German Document on Chelmno Gas Van Driver Filling up Gasoline in Lodz

APL 221/30183, p. 11

A document from the Ghetto Lodz administration shows that on 2 September 1944 "Laabs" from the "SS police" refuelled his truck with the licence number "71449" two times with "45 liters" of gasoline at the tank station of the Ghetto Lodz administration. The driver "Laabs" of the "SS police" can be matched to the well known permanent gas van driver of the SS and police Sonderkommando Kulmhof Gustav Laabs (see testimonies in the appendix below). That this vehicle was indeed a homicidal gas van is supported by the fact that its license number of 71449 is close to those of other known gas vans 71457, 71462 and 71463 (see also How the convergence of evidence works: the gas van of Auschwitz, Mattogno and the Activity & Situation Report of Einsatzgruppe B on its Gas Vans and Rebuttal of Alvarez on Gas Vans: The Schäfer, Trühe & Rauff Telexes).

Jews Shot because They Were Jews

In response to the brainless denier meme that Jews were only shot in the USSR because they were partisans, Communists, saboteurs or provocateurs (a meme that is antisemitic on its face, because no other group was automatically shot because it was assumed to inherently possess those characteristics), below are a list of quotes from Einsatzgruppen Operational Situation Reports [hereafter EMs] which show that being a Jew alone - and for no other reason - was sufficient to get a person shot, regardless of age, class, gender or political history.

German Instigation of Pogroms

A favourite meme of Holocaust deniers is that pogroms were not the responsibility of the Germans. Germar Rudolf even claims here that Jewish deaths from pogroms were not "real Holocaust victims." This article refutes such lies by demonstrating that references to pogroms in the Einsatzgruppen Operational Situation Reports [hereafter EMs] almost always show attempts by Germans to instigate them. The success or failure of these attempts varies with the region in which each Einsatzkommando was operating.

The Denial Fossil Faurisson Sounds Like a Broken Record (Again)

After the news that Angela Merkel will receive USHMM's Elie Wiesel award the French denier of the obvious Robert Faurisson couldn't stay silent and had to express his displeasure in an article with the name as long as Pinocchio's nose would be if he were to read any of Faurisson's articles out loud: "Is Angela Merkel Going to Endorse Elie Wiesel’s lies and, Particularly, his lie of the Extermination of the Jews at Auschwitz by Fire and not by Gas?" in which he, predictably, attacks Wiesel as a "false witness":

137 Crushed Lies, or Why Denial Is Beyond Repair

The average online denier is not a sophisticated creature. He is usually satisfied with a few memes he has found on Twitter or at some forum and repeats them ad infinitum, never bothering to fact-check them, thus regurgitating the deceptive tidbits that have been debunked over and over and over again. One such moldy debunked meme is the myth about the crushed testicles of 137 German defendants in the Dachau trials.

From David Irving's site:

All but two of the Germans, in the 139 cases we investigated, had been kicked in the testicles beyond repair. This was Standard Operating Procedure with American investigators.

The source is given as "The Progressive, February 1949, p. 21f", the author is alleged to be Edward L. Van Roden:

a Pennsylvania judge served in World War I and II, in the latter as Chief of the Military Justice Division for the European Theater where he saw service in Normandy, Belgium, the Rhineland, the Battle of the Bulge, and in the Ardennes. In 1946 he was reassigned to active duty and served on several important court martial trials in Germany. In 1948 Secretary of the Army Royall appointed him to an extraordinary commission charged with investigating the Dachau War Crimes program.

So of course this is repeated ad nauseam on Twitter and at trashy forums like CODOH, where this is a favorite of its know-nothing Aufseher Jonnie "Hannover" Hargis.

An Early Use of 'Ausrottung' - and a small deception by Jansson

On September 12, 1936, Julius Streicher used the word 'extirpated' [Ausrottung] in a clearly exterminatory sense in a speech reported by The Times, reproduced on September 16 in The Glasgow Herald, shown here. Jansson claims here that the quote was imputed falsely to Streicher by Jewish organizations, and credulously chooses to believe Streicher's defence at Nuremberg. However, Jansson's own source (pp.23-24) shows that the quote was published in The Times, which was not a Jewish organization, and the original author of the article was, according to his biography, Matthew Halton, a Canadian reporter.

