The first to speak up in Mattogno's defense is my old friend "Werd" aka "Drew J", whose post of Sun Dec 18, 2011 10:28 pm I shall have the pleasure of commenting hereafter.
Werd
Seems Roberto Muehlenkamp isn't impressed.
Bingo!
Werd
Here is one quote from his latest blog entry.
Why does Werd not provide the link to his fellow "Revisionists"?
What is worse than these and other ongoing blunders (or falsehoods), as concerns Mattogno's scholarship, is that Mattogno continues peddling his claim that "the alleged activity of Blobel at Chełmno is not confirmed by any document, but only by a single testimony, that of Rudolf Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz (confirmed, long after the fact, by one of the architects of the Auschwitz crematoria, Walter Dejaco)" (section 8.2, page 76), conveniently omitting the testimonies of Fritz Ismer and Julius Bauer, which are mentioned in Hoffmann's book and in my blog Mattogno on Chełmno Cremation (Part 1).
Here is what Ismer said, as quoted by Roberto.
That's not all what Ismer said, actually. What Ismer said comes only at the end of the paragraph. I’ll highlight it:
Chełmno became Blobel’s experimentation site for devices and methods of which those considered efficient were later applied at other extermination camps and at the massacre sites of mobile killing units in the occupied Soviet territories. He tried fire bombs, but these caused large fires in the surrounding woods[12]. According to Höß he also tried blowing up the bodies, with unsatisfactory results. [13] Another of Blobel’s creations was presented to a number of high-ranking SS-officers (SS–Obersturmbannführer Höß, SS-Untersturmführer Hößler and SS-Untersturmführer Dejaco) during a visit to Chełmno on 16.09.1942, mentioned by Höß[14] and in a report prepared by Dejaco on 17.09.1942. [15] At the trial against Dejaco and Ertl in Vienna in 1972, Dejaco described the device as having had the aspect of a round coal furnace (Kohlenmeiler) and a diameter of 4 to 6 meters, in which the corpses had been burned alternated with layers of wood. Blobel is supposed to have stated that the installation was not suitable for rapid corpse cremation because combustion was slow, but that the principle of alternating corpses and wood should be maintained.[16] Yet another Blobel contraption was described by SS-man Fritz Ismer, a member of the Chełmno staff. When working on the removal of the mass graves at Chełmno, this witness had watched an experiment in which Blobel had attempted to set corpses in a mass grave on fire with a flamethrower-like apparatus that the witness described as having the aspect of an enlarged blow torch. The flame had not been very strong, and the witness concluded that the experiment must have failed. He had heard of no further experiments by Blobel. However, he added, "We in time developed a certain technique in burning corpses on the grids<" ("Wir entwickelten aber im Laufe der Zeit eine gewisse Technik bei der Leichenverbrennung auf den Rosten).[17]
Werd
Here are the footnotes.
[12] Yitzhak Arad, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. The Operation Reinhard Death Camps, Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis 1987 (hereinafter "Arad, Reinhard"), p. 171; see also the blog "The Germans wouldn’t have done it that way".
[13]Höß, Endlösung, Kommandant in Auschwitz p. 244.
[14] As above.
[15] Reisebericht über die Dienstfahrt nach Litzmannstadt, Nuremberg Document NO-4467.
[16] Jean-Claude Pressac, Os Crematórios de Auschwitz. A Maquinaria do Assassínio em Massa (hereinafter "Pressac, Crematórios"). Translated by António Moreira, 1993 Editorial Notícias, Lisbon, p. 100.
[17] Hoffmann, Aktion 1005, p. 81 (interrogation of Fritz Ismer on 1 August 1961, criminal case 141 Js 204/60 Vol. 4, fl. 1419ff.).
Why does Werd discuss the whole paragraph, when the reference to Ismer comes only at the end of it? Obviously in order to detract attention from my point (Mattogno incompetently or mendaciously claimed that Höss was the only witness to Blobel’s presence at Chełmno) through some obfuscation centered on, guess what, his good old "Höss was tortured" mantra (Höss was tortured during his first interrogation by the British indeed, but this doesn’t mean that every statement made by Höss was extracted under torture; as concerns what he wrote in his memoirs and what he told his Polish interrogators there is no reason to suspect the influence of torture or any other form of coercion, as we shall see).
Werd
So how did Arad know about what was going on in Clemno with faulty experiments setting fire to woods? Probably based on some trial testimony. Googlebooks didn't have page 171 of Arad's book available for preview.
Assuming Arad or his sources based their conclusions on trial testimonies, what would be wrong with that? Can Werd demonstrate that and why these trial testimonies are unreliable, or what is he trying to tell his readers?
Werd
However, anytime someone says, ACCORDING TO HOESS, I have to be wary because we all know Hoess was tortured into signing his confession and that a lot of other nazis were tortured and threatened. The 13th and 14th footnotes come from Hoess so we can ignore that.
