How Mattogno & Rudolf Invented A Crazy Journey of a Jewish Transport from Holland Through Upper Silesia

Almost unnoticed, an Italian researcher made a surprising discovery on the route of Jewish transports to Auschwitz.

On 16 October 1942, a Jewish transport with 1,710 departed from the Netherlands (Westerbork camp) to Auschwitz. But the train did not only halt at the station Cosel in Upper Silesia, where 570 Jews were taken out for forced labour, as it is well-known so far.

According to this Italian researcher, the transport was diverted from its route to Auschwitz after reaching Cosel. Instead of going eastwards to Auschwitz, the train headed North-West to Gogolin, where some Jews were unloaded and admitted to the camps St. Annaberg or Sakrau. At Gogolin, the transport was either going further North to Oppeln and then East to take a halt at Voßwalde. Here, some more people got off to go to the camp Malapane between Oppeln and Voßwalde. The journey continued South to Blechhammer, some 5 km East of Cosel, where the train had started its detour and where more people were again taken out for forced labour. The train headed straight to Königshütte near Kattowitz, where it let off more forced labourers for the Bismarckhütte. Finally, the transport arrived at the Auschwitz camp.

Alternatively, the deportees were sent back from Gogolin to Cosel via Kattowitz to Auschwitz. But the transport was not unloaded at the Auschwitz camp. Instead, some Jews were selected for forced labour for the camp Bobrek. The rest of the people was taken back to Blechhammer (5 km East of Cosel, where they had been earlier the day), then to Königshütte (which they pass now for the third time) to sent Jews to Bismarckhütte and finally to the Auschwitz camp.

How does that sound? Incredible? Unbelievable? Well, perhaps I should have mentioned that this Italian "researcher" is not doing historical research in the proper sense, but he is just watching out for any straw - how matter far-fetched and absurd - to deny the Holocaust.

Rebutting the "Twitter denial": the most popular Holocaust denial memes debunked

"Twitter denial" (this includes Facebook and other social networks, of course), as primitive as it is, is the main form of denial today. So it may be useful to compile a list of rebuttals to the most common memes. One such meme repository I found in one neo-Nazi twitter account, and in the beginning the tweets from the account were being responded to here, but the post is still being updated with various other tweets and memes.

If you want to translate this text into another language, you're hereby given permission to do so as long as you link to this original posting and give credit where credit is due.

Warning: this post is very image-heavy.

Also, take a look at this debunking of YouTube denial.

If you want to copy a link to a particular argument to post on Twitter or elsewhere, please use the table below. The links are anchored to specific items.
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1. Revision of the Auschwitz plaque.
2. Detached Krema I chimney?
3. Flimsy wooden gas chamber door with a window?
4. Leuchter's report.
5. Alleged lies by the British government.
6. The First Holocaust canard.
7. Auschwitz swimming pool, hospital etc.
8. Arbeit macht frei.
9. The World Almanac canard.
10. The Red Cross stats canard.
11. The Red Cross inspected the death camps?
12. Gas chambers not mentioned in the memoirs of Churchill, Eisenhower, de Gaulle?
13. Elie Wiesel did not mention gas chambers?
14. Elie Wiesel an impostor?
15. More Wiesel stuff.
16. Auschwitz decodes.
17. Survivors did not see or hear about gas chambers?
18. Anne Frank diary.
19. Rassinier denied Auschwitz gas chambers. Or was that Thies Christophersen?
20. The Larson canard.
21. Fake, unreliable or mistaken witnesses.
22. Scratched gas chamber walls?
23. Dachau gas chamber; the Broszat letter.
24. Survivor Lieberman and the Auschwitz ovens.
25. The Lachout document.
26. Fake Holocaust photos?
27. Science debunks Holocaust?
28. No Britannica mention of gas chambers?
29. Dr. Listojewski? Simon Wiesenthal's quote?
30. Small children and people unfit for work in Auschwitz?
31. Jews lie about the Holocaust?
32. Predetermined death toll?
33. Hilberg and famous witnesses shown to be liars, impostors during the Zündel trial?
34. Schindler's list a tale of fiction?
35. Bruno Baum admitted that false propaganda was created in Auschwitz?
36. Changing camp death tolls?
37. Death camps found only by the Soviets?
38. Rick debunks the Holocaust?
39. 6-digit tattoo but 6 million victims?
40. Cherry-red skin color absent on gassed corpses?
41. Contradictory Holocaust survivor numbers?
42. ADL admitted the Holocaust might be a hoax?

