Sunday, October 19, 2014

Rebuttal of Mattogno on Auschwitz, Part 1: Indoor Cremation

Rebuttal of Mattogno on Auschwitz:
Part 1: Indoor Cremation
Part 2: Gas Introduction at the Crematoria
Part 5: Construction Documents:

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). 

Sunday, October 12, 2014

Warsaw '44: Testimony of Matthias Schenk

Taken from this source. Any commentary by me would be superfluous:
(Schenk hides his face in his hands).
“We blew up the doors, I think of a school. Children were standing in the hall and on the stairs. Lots of children. All with their small hands up. We looked at them for a few moments until Dirlewanger ran in. He ordered to kill them all. They shot them and then they were walking over their bodies and breaking their little heads with butt ends. Blood streamed down the stairs. There is a memorial plaque in that place stating that 350 children were killed. I think there were many more, maybe 500."
“Or that Polish woman" (Schenk doesn't remember which action it was). "Every time, when we stormed the cellars and women were inside the Dirlewanger soldiers raped them. Many times a group raped the same woman, quickly, still holding weapons in their hands. Then after one of the fights, I was standing shaking by the wall and couldn't calm my nerves. Dirlewanger soldiers burst in. One of them took a woman. She was pretty. She wasn't screaming. Then he was raping her, pushing her head strongly against the table, holding a bayonet in the other hand. First he cut open her blouse. Then one cut from stomach to throat. Blood gushed. Do you know, how fast blood congeals in August?"
“There is also that small child in Dirlewanger’s hands. He took it from a woman who was standing in the crowd in the street. He lifted the child high and then threw it into the fire. Then he shot the mother."
“Or that little girl who unexpectedly came out of the cellar. She was thin and short, something about 12 years old. Torn clothes, disheveled hair. On one side we, on the other Poles. She was standing by the wall not knowing where to run. She raised her hands, and said Nicht Partizan. I waved with my hand that she shouldn't be afraid and should come closer. She was walking with her little hands up. She was squeezing something in one of her hands. She was very close when I heard a shot. Her head bounced. A piece of bread fell out from her hand. In the evening the platoon leader, he was from Berlin, came up to me and said proudly: ‘It was a master shot. Wasn’t it?’ He smiled proudly."