Evidence of Extermination in Pyatigorsk, North Caucacus

Back in 2011, Roberto included this image of a child called Svetlana in his excellent article The Atrocities committed by German-Fascists in the USSR (1). By comparing the image with this Yad Vashem page, I was able to establish that her full name was Svetlana Rudinskaya, she was killed on December 31, 1942 (or the following day), at the Mashuk Mountain overlooking Pyatigorsk in Stavropol Krai of the North Caucacus, and her body was exhumed on January 13, 1943.

The killing of the Jews of Pyatigorsk began on September 6-8, 1941, at the glass factory of Mineralnye Vody, according to the testimony of Pfeifer at his Soviet trial in 1968, after Jews from Essentuki and Zheleznovosk had been killed on September 2-5 and before Kislovodosk Jews were killed on September 9 (source: The Complete Black Book of Soviet Jewry). This was followed in October by murders in gas vans, according to testimonies here. The final action of the New Year was just prior to the German retreat and seems to have targeted professionals.

How the Fate of the Krymchaks Refutes Mattogno

Mattogno claims repeatedly that Soviet Jews were shot for security reasons rather than on racial grounds. In Treblinka, for example, he and Graf paraphrased Mayer's formulation to claim that "the massacres of the eastern Jews was not part of a comprehensive plan of extermination, but occurred as the result of the inexorable radicalization of the war in the east and because the eastern Jews were classified by the SS as carriers of Bolshevism." However, Kiril Feferman's work has shown how German killing policies for Krymchaks directly reflected changes in racial policy. To demonstrate this, I will discuss two documents in my possession. Feferman originally cited these documents from different archives than those from which my copies are sourced, so the references below are mine, not his.

Killing of Jews and Krymchaks in Karasubazar, Crimea

A report by Ortskommandantur II/937 on February 14, 1942, included a survey showing that, of 8,789 people counted in Karasubazar (today Bilohirsk), only one was a Jew and one a Krymchak (NOKW-1688, BArch B 162/657, p.76). Other documents show how the killing of the rest had occurred in stages.

On December 14, 1941, Ortskommandantur Karasubasar Stab Wachbatl. (B) 49 had reported that 76 Jewish men, women (referred to as "Weiber") and children had been taken to a field four days previously and not seen again (BArch B 162/657, p.163); a Soviet Commission report from 1944 shown here collected testimonies about the shooting of the adult Jews and poisoning of the children; killings at this location were also noted in the West German indictment against Johannes Schlupper, 1971. A Soviet testimony from 1973 is shown here. On January 2, 1942, EM 150 recorded Karasubazar as one of the locations in western Crimea that was "free of Jews" due to 17,645 having been liquidated in the region between November 16 and December 15, 1941.

The Krymchaks (numbering 468) were killed in two gas vans on January 17-18, 1942, according to the testimonies given here and here.

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.

Sonderkommando Kulmhof in German Documents - Farewell (1943)

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)

Until 31 December 1942, the Sonderkommando Kulmhof had systematically murdered about 4,400 Sinti and Roma and 145,301 Jews  (Document 234). The Jews of the Warthegau had been wiped out except for the "labour ghetto" in Litzmannstadt and Jews loaned to outside work-sites. Since life as a Sonderkommando member was comparable pleasant and beneficial - with bonus payments, free tabacco and alcohol, no front duty, absence of military discipline, access to cheap goods from the rich warehouses of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto Administration - and facing the prospect of front-line service, the Kulmhof commandant Hans Bothmann seemed to have stretched the dismantling and closing of the camp over the whole Winter 1942/43. ^[1]

Correction Corner #7: false Stuckart quote about the "extermination of Jews".

Sometimes the following alleged quote is ascribed to Wilhelm Stuckart (a Wannsee conference participant):

Die Judenvernichtung findet ihre Rechtfertigung daher nicht nur in der Andersartigkeit, sondern auch in der Anderswertigkeit des Judentums. 

The extermination of the Jews is therefore justified not only by the otherness, but also by the different value of the Jewry.

This allegedly comes from Stuckart's and Schiedermair's book Rassen- und Erbpflege in der Gesetzgebung des Reiches, 3rd edition, 1942.

