Debunking David Cole's Auschwitz video

The video is available here.

First, a quick historical intro. The video deals with the gas chamber at Auschwitz I, the so-called main camp.

This small makeshift gas chamber was adapted from a morgue in the crematorium I of the main camp in late 1941. The gassings here were occasional, it's unlikely that more than 10000 people were gassed in this chamber in total, the main killings took place in Auschwitz-Birkenau since early 1942, first in two peasant houses whose rooms were converted into makeshift gas chambers; then in the 4 big crematoria completed in the early 1943.

Crematorium I was converted into an air-raid shelter by the Nazis in late 1944 (to repeat, the killings at that time took place in Birkenau and in late 1944 were coming to an end anyway). The main modifications were documented by the Nazis themselves, so we know that the morgue/gas chamber was divided into 4 smaller rooms. After the war the authorities tried to reconstruct the original look of the crematorium but botched the job in several ways. The most important mistake was knocking down one wall too many: as they were removing the recently installed air-raid shelter walls of the small inner rooms, they also removed the wall between the morgue and the former washroom (hence the visible toilet drains, which originally were in the washroom).

Given that it was tampered with by the Communists (though not with a provable ill intent), the reconstructed small gas chamber in the main camp is in its current state not a "proof" of the gassings by itself. However the presence of the HCN residue in the original remaining walls of the gas chamber is highly suggestive and certainly corroborates the witness testimonies.

The video deals with misrepresentations of the gas chamber state by some people (incl. tour guides) in the video, but that is frankly irrelevant to the historicity of the Holocaust. We have the original documents and other sources and can examine the evidence for ourselves. Misrepresentations by third parties will always be there about any significant historical event, this does not mean they call these events into doubt. Also, nowadays the Auschwitz Museum is very explicit about the gas chamber having been reconstructed. Representation and misrepresentation of facts by museums is, of course, a fair and important topic to discuss. But not with the dishonest individuals who would spin such a discussion into a denial of history.

A short debunking of Mark Weber's "Auschwitz: Myths and Facts"

Original here. A short debunking relying mostly on the already published materials follows.

Sonderkommando Kulmhof in German Documents - Origin and Foundation

Mass Killing Unit of Warthegau

Sonderkommando Lange in German Documents:

 Euthanasia 1940/41

Sonderkommando Kulmhof in German Documents:

Part I: Origin and Foundation

Part II: The Extermination of 100,000 Jews

Part III: Body Disposal (Appendix)

Part IV: Pabianice Sorting Camp

Part V: Funding

Part VI: The Polish Working Detail

Part VII: Motor Pool and Fuel (Appendix)

Part VIII: Drinks and Tobacco (With Excursus on the Extermination of the Sinti and Roma)

Part IX: Farewell (1943)

On 16 July 1941, officials of the Reichsgau Wartheland discussed the "solution of the Jewish question", which was picked up by the head of the SD and Umwandererzentralstelle (migration centre office) Posen Rolf-Heinz Höppner and forwarded to Adolf Eichmann with the request "to have your reactions sometime". Höppner himself considered the proposals "in part fantastic, but in my view...thoroughly feasible". Among mass sterilisation and erection of a huge camp for the Jews of the Warthegau, it was discussed "to finish off those of the Jews who are not employable by means of some quick-working agent" as "this winter there is a danger that not all the Jews can be fed anymore" (Document 15). The feasibility of the secret mass killing of people in the Warthegau had been previously demonstrated by the clearing of the asylums by Sonderkommando Lange with its carbon monoxide gas van (see the previous posting of this series Sonderkommando Lange in German Documents: Euthanasia 1940/41). On 2 September 1941, Höppner urged Eichmann for a policy decision: ^[1]

"It is by the way essential that it is entirely clear from the start what shall happen with those evacuated ethnic groups, which are undesirable for the greater German settlements: if the aim is to permanently assure them a certain life or if they shall be wiped out [ausgemerzt] entirely."

Ernst Jünger's March 1942 Diary Entry on Shootings in Lithuania

On March 30, 1942, a German war hero, Ernst Jünger, wrote in his diary that he had heard about shootings in Lithuania in which the victims had to dig their own graves and lie down in them in layers before being shot. 

Claus Valentiner kehrte aus Berlin zurück. Er erzählte von einem schauerlichen Burschen, früherem Zeichenlehrer, der sich gerühmt hatte, in Litauen und anderen Randgebieten ein Mordkommando geführt zu haben, das zahllose Menschen schlachtete. Man läßt die Opfer, nachdem sie zusammengetrieben sind, zuerst die Massengräber ausheben, dann sich hineinlegen und schießt sie von oben in Schichten tot. Zuvor beraubt man sie des Letzten, der Lumpen, die sie am Leibe tragen, bis auf das Hemd.

