Michael Shermer, have exposed some contradictions in how deniers approach Hitler's motivation for invading Poland and the USSR. I summarize three of those contradictions below.
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Firstly, deniers wish to pretend that Hitler's actions were defensive. He was hemmed in by the other powers; he needed to recover land stolen from Germany at Versailles; and Stalin was gearing up for an assault on the west. The obvious refutations of these points - the fact that Britain's approach was to appease rather than provoke; the fact that Stalin was purging his generals; the fact that Hitler always took far more territory than was in dispute and declared his intention to hold on to it permanently - will always fall on deaf pro-Nazi ears.
Where the contradiction arises is from the fact that deniers then claim (as Weber did when interviewed by Shermer) that the world would have been a better place had Germany won the war and Communism been destroyed. Suddenly a war of self-defence becomes a justifiable war of annihilation. The defensive pretence is no longer maintained when the glorious victory over Communism is discussed.
Secondly, it follows from the tears shed over the Nazi defeat that the measures that would have been necessary to secure victory - including mass starvation of the Soviet population and the Jews - become justifiable. One cannot will the ends without willing the means.
Thirdly, deniers are also thus forced to concede that which they cannot mention: Lebensraum and Holocaust. Anti-Communism for Hitler was ipso facto an ethnic re-ordering of Europe using (to borrow Nick Terry's excellent phrase) "a political economy of racial value." Weber happily acknowledges that deniers share this eugenic fantasy, yet once again they shy away from the obvious conclusions: no Lebensraum could have been achieved without mass killing. There was nowhere to send the Jews once it became obvious that the Soviets were not simply going to cave in.
The 'defensive Hitler' fallacy is not therefore just apologia: it is denial of the facts that flow from Hitler's aggressive reality.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Resettlement Hypothesis Revisited: Denial's Intellectual Bankruptcy
Given that deniers have not contested the evidence that millions of Jews were transported to Auschwitz, Majdanek and the Reinhardt camps (although Weckert has tried this gambit for Chelmno), their only explanation for the Jews' fate must be that they were transported further east. We have already pointed out the deceptions to which Mattogno and Graf have had to resort in order to substantiate that case. What are the other fatal flaws in the hypothesis? They fall into five categories.
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Firstly, it should be obvious that if there is no positive evidence for the hypothesis, it is simply a faith position. Deniers cling to the maxim that 'absence of evidence is not evidence of absence'. I have already shown here why that cannot apply to resettlement:
Thirdly, civilian authorities had expressed concern during 1941 that Jews in Polish ghettoes could no longer be fed. Such problems would clearly have been even greater in war-torn USSR, so it is no surprise that the Nazis had starvation plans for Jews and other groups in the USSR. There is also documentary evidence that forced labour was intended to result in the death of the Jews involved. It is thus bizarre to suggest that a civilian administration geared to making the USSR 'judenfrei' would consent to the influx of huge numbers of Jews from the west.
Fourthly, as I showed here, ethnic Germans in the USSR were traced successfully in the decades following 1945, presumably in part because they maintained contact with their relatives in the west. It therefore follows that contact between Jews sent east from Poland and their relatives back in the west would almost certainly have been established had such Jews not been killed by the Nazis.
Finally, there is documentation showing that transport logistics to the East were a nightmare. For example, Pohl reported that:
Read more!
Firstly, it should be obvious that if there is no positive evidence for the hypothesis, it is simply a faith position. Deniers cling to the maxim that 'absence of evidence is not evidence of absence'. I have already shown here why that cannot apply to resettlement:
Revisionists have had over sixty years in which to find records of transports taking Jews from the camps to the USSR, or records of resettlement, or even eyewitnesses of such resettlement, but have been unable to uncover any such evidence. They have been unable to explain why no defendants at postwar trials, including those such as Eichmann who had direct responsibility for 'evacuation' transports, ever used the 'transit camp' gambit in their defence, despite the fact that this would surely have been the most obvious defence available, had it been true. Moreover, they ignore the fact that the Soviets signed repatriation agreements with Poland in September 1944 and July 1945 but the total number of Polish Jews who returned under those agreements was only 230,700 (source: Yosef's Litvak's essay in Polonsky and Davies, Jews in Eastern Poland and the U.S.S.R., 1939-46, p.235).Secondly, we have evidence of resistance by the SS to Jewish resettlement. I gave a detailed example of such a document, which Mattogno and Graf blatantly distorted, here. It is patently absurd to pretend that senior SS officials, who were paranoid about Jewish partisans and 'diseases spread by Jews', would permit mass resettlement into their regions.
Consequently, the 'absence of evidence' gambit is a fallacy because there are powerful reasons why evidence of resettlement should be present.
Thirdly, civilian authorities had expressed concern during 1941 that Jews in Polish ghettoes could no longer be fed. Such problems would clearly have been even greater in war-torn USSR, so it is no surprise that the Nazis had starvation plans for Jews and other groups in the USSR. There is also documentary evidence that forced labour was intended to result in the death of the Jews involved. It is thus bizarre to suggest that a civilian administration geared to making the USSR 'judenfrei' would consent to the influx of huge numbers of Jews from the west.
Fourthly, as I showed here, ethnic Germans in the USSR were traced successfully in the decades following 1945, presumably in part because they maintained contact with their relatives in the west. It therefore follows that contact between Jews sent east from Poland and their relatives back in the west would almost certainly have been established had such Jews not been killed by the Nazis.
Finally, there is documentation showing that transport logistics to the East were a nightmare. For example, Pohl reported that:
The transportation by rail proved to be especially difficultIn conclusion, therefore, deniers have not only provided no evidence of resettlement where such evidence would certainly exist; they have also not even begun to address the huge obstacles to such resettlement. Such is the bankruptcy of denial.
Through the continually recurring transportation stoppages, the dispatch was held up with the resulting [sic] in temporary accumulations in the individual camps.
The transportation hold-up to the Ukraine has been especially noticeable since December 1942, and prevented the delivery of old clothing intended for the racial Germans there....
Monday, December 22, 2008
Hannover's Reading Skills
It is strange that a librarian cannot read a paragraph without garbling its contents. Jonnie Hargis perpetrates a total misreading of Dr Neander's post #78 in this thread then deletes all of Dr. Neander's clarifying posts. I summarize his misreading in my post #2862 here. Note especially the Moderator's hypocrisy in demanding sources from Dr Neander whilst allowing Hannover to make unsourced wild conjectures about Halbreich's supposed criminality.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Weckert on Chelmno
It is instructive that Ingrid Weckert's Chelmno screed, which can be viewed here, is the only denier text concerning Chelmno, because it illustrates that deniers have no real interest in historical revision, or in critical peer review of other denial works. Weckert's article is full of errors and omissions, which are detailed below, yet no denier has seen fit to publish a 'corrected' revisionist account of the camp. This alone tells us that denial is dogma, not historiography.
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Four points should quickly become apparent to any informed reader who scans Weckert's analysis of the Chelmno historiography. Firstly, Weckert deliberately omits key documents and testimonies, such as the Greiser-Himmler correspondence, the Korherr Report, and many of the perpetrator testimonies collected by West German criminal authorities. Contrast her summary of the testimonies with my recent overview here. Secondly, Weckert focusses on alleged discrepancies between secondary texts without tracing them to the authors' primary sources. Her approach is to abuse the sources via the secondary author, without allowing the reader to see the sources she is 'attacking by proxy.' Thirdly, Weckert conflates different contexts. She pretends that documents discussing one event (or timeframe) are actually discussing another. She perpetuates the deliberate chronological and geographical confusions that are key components of denial's methodology. Finally, Weckert specializes in the false dilemma. She repeatedly insists that we must choose between two alternatives, each of which she distorts.
Weckert definitely knows about the Greiser-Himmler letter because it is printed on p.278 of Faschismus - Getto - Massenmord [the page ref. is cited in Kershaw, p.85, n.88], a work which she cites in her text. She omits the Greiser-Himmler letter because she has already declared another gas van letter, Just to Rauff, to be a forgery. She has also strongly implied that the letter by the SS-Sturmbannführer Rolf-Heinz Höppner to Adolf Eichmann dated July 16, 1941 was a forgery. She has therefore already used up her "forgery" gambit on those documents. Her grounds for dismissing Just's statement that "Since December 1941, ninety-seven thousand have been processed" are that the figure of 97,000:
Weckert also tries to undermine Rückerl by quote-mining eyewitness accounts published in New York in November 1942, which described the murders of Jews from the Grodziec, Rzgów and Zagórów ghettos in local forests. Weckert infers, falsely, that because the source publishing these accounts stated that the killing actions were completed before the Lodz deportations began on January 16th, 1942, all deportations to Chelmno from that date could only have been from Lodz. All her subsequent 'discrepancies' flow from that (deliberate) misreading of the sources.
Weckert's misinterpretation betrays her technique of playing off secondary sources against each other. Had she been willing to honestly report how Rückerl used his sources, she would not have accused him falsely of contradiction.
Weckert plays a similar game of falsifying contradictions with regard to the naming of the Sonderkommando and the chronology of gas van deployment. On the SK, Weckert claims:
On the gas vans, Weckert claims that:
Finally, I am grateful to David Woolfe for exposing, in this RODOH post, Weckert's fraudulent use of Reitlinger, whom she distorts on three occasions. Firstly, Weckert claims that:
Secondly, Weckert uses Reitlinger to suggest that nobody in the Lodz ghetto knew of gassing at Chelmno yet she ignores Reitlinger's very next sentence:
In conclusion, therefore, going back to my opening point in this blog, it is inconceivable that a denier such as Mattogno could trace the footnotes in Weckert's screed and not realise that she had lied blatantly throughout the article. Yet no denier has sought to replace her dishonest and disreputable garbage with a genuine revisionist study of the historiography of Chelmno. They seem happy to allow it to stand as the standard denier work on the camp and must therefore share her culpability for its falsehoods.
Read more!
Four points should quickly become apparent to any informed reader who scans Weckert's analysis of the Chelmno historiography. Firstly, Weckert deliberately omits key documents and testimonies, such as the Greiser-Himmler correspondence, the Korherr Report, and many of the perpetrator testimonies collected by West German criminal authorities. Contrast her summary of the testimonies with my recent overview here. Secondly, Weckert focusses on alleged discrepancies between secondary texts without tracing them to the authors' primary sources. Her approach is to abuse the sources via the secondary author, without allowing the reader to see the sources she is 'attacking by proxy.' Thirdly, Weckert conflates different contexts. She pretends that documents discussing one event (or timeframe) are actually discussing another. She perpetuates the deliberate chronological and geographical confusions that are key components of denial's methodology. Finally, Weckert specializes in the false dilemma. She repeatedly insists that we must choose between two alternatives, each of which she distorts.
Weckert definitely knows about the Greiser-Himmler letter because it is printed on p.278 of Faschismus - Getto - Massenmord [the page ref. is cited in Kershaw, p.85, n.88], a work which she cites in her text. She omits the Greiser-Himmler letter because she has already declared another gas van letter, Just to Rauff, to be a forgery. She has also strongly implied that the letter by the SS-Sturmbannführer Rolf-Heinz Höppner to Adolf Eichmann dated July 16, 1941 was a forgery. She has therefore already used up her "forgery" gambit on those documents. Her grounds for dismissing Just's statement that "Since December 1941, ninety-seven thousand have been processed" are that the figure of 97,000:
contradicts the statistic by Rückerl as adopted in the conclusion of Massentötungen (p. 132) of the deportations from Lodz, which are generally equated with the murder victims of Kulmhof/Chelmno. Rückerl says (p. 276) that until the end of May 1942 some 55,000 Jews were deported from Lodz. This number should have been in the Aktenvermerk of June 5, 1942, if it is really about the murder victims of Kulmhof/Chelmno.This is a distortion because at no point in the Just-Rauff or Greiser-Himmler letters is it stated that all the 97,000 (Just-Rauff) or 100,000 (Greiser-Himmler) victims were from Lodz. Moreover, Weckert's own source for the 55,000 figure, Rückerl, had already been quoted earlier in Weckert's article as stating that the Jews from areas surrounding Lodz, rather than from the ghetto itself, were transported to Chelmno "a few in the month of March and a large quantity in the month of April 1942" (p. 278, note 72). Weckert dismisses this quote on the grounds that Rückerl previously stated that
"After Jews were taken by truck from the closer vicinity to Chelmno from December 5, 1941, to the middle of January 1942, the transports from the ghetto began on January 16, 1942" (p. 276)Weckert thus simply manufactures a contradiction in the evidence where there is none. The logical meaning of Rückerl's narrative, combined with the gas van documentation, is that, in addition to the 55,000 Jews deported from the ghetto by June 1942, a further 42,000-45,000 Jews were killed in gas vans after being deported from other parts of the Warthegau.
Weckert also tries to undermine Rückerl by quote-mining eyewitness accounts published in New York in November 1942, which described the murders of Jews from the Grodziec, Rzgów and Zagórów ghettos in local forests. Weckert infers, falsely, that because the source publishing these accounts stated that the killing actions were completed before the Lodz deportations began on January 16th, 1942, all deportations to Chelmno from that date could only have been from Lodz. All her subsequent 'discrepancies' flow from that (deliberate) misreading of the sources.
Weckert's misinterpretation betrays her technique of playing off secondary sources against each other. Had she been willing to honestly report how Rückerl used his sources, she would not have accused him falsely of contradiction.
Weckert plays a similar game of falsifying contradictions with regard to the naming of the Sonderkommando and the chronology of gas van deployment. On the SK, Weckert claims:
Massentötungen decided to call it "Sonderkommando (SK) Kulmhof/Chelmno" or also "SK Lange" or "SK Bothmann" after the Kommandoführer at the time (Massentötungen, p. 116).Here Weckert has simply falsified the chronology by ignoring the fact that Lange and Bothmann were in charge of the unit during different periods, and the fact that the unit was renamed SK Kulmhoff when Bothmann replaced Lange. Weckert would have known this because, according to Kershaw, p.85, n.81, the chronology is given in Rückerl, p.251 and 258.
On the gas vans, Weckert claims that:
In the chapter about the origin of the gas trucks, Massentötungen explained that at this time, December 1941, the delivery of the Saurer-vehicle chassis was still being negotiated and were then, after delivery, to be equipped with a body by the firm Gaubschat. The completed trucks could therefore not have been delivered prior to spring 1942. How was it then possible that three of these vans were already in operation since December 1941?Again, Weckert has used a secondary source to camouflage the primary ones, such as the testimonies of Walter Burmeister and Walter Piller, which make it plain that Lange's unit initially used the van containing bottled carbon monoxide that had been deployed in the Euthanasia action, and subsequently deployed "medium size Renault trucks with Otto engines". The source of these testimonies is Kogon/Langbein/Rückerl et al, Nationalsozialistische Massenttungen durch Giftgas, page 81ff., the very same source which Weckert claims proves that the vehicles were Saurers!
