Rebuttal of Alvarez on Gas Vans: Material Evidence

 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

Part XII: Material Evidence

Part XIII: Misreading the Fine Print 

 

"Forensic evidence" is lacking for the vast majority of people killed during World War Two. Yet, it is not that we do not know what happened during this time: combat deaths, war deaths, bombing deaths, ethnic cleansing, genocide, pogroms etc. Historians have access to a wide range of types of sources to reconstruct the events. Holocaust deniers do not raise their hands that they have issues with this - like when it concerns German casualties. But on the extermination of the European Jews, deniers are suddenly keen to make up new standards to deny the reality of the fate of the Jews. It is a symptom of desperation that they cannot cope with the evidence on Nazi atrocities with "fair play" according to what is reasonable and accepted on other historical events.

Santiago Alvarez, too, thought to make up new rules. He claims that "finding the murder weapon and at least traces of the victim are key issues" and "a pivotal point for any independent scientific investigation" (p.17). Finding the murder weapon and the victim are not even pivotal for a criminal investigation of murder, let aside for historical research on state-sponsored mass violence during a bloody world war decades ago. As if killings - howsoever well-evidenced - could not be established if the murder weapon and corpse are not available. The only "pivotal" point is whether shortage of "material evidence" is explainable within the context.

Seriously Now, Where Did The Jews "Evacuated to The East" Go?

A straightforward question to corner any Holocaust denier:

Where did the Jews considered unfit for work by the Nazis and "evacuated to the East" go?

Figure 1: Satellite map of Europe (Google Earth image) highlighting selected political-administrative regions of the Third Reich. The map also displays: The number of Jews 'evacuated' between June 1941 and April 1943, Remaining Jewish populations as of 1943, Partisan-populated areas within the German army's rear and operational zones, the boundary of the operational zone and the Eastern front line as of mid-1942.

On December 15, 1942, Adolf Eichmann’s RSHA Jewish Affairs office, IV B4, submitted a "Secret State Affair" report titled Operation and Situation Report on the Final Solution of the European Jewish Question (unfortunately not preserved). Himmler, however, found it lacking "professional accuracy" (left image, microfilm quality) and, unsatisfied, ordered his chief statistician, Richard Korherr, to take over data analysis from Eichmann's office (BArch NS 19/1577).

By March 23, 1943, Korherr had compiled a 16-page document, The Final Solution of the European Jewish Question, covering data up to December 31, 1942, for Himmler. A month later, on April 19, he prepared a condensed summary extending coverage to March 31, 1943, to be incorporated into a larger (not preserved) report on the Final Solution for Adolf Hitler, coordinated by the RSHA (BArch NS 19/1570, scans, text in German/English).

Korherr’s findings? Approximately 2.6 million European Jews had been "evacuated" eastward by Nazi operations. After factoring in double-counting, forced labor selections, and transports not routed to extermination camps such as Auschwitz, Belzec, Kulmhof, Sobibor, and Treblinka, we’re left with roughly 2.3 million Jews "evacuated to the East" between June 1941 and April 1943 - numbers that Holocaust deniers struggle to account for (see the appendix for details).

Even with combined forces, deniers like Carlo Mattogno, Thomas Kues, and Jürgen Graf couldn’t tackle this in their "inverted comma" opus The "Extermination Camps" of "Aktion Reinhardt". They weakly speculate about Jews fit for work being deported or directly transported east but fail to explain the fate of those "unfit" Jews deported to extermination camps. Graf concedes in TECOAR’s epilogue  "that we are unable to produce German wartime documents about the destination and the fate of the deportees" (TECOAR, p. 1503).

The reality is clear: the claim that these Jews were simply resettled further east, instead of killed in extermination camps, is a not true. Contemporary German documents show that the "evacuated" Jews did not reappear in the occupied Soviet territories under civilian administration, and the military-governed zones, already plagued by partisan conflict, were largely devoid of Jewish presence (see Figure 1).

Holocaust Denial and Himmler's Report to Hitler on "Jews executed: 363,211" (Part III)

Now that Carlo Mattogno is out of the game (see Part I & Part II), let's hear the rest of the denier's band on Himmler's report to Hitler.

