What Vladimir Davydov really said about the height of the Babyn Yar pyres.

It has long been a staple argument of the deniers against one Babyn Yar witness Vladimir Davydov (one, but not the only, contrary to the incompetent nincompoops Carlo Mattogno and Jürgen Graf's claim) that he claimed the height of 10-12 m for the Babyn Yar pyres in 1943.

Mattogno and Graf wrote:

On November 9, 1944, Major Lavrenko, member of the Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Kiev, questioned the Jewish witness Vladimir K. Davidov. The latter stated that on August 18, 1943, he, along with 99 other prisoners, for the most part also Jewish, had been selected from the Siretzki concentration camp 5 km from Kiev. The 100 prisoners were taken to Babi Yar and there were forced to dig up the bodies of the Jews shot in 1941. According to him, 70,000 bodies had been in the mass graves of Babi Yar. The prisoners had exhumed these and burned them on 'ovens' afterwards, which consisted of granite blocks - procured from the Jewish cemetery of Kiev - with train rails laid upon them. On these a layer of wood was piled and on top of this the bodies, so that an enormous stack of bodies 10 to 12 m high resulted! In the beginning there was merely a single 'oven,' but then 75 of them (literally seventy-five) were built.

No other witness claimed something like this and Davydov himself stated in 1967 that the height was actually 4 m.

But what of his original claim? Well, now we have the original BY investigation files from 1943 and 1944.

Germar Rudolf doubles down on John Ball's Babiy Yar lie.

John Ball's blatant lie about Babiy Yar was exposed by me here back in 2006.

Long story short, Ball lied about the place where the shootings took place in the ravine and "analyzed" the wrong area of the aerial photo. Here, once again, is the photo with Ball's picture overlaid. No witness has claimed shootings took place there. Ball deceptively omitted most of the ravine, including the places where the shootings did take place.

Ball's lie was republished under Germar Rudolf's editorship numerous times.

Ball's book is the volume 27 of the "Holocaust Handbooks" series and is already in its 5th "corrected and updated edition".

There's a note:

The first three editions of this book bore John C. Ball as the author of this work. On Jan. 29, 2015, John requested not to use his name for new editions, but allowed us the use all of the photographic and texual material as we see fit.
The first edition appeared in 1992 under the title Air Photo Evidence: Auschwitz, Treblinka, Majdanek, Sobibor, Bergen-Belsen, Belzec, Babi Yar, Katyn Forest— World War II photos of alleged mass murder camps! Does evidence confirm or dismiss eye witness stories? Were gas chamber marks put on by CIA workers?, self-published by the author, Ball Resource Services Ltd., Delta, BC, Canada. The second edition of January 2015 has the same title as the current one and is a marginally corrected reprint of the first edition with a preface similar to the present one plus a number of footnotes added. The third and fourth editions (January 2015, March 2017) resembled the current one closely, except for some updates, corrections and material added.

Naturally, the lie is still in the book:

Wrong! This location is not alleged to have been used for shootings or cremations.

Fake news! Entirely wrong location.

A blatant lie! "8" is not the location "where between 33,771 and 100,000 bodies were said to have been exhumed and cremated".

Rudolf is well aware of our blog, so he has no excuse whatsoever.

Needless to say, this lie fully discredits not only the hoaxer John Ball (about whose other exploits you can read here, here and here) but also the fraud Germar Rudolf, known for his use of numerous fake PhDs in absence of a real one.

Dividing the Dead – or not (Part 4)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

The fourth and final part is this series is about how the Soviets addressed the Nazi genocide of the Jews after Nuremberg, and about what the Soviet approach to the particular fate of Jews under Nazi rule might (or not) reveal about the reasons why the Soviets held back the 2nd Jäger Report for almost twenty years after its discovery.

Dividing the Dead – or not (Part 3)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

This article is about the Soviet prosecution’s case at Nuremberg regarding Crimes against Humanity, with a focus on how the Soviet prosecutors addressed the genocide of Europe’s Jews by Nazi Germany.

Dividing the Dead – or not (Part 2)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

In this article, the Soviet prosecution’s case at Nuremberg regarding War Crimes will be addressed, with a focus on how the Soviet prosecutors addressed the genocide of Europe’s Jews by Nazi Germany.