The citation or a mention of it appears e.g. in Christian Gerlach's The Extermination of the European Jews, 2016, p. 146 (with a reference to U. Herbert, Best: Biographische Studien über Radikalismus, Weltanschauung und Vernunft 1903-1989, 1996, p. 286); in Hans-Christian Jasch's Staatssekretär Wilhelm Stuckart und die Judenpolitik, 2012, p. 364 and in the article "Civil service lawyers and the Holocaust" in A. Steinweis, R. Rachlin (eds.), The Law in Nazi Germany: Ideology, Opportunism, and the Perversion of Justice, 2013, p. 52 (both times with a reference to D. Majer, Grundlagen des nationalsozialistischen Rechtssystems, 1987, pp. 142ff.; in the first source Jasch points out that this sentence is not found in the 2nd and the 4th editions); in Mark Roseman, "Beyond Conviction? ...", in F. Biess, M. Roseman, H. Schissler (eds.), Conflict, Catastrophe and Continuity: Essays on Modern German History, 2007, p. 95 (with a reference to Herbert, 1996);  et cetera.

However Horst Dreier points out (among other places, in Die deutsche Staatsrechtslehre in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus, 2001, p. 40n150 and in Staatsrecht in Demokratie und Diktatur, 2016, p. 217n150) that the word "Judenvernichtung" (extermination of Jews) does not appear in the 3rd edition (or in the whole 3rd Reich literature on the constitutional law that he had read). Rather, the following does appear there:

Die Judenvorschriften finden ihre Rechtfertigung daher nicht nur in der Andersartigkeit, sondern auch in der Anderswertigkeit des Judentums. 

The Jewish regulations are therefore justified not only by the otherness, but also by the different value of the Jewry.

The third edition of Stuckart's and Schiedermair's book is available online, so we can see that Dreier is correct:

It would seem that the incorrect quote was first used by Diemut Majer. Thus, we see it in "Fremdvölkische" im Dritten Reich: ein Beitrag zur nationalsozialistichen Rechtssetzung und Rechtspraxis in Verwaltung und Justiz unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der eingegliederten Ostgebiete und des Generalgouvernements, 1981, p. 121 and Majer's subsequent 1987 book and Herbert's 1996 book (that must have relied on Majer) are the main sources for the spread of the false version.

The latest publication of the English translation of Majer's book - “Non-Germans” Under The Third Reich: The Nazi Judicial and Administrative System in Germany and Occupied Eastern Europe, with Special Regard to Occupied Poland, 1939–1945, 2013, still contains the quote.

Herbert corrected the quote in the 2016 edition of his book (p. 306).

Book chapter "Holocaust denial in the age of web 2.0" by Nicholas Terry Available Online

The multi-author book Holocaust and Genocide Denial: A Contextual Perspective edited by Paul Behrens, Olaf Jensen and Nicholas Terry (2017) is a more recent publication on the development, incidence and encountering of Genocide Denial in general and Holocaust Denial specifically. The chapter Holocaust denial in the age of web 2.0 by Holocaust Controversies' Nick Terry is online available at google books. Its conclusion points out these seven reasons which "can be adduced for the decline of Holocaust denial":

1 Consistent social disapproval
2 Its political ineffectiveness
3 The ease of finding other ways of expressing anti-Semitism or delegitimising Israel
4 Loss of 'market share' to other conspiracy theories
5 Inability to cope with the volume of recent Holocaust research
6 Lack of novelty
7 The ageing of the 'movement'

(Behrens et al., Holocaust and Genocide Denial: A Contextual Perspective, p. 53)

Sonderkommando Kulmhof in German Documents - Drinks and Tobacco (With Excursus on the Extermination of the Sinti and Roma)

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)

The fate of the about 5,000 Sinti and Roma deported from the Reichsgaue Niederdonau (Lower Danube) and Steiermark in annexed Austria to the Litzmannstadt Ghetto in early November 1941 and forced to vegetate in the most inadequate conditions was sealed when a typhus epidemic broke out in early December 1941 ^[1] and, incidentally, an extermination camp was established 70 km North-West of Litzmannstadt: Kulmhof. The liquidation of the Sinti and Roma from the Ghetto by the Sonderkommando in December 1941/January 1942 was going beyond its initially assigned task to exterminate 100,000 Warthegau Jews and marked another escalation of the type of victims targeted after mental patients and unfit Jews.

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