Confirmed: a Holocaust denier has influenced Trump and his policy.

As we have reported recently, there has been a well-founded suspicion that Chuck C. Johnson, a Holocaust denier, has been collaborating with the Trump administration.

Now there is more information. Politico reports  (via Charles Johnson, not to be confused with the deplorable C(h)uck):

The consequences can be tremendous, according to a half-dozen White House officials and others with direct interactions with the president. A news story tucked into Trump’s hands at the right moment can torpedo an appointment or redirect the president’s entire agenda. Current and former Trump officials say Trump can react volcanically to negative press clips, especially those with damaging leaks, becoming engrossed in finding out where they originated.
That is what happened in late February when someone mischievously gave the president a printed copy of an article from GotNews‌.com, the website of internet provocateur Charles C. Johnson, which accused deputy chief of staff Katie Walsh of being “the source behind a bunch of leaks” in the White House.

To remind you, Chuck C. Johnson is a sociopath who simply invents facts when it suits him. He also denies the Holocaust (archived version):

I do not and never have believed the six million figure. I think the Red Cross numbers of 250,000 dead in the camps from typhus are more realistic. I think the Allied bombing of Germany was a ware crime. I agree with David Cole about Auschwitz and the gas chambers not being real. I read the German War (highly recommend), Bloodlands, Mein Kampf, and all of David Irving. I’m more or less of the view that the war was an outgrowth of the efforts of communism to spread itself throughout the world. I also believe that the fears of German extermination were not misplaced, especially in light of the Ukrainian famine. But I support Israel as a Jewish state and Zionism as a concept. I’m pro-ethno state, generally. I understand why and how Hitler rose to power but think too much of our focus on World War II is spent trying to understand Hitler and not enough is spent trying to understand Weimar. Mecius Moldbug, aka Curtis Yarvin, is right. America is a communist country.

(The "Red Cross numbers" refer to a popular dumb denial meme  with the alleged "Red Cross stats" about the Nazi camps. The stats come from the ITS, not the Red Cross; were not gathered during the war but are based on the incomplete camp documentation; do not refer to camp death tolls but to the numbers of death certificates by the special registry office of the ITS; concern only the registered prisoners (most gassed Jews were not registered); never were claimed to have been complete camp death tolls; IOW Chuckie is full of $@#$).

Yet another Trump connection to Holocaust denial?

The sex-predator-in-chief has been getting some bad rap lately for his mealy-mouthed statement on the Holocaust Remembrance day, characterized by his noted neofascist supporter Richard Spencer as "de-Judaification" of the Holocaust (which makes no sense whatsoever since the Holocaust is defined as the systematic murder of the Jews by the Nazis), and which might have been intentional, so it's interesting that yet another Trump supporter and an apparent Trump admin collaborator Chuck Johnson, primarily known for being a shameless liar, has recently come out as a Holocaust denier in a Reddit AMA:

justacolyte:
what are your thoughts on the Holocaust, WW2, and the JQ in general? 

ChuckCJohnson:
I do not and never have believed the six million figure. I think the Red Cross numbers of 250,000 dead in the camps from typhus are more realistic. I think the Allied bombing of Germany was a ware crime. I agree with David Cole about Auschwitz and the gas chambers not being real. I read the German War (highly recommend), Bloodlands, Mein Kampf, and all of David Irving. I’m more or less of the view that the war was an outgrowth of the efforts of communism to spread itself throughout the world. I also believe that the fears of German extermination were not misplaced, especially in light of the Ukrainian famine. But I support Israel as a Jewish state and Zionism as a concept. I’m pro-ethno state, generally. I understand why and how Hitler rose to power but think too much of our focus on World War II is spent trying to understand Hitler and not enough is spent trying to understand Weimar. Mecius Moldbug, aka Curtis Yarvin, is right. America is a communist country.

