Brest Ghetto Mass Grave: More Than One Thousand Murder Victims Exhumed

Earlier this month, the BBC reported here the exhumation of over 1,000 Jews from a mass grave in the site of the Brest ghetto during the previous two months. The unearthed skeletons included women and children and proof that victims were shot in the back of the head. The embedded video in the report included (from two minutes in) an illustrated discussion of the ghetto population register. As I showed in our Critique, this was the 'Accounting and Control Book of Population Movement' that recorded 16,934 Jews on October 15, 1942, but crossed out that figure the following day. Mattogno of course insists that all these 16,934 Jews were 'evacuated' as that is the term used by Police Battalion 310 in its report of the ghetto action (Mattogno, pp.702-704), but these remains are proof that not all 'evacuated' Jews ever left the ghetto and that at least a thousand of them had infact been shot in the ghetto itself. Moreover, given that this also proves that 'evacuated' was a euphemism that included substantial killing, and there is no evidence these Jews ever left that administrative region of the occupied territories, it is logical to infer that any Jews who were transported elsewhere were also shot. Another desperate Mattogno gambit therefore fails.

Georg Leibbrandt and the Killing of Jews in the USSR: A Case Study of Mattogno's Methods

Georg Leibbrandt was one of two members of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories (RMfdbO) who attended the Wannsee conference. Mattogno has discussed him on numerous occasions, most recently in the Italian edition of volume 1 of his forthcoming Einsatzgruppen Handbook where Mattogno cites him seven times, six of which are duplicated from his response of 2013 to our White Paper. The one new reference in the Italian edition is the false claim, as shown below, that Leibbrandt regarded Soviet Jews as only a political and partisan enemy rather than a race that had to be eliminated on biological grounds. The six recycled references entail a misrepresentation of Leibbrandt's correspondence with Hinrich Lohse of the Reichskommissariat Ostland in the Autumn of 1941 as supporting resettlement of Jews eastwards. An analysis of Leibbrandt's involvement in anti-Jewish policy can therefore form a useful case study of how Mattogno manipulates sources on German perpetrators.

Reports from the Occupied Eastern Territories, May 1942 to January 1943

Extracts from the Meldungen aus den besetzten Ostgebieten appear in this collection edited by Arad et al. Below I copy across several relevant extracts, each referenced by the page number in the collection.

No. 4, 22.5.42: "Of the Krimchaks (about 6,000) who were usually counted as part of the Jewish population, well over half lived in Simferopol (2,500) and in Karasubatsar [Karasubazar]. Their extermination, together with that of the Jews and the Gypsies in the Crimea, was accomplished for the most part by the beginning of December, 1941 [p.344, quoted here]."

No. 5, 29.5.42: 251 people shot and 28 hanged in Minsk on 5.5.42 [p.346].

Contemporary Reports of Killings in the USSR that included Children

The following is merely a sample of reports where the killing of children is included or clearly implied. More will follow in due course. To these must also be added the numerous actions in the Jaeger Report that included children, and Jaeger's update of 9.2.42 which gave a total killed of 34,464 children.We can also consider the high number of references to places being "free of Jews" (e.g. EM 88, EM 133, EM 150) as being inclusive of killing all the children.

More Nazi Mass Murder Statements (Part 1)

Further to my previous list, this article adds numerous quotes that clearly spell out mass murder intentions or that report mass murder actions. Preference is given to sources with online links:

1) Palfinger, 8.11.40: "a rapid dying out of the Jews is for us a matter of total indifference, if not to say desirable [YVA O.53/78, p.8; German text also here; translation in Browning, p.66]."

2) Stahlecker, 6.8.41: "an almost one hundred percent immediate cleansing of the entire Ostland of Jews [VEJ 7, pp. 511-514 (Dok. 181), here p.514]."

Update: Kube, Lohse and Strauch (Part 1: September 1941 to December 1942)

A major theme of the literature on the Ostland is the disputes between the civil administration and the SS over the scope and methods of killing operations. In the Autumn of 1941, Lohse prohibited the killing of work Jews in both Schaulen (at the instigation his subordinate Gewecke) and Libau. In the summer of 1943, he expressed disgust at the methods used to kill partisans. Kube and Strauch meanwhile had an ongoing feud that lasted throughout Strauch's time as KdS Weissruthenien and only concluded when Kube was assassinated (see extract from Hilberg here). The following article updates the material presented in the Critique on these issues (here and here) and adds links to sources that have come to our attention since 2011.

Update: Kube, Lohse and Strauch (Part 2: Strauch's Euphemisms)

Continued from Part 1

Strauch's complaint to Bach-Zelewski of July 25, 1943 (NO-2662) reveals that the use of the word 'resettlement' was a deception:

On 1 March 1942 an action was to take place against the Russian ghetto in Minsk. The Generalkommissar received prior notification. In order to disguise the action the Council of Elders was to be informed that 5,000 Jews from the Minsk ghetto were to be resettled.

Strauch then states that "It is clear, however, that the Gauleiter used his knowledge to save his Jews."

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.

