SK Lange and Mattogno's Italian Book on the Einsatzgruppen

A few days ago, Germar Rudolf indiscreetly revealed on the Holocaust Handbooks site that he has "submitted a long list of open issues -- including remarks made by the HC blog" to Carlo Mattogno for review for an already translated and edited, but not yet published English edition of his Einsatzgruppen book. I don't want to miss the opportunity to add to this list his (mis)treatment of Sonderkommando Lange, if it's not yet on it. I have already blogged extensively on SK Lange, but I will again roll out some of it in this posting specifically to address Mattogno's Italian edition of his Einsatzgruppen book.

Scrolling through the footnotes (Mattogno, Gli Einsatzgruppen nei territori orientali occupati, parte I, p. 279 - 286), it strikes one right away that his knowledge of literature is marginal, his use of documents selective and his study of testimonial evidence virtually non-existent.

His main source is the more than 30 years old article by Beer, Die Entwicklung der Gaswagen beim Mord an den Juden (1987). He does not use in this context or know of the more recent works specifically on the killing of mentally ill people and SK Lange, like 

• Rieß, Die Anfänge der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens in Danzig und Wartheland 1939/40 (1995)

• Alberti, Die Verfolgung und Vernichtung der Juden im Reichsgau Warthegau 1939-1945 (2006)

• Topp et al., Die Provinz Ostpreußen und die nationalsozialistische "Euthanasie" SS-"Aktion Lange" und "Aktion T4", Medizinhistorisches Journal, 43 (2008) 

• Montague, Chelmno and the Holocaust (2012)  [only cited later on]

• Leidinger, Das Schicksal der polnischen Psychiatrie unter deutscher Besatzung im Zweiten Weltkrieg, Psychatrische Praxis, 41 (2014)

• Schwanke, Die Landesheil- und Pflegeanstalt Tiegenhof (2015)

Mattogno pours in some snippets from Gerlach's Kalkulierte Morde and Longerich's Holocaust - not exactly specialist literature on the subject - and some British intercepts of radio signals. But this does not change the overall picture that he is mainly stuck in the 80s, both in terms of literature knowledge and his method, that does not seem to have advanced since then.

His limited knowledge of sources combined with his usual double standards, systematic misinterpretation, destructive approach of dismissing evidence for no real reason without offering any own narrative seems to provide him with the false certainty that he has somehow neutralised the momentum of SK Lange on gas vans and the Holocaust. 

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

Sonderkommando Kulmhof in German Documents - The Polish Working Detail

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 Polish working detail of Sonderkommando Kulmhof was situated in the grey zone between prisoners and collaborators. Once imprisoned in Fort VII in Posen, the Poles were forced to empty the gas van and bury the corpses during the Euthanasia killings of Sonderkommando Lange in 1940/1941. At the beginning in December 1941, the same job awaited for them in Kulmhof extermination camp, until a permanent Jewish working detail was established for the forest camp at latest in early January 1942 (see section Mass Graves here). During the erection of the camp, the Polish prisoners constructed the wooden ramp and fence used for loading the gas vans. ^[1] They were regarded as sufficiently trustworthy and reliable by the Sonderkommando leadership for more critical and responsible work, like collecting the Jewelry and money of the Jews in the Kulmhof palace ^[2] (also ref 3 here), searching the orifices of the corpses for valuables (ref 5 here), accompanying the SS and police men outside the camp, ^[3] supervising the undressing of the Jewish victims and forcing them into the gas vans, ^[4] overseeing the Jewish working details, ^[5] driving the vehicles including the gas vans, ^[6] possibly establishing the connection between the exhaust and the gassing box (the claim should be taken carefully as it was made by perpetrators to exculpate themselves), ^[7] maintenance services on the Sonderkommando motor pool. ^[8]

In return for their loyal service, the members of the Polish working detail were awarded a large degree of freedom and preferential treatment. They were accommodated on the upper floor of the Kulmhof palace, but could move around freely in the camp and in the village ^[9] , as illustrated by a series of photographs showing them strolling and posing in Kulmhof village as well as drinking beer with members of the Police Sonderkommando at the Kulmhof palace (for example Figure 1 and 2). ^[10] They could meet Polish women and were in some cases allowed to pick Jewish girls from the transports for the night. ^[11] After the war, one of its members Henryk Mania claimed that "I did not run away, because I was afraid that my family will be killed as they threatened in the beginning" - a motive corroborated by the local residents Jozef Grabowski and Jan Krysinski, but contradicted by another Polish worker, Henryk Maliczak. ^[12]

