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)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

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)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

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)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

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)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

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.

From the vocabulary of Aktion 1005

With time the members of Aktion 1005, whose task was destroying the traces of the Nazi crimes by incinerating corpses from mass graves, developed their own slang to denote their activities. Some of the terms became sort of official, as we will see. Since the issue of the Nazi code words crops up from time to time in denial-related discussions, I decided to gather what I could about several terms most often used by the corpse-burning brigades.

The Jäger Report (7)

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 (8)

The seventh blog of this series addresses the events that led to a temporary suspension of the extermination of Lithuania’s Jews after the massacres organized by Einsatzkommando 3 in 1941, and the fate of this Jewish community’s remainders. 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").

The Jäger Report (4)

The Jäger Report (1)

The Jäger Report (2)

The Jäger Report (3)

The Jäger Report (5)

The Jäger Report (6)

The Jäger Report (7)

The Jäger Report (8)

The present blog addresses mass killings by Einsatzkommando 3 at Vilna (Vilnius) and Kaunas and isolated instances of Jewish resistance. 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").

Photographic Evidence of Mass Shootings: 2. Ponary

An excellent gallery of Ponary photographs can be found here. Three larger-sized examples from that gallery are shown here and here and here. Details in the photos match eyewitness testimony given to West German prosecutors that is reproduced here. See for example the book-keeper's statement that "The other nine walked one behind the other, stooping and holding on to the man in front with their hands because they could not see." Finally, note again that this massacre was not carried out by a unit of Einsatzgruppen acting alone. Lithuanian collaborators played an essential role in this murder.