Finally, I am grateful to David Woolfe for exposing, in this RODOH post, Weckert's fraudulent use of Reitlinger, whom she distorts on three occasions. Firstly, Weckert claims that:
Some of the deportees were "transferred to work camps and to vacated ghettos of the district of Lublin", (Reitlinger, p. 279). Others were deployed "for the reclamation of the Pripjet swamps and to the Jewish agricultural colonies close to Kriwoi Rog in the Ukraine", (Reitlinger, p. 101).As David has shown, Reitlinger actually says that "A small portion of the 'resettled' Jews of Lodz were transferred to work camps and to vacated ghettos of the district of Lublin." He says nothing about Lodz Jews being sent to the Ukraine. There is no evidence that even these small numbers of Lodz Jews sent to Warsaw and Lublin were part of the Lublin and Warsaw selections sent for forced labour to the Pripyet Marshes project. Weckert has simply connected two separate Reitlinger passages without explaining that they refer to different populations.
Secondly, Weckert uses Reitlinger to suggest that nobody in the Lodz ghetto knew of gassing at Chelmno yet she ignores Reitlinger's very next sentence:
Those who knew did not care to spread despondency. Thus Lieutenant Rosenblatt, the commander of the Jewish Ordnungsdienst, admitted that he selected the old and feeble, knowing perfectly well they would be gassed.Finally, Weckert attempts to discredit Reitlinger's source, Salomon M. Schwarz, when he discusses the liquidation of the Ukrainian camps in May 1942, whilst ignoring the fact that Schwarz was also Reitlinger's original source for the transfer of Warsaw and Lublin Jews to these camps.
In conclusion, therefore, going back to my opening point in this blog, it is inconceivable that a denier such as Mattogno could trace the footnotes in Weckert's screed and not realise that she had lied blatantly throughout the article. Yet no denier has sought to replace her dishonest and disreputable garbage with a genuine revisionist study of the historiography of Chelmno. They seem happy to allow it to stand as the standard denier work on the camp and must therefore share her culpability for its falsehoods.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Chelmno Testimonies
In this blog I examine the convergence between different forms of evidence demonstrating the killings at Chelmno. Roberto has already posted the letter from Greiser to Himmler which mentioned "the action of special treatment of about 100,000 Jews in the area of my Gau, authorized by yourself." He has also discussed the Chelmno mass graves.
To this mass graves evidence we can add the graves from the Bornhagen gas van killings that were excavated after the war, documented in this trial archived at JNSV Vol 7 Nr. 231b (LG Stuttgart 3 Ks 31/49, pp. 217-33), and cited by Browning & Matthaeus, p.542, n.144. Below I summarize the testimonies of perpetrators and other witnesses that were gathered by German courts in the 1960's. The main secondary sources used are Browning and Matthaeus (hereafter B/M) and Chapter 3 of Kershaw.
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Greiser was executed by the Poles in 1946 but his trial records are also held in ZStL (see Kershaw, p.88n.). The highest level perpetrator to give testimony to the German authorities was the HSSPF for the Warthegau, Wilhelm Koppe. Significantly, Koppe had spent 15 years of freedom as a successful businessman before 1960 yet, like Eichmann and Stangl, he did not gather together any evidence during that time that would have supported a denier narrative of resettlement, despite the fact that he would clearly have known where the 'surviving' Jews went; when they went, and how. Greiser and Frank were similarly silent on any alternative fate for the Jews in their Polish and Nuremberg trial defences.
Such silence is a killer blow to denial. Instead Koppe, like the others, relied on a 'just following orders' defence. He claimed that, when Lange arrived in the Warthegau with his gas van, Greiser had confirmed to Koppe that Lange's mission was the result of a Fuehrer order (Kershaw, p.72). However, B/M (p.417) show that Koppe supplied personnel to Sk Lange through his IdS, Damzog, as well as recruiting a rotating squad of 80 Orpo for Chelmno from the BdO, Oskar Knofe. Furthermore, both Greiser and Koppe were promoted by Himmler on January 30, 1942, which suggests that the RFSS, HSSPF and Gauletier were in close harmony on the purpose of Chelmno.
Testimonies concerning the killing process are summarized by Roberto here and here and can be found on-line in the accounts of Malzmueller and Burmeister.
In addition, the design of the gas van itself, and its use of a gasoline engine, is detailed in the witness account of Polish factory worker Piaskowski:
Finally, due to the imperfect concealment of the killing site from a neighboring school, the early killings at Chelmno were witnessed by two ethnic German children, Nelli Lohrko and Else Semmler, who later testified to the West German authorities (B/M, p.542n.)
To this mass graves evidence we can add the graves from the Bornhagen gas van killings that were excavated after the war, documented in this trial archived at JNSV Vol 7 Nr. 231b (LG Stuttgart 3 Ks 31/49, pp. 217-33), and cited by Browning & Matthaeus, p.542, n.144. Below I summarize the testimonies of perpetrators and other witnesses that were gathered by German courts in the 1960's. The main secondary sources used are Browning and Matthaeus (hereafter B/M) and Chapter 3 of Kershaw.
Read more!
Greiser was executed by the Poles in 1946 but his trial records are also held in ZStL (see Kershaw, p.88n.). The highest level perpetrator to give testimony to the German authorities was the HSSPF for the Warthegau, Wilhelm Koppe. Significantly, Koppe had spent 15 years of freedom as a successful businessman before 1960 yet, like Eichmann and Stangl, he did not gather together any evidence during that time that would have supported a denier narrative of resettlement, despite the fact that he would clearly have known where the 'surviving' Jews went; when they went, and how. Greiser and Frank were similarly silent on any alternative fate for the Jews in their Polish and Nuremberg trial defences.
Such silence is a killer blow to denial. Instead Koppe, like the others, relied on a 'just following orders' defence. He claimed that, when Lange arrived in the Warthegau with his gas van, Greiser had confirmed to Koppe that Lange's mission was the result of a Fuehrer order (Kershaw, p.72). However, B/M (p.417) show that Koppe supplied personnel to Sk Lange through his IdS, Damzog, as well as recruiting a rotating squad of 80 Orpo for Chelmno from the BdO, Oskar Knofe. Furthermore, both Greiser and Koppe were promoted by Himmler on January 30, 1942, which suggests that the RFSS, HSSPF and Gauletier were in close harmony on the purpose of Chelmno.
Testimonies concerning the killing process are summarized by Roberto here and here and can be found on-line in the accounts of Malzmueller and Burmeister.
In addition, the design of the gas van itself, and its use of a gasoline engine, is detailed in the witness account of Polish factory worker Piaskowski:
However, at least three witnesses were able to see the vehicles from the short distance. Mr. Jozef Piaskowski (b. 1908) was employed in the Reichsstrassenbauamt in Kolo (former *Ostrowski factory). In the winter 1941/42 he was ordered to repair the damaged cooler in the biggest of Chelmno vans. Piaskowski was an experienced driver. He declared later that he has never seen the motor of this type. "The motor was a bit odd". "It was enormous". The most interesting in his report is the description of the exhaust system. He has noticed that the exhaust pipe was divided into three parts. First and third were done of metal as in normal cars. But, the central part was done of the elastic, "hydraulic" pipe which could joint both standard tubes or could be screwed to the holen the van's floor. After the repair of the cooler, when the motor was tested, so much exhaust fumes were produced that the air in the garage (size 30 m x 12 m) started immediately to be blue. The German bosses ordered to open all windows and doors. The workers who spent a very short time in the polluted air have got headache. The witness heard later their comments that the motor of this car uses 75 liters of petrol per 100 km, so twice more than normal motors do. Piaskowski stated that he had seen two military type gas-masks in the driver's cab. Piaskowski's colleague, Mr. Bronislaw Mankowski (b. 1882) confirmed his story and added that he had seen the van when the middle part of the exhaust tube was joint to the hole in the car's floor. Mankowski declared that he looked inside the box when the watchmen left their posts for a while. He had seen a hole covered with a perforated sheet iron in the middle of the wooden floor.As Roberto has noted, the testimony concerning the large consumption of petrol by the vehicle converges with Jeckeln's testimony in the USSR that gas vans had "too high gasoline consumption and cleaning problems."
Finally, due to the imperfect concealment of the killing site from a neighboring school, the early killings at Chelmno were witnessed by two ethnic German children, Nelli Lohrko and Else Semmler, who later testified to the West German authorities (B/M, p.542n.)
Thursday, December 18, 2008
How to Become A Mass Graves Denier in 10 Easy Steps
No need to visit an archive or even go to school! You can practice these steps in the privacy of your own home or Fuehrerbunker.
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1. Always say the grave site is too small or too large, whilst ignoring the blatant contradiction between these two positions.
2. Call your opponent a "Jew bitch", "Jew lie" or "Judeo-supremacist", whilst insisting that there's no such thing as antisemitism.
3. Ignore the fact that Jewish religious laws have prohibitions against the disturbance of human remains. Demand full autopsies that would contravene these laws.
4. Pretend that partial excavations or test drillings were full site investigations and judge the results against that benchmark.
5. When referred to translations of Polish or Soviet postwar reports of mass grave excavations, bluntly dismiss them saying that those 'Communists' were liars who cannot be trusted. When shown evidence independent of those 'Communists' that corroborates their findings, ignore the argument or argue as per item 7.
6. Pretend that only those parts of an excavation that are published on-line were actually carried out. If it's not on-line, it doesn't exist! Forget that this would rule out nearly all historical studies of mass killings or criminal cases ever conducted.
7. Insist that German wartime documents and perpetrator eyewitnesses do not constitute real evidence, without explaining why.
8. Insist that if every victim cannot be identified by name, or if victim estimates change over time, this proves that the killings did not occur. Ignore this rule when discussing the firebombing of Dresden or crimes against ethnic Germans in Eastern Europe.
9. Keep demanding to be shown 'just one' sample of a bone fragment, tooth or other type of human remains. When asked about the relevance of your demand, ignore the question and repeat the demand. When shown photographs of human remains found at a Nazi mass killing site, yell that it has not been proven that these are actually a) human remains and b) Jewish human remains. Alternatively, argue that such remains could have been brought there from the local cemetery.
10. Apply the "falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus" fallacy to any source (e.g. eyewitness accounts given to Father Desbois), without reference to any established legal or historiographical rules that would justify such a negationist approach to the evidence.
Read more!
1. Always say the grave site is too small or too large, whilst ignoring the blatant contradiction between these two positions.
2. Call your opponent a "Jew bitch", "Jew lie" or "Judeo-supremacist", whilst insisting that there's no such thing as antisemitism.
3. Ignore the fact that Jewish religious laws have prohibitions against the disturbance of human remains. Demand full autopsies that would contravene these laws.
4. Pretend that partial excavations or test drillings were full site investigations and judge the results against that benchmark.
5. When referred to translations of Polish or Soviet postwar reports of mass grave excavations, bluntly dismiss them saying that those 'Communists' were liars who cannot be trusted. When shown evidence independent of those 'Communists' that corroborates their findings, ignore the argument or argue as per item 7.
6. Pretend that only those parts of an excavation that are published on-line were actually carried out. If it's not on-line, it doesn't exist! Forget that this would rule out nearly all historical studies of mass killings or criminal cases ever conducted.
7. Insist that German wartime documents and perpetrator eyewitnesses do not constitute real evidence, without explaining why.
8. Insist that if every victim cannot be identified by name, or if victim estimates change over time, this proves that the killings did not occur. Ignore this rule when discussing the firebombing of Dresden or crimes against ethnic Germans in Eastern Europe.
9. Keep demanding to be shown 'just one' sample of a bone fragment, tooth or other type of human remains. When asked about the relevance of your demand, ignore the question and repeat the demand. When shown photographs of human remains found at a Nazi mass killing site, yell that it has not been proven that these are actually a) human remains and b) Jewish human remains. Alternatively, argue that such remains could have been brought there from the local cemetery.
10. Apply the "falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus" fallacy to any source (e.g. eyewitness accounts given to Father Desbois), without reference to any established legal or historiographical rules that would justify such a negationist approach to the evidence.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Not With a Bang but a Whimper
Those of you reading this who don't "get" the title, read T.S. Eliot's poem "The Hollow Men" here.
The final installment of One Third of the Holocaust begins with a story from Reuters about negative population growth in Germany. Economic implications are the reason for the drop in population growth, the article says. Denierbud doesn't agree.
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"Nothing is bigger in the German psyche and identity than the Holocaust," denierbud tells us. Really? How does he know? Not only is he demonstrably not German (both because of his accent and his deplorable pronunciation of the German language), but he's engaging in the "no true Scotsman" fallacy -- again. Incidentally, one of this blog’s contributors is a German citizen. Ask Roberto is he feels "guilt, self-hatred and demoralization", which is what, according to denierbud, is instilled by the Holocaust in the poor German people. Roberto will probably tell you how proud he is of his German heritage, and of his uncle who fought and died as a Wehrmacht soldier in World War II. Apparently it is possible to distinguish the overwhelming majority of decent Germans past and present from denierbud’s mass-murdering Nazi heroes, no less so than it is possible to distinguish the overwhelming majority of decent Turks from the masterminds and executors of the Armenian genocide, the overwhelming majority of decent Japanese from the organizers and perpetrators of the Nanking massacre, the overwhelming majority of decent Cambodians from the likes of Pol Pot, or the overwhelming majority of decent Americans from the likes of George A. Custer, William Calley or Curtis LeMay, to name but a few out of many possible examples. And we expect most Germans to be intelligent and objective enough to have that capacity of distinction.
Plus, what does this have to do with negative population growth in Germany? Are Germans supposed to refrain from reproducing out of "guilt, self-hatred and demoralization"? If so, then Latvia, Poland, Hungary, Greece, and the Czech Republic must have similar psychic problems, because their birthrates, according to this BBC report, are not much higher than that of Germany. And in Germany, as the same report shows, the problem lies chiefly in the areas that formerly belonged to the so-called German Democratic Republic, where the transformation process following the reunification has been accompanied by immense insecurity and social crisis. Financial burden and conflict between job and family figure prominently as the reasons given by Germans for their reluctance to have children, according to a survey referred to on Andrew Hammel’s blog:
Yet there’s nothing suggesting "guilt, self-hatred and demoralization", as far as I can see. But then, who would expect denierbud, the self-appointed expert on the "German psyche" to know something about social and economic realities?
