Carlo Mattogno and an inconvenient document

Last month one of the lesser "Revisionist" brains, Ralph Gordon, chimed into a discussion about cremations on the RODOH forum with the following remark:

Roberto, you really need to read Mattogno's http://holocausthandbooks.com/22/ as he makes it quite clear why the notion of multiple bodies in a muffle is just technically absurd. But od course you're just a biassed propagandist, but others might appreciate it.

I responded as follows:

If you want to call me self-projecting names, Ralphie (this thread seems to be good for livening up RODOH as it has already attracted the fifth "Revisionist" crackpot), you should at least learn to spell the word "biased".

As to my old friend Mattogno (who calls his screed "The Case for Sanity", thus suggesting that he considers everybody but himself and a few other illuminated spirits insane, which in turn suggests that he is becoming increasingly schizophrenic), I wonder how he explains the fact that Engineer Sander of Topf & Söhne didn’t consider this procedure "technically absurd" but merely pointed out that it didn’t solve the problem. In a letter dated 14 September 1942 (discussed here), Sander wrote the following (my translation and emphasis):

The high demand of incineration ovens for concentration camps - which lately has shown especially in what concerns Auschwitz, and which according to Mr. Pruefer's report again led to an order of 7 three-muffle ovens - led me to examine the question whether the current oven system with muffle for the above-mentioned entities is the right thing. In my opinion things don't go fast enough in the muffle ovens to remove a huge number of corpses within a desirably short time. Thus one helps out with a multitude of ovens or muffles and by stuffing full the individual muffle with several corpses, without thereby solving the basic source [of the problem], i.e. the deficiencies of the muffle system.

So what Mattogno calls "technically absurd" was obviously standard operating procedure at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Please quote the part where good old Carlo explains this, Ralphie (assuming he mentions Sander’s letter of 14.09.1942 at all, that is – which I hope he does, for otherwise his 768-or-so pages of "sanity" are not even worth the paper they were printed on).

Mattogno is familiar with the existence of Sander's letter and with the translated statement about multiple cremations on the letter's first page, which has been on the website of the German exhibition "Techniker der 'Endlösung'. Topf & Söhne – Die Ofenbauer von Auschwitz" ("Technicians of the 'Final Solution. Topf & Söhne - The Auschwitz Oven Builders") for several years and was mentioned in Sergey Romanov's blog Carlo Mattogno and interrogations of Topf engineers in March 2006. He even provided an Italian translation of the passage mentioning multiple cremation in his blog ILCOMITATO DI SOCCORSO ZIMMERMAN (briefly commented in my blog Mattogno freaks out). Mattogno also rendered the remaining contents of the letter's first page shown on the Topf & Söhne exhibition's website (see my RODOH post 12773 for an English translation of the whole first page), and assumed that thereafter Sander explained why the problems he had pointed out (insufficiency of the muffle system for removing a huge number of corpses within a desirably short time) could not be solved by multiple cremation. If this were not so, Mattogno reasoned, it couldn't be explained why the rest of the document has not been published. (The inevitable conspiracy theory, and how does Mattogno know that the letter's complete text has not been made available to the public? Did he visit the Topf & Söhne exhibition?) Mattogno referred to a "more proper" place for a "detailed analysis" of Sander's text ("Rimando ad una sede più appropriata l’analisi dettagliata del testo").

Thus there was every reason to expect that Mattogno had done this "detailed analysis" somewhere in the 756 pages of his "Case for Sanity", especially if, as Ralph Gordon triumphantly announced, he "makes it quite clear why the notion of multiple bodies in a muffle is just technically absurd". In fact, it would be rather unscientific, even dishonest, if Mattogno didn't dedicate a fair amount of space to a document that expressly mentions multiple cremation in a manner suggesting that this "technically absurd" procedure was common practice at Nazi concentration camps and especially at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Therefore I prodded poor Gordon, in my posts 12734, 12736, 12739 and 12747, to quote what Mattogno had written in The Case for Sanity about Sander's letter of 14.09.1942. In my post 12760, I pointed out that I had found nothing about that letter in Mattogno's screed, and demanded a clear statement about whether or not Mattogno had mentioned that letter. Gordon eventually replied claiming that Mattogno had addressed that letter, disingeniously and rather unintelligently insinuating that I had confounded The Case for Sanity with an earlier article by Mattogno (which I had partially commented back in 2006, by the way). I responded by quoting all mentions of Sander that I had found in The Case for Sanity, whereupon Gordon admitted to having lied about Mattogno mentioning in his book the Sander letter of 14.9.42. Gordon's lame subsequent argument that Mattogno's not having mentioned this document didn't really matter was taken apart by RODOH poster Dmitry.

So here we have one reason why Mattogno's "Case for Sanity" isn't worth the paper on which it was printed, as I remarked in my above-quoted first response to Gordon. Mattogno conveniently avoided addressing a document inconvenient to his argument, in a context in which he should have addressed it. After what I have seen of Mattogno, I wouldn't be surprised if his "Case for Sanity" (which seems to be the English version of a book in which Mattogno distorted Henryk Tauber's testimony, and which I frankly haven't bothered to read beyond what was required to establish Mattogno's omission of Sander's letter) contained a number of such somewhat-less-than-honest omissions and/or other falsehoods.

Let's see how the indefatigable Mattogno addresses Sander's letter of 14.9.42 in his upcoming book The Crematory Ovens of Auschwitz, touted in Reverend Father Kues' sermon to his wavering flock as "Mattogno’s long-awaited magnum opus". Grapevine has it that the magnum opus will be about 1,000 pages long and so full of technobabble as to be unreadable for the average "Revisionist" faithful. But then, Hitler's Mein Kampf was also an unreadable screed, which nevertheless figured prominently on the bookshelf of many a devout Nazi who never looked inside it.

Update, 15.04.2011

Ralph Gordon (who can't even manage to log into Google) insists in my further showing the readers of this blog that he's not the sharpest tool in the shed. So I'll do him the favor:

Roberto, it is true what you say in relation to your comments as regards myself in your blog http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2011/04/c-arlo-mattogno-and-inconvenient.html , but it would be less than honest on your part if you did not mention my subsequent post in relation to Sander: "Roberto, you must understand that what I did was what I thought was for your own good, since I have no problem with someone who perhaps is a sincere exterminationist, and needs to be put on the right path. In any case it was not necessary to lie as I have found a reference where Mattogno raises Sander's admission that multiple corpses were put into muffles, and that is Volume 2 of Mattognos book, Chapter 12.2.2., page 447; but it is in relation to Sander's patent application of November 5, 1942, so it was not necessary to mention the letter of 14-9-42. However, as Mattogno points out, Sander is not satisfied with even as a necessary solution multiple corpses in muffles, and with even multiple-muffles, as it is too slow in relation to the task of disposing properly of corpses on hand at Birkenau quickly, as it is not really cremation but incineration; of course, Sander is concerned with selling the idea his idea of a super-oven, which is really a giant incinerator, I think (since the subject is all very technical and complex)."

I don't remember having disputed that Sander considered multiple cremation in multiple-muffle ovens an insufficient solution for burning large numbers of bodies within a short time. However, and contrary to what Gordon apparently believes, what Mattogno wrote on page 447 (quoted in my RODOH post 12798, previously mentioned in this blog) doesn't excuse Mattogno's having omitted a document known to him that expressly mentioned multiple cremation as a current practice at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Gordon's defending himself by arguing that he not only lied but lied unnecessarily is taken note of with a chuckle, as is his instructively benighted remark about having lied for my own good. The poor guy is obviously dumb as a door.