He has apparently missed the fact that Cole actually accepts the murder of millions of Jews, including in gas chamber at the Aktion Reinhardt camps, even if he is still "skeptical" about Auschwitz.

Notably, Chucky partially bases his denial on the tired meme of the "Red Cross statistics", which is popular among the twitter generation of the denier zombies. I wrote this entry which succinctly explains why this meme is utterly false. Chuck prides himself on his allegedly high IQ, which in this instance must mean "slightly above 10", because no truly intelligent life form would fall for such a stupid lie.

Anyway, there you have it: another apparent Trump-HD connection. Earlier we have already reported on an apparently Holocaust-denying Trump adviser. Which comes as no surprise given how the so-called "alt-right" is so fond of denial and/or minimization of the Holocaust.

Contemporary Diary of Swiss Doctor Robert Hegglin on Mass Shootings of Jews in Latvia

The following is taken from the contemporary diary of the Swiss internist and cardiologist Robert Hegglin, who took part in a humanitarian mission of the Swiss Red Cross in Riga, Daugavpils and ­Pskov in June - September 1942 and learnt from "German soldiers, officers and Latvians...that 100,000 Jews have been shot in the Riga area since the German occupation".

Kollerstrom and the 1948 Report of the International Committee of the Red Cross on the Holocaust

Nicholas Kollerstrom presented the three-volume Report of the International Committee of the Red Cross on its Activities During the Second World War (hereafter 1948 ICRC report) as a highly relevant source on the fate of the European Jews during World War 2 and on Auschwitz even as an "authentic eyewitness account" (Kollerstrom, Breaking the Spell, p. 233) supporting his Holocaust denial. But this publication is not an "eyewitness account", last on Auschwitz, it's a report compiled by people of the International Committee of the Red Cross in 1948 based on (usually not referenced) other sources. The report was never studied by Kollerstrom, it does neither really say what he claims, nor is it a historically reliable and competent source on the fate of most Jews during the war. In short, this episode illustrates the disturbingly low level of research and study in Breaking the Spell.

Shamir not very sharp

A notable antisemitic nutjob Israel Shamir recently wrote:

Gilad reiterated: It was the RAF that repeatedly dismissed the necessity of bombing Auschwitz.

Another go of Zionist propaganda. The camp was an internment facility, attended by the Red Cross (as opposed to the US internment centre in Guantanamo). If it were bombed, the internees would die – or as a result of the bombing, or due to starvation for the supplies would not arrive. Indeed, would Gilad advise to bomb Guantanamo? This idea of “bombing Auschwitz” makes sense only if one accepts the vision of “industrial extermination factory”, and it was formed only well after the war.

Of course, ICRC was never let to inspect even the main Auschwitz camp, not even speaking about Birkenau.

The pleas to bomb Auschwitz already included information about the gassings (based on Vrba-Wetzler report and other sources) which was available long before the war was over.

Shamir is clearly ignorant of history, but thinks that he can discuss it anyway. Moreover, he shamelessly regurgitates denier manure.

He also hails deniers:

Likewise, the revisionists have religious and metaphysical tasks, even if they use some scientific words and concepts. Jurgen Graf made it clear in his important book, but the same was stated by Mahler, Zundel and others.

Important book? Sorry, what important book has ever been written by denier moonbat Juergen Graf?

Elsewhere he writes:

The innocent revisionist historians were so excited when he toyed with an idea of “finally discovering the truth”. They prepared their well-thumbed books and diagrams of gas consumption and body heat.

What "revisionist" historians?

And of course there is this article on his site, full of the usual "revisionist" platitudes.

Make your own conclusions.

Update: Also see this article, basically, the same denier tripe, and Shamir's comment, full of the same. But especially cute is this little bit of demagoguery:

You exclaim: "Zundel is a Jew-hater". Nobody has to love Jews.

The Arolsen Archive Controversy: Cold Comfort for Deniers

Today's Washington Post brings an update on the spat over the records housed at the International Tracing Service in Arolsen, Germany. The story first broke just over a month ago, when it was revealed that more than 20 countries were calling on Germany to open up access to the Arolsen archive to both historians and relatives.

