The Challenge to Supporters of the Revisionist Transit Camp Theory ...

... has been updated.

Children from Venice who were Murdered at Auschwitz

During a recent vacation in Venice, I bought The Ghetto of Venice by Riccardo Calimani, where I found on page 279 an intriguing Italian police report sent from Venice to Fossoli on January 18, 1944, stating:

Re. Jews:
On today's date, officers of this command accompanied here those Jewish minors found on December 31st in such conditions as to make them untransportable.
1. LM child of Beniamino, age 4
2. LL child of Benianimo age 6
3. TS child of Eugenio age 4
4. NN child of Eugenio age 3
The above children will find their parents in this concentration camp.

Although the extract in Calimani only gives the children's initials, I located the document at Yad Vashem (here, image 184) where the names are given as Mario Levi, Lino Levi, Sergio Todesco and Mora Nacamulli. All these names appear on this list of Venetian Jews who were deported by the Germans, despite the Italians having noted that the children were originally found "in such conditions as to make them untransportable." Their destinations were Auschwitz, where all of them died.

Sonderkommando Kulmhof in German Documents - The Extermination of 100,000 Jews

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)

Figure 1: Google Earth view on the final train stations (Kolo/Warthbrücken & Powierce), the ruins of Kulmhof Extermination Camp and its Body Disposal Site in Rzuchow Forest

A short debunking of David Duke on the Holocaust

This post deals with chapter 12 of David Duke's Jewish Supremacism (2002 edn.).

I skip his initial musings (only noting that he exaggerates the Soviet death toll significantly) and begin from p. 272.

Roberto in the deniers' den.

This is a comment thread to discuss our Roberto's appearance at CODOH.

There is almost no doubt that he will eventually be censored, but for now let's have some fun and laugh at the silly deniers being destroyed by Roberto.

The Kinna Report - German Document on the Killing of Unfit Jews in Auschwitz

Introduction

In late 1942, several thousand Poles were deported from Zamosc to destinations according to their racial value attributed to them by Nazis since the area was declared "to the first German settlement area in the Generalgouvernement" (order of Himmler of 12 November 1942, Jaczynska, Sonderlaboratorium SS, p. 414). The racially most inferior defined people were sent to Auschwitz concentration camp. The transport left Zamosc with 644 Poles of this group on 10 December 1942. Several people escaped from the train, the rest was admitted to Auschwitz on 13 December 1942.

The SS officer Heinrich Kinna of the migration central office wrote a report about the transport on 16 December 1942, in which he also summarised his talk with the deputy commandant in Auschwitz, Hans Aumeier (who he spelled phonetically as "Haumeier"). Aumeier informed Kinna on the camp's lethal policy on unfit prisoners, an indiscretion only trumped by Kinna writing that down in plain words:

"Imbeciles, idiots, cripples and sick people have to be removed from the camp within a short time by liquidation to unburden the camp. But this measure has insofar complications as, according to the order from the RSHA, the Poles have to die of a natural death contrary to the measures applied to the Jews."

(extract from the report of Heinrich Kinna of 16 December 1942, reproduced in full below)

It is noteworthy that while Kinna's employer, the migration central office in Lodz, sounds rather innocent and unrelated to the murder of Jews, its men were dispatched to Chelmno/Kulmhof extermination camp in 1942 (see documents 16 and 17 in Sonderkommando Kulmhof in German Documents - Origin and Foundation), so that Kinna might have been already inside the circle of people knowing details on the extermination of Jews. In fact, in his job description Kinna himself included the task "carrying out measures [Zweckmaßnahmen] against Jews and anti-social people" (letter of Kinna to the SS Personnel Main Office of 13 July 1943, cited in Aly, "Endlösung". Völkerverschiebung und der Mord an den europäischen Juden, p. 20).

The significance of this contemporary German document lies in its reference to the killing of Jews unfit for work in Auschwitz without resorting to the usual camouflage language (see for instance Mattogno's special treatment of evidence and "Separate accommodation" in Auschwitz: a code word for extrajudicial executions).

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.