Seriously Now, Where Did The Jews "Evacuated to The East" Go?

A straightforward question to corner any Holocaust denier:

Where did the Jews considered unfit for work by the Nazis and "evacuated to the East" go?

Figure 1: Satellite map of Europe (Google Earth image) highlighting selected political-administrative regions of the Third Reich. The map also displays: The number of Jews 'evacuated' between June 1941 and April 1943, Remaining Jewish populations as of 1943, Partisan-populated areas within the German army's rear and operational zones, the boundary of the operational zone and the Eastern front line as of mid-1942.

On December 15, 1942, Adolf Eichmann’s RSHA Jewish Affairs office, IV B4, submitted a "Secret State Affair" report titled Operation and Situation Report on the Final Solution of the European Jewish Question (unfortunately not preserved). Himmler, however, found it lacking "professional accuracy" (left image, microfilm quality) and, unsatisfied, ordered his chief statistician, Richard Korherr, to take over data analysis from Eichmann's office (BArch NS 19/1577).

By March 23, 1943, Korherr had compiled a 16-page document, The Final Solution of the European Jewish Question, covering data up to December 31, 1942, for Himmler. A month later, on April 19, he prepared a condensed summary extending coverage to March 31, 1943, to be incorporated into a larger (not preserved) report on the Final Solution for Adolf Hitler, coordinated by the RSHA (BArch NS 19/1570, scans, text in German/English).

Korherr’s findings? Approximately 2.6 million European Jews had been "evacuated" eastward by Nazi operations. After factoring in double-counting, forced labor selections, and transports not routed to extermination camps such as Auschwitz, Belzec, Kulmhof, Sobibor, and Treblinka, we’re left with roughly 2.3 million Jews "evacuated to the East" between June 1941 and April 1943 - numbers that Holocaust deniers struggle to account for (see the appendix for details).

Even with combined forces, deniers like Carlo Mattogno, Thomas Kues, and Jürgen Graf couldn’t tackle this in their "inverted comma" opus The "Extermination Camps" of "Aktion Reinhardt". They weakly speculate about Jews fit for work being deported or directly transported east but fail to explain the fate of those "unfit" Jews deported to extermination camps. Graf concedes in TECOAR’s epilogue  "that we are unable to produce German wartime documents about the destination and the fate of the deportees" (TECOAR, p. 1503).

The reality is clear: the claim that these Jews were simply resettled further east, instead of killed in extermination camps, is a not true. Contemporary German documents show that the "evacuated" Jews did not reappear in the occupied Soviet territories under civilian administration, and the military-governed zones, already plagued by partisan conflict, were largely devoid of Jewish presence (see Figure 1).

Thomas Kues Is No Longer An Active Revisionist

This is according to Jürgen Graf here. I have no way of checking the veracity of Graf's account, which is filtered through his conspiracy theories and wishful thinking; I'm simply posting the information for others to read and comment upon. Kues made the denier scene more entertaining given the "imaginative" nature of his resettlement thesis and wild hypothesizing, and at least he motivated M/G to get something out on Sobibor (no matter how dim-witted), so in that sense we will miss him, as I would expect the denier scene now to contract again into Auschwitz and not much else.

Upcoming "attractions"

The blog Jansson thought of quitting our discussions … has been updated, in response to Jansson’s hysterics with the (as usual self-revealing) title Muehlenkamp goes full retard.

Meanwhile, Reverend Jansson has announced further masses for "Revisionist" true believers.

It’s good to see that the HC critique continues figuring prominently in "Revisionist" attention. If that were not so, Jansson wouldn’t try to gain attention by announcing future error-picking exercises (more about such exercises later) as "attractions" for the faithful.

Again, I wonder why Jansson continues making a fuss about issues that I thought were supposed to have been exhaustively addressed in MGK’s magnum opus.

Does he have such a low opinion of MGK’s performance that he considers it necessary to come to their assistance?