The archive, administered since 1955 by the Federal Republic of Germany, contains records created by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) after 1945 through their efforts to trace and locate the countless displaced persons, refugees and concentration camps. Reputedly, over 17 million names are contained in these records.

So why are the Arolsen archives of interest to both historians of the Holocaust as well as to Holocaust deniers? For more, see below the fold.

The reason, it appears, for the obstinacy of both the ICRC and the German government lies in the strict privacy laws which govern access to German archives. If you've ever wondered why Christopher Browning and other leading historians have to write of Hans K. or invent pseudonyms for eyewitnesses, then it's because of German data protection law. This applies both to victims as well as perpetrators, with the result that unconvicted or acquitted SS men accused of war crimes in German courts cannot be named by historians, even though their identities can be freely established by resort to the SS personnel files available in the US National Archives.

From today's WaPo story, it would appear that the ITS is also lagging behind in its primary function, with an alleged backlog of hundreds of thousands of cases requiring identification. This hurts not only those seeking to establish the fate of missing relatives, but also might undermine the compensation cases brought by survivors under existing schemes. Yet it appears that the German government might fear an avalanche of new claims should the archives be opened.

But compensation is a second-order issue to the main controversy surrounding access to ITS files. This concerns access for historians. As historians already labour under incredibly tight restrictions on privacy in other German archives such as the former Zentrale Stelle für Landesjustizverwaltung in Ludwigsburg, which houses the records of West German war crimes investigations, there are already precedents for how privacy concerns can be managed. So far, because of German opposition, no agreement has been reached among the 11-nation oversight committee in charge of Arolsen concerning establishing even a working group of scholars to assess the value of the records for historians.

Among the research centres that have protested the lack of access to Arolsen include the University of Amsterdam and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The irony of the entire controversy is that many files from Arolsen have long been copied to other archives, including the US National Archives, and through then, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

So what do these existing collections contain? The 189 reels of microfilm at NARA alone contain records of some but not all German concentration camps, but more interestingly also an incomplete set of deportation lists from Berlin and several other German cities. They therefore help document the number of Jews transported to Auschwitz, including thousands of Berliners deported during the so-called Fabrikaktion of early 1943, about which Wolf Gruner has recently written at length.

Moreover, other Arolsen files have been copied to Yad Vashem Archives. It was in these files, for example, that Christian Gerlach found a copy of a 1945 report indicating the numbers of arrivals at Auschwitz during 1944 who were selected for work, thereby clarifying the fate of Jews deported during the Hungarian Action.

Thus, the ITS files offer cold comfort for Holocaust Deniers such as Ernst Zundel, who claims that the Arolsen materials prove a far lower death toll inside German concentration camps.

The value of the Arolsen archive to researchers does not lie in the opening-up of files relating to the main concentration camps, since most of these are already available for public access at NARA. Moreover, the detailed records for many camps like Majdanek and Neuengamme were destroyed, never to be recovered. Nor does Arolsen contain materials relating to the Aktion Reinhard camps. It cannot be ruled out that the Arolsen archive may also contain more documents related to the fate of Jewish deportees like the Glaser report mentioned above. But this is not the only material that Arolsen holds.

Rather, the ITS archives could also help to clarify the fates of literally millions of other deportees, especially non-Jewish forced labourers from Western and Eastern Europe, but also the victims of ethnic expulsions in Central and Eastern Europe after 1945. Arolsen is therefore of concern not just to historians of the Holocaust, but to historians of the Second World War and its aftermath as a whole. Research into the deportation of well over 7 million foreign workers to Germany, the postwar movements of Displaced Persons, repatriaton programs and the ethnic expulsions will all be immeasurably enriched by access to the ITS files.

In this sense, Holocaust deniers expose their lack of imagination and lack of humanity when they concentrate solely on the fate of European Jews, ignoring the fate of millions of non-Jews who also suffered because of Nazi policies of deportation. Nor do they seem as concerned with the fate of ethnic Germans expelled from east of the Iron Curtain. Perhaps, in this last case, because it is easier to spout superficially sourced figures than to do proper research.

Update: see a reply to AAARGH here.