Dividing the Dead – or not (Part 1)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

1. Introduction

In an earlier article^[1], I suggested that one of the reasons why the Soviet Union held back until 1963 the report dated 1.12.1941 by SS-Standartenführer Karl Jäger, commander of Einsatzkommando 3 (the 2nd Jäger Report)^[2], notwithstanding the document’s damning explicitness, was its incompatibility with a Soviet policy against "dividing the dead" when documenting crimes committed by Nazi Germany on the territory of the USSR.

This policy, as characterized in the secondary sources referred to in my earlier article, did not imply concealing the mass murder of Jews on Soviet territory. It did, however, imply presenting it as part and parcel of no-holds-barred, systematic violence directed against the Soviet population in general. Jews were to be seen not as the targets of the Nazis’ most concentrated violence, an extermination program that was a breed apart from the occupiers’ terror in general, but as victims of Nazi mass murder just like all other peoples of the occupied Soviet territories.

This series is about that policy, with a focus on the Soviet prosecution case at the Nuremberg Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal.

Mattogno’s Marijampolė Mass Graves Controversy

One of the largest massacres committed in German-occupied Lithuania in 1941 took place near the city of Marijampolė. The victims were the following, as recorded in the report dated 1.12.1941 by SS-Standartenführer Karl Jäger, commander of Einsatzkommando 3 (the 2nd Jäger Report)^[1], under the date 1 September 1941:

Mariampole

1,763 Jews, 1,812 Jewesses 1,404 Jewish children, 109 mentally ill, 1 fem. German national who was married to a Jew, 1 fem. Russian

Evidence on the Babi Yar Massacre 29 & 30 September 1941: Testimonies

Part I: Contemporary Sources
German Sources (20 documents + 13 photographs)
Diaries of Local Population (2)
Swiss (3), Soviet (6), Polish (1), US Sources (1)

Part II: Testimonies 

German Military, Paramilitary & Ukrainian Police Forces (29)

German Civilians (1)

Local Population and Prisoners (32)

NB: Many of the Russian testimonies have not been translated into English, however a decent understanding is obtained from machine translators such as google translate.

Evidence on the Babi Yar Massacre 29 & 30 September 1941: Contemporary Sources

The killing of more than 30,000 Jews on 29 and 30 September 1941 in the ravine Babi Yar in Kiev is known as the largest individual Nazi massacre. This posting continues and extends the collection of evidence in That's why it is denial, not revisionism. Part III: Deniers and Babiy Yar massacre (1). Numerous contemporary German sources cover the preparation and planning of the mass shooting (fabrication of wall posters by a Wehrmacht propaganda unit, delivery of 100,000 rounds of ammunition to the police forces of the Higher SS and Police Leader South-Russia and intention of Sonderkommando 4a to execute "at least 50,000 Jews"), its implementation (reports of Einsatzgruppen, Higher SS and Police Leader Russia-South, Wehrmacht, Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories, German Foreign Office) and its clean up (Wehrmacht photographs). The mass killing was also echoed in contemporary diaries of the local population, contemporary Swiss, Soviet, Polish and US sources. A seperate posting will compile some of the testimonies of German paramilitary personnel, German civilians, local population and prisoners on the mass shooting and the later body disposal in 1943.

Part I: Contemporary Sources
German Sources (20 documents + 13 photographs)
Diaries of Local Population (2)
Swiss (3), Soviet (7), Polish (1), US Sources (1)

Part II: Testimonies

Testimonies of German Paramilitary Forces & Nazi Collaborateur

Testimonies of German Civilians

Testimonies of Local Population and Prisoners

From the vocabulary of Aktion 1005

With time the members of Aktion 1005, whose task was destroying the traces of the Nazi crimes by incinerating corpses from mass graves, developed their own slang to denote their activities. Some of the terms became sort of official, as we will see. Since the issue of the Nazi code words crops up from time to time in denial-related discussions, I decided to gather what I could about several terms most often used by the corpse-burning brigades.

Films and photos of Nazi crimes on Youtube

Last week I came upon this trailer of a History Channel documentary called "The Unseen Holocaust", which announces "newly discovered footage" showing Nazi mass killings "on the Eastern Front", i.e. in the areas of the former Soviet Union occupied by Nazi Germany during World War II.

