Hitler vs. Stalin: Who Was Worse?

After two decades of access to Eastern European archives, and thanks to the work of German, Russian, Israeli, and other scholars, the question has been solved as concerns numbers, according to a 2011 article in The New York Review of Books by American historian Timothy Snyder.

With 11 million non-combatants deliberately killed plus another one million foreseeable deaths from deportation, hunger, and sentences in concentration camps, Hitler was clearly ahead of Stalin, whose analogous record was approximately six million deliberately killed and nine million if foreseeable deaths among deportees, Gulag prisoners and others are included.

Snyder's figures for Hitler are not much lower than those of German historian Dieter Pohl and mine.

The Ustasha and Vatican's Silence - Part 3

Read the Part 1 and Part 2. This text was originally translated into Portuguese here. The book was originally written in Spanish.

The Ustasha and Vatican's Silence - Part 3
The crimes of the Croatian Ustashis (NDH)

HASTILY ESCAPE. THE VATICAN IN THE END OF WORLD WAR II

Far from being a historical mystery, the escape of thousands outlaw Nazis to South America and other parts of the world is a fact broadly documented in what the Holy See took part actively. Sinister Characters such as Pavelic, Klaus Barbie or Joseph Mengele went into exile making a prior scale in Vatican. Meanwhile, in Croatia, the last Ustasha men hoped that a timely intervention of Vatican diplomacy propitiated the creation of an independent Croatian state off of Yugoslavia.

Ustasha soldier displays proud his macabre trophy, the decapitated head of a Serbian Chetnik. (Photo)

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.

The Ustasha and Vatican's Silence - Part 2

Read the Part 1 and Part 3. This text was originally translated into Portuguese here. The book was originally written in Spanish.

The Ustasha and Vatican's Silence - Part 2
The crimes of the Croatian Ustashis (NDH)

KILLER FRIARS

Genocide: Ustasha soldiers pose beside five dead Serbs. (Photo)

The most scandalous of this sordid issue is that not only few priests, and particularly Franciscan friars, were in charge of the death camps.

The Ustasha and Vatican's Silence - Part 1

At the suggestion of Jonathan, follows below my translation of part of Chapter 5 on the Ustasha, from the book Non Authorized Biography of the Vatican. This text was originally translated into Portuguese here. The book was originally written in Spanish. Read the Part 2 and Part 3.


The Ustasha and Vatican's Silence - Part 1
The crimes of the Croatian Ustashis (NDH).
ANOTHER HOLOCAUST
THE VATICAN AND THE CROATIA'S GENOCIDE

Pavelic and the Catholic Archbishop of Zagreb, Aloysius Stepinac. (Photo)

The most people ignore that during the Second World War was produced another genocide, whose brutality topped with an increase that seen in the Nazi concentration camps. The murder of a half million Serbs in Croatia has passed to the annals of the most infamous crimes against humanity. The Catholic Church's role in this tragedy wasn't at all minor.

Mattogno on Chełmno Cremation (Part 3)

Part 1

Part 2

This is the third of a series of three blogs addressing the claims and arguments of "Revisionist" coryphee Carlo Mattogno regarding cremation of the people murdered at Chełmno extermination camp.

Mattogno on Chełmno Cremation (Part 2)

Part 1

Part 3

This is the second of a series of three blogs addressing the claims and arguments of "Revisionist" coryphee Carlo Mattogno regarding cremation of the people murdered at Chełmno extermination camp.

Mattogno on Chełmno Cremation (Part 1)

Part 2

Part 3

This is the first of a series of three blogs addressing the claims and arguments of "Revisionist" coryphée Carlo Mattogno regarding cremation of the people murdered at Chełmno extermination camp.

An interesting testimony about the gassing of Gypsies on August 2, 1944

This is one of DEGOB testimonies, protocol no. 308. The witness is S.M. (K-Sz. M.), a medical intern, born in 1922 in Budapest, was in Birkenau from 30.6.44 to 15.9.44. On 4.7.45 he had this to say on the liquidation of the Gypsy camp:

The next morning, they put us in freight cars and after three days of horrible travel, on the 30th of June 1944, I arrived in Birkenau. In Birkenau, after the usual selections and bath I got into quarantine for two weeks. There were around 850 of us, mostly doctors, lawyers and pharmacists, living in a barrack that was originally meant to be a stable. [...] After these two weeks I got into the camp hospital as a nurse. That time the hospital had a Jewish and a Gypsy ward. It remained like this till the 2nd of August 1944, when several trucks appeared in front of the hospital, which took away all the Gypsy patients including elderly people, patients with tuberculosis, with pox and starving children. At the same time they took away all Gypsy inhabitants of the camp, and as I came to know later from a reliable source, all of them, exactly 3540 of them, were gassed.