Actually that’s the equivalent of throwing out the baby with the bath water. If the only statements from Höss available were those he made following his capture by the British (when he was indeed subjected to torture, as he wrote himself later in his memoirs), I might agree with Werd. But the statements in question come from his pre-trial interrogations by Polish examining judge Jan Sehn. In these interrogations Höss had the cheek of, among other things, telling his interrogator that the death toll of Auschwitz-Birkenau was in the order of 1 million, that the 2.5 million-figure he had given before was way too high and that higher figures (namely the Soviet 4 million figure that the Poles would have liked him to confirm) were nonsense. He cannot possibly have been under the influence of torture or any other form of coercion during these interrogations, so what he said there is not subject to the "Hoess was tortured" caveat.
Werd
16th footnote comes from Pressac.
So?
Werd
As for Ismer himself, I don't think anyone knows what happened to him in terms of what year he died or what he was even sentenced to. I can't find anything.
And so? How is that supposed to affect the fact that Ismer confirmed Blobel’s presence at Chełmno during his interrogation by West German criminal justice authorities on 1 August 1961, and that Mattogno incompetently or dishonestly ignored this evidence to Blobel’s activities at Chełmno?
Werd
But just because Hoess was tortured as were other nazis, we shouldn't just throw out confessions as soon as exterminationists would accept them.
Congratulations on a flicker of common sense. Except, of course, for the "exterminationists" BS.
Werd
Just sit on the fence and keep digging on a particular affidavit.
Unfortunately the flicker didn’t last, as usual. Yeah, just keep on nitpicking about evidence that doesn’t fit your ideological bubble. Let faith be your guide.
Werd
We know Hoess is compromised because we have it on record that his torture was admitted. So revisionists win on that front.
They would if the statements in question were from the affidavit signed by Höss after his capture by the British in March 1946. But they were not, see above.
Werd
Even Bernard Clarke admitted it in his book.
I don’t know what the "even" and the "admitted" are supposed to mean, but I guess this Clarke fellow mentioned Höss’ torture by the British in his book. And that’s irrelevant in this context for the reasons explained above.
Werd
So my question is, is there anything comparable to that with regards to Ismer?
Not likely. Ismer was interrogated by criminal justice authorities of the German Federal Republic, who are not known to have ever tortured or otherwise coerced their Nazi suspects.
Werd
Also, Roberto takes issue with Mattogno allegedly inflating the average weight of the jewish camp inmate in order to justify a necessity for a large quantity of wood to burn the bodies which no one saw. Roberto says no one saw this much wood, because it wasn't needed.
As concerns cremation logistics, Mattogno had in the Italian version (section 9.2, pp. 114-15) calculated that the burning of 145,000 corpses would have required 21,750 tons of wood, assuming 150 kg of wood for a corpse with an average weight of 45 kg at the time of cremation (down from an assumed average life weight of 60 kg, as a part of the corpses had lain in mass graves some months before being burned).
My calculations, based on a life weight assumption closer to the reality of starving Polish ghettos than Mattogno’s flagrantly unrealistic 60 kg, on the weight loss due to dehydration of the corpses that had been buried prior to cremation, and on the wood-to-carcass weight ratios achieved in the animal carcass burning experiments by Dr. Lothes and Dr. Profé in the early 19th Century (which Mattogno ignored and continues ignoring in this context, even though it was his mention of these experiments in Combustion Experiments with Flesh and Animal Fat that brought them to my attention), point to a requirement of ca. 2,451 metric tons of dry wood or 4,657 tons of fresh wood for burning the corpses of the about 150,000 people killed in the first phase of extermination operations at Chełmno, between December 1941 and March 1943 (see the blog Mattogno on Chełmno Cremation (Part 2), figures in tables 2.11 and 2.12).
In the English version of his Chełmno book (section 9.2, p. 89), Mattogno further inflates his already overblown calculations of wood requirements by assuming, pursuant to considerations in the Sobibor book by Mattogno, Graf and Kues, that the corpses weighed 60 kg on average at the time they were cremated and that the wood used was fresh wood with a calorific value of only 2,000 kcal/kg. He thus arrives at a wood requirement of 53,000 metric tons for the cremation of 152,000 corpses (350 kg per corpse), more than ten times the amount I calculated for 150,000 corpses assuming the use of fresh wood. Instead of becoming more realistic, Mattogno’s figures have become even more unreasonable than they were before.
Even if Mattogno is engaging in gymnastics, which he may be, what about Roberto?
I like the "maybe" regarding the absurd claim that Jewish deportees from the Łódź ghetto and other Polish ghettos (many of whom were children, all of whom were malnourished, and many of whom had furthermore lain in mass graves for months before being cremated) weighed 60 kg on average at the time of cremation. Mattogno is really putting it on thick here.