42,500 Camps and Ghettos

While the huge research effort led by USHMM researchers Geoffrey Megargee and Martin Dean deserves much respect, the same does not apply to the way their finds are being announced, especially in some of the English language press.
  

The Jäger Report (1)

The Jäger Report (2)

The Jäger Report (3)

The Jäger Report (4)

The Jäger Report (5)

The Jäger Report (6)

The Jäger Report (7)

The Jäger Report (8)

The report dated 1 December 1941 by SS-Standartenführer Karl Jäger, head of Einsatzkommando 3 of Einsatzgruppe A, is probably the most detailed and explicit document about Nazi mobile killing operations. It contains a tabulation, by date and place, of executions carried out by Einsatzkommando 3 on Lithuanian territory between 4 July and 25 November 1941. For each execution the number of victims is stated, broken down into Jews and (where existing) non-Jews, the number of Jews often further broken down into Jewish men, women and children.

HC Reference Library

No hay mal que por bien no venga, says a Spanish proverb. There is nothing bad that doesn’t also bring some good.

June 22, 1941

On this day 70 years ago, Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union and began the most devastating conflict in recorded history, which accounted for the overwhelming majority of World War II deaths in Europe. About 26.6 million of these deaths, according to demographic calculations, occurred among the population of the Soviet Union. A significant part of Soviet deaths was due to the Nazi invaders’ criminal actions.

Mass Graves and Dead Bodies

[Last updated on 07.03.2014 to add a photo credit note.]

The online archives of the Ghetto Fighters’ House have been reconfigured, breaking the links in my former photo collection on the RODOH forum.

Therefore I reproduce that collection below, to the extent permitted by my records. The photo captions are those I copied from the GFH Archives when putting together this collection. Where I'm aware of inaccuracies in a caption, this is pointed out.

The images can be enlarged by clicking on them. Needless to say, many of the photos are graphic and sensitive persons are advised against watching them.

Photos should be credited to: 

The Ghetto Fighters' House Museum/Israel/ The Photo Archive 

Reactions in the Cesspit ...

... to my blog So what’s happened on the Cesspit since I last looked in?

Obviously after reading the aforementioned blog, "Revisionist" primitive Greg Gerdes, on the Cesspit thread Muehlenkamp and Mermelstein, took issue with A Holland’s post of Sat Nov 21, 2009 4:48 pm.

That's why it is denial, not revisionism. Part VI: Deniers and Babiy Yar massacre (4)

John Ball's argument has been uncritically accepted by many deniers. Here are just some "revisionist" sources happily swallowing Ball's BS: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Etc. Suckers.

One source should interest us in particular - the book about Treblinka by our favorite victims, Mattogno and Graf. In a review of this book Graf writes:

Treblinka: Extermination Camp or Transfer Camp? is mostly the work of Carlo Mattogno, since he edited seven of the nine chapters. I am the author of the first and fifth chapter, and the introduction and conclusion...

I.e. the author of the chapter we've been discussing in this series is Carlo Mattogno. Of course, Graf himself also wrote about Babiy Yar in The Giant with Feet of Clay and Holocaust or Hoax? claiming that the "case of Babi Yar provides an irrefutable proof of the falseness of these Operational Reports", rehashing arguments of Tiedemann and Ball, and generally spouting the usual uninspired nonsense. But Graf is a lesser half of the duo, Mattogno being the main researcher and a "mastermind". So someone could expected a somewhat more refined analysis from him. Oh boy, would that someone be in for a disappointment!

Read more!

I guess it should be mentioned only in passing that Mattogno finds Ball and Tiedemann credible:

"e. Babi Yar
In the “Activity and Situation Report no. 6 of the Einsatzgruppen of the Securty Police and the SD in the USSR,” we read this concerning the time period from October 1 to 31, 1941:595 “In Kiev all the Jews were arrested and on September 29 and 30, a total of 33,771 Jews were executed.” This deals with the (in)famous ‘Massacre of Babi Yar.’ However, as Udo Walendy and Herbert Tiedemann have proved, this did not happen, at least not remotely in the scope claimed.596 Presumable near Kiev, as in Simferopol, several hundred people were shot. We will come back to the case of Babi Yar.
595 102-R. IMT, Vol. XXXVIII, pp. 292f.
596 Udo Walendy, “Babi Jar - Die Schlucht ‘mit 33,771 murdered Jews’?”, in: Historische Tatsachen
no. 51, Verlag für Volkstum und Zeitgeschichtsforschung, Vlotho 1992. Herbert
Tiedemann, “Babi Jar: Critical Questions and Comments”, in: Germar Rudolf (ed.), op. cit.
(note 81), pp. 501-528."

