Mattogno on the Killing of 4,273 Children in Kaunas [Kovno]

The second Jaeger Report stated that, on October 29, 1941, a total of 9,200 Jews were killed in Kaunas [Kovno] consisting of:

2,007 Jews, 2,920 Jewesses, 4,273 Jewish children (mopping up ghetto of superfluous Jews)

Mattogno's Einsatzgruppen Handbook (here p.211) entertains the possibility that these Jews may have been shot in order to make room for five transports due to arrive from the Reich, despite the fact that Jaeger also reports those Jews as having been shot. Mattogno's suggestion would mean that 4,273 Lithuanian Jewish children were shot in order to accommodate transports that (according to Jaeger) only contained 327 children (175 on 25.11 and 152 on 29.11). Mattogno does not acknowledge the significance of the fact that Jaeger sarcastically refers to the Reich Jews as "resettlers" and that he correctly identifies the cities of origin. He is of course refuted by the way in which the selection for the shooting was carried out and the fact that diaries (most notably Tory), witnesses, trials and other sources never identify deported Reich Jews as being in the Kaunas ghetto. However, following Roberto's refutation here (at footnote 129), Mattogno seems to have abandoned his argument in the Italian edition concerning the transfer of Jews from Kaunas to Riga in early February 1942, as it does not appear in the English translation. Rudolf does not acknowledge this deletion in his foreword but instead chooses to imply that no such changes were made in response to criticisms made on this blog.

Moreover, Mattogno's underlying purpose of trying to show that the Nazis allowed Reich Jews to be resettled while shooting Soviet Jews is undermined by his own citation (p.210) of the report from the East of July 3, 1942, stating that Reich Jews deported to Riga the previous winter were "covered by the general anti-Jewish measures in effect in the East." There was thus a "general" policy covering Jews of all national origins, in accordance with Nazi racial constructs that regarded all Jews as a Gegenrasse. All these Jews were eventually meant to die after their usefulness as labour expired, as Lohse made clear on December 2, 1941.

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.

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

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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)

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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

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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]

Mattogno takes on the Jäger Report (well, he tries) – Part 3

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This article and the following will address what Mattogno’s calls his "critical examination" of the 2nd Jäger Report.^[47]

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

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In the previous article of this series I addressed Mattogno’s arguments against the authenticity of the 2nd Jäger Report and concluded that these are rather weak. In this and the following articles I will address Mattogno’s arguments against the reliability of the information contained in the 2nd Jäger Report.

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

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Introduction

The report dated 1.12.1941 by SS-Standartenführer Karl Jäger, commander of Einsatzkommando (EK) 3 of Einsatzgruppe (EG) A (the 2nd Jäger Report) ^[1] is the most explicit surviving German document related to Nazi Germany’s largely successful endeavor to exterminate the Jewish population of Europe. It details the killing, between 4 July and 25 November 1941, of a total of 137,447 people mainly on the territory of Lithuania, of which 135,391 (98.50%) were Jews and 2,056 (1.50%) were non-Jews (communists, partisans, prisoners of war, mentally disabled people and others). ^[2]

Report on the Deportation of Reich Jews to Riga in December 1941

On December 26, 1941, Paul Salitter submitted a report on a transport from Düsseldorf to Riga that had taken place between the 11th and 17th of that month. A copy of that report, the original of which is in the Wiener Library, London, can be seen here whilst an English translation is here. Below I analyze its most pertinent contents and compare it to other sources, such as Meurin's report of the transport to Minsk of a month earlier.

Dividing the Dead – or not (Part 4)

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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)

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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.

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

How many people were killed at Ponary?

In the community Rudamina, in the small forest Paneriai^[1],near the railway station of Paneriai, a neighborhood of Vilnius, the largest killing site in Lithuania during its occupation by Nazi Germany was located. Known as Ponary to Poles and as Paneriai to Lithuanians^[2],the place was mainly used for killing Jews from the Vilna Ghetto, but Jews from other places, non-Jewish civilians and Soviet prisoners of war were also shot there. In this article the Polish name Ponary will be used.

Mattogno on the Mass Graves at Ponary (Part 4)

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We now get to what are probably the most interesting images in the Yad Vashem collection of photos captioned as having been taken at Ponary.

