A Study In Hypocrisy: The "Revisionist" Treatment Of The "Soviet Gas Vans".

In their crusade against anything Nazi gas chamber-related, deniers use the hyper-skeptical approach: witnesses are right out, documents are suspect and probably forgeries, and don't even mention hearsay or "tortured" confessions.

This approach is utterly ahistorical, as has been demonstrated time and again. But the problem is not even that the deniers use approaches that no historian deems sound. It's that they use them only when they want to deny the Nazi mass murder. When they see an atrocity claim that they actually like, all "skepticism" flies out of the window.

Case in point: the deniers' treatment of the Soviet gas vans story.

German POWs on Homicidal Gassing in Secretly Recorded Conversations

The British and the US secretely recorded private conversations of some of their German POWs during World War 2. Extracts of the transcripts were published in Tapping Hitler's Generals and Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying. In the following passages, the POWs talked about homicidal gassing carried out by the Germans.

Note on Decode Concerning Shooting at Kamanets-Podolsk

Back in April. BroI posted this scan to CODOH, which he summarized as:

27 Aug 1941:
Police Regiment South shot 914 Jews
Police Battalion 320 shot 4,200 Jews

BroI's scan is taken from HW 16/45. The action in which "Police Battalion 320 shot 4,200 Jews" took place at Kamanets-Podolsk. Below I discuss some facts concerning how the intercepted information in this message first came to light.

A document that forced Mattogno to claim "forgery"

[Edited on 06.02.2016 to finish an incomplete sentence.]



On 24 October 1942, the following events were recorded in the Kriegstagebuch (War Diary) of the Oberquartiermeister (Head Quarter Master), Mbfh Polen (Military Commander Poland) for the period from 1.5.41 to 31.12.43:

OKW beabsichtigt die Mitnahme von Waren aus dem GG dahin zu regeln, dass der persönliche Reisebedarf und die zur Mitnahme zugelassenen Waren frei von jeglicher Abgabe bleiben.
OK Ostrow meldet, dass die Juden in Treblinka nicht ausreichend beerdigt seien und infolgedessen ein unerträglicher Kadavergeruch die Luft verpestet.

Gassing of Mental Patients by Sonderkommando Lange in Novgorod

The gassing of mental patients on Soviet territory was a topic of discussion in the Wehrmacht during September 1941, as shown by Halder's diary entry of September 26, which stated "Mental institutions in sector of AGp. North. Russians regard the feeble-minded as holy. Killing nevertheless necessary" [source, p.124, also submitted with a slightly different translation at Nuremberg as cited here]. On October 1, Halder noted that Wagner had discussed "Novgorod mental institutions" [source, p.133].

Rebuttal of Alvarez on Gas Vans: The Rauff Letter to the Criminal Technical Institute

Rebuttal of Alvarez on Gas Vans

Part I: Why the Diesel Issue is Still Irrelevant (update 1, 2)
Part II: Producer Gas

 Part III: The Ford Gas Wagon (update)
Part IV: The Becker Letter (update)
Part V: The Rauff Letter to the Criminal Technical Institute (update 1, 2, 3, cf. on Mattogno & here)

Part VI: The Turner Letter

Part VII: The Schäfer, Trühe & Rauff Telexes

Part VIII: The Einsatzgruppe B Activity & Situation Report (cf. on Mattogno)

Part IX: The Just Memo

Part X: The West-German Trials Against Members of Einsatzkommando 8

Part XI: Einsatzgruppe D in Simferopol

On 26 March 1942, the head of Technical Department of the RSHA Walther Rauff informed the Criminal Technical Institute of the Security Police that "the special vans manufactured by us are at this time in operation...I request that you use steel bottles with carbon monoxide or respectively other remedies to get things started" in concentration camp Mauthausen (document 4 here). The letter strongly supports the construction and use of homicidal gas vans by the German paramilitary forces. As usual, the document is dismissed as forgery by Holocaust deniers, yet none of the arguments brought forward by Santiago Alvarez actually supports this hypothesis.

Jonnie Hargis's Greatest Hits

Readers are invited to inspect these gems of Jonnie Hargis aka 'Breker' aka 'Hannover'

Another Hannover Gaffe

!! California Wants to Ban Free Speech on the 'holocaust' Storyline. !!

So says Hannover here.

In reality, it's a petition being raised privately that will need 365,880 valid signatures to get on the ballot

War Crimes in Belorussia, mid-1943

Nuremberg exhibit NO-3028 is a series of reports raising concerns about atrocities committed in anti-partisan operations in White Ruthenia. These were posted here by David Thompson in 2004. The most pertinent is perhaps that of 'party member' Lange:

I am submitting the following private communication for your information. Dr. Walkewitsch, the acting head of WSW came to me.

He was informed by Mr. Sakowitsch, the former territory head [Gebietsvorsitzender] of the WSW Minsk--County that on 27 May 1943 at 1400 hours the SS and/or Ukrainians had driven the inhabitants of Krjvsk together into two houses and afterward set fire to the houses so that those inside burned to death.

The same thing happened to the village of Krashyn on 24 May 1943. Both villages are located in the district of Woloshin of the Vilijka territory.

Typically, Himmler's office dismissed such concerns. In the last document in the exhibit, Brandt states that "[Himmler] requests that the Reich Minister of the East be informed that the campaign against the partisans is going quite according to schedule and Volhynia and Podolia will be the next on the list." The subtext was advising Rosenberg to tell his subordinates to quit their complaining. See Leo Alexander's excellent analysis of this exchange, published here in 1948.

Early 1943: Rosenberg Promises Total Extermination

The USHMM edition of Rosenberg's diaries contains, on pages 407-409, extracts from a speech made by Rosenberg just after Goebbels' Total War speech. The German text is in IMT XXXIX, pp.412-25 as part of exhibit USSR-170: 

We must not content ourselves with the Jews getting pushed around from one country to another and possibly still having a big Jewish ghetto here and there. Instead, our goal can only be the old one: the Jewish question in Europe and in Germany is only solved when there is no longer a single Jew on the European continent [Wir dürfen uns nicht damit begnügen, dass die Juden von einem Staat zum anderen geschoben werden, und dass vielleicht hier und da noch ein großes jüdisches Ghetto steckt, sondern unser Ziel kann nur das alte sein: Die Judenfrage in Europa und in Deutschland ist nur dann gelöst, wenn es keinen Juden mehr auf dem europäischen Kontinent gibt]. 

Rosenberg was thus repeating his declaration of November 18, 1941, but this time, with no possibility of the Jews being pushed militarily over the Urals, the method could only be direct killing.