On September 26, the Luftwaffe took an aerial photograph of the area, in which Babi Yar was located. John Ball has published it with the following commentary:[...]
Regarding an enlarged section of the same photograph, Ball says:[...]
Ball deduces from this:[...]
These findings have all the more value since, according to the sole witness, the cremation of the bodies in Babi Yar is supposed to have been completed on September 25 or 26, corresponding to the same day or the day before the air photos were taken.

Then pure idiocy begins:

This Vladirmir K. Davidov is apparently the only witness who claims to have participated in the cremation of bodies of Babi Yar. His tale is wholly unbelievable. The number of bodies - 70,000 - is more than double the number shot according to the Event Report, which in itself is already hugely excessive.

"Apparently the only witness". This alone disqualifies Mattogno from being a serious researcher. This means that he did not take pains to study the available literature on the massacre and the following events. Here's a (probably incomplete) list of literature available at the time Mattogno wrote this phrase, which contains testimonies of Sonderkommandos other than Davydov:

• the 1993 book with the Russian, English and German versions of the testimonies of Babiy Yar Sonderkommandos Jakov Kaper and David Budnik, edited by the Babiy Yar researcher Erhard Roy Wiehn and published by Hartung-Gorre Publishers, D-78465 Konstanz/Germany (Hartung.Gorre@t-online.de) under ISBN 3-89191-666-3 (last time I checked it was still available);


• the English translations from this book, available at http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/content.htm, at least since 1999;


• the Russian edition of Babyi Yar Sonderkommando Zakhar Trubakov's memoir, available at http://www.geocities.com/svr_2000svr_us/bkv/ at least since 2000;


• Anatolij Kuznetsov's excellent Babi Yar: A Document in the Form of a Novel, from which Mattogno could learn that when Kuznetsov was writing the book, at least nine Sonderkommandos were still alive: Jakov Stejuk, Vladimir Davydov, Vladislav Kuklya, Jakov Kaper, Zakhar Trubakov, David Budnik, Semyon Berlyand, Leonid Ostrovskij and Grigorij Iovenko;


• protocols of interrogations of Berlyant, Stejuk and Davydov published in 1991 (Babij Jar. K pyatidesyatiletiju tragedii 29, 30 sentyabrya 1941 goda, Jerusalem, 1991; "Babyn Jar (veresen' 1941 - veresen' 1943)", Ukrainskij istorychnyj zhurnal, 1991, no. 12).

Plus, Sonderkommandos' testimonies were used in different war crimes trials, such as SK1005 trial in Stuttgart in 1969; they also gave testimonies to the Extraordinary Commission. (For completeness' sake I will mention that Sonderkommandos and other witnesses were also interrogated many times since 1943, but most of these documents have been published only recently, in the 2004 volume cited previously.)

Last, but not the least, is the 1944 Soviet Extraordinary Commission report (courtesy of David Thompson), which states (p. 201, Eng. edn.):

Witnesses L. K. Ostrovsky, S. B. Berlyand, V. Yu. Davydov, Ya. A. Steyuk and I. M. Brodsky who escaped the shooting in Babi Yar on September 29, 1943 have testified the following: "As prisoners-of-war we were kept in the Syrets camp in the outskirts of Kiev. On August, 18, 100 of us were sent to Babi Yar. There we were chained into shackles and ordered to dug out and burn the bodies of Soviet citizens exterminated by the Germans [...]"

Detailed description of the process follows.

How come Mattogno did not examine this report?

"The number of bodies - 70,000 - is more than double the number shot according to the Event Report, which in itself is already hugely excessive." Mattogno's ignorance shows again. He doesn't show that the number in the German war-time documents is "hugely excessive". And it is clear that he doesn't understand that according to numerous witnesses, the ravine served as an execution site for two years since the initial massacre. So the number of corpses in the ravine should not correspond to the number of victims in the German reports, and not all of the victims were Jewish.