Holocaust Denial & Himmler's Report to Hitler on "Jews executed: 363,211" (Part II)

Holocaust Denial & Himmler's Report to Hitler on "Jews executed: 363,211" (Part I, II, III)

The previous part of this series examined Mattogno's bizarre arithmetic and his nearly illiterate understanding of secondary literature in his Einsatzgruppen book on Himmler's report to Hitler on 363,211 executed Jews.

Now, if Mattogno had taken his own credo seriously that only Nazi documents have a historical value (as opposed to non-German documents and testimonies), his confused 9-pages on Himmler's report to Hitler could have been boiled down to a concise two-pager. Several contemporary German sources answer the key points:

How many Jews had been in the Generalbezirk Wolhynien before summer 1942?

Ironically, Mattogno did quote, but not use the most relevant and clear German source on the Jewish population in the Generalbezirk Wolhynien before their systematic extermination was carried out:

"Today, the total population of the General District of Volhynia and Podolia is about 4,630,000, of which approx. 465,000 are Poles and 326,000 are Jews. In the cities, Jews and Poles make up the majority. For example, the cities of Rovno, Dubno, Vladimir-Volhynsk, Lutsk, Kovel, Kostopol, Stolbunov, Brest-Litovsk, Pinsk and Kobrin have a total of 2,438,000 inhabitants, of which 71,300 (around 35%) are Poles and 103,200 are Jews."

(Meldungen aus den besetzten Ostgebieten (MbO) no. 5 dated 29 May 1942, Angrick et al. Deutsche Berichte aus dem Osten 1942-1943, p. 351 f.)

Here you've got it black on white: by May 1942, the Nazis estimated that there had been 326,000 Jews in the Generalbezirk Wolhynien.

Holocaust Denial & Himmler's Report to Hitler on "Jews executed: 363,211" (Part I)

Holocaust Denial & Himmler's Report to Hitler on "Jews executed: 363,211" (Part I, II, III)

The Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler's report to Adolf Hitler of 29 December 1942 that 363,211 Jews had been executed within three months in the area of Bialystok, the Reichskommissariat Ukraine and the Army Rear and Operation Area in the South is yet another show stopper for Holocaust denial. This series will review deniers' lame attempts to explain away this contemporary Nazi document.

Let's begin with the "Revisionist" who has published most, but who is arguably read the least.

Report to Hitler: "Jews executed: 363,211"

      

1st and last page of the report (B&W scan)

On 29 December 1942, the Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler reported to Adolf Hitler that "Jews executed: 363,211" between August to November 1942 in the area of the Higher SS and Police Leader (HSSPF) Russia-South, Ukraine, and North-East. The report is one of the most explicit known individual high-level documents on the extent and intensity of the extermination of the European Jews (see also Nazi Document on Mass Extermination of Jews in Auschwitz-Birkenau: The Franke-Gricksch Report).

We publish here for the first time colored photographs of the original, a copy for the files and the report of the HSSPF providing the data to Himmer's staff (see below).

Blobel, Eichmann's Office and a Denier's Ignorance

We have already observed the pattern that whenever the denier Carlo Mattogno claims on the Holocaust that something or someone is not known, had nothing to do with something else or did not exist, then there is a good chance that the exact opposite is true.

Examples:

• Josef "quite unknown" Spacil (SS-Standartenführer, BdS Niederlande, SS economist at the HSSPF Süd-Russland, head of RSHA II)


• Johann "completely unknown" Ernst (SS-Untersturmführer and Technischer Obersekretär, head of SiPo repair garages)


• Guido "completely unknown" Huhn (SS-Obersturmführer, SS-Sondereinheit at concentration camp Auschwitz)


• Friedrich "not a Major in any way" Pradel (SS-Sturmbannführer and Major der Schutzpolizei, RSHA II D 3 a)


• on Sonderkommando 1005 German documents that "there are none" and that the designation "was invented by the Soviets".


• on the Minsk gas-chamber dossier that the "signature of the note in question is by a different hand and is a rather clumsy attempted imitation" and that "there is no trace of any record of the presumed visit to Minsk itself by any Italian fascist delegation".