Werd
From Thomas Dalton.
"Muehlenkamp also accepts the average weight of Provan's group - 77 pounds - as representative of the mass of Jews. In other words, miniature people.
In terms of volume density, Provan claims to have packed eight people into 0.42 cubic meters, equivalent to a density of 19 per cubic meter. Muehlenkamp generously uses only 15 per cubic meter in his subsequent calculations. The reader is invited to build a one cubic meter box out of wood, find 15 of the skinniest people around, even 15 children, and try to fit them all in.
Since the Jews were miniature people, the bloggers claim, their bodies decayed more quickly, leaving less mass to be burned away to nothing. In order to estimate wood and ash conditions we need an idea of how much wood it takes to cremate a given unit of organic flesh; in other words, what is the nominally required 'wood to flesh' ratio? Revisionst estimates run from 3.5 : 1 up to 11:1. So the complete burning, down to ash, of a 45 kg corpse would take between 158 and 495 kg of wood.
Muehlenkamp thinks it much easier to burn rotting flesh. After running through some analytical gyrations he decides the range is only between 1:1 and 2:1 (We can assume the mid range value of 1.5:1). For death camp like conditions this is highly unlikely. To be taken seriously, the bloggers would have to conduct careful experiments under scientific conditions to prove this claim.
MUehlenkamp then argues that the corpses decayed down to 25kg each, in contrast to the revisionist 45kg. Based on his 1.5:1 ratio, it only takes him 38kg of wood to burn a typical body - merely one quarter of the minimum revisionist requirement. Consequently, only one quarter of the ash is produced (see Muehlenkamp 2006b). This, then, is the essence of the traditionalist reply, such as it is: tiny, easily burned bodies. At best this only alleviates the problems, it doesn't eliminate them.
"Dalton"'s straw-man mischaracterization of my arguments is a weak argument, for I have already taken "Dalton" to task for his nonsense in the blog Thomas Dalton responds to Roberto Muehlenkamp and Andrew Mathis (4). In this blog I referred to my counter-rebuttal of Mattogno’s rebuttal of my arguments, which was not mentioned by "Dalton" and has neither been responded to by Mattogno (except for a feeble go at the first two installments, which was refuted here and here) more than two years after the last installment was published.
Werd
However, Muehlenkamp claims to have found a scientific report that justifies his lower ratios. And Mattogno still is ignoring this.
holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2009/12/animal-carcass-burning-experiments-by.html
I don’t claim to have found Lothe’s and Profe’s report (it was actually provided to me by Sergey Romanov, as mentioned in the related blog), but I provided a complete translation and a digital copy of the report in my RODOH post 11792.
Werd
As far as I know, I have heard of nothing from Thomas Dalton on this report.
Nor will you ever unless Mattogno should address it, for "Dalton" is just a parrot.
Werd
Has any revisionist addressed these? If so, can someone give me a link. If not, then how come?
Good question. :-)
Werd’s posts is followed by Mkk’s post of Mon Dec 19, 2011 4:24 am, where the lady tries the following:
Mkk
As for Roberto's stuff on cremations, I cannot comment on the study he shows, but I can say M/G/K have dealt with decomposed/emaciated corpses in their Sobibor book. Decomposition or emaciation doesn't positively affect cremation; infact, in some cases the relative amount of fuel used is more.
Sorry to burst Mkk's bubble, but I have already dealt with that counterintuitive nonsense of MGK’s, see the blog Mattogno, Graf & Kues on Aktion Reinhard(t) Cremation (2).
Mkk
Has Roberto said anything on the Archaeological findings that there were only one crematoria in Chelmno, which, according to Mattogno's calculations could have cremated a maximum of 45 corpses in 24 hours. 45 times 365 equals 11925 per year, and about 12 years to cremate all the corpses, ofcourse assuming the use of the crematoria all the way through that 12 years! It is alleged two ovens were used, which (going by the witness statements, which archaeological research have shown to be unfounded) could have cremated 180 corpses in 24 hours. That is 64080 corpses per year, or about 2.5 years to cremate all the corpses, again assuming around the clock operation. The cremation was supposedly ordered in June 1942, and a crematoria set up sometime in spring or summer, which continued on until April 1943. So, that gives us slightly less than a year, so I will say about 60,000 corpses in this time, at full capacity ofcourse. What happened to the other 90,000 or so, even if we believe the witness statements?
Instead of repeating Mattogno’s rubbish and making funny calculations on the basis thereof, Mkk should have read my blogs Mattogno on Chełmno Cremation (Part 1) and Mattogno on Chełmno Cremation (Part 2).
Mkk is followed by Toshiro, who in his post of Mon Dec 19, 2011 5:19 am tries to have a go at the Lothes and Profé report:
The Lothes and Profé animal cremation report is interesting, but careful planning has to be done in order to cremate efficiently.
