Denier Legalism: 3. Conspiracism and Faith-Based Assertions

When deniers discusses the trials of Aktion Reinhard staff, their 'researcher' masks slip and they descend rapidly into paranoia. Their statements become nothing more than faith-based assertions. For example, in this review of Schelvis's Sobibor study, Thomas Kues describes Sobibor perpetrator Gomerski in these terms:

The photo which stuck with me shows Hubert Gomerski, a bespectacled old man with whitened hair wearing a cheap-looking beige jacket. We see him slightly from behind, as he is walking away from the camera along some street. According to the caption, Gomerski is hurrying away from the court building where he has appeared as a witness for the prosecution. On the same page, we are shown a vintage photo of Gomerski in uniform together with some other members of the Sobibór staff. The caption of this photo claims that Gomerski was a callous and brutal murderer. Is this true? Did he really receive a fair trial back in 1950, as implied by Schelvis? Was he able to speak his mind openly to his interrogators and lawyers, or was he, like Auschwitz SS man Hans Aumeier, handed a number of leading questions, demanding that he stated what he “knew” about the “gas chambers”? The anonymous-looking old man on the photo knew the truth about Sobibór. Did he dare confide it to anyone? To his friends? To his family? To himself, in private writings possibly left behind at his death? Most likely we will never know...

This paranoid rant ignores the fact that, after his release, Gomerski gave an interview to E.A. Cohen for this book in which Gomerski said his crimes deserved a sentence of 8-10 years and acknowledged: "After all, I was there. I cannot deny that" [cited de Mildt, p.392n.]. Kues ignores this source, even though the same Kues article mentions the Cohen book in its introduction.

Furthermore, in order to explain the lack of denials by perpetrators in these trials, Kues (as 'Dahl') invents an absurd conspiracy in which the suicides of numerous SS personnel were supposedly faked. He focuses especially on Wagner, as in this thread:

My guess it that a loose cabal of "nazi hunters" like Wiesenthal and the Klarsfelds in league with Mossad people and maybe also survivors like Schlomo (who likely acted as a sayan, a local trusted assistant of Mossad, in the terminology described by ex-Mossad Victor Ostrovsky in his book By way of deception) eliminated those former "death camp" guards who they did not manage to extradite and put before kangaroo courts (where they would "confess" to the gassings). They would have an extra incentive in the case of Wagner, who seems to have denied the established view of Sobibor as a "death camp" in his extradition trial. If not eliminated, he might pose a threat to the gas chamber legend. This hypothesis could also explain the "suicides" while under arrest of some of the ex-guards brought before "trial" in West Germany during the 50's and 60's or earlier, such as Kurt Bolender (according to death-camps.org "During his trial he constantly maintained that there were no sick and cripple people executed in Sobibor - only when he was cross examined he admitted that everything was true."), Friedrich Tauscher and Hermann Felfe.

Whilst he normally avoids explicitly antisemitic language, this conspiracy theory cannot avoid betraying his antisemitic premises, such as here

Those sick Jewish gangsters and their ilk are more than likely behind the "suicides" of a number of Germans. It is telling that they are also part of the posh anti-revisionist establishment. Their Klarsfeld Foundation funded the research of J-C Pressac until the man grew too openly heretic.

Kues' obsession ignores the fact that Wagner had a history of suicidal tendencies. The report of his death in the New York Times, shown here, indicates four previous suicide attempts. Similarly, Kues' insinuations about Bolender's death ignore the fact that Bolender testified about gassing, shootings and bodies at Sobibor (see this table) and Bolender's ex-wife had already testified (on 15th August 1966) that he brought home 'goldbruecken' from Sobibor, even though this testimony is in the same Schelvis edition (p.85) that Kues critiques elsewhere.