An Early Use of 'Ausrottung' - and a small deception by Jansson

On September 12, 1936, Julius Streicher used the word 'extirpated' [Ausrottung] in a clearly exterminatory sense in a speech reported by The Times, reproduced on September 16 in The Glasgow Herald, shown here. Jansson claims here that the quote was imputed falsely to Streicher by Jewish organizations, and credulously chooses to believe Streicher's defence at Nuremberg. However, Jansson's own source (pp.23-24) shows that the quote was published in The Times, which was not a Jewish organization, and the original author of the article was, according to his biography, Matthew Halton, a Canadian reporter.

The Revisionist Fabrication of the Myth of an Original Treblinka "Steam Narrative" (Part C)

The Case of Friedrich Jansson and His Ball of Confusion 

Part A. Jacob Rabinowicz

Part B. Abraham Krzepicki

Part C. Rabinowitz, Krzepicki . . . and the burden of the early reports on Treblinka

In this short series examining Jansson's case for a "Treblinka steam narrative," we've looked so far in depth at two of Jansson's key witnesses, Jacob Rabinowicz and Abraham Krzepicki. In this concluding section we will broaden our view to the range of early testimonies and reports about Treblinka and draw some conclusions about these early reports on mass murder at Treblinka and the viability of the revisionist claim that they show early witnesses and observers settling on murder by means of steam.

The Revisionist Fabrication of the Myth of an Original Treblinka "Steam Narrative" (Part B)

The Case of Friedrich Jansson and His Ball of Confusion 

Part A. Jacob Rabinowicz

Part B. Abraham Krzepicki

Part C. Rabinowitz, Krzepicki . . . and the burden of the early reports on Treblinka

In Part A of this comment on Jansson's "Treblinka steam narrative," we saw that, by straightening out chronology and multiple testimonies given by Jacob Rabinowicz, Rabinowicz's important early testimonies on Treblinka were not conclusive on how the young escapee believed Jews were being murdered at Treblinka. Examining the more extensive early testimonies of another escapee, Abraham Krzepicki, in Part B, we will see another case in which Jansson has read into inconclusive reports his "steam narrative."

The Revisionist Fabrication of the Myth of an Original Treblinka "Steam Narrative" (Part A)

The Case of Friedrich Jansson and His Ball of Confusion 

Part A. Jacob Rabinowicz

Part B. Abraham Krzepicki

Part C. Rabinowitz, Krzepicki . . . and the burden of the early reports on Treblinka

Friedrich Jansson has recently made some assertions about the Warsaw ghetto and Treblinka death camp that warrant comment. His assertions rely heavily on his misinterpretation of the reports given by two early escapees from Treblinka death camp – Jacob Rabinowicz and Abraham Krzepicki. The context for Jansson’s assertions was the publication of Belzec, Sobibor,Treblinka: Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard: A Critique of the Falsehoods of Mattogno, Graf and Kues (Holocaust Controversies 2011). Jansson’s particular target is the argument made in the Holocaust Controversies critique against the revisionist “Treblinka steam chamber” claim. The Holocaust Controversies argument is that revisionists misunderstand the relative evidentiary value of different sources and use this misunderstanding to create a false problem. As we shall see, the argument made by the Holocaust Controversies writers is sound.

Beyond Rumors - The Testimony of the Sonderkommando Doctor Charles Bendel

In April 2015, the Revisionist blogger "Friedrich Jansson" posted his reply ‘Hans’ attempts to evade the facts on Bendel: a reply to a controversial blogger to my blog Reply to Friedrich Jansson on Auschwitz Sonderkommando Doctor Charles Sigismund Bendel. Actually, I can reiterate again the previous conclusion: "Jansson's critique is either of minor significance for my argument, irrelevant or utterly unfounded". For him and those who are interested in all the details, I attach a point-to-point reply as a supplement to this posting.