Claus Valentiner returned from Berlin. He reported about a horrible fellow, a former art master, who bragged about having commanded a murder detachment in Lithuania and other peripheral areas, which slaughtered countless people. After rounding up the victims they first have them dig mass graves, then lie down inside them, and then they shoot them dead in layers from above. Before they rob them of the last they have, the rags they wear, up to the last shirt.

Germans in Jünger's position were therefore hearing, not just about executions, but also their method.

4 more documents mentioning SK 1005.

I have added 4 British decodes to the article "Once More, With Feeling: Deniers And Aktion 1005, 10 Years Later". Yes, they count as original German wartime documents.

That means that we now have 26 German wartime documents mentioning Sonderkommando 1005, 12 of them published.

Remember how Mattogno and Graf lied about the very designation "1005" being a Soviet invention? That lie has discredited them forever.

Sources on a Gas Van in Belzec Extermination Camp

According to the member of the Belzec staff and later commandant of Treblinka, Kurt Franz, a homicidal gas van existed in Belzec prior the operation of the stationary gas chambers. Lorenz Hackenholt is supposed to have been involved in the construction of the gas van, which Franz described as a converted parcel van. Some corroboration can be found in the testimony of Anna Fuchs - the former wife of the gassing device specialist Erich Fuchs -, who stated that her former husband drove a closed parcel van during his Euthanasia time and wrote her from Belzec that he drove a gas van.

Rebutting the "Twitter denial": the most popular Holocaust denial memes debunked

"Twitter denial" (this includes Facebook and other social networks, of course), as primitive as it is, is the main form of denial today. So it may be useful to compile a list of rebuttals to the most common memes. One such meme repository I found in one neo-Nazi twitter account, and in the beginning the tweets from the account were being responded to here, but the post is still being updated with various other tweets and memes.

If you want to translate this text into another language, you're hereby given permission to do so as long as you link to this original posting and give credit where credit is due.

Warning: this post is very image-heavy.

Also, take a look at this debunking of YouTube denial.

If you want to copy a link to a particular argument to post on Twitter or elsewhere, please use the table below. The links are anchored to specific items.
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1. Revision of the Auschwitz plaque.
2. Detached Krema I chimney?
3. Flimsy gas chamber door with a window?
4. Leuchter's report.
5. Alleged lies by the British government.
6. The First Holocaust canard.
7. Auschwitz swimming pool, hospital etc.
8. Arbeit macht frei.
9. The World Almanac canard.
10. The Red Cross stats canard.
11. The Red Cross inspected the death camps?
12. Gas chambers not mentioned in the memoirs of Churchill, Eisenhower, de Gaulle?
13. Elie Wiesel did not mention gas chambers?
14. Elie Wiesel an impostor?
15. More Wiesel stuff.
16. Auschwitz decodes.
17. Survivors did not see or hear about gas chambers?
18. Anne Frank diary.
19. Rassinier denied Auschwitz gas chambers. Or was that Thies Christophersen?
20. The Larson canard.
21. Fake, unreliable or mistaken witnesses.
22. Scratched gas chamber walls?
23. Dachau gas chamber; the Broszat letter.
24. Survivor Lieberman and the Auschwitz ovens.
25. The Lachout document.
26. Fake Holocaust photos?
27. Science debunks Holocaust?
28. No Britannica mention of gas chambers?
29. Dr. Listojewski? Simon Wiesenthal's quote?
30. Small children and people unfit for work in Auschwitz?
31. Jews lie about the Holocaust?
32. Predetermined death toll?
33. Hilberg and famous witnesses shown to be liars, impostors during the Zündel trial?
34. Schindler's list a tale of fiction?
35. Bruno Baum admitted that false propaganda was created in Auschwitz?
36. Changing camp death tolls?
37. Death camps found only by the Soviets?
38. Rick debunks the Holocaust?
39. 6-digit tattoo but 6 million victims?

Sonderkommando Lange in German Documents: Euthanasia 1940/41

Mass Killing Unit of Warthegau

Sonderkommando Lange in German Documents:

 Euthanasia 1940/41

Sonderkommando Kulmhof in German Documents:

Part I: Origin and Foundation

Part II: The Extermination of 100,000 Jews

Part III: Body Disposal (Appendix)

Part IV: Pabianice Sorting Camp

Part V: Funding

Part VI: The Polish Working Detail

Part VII: Motor Pool and Fuel (Appendix)

Part VIII: Drinks and Tobacco (With Excursus on the Extermination of the Sinti and Roma)

Part IX: Farewell (1943)

Herbert Lange (source)

Herbert Lange, born 29 September 1909 in Menzlin in the Province of Pomerania, worked as criminal investigator at the Gestapo in Aachen before the war and took part in the Polish Campaign as member of Einsatzgruppe VI, which settled as Security Police headquarters in Poznan ^[1] (click or hover over footnotes to see references). For a short period of time until 16 October 1939, he was commandant of the Übergangslager (transition camp) Fort VII in Poznan ^[2]. Lange became the leader of a special detail (Sonderkommando) founded by and named after him, which specialized in the killing of mentally ill people with poison gas. In late 1941, he moved on to establish Chelmno (Kulmhof) extermination camp to wipe out the Jews of the Warthegau as well. He was replaced in Spring 1942 as commandant of the extermination camp by Hans Bothmann and employed as investigator in the RSHA. He supposedly died during the battle of Berlin at the end of the war.