• on homicidal gas vans that "the word 'Gaswagen,' in the sense of 'mobile homicidal gas chamber' was coined only after the Second World War by the victorious powers".


• on homicidal gas vans that "the term 'Gaskammer' can only refer to a stationary 'gas chamber'".


• on Saurer gasoline driven gas vans that "all Saurer trucks had diesel engines"


• on intercepted decodes on the mass killing unit Sonderkommando Lange that "there is no mention of Sonderkommando Lange, or gas vans, or Novgorod, or mental patients to be killed!".


• on a gas van document that "[c]ontrary to normal practise, the typed name of the author of the letter is missing, as are his name [sic!] and rank and  that steel bottles with carbon oxide "does not appear in any document".


• on the testimony of von dem Bach-Zelewski that "the Jewish editors of Aufbau falsified the original document, shamelessly interpolating and adding entire paragraphs".


• on the Auschwitz Jewish Sonderkommando that "not a single one had anything whatsoever to do with the crematoria" 

Mattogno never gets tired to deliver explosive ammunition that would have destroyed his reputation as a researcher - if he ever had one. In this posting, we take a look at another case in point from his recent "Holocaust Handbooks": Mattogno argues that the Aktion 1005 leader Paul Blobel "had nothing to do" with Eichmann's office - which is straight away refuted by numerous contemporary German documents.

Mattogno, his Einsatzgruppen book and the Gas Vans. Part VIII: Little More Than Hot Gas

 Mattogno, his Einsatzgruppen book and the Gas Vans

Part I: A Dilettante at Work

Part II:  Mental Degeneration or Dishonesty, Your Choice!

Part III: Genesis and Pictures That Say it All

Part IV: The "Enormous Contradiction" That Is None

 Part V: Nazi Foreign Office Documents vs. Holocaust Denial

Part VI: Gas Van Arithmetic

Part VII: Semantics

 Part VIII: Little More Than Hot Gas

In his Einsatzgruppen book, Mattogno explains away the Einsatzgruppe B report of 1 March 1942 on "Gaswagen" (gas van) as referring to producer gas vehicles. The term "Gaswagen" can describe a producer gas vehicle, but it can also describe a vehicle for transporting gas, a vehicle driven by liquefied petroleum gas, a delousing van - or as demonstrable in this context a homicidal gas van.

Mattogno, his Einsatzgruppen book and the Gas Vans. Part VII: Semantics

 Mattogno, his Einsatzgruppen book and the Gas Vans

Part I: A Dilettante at Work

Part II:  Mental Degeneration or Dishonesty, Your Choice!

Part III: Genesis and Pictures That Say it All

Part IV: The "Enormous Contradiction" That Is None

 Part V: Nazi Foreign Office Documents vs. Holocaust Denial

Part VI: Gas Van Arithmetic

Part VII: Semantics

 Part VIII: Little More Than Hot Gas

If we search through the books published before the Second World War, the word Gaswagen has been used with three meanings: a) short for Holzgaswagen (producer gas vehicle), short for Gastransportwagen (vehicle for transporting gas), c) any vehicle with an internal combustion engine (for sources see Mattogno and the Activity & Situation Report of Einsatzgruppe B on its Gas Vans). 

Between 1941 and 1944, the Nazis deployed homicidal gas vans with engine exhaust. The vehicles consisted of a closed cargo box mounted on a light to medium truck chassis and can be described as Kastenwagen (box wagon/van). Vergasungen (gassings) were carried out inside the closed box, so the vehicle would be something like a Vergasungskastenwagen. The bulky term can be shortened to Gaswagen (as in Gaskammer/gas-chamber, the prefix Vergasung- can be simplified to Gas-). It is semantically plausible that the Nazis would have called their homicidal gas vans as Gaswagen.

Mattogno, his Einsatzgruppen book and the Gas Vans. Part VI: Gas Van Arithmetic

 Mattogno, his Einsatzgruppen book and the Gas Vans

Part I: A Dilettante at Work

Part II:  Mental Degeneration or Dishonesty, Your Choice!