And so? Were the SS not up to careful planning in order to cremate efficiently?
The watery entrails of the animal are removed, leaving the animal practically hollow inside. The guts are then placed next to the carcass so fire can reach and burn them faster.
That may be helpful, but is it supposed to be the factor that accounts for Lothes and Profé’s wood-to-carcass weight ratios? I don’t remember them saying so anywhere, but maybe I missed something. The corpses at Chełmno and the Aktion Reinhard(t) camps may not have had their entrails removed, but they were mostly dehydrated after long periods of lying in the graves. So at least the dehydrated ones would have burned at least as well as L&P's hollow cows, wouldn’t they?
Their method of cremation also only applies to single cremations, that is to say, of a single animal carcass. The reason for that is the position of the carcass which must be placed in a specific way on the two iron carriers below, i.e. their four feet dangling openly in the pit.
Sure, if you want to arrange a multitude of cattle in that manner you need a much bigger grid. But who said that this arrangement was what accounted for the low wood-to-carcass weight ratio achieved by L&P?
The carcasses also needed to be covered with tar.
Or some other flammable substance, which the SS had at their disposal just like L&P.
Such cremation is not possible or is very inefficient with throwing/stacking bodies on each other.
Because Toshiro says so, or for any reason worth considering?
I'd say that a multitude of carcasses can be burned at least as efficiently if they are arranged in such a way that they will largely burn in a fire fed by their own fat and/or by the fat of carcasses placed on the grid below them. That a carcass can be burned in a fire fed by its own fat, proper arrangement of the grid and the carcass on the grid provided, was experimentally demonstrated by Bruce W. Ettling, as mentioned in my blog Mattogno, Graf & Kues on Aktion Reinhard(t) Cremation (2):
The importance of bringing the grid into the "right position", one that provided for good air circulation and in which the corpses burned largely on their own combustible substances because they were suspended over a fire fed by body fat, is illustrated by the experimental burning of two carcass in two different cars described in a 1969 scientific article by Bruce V. Ettling.[84] One of the experimental carcasses burned rather incompletely whereas the other was mostly consumed by fire. The reason for the difference was that the latter carcass "was still suspended on the seat springs with a lot of char and ash underneath. The fat being rendered from the carcass dripped onto the char which acted like a candle wick and kept the fat burning." This burning rendered more fat, which in turn kept alive the fire consuming the carcass. Ettling concluded that a carcass, and presumably also a human body, "can be rather thoroughly consumed by fire from its own fat", a necessary condition being that "the body be suspended in such a way that it is over the fire which is fed from the body fat". He drew the following parallel with burning procedures at the Aktion Reinhard(t) camps (emphasis added):[85]Some related information was found in an article concerning a Nazi extermination camp and its trouble destroying the corpses (3). Burning gasoline on piles of corpses on the ground did not consume the corpses. Eventually an "expert" was brought in who arranged the bodies on a rack with the corpses that appeared to contain some fat being placed on the bottom of the pile. A good fire beneath the rack caused fat to drip down and burn. The corpses which were thus over the fire instead of on the ground were reduced to ashes.
So much for the first three true believers to speak up in their guru's defense. Further posts on this CODOH thread will be commented on the RODOH thread A message to Jonnie Hannover Hargis ..., currently on page 50.
Needless to say, my critics are all invited to discuss their arguments with me on RODOH or any other forum of their choice (except CODOH, where I am not allowed to post), should they dare to step out of the warm and cozy CODOH Führerbunker into the cold world of open debate.
Update, 19.12.2011: As I expected, the CODOH thread about Mattogno's Chełmno book has become the usual freak show, with posts by Jonnie "Hannover" Hargis, "Kingfisher" and the inevitable Carmelo "Blogbuster" Lisciotto.
Update, 20.12.2011: See my RODOH posts 13242 and 13243
Update, 21.12.2011: Jonnie "Hannover" Hargis insists in further demonstrating why he sometimes even manages to convince a fellow "Revisionist" that "Revisionism" is bunk. See my RODOH post 13250. Besides that sad display of "Revisionist" stupidity, the thread also featured a rebuttal attempt by "Toshiro", some amusing remarks by "Werd" and a longer post by that fellow.
Update, 22.12.2011: Ongoing freak show with Jonnie "Hannover" Hargis and my old friend Greg "Clem" Gerdes. Some Faurisson nonsense via "Mkk". And one deletion candidate.
Update, 23.12.2011: The faithful in the CODOH church (including but not limited to two of my favorite pukes, Jonnie "Hannover" Hargis and Greg "Clem" Gerdes) continue very agitated. See my RODOH posts 13265, 13266, 13267 and 13268.
Update, 24.12.2011: Some more mendacious bragging and other lies from Jonnie "Hannover" Hargis.
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