Then denierbud cuts to a Steven Spielberg cameo in the third Austin Powers movie. He compares the "fun and laughs of Hollywood" with Spielberg's "catch 'em while they're young" tactic of instilling guilt in non-Germans (demonstrated with a cut from Spielberg's Survivors of the Shoah project with voice-over by Morgan Freeman).
We're next brought to the Web site of Prof. Harold Marcuse of the University of California-Santa Barbara. Denierbud remarks on syllabi from Prof. Marcuse, noting that "a people's ability to navigate their future" is important. Denierbud flashes back ominously to the news story about negative population growth in Germany. He has yet to make any statement that definitely link the Holocaust to negative population growth in Germany. We've already established that he has no idea what the "German psyche", if such a thing even exists, consists of, and he hasn't given us any more to go on.
Denierbud also shows us that Prof. Marcuse has shown in previous courses the films Schindler's List and Escape From Sobibor, the latter of which denierbud "treated" back in Part 14.
A final point about Prof. Marcuse: His grandfather was Herbert Marcuse, who was an OSS agent during the war. If anyone might have known about mass killing of Jews before it became general knowledge, it was Herbert Marcuse.
After repeating some of the soundtrack from the trailer from Escape From Sobibor, denierbud flashes quickly to a clip from Schindler's List, this one showing Schindler's car driving over a street near the labor camp Plaszow (where the first half of the movie takes place) that has been paved with Jewish gravestones. Denierbud says cryptically that Spielberg shares much with Ben Hecht, implying (I guess) that they both lie and add religious elements to the "story" to make it more tragic.
There are two problems with this line of argumentation. The first is that the "story" wasn't invented in 1993, when Schindler's List was released. It is included in Thomas Keneally's 1982 book Schindler's List, from which the movie was adapted. You can find references to the road on pp. 221-22 of the paperback edition and on p. 16 (in the Prologue). So if anyone added this detail to the "story," it was Keneally and not Spielberg. But the second point tell us even more: Keneally didn't invent the story -- there actually was a road to Plaszow paved with Jewish headstones, even if denierbud tells us -- again -- that Hilberg doesn't mention it (not that he doesn't lie also, denierbud reminds us; he just knows what's truly outrageous).
In case there's any doubt that Keneally was telling the truth when he included in his book a description of the road paved with stones, here is an article from an anti-Semitic Web site indicating that Polish headstones were also used. In fact, the road still exists today, and anyone can go to Krakow and see it.
After showing the clip from Schindler's List, denierbud segues to a discussion of Holocaust education of teens in the U.S., stating that the primary audience now consists of "young hip-hop kids." I'm not quite sure what this means, though we have thankfully already been shown a young African American listening to testimony from the Survivors of the Shoah project in Clip 14, so you can connect the dots, I suppose.
Then something rare for this four-and-a-half-film happens: Denierbud makes a decent point. He says that young American high school students should be learning about the genocide against the indigenous population of North America. I, for one, could not agree more (although I disagree that this education should take place to the exclusion of teaching about other genocides, including the Nazi Holocaust).
Now denierbud asks a rhetorical question he believes his viewers might have, i.e., "Well, even if one-third is a lie, the other two-thirds are still true." Don't make that mistake, denierbud says. "The whole thing is a lie"
(As a side note, let's consider that in this series of refutations of One Third of the Holocaust, we will have successfully countered all of denierbud's claims against nearly 1.5 million Jewish deaths at Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka. If denierbud should attack the remaining 3.6 million Jewish deaths during World War II, assuming Hilberg's casualty figures that he refers to, we will probably have an easier job debunking his BS. For these 3.6 million include the death toll for Auschwitz [ca. 1 million, according to Hilberg] and mobile killing operations [i.e., open-air massacres by the Einsatzgruppen and other German formations, mainly in the occupied territories of the USSR, for which Hilberg’s estimate is about 1,300,000]. That would account for over 2.3 million, and, I'm sorry to break it to denierbud and his fans, but those figures are more easily proved than the Reinhard[t] figures because there was more evidence left after the war for both. The other 1.3 million [Kulmhof and Lublin, ghettoes, privation, labor camps, and camps in Romania and Croatia] are also supported by sufficient documentation, demographic data, and testimonies to leave no room for reasonable doubt. It should be borne in mind, in this context, that Hilberg’s estimates are rather conservative; more recent studies (e.g., those published in Benz et al, Dimensionen des Völkermords) point to a somewhat higher overall death toll.)
In the final assault, we go back to newspaper discussion from Clip 1 on the foundation of U.S. policy in the Middle East on the Holocaust. Denierbud finishes his diagram and then says this: "Bomba down here equals bombs up here," "up here" indicating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Abruptly, the film ends.
As I noted in my analysis of Episode 9, anti-Zionism is typical among Holocaust deniers:
Well, now he's included it in the last part of the film also.
Nice work, Bud.
Some final words about the film as a whole, as this article finishes our debunking of the same.
I think the thing that never ceases to amaze me is how Holocaust deniers get so easily impressed by such facile arguments. I actually found One Third of the Holocaust at YouTube by accident, and it wasn't obvious to me until denierbud said so that the film was intended to deny the Holocaust. This revelation took place when he advanced the argument that, because Hilberg and Arad both used the testimony of Yankel Wiernik in their individual works, then both Hilberg's and Arad's works had to be dismissed out of hand. (What's funny here, despite the obvious immense lapse in logic in such a proposition is that denierbud then continues through twenty-nine subsequent parts of the film to use Hilberg and Arad. I thought they were worthless?)
If there's one other thing that came shining though while working on a refutation of this film, it was the continued observation on my part that most Holocaust deniers have no idea of the details of the events that they are denying. Just for a few examples (from the pieces I principally wrote): The origins of the flag of Israel, the role of the SS during the Holocaust, the status of the war at different points in Holocaust historiography. With the possible exception of Mark Weber, who actually did graduate level work in German history (but who has a checkered past history of membership in neo-Nazi groups), the average Holocaust denier is totally ignorant of most of the historiography of the period.
Then there's the Zionist issue. I've stated many times that I am not a Zionist, but I do get awfully suspicious of anti-Zionists who focus entirely on Israel when there are far more oppressive régimes running countries around the world. When these people are also Holocaust deniers, then my anti-Semitism bells begin to go off. Denierbud set my bells off at least three separate times. Granted, that's a relatively low number for a four hour and fifteen minute film, but it's there nevertheless.
I also realized during this period just how brilliant the people I work with on this blog are. Nick Terry (who read, edited, and vetted every post), Roberto Muehlenkamp, and Sergey Romanov are some of the best researchers (and all around smart folks) I've come across, and I feel lucky even just to have been invited to share a blog with them.
Finally, I really have to thank denierbud himself. As I have stated several times over the last several years, refuting Holocaust denial has made my own knowledge of the period stronger. So thanks, Bud!
The final installment of One Third of the Holocaust begins with a story from Reuters about negative population growth in Germany. Economic implications are the reason for the drop in population growth, the article says. Denierbud doesn't agree.
Read more!
"Nothing is bigger in the German psyche and identity than the Holocaust," denierbud tells us. Really? How does he know? Not only is he demonstrably not German (both because of his accent and his deplorable pronunciation of the German language), but he's engaging in the "no true Scotsman" fallacy -- again. Incidentally, one of this blog’s contributors is a German citizen. Ask Roberto is he feels "guilt, self-hatred and demoralization", which is what, according to denierbud, is instilled by the Holocaust in the poor German people. Roberto will probably tell you how proud he is of his German heritage, and of his uncle who fought and died as a Wehrmacht soldier in World War II. Apparently it is possible to distinguish the overwhelming majority of decent Germans past and present from denierbud’s mass-murdering Nazi heroes, no less so than it is possible to distinguish the overwhelming majority of decent Turks from the masterminds and executors of the Armenian genocide, the overwhelming majority of decent Japanese from the organizers and perpetrators of the Nanking massacre, the overwhelming majority of decent Cambodians from the likes of Pol Pot, or the overwhelming majority of decent Americans from the likes of George A. Custer, William Calley or Curtis LeMay, to name but a few out of many possible examples. And we expect most Germans to be intelligent and objective enough to have that capacity of distinction.
Plus, what does this have to do with negative population growth in Germany? Are Germans supposed to refrain from reproducing out of "guilt, self-hatred and demoralization"? If so, then Latvia, Poland, Hungary, Greece, and the Czech Republic must have similar psychic problems, because their birthrates, according to this BBC report, are not much higher than that of Germany. And in Germany, as the same report shows, the problem lies chiefly in the areas that formerly belonged to the so-called German Democratic Republic, where the transformation process following the reunification has been accompanied by immense insecurity and social crisis. Financial burden and conflict between job and family figure prominently as the reasons given by Germans for their reluctance to have children, according to a survey referred to on Andrew Hammel’s blog:
The Allensbach institute, on of the principal public-opinion research institutes in Germany, recently asked Germans of child-bearing age why they aren't having children. Here are some of the reasons (German):
1. A child would be too much of a financial burden (47%)
2. I'm still too young for that (47%)
3. My career plans would be hard to fulfill with a child (37%)
4. I haven't yet found the right partner (28%)
5. I want to have the maximum amount of freedom, not to have to limit myself (27%)
6. I have many interests that would be hard to reconcile with having a child (27%)
7. Children are hard to raise; I am not sure I have the strength and nerves for that (27%)
8. I want to be as independent as possible (26%)
9. I would then have less time for friends (19%)
10. I don't know if my relationship will stay together (17%)
11. I or my partner would be at a career disadvantage if we had a child (16%)
Yet there’s nothing suggesting "guilt, self-hatred and demoralization", as far as I can see. But then, who would expect denierbud, the self-appointed expert on the "German psyche" to know something about social and economic realities?
Then denierbud cuts to a Steven Spielberg cameo in the third Austin Powers movie. He compares the "fun and laughs of Hollywood" with Spielberg's "catch 'em while they're young" tactic of instilling guilt in non-Germans (demonstrated with a cut from Spielberg's Survivors of the Shoah project with voice-over by Morgan Freeman).
We're next brought to the Web site of Prof. Harold Marcuse of the University of California-Santa Barbara. Denierbud remarks on syllabi from Prof. Marcuse, noting that "a people's ability to navigate their future" is important. Denierbud flashes back ominously to the news story about negative population growth in Germany. He has yet to make any statement that definitely link the Holocaust to negative population growth in Germany. We've already established that he has no idea what the "German psyche", if such a thing even exists, consists of, and he hasn't given us any more to go on.
Denierbud also shows us that Prof. Marcuse has shown in previous courses the films Schindler's List and Escape From Sobibor, the latter of which denierbud "treated" back in Part 14.
A final point about Prof. Marcuse: His grandfather was Herbert Marcuse, who was an OSS agent during the war. If anyone might have known about mass killing of Jews before it became general knowledge, it was Herbert Marcuse.
After repeating some of the soundtrack from the trailer from Escape From Sobibor, denierbud flashes quickly to a clip from Schindler's List, this one showing Schindler's car driving over a street near the labor camp Plaszow (where the first half of the movie takes place) that has been paved with Jewish gravestones. Denierbud says cryptically that Spielberg shares much with Ben Hecht, implying (I guess) that they both lie and add religious elements to the "story" to make it more tragic.
There are two problems with this line of argumentation. The first is that the "story" wasn't invented in 1993, when Schindler's List was released. It is included in Thomas Keneally's 1982 book Schindler's List, from which the movie was adapted. You can find references to the road on pp. 221-22 of the paperback edition and on p. 16 (in the Prologue). So if anyone added this detail to the "story," it was Keneally and not Spielberg. But the second point tell us even more: Keneally didn't invent the story -- there actually was a road to Plaszow paved with Jewish headstones, even if denierbud tells us -- again -- that Hilberg doesn't mention it (not that he doesn't lie also, denierbud reminds us; he just knows what's truly outrageous).
In case there's any doubt that Keneally was telling the truth when he included in his book a description of the road paved with stones, here is an article from an anti-Semitic Web site indicating that Polish headstones were also used. In fact, the road still exists today, and anyone can go to Krakow and see it.
After showing the clip from Schindler's List, denierbud segues to a discussion of Holocaust education of teens in the U.S., stating that the primary audience now consists of "young hip-hop kids." I'm not quite sure what this means, though we have thankfully already been shown a young African American listening to testimony from the Survivors of the Shoah project in Clip 14, so you can connect the dots, I suppose.
Then something rare for this four-and-a-half-film happens: Denierbud makes a decent point. He says that young American high school students should be learning about the genocide against the indigenous population of North America. I, for one, could not agree more (although I disagree that this education should take place to the exclusion of teaching about other genocides, including the Nazi Holocaust).
Now denierbud asks a rhetorical question he believes his viewers might have, i.e., "Well, even if one-third is a lie, the other two-thirds are still true." Don't make that mistake, denierbud says. "The whole thing is a lie"
(As a side note, let's consider that in this series of refutations of One Third of the Holocaust, we will have successfully countered all of denierbud's claims against nearly 1.5 million Jewish deaths at Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka. If denierbud should attack the remaining 3.6 million Jewish deaths during World War II, assuming Hilberg's casualty figures that he refers to, we will probably have an easier job debunking his BS. For these 3.6 million include the death toll for Auschwitz [ca. 1 million, according to Hilberg] and mobile killing operations [i.e., open-air massacres by the Einsatzgruppen and other German formations, mainly in the occupied territories of the USSR, for which Hilberg’s estimate is about 1,300,000]. That would account for over 2.3 million, and, I'm sorry to break it to denierbud and his fans, but those figures are more easily proved than the Reinhard[t] figures because there was more evidence left after the war for both. The other 1.3 million [Kulmhof and Lublin, ghettoes, privation, labor camps, and camps in Romania and Croatia] are also supported by sufficient documentation, demographic data, and testimonies to leave no room for reasonable doubt. It should be borne in mind, in this context, that Hilberg’s estimates are rather conservative; more recent studies (e.g., those published in Benz et al, Dimensionen des Völkermords) point to a somewhat higher overall death toll.)
In the final assault, we go back to newspaper discussion from Clip 1 on the foundation of U.S. policy in the Middle East on the Holocaust. Denierbud finishes his diagram and then says this: "Bomba down here equals bombs up here," "up here" indicating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Abruptly, the film ends.