In this main blog, I will focus only on a single point of the skirmish, but which most significant for the issue of the testimony of the Auschwitz prisoner Charles Bendel. Jansson argued that Bendel's testimony on mass extermination and the events concerning the Jewish Sonderkommando history in Auschwitz-Birkenau can be explained by rumors circulating among prisoners in Auschwitz. However, Bendel's level of knowledge far extends the details and reliability of rumors and hearsay knowledge which were present among ordinary prisoners. Hence, and despite the absurd low ceiling height of the gas chambers provided by him, he has to be considered an insider and eyewitness to the extermination sites.

Yet another mention of six million Jews from 1942 …

… can be found in the Stellungnahme und Gedanken zum Generalplan Ost des Reichsführers SS ("Opinion and Ideas Regarding the General Plan for the East of the Reichsführer-SS"), dated April 27, 1942 and written by Dr. Erhard Wetzel, the director of the Central Advisory Office on Questions of Racial Policy at the National Socialist Party, which is mentioned here and here.

Readers may ask what Wetzel’s mention of a "5 to 6 million" order of magnitude is supposed to mean.

That would be a good question, and the answer would be: it means that, based on what was known to him, Wetzel assumed there were about 5 to 6 million Jews in the area he was referring to at the time of his writing.

Now ask this question to "Revisionists". In their conspiracy theories, mentions of the number "6 million" prior to the end of World War II apparently mean something more.

On "Revisionist" error nitpicking (7)

On "Revisionist" error nitpicking (1)

On "Revisionist" error nitpicking (2)

On "Revisionist" error nitpicking (3)

On "Revisionist" error nitpicking (4)

On "Revisionist" error nitpicking (5.1)

On "Revisionist" error nitpicking (5.2)

On "Revisionist" error nitpicking (6)

This blog will address Friedrich Jansson’s latest bid for "Revisionist" glory, which bears the title Memo for the controversial bloggers, part Vd: Dresden pyres, gasoline as a fuel for cremation, and High Bishopton farm

On "Revisionist" error nitpicking (6)

On "Revisionist" error nitpicking (1)

On "Revisionist" error nitpicking (2)

On "Revisionist" error nitpicking (3)

On "Revisionist" error nitpicking (4)

On "Revisionist" error nitpicking (5.1)

On "Revisionist" error nitpicking (5.2)

On "Revisionist" error nitpicking (7)

In another of his misfires, with the title Memo for the controversial bloggers, part Vc: Herbert Floss, Treblinka, and pyre systems based on pits, Jansson starts out on the wrong foot by misrepresenting an assumption of mine regarding the Treblinka cremation structures.

On "Revisionist" error nitpicking (5.2)

On "Revisionist" error nitpicking (1)

On "Revisionist" error nitpicking (2)

On "Revisionist" error nitpicking (3)

On "Revisionist" error nitpicking (4)

On "Revisionist" error nitpicking (5.1)

On "Revisionist" error nitpicking (6)

On "Revisionist" error nitpicking (7)

In this blog I discuss what Jansson calls the "vital question" in his blog Memo for the controversial bloggers, part Vb: Lothes and Profé’s carbonization experiments with anthrax carcasses, i.e. the question "whether Muehlenkamp is correct in asserting that Lothes and Profé achieved complete cremation, or whether Carlo Mattogno was correct in assuming[109] that their experiments aimed only at more or less complete carbonization".

The present blog includes graphic images, which may be disturbing to some readers.

On "Revisionist" error nitpicking (5.1)

On "Revisionist" error nitpicking (1)

On "Revisionist" error nitpicking (2)

On "Revisionist" error nitpicking (3)

On "Revisionist" error nitpicking (4)

On "Revisionist" error nitpicking (5.2)

On "Revisionist" error nitpicking (6)

On "Revisionist" error nitpicking (7)

Always obliging when it comes to complying with my requests, my good friend Friedrich Jansson didn’t keep me waiting too long for error-nitpicking exercise "Vb", which it will be my pleasure to dissect.