Films and photos of Nazi crimes on Youtube

Last week I came upon this trailer of a History Channel documentary called "The Unseen Holocaust", which announces "newly discovered footage" showing Nazi mass killings "on the Eastern Front", i.e. in the areas of the former Soviet Union occupied by Nazi Germany during World War II.

Biological eradication (biologische Ausmerzung)

On page 118 of the Critique, I cited Rosenberg's briefing of November 18, 1941, taken from Christopher Browning's submission to the Irving-Lipstadt trial. Rosenberg spoke of the necessity of "a biological eradication of the entire Jewry of Europe" (eine biologischen Ausmerzung des gesamten Judentums in Europe) by measures that would "expel them over the Urals or eradicate them in some other way." Mattogno replied to this by stating that the "purely figurative meaning of “Ausmerzung des Judentums” (extirpation of Jewry)...designated the eradication of Jewry from the soil of the Reich and from the European soil." However, this can be refuted by two points.

Peter Bamm on male hysteria

The hysterics of my mostly male "Revisionist" interlocutors over the years have often reminded me of the following remark:

Während die weibliche Hysterie eine verhältnismäßig harmlose Bereicherung des Daseins ist, wird die männliche Hysterie oft zum blutigen Motiv der Geschichte. Daß die meisten Menschen nicht wissen, daß es Hysterie bei Männern gibt, macht die Störung nur um so gefährlicher. (Whereas female hysteria is a comparatively harmless enrichment of existence, male hysteria often becomes the bloody motive of history. The fact that most people don’t know that there is hysteria in men only makes the disturbance all the more dangerous.)

Breaking Down Soviet World War II Losses

Our reader Marko Marjanović from Ljubljana has published an updated version of his breakdown of the Soviet Union’s human losses in World War II, which can be read and downloaded under this link.

Minsk: A Preliminary Partial List of German Witness Statements

This article is an alphabetical list of witnesses to events that occurred in Minsk between 1941 and 1944. I have only included witnesses whose full surname I was able to ascertain from the sources. There are far more witnesses in trial judgments whose names are censored to just two letters. These are listed at the end of the blog article.

Wilhelm Dadischek - admitted killing Jews but claimed superior orders [source]

Karl Dalheimer - Heuser co-defendant, described mass shooting actions [source]

Sabine Dick - Heuser's secretary, wrote up his orders for Jewish actions [Heuser judgment, 552-129, and Wendy Lower, Hitler's Furies, pp.110-113]

Dittrich - gan vans sent from Minsk to Baranovici [source]

Otto Edel - atrocities against Jewish prisoners [source]

June 22, 1944

On this day 70 years ago, three years to the day after the beginning of Nazi Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union, the Soviet army launched an offensive codenamed Operation "Bagration", which led to the Wehrmacht’s greatest defeat on the Eastern Front.

The Kortelisy Massacre

On 23 September 1942, Reserve Police Company Nürnberg destroyed the Ukrainian small town of Kortelisy and killed almost all its inhabitants. The present article about this massacre, where not stated otherwise, is based on the well-sourced brochure »Ihr Gewissen war rein; sie haben es nie benutzt«. Die Verbrechen der Polizeikompanie Nürnberg, by Jim G. Tobias and Nicola Schlichting, 2005 ANTOGO Verlag, Nuremberg. Tobias also made a short documentary that includes interviews with survivors of the massacre ("Der Schwarze Mittwoch" Polizeikompanie Nürnberg vernichtet Kortelisy). Accounts quoted in the following are my translations from German text.
  

42,500 Camps and Ghettos

While the huge research effort led by USHMM researchers Geoffrey Megargee and Martin Dean deserves much respect, the same does not apply to the way their finds are being announced, especially in some of the English language press.
  

The Jäger Report (1)

The Jäger Report (2)

The Jäger Report (3)

The Jäger Report (4)

The Jäger Report (5)

The Jäger Report (6)

The Jäger Report (7)

The Jäger Report (8)

The report dated 1 December 1941 by SS-Standartenführer Karl Jäger, head of Einsatzkommando 3 of Einsatzgruppe A, is probably the most detailed and explicit document about Nazi mobile killing operations. It contains a tabulation, by date and place, of executions carried out by Einsatzkommando 3 on Lithuanian territory between 4 July and 25 November 1941. For each execution the number of victims is stated, broken down into Jews and (where existing) non-Jews, the number of Jews often further broken down into Jewish men, women and children.

HC Reference Library

No hay mal que por bien no venga, says a Spanish proverb. There is nothing bad that doesn’t also bring some good.

Thomas Kues on Maly Trostenets: Trying to create a false dilemma

In his article The Maly Trostenets "Extermination Camp"—A Preliminary Historiographical Survey, Part 2, anomaly-hunter Thomas Kues points out «a few oddities and contradictions pertaining to the alleged use of "gas vans" at Maly Trostenets».

Thomas Kues on Maly Trostenets: Trying to discredit the Arlt Reports

A large part of Thomas Kues’ article The Maly Trostenets "Extermination Camp"—A Preliminary Historiographical Survey, Part 2 is spent discussing the activity reports of an SS unit known as Gruppe Arlt, which Kues claims are the only documents that connect the Maly Trostenets killing site with mass killings.