The real number of victims will never be known. We know from many testimonies (e.g. those published in Babij Jar book cited in the previous posting) that shootings continued for several days afterwards the initial action. How many were shot is not known. We know from testimonies that executions continued afterwards, for two years - many thousands (possibly, 20,000-25,000) of Soviet POWs were shot and buried in a nearby ditch; Gypsies, partisans, Ukrainian nationalists and others were shot in the ravine. Gas vans were also used.

We have numerous testimonies of Jewish survivors who worked in the ravine and burned the bodies. I have summed up their testimonies about the number of corpses here. As is only to be expected, there are differing estimates and details. I think it will be reasonable to estimate the minimum number of victims as 70,000. Possibly, the real number is about 100,000. It is not known how many of the victims were Jewish and how many non-Jewish. Probably, if we accept the lower estimate, the ratio is about 1:1, while with the larger estimates we have more non-Jewish victims than Jewish ones.

Later Mattogno reasserts his ignorance:

Thus, the most important material evidence for the shooting of 33,771 (or 70,000) Jews...

---

Next, Mattogno explores the issue of physical evidence. First, what should have remained:

With the data specified in the fourth chapter, the cremation of 33,771 bodies would have required approximately 4,500 tons of firewood and approximately 430 tons of wood ashes and about 190 tons of human ashes would have been generated by the process.

Let's take the data from Roberto's posting about Mattogno and Belzec (keeping in mind that it may have to be corrected in the future, if the new data arrives), and assume 100,000 bodies with an average weight of 45 kg (there were lots of children and women among the victims, though probably not as many as in Belzec). That's about 4,500 tons of corpses. 5% of that is 225 tons (if we follow Mattogno's rules). Again, accepting Roberto's generous assumptions (i.e. no regard for decomposition of corpses), the wood ashes would constitute about 360 tons. Together - 585 tons. SKs testified that they were mixing the ashes with sand and earth inside and around the ravine, and dumping it in nearby kitchengardens, fields, etc. They were working for about 40 days. I.e. on average they would have to transport and disperse around 14.6 tons of ashes per day. They were working for 12-15 hours, according to their testimonies. Assuming 12-hour working day, they had to disperse 1.2 tons of ashes per hour. Assuming 30 kg per person, they would need about 40 SKs busy with dispersing ashes - each having to disperse 30 kg per hour. And they had at least 300 people working in the ravine. These numbers are very rough, and possibly the situation was much better from a logistical POV, the wiggle room is quite large. Suppose they were always working for 15 hours. Then they would need just 32 men. Suppose they didn't need an hour to disperse 30 kg of ashes... Etc., etc., etc. So yes, it was possible to spread ashes and bones around the area. No, it wouldn't be possible to obliterate the ashes and pieces of bones completely, but then, nobody claims that it was done.

E.g. in his book Anatolij Kuznetsov describes his trip to the ravine with his friend not long after the incineration had stopped:

We knew this stream perfectly... It contained coarse-grained sand, but now for some reason it was full of white stones.

I stooped and took one to take a closer look. It was a burned piece of a bone, size of a nail, white on one side, black on the other. The stream washed away them from somewhere. [...]

So we walked for a long time over these bones, until we reached the very beginning of the ravine, where the stream disappeared - here it originated from many sources seeping from sandy layers, and that's where the bones came from.

The ravine became narrow ... and in one place the sand became gray. Suddenly we understood that were were walking on human ashes.

[...]

We walked around a little bit, found many whole bones, fresh skull (still wet) and again pieces of black ashes among the gray sand.

I picked up one piece, about two kilograms, took it with me and kept it. This is the ashes of many people, everything is mixed in it - international ashes, so to say.

(JFYI, Kuznetsov wasn't Jewish, he was half-Ukrainian, half-Russian; he escaped from USSR in 1969, taking the uncensored Babij Jar with him. The full version is extremely critical of the Stalinist regime, so, of course, it couldn't have been published in USSR in full. In a 1965 letter to Shlomo Even-Shoshan Kuznetsov wrote:

I belong neither to Zionists, nor to antisemites - both [ideologies] are equally repulsive to me, and I'm writing my story from what I think is the only right position - internationalist.