Jansson vents his frustration …

… in another dreary piece of hollering against Jonathan Harrison and me, regarding the familiar subject of what Ausrottung means or can mean in certain contexts.

Hitler Speech 30.1.42 Reprise

In response to Jansson's latest babbling, and again ignoring his ad hominem attacks, I will simply point out another sentence in the speech, which Roberto quoted here: "For once all the others will not bleed to death alone; for once the ancient Jewish law will come into play: an eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth." This connects to another Hitler statement of the following year: "The Bolshevist monster, to which they want to deliver the European nations, will someday tear them and their people to pieces." According to Jansson, such statements do not refer to large-scale killing of the European population, even though Rosenberg had already, on Sept. 12 1941, referred to the "ausrottung" of a million Volga Germans as "mass murder." Of course, to rebut another lingering straw man in Jansson's position, one does not have to show an intent to kill every living being directly (by shooting or gassing) to achieve extermination, merely an intent to kill enough to remove the viability of the population's survival. Thus Hitler could have meant extermination in the sense of "kill most Europeans, leave the rest to die off." As to what Hitler meant by "Europeans", clearly he meant that the USSR would eventually massacre its allies after it had finished exterminating the Germans.

So we have to wonder again what Jansson's purpose here. As I will show in a future post, there are dozens of ausrottung-related statements (or statements deploying similar phrases) by Nazis that clearly relate to killing. Even if Jansson managed to find one Nazi who used ausrottung in an anomalous manner (which he has not managed to do), such an anomaly would be swamped by the overwhelming majority of killing uses, which can be connected to a timeline and a context (such as the Volga German deportation and Kaufman's "Germany Must Perish") which leave no doubt as to what "eye for an eye" meant.

On "Revisionist" error nitpicking (4)

On "Revisionist" error nitpicking (1)

On "Revisionist" error nitpicking (2)

On "Revisionist" error nitpicking (3)

On "Revisionist" error nitpicking (5.1)

On "Revisionist" error nitpicking (5.2)

On "Revisionist" error nitpicking (6)

On "Revisionist" error nitpicking (7)

This previous blog of this series was originally meant to be the last. However, Jansson’s latest foot-stomping, with the overlong tabloid title Memo for the controversial bloggers, part Va: The sum of all errors: Roberto Muehlenkamp – burial space and decomposition, fits the theme of this series so well that I decided to add another installment, and further installments will probably follow as Jansson goes on hollering against the "controversial blogger" he hates most in "part Vb", "part Vc" (or "part VIa"), etc.

Hitler Speech 30.1.42

German propaganda truly did claim that the allies were embarked on the physical extermination of the German people. Hitler's speech repeated that claim, and thus did use "ausrottung" in the sense of physical extermination. I discussed the sources that fed this propaganda here, and Hitler's subsequent use of the theme can be seen here.

Context of Rosenberg diary entry 9 Oct 1942

On September 14, 1942, Thierack wrote:

With regard to the destruction of asocial life, Dr Goebbels is of the opinion that the following groups should be exterminated: Jews and gypsies unconditionally, Poles who have to serve 3-4 -years of penal servitude, and Czechs and Germans who are sentenced to death or penal servitude for life or to security custody [Sicherungsvorwahrung] for life. The idea of exterminating them by labor is the best. For the rest however, except in the aforementioned cases, every case has to be dealt with individually. In this case, of course, Czechs and Germans have to be differently judged. There may be cases where a German sentenced to 15 years of penal servitude is not to be considered asocial, but in contrast to this a person sentenced to penal servitude up to 8 years may be.

A Short Update on Steam

Jansson reiterates his position thus:

Thus the early vague and unreliable rumors were replaced by the detailed steam chamber report, whose description of the killing buildings is the foundation of all later accounts.

