Thursday, January 28, 2010

Sobibor survivor Thomas Blatt sets the record straight

On 17.01.2010 there appeared a news item on The Independent's site, in which the Sobibor revolt participant Thomas (Toivi) Blatt is quoted as follows:
"We heard the whine of the generator that started the submarine engine which made the gas that killed them. I remember standing and listening to the muffled screams and knowing that men, women and children were dying in agony as I sorted their clothes. This is what I live with," he said.
The mention of the submarine engine was, of course, seized on by Holocaust deniers. Supposedly a submarine engine would be a diesel engine and that is a big no-no for deniers (most other people find this irrelevant). To date only Eichmann mentioned the use of such an engine for gassings in regard to Christian Wirth's early gassing experiments, and it was hearsay and probably also an example of distorted memory.

Mr. Blatt never claimed to be in the extermination zone proper, so even if he would say such a thing, that would be but a speculation. But did he say that? I contacted Mr. Blatt, and here is his response, which he kindly permitted me to post online:
Dear Mr. Romanov

This is the first time I heard about submarine engine in Sobibor.
It was a Tank engine.
Must be a mistake by the journalist.

5 comments:

  1. CCCS says Blatt is still lying:

    by Carto's Cutlass Supreme » Fri Jan 29, 2010 1:22 am
    I wonder if that's what The Independent journalist Tony Paterson would say: the journalist who interviewed him. He probably recorded it. Since Blatt is an obvious fake, and submarine engine is sometimes the story, it wouldn't surprise me if Blatt screwed up.

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  2. Cesspit Clown Carto's Cutlass Supreme is a well-known scumbag, so I expected nothing else from him.

    He has no evidence whatsoever (and yes, I read his ignorant libelous piece).

    I'm against anti-denial laws, but reading CCCCS I at least understand _why_ they are in place.

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  3. Berg has still not corrected his site. The story is at the top of his front page.

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  4. Well, what do you know, another journalist made exactly the same mistake, and quote Thomas Blatt stating it was a submarine engine.
    http://news.scotsman.com/world/True-hell-of-life-inside.5968715.jp

    Thomas Blatt's paper on Human Soap, was edited by his wife Dena, who usually writes and lectures on the fact aliens from Sirius live amongst us.

    Hilariously, Blatt's paper was cited from in Michael Shermer's 2002 book; Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It? page 116

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  5. > Well, what do you know, another journalist made exactly the same mistake, and quote Thomas Blatt stating it was a submarine engine.

    OK, that's a good point. But there is a lot of intersection between the articles, they're very similarly structured, weird. Was the later one partially based on the earlier one? I wouldn't exclude this.

    Note that Blatt was talking about a tank engine all along (e.g. in an interview in 1984), he wrote a scholarly book on Sobibor where again he posited a normal petrol engine, so why would he suddenly change the story, and then deny it? Something just does not fit with this explanation, so sorry, but even this second source won't convince be Blatt really said it. I'll dig around, though.

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