Figure 1: Members of the Polish working detail on the bridge across the river Ner with the Kulmhof village in the background (1942/early 1943). From left to right: Henryk Mania, Stanislaw Polubinski, Lech Jaskolski, Kajetan Skrzypczynski, Henryk Maliczak; photograph from Montague, Chelmno and the Holocaust, image 28, online available here (see also examination of Henryk Mania of  14 April 1964, Pawlicka-Nowak, Swiadectwa Zaglady, p. 123 ff.).

Figure 2: Members of the Polish working detail and Police Sonderkommando drinking beer in front of the Kulmhof palace (1942/early 1943). Photograph from Montague, Chelmno and the Holocaust, image 27, online available here, see also close-up here.

Sonderkommando Kulmhof in German Documents - Funding

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 9 January 1942, when the killing of the Sinti and Roma of the Ghetto Litzmannstadt was completed, ^[1] the commandant Herbert Lange received a bar cheque for 20,000 RM from the Ghetto Administration "as special assignment for the gipsies' camp" (Document 105). The payment may have been a danger bonus for the Sonderkommando men because of typhus cases among the Sinti and Roma.

Apart from that, the extermination camp was apparently funded by the Provincial Government in Posen in this initial period of December - February 1942. The cash confiscated in Kulmhof was delivered to Posen, as shown by the transfer of a "surplus of Sonderkommando Kulmhof" of about 176,000 RM in late April 1942 from the Reich Governor's office to the Litzmannstadt Ghetto Administration, which had been "accumulated at Sonderkommando Lange and [was] partly retained here" (Document 109). The transactions of the Sonderkommando were carried out with the postal cheque account 14551 of the "Landesversicherungsanstalt Wartheland" (State Insurance Institution) (Document 159). ^[2] Such cover up account - possibly related to the Health Insurance Department of Landesversicherungsanstalt Wartheland - might have been a relict of camouflaging the Euthanasia operations of Sonderkommando Lange.

Sonderkommando Kulmhof in German Documents - Body Disposal

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)

Sonderkommando Kulmhof in German Documents - Body Disposal (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)

Appendix to Sonderkommando Kulmhof in German Documents - Body Disposal

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

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."

Sonderkommando Lange in German Documents: Euthanasia 1940/41

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)

Herbert Lange (source)

Herbert Lange, born 29 September 1909 in Menzlin in the Province of Pomerania, worked as criminal investigator at the Gestapo in Aachen before the war and took part in the Polish Campaign as member of Einsatzgruppe VI, which settled as Security Police headquarters in Poznan ^[1] (click or hover over footnotes to see references). For a short period of time until 16 October 1939, he was commandant of the Übergangslager (transition camp) Fort VII in Poznan ^[2]. Lange became the leader of a special detail (Sonderkommando) founded by and named after him, which specialized in the killing of mentally ill people with poison gas. In late 1941, he moved on to establish Chelmno (Kulmhof) extermination camp to wipe out the Jews of the Warthegau as well. He was replaced in Spring 1942 as commandant of the extermination camp by Hans Bothmann and employed as investigator in the RSHA. He supposedly died during the battle of Berlin at the end of the war.

Fort VII

Fort VII in Poznan; ref. 2, p. 13

The first Nazi gassings of people took place in Fort VII in Poznan in late 1939. Some experiments with the two most promising killing agents hydrogen cyanide and carbon monoxide may have been tried in casemates of the camp as early as October 1939. What seems like an experimental gassing with hydrogen cyanide soaked pellets (Degesch's "Zyklon") was mentioned en passant by the RSHA driver Wilhelm F. ^[3] :

"Right after the Polish Campaign I was sent with a group of officers to a town in Poland, I do not remember its name. There was a red haired Untersturmführer, who was called Becker as I now recall. This Becker made experiments with poison gas. A number of people were locked in a casemate and gas was introduced into the casemate through venting pipes. I remember exactly how Becker dropped something into the pipes."