)

Now consider Mattogno's blather about the photos made by the Soviet commission:

After the Soviets had reconquered Kiev, an investigatory commission made its way to Babi Yar and took some photographs, which were immortalized in an album. Three of the photos supposedly show a first and a second "zone where the bodies were burned."[643] In another, the "remnants of the ovens and the grotto, into which the prisoners who had cremated the bodies had escaped" are allegedly shown.[644] The captions to these pictures are absurd; the only actual, clearly recognizable objects are a few rotted shoes and some rags, which were painstakingly photographed by the Soviets and were described as follows:[643]

"Remnants of shoes and pieces of clothing from Soviet citizens shot by the Germans."

Why are the captions "absurd"? Photos by themselves are not enough, and the captions provide context. Indeed, exactly because not much is "recognizable" on the photos, the captions are needed.

Thus, the most important material evidence for the shooting of 33,771 (or 70,000) Jews and the later excavation and cremation of their bodies, which was discovered at the scene of the crime by the Soviets, consisted of a few shoes and some rags! If, however, the Soviets took such great pains to document things, which had no connection with the charges, what a propaganda circus would they have put on if they had really discovered mass graves with a total of far more than a million murdered Jews (as well as countless non-Jews)? Yet such a propaganda circus failed to occur, since the Soviets found nothing, which would have been comparable to the discoveries made by the Germans in Katyn and Vinnitsa!

Suddenly Mattogno jumps from the issue of Babiy Yar to the issue of the mass graves in general, with which we have dealt here and here. In what specifically concerns Babyi Yar, there were no longer mass graves there, nothing for "propaganda circus". The focus, therefore, was on investigation of the nearby Syretsky camp, in which many unburned corpses have been found.

Not that I know of any "propaganda circus" associated with these gruesome findings.

The real circus here is deniers' treatment of the Babiy Yar massacre, which mirrors their treatment of the Holocaust in general.

Previous << Part V: Deniers and Babiy Yar massacre (3)

Next >> Part VII: Other pathetic objections to Einsatzgruppen reports

That's why it is denial, not revisionism. Part V: Deniers and Babiy Yar massacre (3)

John Ball is a well-known Holocaust denier whose specialty is "analysis" of the war-time aerial photos of the Nazi camps. For an introduction to his methodology see the excellent article "See No Evil: John Ball's Blundering Air Photo Analysis". For information about Ball's professional and intellectual credibility see "John Ball: Air Photo Expert?" and "John Ball's $100,000 Challenge: Where is John Ball?".

One of Ball's arguments concerns the Babiy Yar massacre. Here's how it goes:

Read more!

ALLEGATIONS ARE THAT 33,771 CORPSES WERE BURNED IN BABI YAR RAVINE

In 1941 the babi Yar ravines were a series of dried up stream drainage channels that once drained into the Dnieper River in northwest Kiev in the Ukraine region of the Soviet Union. The upper channels had flat bottoms.

It is alleged that in 1941 on September 28th and 29th, 33,771 Jewish people from Kiev reported as ordered to the end of Melnik Street where the Jewish cemetery meets Babi Yar ravine. There they were marched in small groups to the edge of the ravine and machine gunned by Waffen-SS soldiers.

In 1943 from August 18th to September 19th, 327 workers lived in the ravine while digging up the 33,000 corpses and burning them on railroad ties doused with gasoline.

During the 1970's fill was plowed into the ravine and today there are no photos or other evidence of the crimes other than eye-witness accounts. (Ref.: _Encyclopedia of the Holocaust_, pages 113-115.)

The Kiev archives released this hazy picture in 1990 as the best known photo of the Babi Yar dried up stream channel. The victims allegedly fell in the ravine and were buried after being shot, and then two years later were dug up and burned. It is not known if any roads went down the steep walls to the flat bottom. (Ref.: Wolski, M., _Fact Sheet on the 50th Anniversary of the Babi Yar Massacre, October, 1991_)

SEPTEMBER 26th, 1943: This photo was taken one week after the end of the supposed mass cremations in the ravine. If 33,000 people were exhumed and burned, evidence of vehicle and foot traffic to supply fuel should be evident in the area where the Jewish cemetery meets Babi Yar ravine, however there is no evidence of traffic either on the end of the narrow road that proceeds to the ravine from the end of Melnik Street, or on the grass and shrubbery within or on the sides of the cemetery. [Labelled: Location of alleged shootings and cremations at edge of Jewish cemetery at Babi Yar ravine, Babi Yar ravine, orthodox cemetery, Jewish cemetery, and Melnik Street.] [Ref.: GX 3938 SG, exp. 104 & 105]