Part III: Genesis and Pictures That Say it All

Part IV: The "Enormous Contradiction" That Is None

 Part V: Nazi Foreign Office Documents vs. Holocaust Denial

Part VI: Gas Van Arithmetic

Part VII: Semantics

 Part VIII: Little More Than Hot Gas

The number and distribution of the RSHA gas vans is yet another topic that exposes Mattogno's deficiency in his Einsatzgruppen book. He does not properly read/understand the literature he wants to attack, he omits relevant German documents on the subject, his knowledge on the Nazis' Security Police and Security Service in the East - precisely the topic of the whole book - is beneath contempt, and his representation is ridden by confusion.

Mattogno, his Einsatzgruppen book and the Gas Vans. Part IV: The "Enormous Contradiction" That Is None

 Mattogno, his Einsatzgruppen book and the Gas Vans

Part I: A Dilettante at Work

Part II:  Mental Degeneration or Dishonesty, Your Choice!

Part III: Genesis and Pictures That Say it All

Part IV: The "Enormous Contradiction" That Is None

 Part V: Nazi Foreign Office Documents vs. Holocaust Denial

Part VI: Gas Van Arithmetic

Part VII: Semantics

 Part VIII: Little More Than Hot Gas

Before I roll out the heavy artillery, here's a quick appetiser to illustrate Mattogno's cheating or ignorance (your choice again) on German documents on the gas vans. Even after having read 250 documents on the Einsatzgruppen and some 200 individual pieces of correspondence from or to the Einsatzgruppen, he argues like a beginner on the subject and even considers his lack of understanding as something especially clever no one else has noticed:

Mattogno on Photographic Documentation

This article contains very graphic images that may disturb sensitive readers.

On page 402 of his recent Einsatzgruppen "masterpiece",^[1] Carlo Mattogno writes the following:

If these extraordinary Soviet discoveries, of which I have used those relating to the Ukraine as an example, were authentic, they should be confirmed by hundreds of photographs of mass graves and of exhumations taken by the various warcrimes commissions, and showing hundreds of thousands of bodies. However, photographs of this type are incredibly scarce. This is also true for the most prestigious among Holocaust archives, such as those at Yad Vashem, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Ghetto Fighter House.

Over this and the following 7 pages (402 to 410), Mattogno then treats his readers to a litany of juxtapositions between the number of corpses (if any) that can be seen on published photographs of a number of killing sites and the number of people killed at these sites according to various sources – German documents (namely the Jäger Report^[2]), Soviet investigation reports or historical writing.

In this article I will test the aforementioned arguments for substance.

Mattogno, his Einsatzgruppen book and the Gas Vans. Part III: Genesis and Pictures That Say it All

 Mattogno, his Einsatzgruppen book and the Gas Vans

Part I: A Dilettante at Work

Part II:  Mental Degeneration or Dishonesty, Your Choice!

Part III: Genesis and Pictures That Say it All

Part IV: The "Enormous Contradiction" That Is None

 Part V: Nazi Foreign Office Documents vs. Holocaust Denial

Part VI: Gas Van Arithmetic

Part VII: Semantics

 Part VIII: Little More Than Hot Gas

The genesis of the Einsatzgruppen gas vans can be traced back to Fort VII in Posen. Here, the Nazis conducted mass gassing experiments for the Euthanasia action in Winter 1939/40. One branch developed to stationary gas chambers in the Altreich, the other developed to a gas van in the Warthegau, both types operating with carbon monoxide (CO) from gas cylinders. A killing commando of the Gestapo Posen, Sonderkommando (SK) Lange, employed the CO gas van. The war against the Soviet Union with its extermination policy pushed the development of a new mass killing technique since the mass shooting of people not fit for military service posed a considerable strain on the German paramilitary forces. The method had to fit the use in the wide Russian territory. The carbon monoxide gas cylinders already in use were considered not suitable for logistic reasons. In September 1941, gassing with engine exhaust was tried on a large scale in mental asylums in Minsk and Mogilev, followed by the testing of a prototype gas van with engine exhaust.

Germar Rudolf’s foreword to Mattogno’s Einzatzgruppen book

The English translation of Mattogno’s Einsatzgruppen opus, which bears the title The Einsatzgruppen in the Occupied Eastern Territories. Genesis, Missions and Actions and has already been addressed in several HC articles, has finally been published.