"I have seen that Becker fetched a box with cans. He threw them [into the air shafts]."

From November 1939, mentally ill people were systematically killed with carbon monoxide gas in Fort VII ^[4]. Under the command of Lange the inmates of the asylums near Poznan were driven to the camp, locked in casemates and suffocated with carbon monoxide from pressurized steel bottles. The corpses were buried in mass graves in a forest near Oborniki, 30 km North of Poznan. The handling of the corpses was done by Polish prisoners of Fort VII assigned to Sonderkommando Lange, among those Henryk Mania and Henryk Maliczak, who testified on the killings after the war.

German Document on Chelmno Gas Van Driver Filling up Gasoline in Lodz

APL 221/30183, p. 11

A document from the Ghetto Lodz administration shows that on 2 September 1944 "Laabs" from the "SS police" refuelled his truck with the licence number "71449" two times with "45 liters" of gasoline at the tank station of the Ghetto Lodz administration. The driver "Laabs" of the "SS police" can be matched to the well known permanent gas van driver of the SS and police Sonderkommando Kulmhof Gustav Laabs (see testimonies in the appendix below). That this vehicle was indeed a homicidal gas van is supported by the fact that its license number of 71449 is close to those of other known gas vans 71457, 71462 and 71463 (see also How the convergence of evidence works: the gas van of Auschwitz, Mattogno and the Activity & Situation Report of Einsatzgruppe B on its Gas Vans and Rebuttal of Alvarez on Gas Vans: The Schäfer, Trühe & Rauff Telexes).

Finally, a taker

Yesterday I received the following e-mail message, in response to my 2011 Challenge to Supporters of the Revisionist Transit Camp Theory:

I, Jake O'connor, hereby accept your Challenge to Supporters of the Revisionist Transit Camp Theory as stated on the Holocaust Controversies blog site under [url of Challenge blog], and undertake to, within 365 days after this date, provide proof of at least one person identified by name who was transited through either of the camps Chełmno, Bełżec, Sobibór or Treblinka to the Nazi-occupied Soviet territories in 1942/43, in the manner more precisely described in the Challenge, to the Arbiter(s) chosen by me from among those mentioned in the Challenge. You will be immediately notified of the Arbiter(s) identity and the proof submitted to such Arbiter(s).»
I do not have a website/blog and have not engaged in online discussion about the holocaust before, but I can answer this challenge and as soon as they activate my RODOH account I'll post about it.

So Mr. Jake O’Connor thinks he can accomplish what no "Revisionist", including our usual customers Mattogno and Graf, has been able to accomplish in almost 72 years since the end of World War II. He thinks he can provide proof that at least one named Jewish individual was transported to Chełmno, Bełżec, Sobibór or Treblinka in the years 1942 or 1943, and then taken from there to a destination in the Reichskommissariat Ostland, the Reichskommissariat Ukraine or the Soviet territories under German military administration. He has undertaken to, until 25.03.2018, submit such proof to the Arbiter(s) chosen by him from among those mentioned in the Challenge.

Well then, good luck, Jake. And please send me the link to that RODOH post you’re announcing.

Update, 28.03.2017: Jake O'Connor's submission and my reply thereto can be read here.

Sketches of German Homicidal Gas Vans

So far, there are eight witnesses known to have produced drawings of homicidal German gas vans or parts therof. A sketch of a gas van operating in Minsk made by the Wehrmacht soldier Erich W. on 18 September 1962 for West-German investigators can be examined only in the Niedersächsische Hauptstaatsarchiv, NDS. 721 Hannover Acc. 97/99 Nr.10/28, p. 191. The remaining seven drawings are reproduced in this posting. 