Mattogno on the Mass Graves at Ponary (Part 3)

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Now, let’s look at the Ponary photos that Mattogno "examined", and at what (other) photos that may be relevant to Mattogno’s argument regarding the exhumed corpses mentioned in the 26 August 1944 report (and/or to his other arguments presented in this context) are available in the online archives of The Ghetto Fighters House and Yad Vashem. All photos must, of course, be credited to the respective institution in whose archives they are featured, respectively The Ghetto Fighters’ House and Yad Vashem. Photos that appear in both collections are shown only once, with the references in each of these collections.

Whether or not they were taken at Ponary, some of these photos are very graphic and should not be viewed by sensitive readers.

Mattogno on the Mass Graves at Ponary (Part 2)

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Back now to Mattogno’s considerations regarding the August 1944 commission’s report as concerns excavations at Ponary and finds of human corpses and cremation remains.

Mattogno on the Mass Graves at Ponary (Part 1)

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Introduction

This is the first of a series of articles discussing Carlo Mattogno’s claims and arguments regarding mass graves at the Ponary mass killing site near Vilnius, Lithuania. It is based on the 153rd of my posts on the forum of the "Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust" that was censored (i.e. "disapproved" or truncated beyond recognition, in both cases on the flimsiest of mendacious pretexts, or deleted after publication) since early July 2017 (the number would be higher if my job had not been such a hustle in the past months, leaving little if any time for pastimes both online and offline). Said censorship is further proof of what is already common knowledge, namely that open debate on the Holocaust is the last thing that said "Committee" is interested in and wishes to provide.

Commendably none other than Friedrich Paul Berg, one of the least commendable exponents of Holocaust denial, expressed his opinion about CODOH censorship with unusual frankness. He gets points for that.

That said, I move on to the first article of this series, which owes much to the gratefully acknowledged, very valuable input of my fellow bloggers Jonathan Harrison, Nick Terry and Sergey Romanov.

Ernst Jünger's March 1942 Diary Entry on Shootings in Lithuania

On March 30, 1942, a German war hero, Ernst Jünger, wrote in his diary that he had heard about shootings in Lithuania in which the victims had to dig their own graves and lie down in them in layers before being shot. 

Claus Valentiner kehrte aus Berlin zurück. Er erzählte von einem schauerlichen Burschen, früherem Zeichenlehrer, der sich gerühmt hatte, in Litauen und anderen Randgebieten ein Mordkommando geführt zu haben, das zahllose Menschen schlachtete. Man läßt die Opfer, nachdem sie zusammengetrieben sind, zuerst die Massengräber ausheben, dann sich hineinlegen und schießt sie von oben in Schichten tot. Zuvor beraubt man sie des Letzten, der Lumpen, die sie am Leibe tragen, bis auf das Hemd.

Claus Valentiner returned from Berlin. He reported about a horrible fellow, a former art master, who bragged about having commanded a murder detachment in Lithuania and other peripheral areas, which slaughtered countless people. After rounding up the victims they first have them dig mass graves, then lie down inside them, and then they shoot them dead in layers from above. Before they rob them of the last they have, the rags they wear, up to the last shirt.

Germans in Jünger's position were therefore hearing, not just about executions, but also their method.

"Pregnant Women will be Put to Death": Policies on Childbirth

I am grateful to Kent Ford for transcribing ghetto diaries that show the policy of the Nazis towards pregnancy. The following text is largely in his own words and was originally posted in a RODOH thread that disappeared when the forum closed.

In Kovno ghetto, on 24 July 1942, around the time of Great Deportation from Warsaw, Avraham Tory noted the following: 

The Gestapo issued an order: pregnancy in the Ghetto is forbidden. Every pregnancy must be terminated. An eighth- or ninth-month pregnancy may be completed. From September on, giving birth is strictly forbidden. Pregnant women will be put to death.

The Jäger Report (8)

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 eighth and last blog of this series addresses Karl Jäger's involvement in the killings committed by Einsatzkommando 3 in 1941, his further wartime career and his postwar life until his arrest, interrogation and suicide in 1959. Like in the previous blogs of this series, the information presented in this blog is mostly based on German historian Wolfram Wette’s biography of Karl Jäger (Wolfram Wette, Karl Jäger. Mörder der litauischen Juden, S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2011, hereinafter "Wette, Jäger").