As I noted in my analysis of Episode 9, anti-Zionism is typical among Holocaust deniers:
Here the UV has tipped his hand, so to speak. Like most Holocaust deniers, he doesn't just have a problem with "the orthodox version" of events. Rather, he has a problem with Jews. Thus his obvious problem with Zionism: Were Israel populated by non-Jews, would the UV mention it at all in his film? And yet Israel is populated mostly by Jews, and we hear about Israel in the very first clip of this film.
Well, now he's included it in the last part of the film also.
Nice work, Bud.
Some final words about the film as a whole, as this article finishes our debunking of the same.
I think the thing that never ceases to amaze me is how Holocaust deniers get so easily impressed by such facile arguments. I actually found One Third of the Holocaust at YouTube by accident, and it wasn't obvious to me until denierbud said so that the film was intended to deny the Holocaust. This revelation took place when he advanced the argument that, because Hilberg and Arad both used the testimony of Yankel Wiernik in their individual works, then both Hilberg's and Arad's works had to be dismissed out of hand. (What's funny here, despite the obvious immense lapse in logic in such a proposition is that denierbud then continues through twenty-nine subsequent parts of the film to use Hilberg and Arad. I thought they were worthless?)
If there's one other thing that came shining though while working on a refutation of this film, it was the continued observation on my part that most Holocaust deniers have no idea of the details of the events that they are denying. Just for a few examples (from the pieces I principally wrote): The origins of the flag of Israel, the role of the SS during the Holocaust, the status of the war at different points in Holocaust historiography. With the possible exception of Mark Weber, who actually did graduate level work in German history (but who has a checkered past history of membership in neo-Nazi groups), the average Holocaust denier is totally ignorant of most of the historiography of the period.
Then there's the Zionist issue. I've stated many times that I am not a Zionist, but I do get awfully suspicious of anti-Zionists who focus entirely on Israel when there are far more oppressive régimes running countries around the world. When these people are also Holocaust deniers, then my anti-Semitism bells begin to go off. Denierbud set my bells off at least three separate times. Granted, that's a relatively low number for a four hour and fifteen minute film, but it's there nevertheless.
I also realized during this period just how brilliant the people I work with on this blog are. Nick Terry (who read, edited, and vetted every post), Roberto Muehlenkamp, and Sergey Romanov are some of the best researchers (and all around smart folks) I've come across, and I feel lucky even just to have been invited to share a blog with them.
Finally, I really have to thank denierbud himself. As I have stated several times over the last several years, refuting Holocaust denial has made my own knowledge of the period stronger. So thanks, Bud!
"The Germans wouldn’t have done it that way"
One of the recurring themes in "Revisionist" wisecracking is the contention that "the Germans" wouldn’t have adopted the killing and body disposal methods that evidence shows them to have adopted for killing and removing the bodies of about 2.5 million people murdered at the Nazi extermination camps during World War II.
Read more!
This contention is a potentially relevant one where based on the alleged physical, technical or logistical impossibility of a certain reported method. Try though they might, however, "Revisionists" haven’t managed to demonstrate that the mass killing and body disposal at Nazi extermination camps, in the manner and on the scale reconstructed by historians and criminal investigators based on evidence, would have been physically, technically or logistically impossible.
Of less potential relevance is the argument that a certain killing or body disposal method had certain practical shortcomings and "the Germans" would have necessarily eliminated such shortcomings or chosen a "better" method. Hindsight is always 20/20, but all too often in human history things have been done less efficiently than they could have been done, or even in a grossly inefficient manner, without this being an indication against the accuracy of evidence showing that they were done. Man is simply everything other than perfect, even if belonging to the German "master race" whose capabilities many "Revisionists" have such a high idea of. So this kind of arguments don’t mean much even where the killing or body disposal method in question had certain shortcomings indeed and a "better" method could have been applied.
Even less potentially relevant, and all the more revealing of the cloud-cuckoo-land of "Revisionist" ill-reasoning, is the contention that the oh-so-technically-advanced Germans would have "designed" the killing or body disposal process in a technically advanced manner rather than applying a comparatively primitive methodology that evidence shows to have been applied. The proponents of this kind of argument seem to be of the strange conviction that technically advanced methods and devices tend to be applied just because they exist and are available, regardless of whether they are a cost-efficient or even a suitable solution for the task at hand in a particular case. They apparently don’t realize that the oh-so-technically wise Germans they look up to could also be practical enough to do without technology and mechanization where simpler methods achieved the same or better results at lower cost and/or in less time.
True to this "Revisionist" tradition, denierbud has tried all three lines of argumentation in his One Third of the Holocaust video, almost all clips of which have been debunked on this blog.
In clip # 10, denierbud essentially uses the second and third lines of argumentation described above, as he contends that certain reported killing or body disposal methods wouldn’t have been adopted or even tried by "the Germans" because they were unpractical, uncouth or unsophisticated. These contentions shall be addressed hereafter.
1. Height of gas chambers.
On pages 73 and 74 of Yitzhak Arad’s book Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. The Operation Reinhard Death Camps (hereinafter "Arad"), the author quotes from a description of the Belzec gas chambers by Rudolf Reder, one of the handful of survivors of that camp. Reder’s description includes the mention that "The corridor and the gas chambers were lower than ordinary rooms, no higher than two meters". Denierbud has a problem with the height: he claims that if the gas chambers were only 2 meters high, everything inside the chamber would be in reach of the victims, who could have blocked the pipes through which the exhaust entered their room with their hands or, as "it is often claimed that they were given towels", by stuffing towels into the openings.
Denierbud is obviously referring to the showerhead openings attached to the pipes along the gas chamber roof (see this CAD model, based on eyewitness descriptions of the gas chambers at Treblinka), which he figures could have been reached and blocked by the people inside the chamber because of the low height of the sealing.
Was this really a disadvantage, not compensated by the advantages of a low roof as concerns reduction of the oxygen available to the victims and the time required to fill the chamber with exhaust? Only if the people were on average tall enough to reach the openings and had enough presence of mind to a) realize that poisonous gas was coming out of the openings and b) react by trying to block them in some way.
The former is hardly a realistic expectation as the people gassed at Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka were mostly women, children and elderly people, and even the comparatively few younger adult males would rarely if ever have been tall enough to easily reach the sealing or the pipe openings fixed to the sealing.
The latter expectation is even less realistic: exhausted, frightened and confused people, naked and packed together like sardines into a chamber in which it was hard to breathe even before the exhaust was introduced, would hardly react in a rational and cold-blooded manner when faced with the introduction of a poisonous gas into the room. They would panic, completely loose their heads and be incapable of a rational thought or reaction. Any individuals tall and cool-headed enough to try blocking the openings would furthermore have had a problem finding those openings because, as mentioned by Dr. Wilhelm Pfannenstiel regarding Belzec, the lights were turned off prior to gassing.
So the probability that the victims might block openings through which the exhaust was introduced into the chamber was so reduced as to be negligible. Denierbud’s problem was no problem for the SS at the camps of Aktion Reinhard(t).
2. Exhaust introduction and air outlet
Denierbud tells his viewers that "If you have a pipe that pumps exhaust into a hermetically sealed room, you also need a pipe to let the air that's already in the room escape". Why this is so he doesn't explain, but a contemporary Nazi document about the use of homicidal gas vans shows that the need or advantage of an air outlet from a room used for homicidal gassing was also realized by the Nazis. This document, a letter sent by Willy Just to Walter Rauff on June 5, 1942, describes in great detail the technical issues of special vans used in the gassing murders of tens of thousands of people, following the information that "Since December 1941, ninety-seven thousand have been processed, using three vans, without any defects showing up in the vehicles". The document mentions several adjustments that "would be useful" according to "previous experience", the first of which is the following:
The slots here mentioned were obviously air outlets, and their function was to facilitate the rapid distribution of the carbon monoxide gas introduced from the exhaust of the vehicle and to avoid a buildup of pressure in the cargo area, which was stuffed with people to be gassed at a concentration of – as the document also reveals – 9 to 10 per square meters. The probable reason for wanting to avoid a buildup of excess pressure in the van's cargo area was that excess pressure could have the effect of blocking the gas van's exhaust pipe and causing the gas van's engine to die off or be damaged, or at least to lose power and burn much more fuel, like when a vehicle’s exhaust pipe is blocked by an object or substance not easily blown out by the exhaust:
Nevertheless, the apparent absence of such slots before the date on which the aforementioned letter was written did not impede the well-documented killing of tens of thousands of people in gas vans at Chelmno extermination camp, which the letter refers to when mentioning that ninety-seven thousand [people] had been "processed" (see the translated excerpt from the Bonn District Court’s judgment of 30 March 1963 at the trial against Heinrich B. et al in my post of 8-Apr-2007 18:12 on the RODOH forum). It may have been the reason, however, for the gas vans' large fuel consumption, mentioned by German historian Peter Witte:
Let’s assume that denierbud didn't find a mention of a "second pipe" to let out the air in either Arad’s or Hilberg’s work (even though there is at least one mention of apertures in the gas chambers, which would have served as an air outlet, by an eyewitness, Shimon Goldberg, quoted on page 153 of Arad’s book). If neither Arad nor Hilberg wrote much about this detail or didn't mention it at all, this only means that they were more interested in the overall reconstruction of the events that were the subject of their research than in specific technical details of the gas chambers, as becomes their being historians. This doesn’t change the fact that an air outlet in the homicidal gas chambers of the Aktion Reinhard(t) camps is mentioned not only by eyewitness Jankel Wiernik (who is quoted by denierbud in this sense), but also by other eyewitnesses or in drawings based on eyewitness testimonies. The following are mentioned by the authors of the aforementioned CAD Reconstruction of the Treblinka gas chambers:
The outlet of air through openings in the gas chambers may explain why some eyewitnesses believed that the victims were killed by extracting the air from the chamber. This method was considered a possibility in an early report (April 1942) by the Polish underground about Belzec, quoted in Arad, page 350. The report states that "It is unknown by which means the Jews are liquidated in the camp. There are three assumptions: (1) electricity; (2) gas; (3) by pumping out the air". On pages 67 f. of their book about Treblinka, "Revisionist" gurus Carlo Mattogno and Jürgen Graf enjoy themselves regarding the "hopeless confusion" among eyewitnesses who mentioned the pumping out of air from the chambers, alone or in combination with the introduction of exhaust gas. They probably wouldn’t be too happy about denierbud having unintentionally provided what may be a plausible explanation for these eyewitness descriptions.
A case of possible violation of the exhaust inlet/air outlet principle that particularly amuses denierbud is the gassing experiment at the lunatic asylum in Mogilev by Dr. Widmann of the German Criminal Police and SS Brigadeführer Arthur Nebe, commander of the mobile killing unit known as Einsatzgruppe B, which is described as follows on page 10 of Arad’s book:
Denierbud argues that when connecting the second car's engine to the "other pipe in the wall", which he figures was the air outlet pipe, the killers would have blocked the air outlet and thus kept their experiment from working properly. What exactly would have gone wrong he does not explain, but the above-quoted excerpt from Just’s letter to Rauff of June 5, 1942 suggests that the gassing experiment would, for the reasons explained above, have been in risk of not succeeding or of damaging the engines, or at least used up a lot more fuel than would have been necessary with an air outlet.
Arad’s description of the experiment is based on the description by Dr. Widmann quoted on pages 81/82 of Kogon, Langbein, Rückerl u.a., Nationalsozialsozialistische Massentötungen durch Giftgas. This is my translation of Dr. Widmann’s description, which he provided in the course of the West German criminal investigation StA Düsseldorf, AZ: 8 Js 7212/59; emphases are mine:
The above text suggests that Dr. Widmann assumed both openings to have been meant for the gas inlet pipes (Gaszuleitungen), though it is also possible that a misunderstanding on the part of the interrogator taking down Widmann's deposition was at play. However, it does not become apparent from Dr. Widmann’s description that the second hose was necessarily connected to a pipe in the second hole in the wall; as Dr. Widmann didn’t mention how many "pieces of pipe" there were, it is possible that at least the inlet opening had more than one pipe in it, and that both hoses were connected to pipes in that same opening. Arad's reading of Widmann's testimony, which assumes that the second car was connected to "the" other pipe in the wall (suggesting that there were only two pipes in total) would thus be incorrect.
On the other hand, there is a film about the Nuremberg Trials containing a gassing sequence that seems to correspond to Dr. Widmann’s description. Stills from this sequence show two hoses connected to two openings in the wall, with not other opening visible. According to the Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive at USHMM, which features this film, stills from the gassing sequence were used in evidence at the trial of Albert Widmann (Widmann was sentenced to 6 ½ years in prison by the Stuttgart District Court on 15.09.1965. According to the trial summary available on the University of Amsterdam's Justiz und NS-Verbrechen site, the subject of the proceeding included the blowing up of a bunker near Minsk in which mentally disabled patients had been locked up, as well as gassing of mentally disabled patients in Mogilev):
The accuracy of the above-quoted information is put in question by the fact that the Nuremberg film is stated to have been made in 1947, i.e. two years before the discovery, in Nebe’s former Berlin apartment, of an amateur film showing a gas chamber operated by the exhausts of a car and a lorry (Gerald Reitlinger, The Final Solution, 2nd Revised and Augmented Edition, Thomas Yoseloff, South Brunswick, New York, page 137). It seems more likely that what was used in evidence at Widmann's trial was this amateur film discovered in 1949. If so, the question arises where the 1947 gassing sequence came from. Could it be that there were several films of this experimental gassing, and that one of these films was captured by the Allies and presented as evidence at Nuremberg?
Assuming that the 1947 film is (also) a life recording of the gassing experiment at the Mogilev insane asylum in September 1941, that the building was hermetically sealed and that no air outlet was made in the sealed building before the second hose was connected to the second opening with a pipe in it, this would mean that Nebe and Dr. Widmann made a mistake in their experiment. How long it would have taken for pressure building up inside the room to shut off or damage the engines, or at least cause them to lose power and burn a lot more fuel (see above), would probably depend on how big the room was and how tightly it was packed with insane asylum inmates to be gassed. Nebe and Widmann may have been lucky to complete their gassing experiment before the absence of an air outlet led to any of these consequences, or to any consequence beyond excessive fuel consumption. Given the evidence – which sufficiently convinced an independent court of the Federal German constitutional state that the gassing experiment had taken place and Dr. Widmann was guilty of having taken part in it – concluding on an experiment that could have gone wrong but did not seems more reasonable than denierbud's conjecture about a tale invented by technically unwise "storytellers". After all this was just the first trial-and-error approach to a procedure that, as Just’s letter to Rauff of June 5, 1942 shows, was eventually purged of this error when homicidal gassing with engine exhaust was conducted on a large scale.