However, the Critique already addressed this point, noting that "steam is, after all, a gas, and it is not difficult to see how the anonymous source describing steam to Wasser could have deduced that the victims were being killed with steam when witnessing the opening of a gas chamber and mistaken the emanation of exhaust fumes from the chamber for a lethal sauna." It also notes that gas was specified by Milgroim [Milgrom] in a testimony given in Bratislava on 30.8.43. I am therefore entitled to conclude that Jansson is engaging in a "falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus" fallacy that tries to reduce the whole of Treblinka witness accounts in 1942-43 to "steam", and attempts to claim that "steam" invalidates all the other details the witnesses supplied.

Jansson also gaffes in his assumption that we can only be sure that nobody left Treblinka eastwards if there was "a 24/7 watch on Treblinka to make sure that Jews never left the camp." Jansson seems unaware that Polish railway workers were reporting to the underground, despite this fact being noted in the Critique. 

Jansson Misreads Rosenberg's Diary

Jansson asks:

Rosenberg mentions a proposal that would have put Ukrainians on the same level as Jews and Gypsies.[74] According to the interpretations of holocaust controversies, this means that there was a German proposal to exterminate the Ukrainians. Does Harrison believe that such a proposal existed, and if not how does he explain this diary entry?  [9.10.42].

The proposal was that made by Himmler to Thierack that Ukrainians facing trial should have the same status as Gypsies and Jews. It was not concerned with exterminating racial or national groups, although it could be used as cover by the SS for mass killing. Rosenberg was firmly opposed to the policy [Vorschlag Himmler wird von mir abgelehnt], as he reiterated to Thierack on 27.10.42 [Über die Frage d. Rechtsstellung d. Ukrainer i. D. gebe ich ihm meine Meinung bekannt: dass man sie nicht m. Zigeunern auf eine Stufe stellen könne], presumably because he knew that giving the SS such powers would lead to some mass killing of Ukrainians (as later did occur), albeit not the total extermination that was inflicted on Ukrainian Jews (note that Jews in Ukraine at this point were largely dead so their inclusion on 9.10.42 is moot). 

Due to shortage of time and difficulty of accessing the blog at this time, I have asked Roberto to deal with my other notes, but I will finish for now by noting the diary entries "Stalin hätte doch die
führende Schicht ausgerottet" [29.9.39] and "Von den 2 ½ Millionen Volksdeutschen sind 1 Million sicher ausgerottet, von den 1 ½ Millionen Wolgadeutschen waren 400000 nach geblieben." [12.9.41]

Ausrottung Revisited

With apologies to Jansson, I am traveling for the next few weeks so cannot guarantee that I can reply speedily to everything he posts. For now I will defer to Longerich who says that 

6.2 Used with respect to a people, the term ausrotten does not necessarily have to mean that all members of this people are killed. The term could also be understood in the sense that the foundations for the existence of the people are destroyed, so that the nation ceases to exist as a nation. However, the term can also be understood as meaning that all members of a nation or the great majority of a nation are killed. The term is used in this second sense by Hitler and leading National Socialists during the Second World War and also in the years preceding the war. I have not yet found a single example of Hitler or Himmler using the term "ausrotten" during the Second World War with respect to human beings or a group of human beings other than in the sense of "to kill in large numbers or to kill all as far as possible".

With regard to ausmerzung, Rosenberg's use seems most likely to be indebted to its application in eugenics, to mean the biological elimination of the unfit, as in this title. We also have Staeglich's confirmation, as I showed in my last posting. Jansson and others would have to show that the overall pattern of usage by the Nazis of ausrottung and ausmerzung was compatible with a policy of keeping the Jews alive rather than imposing conditions that would eradicate them physically from the earth.

Jansson and the Luther Bible

Update, 16.06.2015

In his latest "Memo" blog, Jansson claims that

In the Luther Bible translation of Genesis 17.14, it is commanded that the uncircumcised be ausgerottet, with the meaning that they be removed from the people, or exiled.

One of Jansson’s complaints …

Update, 15.06.2015


… just gave me a good laugh.