An article at DEGOB site states:

Based on his reminiscences, K-Sz. M. proved to be a highly acute observer: in the earlier parts of his testimony he gives the accurate date of the Gypsy camp's liquidation (August 2, 1944), with some error he puts the number of those killed at 3451 (the actual number killed that night was 2897) and he is also right when he states that inmate doctors intentionally misdiagnosed those suffering from tuberculosis to save their lives (automatically condemned to death). K-Sz. M. is also an important witness because he knew Mengele personally and not only by hearsay.

This statement contains two mistakes. First of all, witness M. claimed that 3540 Gypsies were gassed, not 3451. The article thus repeats the mistaken online transcription, which, however, can be checked against the original scanned version. It also claims that "the actual number killed that night was 2897", which is simply not true, as has been shown at length in the article "Auschwitz Museum and the number of Gypsy victims".

The traditional number 2897 is based on the absolutely incorrect calculation by Danuta Czech, 1) which was based solely on the statistics for males in the Gypsy camp, 2) which probably mistook the Jews from Radom temporarily residing in the Gypsy camp for Gypsies, 3) which probably incorrectly specified the origin of 1408 transferred Gypsies as Stammlager rather than Birkenau. If we take into account the female statistics for the Gypsy camp and subtract both the 1298 Jews from Radom and 1408 transferred Gypsies, we get the maximum number of Gypsies that could have been gassed on that day - 3613. It is remarkably close to the number given by witness M.

Correction Corner #4: Auschwitz Museum and the number of Gypsy victims

Today, 63 years ago, the liquidation of the Gypsy Family camp in Birkenau commenced.

On the website of the Auschwitz Museum we can find the following information:

The “Gypsy” camp was liquidated on the night of August 2/3, 1944 on orders from Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler. All the people still alive, 2,897 of them, were murdered that night.

The figure of 2897 murdered Gypsies, is, however, absolutely wrong and unfounded.

This is one of the cases when an examination of Holocaust deniers' claims leads not only to refutation of those claims (this is usual), but also a refutation of mainstream claims, as new facts are uncovered (this also happens sometimes).

What's ironic this time is that the mainstream claim (in this case - about the liquidation of the Gypsy camp) probably diminished the scope of tragedy, and, what's worse, this mistake has been mindlessy perpetuated in books and media.

Informational items about the liquidation of Auschwitz Gypsy camp on August 2, 1944 are usually based on D. Czech's reconstruction. Here's a another example from the Auschwitz Museum's site:

The extermination of the Roma in Birkenau took place on the night of August 2/3, 1944. A ban on going outside the barracks was imposed on the Gypsy camp on the evening of September 2 and, despite resistance, 2,897 men, women, and children were loaded on trucks, taken to gas chamber no. V, and exterminated. Their bodies were burned in the adjacent pits.

In his article "The "Gassing" of Gypsies in Auschwitz on August 2, 1944" Carlo Mattogno claims that no Gypsies were gassed on August 2, 1944. He makes some ignorant claims to arrive at this conclusion, although he does make one good point in the process. Let's examine his claims and compare them to the claims by Danuta Czech and the Auschwitz Museum.

• 1. There were 1518 inmates listed in male labor deployment report for July 30, 1944 in the Gypsy camp.
• 2. This number increased to 2815 on August 1, 1944 and to 2885 on August 2, 1944. July 31 report is missing.
• 3. On August 3 there are 1408 Gypsies explicitly mentioned for BIIe camp, noted as being transferred elsewhere.
• 4. The difference, therefore is 1477 inmates of the Gypsy camp, who seem to have disappeared.
• 5. To explain the bulk of this disappearance Mattogno brings up the transport of 1298 Radom Jews (males), who arrived on July 31, 1944 and were registered on the same day. These Jews, however, don't appear in male labor deployment lists of August 1 and 2 (labor deployment lists noted the new arrivals). As could be established from quarantine camp documents, these Jews weren't in that camp either.
• 6. Mattogno, therefore, makes a logical conclusion: the increase of the male Gypsy camp population from 1518 on July 30 to 2815 on August 1, 1944 (the difference being 1297) is due to these Radom Jews being temporarily placed in the Gypsy camp. This is not unheard of, as the Gypsy camp was also used to lodge some Jews during the Hungarian action. The difference in 1 person might have been covered by the missing July 31 report.
  