Fort VII

Fort VII in Poznan; ref. 2, p. 13

The first Nazi gassings of people took place in Fort VII in Poznan in late 1939. Some experiments with the two most promising killing agents hydrogen cyanide and carbon monoxide may have been tried in casemates of the camp as early as October 1939. What seems like an experimental gassing with hydrogen cyanide soaked pellets (Degesch's "Zyklon") was mentioned en passant by the RSHA driver Wilhelm F. ^[3] :

"Right after the Polish Campaign I was sent with a group of officers to a town in Poland, I do not remember its name. There was a red haired Untersturmführer, who was called Becker as I now recall. This Becker made experiments with poison gas. A number of people were locked in a casemate and gas was introduced into the casemate through venting pipes. I remember exactly how Becker dropped something into the pipes."

"I have seen that Becker fetched a box with cans. He threw them [into the air shafts]."

From November 1939, mentally ill people were systematically killed with carbon monoxide gas in Fort VII ^[4]. Under the command of Lange the inmates of the asylums near Poznan were driven to the camp, locked in casemates and suffocated with carbon monoxide from pressurized steel bottles. The corpses were buried in mass graves in a forest near Oborniki, 30 km North of Poznan. The handling of the corpses was done by Polish prisoners of Fort VII assigned to Sonderkommando Lange, among those Henryk Mania and Henryk Maliczak, who testified on the killings after the war.

Confirmed: a Holocaust denier has influenced Trump and his policy.

As we have reported recently, there has been a well-founded suspicion that Chuck C. Johnson, a Holocaust denier, has been collaborating with the Trump administration.

Now there is more information. Politico reports  (via Charles Johnson, not to be confused with the deplorable C(h)uck):

The consequences can be tremendous, according to a half-dozen White House officials and others with direct interactions with the president. A news story tucked into Trump’s hands at the right moment can torpedo an appointment or redirect the president’s entire agenda. Current and former Trump officials say Trump can react volcanically to negative press clips, especially those with damaging leaks, becoming engrossed in finding out where they originated.
That is what happened in late February when someone mischievously gave the president a printed copy of an article from GotNews‌.com, the website of internet provocateur Charles C. Johnson, which accused deputy chief of staff Katie Walsh of being “the source behind a bunch of leaks” in the White House.

To remind you, Chuck C. Johnson is a sociopath who simply invents facts when it suits him. He also denies the Holocaust (archived version):

I do not and never have believed the six million figure. I think the Red Cross numbers of 250,000 dead in the camps from typhus are more realistic. I think the Allied bombing of Germany was a ware crime. I agree with David Cole about Auschwitz and the gas chambers not being real. I read the German War (highly recommend), Bloodlands, Mein Kampf, and all of David Irving. I’m more or less of the view that the war was an outgrowth of the efforts of communism to spread itself throughout the world. I also believe that the fears of German extermination were not misplaced, especially in light of the Ukrainian famine. But I support Israel as a Jewish state and Zionism as a concept. I’m pro-ethno state, generally. I understand why and how Hitler rose to power but think too much of our focus on World War II is spent trying to understand Hitler and not enough is spent trying to understand Weimar. Mecius Moldbug, aka Curtis Yarvin, is right. America is a communist country.

(The "Red Cross numbers" refer to a popular dumb denial meme  with the alleged "Red Cross stats" about the Nazi camps. The stats come from the ITS, not the Red Cross; were not gathered during the war but are based on the incomplete camp documentation; do not refer to camp death tolls but to the numbers of death certificates by the special registry office of the ITS; concern only the registered prisoners (most gassed Jews were not registered); never were claimed to have been complete camp death tolls; IOW Chuckie is full of $@#$).

Why has a metric ton of Holocaust denial articles recently resided on Ron Unz's website?

And by that I mean stuff like this - and there are 17 pages more like that. The links to the index are still live, the links to individual articles no longer work but many are accessible through the Google cache (archived example), and all of them are actually posted from Ron Unz's account.

Is this some kind of a sabotage or hacking attempt? Doesn't seem so, because Unz's other website still has the whole collection of the IHR articles here (archived version).