3. Killing experiment with explosives
Earlier on page 10 of Arad's book, the author describes a killing experiment carried out by Nebe and Dr. Widmann at an insane asylum near Minsk, in which the insane were blown up with explosives:
Denierbud calls this a "ridiculous" experiment on how to kill "millions of Jews" with explosives. He also tells his viewers what he thinks makes this experiment so "ridiculous": "Explosives would take a toll on the bunker as well, by blowing it up, and imagine the mess."
Say what?
The bunker in question, as we shall see below, was a bunker-like wooden refuge, i.e. something that could be set up without too much of an effort.
And the mess, as we shall also see below, was one of the reasons why the method of killing by explosives was not pursued beyond this one experiment.
But was the possibility of such mess a reason not to try this experiment at all?
One should bear in mind the problem that experimenting with this and other killing methods to replace mass shooting was meant to solve: the emotional stress of regularly bumping off at close range large numbers of defenseless people, including many women and children, with the victims screaming and crying and their blood and brain matter flying all over the place and unto the killers’ boots and uniforms, was taking a toll on the executors' psyche, and therefore alternative killing methods were sought that would spare the killers the direct confrontation with their victims. Blowing the victims up from afar came to mind as such a method, and it promised the additional advantage of giving the victims a more "humane" death: instead of suffering the agonies of death panic as they were waiting for their turn to be lined up in front of a trench or ravine or lie down inside it, and then for the fatal bullets to hit them, the victims would be unsuspecting of their fate until killed by the explosion in a split second, without even realizing what was going on. So this method was at least worth a try, not because it would make killing more efficient if it worked – it would hardly be a match for mass shooting as concerns efficiency – but because it would spare the victims suffering and keep the executors from losing their minds.
Incidentally, explosives were considered a recommendable method for killing large numbers of people at a time – more so than homicidal gassing, and on a par with mass shooting – by no less a "Revisionist" icon than Fred Leuchter. Leuchter said as much in the documentary film Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr., as is mentioned on the Wikipedia page about this film (emphasis added):
The exact words used by Leuchter in the film were the following (emphasis added):
While Leuchter’s conjectures are not less ignorant than denierbud’s, it's amusing to see a mass killing method recommended by "Mr. Death" himself called "ridiculous" by one of his admirers (denierbud seems to have Leuchter in high esteem as a "scientist", see clip # 18 of his One Third of the Holocaust video and the related article on this blog).
The oh-so-ridiculous explosion experiment at the Minsk lunatic asylum (the outcome of which was indeed as ridiculous as it was horrifying, but then even denierbud's oh-so-efficient Germans made blunders sometimes) was reconstructed in detail in the course of the West German criminal investigation and trial of Dr. Widmann. An account of the planning and execution of this experiment, based mostly on the files of this trial, can be found on pages 368 ff. of the book Besatzungspolitik und Massenmord. Die Einsatzgruppe D in der südlichen Sowjetunion 1941-1943, by historian Andrej Angrick (English translation see my RODOH post # 10473). This account mentions that Himmler himself instructed Nebe to research for murder methods other than shooting, and that the bunkers used for the explosion experiment were "two small bunker-like wooden refuges" in a forest near Minsk. It also becomes apparent from this account that Nebe himself considered the outcome of the explosion experiment a mess, and that the mess, together with the extensive preparations, was what led to this method being rejected, despite the advantages in expectation of which the experiment had been carried out in the first place:
Another hint that makes the findings of a detailed investigation by German criminal justice authorities into a "made-up story from someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about" in denierbud’s book is the amount of explosives brought along for the experiment: 400 kilograms, which denierbud apparently considers too much. Actually some redundancy or overkill is what one would logically expect to be in the plans of who was trying to find a killing method as quick and painless as possible and therefore disinclined to run the risk that the amount of explosives might not be sufficient. The question why the amount of explosives was so high seems to have also been raised during the West German criminal investigation of this incident, which also managed to establish where the explosives had been obtained:
Widmann’s precaution turned out to have been justified, because something did go wrong in the initial blast, as is also mentioned in Angrick’s account:
Rather than a story made up to vilify the poor Germans, what we have here is the detailed reconstruction of a well-evidenced, botched experiment aimed at finding an alternative to mass shooting that would be more "humane" on both the victims and the killers – and what is more, one that corresponded to Fred Leuchter’s own ideas on how best to kill large numbers of people at one time.
4. Body-burning experiments with fire bombs
Denierbud has a problem with experiments to burn dead bodies with incendiary bombs, which are mentioned on page 171 of Arad's book in the following context:
Denierbud’s comment: "Hmm, multiple large fires in the surrounding woods. OK."
What’s the poet trying to tell us here? That the perfectly efficient Germans of his fantasies would not have tried this method because they would have realized, without even trying, that fires caused by incendiary bombs might have undesirable collateral effects offsetting their effectiveness as a body disposal method? Such reasoning fails to take into account the situation that led to this method being attempted. Tens of thousands of bodies lying in mass graves at Chelmno had to be removed, and burning them in huge fires seemed the best way to do that, so the question was how to make such huge fires, preferably with the least effort and at the lowest cost. Incendiary bombs were a simple and effective way to start large fires at high temperatures, which were just what was needed to burn all those bodies in a speedy and thorough manner. Incendiary bombs were something that could be handled by the small staff of SS-men assigned to the task (see above quote from Arad), whereas building fireplaces to cremate the corpses (the solution eventually adopted), and transferring the corpses from the graves onto these fireplaces, required time and a workforce of permanent camp inmates. And the SS-officer in charge of burning the bodies, Paul Blobel, was not at the same time a forest-keeper, and may only have started caring about environmental side effects of his work after he or his superiors were faced with complaints about forest fires caused by the body-burning. Such complaints from the local forest administration and/or other entities were probably what caused this method to be abandoned and a burning method perhaps less comfortable but more sparing on the environment to be adopted. What's the implausible part supposed to be?
The early method of body disposal tried at Chelmno by Paul Blobel may also have been related to his experience as a combat engineer in World War I, which is mentioned in a lecture about >Operation 1005< in Riga:
5. Dragging the corpses from gas chambers to mass graves
Denierbud argues that his admired Nazi Germany, with its advanced technology (the only country to have operational jet aircraft during World War II, and miles beyond any country in rocket science) would have applied some "mechanized industrial process" to drag large numbers of bodies from the Aktion Reinhard(t) camps' gas chambers to the mass graves in which they were buried before cremation became the chosen body disposal method, instead of having permanent camp inmates carry or drag them there manually. However, he doesn’t tell his viewers what "mechanized industrial process" exactly he has in mind, let alone if such process would have produced better results than the non-mechanized method of carrying or dragging the bodies to the graves one by one. He tries to impress his viewers with big numbers ("A 100 pounds each, which is 45 kilos, that is 1,200,000 pounds of bodies to be hauled to the pits to be hauled to the pits in just one day, or 545,000 kilos"), as if transporting this weight (corresponding to the maximum number of people killed at Treblinka in one day, 12,000 to 15,000 according to camp commandant Stangl, an average weight of 45 kilos being a somewhat exaggerated assumption considering that the overwhelming majority of the victims were women, children and elderly people) to the mass graves were not just a matter of having a fast-working labor force large, organized and experienced enough. And he doesn’t tell his viewers that at Treblinka a "mechanized industrial process" was actually tried, but found to be less efficient. Arad, page 87, emphasis added:
At Sobibor, on the other hand, a trolley rail was used to take the bodies to the mass graves as long as burial and not burning was the body disposal method, according to the judgment at the trial against former members of the Sobibor staff before the Hagen District Court. But then, the killing and body disposal work at Sobibor was much less intensive than at Treblinka or Belzec. Arad, page 79:
While at Sobibor the luxury of some form of "mechanized industrial process" for taking the bodies to the mass graves could be afforded because there were less bodies to be moved in a given time, such process was unsuitable for the permanent rush job at Treblinka, as the frequent derailing of the trolley cars (probably due the hurry), made it slower than the use of labor alone. For certain tasks, methods that "predate the invention of the wheel" (denierbud) are more effective than what "mechanized industrial process" might be employed instead, and denierbud’s SS-heroes were not enamored with mechanized processes to the point of applying such even if they were more time-consuming.
At the end of this clip, denierbud involuntarily describes himself when he remarks that "What we’re really seeing is the recurring theme of the storytellers thinking they know how the Germans would have done it.". For unless he’s well aware that his conjectures are nonsense, denierbud obviously thinks he knows that his admired Nazis would have engineered elaborate "industrial" methods for mass killing and body disposal instead of doing things in a primitive but more effective manner where necessary, and he dismisses all evidence that doesn’t fit his world-view, however conclusive, on grounds that it contradicts his preconceived notions of the technically advanced German way of mass murder.
Thanks to Sergey for his valuable input about Fred Leuchter’s utterances in "Mr. Death".
Read more!
This contention is a potentially relevant one where based on the alleged physical, technical or logistical impossibility of a certain reported method. Try though they might, however, "Revisionists" haven’t managed to demonstrate that the mass killing and body disposal at Nazi extermination camps, in the manner and on the scale reconstructed by historians and criminal investigators based on evidence, would have been physically, technically or logistically impossible.
Of less potential relevance is the argument that a certain killing or body disposal method had certain practical shortcomings and "the Germans" would have necessarily eliminated such shortcomings or chosen a "better" method. Hindsight is always 20/20, but all too often in human history things have been done less efficiently than they could have been done, or even in a grossly inefficient manner, without this being an indication against the accuracy of evidence showing that they were done. Man is simply everything other than perfect, even if belonging to the German "master race" whose capabilities many "Revisionists" have such a high idea of. So this kind of arguments don’t mean much even where the killing or body disposal method in question had certain shortcomings indeed and a "better" method could have been applied.
Even less potentially relevant, and all the more revealing of the cloud-cuckoo-land of "Revisionist" ill-reasoning, is the contention that the oh-so-technically-advanced Germans would have "designed" the killing or body disposal process in a technically advanced manner rather than applying a comparatively primitive methodology that evidence shows to have been applied. The proponents of this kind of argument seem to be of the strange conviction that technically advanced methods and devices tend to be applied just because they exist and are available, regardless of whether they are a cost-efficient or even a suitable solution for the task at hand in a particular case. They apparently don’t realize that the oh-so-technically wise Germans they look up to could also be practical enough to do without technology and mechanization where simpler methods achieved the same or better results at lower cost and/or in less time.
True to this "Revisionist" tradition, denierbud has tried all three lines of argumentation in his One Third of the Holocaust video, almost all clips of which have been debunked on this blog.
In clip # 10, denierbud essentially uses the second and third lines of argumentation described above, as he contends that certain reported killing or body disposal methods wouldn’t have been adopted or even tried by "the Germans" because they were unpractical, uncouth or unsophisticated. These contentions shall be addressed hereafter.
1. Height of gas chambers.
On pages 73 and 74 of Yitzhak Arad’s book Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. The Operation Reinhard Death Camps (hereinafter "Arad"), the author quotes from a description of the Belzec gas chambers by Rudolf Reder, one of the handful of survivors of that camp. Reder’s description includes the mention that "The corridor and the gas chambers were lower than ordinary rooms, no higher than two meters". Denierbud has a problem with the height: he claims that if the gas chambers were only 2 meters high, everything inside the chamber would be in reach of the victims, who could have blocked the pipes through which the exhaust entered their room with their hands or, as "it is often claimed that they were given towels", by stuffing towels into the openings.
Denierbud is obviously referring to the showerhead openings attached to the pipes along the gas chamber roof (see this CAD model, based on eyewitness descriptions of the gas chambers at Treblinka), which he figures could have been reached and blocked by the people inside the chamber because of the low height of the sealing.
Was this really a disadvantage, not compensated by the advantages of a low roof as concerns reduction of the oxygen available to the victims and the time required to fill the chamber with exhaust? Only if the people were on average tall enough to reach the openings and had enough presence of mind to a) realize that poisonous gas was coming out of the openings and b) react by trying to block them in some way.
The former is hardly a realistic expectation as the people gassed at Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka were mostly women, children and elderly people, and even the comparatively few younger adult males would rarely if ever have been tall enough to easily reach the sealing or the pipe openings fixed to the sealing.
The latter expectation is even less realistic: exhausted, frightened and confused people, naked and packed together like sardines into a chamber in which it was hard to breathe even before the exhaust was introduced, would hardly react in a rational and cold-blooded manner when faced with the introduction of a poisonous gas into the room. They would panic, completely loose their heads and be incapable of a rational thought or reaction. Any individuals tall and cool-headed enough to try blocking the openings would furthermore have had a problem finding those openings because, as mentioned by Dr. Wilhelm Pfannenstiel regarding Belzec, the lights were turned off prior to gassing.
So the probability that the victims might block openings through which the exhaust was introduced into the chamber was so reduced as to be negligible. Denierbud’s problem was no problem for the SS at the camps of Aktion Reinhard(t).
2. Exhaust introduction and air outlet
Denierbud tells his viewers that "If you have a pipe that pumps exhaust into a hermetically sealed room, you also need a pipe to let the air that's already in the room escape". Why this is so he doesn't explain, but a contemporary Nazi document about the use of homicidal gas vans shows that the need or advantage of an air outlet from a room used for homicidal gassing was also realized by the Nazis. This document, a letter sent by Willy Just to Walter Rauff on June 5, 1942, describes in great detail the technical issues of special vans used in the gassing murders of tens of thousands of people, following the information that "Since December 1941, ninety-seven thousand have been processed, using three vans, without any defects showing up in the vehicles". The document mentions several adjustments that "would be useful" according to "previous experience", the first of which is the following:
In order to facilitate the rapid distribution of CO, as well as to avoid a buildup of pressure, two slots, ten by one centimeters, will be bored at the top of the rear wall. The excess pressure would be controlled by an easily adjustable hinged metal valve on the outside of the vents.
The slots here mentioned were obviously air outlets, and their function was to facilitate the rapid distribution of the carbon monoxide gas introduced from the exhaust of the vehicle and to avoid a buildup of pressure in the cargo area, which was stuffed with people to be gassed at a concentration of – as the document also reveals – 9 to 10 per square meters. The probable reason for wanting to avoid a buildup of excess pressure in the van's cargo area was that excess pressure could have the effect of blocking the gas van's exhaust pipe and causing the gas van's engine to die off or be damaged, or at least to lose power and burn much more fuel, like when a vehicle’s exhaust pipe is blocked by an object or substance not easily blown out by the exhaust:
Yes, it will blow the bottle out. However, if the exhaust is blocked by something more substantial, like the tail pipe being sandblasted shut by hours of travel on a gravel road (it happened to us) then the catalytic converter and/or other sections of the exhaust will probably balloon, your vehicle will get noisier, you will lose power - hills will get more difficult, and you will burn far more gas.