  So far, the argument seems reasonable, and it's a pity the mainstream researchers didn't put it up first, and rather assumed that all 2815 inmates on Aug. 1 were Gypsies, because this, obviously, does some serious violence to their Gypsy death toll estimates.
• 7. Now, Danuta Czech assumes that all 2885 inmates of the Gypsy camp on August 2 were Gypsies (she calculates 2898 for Birkenau as a whole). She notes the transfer of 1408 Gypsies to other place (she says Buchenwald) and claims that 2897 Gypsies were gassed afterwards.
• 8. Mattogno thinks this is a stupid mistake:

  Here it should be pointed out that the number of the allegedly gassed gypsies contains a glaring arithmetic mistake: if there had been altogether 2,898 gypsies, and 1,408 thereof have been transferred, it is completely impossible that 2,897 were "gassed"! The number of the "gassed" would rather amount to (2,898-1,408 =) 1,490.

  Actually it is Mattogno's glaring mistake.
  
  Czech doesn't deal only with Birkenau Gypsies, she explicitly notes that 1408 transferred Gypsies came from Blocks 10 and 11 of Auschwitz I camp (Aug. 2 entry). The 1989 text of the Kalendarium (both English and German) is actually confusing, but even then one can understand that she is talking about Stammlager Gypsies, especially when one reads May 23 entry. Here's the more clearly worded German version, from the Auschwitz Trial DVD:

  Am Nachmittag wurde auf der Eisenbahnrampe innerhalb des Lagers Birkenau ein leerer Gueterzug bereitgestellt, in den 1.408 Zigeunerinnen und Zigeuner verladen wurden, die am 23. Mai 1944 im Lagerabschnitt BIIe selektiert worden waren, damals in die Bloecke 10 und 11 im Stammlager verlegt worden waren, am Leben gelassen und in andere Konzentrationslager ueberstellt werden sollten und jetzt vom Stammlager nach Birkenau gefuehrt wurden.

  Indeed, in May 23, 1944 entry Czech claims, based on a testimony of T. Joachimowski, that there were about 1500 Gypsies lodged in blocks 10 and 11 of the main camp, waiting to be transferred elsewhere.
  
  So Mattogno's argument about Czech's "mistake" is bogus (regardless of veracity of Czech's method).
  
  Czech gives the death toll of 2897 (and not 2898) because one Gypsy stayed in camp BIIf.
• 9. And yet, we still have to subtract 1298 Radom Jews from Czech's death toll, leaving us only with only 1599 Gypsies which, according to Czech's methodology, could have been gassed.
• 10. However, here is where both Mattogno and Czech make a fatal mistake. All this time they were dealing with male labor deployment lists. How on the basis of the male population of the Gypsy Family camp Czech could make a conclusion that "2897 defenceless women, men and children" were gassed, and how, on the basis of male population could Mattogno make his conclusion about the lack of gassings of any Gypsies?
• 11. What they both amazingly ignored are the existing strength reports for female population of camp BIIe, i.e. the Gypsy camp. I've had them for some time from Dr. John Zimmerman, but only recently Dr. Nicholas Terry realized, that this is it - the actual numbers for the female Gypsies, covering the period from 16 to 31 July, 1944. The reports were available to Czech, and basically to everybody, and yet nobody seems to have realized their significance until Nick, which is rather baffling.
• 12. July 31, 1944 report records 3422 women in Gypsy camp BIIe:
  
  
• 13. Therefore, taking into account everything said before, and assuming D. Czech is correct about 1408 Gypsies being from Auschwitz I, there could have been as many as (1599+3422)=5021 Gypsies gassed.

Well, actually this is problematic too, because this assumes that Czech is correct when she claims that 1408 Gypsies were male AND female Gypsies from Stammlager. Once again, the assumption that female deportees were mentioned in the male labor deployment lists is shaky at best. So we're left in uncertainty about the number of Gypsies who could have been gassed. Until proven otherwise, we should assume that 1408 transferred Gypsies were males, and there could have been females transferred as well (though we don't know the numbers).

It is also not completely clear whether these 1408 Gypsies were indeed from Auschwitz I, or from Auschwitz II. If they were from Auschwitz II, then we should subtract them from the Birkenau Gypsy population, having as many as (5021-1408)=3613 Gypsies potentially gassed.

It is possible that it was a mix of both Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II male Gypsies, but it is also possible that no Gypsies were brought from the main camp at all, and this is only D. Czech's assumption (testimonies from the Frankfurt trial don't seem to support this version, and some contradict it, saying that the Gypsies were in the main camp just for quarantine for several days only).

In any case, it seems clear that D. Czech's - and Auschwitz Museum's - number of 2897 gassed Gypsies is absolutely unfounded, and potentially, many more hundreds of Gypsies could have been gassed, mostly women and children. To establish the true number and to remove uncertainties, further research is required.