Towards the end of October, as mentioned in this article, Germar Rudolf wrote that "We have submitted a long list of open issues -- including remarks made by the HC Blog -- to the author for his review, and are awaiting his feedback". However, there seems to have been no such feedback, or then it was limited to excuses for not addressing that long list of open issues, or then Rudolf changed his mind.

Either possibility is in line with the final part of Rudolf’s foreword to Mattogno’s book, which will be addressed in this article. Said foreword is on pp. 11-22 of the book, and the part referring to the "remarks made by the HC Blog" is on pp. 21 and 22.

Some Initial Observations on Mattogno's Einsatzgruppen Handbook

Mattogno's Einsatzgruppen study, which we have already addressed in its Italian version, has just been issued as Holocaust Handbook, Volume 39 in an English translation. Several members of the HC team will be posting their observations about this text on this blog shortly. My initial observations constitute seven parts, presented below.

1) Flawed Logic

Mattogno's key argument regarding German actions in the USSR is that Soviet Jews were killed because they were perceived by the Germans to be the "architects and supporters of Bolshevism" rather than because they were Jews (p.126). However, this is a "begging the question" fallacy because it does not acknowledge how this perception was connected to a racist worldview in which, as I showed here and here, the Jews were considered to be a Gegenrasse. Mattogno omits, for example, Hitler's message to the troops of October 2, 1941, in which both Communism and American plutocracy were blamed on "Jews and Jews alone." Given that the evidence clearly shows the perpetrators embracing this worldview, it is inescapable that Jews were killed "as Jews", as a perceived world-historical racial enemy. Mattogno simply feigns blindness to this racist, antisemitic framework of Nazi policy.

Mattogno's Distortion of Orders in his Italian Einsatzgruppen Book

An English translation of Carlo Mattogno's Einsatzgruppen study, which had previously appeared in Italian in two parts (1 and 2) has just been translated and is undergoing "author proofing" before being made available as Holocaust Handbook No. 39. However, towards the end of October 2018, Germar Rudolf wrote that "We have submitted a long list of open issues -- including remarks made by the HC Blog -- to the author for his review, and are awaiting his feedback" [see screenshot at the foot of this article]. What are these issues? Many of them are likely to pertain to Roberto's detailed refutation of the Jaeger Report chapter. Some may also relate to Hans' demolition of Mattogno on gas vans. This posting focuses on the Italian text's distortions of German orders, which Mattogno misrepresents because he wishes to convince his readers that the orders were intended to shoot Jews not "as Jews" but because they were assumed by the Germans to be aiding Bolshevism and the partisans (pp.10-11). Given that I have posted previously on Mattogno and Graf's old habits on this theme, it is possible that Rudolf wants Mattogno to address it. The distortions regarding orders can be shown by presenting them in chronological sequence.

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. 

Mattogno takes on the Jäger Report (well, he tries) - Part 5 (2)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5 (1)

Part 5 (2)

In this article I continue the presentation of administrative documents relating to mass graves from the extermination of the Jews in Lithuania in 1941, which like in the previous series will be contextualized with the 2nd Jäger Report and other evidence.

The documents presented hereafter are from districts of the GBK’s Panevėžys(Ponewesch), Šiauliai (Schaulen) and Vilnius(Wilna)-Land.

Mattogno takes on the Jäger Report (well, he tries) - Part 5 (1)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5 (1)

Part 5 (2)

In the previous articles of this series I refuted Mattogno’s arguments against the authenticity and reliability of the 2nd Jäger Report in the first volume of his work about the Einsatzgruppen.

This article and the next one will be dedicated to presenting and discussing some documentary evidence associated to the mass killings reported by Jäger, which is mostly ignored by Mattogno and largely shown for the first time, as far as I know, in a publication written in the English language.

Mattogno takes on the Jäger Report (well, he tries) – Part 4

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5 (1)

Part 5 (2)

The subject of this article is Mattogno’s argumentation in support of his denial of the killing, mentioned in the 2nd Jäger Report, of German and Austrian Jews deported to Kaunas.^[98]