Rebuttal of Mattogno on Auschwitz:
Part 1: Indoor Cremation
Part 2: Gas Introduction at the Crematoria
Part 2: Gas Introduction at the Crematoria
Part 5: Construction Documents:
A: Introduction
B: Ventilation & Elevators
C: Undressing Rooms
D: Outwards Opening Door & Removal of Corpse Chute
B: Ventilation & Elevators
C: Undressing Rooms
D: Outwards Opening Door & Removal of Corpse Chute
Revisionist Carlo Mattogno’s book Auschwitz: The Case for Sanity (September 2010, abbreviated as ATCFS) is hailed as the “the most devastating blow ever” to holocaust historiography according to the Holocaust handbooks webpage or in Mattogno’s own words:
"In fact, I am the author “most damaging” to their [Jean-Claude Pressac and Robert Jan Van Pelt] books about Auschwitz, which I exhaustively refuted in the more than 700 pages of my already quoted study Auschwitz: The Case for Sanity."
(Mattogno [with Graf and Kues], The “Extermination Camps” of “Aktion Reinhardt”, 2013, p. 1496)
Not the first time Mattogno thinks a great deal of his page count (see also Mattogno, Auschwitz: The First Gassing, 2011, p. 7 and Mattogno, Inside the Gas Chambers, 2014, p. 110; Mattogno had been truly hyperactive over the last years, but the other side of the coin is that he missed out to improve the quality of his writings).
The book has some 768 pdf pages, but that’s fortunately not all I had to wade through. It comes along with a large appendix. There are effectively 640 pages of text with about 250,000 words; the figure is not reflecting his original output, since more than 53,000 words are block quotes. Moreover, entire paragraphs and sections have been taken over from at least six previous books and four articles published by Mattogno, a total of about 36,000 words (and I did not even compare the chapter on cremation with his Italian crematoria book; curiously, comments on Aumeier on p. 609 f. are repeated again 30 pages later, something that could have been avoided if the patchwork were subjected to some serious proofreading).
Anyway, the good news is this won’t be a 250,000 words riposte. I won’t go after every single minor issue and follow him on every secondary theatre he pulled on Jean-Claude Pressac and Robert Jan Van Pelt. I will also not synthesize a narrative on Auschwitz – I will leave it to the people who have learnt how to do it (historians) to clear up the timeline and details of the Holocaust in Auschwitz if something is still unclear and contradictory. I will focus on a single issue: Did Mattogno justify reasonable doubts on the mass extermination of Jews in Auschwitz? The book will have to be measured on Mattogno’s own words that “the present work furnishes a coherent and actually converging set of evidentiary elements which show that the holocaust thesis regarding the existence of homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz is historically, documentarily and technically unfounded” (ATCFS, p. 24).