Update: The Extermination of Entire Communities in Ukraine in 1941

It is often assumed that no Axis orders were issued before the invasion to kill women and children in any part of the USSR, but this assumption is false. The General Inspector of the Romanian Gendarmerie, Constantin Vasiliu, issued an order on June 17 or 18, 1941, mandating "the extermination on the spot of all Jews in rural areas, enclosing them in ghettos in urban areas, and the arrest of all those suspected of being Communist party members or of having held important functions under Soviet rule [cited by Ancel, here, note 21, and by Deletant, p.143]." However, it is correct that in the area under the authority of HSSPF Jeckeln, the killing of women and children only became systematic in late August. Prior to the Kamenets-Podolsky massacre of 27.8.41, 40,000 Jews had been killed, but from 27.8.41 to 30.9.41, 100,000 were murdered [Dieter Pohl, here, p.32]. This article examines how the German policy escalated from one of primarily shooting male Jews (as a "security measure" or in reprisal) to one of exterminating whole Jewish population centres.

More on Sebastian Gorka

LATE ADDITION AT BOTTOM

Since I wrote on this topic last, right wing bloggers and journalists have circled the wagons around Sebastian Gorka, Trump's deputy adviser for national security and purported anti-terrorism expert. Responding to reporting by the Forward, on the Lobelog blog, and in the Hungarian press, Richard Miniter – among other writers – responded on the Forbes Web site.

Miniter's defense of Gorka is remarkable for its sheer length and comprehensiveness. Going point by point, Miniter begins with the assertion that charges of anti-Semitism on Gorka's part, on the basis of his having cofounded a political party with former members of the Jobbik far-right party, are a matter of guilt by association. He elaborates:

Gorka founded a party that included some people who came from another party and that other party had some figures who… Really? This is the argument here? Gorka wrote for a newspaper that also published content that critics called “anti-Semitic” and hung around opposition figures that included people that critics say are “anti-Semitic,” therefore…. Even if the critics were right about the alleged “anti-Semitism” of the other journalists and the other politicians (and there are good reasons to believe that their characterizations are highly questionable), it reveals nothing about Gorka or his beliefs. Sharing a room with Helen Keller does not make one blind; sharing a subway car with Albert Einstein does not make one a genius.

Miniter has something of a point – the mere fact of a relationship between Gorka and some loathsome characters on Hungary's far right cannot be used alone to establish the political leanings of Gorka himself.

However, the analogy that ends the quote above is inapt. No, sharing a room with Helen Keller does not make one blind; however, sharing a political party with her might result in the reasonable assumption that the person sharing that party is a socialist, as Keller herself was. Moreover, it's certainly true that sharing a subway car with Albert Einstein does not make one a genius; however, publishing scholarly articles in the same journals with Einstein might reasonably result in the assumption that the person in question is a theoretical physicist.

Taking Miniter's argument about Gorka's political assumptions one by one, we can begin with the assertion that "Gorka wrote for a newspaper that also published content that critics called 'anti-Semitic' and hung around opposition figures that included people that critics say are 'anti-Semitic.'" What's irksome about this passage is not only the sneer quotes around "anti-Semitic" but also what even a cursory examination of the people in question reveals about their political points of view.

Among the photos making the rounds is one of Gorka standing to Támás Molnár (above), one of the former Jobbik members referred to above. As the screenshot shown below reveals, the two men are Facebook friends. To be fair, Gorka has more than 2,000 "friends" on Facebook, but there are several other Jobbik members and political allies not on Gorka's friends list. We might assume (and I do believe that the evidence suggests that Gorka should address this issue directly) that the two men are friends.

So what does Molnár believe? Apparently at least some of what informs Molnár's ideology is a belief in "double genocide" -- a popular right-wing theory in countries subjected to occupation by both the Nazis and the Soviets. Where the theory has seen expression most publicly since 1991 has been in the Baltic states, including Latvia, where members of the Latvian Legion of the Waffen-SS have marched in parades with the status of heroes for having fought the Soviets.