Does he want to show his coreligionists that he's at least as smart and knowledgeable as the movement’s coryphées?

Or is he (not unreasonably) concerned that MGK’s lengthy screed might be read by as few people as are likely to have read his beloved Führer’s Mein Kampf?
____________

P.S., 05.06.2015: Not being a native speaker of the English language, I used a term (error picking) which is too weak for what I meant to express. The appropriate term is error nitpicking.

PPS, 06.06.2015: Jansson has released the introduction of his announced error nitpicking exercise about the HC critique.

It seems that this humble writer’s contributions to the critique will be Jansson’s main focus, which is not surprising insofar as a) techno-babble is Jansson’s specialty and b) the fellow obviously hates my guts (which in turn is not surprising given the outcome of our encounters so far, taking into account Jansson's petty and vindictive character).

It’s not entirely without interest that Jansson calls the critique "the most substantial piece of anti-revisionism to appear since Robert Jan van Pelt’s The Case for Auschwitz". While this assessment should in part be attributed to Jansson’s trying to make his exercise look as important as possible in the eyes of his coreligionists, it also further illustrates (after, among other things, MGK’s magnum opus) the extent to which the critique rattled the "Revisionist" cage (or perhaps "rocked the "Revisionist" church" would be a more adequate expression).

I look forward to Jansson’s precious assistance in helping me improve my response to Mattogno, and perhaps anticipate some of it.

Friedrich Jansson on Burial Space

Hans’ reply to Friedrich Jansson brought to my memory this "Revisionist" blogger, with whom I had some fairly interesting conversations on the RODOH forum back in 2013, see the threads Sobibor gassing engine - what was it?, Now that Mr. Jansson is with us ..., Alex Bay killed in trench collapse!, The rails would have bent in the heat, A new video on open air cremation, Why didn't everyone notice the cremation?, Foot and Mouth burial space versus the Reinhardt camps, Roswell denial: a conspiracy theory?, Chinese forensic scientist supports holocaust denial?, 100 million dead at Yanov, or 1,800 dead at Treblinka?, Those yellow corpses, Recovery of fat from burning pyres and Katyn burial space versus the Reinhardt camps.

Jürgen Graf keeps on giving

Apparently beside himself with rage about our contemptuous reaction to MGK’s monster pamphlet ([large PDF]) in the blogs Jürgen Graf at his best and The Steaming Pile of MGK Manure is Here, Jürgen Graf let fly in some publication of the extreme right with this stuff (not sure how to categorize it, maybe it was meant to be a satire), which will be translated hereafter for what it further reveals about the intellectual level, mindset and character of one of the world’s leading "Revisionists".

Graf isn’t stated to be the author of this pearl, but the rank stupidity of it alone would point to him even if it were not for the puerile bragging about the aforementioned monster pamphlet and for another of Graf’s "Lieber Esel" e-mails, which I received last Friday evening.

The Steaming Pile of MGK Manure is Here

Many of our readers will be aware that, nearly two years ago, the members of this blog produced a substantial “white paper” critique of three antisemitic Holocaust deniers named Carlo Mattogno, Jürgen Graf, and Thomas Kues (hereafter MGK) concerning the subject of the Aktion Reinhard camps. Our critique focused on three of their collective books: Mattogno and Graf’s Treblinka (2004), Mattogno’s Belzec (2004), and MGK’s Sobibor (2010). This weekend MGK posted this response consisting of ludicrously bloviated diatribes and arguments based on logical fallacies such as Argumentum Verbosium, which is a common feature of conspiracist cranks like MGK. We are currently reading through the PDF file like men forced to walk through an endless river of manure. It will take us a long time to digest the whole pile of rotting vegetables, but here is a taster of its antisemitic contents. Mattogno writes:

An Italian writer troubled himself to count the number of persons exterminated according to the Bible by virtue of the “cherem”: 2,120,182. The biblical Jehudim were therefore real forerunners of the Einsatzgruppen, actually even worse, because besides men, women and children, they even exterminated the animals! Is pointing this out “anti-Semitic” too?