Nevertheless, the apparent absence of such slots before the date on which the aforementioned letter was written did not impede the well-documented killing of tens of thousands of people in gas vans at Chelmno extermination camp, which the letter refers to when mentioning that ninety-seven thousand [people] had been "processed" (see the translated excerpt from the Bonn District Court’s judgment of 30 March 1963 at the trial against Heinrich B. et al in my post of 8-Apr-2007 18:12 on the RODOH forum). It may have been the reason, however, for the gas vans' large fuel consumption, mentioned by German historian Peter Witte:
For the extermination camp Chelmno and the gas vans there the same applies: unquestionably petrol motors. Walter Burmeister, gas van driver at Chelmno, mentioned mid-heavy Renault lorries with an Otto-Motor. Camp chief Walter Piller described the killing process with “gasses which were produced by petrol motors”. Polish mechanics, who were personally ordered to repair a gas van, precisely described exactly the huge petrol motor and its consumption: “The motor of this car uses 75 litres of petrol per 100 km, that is, twice the consumption of normal motors.”
Let’s assume that denierbud didn't find a mention of a "second pipe" to let out the air in either Arad’s or Hilberg’s work (even though there is at least one mention of apertures in the gas chambers, which would have served as an air outlet, by an eyewitness, Shimon Goldberg, quoted on page 153 of Arad’s book). If neither Arad nor Hilberg wrote much about this detail or didn't mention it at all, this only means that they were more interested in the overall reconstruction of the events that were the subject of their research than in specific technical details of the gas chambers, as becomes their being historians. This doesn’t change the fact that an air outlet in the homicidal gas chambers of the Aktion Reinhard(t) camps is mentioned not only by eyewitness Jankel Wiernik (who is quoted by denierbud in this sense), but also by other eyewitnesses or in drawings based on eyewitness testimonies. The following are mentioned by the authors of the aforementioned CAD Reconstruction of the Treblinka gas chambers:
Gas chambers - openings in gas chambers ceilings / hermetic caps.
a) “... the Germans poured chlorine through a window above the chamber.” (Rosenberg, Demjanjuk, Teicholz, p.130)
b) “The outlet on the roof had a hermetic cap.” (Wiernik, Donat, p.157)
c) Explanation of the legend in Jurowski's plan: Nr ?: Window (= opening) through which gas was drawn off to the roof. (Jurowski plan)
d) “The 'windows' on the ceiling measured approximately 0.5 m x 0.5 m according to the plan, and were supplied with grates." (Jurowski plan)
e) An exhaust / chimney type of construction is visible on the Kurt Franz photo.
f) Checking the window in the ceiling / roof. (Rosenberg drawing)
The outlet of air through openings in the gas chambers may explain why some eyewitnesses believed that the victims were killed by extracting the air from the chamber. This method was considered a possibility in an early report (April 1942) by the Polish underground about Belzec, quoted in Arad, page 350. The report states that "It is unknown by which means the Jews are liquidated in the camp. There are three assumptions: (1) electricity; (2) gas; (3) by pumping out the air". On pages 67 f. of their book about Treblinka, "Revisionist" gurus Carlo Mattogno and Jürgen Graf enjoy themselves regarding the "hopeless confusion" among eyewitnesses who mentioned the pumping out of air from the chambers, alone or in combination with the introduction of exhaust gas. They probably wouldn’t be too happy about denierbud having unintentionally provided what may be a plausible explanation for these eyewitness descriptions.
A case of possible violation of the exhaust inlet/air outlet principle that particularly amuses denierbud is the gassing experiment at the lunatic asylum in Mogilev by Dr. Widmann of the German Criminal Police and SS Brigadeführer Arthur Nebe, commander of the mobile killing unit known as Einsatzgruppe B, which is described as follows on page 10 of Arad’s book:
A few days later an experiment with poison gas was carried out by Nebe and Dr. Widmann in Mogilev. In the local lunatic asylum, a room with twenty to thirty of the insane was closed hermetically, and two pipes were driven into the wall. A car was parked outside, and one of the metal pipes that Dr. Widmann had brought connected the exhaust of the car to the pipe in the wall. The car engine was turned on and the carbon monoxide began seeping into the room. After eight minutes, the people in the room were still alive. A second car was connected to the other pipe in the wall. The two cars were operated simultaneously, and a few minutes later all those in the room were dead.
Denierbud argues that when connecting the second car's engine to the "other pipe in the wall", which he figures was the air outlet pipe, the killers would have blocked the air outlet and thus kept their experiment from working properly. What exactly would have gone wrong he does not explain, but the above-quoted excerpt from Just’s letter to Rauff of June 5, 1942 suggests that the gassing experiment would, for the reasons explained above, have been in risk of not succeeding or of damaging the engines, or at least used up a lot more fuel than would have been necessary with an air outlet.
Arad’s description of the experiment is based on the description by Dr. Widmann quoted on pages 81/82 of Kogon, Langbein, Rückerl u.a., Nationalsozialsozialistische Massentötungen durch Giftgas. This is my translation of Dr. Widmann’s description, which he provided in the course of the West German criminal investigation StA Düsseldorf, AZ: 8 Js 7212/59; emphases are mine:
Then on the afternoon of that day Nebe had the window bricked up and two openings left for the gas inlet pipes … When we arrived, at first one of the hoses that were in my car was connected. It was connected to a passenger car … In the holes along the wall there were pieces of pipe on which one could comfortably fit the hoses. After 5 minutes Nebe came out and said that no effect could be seen. Also after 8 minutes he established no effect and asked what was to be done now. Nebe and I became convinced that the car was too weak. Thereupon Nebe had the second hose connected to a troop truck of the order police. After that it was only a few minutes before the people became unconscious. Both cars were then allowed to run for another ten minutes.
The above text suggests that Dr. Widmann assumed both openings to have been meant for the gas inlet pipes (Gaszuleitungen), though it is also possible that a misunderstanding on the part of the interrogator taking down Widmann's deposition was at play. However, it does not become apparent from Dr. Widmann’s description that the second hose was necessarily connected to a pipe in the second hole in the wall; as Dr. Widmann didn’t mention how many "pieces of pipe" there were, it is possible that at least the inlet opening had more than one pipe in it, and that both hoses were connected to pipes in that same opening. Arad's reading of Widmann's testimony, which assumes that the second car was connected to "the" other pipe in the wall (suggesting that there were only two pipes in total) would thus be incorrect.
On the other hand, there is a film about the Nuremberg Trials containing a gassing sequence that seems to correspond to Dr. Widmann’s description. Stills from this sequence show two hoses connected to two openings in the wall, with not other opening visible. According to the Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive at USHMM, which features this film, stills from the gassing sequence were used in evidence at the trial of Albert Widmann (Widmann was sentenced to 6 ½ years in prison by the Stuttgart District Court on 15.09.1965. According to the trial summary available on the University of Amsterdam's Justiz und NS-Verbrechen site, the subject of the proceeding included the blowing up of a bunker near Minsk in which mentally disabled patients had been locked up, as well as gassing of mentally disabled patients in Mogilev):
05:38:38 CU pipes from a German police car bearing a license plate POL-28545 and a German police truck with license POL-51628 (as well as military unit markings: 7 circle-with-flag IX). Apparently metal piping is directed into the brick work of a small brick building, in an area that appears to be a bricked up window or door. Projected against the wall is what appears to be the shadow of a man in uniform. Five emaciated men pass on an open farm cart/wagon to a wooded location; a tall naked emaciated man and two emaciated children (different from those seen first) are led by a man and a woman in white lab coats to the building. Small red cross appears on man's white coat sleeve. The man and woman put blankets around the patients' shoulders as they are led toward the building (and over a child lying on the cart). A uniformed man - probably German - is visible in the background, along the fence, watching the scene. CU car and pipes connecting the car exhaust to the building. [Scene is consistent with descriptions of September 1941 experimental killings by Einsatzgruppe B of patients from a local asylum in the area of Mogilev, Belarus. Corresponding still images were used in evidence at the trial of Albert Widmann.]
The accuracy of the above-quoted information is put in question by the fact that the Nuremberg film is stated to have been made in 1947, i.e. two years before the discovery, in Nebe’s former Berlin apartment, of an amateur film showing a gas chamber operated by the exhausts of a car and a lorry (Gerald Reitlinger, The Final Solution, 2nd Revised and Augmented Edition, Thomas Yoseloff, South Brunswick, New York, page 137). It seems more likely that what was used in evidence at Widmann's trial was this amateur film discovered in 1949. If so, the question arises where the 1947 gassing sequence came from. Could it be that there were several films of this experimental gassing, and that one of these films was captured by the Allies and presented as evidence at Nuremberg?
Assuming that the 1947 film is (also) a life recording of the gassing experiment at the Mogilev insane asylum in September 1941, that the building was hermetically sealed and that no air outlet was made in the sealed building before the second hose was connected to the second opening with a pipe in it, this would mean that Nebe and Dr. Widmann made a mistake in their experiment. How long it would have taken for pressure building up inside the room to shut off or damage the engines, or at least cause them to lose power and burn a lot more fuel (see above), would probably depend on how big the room was and how tightly it was packed with insane asylum inmates to be gassed. Nebe and Widmann may have been lucky to complete their gassing experiment before the absence of an air outlet led to any of these consequences, or to any consequence beyond excessive fuel consumption. Given the evidence – which sufficiently convinced an independent court of the Federal German constitutional state that the gassing experiment had taken place and Dr. Widmann was guilty of having taken part in it – concluding on an experiment that could have gone wrong but did not seems more reasonable than denierbud's conjecture about a tale invented by technically unwise "storytellers". After all this was just the first trial-and-error approach to a procedure that, as Just’s letter to Rauff of June 5, 1942 shows, was eventually purged of this error when homicidal gassing with engine exhaust was conducted on a large scale.
3. Killing experiment with explosives
Earlier on page 10 of Arad's book, the author describes a killing experiment carried out by Nebe and Dr. Widmann at an insane asylum near Minsk, in which the insane were blown up with explosives:
In September 1941, Einsatzgruppe B was faced with the task of liquidating the patients of the lunatic asylums in the cities of Minsk and Mogilev. Nebe decided to find a simpler way for his men to kill the mentally diseased, other than by shooting them. He contacted Kripo headquarters and asked for their help in carrying out the killing of the insane with either explosives or poison gas. Dr. Widmann of the Criminal Police was sent to Nebe in Minsk, but before he left, Dr. Widmann discussed with the director of the Criminal Police Technological Institute, Dr. Heess, ways of using the carbon monoxide from automobile exhaust for killing operations in the East, based on the experience gained from the euthanasia program. Dr. Widmann took to Minsk 400 kgs of explosive material and the metal pipes required for the gassing installations.
Nebe and Dr. Widmann carried out an experimental killing using explosives. Twenty-five mentally ill people were locked into two bunkers in a forest outside Minsk. The first explosion killed only some of them, and it took much time and trouble until the second explosion killed the rest. Explosives therefore were unsatisfactory.
Denierbud calls this a "ridiculous" experiment on how to kill "millions of Jews" with explosives. He also tells his viewers what he thinks makes this experiment so "ridiculous": "Explosives would take a toll on the bunker as well, by blowing it up, and imagine the mess."
Say what?
The bunker in question, as we shall see below, was a bunker-like wooden refuge, i.e. something that could be set up without too much of an effort.
And the mess, as we shall also see below, was one of the reasons why the method of killing by explosives was not pursued beyond this one experiment.
But was the possibility of such mess a reason not to try this experiment at all?
One should bear in mind the problem that experimenting with this and other killing methods to replace mass shooting was meant to solve: the emotional stress of regularly bumping off at close range large numbers of defenseless people, including many women and children, with the victims screaming and crying and their blood and brain matter flying all over the place and unto the killers’ boots and uniforms, was taking a toll on the executors' psyche, and therefore alternative killing methods were sought that would spare the killers the direct confrontation with their victims. Blowing the victims up from afar came to mind as such a method, and it promised the additional advantage of giving the victims a more "humane" death: instead of suffering the agonies of death panic as they were waiting for their turn to be lined up in front of a trench or ravine or lie down inside it, and then for the fatal bullets to hit them, the victims would be unsuspecting of their fate until killed by the explosion in a split second, without even realizing what was going on. So this method was at least worth a try, not because it would make killing more efficient if it worked – it would hardly be a match for mass shooting as concerns efficiency – but because it would spare the victims suffering and keep the executors from losing their minds.
Incidentally, explosives were considered a recommendable method for killing large numbers of people at a time – more so than homicidal gassing, and on a par with mass shooting – by no less a "Revisionist" icon than Fred Leuchter. Leuchter said as much in the documentary film Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr., as is mentioned on the Wikipedia page about this film (emphasis added):
In the course of the film Leuchter goes so far as to state frankly that he could not believe in the gas chambers because he could not himself conceive of their mechanics, although he makes it plainly evident that he knows very little of the history in which these arose. He suggests a series of options (hanging, shooting, and explosives), most of which the Nazis had in fact attempted (shootings and explosives) before determining that direct, ongoing, and extensive SS involvement would not be sufficient to the genocidal objectives they set for themselves after earlier forays into mass murder, such as Einsatzgruppen and Babi Yar..
The exact words used by Leuchter in the film were the following (emphasis added):
It's a tough job...
to execute several hundred people at once.
We have a hard job executing one man.
I think it would be easier to shoot them or hang them.
I probably could do a reasonably good job by building a multiple gallows...
and hanging people at once.
I probably could execute more people...
within a shorter time frame.
Why didn't they just shoot them?
Bullets would've been cheaper than doing this.
Why didn't they just blow them up?
Why didn't they take them down into a mine and seal the mine off?
While Leuchter’s conjectures are not less ignorant than denierbud’s, it's amusing to see a mass killing method recommended by "Mr. Death" himself called "ridiculous" by one of his admirers (denierbud seems to have Leuchter in high esteem as a "scientist", see clip # 18 of his One Third of the Holocaust video and the related article on this blog).