SEPTEMBER 26th, 1943: An enlargement reveals no evidence that 325 people were working in the ravine finishing the cremation of 33,000 bodies just one week earlier, for many truckloads of fuel would have had to be brought in, and there are no scars from vehicle traffic either on the grass and shrubs at the side of the Jewish cemetery or in the ravine where the bodies were supposedly burned. [Ref.: GX 3938 SG, exp. 105]

1943 AIR PHOTOS OF BABI YAR RAVINE AND THE ADJOINING JEWISH CEMETERY IN KIEV REVEAL THAT NEITHER THE SOIL NOR THE VEGETATION IS DISTURBED AS WOULD BE EXPECTED IF MATERIALS AND FUEL HAD BEEN TRANSPORTED ONE WEEK EARLIER TO HUNDREDS OF WORKERS WHO HAD DUG UP AND BURNED TENS OF THOUSANDS OF BODIES IN ONE MONTH.

(Or see here.)

Blatant factual mistakes immediately betray Ball's historical ignorance. E.g., it is known that many more than 33,000 people were buried in Babiy Yar (this will be discussed in the next posting in the series). Sonderkommandos did not stop their work on 19th September (see below; this may have been a typo in a source Ball used ("19th" instead of "29th"), but even so, it shows that Ball simply did not research the issue properly). And there is much more evidence for the massacre than simply testimonies.

Photos taken on September 26, 1943 may be examined on USHMM's site.

You can see the area "analyzed" by Ball on his site.

Here's a little exercise: compare the area examined by John Ball with the ravine on the photo. Let me make it easier for you:

OK, so Ball "missed" most of the ravine in his "analysis". For those who know deniers' methods this is not really surprising.

What scholarly sources say that people were being killed exactly in this part of the ravine? None that I know of.

The question of the exact locations of killings is somewhat controversial because during the Kurenyovka tragedy of 1961 Babiy Yar was destroyed and, it seems, the attempts to put the exact places of mass shootings on maps post-date 1961. Until then Babiy Yar, except for a brief war-time and post-war period, had been a political sore spot for Soviet officials, who even tried to gradually destroy it themselves, by dumping pulp in the ravine. And, in fact, this is what led to the tragedy which took many lives in 1961.

It can be said with certainty that people were shot in different parts of Babiy Yar (and it couldn't have been otherwise, considering the number of victims and time constraints). But on none of the plans I have seen Ball's area is claimed to be a site of shootings.

Here are several plans, to consider:

1) The plan from http://www.jewukr.org/observer/jo15_34/map_main1.php, based on several other maps and sources. Probable places of shootings (according to the site) are denoted by "1".

2) A relatively recent plan from "Kyivprojekt", on which crosses denote the probable places of shootings according to their sources.

Source: Babij Jar: chelovek, vlast', istorija, vol. 1, compiled by T. Yevstafjeva, Vitalij Nakhmanovich; Kiev, Vneshtorgizdat Ukrainy, 2004.

Here is another version of this plan (source), with changes in pre-war relief marked in red. Pre-war relief was compared with 1960 geodesic survey. I.e., this plan denotes possible areas of shootings/burial (this is because the Nazis tried to use explosives to blow up the "walls" of the ravine). It should be noted that by itself lack of changes in outlines doesn't necessarily mean that some places weren't used for executions.

3) 1969 plan with the general area of shootings established with the help of several survivors. Again, the plan was made several years after Babiy Yar has been obliterated, so don't expect absolute accuracy or completeness.

Source: Yevstafjeva, Nakhmanovich, op. cit.

To repeat: on each of the plans the information may not be complete, but none of them consider Ball's area as a place where any killings took place.

'Nuff said, really. Here we have some vile ignoramus, trying to "prove" that killing of tens of thousands did not happen, based on nothing but his own idiocy.

---

Now, what can we say about relevance of the aerial photos made on September 26, 1943? According to Sonderkommando survivor Vladimir Davydov, on September 25-26, incineration action had been almost finished. (Yevstafjeva, Nakhmanovich, op. cit., p. 148). The last phase of this action consisted of brushing things up - dismantling camouflage, leveling earth, building one last pyre (ibid.). SKs guessed that this pyre was for themselves; and probably they were correct. In any case, Sonderkommandos revolted on September 29, 1943 (exactly two years since the beginning of the massacre) and several of them managed to escape.