This is the level and tone to which Mattogno has sunk, abetted by his pet monkeys Graf and Kues. We will reserve our full response to the maniacal work until we have had time to read through the verbiage and recover from both our laughter at its fallacies and our migraines from its tedious length. However, a few preliminary remarks are necessary here in order to forewarn our readers of the crap they will encounter when reading MGK's work.

Our Demolition of MGK: One Year On

By HC Guest Blogger

In December 2011, this blog published a lengthy critique of three books authored by the sole remaining semi-serious researchers on the Holocaust denial scene, Carlo Mattogno, Jürgen Graf and Thomas Kues. The project evolved from a failed attempt in July 2009 to organise a formal debate on the Aktion Reinhard camps of Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka at the old RODOH forum.^[1] As we noted at the time, and observed in the critique, the denier scene had become more and more obsessed with Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka this side of the millennium, and so the Reinhard camps seemed to be a suitable subject for a proper debate along the lines of the RODOH 'Scholars’ Debate' on Auschwitz in 2004.^[2]. The failure of ‘revisionists’ to muster a debate team wasn’t entirely unexpected, given the reluctance that deniers have to ever allow themselves to be pinned down and actually defend an argument properly. So we decided instead to scrutinise the arguments of what we thought were the organ-grinders, instead of cleaning up the poo flung by monkeys on the internet. 

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. A Critique of the Falsehoods of Mattogno, Graf and Kues.

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka

Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard

A Critique of the Falsehoods of Mattogno, Graf and Kues

A Holocaust Controversies White Paper, First Edition, December 2011

http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com

© 2011 Jonathan Harrison, Roberto Muehlenkamp, Jason Myers, Sergey Romanov, Nicholas Terry

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NOTE: the definitive version of this Critique is in the PDF format. It can be downloaded from the following sources:

• Google Docs
• Rapidshare
• Archive.org

The blog version should be considered as an earlier version.

---

Meanwhile, on "Inconvenient History" ...

... our infuriated friends Mattogno, Graf and Kues announce another delay in their response to the HC critique.

I especially liked the part about the "comrade" who can't manage the translation of Mattogno's text from Italian to English. :-)

Thomas Kues is said to be "reviewing important material about new archeological investigations at Sobibór". These must be the investigations directed by Yoram Haimi, which have been reported in the press over the past days (see articles on the CBS News, Daily Mail and Haaretz websites, among others).

Bełżec mass graves and "Revisionist" mathematics

Two weeks ago, on the forum of the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) a Brazilian "Revisionist" posting under the name "Snake Tongue" launched what he apparently considered to be a major attack on my mass grave capacity calculations in Chapter 7 of the HC critique of Mattogno, Graf and Kues. "Snake Tongue" was obviously so proud of his achievement that he also posted it on the "CODOH Revisionist Forum".

A message to Jonnie "Hannover" Hargis

The extinct RODOH forum's most visited thread, "A message to Jonnie Hannover Hargis ...", is being reconstructed on the RODOH 2 forum.

Available so far:

Posts # 1 to # 10

Posts # 11 to # 20.

Enjoy reading, Jonnie!

Our infuriated friends Mattogno, Graf and Kues ....

... have published some hollow bragging on the "Inconvenient History" blog site.

The End of the Kues Transnistria Gambit

This excellent thesis by Eric Conrad Steinhart details how Sonderkommando R (commanded by Hoffmeyer and consisting of local ethnic Germans) killed tens of thousands of Jews in Transnistria in 1942. There were 134,000 ethnic Germans living in Transnistria and it was believed that Jews deported from Odessa were a typhus threat to these Volksdeutsche. Documents uncovered by Steinhart include a complaint from Gk Nikolayev to Erich Koch stating that unburied Jewish bodies were a health risk. Thus we have proof that Transnistria would not be a resettlement zone for Jews.

