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.

Rebutting the "Twitter denial": the most popular denier 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.

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?

The dumbest Holocaust denial icon: the Auschwitz swimming pool

[Update: here is a more in-depth piece on the swimming pool and other stuff the sillier deniers like to bring up.]

I mean, Jon Harrison dealt with it, Pressac dealt with it, van Pelt dealt with it:

Given the dichotomy between the very complex nature and history of Auschwitz and the habit of many to consider the camp only as a "top-secret mass extermination center," many people, including bona-fide historians, survivors, and not so bona-fide holocaust deniers, often commit the fallacy of composition: they reason from the properties of the part of Auschwitz that was engaged with mass extermination to the properties of Auschwitz as a whole. A favourite example of the negationists is the so-called swimming pool in Auschwitz I. They argue that the presence of a swimming pool, with three diving boards, shows that the camp was really a rather benign place, and therefore could not have been a center of extermination. They ignore that the swimming pool was built as a water reservoir for the purpose of firefighting (there were no hydrants in the camp), that the diving boards were added later, and that the pool was only accessible to SS men and certain privileged Aryan prisoners employed as inmate-funcionaries in the camp. The presence of the swimming pool does not say anything about the conditions for Jewish inmates in Auschwitz, and does not challenge the existence of an extermination program with its proper facilities in Auschwitz II.

Yet it keeps returning, and returning, and returning, and returning, like a zombie.

The "argument" is so mind-bogglingly illogical that one is surprised that even denial cultists would want to repeat it, yet they keep doing it till it's not longer funny.

No historian or court ever claimed that every single inmate of Auschwitz had to perish - or had to perish immediately. The presence of relatively privileged groups of prisoners (like Kapos, "Aryan" or Jewish) is acknowledged by everyone. The presence of amenities (like a brothel) for certain privileged prisoners is hardly a secret.

So why the persistent mentions of the structure, the existence of which contradicts nothing even if one denies its primary use as a water reservoir (and which is not even situated in the extermination section, i.e. Birkenau, though even if it were otherwise, it would still not be an issue)?

How utterly braindead, ignorant or devious one must be to even think about using the Auschwitz swimming pool as a PR trick in the name of "revisionism"?

Faurisson and the Swimming Pool at Auschwitz I

In 2001, Faurisson published this article about the swimming pool at Auschwitz I. He claimed that "The pool was a pool. It was meant for the detainees." However, the solitary direct eyewitness that Faurisson quoted in the original article stated that, "It should be noted that only the very fit and well-fed, exempt from the harsh jobs, could indulge in these games..."

This is therefore a direct distortion by Faurisson, contradicted by his own witness. The pool was only meant for a small minority of detainees: the administrative workers in Auschwitz I. We do not know from the extract that any of these were Jews. The workers at Buna (Auschwitz III) and those selected for Birkenau never went near it; nor did those on starvation rations, nor those doing heavy labour. Yet, as was surely Faurisson's intention, deniers have swallowed this evidence as if it related to the whole of Auschwitz. Both astro3 [Kollerstrom] and 'Hannover' [Hargis] do precisely that here. Readers can decide for themselves whether this misreading was done through mendacity or sheer stupidity. With Hargis and Kollerstrom, either answer would be plausible.

Furthermore, in an addendum on the same link, Faurisson quoted a later witness account, written in 1997, stating that "a newsreel director had some deportees filmed swimming there." An honest scholar might conclude that this indicated the true propaganda purpose of the pool, but Faurisson is a dishonest scholar and chooses to call the witness a liar, except in the small part where his testimony supports Faurisson's claim.