Sonderkommando Kulmhof in German Documents - Motor Pool and Fuel

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)

Unlike the extermination camps in the Generalgouvernement, Kulmhof was not located next and connected to a main railway line. The victims were buried and disposed not on site, but some 4 km north in a forest. The Sonderkommando had to put considerable own effort in the transport logistics to get the victims to the killing site and the corpses to the burial site. Moreover, the belongings of the killed Jews had to be transported away again. Its motor pool and fuel supply - the latter provided by the State Economic Office of the Warthegau (Gerlich) via the Gestapo Posen (Lohse) to the Kulmhof commandants (Lange, Bothmann) - were thus essential for the smooth operation of the mass murder.

Sonderkommando Kulmhof in German Documents - Motor Pool and Fuel (Appendix)

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)

Documents-Appendix to Motor Pool and Fuel

More on "Biological eradication (biologische Ausmerzung)"

Back in 2015, in this posting, I took Mattogno to task for his ridiculous attempt (made here, pp.281-282) to neutralize Rosenberg's press briefing of November 18, 1941. I would now like to expand upon this by citing an observation made by Alex J. Kay, in this book, which includes an excellent discussion of Rosenberg's role in the planning process for occupation of the USSR up to July 1941. On June 20, 1941, Rosenberg used the term "evacuation" to refer to the starvation, not deportation, of ethnic Russians, who Hitler had decided should not be allowed to survive the bombardment of major cities, most notably Leningrad and Moscow (and subsequently Kiev).

Rosenberg's usage came in the speech presented in the International Military Tribunal as 1058-PS; Hartley Shawcross read the following extract to the court on July 27, 1946:

The object of feeding the German people stands this year without a doubt at the top of the list of Germany's claims on the East, and there the southern territories and the Northern Caucasus will have to serve as a balance for the feeding of the German people. We see absolutely no reason for any obligation on our part to feed also the Russian people with the products of that surplus territory. We know that this is a harsh necessity bare of any feelings. A very extensive evacuation will be necessary without any doubt, and it is sure that the future will hold very hard years in store for the Russians [translation in National Conspiracy and Aggression, III, pp.716-717].

Rosenberg's use of expulsion as a euphemism for mass death therefore had a genesis in Rosenberg's contribution to the pre-Barbarossa starvation proposals, which had been initiated by Backe but not explicitly endorsed by Rosenberg until this "evacuation" speech. As Kay shows (here, p.689), Rosenberg was using "evacuation" to euphemize the deaths of 30 million people.

Hitler and the "Asiatic Races"

In December 1942, Hitler held a meeting concerning the Netherlands with Mussert, Seyss-Inquart, Himmler, Lammers, Schmidt and Bormann. The meeting's notes, written up by Bormann, were published in 1976 in the collection De SS en Nederland Documenten uit de SS-archieven 1935-1945, which was recently made available through NIOD and Wikimedia Commons here in two pdf files. The first file, from pages 893-899, reproduces Bormann's record of the meeting.

In one of its key passages, Hitler depicts the war in the East as a life-or-death struggle because the Bolsheviks would exterminate all European strata (p.895). Hitler also makes it clear that his opposition to the Bolsheviks is racial, not political or ideological: Germany is up against the Asiatic races who intend to destroy European civilization and impose race-mixing (p.894).

These remarks can be compared to other sources. Hitler was, in part, echoing Diewerge's formulation "Who Should Die — Germans or Jews?" The same day that Bormann produced his notes, Goebbels wrote in his diary, "Jewry must pay for its crime just as our Fuehrer prophesied in his speech in the Reichstag; namely, by the wiping out of the Jewish race in Europe and possibly in the entire world." Crucially, however, Hitler's comments were not just antisemitic but pointed to a willingness to exterminate all 'Asiatic' life in his path that was incompatible with his view of European civilization. They therefore converge with the starvation goals of May 1941, in which the Nazis were willing to condemn to death thirty million people (see, for example, Kay, p.689), and the plan to to totally destroy the major Soviet cities and make the areas uninhabitable (see here).

Mattogno on the Mass Graves at Ponary (Part 4)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

We now get to what are probably the most interesting images in the Yad Vashem collection of photos captioned as having been taken at Ponary.

Mattogno on the Mass Graves at Ponary (Part 3)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Now, let’s look at the Ponary photos that Mattogno "examined", and at what (other) photos that may be relevant to Mattogno’s argument regarding the exhumed corpses mentioned in the 26 August 1944 report (and/or to his other arguments presented in this context) are available in the online archives of The Ghetto Fighters House and Yad Vashem. All photos must, of course, be credited to the respective institution in whose archives they are featured, respectively The Ghetto Fighters’ House and Yad Vashem. Photos that appear in both collections are shown only once, with the references in each of these collections.

Whether or not they were taken at Ponary, some of these photos are very graphic and should not be viewed by sensitive readers.

Photographic Documentation of the Shooting of a Woman and Child in Miropol

This photograph was taken by the Slovak soldier, Skrovina Lubomir, in Miropol, Ukraine in October 1941. It is one of two known photographs documenting the shooting of women and children at close range in a public park by Ukrainian policemen attached to Order Police Battalion 303. Lubomir testified in Prague in 1958 that he was in a unit guarding bridges when he and two others were assigned to attend the execution, at which 94 Jews (including 49 children) were murdered. The two shooters on the photo are Ukrainian, the 3 Order Police commanders are German.

Source of the photo is USHMM, originally from Security Services Archive, Prague, H-770-3.0020. Source of the context and archival reference is Wendy Lower, 'Axis Collaboration, Operation Barbarossa, and the Holocaust in Ukraine', in A. Kay, J. Rutherford, & D. Stahel (eds.), Nazi Policy on the Eastern Front, 1941: Total War, Genocide, and Radicalization, Boydell & Brewer, 2012, p.200.

Mattogno on the Mass Graves at Ponary (Part 2)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Back now to Mattogno’s considerations regarding the August 1944 commission’s report as concerns excavations at Ponary and finds of human corpses and cremation remains.

Mattogno on the Mass Graves at Ponary (Part 1)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Introduction

This is the first of a series of articles discussing Carlo Mattogno’s claims and arguments regarding mass graves at the Ponary mass killing site near Vilnius, Lithuania. It is based on the 153rd of my posts on the forum of the "Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust" that was censored (i.e. "disapproved" or truncated beyond recognition, in both cases on the flimsiest of mendacious pretexts, or deleted after publication) since early July 2017 (the number would be higher if my job had not been such a hustle in the past months, leaving little if any time for pastimes both online and offline). Said censorship is further proof of what is already common knowledge, namely that open debate on the Holocaust is the last thing that said "Committee" is interested in and wishes to provide.

Commendably none other than Friedrich Paul Berg, one of the least commendable exponents of Holocaust denial, expressed his opinion about CODOH censorship with unusual frankness. He gets points for that.

That said, I move on to the first article of this series, which owes much to the gratefully acknowledged, very valuable input of my fellow bloggers Jonathan Harrison, Nick Terry and Sergey Romanov.

Nazi shrunken heads, human skin lampshades, human soap, textiles from human hair? Sorting out the truth from the legends.

[Last updated on 23.12.2019]

In this article several claims about the use of the bodies of the Nazi victims will be examined. An attempt will be made to separate the facts from the rumors and legends that inevitably arose during and after the war and still live in the public consciousness.

1. Shrunken heads.
2. Human skin lampshades.
3. Human soap.
4. Human hair.
5. Summary.

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