Thomas Kues on recent archaeological finds at Treblinka

It comes as no surprise that "Revisionist" coryphée Thomas Kues tries to explain the recent finds of Caroline Sturdy Colls at the site of Treblinka extermination camp in accordance with his "Revisionist" theories.

A forensic archaeologist's investigation of Treblinka ...

... made "Revisionist" propagandist Thomas Kues nervous when first mentioned.

CODOH Reactions to the Critique

Reactions on the "CODOH Revisionist Forum" to the HC critique of Mattogno, Graf and Kues are recorded and commented on the RODOH thread Our Holiday Gift to Mattogno, Graf and Kues: The AR Critique.

The most commendable effort so far to address arguments included in the critique was made by "Toshiro", albeit in connection with my earlier blog about Mattogno’s Chelmno book. See my response to this gentleman’s latest post in my RODOH post 13314.

Update, 09.01.2012: See my RODOH posts 13321, 13322 and 13323.

Update, 20.01.2012: More from Toshiro, discussed in my RODOH post 13325.

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Afterword: A Special Note by Jason Myers.

Afterword: A Special Note by Jason Myers

 “I am not a Jew and I was at one time a ‘revisionist.” So said Jean-Claude Pressac in the postface to his monumental and technical study of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.[1] This writer can sympathize with Pressac, as I too identify with such a statement. A detailed history of my earlier Holocaust denial and subsequent ‘road to Damascus’ moment will not be offered here, as a brief account will be more than sufficient.

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Conclusion.

Conclusion

This critique has presented new sources, and cast new light on old sources, which demonstrate the many different forms of proof that exist for the Aktion Reinhard extermination program. We have clearly established in Chapters 2-4 the timeline through which policy evolved from decimation to extermination, and how the planned locations shifted from the Strongpoints to the death camps in Poland. We have synthesized documents from the Nuremberg and Eichmann trials with those in American, German and former Soviet archives to build a detailed picture of how the policy of extermination was understood and implemented at the centre and at the sites of death themselves. We have taken the twisted road to Belzec via this documentation and shown how the twists in the road can be better understood in the light of the convergence of evidence.

A Holiday Gift for Mattogno, Graf and Kues

The members of Holocaust Controversies have prepared a large critique entitled 'Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard: A Critique of the Falsehoods of Mattogno, Graf and Kues.' It is the First Edition of a White Paper, and the background events that led to its creation are discussed in the introduction. We will be publishing the whole work as a PDF file on the Internet within the next 14 days; but first we are rolling out our current working version as a blog series, starting here. We have not employed a professional proofreader and we are working on this project for free in our spare time, so we would like to appeal to all readers to post feedback on any typos or other errors in the Comments below each blog article. We will incorporate any necessary corrections into the PDF and any subsequent versions of the White Paper.

Happy Holidays and Enjoy!

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 8: Burning of the Corpses (6). Why Cremation?

Why Cremation?

In his Belzec book Mattogno provided the following explanation for the human cremation remains discovered at Belzec extermination camp:

The cremation of the bodies of the dead constitutes in and of itself neither proof nor evidence in favor of the official theses, because this was the practice in all concentration camps and had a well-established hygienic function. In the area of the Belzec camp, Kola’s findings show that, along a line linking grave 3 and grave 10, about two-thirds of the length of the camp,284 the groundwater level was at a depth of 4.80 meters.285 In the area below, toward the railroad, this level was obviously at a smaller depth; in the area of grave 1, it was 4.10 meters.286 It is probable that the cremation had to do with the danger of contamination of the ground water, as I have discussed elsewhere.287 Fundamentally, however, one cannot exclude the explanation adopted by the official historiography, while giving it a different interpretation. If the Soviets had discovered mass graves full of corpses dead of disease or malnutrition, then they would certainly have exploited them for propaganda against the Germans, as the latter did in Katyn and Vinnytsya against the Soviets.[264]