Double genocide proponents in Hungary focus on Soviet repression, which began with the Soviet invasion in 1945 and extended through the late 1990s, with the peak occurring in 1956. These proponents suggest not only that the Soviet repression was as costly as Nazi occupation in terms of human lives (it was not: thousands were killed in 1956 vs. hundreds of thousands in 1944), but often, that the perpetrators of Soviet repression were Jewish.

This uncanny focus on the Jewish ancestry of some Hungarian communists is something we've seen before -- see Sergey Romanov's insightful comment on our blog. Molnár is apparently a firm believer, having co-signed an open letter on a Web site indicating refusal of the party (of which Gorka was cofounder) to sign a proclamation denouncing racism and anti-Semitism.

(I am in the process of seeking translation from Hungarian for this material and will post it when I do.)

Incidentally, this Web site features several bloggers from the party, one of whom is Gorka himself.

Lest we think that Molnár's views have moderated since he collaborated with Facebook friend Gorka in the mid-2000s, we need only consider the story of Eszter Solymosi, a Hungarian girl at the center of a blood libel in Hungary in the late 19th century. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the case has been revived since 1989 by Jobbik. Daniel Véri writes:

Besides the revival of Eszter Solymosi’s imaginary portrait, which will be examined in the next part of the study, two further works were created, showing the girl as a Christian martyr. Both were published on kuruc.info, the major news portal of the Hungarian extreme right. The first was created in 2008 by an unknown artist, the second – inspired by the previous one – in 2009 by painter Tamás Molnár.

The name Támás Molnár, it turns out, is not terribly rare in Hungary. It was the name of a conservative Catholic philosopher and U.S. resident, who died some time ago. It's also the name of a Hungarian Olympic water polo player. And, finally, it's the name of two artists -- one of whom was also a member of Jobbik.

Should Mr. Miniter be reading this, we can disagree over whether a double genocide theory is anti-Semitic. On blood libel, I don't think the jury is still out. Gorka has to answer for his friend.

====

Added at 5:30 p.m. EDT

The Forward has just published video of Gorka defending Jobbik's Garda paramilitary. An interview with Gorka from 2007 has him appearing to do the same.

Update: Goebbels Statements from 1941

Goebbels' diary [hereafter TB], January 31, 1941: "Discussed with Bouhler the discreet liquidation of the mentally ill. 40,000 have gone, 60,000 have still to go. It’s a tough but necessary job. And it has to be done. Bouhler is the right man to do it [Longerich, Peter. Goebbels: A Biography (Kindle Locations 21516-21520). Random House Publishing Group, 2015. Kindle Edition, 21519, n.62]."

Das Reich, July 20, 1941: "Just as the fist of an awakened Germany has struck this racial filth, the fist of an awakened Europe will surely follow. Mimicry will not help the Jews then. They will have to face their accusers. The court of the nations will judge their oppressor.
Without pity or forgiveness, the blow will strike. The world enemy will fall, and Europe will have peace [source and source]."

Lying about Elie Wiesel

[Updated on 08.09.2019]

A whole cottage industry has sprung up in recent years devoted to "proving" that the late Elie Wiesel was a total fraud: an impostor who stole an actual Auschwitz survivor's identity. Most of the crazies are of course Holocaust deniers. One notable exception is an actual Jewish Auschwitz and Buchenwald survivor, Nikolaus Grüner, whose book Stolen Identity. Auschwitz Number A-7713 serves as a springboard for the deniers.

To remind our readers: according to Elie Wiesel (1928-2016) in Auschwitz he had the number (and a corresponding tattoo) A-7713, his father Shlomo Wiesel had the number A-7712.

The basic denial claims look like this:

1. Elie Wiesel allegedly had no visible Auschwitz tattoo.

2. Camp documents allegedly show that Lazar Wiesel A-7713 from Auschwitz was born in 1913 (not 1928 as Elie Wiesel; note: both "Elie" and "Lazar" are variants of the name "Eliezer") and that A-7712, who Elie Wiesel said was his father Shlomo, was actually someone named Abram Viezel.

3. Grüner claimed that he knew the "actual" Lazar Wiesel A-7713 in Auschwitz (Monowitz) and Buchenwald and that he wasn't the same person as Elie Wiesel. Moreover, Grüner claimed to have also known the prisoner A-7712, Lazar's brother Abram.