So, the photo was taken during the final phase, several days before the escape, and basically, this means that it is not necessary that we should see any plumes of smoke on the photos. We may find something, but then again, we may not. Both outcomes are compatible with proven history.

Are traces of activity associated with mass incineration (scarring/disturbance of earth nearby and inside the ravine) visible on the photo? It's up to the experts to decide, but it seems that to this date these photos haven't been seriously analyzed by any aerial photography experts (Ball doesn't count, sorry).

My admittedly amateurish interpretation is that a large part of the ravine is covered by shadow, so it's entirely possible that we simply can't see some interesting things that were happening at that moment. It's hard for me to tell whether there is any "scarring" from cars, etc., anywhere on the photo, but deniers surely haven't proven that there isn't any, or, if it is indeed not visible on the aerial photo, that it had to be so large-scale as to be visible. They haven't even shown how such scarring/disturbance should look like, according to analogous aerial photos. So, as they say, the ball is in their court.

Previous << Part IV: Deniers and Babiy Yar massacre (2)

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That's why it is denial, not revisionism. Part IV: Deniers and Babiy Yar massacre (2)

A well-known denier gambit concerns the witnesses statements about blood appearing in the places of mass executions. Most famous is perhaps Bradley Smith's accusation against Elie Wiesel:

EW claims that after Jews were executed at Babi Yar in the Ukraine, "geysers of blood" spurted from their grave for "months" afterward (See Paroles d'etranger, 1982, p. 86). Impossible? Yes, it is. Do the professors believe it matters?

First of all, as John Silber points out, this cannot be but hearsay, so Smith's point is weak.
Nevertheless, Wiesel's account is partially corroborated by a contemporary diary of Irina Khoroshunova, who on 14.10.1941 wrote:

We know, we already know for certain, that the blood from Babiy Yar flowed and was flowing at a distance of kilometers from the cemetery.

(Source: E. Wiehn, Die Schoah von Babiy Yar, Konstanz, Hartung-Gorre, 1991, p. 304; presumably, Lukjanovskoje cemetery is meant.)

Of course, deniers will say that it is impossible. Now, I am not a specialist, but here's an extract from the report made after Kurenyovka tragedy (which also destroyed the ravine itself) entitled "Geological characteristic of the emergency strip in Babiy Yar region" (1961; emphasis mine):

[...]
The strip on which on March 13, 1961 catastrophic movement of earth masses happened is confined to upper and middle part of Babiy Yar, which was 35-40 m deep. The ravine cuts through the aquifers, which is the reason why the bottom part of slopes and the bottom itself are partially waterlogged.

The permanent waterway at the bottom usually has the flow rate of 8-10 lit/sec. Together with the broadly developed system of upper branches, Babiy Yar is a large catchment area and that's why when it rains the flow rate suddenly increases.
[...]

(Source: Babij Jar: chelovek, vlast', istorija, vol. 1, compiled by T. Yevstafjeva, Vitalij Nakhmanovich; Kiev, Vneshtorgizdat Ukrainy, 2004.)

Given that the ravine cut through aquifers, presumably it wouldn't be surprising that liquids from the corpses would appear elsewhere.

But would they spurt like geysers above the graves? Well, "geyser" is probably a wrong word to use here. But consider this report, "1,500 sheep to be dug up as body fluid leaks" (emphasis mine):

THE carcasses of 1,500 sheep slaughtered five weeks ago because they were infected with foot and mouth are to be dug up and burned by Maff after blood was found bubbling up from the ground.

[...]

It follows the discovery a week ago that 15,000 sheep buried on the Army firing ranges at Epynt, mid-Wales, were leaking body fluids into the water table and would have to be dug up and burned. Richard Tutton, who farms at Buttington Hall, said: "They were buried five weeks ago. The pit was very tidy, efficient and deep.

"We have had horrendous rain since then. Water has got in beneath and it was sort of bubbling up. It has not reached the river or anything. They are catching it before anything happens."

That's 1500 sheep. Now imagine what would happen with 34,000 corpses in the Indian summer of 1941.

Previous << Part III: Deniers and Babiy Yar massacre (1)

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