The oh-so-ridiculous explosion experiment at the Minsk lunatic asylum (the outcome of which was indeed as ridiculous as it was horrifying, but then even denierbud's oh-so-efficient Germans made blunders sometimes) was reconstructed in detail in the course of the West German criminal investigation and trial of Dr. Widmann. An account of the planning and execution of this experiment, based mostly on the files of this trial, can be found on pages 368 ff. of the book Besatzungspolitik und Massenmord. Die Einsatzgruppe D in der südlichen Sowjetunion 1941-1943, by historian Andrej Angrick (English translation see my RODOH post # 10473). This account mentions that Himmler himself instructed Nebe to research for murder methods other than shooting, and that the bunkers used for the explosion experiment were "two small bunker-like wooden refuges" in a forest near Minsk. It also becomes apparent from this account that Nebe himself considered the outcome of the explosion experiment a mess, and that the mess, together with the extensive preparations, was what led to this method being rejected, despite the advantages in expectation of which the experiment had been carried out in the first place:
Meanwhile darkness had fallen, so that the »experiment team« returned to Minsk, but the next day they were back on the site of the crime in order to analyze the results and remove the traces as best as possible. After these »tests«, Nebe dismissed killings by explosion, which he - probably because they were even more burdensome on the perpetrators than other forms of murder and furthermore implied unpredictable risks to themselves - called a »very big mess« (»ganz große Schweinerei«). Dr. Widman and Schmidt were in a depressed mood after the »failure« of the »experiment«.
[…]
One day later the KTI-workers and Nebe compared the various murder techniques at the headquarters of Einsatzgruppe B in Smolensk, because Himmler had ordered a report about the results. Despite the »fitfully« occurring death, blasting was rejected on account of the extensive preparations and the need to fill in the bomb craters: »Under these circumstances the killing by exhaust was to be preferred, because there were vehicles available everywhere and any kind of room could be used.«
Another hint that makes the findings of a detailed investigation by German criminal justice authorities into a "made-up story from someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about" in denierbud’s book is the amount of explosives brought along for the experiment: 400 kilograms, which denierbud apparently considers too much. Actually some redundancy or overkill is what one would logically expect to be in the plans of who was trying to find a killing method as quick and painless as possible and therefore disinclined to run the risk that the amount of explosives might not be sufficient. The question why the amount of explosives was so high seems to have also been raised during the West German criminal investigation of this incident, which also managed to establish where the explosives had been obtained:
Regarding the alternative killing variant Nebe had instructed through Werner that members of the KTI should get on their way to Minsk with 250 kilograms of explosives. As neither the KTI nor the police had such an amount of explosives at their disposal and the Wehrmacht made none available, the explosives were bought from Wasag (Westfälische-Anhaltische Sprengstoff AG) in Berlin. Widmann had increased the quantity to 400 kilograms for good measure, »because that must be done in any blasting in case something goes wrong«. With the explosives in their luggage – the detonators were transported separately – Dr. Widmann, Hans Schmidt (expert on ammunition and fires) and Dr. Hans Battista (a member of the KTI Vienna) drove to Belorussia with their drivers.
Widmann’s precaution turned out to have been justified, because something did go wrong in the initial blast, as is also mentioned in Angrick’s account:
The institution inmates were locked into the bunker with the explosive charges, the Jewish men into the other. The area was sealed off so that the »experiment« could begin. In Nebe's refuge the detonator cables were activated, then there was a short explosion. The desired effect had not occurred as expected. While the wooden roof had collapsed and the door had been blown open, half of the patients crawled or ran out of the bunker in panic, screaming loudly. While Jewish forced laborers had to catch the surviving patients in the twilight, Widmann and his companions analyzed their errors. They concluded that the explosive charge had been too weak, and a second attempt was undertaken. After this explosion the refuge collapsed completely, and there was no longer any noise. Several parts of the victims' corpses were hanging in the trees. Now the hole in the ground should have been filled-in by the Jewish ghetto inmates, but these had managed to flee in the general confusion.
Rather than a story made up to vilify the poor Germans, what we have here is the detailed reconstruction of a well-evidenced, botched experiment aimed at finding an alternative to mass shooting that would be more "humane" on both the victims and the killers – and what is more, one that corresponded to Fred Leuchter’s own ideas on how best to kill large numbers of people at one time.
4. Body-burning experiments with fire bombs
Denierbud has a problem with experiments to burn dead bodies with incendiary bombs, which are mentioned on page 171 of Arad's book in the following context:
After his appointment, Blobel, along with a small staff of three or four men, began experimenting with systems for burning bodies. The place chosen for these experiments was Chelmno, the first death camp that had been established and had been operating since the end of 1941. At that time, tens of thousands of Jews from the Lodz area had already been killed there; they were buried in pits in a wooded area. The pits were opened, and the first experiments were carried out. Incendiary bombs were tried, but these caused large fires in the surrounding woods. Then they started to cremate the bodies on wood in open fireplaces.
Denierbud’s comment: "Hmm, multiple large fires in the surrounding woods. OK."
What’s the poet trying to tell us here? That the perfectly efficient Germans of his fantasies would not have tried this method because they would have realized, without even trying, that fires caused by incendiary bombs might have undesirable collateral effects offsetting their effectiveness as a body disposal method? Such reasoning fails to take into account the situation that led to this method being attempted. Tens of thousands of bodies lying in mass graves at Chelmno had to be removed, and burning them in huge fires seemed the best way to do that, so the question was how to make such huge fires, preferably with the least effort and at the lowest cost. Incendiary bombs were a simple and effective way to start large fires at high temperatures, which were just what was needed to burn all those bodies in a speedy and thorough manner. Incendiary bombs were something that could be handled by the small staff of SS-men assigned to the task (see above quote from Arad), whereas building fireplaces to cremate the corpses (the solution eventually adopted), and transferring the corpses from the graves onto these fireplaces, required time and a workforce of permanent camp inmates. And the SS-officer in charge of burning the bodies, Paul Blobel, was not at the same time a forest-keeper, and may only have started caring about environmental side effects of his work after he or his superiors were faced with complaints about forest fires caused by the body-burning. Such complaints from the local forest administration and/or other entities were probably what caused this method to be abandoned and a burning method perhaps less comfortable but more sparing on the environment to be adopted. What's the implausible part supposed to be?
The early method of body disposal tried at Chelmno by Paul Blobel may also have been related to his experience as a combat engineer in World War I, which is mentioned in a lecture about >Operation 1005< in Riga:
During the summer of 1942 Blobel stayed several times at the >Waldlager<-section of CheŁmno to test the cremation of corpses. The local camp guards were also interested in Blobels experiments, as he knew something about flamethrowers and incendiary bombs from his experience as a combat-engineer in World War I.
5. Dragging the corpses from gas chambers to mass graves
Denierbud argues that his admired Nazi Germany, with its advanced technology (the only country to have operational jet aircraft during World War II, and miles beyond any country in rocket science) would have applied some "mechanized industrial process" to drag large numbers of bodies from the Aktion Reinhard(t) camps' gas chambers to the mass graves in which they were buried before cremation became the chosen body disposal method, instead of having permanent camp inmates carry or drag them there manually. However, he doesn’t tell his viewers what "mechanized industrial process" exactly he has in mind, let alone if such process would have produced better results than the non-mechanized method of carrying or dragging the bodies to the graves one by one. He tries to impress his viewers with big numbers ("A 100 pounds each, which is 45 kilos, that is 1,200,000 pounds of bodies to be hauled to the pits to be hauled to the pits in just one day, or 545,000 kilos"), as if transporting this weight (corresponding to the maximum number of people killed at Treblinka in one day, 12,000 to 15,000 according to camp commandant Stangl, an average weight of 45 kilos being a somewhat exaggerated assumption considering that the overwhelming majority of the victims were women, children and elderly people) to the mass graves were not just a matter of having a fast-working labor force large, organized and experienced enough. And he doesn’t tell his viewers that at Treblinka a "mechanized industrial process" was actually tried, but found to be less efficient. Arad, page 87, emphasis added:
The removal of bodies from the gas chambers and their transports in trolleys to the ditches was also a slow process, and it delayed the arrival of new victims to the gas chambers. The hand pushed trolley used to transfer the corpses to the pits would often derail and overturn, and it finally was decided to dispense with it altogether. Instead, the prisoners dragged the bodies by their feet to the ditches.
At Sobibor, on the other hand, a trolley rail was used to take the bodies to the mass graves as long as burial and not burning was the body disposal method, according to the judgment at the trial against former members of the Sobibor staff before the Hagen District Court. But then, the killing and body disposal work at Sobibor was much less intensive than at Treblinka or Belzec. Arad, page 79:
The extermination machine of Sobibor operated for months without interruptions and in an orderly way. The structure of the camp was adapted to the extermination technique and enabled more efficient treatment of the arriving transports than in Belzec. Moreover, the frequency of the transports to Sobibor was lower than in Belzec and, in most cases, less people were in each train. Usually only one train with deportees arrived daily, and there were even days without any transports. The size of the transports rarely exceeded twenty freight cars carrying from 2,000 to 2,500 people.
While at Sobibor the luxury of some form of "mechanized industrial process" for taking the bodies to the mass graves could be afforded because there were less bodies to be moved in a given time, such process was unsuitable for the permanent rush job at Treblinka, as the frequent derailing of the trolley cars (probably due the hurry), made it slower than the use of labor alone. For certain tasks, methods that "predate the invention of the wheel" (denierbud) are more effective than what "mechanized industrial process" might be employed instead, and denierbud’s SS-heroes were not enamored with mechanized processes to the point of applying such even if they were more time-consuming.
At the end of this clip, denierbud involuntarily describes himself when he remarks that "What we’re really seeing is the recurring theme of the storytellers thinking they know how the Germans would have done it.". For unless he’s well aware that his conjectures are nonsense, denierbud obviously thinks he knows that his admired Nazis would have engineered elaborate "industrial" methods for mass killing and body disposal instead of doing things in a primitive but more effective manner where necessary, and he dismisses all evidence that doesn’t fit his world-view, however conclusive, on grounds that it contradicts his preconceived notions of the technically advanced German way of mass murder.
Thanks to Sergey for his valuable input about Fred Leuchter’s utterances in "Mr. Death".
Sunday, December 14, 2008
CODOH and Shawcross
It has been established beyond any reasonable doubt that statements attributed to Hartley Shawcross in which he supposedly claimed that "we are forced to realise that Hitler was right" are false. Furthermore, anyone who Googles the words "Shawcross Stourbridge" will find this full debunking in one of the first returned search results.
Read more!
It is therefore instructive that, when a user named Reviso began this thread on the topic, the moderator (Jonnie 'Hannover' Hargis) did not ask him for a source for the quote. His 'show me' rhetoric was notably absent from his reply. Instead, he gave this bogus reasoning:
1. Pro-Nazi evidence may still be genuine even if it cannot be produced!
2. Even if Shawcross did not make pro-Nazi statements, and we can't produce a quote by anyone else with his background saying them, we can still assume that "it follows that someone like Shawcross would eventually make such statements."
Hence we have proof that Hargis has no real interest in 'evidence' as such, and his 'show me' calls were always a sham.
Furthermore, a CODOH user called Lamprecht currently has the false quote as his signature, without any action being taken by the 'moderator'.
Read more!
It is therefore instructive that, when a user named Reviso began this thread on the topic, the moderator (Jonnie 'Hannover' Hargis) did not ask him for a source for the quote. His 'show me' rhetoric was notably absent from his reply. Instead, he gave this bogus reasoning:
My reason for "supposedly" is that it is quoted frequently but I have never seen the text of the speech in any traditional publication, that doesn't mean it does not exist. A local newpaper where the speech was given may have carried the text. I haven't spend much time on it as I do not find the contents particularly unique.So, in direct contradiction of his approach towards any Holocaust documentation, Hargis's approach to the bogus statements attributed to Shawcross is to state that:
Usually the meaning and implications of such quotes is what people want to debate. And as I have stated, finding support for it's content is easy. IOW, it follows that someone like Shawcross would eventually make such statements.
1. Pro-Nazi evidence may still be genuine even if it cannot be produced!
2. Even if Shawcross did not make pro-Nazi statements, and we can't produce a quote by anyone else with his background saying them, we can still assume that "it follows that someone like Shawcross would eventually make such statements."
Hence we have proof that Hargis has no real interest in 'evidence' as such, and his 'show me' calls were always a sham.
Furthermore, a CODOH user called Lamprecht currently has the false quote as his signature, without any action being taken by the 'moderator'.
Saturday, December 06, 2008
Jonathan’s last blog …
… led the cretin of "Revisionist" cretins, Greg Gerdes (who is probably identical with this illustrious "White" specimen, and who thought I had written that blog), to display his low intellect and lower character in bitching about me on this thread of the "CODOH Revisionist Forum" (where I, as the coward well knows, am not allowed to post).
I commented on Gerdes' primitive nonsense in my post # 1760 on the VNN thread Archeological Investigations of Treblinka.
Update, 10.12.2008
A few more "Revisionist" geniuses have opened their big mouths on the aforementioned CODOH thread, so I’ll comment their utterances hereafter.
Read more!
Post of Mon Dec 08, 2008 2:01 pm by “NeilfromBris” (a debutante hollow-head, of maybe just another hollow-head’s sock-puppet)
NfB
I thank NfB for mentioning that I don't post on CODOH anymore. I'm not allowed to, you know. Moderator Jonnie "Hannover" Hargis had to ban me because neither he nor any other enlightened "Revisionist" could handle my arguments.
NfB
That suggests NfB is just another laughing imbecile. And as he's so eager to talk to me and I'm not allowed to post on CODOH, I suggest he come over to the RODOH forum for some real open debate on the Holocaust (as opposed to the censorship-protected mutual backslapping among "Revisionist" true believers that one sees on CODOH). He can then tell me what’s supposed to have been so laughable about my arguments on those CODOH threads, and explain why, if my arguments were so laughable, Hargis considered it necessary to delete or retain some of my posts (as documented on the RODOH thread A message to Jonnie Hannover Hargis ...).
If he’s not just some other fellow’s sock-puppet, that is.
And if he is not a whimpering coward like Jonnie "Hannover" Hargis.
NfB
Actually I contribute to only two blogs, this one and the Brazilian blog O Holocausto (as can be seen on my profile). And the only "chat sites" I currently post on are RODOH and the VNN thread Archeological Investigations of Treblinka. But the compliment is appreciated.
NfB
That must be my article 5 million non-Jewish victims? (Part 2), at the end of which I wrote the following:
NfB doesn’t seem to be a very attentive reader. But I’m glad he visits this blog, for this means he will also read the present article and thus be informed about my invitation to open debate on RODOH.
A confused person is what NfB seems to be indeed, and also one not interested in historical fact and notoriously ignorant. Maybe he should start by informing himself about the population of the European countries mentioned in my above-quoted list during World War II. Next he may take a look at World War II casualties in those countries, wherein the non-combatants who perished through criminal violence by Nazi Germany and its allies are included.