Rebuttal of Alvarez on Gas Vans: The Just Memo

Rebuttal of Alvarez on Gas Vans

Part I: Why the Diesel Issue is Still Irrelevant (update 1, 2)
Part II: Producer Gas

 Part III: The Ford Gas Wagon (update)
Part IV: The Becker Letter (update)
Part V: The Rauff Letter to the Criminal Technical Institute (update 1, 2, 3, cf. on Mattogno & here)

Part VI: The Turner Letter

Part VII: The Schäfer, Trühe & Rauff Telexes

Part VIII: The Einsatzgruppe B Activity & Situation Report (cf. on Mattogno)

Part IX: The Just Memo

Part X: The West-German Trials Against Members of Einsatzkommando 8

Part XI: Einsatzgruppe D in Simferopol

The Document

On 5 June 1942, the member of the Security Police motor pool Willy Just set up a memo for Walther Rauff, the head of RSHA department II D on Technical Matters, to "decide" on "technical modifications on the special vehicles in operation and under construction". The memo does not explicitly name the purpose of these "special vehicles", but the description is clear enough that it is talking about homicidal gas vans. It explains that about "97,000 have been processed with three vehicles in use" at one place, about "a rapid distribution of carbon monoxide" and that "the load pushes hard against the door" inside the vehicles. The memo also mentions that such vehicle was involved in an "explosion in Chelmno".

“The Jews buried in a little wood near Kulmhof”: Documenting Cremation at Chelmno

In his brochure Chełmno: A German Camp in History and Propaganda, Carlo Mattogno declared (p.83):

Not a single document exists on the alleged Chełmno crematoria

Unfortunately for “the world’s premier revisionist scholar”, this assertion is false.

Mattogno on Klooga

In chapter 13 of Mattogno, Graf and Kues’ magnum opus^[1], with the self-descriptive title "Asinine, Judeophantic Arrogance", Mattogno dwells at length (pp. 1481 to1484, plus images on pages 1485 and 1486) on the massacre of mostly Jewish inmates of the Klooga forced labor camp in Estonia in September 1944. I’ll address his arguments in this respect because they briefly touch the subjects of fuel requirements and duration of cremation^[2] and my name is mentioned, and also because they further reveal Mattogno’s ill-reasoning and intellectual dishonesty.

Mattogno’s Cremation Encyclopedia (Part 4)

Introduction and Part 1, Section 1
Part 1, Section 2a
Part 1, Section 2b
Part 2, Section 1
Part 2, Section 2
Part 2, Section 3
Part 2, Section 4
Part 2, Section 5
Part 3, Section 1
Part 3, Section 2
Part 4


Cremation Remains

As Mattogno rightly pointed out in his otherwise self-defeating statement addressed in Part 2, Section 5, it follows from my assumption of an incomplete combustion of the corpses on the extermination camps’ pyres (an assumption that, as we have seen, is borne out by ample evidence) that I must consider an amount of human cremation remains "much higher than the theoretical".

Mattogno’s Cremation Encyclopedia (Part 3, Section 2)

Introduction and Part 1, Section 1
Part 1, Section 2a
Part 1, Section 2b
Part 2, Section 1
Part 2, Section 2
Part 2, Section 3
Part 2, Section 4
Part 2, Section 5
Part 3, Section 1
Part 3, Section 2
Part 4


Duration of Cremations (2)

Based on a number of eyewitness testimonies and a secondary source, the construction and size of a Bełżec cremation grate was reconstructed by Sara Berger as follows^[271] (my translation):

Together with some comrades and guards Gley obtained ten railway rails about ten meters long, trolley rails and huge stones. They mounted the rails onto the stones, so that these, together with the trolley rails meant to keep the corpses from sliding through, formed a heightened grid roaster. With the help an excavator and the reinforced working detachment they alternately placed corpses and wood on the railway rails, poured flammable liquid like oil and gasoline over the corpses and ignited them. The Jewish »burning detachment« had to keep the fire going and see to it that the corpses burned completely.

Mattogno’s Cremation Encyclopedia (Part 3, Section 1)

Introduction and Part 1, Section 1
Part 1, Section 2a
Part 1, Section 2b
Part 2, Section 1
Part 2, Section 2
Part 2, Section 3
Part 2, Section 4
Part 2, Section 5
Part 3, Section 1
Part 3, Section 2
Part 4


Duration of Cremations (1)

Mattogno commences this section on p. 1416, insisting that in his statement whereby an excavator could dig up 3,000 corpses "at one time", survivor eyewitness Jankiel Wiernik^[237] had indeed meant "at one time" and thus "uttered a monstrous nonsense"