Post of Mon Dec 08, 2008 6:54 pm by Jonni "Hannover" Hargis (who must have read my RODOH thread Hey Bankdraft, what kind of a slimy @sshole are you … and therefore be in need of venting his anger at having once more been shown for the cowardly liar he is)
Hargis
Actually people like me apply science, logic and rational thought processes without making a fuss about it, whereas bigmouthed charlatans like Hargis throw these terms around but know as much about what either implies as a pig does about Sunday – awareness of which is probably the reason, or one of the reasons, why Hargis never leaves his warm and cozy online Führerbunker and ventures into the real world of open debate.
Hargis
Yeah, sure. See the aforementioned thread on how (i.e. by censoring posts and eventually banning the poster) this "debunking" was done. Also of interest in this respect is the RODOH thread The Memory Hole Festival goes on ....
Hargis
First of all, it's not 13.9 million, as I prefer the lower range of estimates on the number of Jewish victims of Nazi mass murder. According to my calculations quoted above, it's at least 12.5 million, thereof 43 % Jews and 57 % non-Jews.
Second, it's amusing to see Hargis emulating the "not ONE" – rhetoric of his fellow coward, liar and obnoxious fish-wife Greg Gerdes.
And third, one only sees no mass graves if one sticks one's head in the sand, ostrich-style, like the characters on this caricature by Dr. Seuss :
If Hargis ever took his head out of the sand (or stopped lying), he would realize (or acknowledge) that one can find quite a few investigators’ or archaeologists’ descriptions of Nazi-made mass graves and photos of such mass graves and of dead bodies of Nazi murder victims even on the web these days. Regarding civilians and prisoners of war bumped off or made to die of starvation and disease in Nazi-occupied territory, see for instance Nick's article Mass Graves in the Polesie, Sergey’s article That's why it is denial, not revisionism. Part II: Deniers and the graves of Marijampole and my articles Neither the Soviets nor the Poles have found any mass graves with even only a few thousand bodies … , Carlo Mattogno on Belzec Archaeological Research, Polish investigations of the Treblinka killing site were a complete failure …, Archaelogical Research at Chelmno and Mass Graves at Sobibor, as well as my RODOH threads Busk, My Trip to Sobibor, Mass Graves and Dead Bodies and Pictures of German Occupation in the USSR. Regarding the siege of Leningrad, Hargis should pay a visit to, say, the Piskaryov Memorial Cemetery in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Hargis
So the "Jewish supremacists" of Hargis' fantasies are supposed to have invented non-Jewish victims of Nazi criminal violence in numbers that, even by the lowest of my counts, largely exceed even the highest estimates on the number of Jewish victims of the Nazi genocide, instead of trying to sweep non-Jewish victims of Nazi criminal violence under the carpet in order to highlight the "uniqueness" of the Jewish people's suffering (as some Jewish scholars unfortunately do)? So much for the "logic" of Jonni "Hannover" Hargis.
Hargis
Those "lies" are so "easy" to "shoot down" that Hargis only "shoots" inside his warm and cozy Führerbunker and stifles opposition by censorship even there, right?
Post of Mon Dec 08, 2008 8:28 pm by "KostasL" (a Greek giggler whose contributions to "Revisionism" are essentially limited to infantile clowning and pitiably lame attempts at provocation)
KostasL
Embarrassed is what this fellow should feel indeed, being as he is one of the benighted fanatics who attack historical facts and the memory of murdered human beings with cloud-cuckoo-land fantasies about an impossibly efficient and powerful (and at the same time laughably dumb) conspiracy that, despite the supposed "blunders" that "Revisionists" make a fuss about, pulled off the well–nigh supernatural feat of manipulating or suppressing thousands of documents, training thousands of false incriminating eyewitnesses (apparently chosen for their telepathic capabilities, which would keep them from straying too far from what their colleagues had said even if they had no way of hearing or reading it), coercing or otherwise inducing a couple of thousand indicted perpetrators, especially before West German courts, into falsely incriminating themselves, silencing all potential exonerating witnesses throughout Europe and the rest of the world, fooling governments and other administrative authorities, criminal justice authorities and historians and demographers all over the world (unless, of course, all these people were/are in the pay of said conspiracy) and brainwashing or otherwise inducing millions of non-victims living in Israel, the US and other countries into concealing their origins and identity so it could be claimed that they had been murdered (even though that meant renouncing to compensation claims against the Federal German government – the conspiracy must have paid them better).
But then, conspiracy theorists like this sorry howler never notice that the small inconsistencies in the accounts which they reject are dwarfed by the enormous, gaping holes in logic, likelihood and evidence in any alternative account.
Or maybe some know how full of shit they are and therefore prefer to spout their nonsense in the comfortable company of like-minded buddies only, instead of facing the cold wind of opposition.
We’ll know what category "KostasL" belongs to if and when Gerdes finally dares to link the CODOH clowns to this blog and to the VNN thread Archeological Investigations of Treblinka, as I again challenged him to do in my VNN post # 1760.
I frankly like it when these low-lives mouth off about me in their cesspit, for every time they do I they give me another chance to wipe the floor with their "Revisionist" nonsense.
And it seems they are too stupid to realize that.
I hope they remain that way.
I commented on Gerdes' primitive nonsense in my post # 1760 on the VNN thread Archeological Investigations of Treblinka.
Update, 10.12.2008
A few more "Revisionist" geniuses have opened their big mouths on the aforementioned CODOH thread, so I’ll comment their utterances hereafter.
Read more!
Post of Mon Dec 08, 2008 2:01 pm by “NeilfromBris” (a debutante hollow-head, of maybe just another hollow-head’s sock-puppet)
NfB
I wish I had been on this list when this guy was.
I thank NfB for mentioning that I don't post on CODOH anymore. I'm not allowed to, you know. Moderator Jonnie "Hannover" Hargis had to ban me because neither he nor any other enlightened "Revisionist" could handle my arguments.
NfB
I got some great laughs from reading some of his old messages.
That suggests NfB is just another laughing imbecile. And as he's so eager to talk to me and I'm not allowed to post on CODOH, I suggest he come over to the RODOH forum for some real open debate on the Holocaust (as opposed to the censorship-protected mutual backslapping among "Revisionist" true believers that one sees on CODOH). He can then tell me what’s supposed to have been so laughable about my arguments on those CODOH threads, and explain why, if my arguments were so laughable, Hargis considered it necessary to delete or retain some of my posts (as documented on the RODOH thread A message to Jonnie Hannover Hargis ...).
If he’s not just some other fellow’s sock-puppet, that is.
And if he is not a whimpering coward like Jonnie "Hannover" Hargis.
NfB
I did a search on him and it seems that he contributes to a lot of blogs and chat sites.
Actually I contribute to only two blogs, this one and the Brazilian blog O Holocausto (as can be seen on my profile). And the only "chat sites" I currently post on are RODOH and the VNN thread Archeological Investigations of Treblinka. But the compliment is appreciated.
NfB
I just finished reading something he posted on another group where he says that in addition to the 6 million jews there were also 7.9 million non jews who were also "murdered".
That must be my article 5 million non-Jewish victims? (Part 2), at the end of which I wrote the following:
20. Sum total
According to the above estimates (rounded up or down to the nearest thousand), the total number of non-Jews who perished through criminal violence by Nazi Germany and its allies during World War II, i.e. of non-Jews who died at the hands of the Nazi “killing apparatus” as defined in Part 1 of this article, is the following:
Soviet Union 5,030,000 to 5,800,000
Poland 1,000,000
Czechoslovakia 33,000
Yugoslavia 260,000
Romania 51,000
Hungary 28,000
Greece 150,000
Italy 76,000
France 147,000
Belgium 17,000
Netherlands 75,000
Norway 2,000
Denmark 1,000
Austria 16,000
Germany 245,000
Total 7,131,000 to 7,901,000
Even the lowest of these totals (7,131,000) exceeds by far not only the 5 million non-Jewish victims “invented” by Simon Wiesenthal but also the highest estimates (around 6 million) of Jews who died at the hands of the Nazi “killing apparatus”. If we consider Nick Terry’s minimum estimate of ca. 5,364,000 Jewish victims of Nazi persecution, the minimum total of people who died at the hands of the Nazi “killing apparatus” would be 5,364,000 + 7,131,000 = 12,495,000, thereof 43 % Jews and 57 % non-Jews.
NfB doesn’t seem to be a very attentive reader. But I’m glad he visits this blog, for this means he will also read the present article and thus be informed about my invitation to open debate on RODOH.
I'm starting to wonder if there was anyone left alive in Europe at the end of the war. Confused
A confused person is what NfB seems to be indeed, and also one not interested in historical fact and notoriously ignorant. Maybe he should start by informing himself about the population of the European countries mentioned in my above-quoted list during World War II. Next he may take a look at World War II casualties in those countries, wherein the non-combatants who perished through criminal violence by Nazi Germany and its allies are included.
Post of Mon Dec 08, 2008 6:54 pm by Jonni "Hannover" Hargis (who must have read my RODOH thread Hey Bankdraft, what kind of a slimy @sshole are you … and therefore be in need of venting his anger at having once more been shown for the cowardly liar he is)
Hargis
People like Muehlenkamp are in denial of science, logic, and rational thought processes.
Actually people like me apply science, logic and rational thought processes without making a fuss about it, whereas bigmouthed charlatans like Hargis throw these terms around but know as much about what either implies as a pig does about Sunday – awareness of which is probably the reason, or one of the reasons, why Hargis never leaves his warm and cozy online Führerbunker and ventures into the real world of open debate.
Hargis
We have his debunked claims on record here, he's a classic example of the irrational 'holocaust' liars in general.
Yeah, sure. See the aforementioned thread on how (i.e. by censoring posts and eventually banning the poster) this "debunking" was done. Also of interest in this respect is the RODOH thread The Memory Hole Festival goes on ....
Hargis
13.9 million absurdly claimed and they cannot even show us ONE mass grave as alleged, not ONE.
First of all, it's not 13.9 million, as I prefer the lower range of estimates on the number of Jewish victims of Nazi mass murder. According to my calculations quoted above, it's at least 12.5 million, thereof 43 % Jews and 57 % non-Jews.
Second, it's amusing to see Hargis emulating the "not ONE" – rhetoric of his fellow coward, liar and obnoxious fish-wife Greg Gerdes.
And third, one only sees no mass graves if one sticks one's head in the sand, ostrich-style, like the characters on this caricature by Dr. Seuss :
If Hargis ever took his head out of the sand (or stopped lying), he would realize (or acknowledge) that one can find quite a few investigators’ or archaeologists’ descriptions of Nazi-made mass graves and photos of such mass graves and of dead bodies of Nazi murder victims even on the web these days. Regarding civilians and prisoners of war bumped off or made to die of starvation and disease in Nazi-occupied territory, see for instance Nick's article Mass Graves in the Polesie, Sergey’s article That's why it is denial, not revisionism. Part II: Deniers and the graves of Marijampole and my articles Neither the Soviets nor the Poles have found any mass graves with even only a few thousand bodies … , Carlo Mattogno on Belzec Archaeological Research, Polish investigations of the Treblinka killing site were a complete failure …, Archaelogical Research at Chelmno and Mass Graves at Sobibor, as well as my RODOH threads Busk, My Trip to Sobibor, Mass Graves and Dead Bodies and Pictures of German Occupation in the USSR. Regarding the siege of Leningrad, Hargis should pay a visit to, say, the Piskaryov Memorial Cemetery in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Hargis
Jewish supremacists made up a laughable story and now they are left trying to defend the impossible. Imagine what they are feeling.
So the "Jewish supremacists" of Hargis' fantasies are supposed to have invented non-Jewish victims of Nazi criminal violence in numbers that, even by the lowest of my counts, largely exceed even the highest estimates on the number of Jewish victims of the Nazi genocide, instead of trying to sweep non-Jewish victims of Nazi criminal violence under the carpet in order to highlight the "uniqueness" of the Jewish people's suffering (as some Jewish scholars unfortunately do)? So much for the "logic" of Jonni "Hannover" Hargis.
Hargis
Revisionists are just the messengers, the ease in which the 'holocaust' lies are shot down is the message.
Those "lies" are so "easy" to "shoot down" that Hargis only "shoots" inside his warm and cozy Führerbunker and stifles opposition by censorship even there, right?
Post of Mon Dec 08, 2008 8:28 pm by "KostasL" (a Greek giggler whose contributions to "Revisionism" are essentially limited to infantile clowning and pitiably lame attempts at provocation)
KostasL
Well, defending the impossible is not so bad when you are defending Truth, Justice, Freedom, Humanity, even if the odds are overwhelmingly against you. Smile
But if you are attacking Truth, Justice, Freedom and Humanity then how are you supposed to feel ? Embarassed
Embarrassed is what this fellow should feel indeed, being as he is one of the benighted fanatics who attack historical facts and the memory of murdered human beings with cloud-cuckoo-land fantasies about an impossibly efficient and powerful (and at the same time laughably dumb) conspiracy that, despite the supposed "blunders" that "Revisionists" make a fuss about, pulled off the well–nigh supernatural feat of manipulating or suppressing thousands of documents, training thousands of false incriminating eyewitnesses (apparently chosen for their telepathic capabilities, which would keep them from straying too far from what their colleagues had said even if they had no way of hearing or reading it), coercing or otherwise inducing a couple of thousand indicted perpetrators, especially before West German courts, into falsely incriminating themselves, silencing all potential exonerating witnesses throughout Europe and the rest of the world, fooling governments and other administrative authorities, criminal justice authorities and historians and demographers all over the world (unless, of course, all these people were/are in the pay of said conspiracy) and brainwashing or otherwise inducing millions of non-victims living in Israel, the US and other countries into concealing their origins and identity so it could be claimed that they had been murdered (even though that meant renouncing to compensation claims against the Federal German government – the conspiracy must have paid them better).
But then, conspiracy theorists like this sorry howler never notice that the small inconsistencies in the accounts which they reject are dwarfed by the enormous, gaping holes in logic, likelihood and evidence in any alternative account.
Or maybe some know how full of shit they are and therefore prefer to spout their nonsense in the comfortable company of like-minded buddies only, instead of facing the cold wind of opposition.
We’ll know what category "KostasL" belongs to if and when Gerdes finally dares to link the CODOH clowns to this blog and to the VNN thread Archeological Investigations of Treblinka, as I again challenged him to do in my VNN post # 1760.
I frankly like it when these low-lives mouth off about me in their cesspit, for every time they do I they give me another chance to wipe the floor with their "Revisionist" nonsense.
And it seems they are too stupid to realize that.
I hope they remain that way.
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