The Soviet Bombing of Auschwitz and Treblinka in 1942/1943

From 20 August to 14 September 1942, the Soviet Air Force flew several air raids deep into the Reich and its Allies. On 4 September 1942, the bombers were sent out for especially far and politically prestigious targets: Vienna and Budapest. In the night of 4 to 5 September, around 00:30 a.m., 12 bombs were dropped on the Kispest area and another 17 bombs on the areas Rózsadomb and Városmajor across the Danube. 11 people were killed and about 60 injured during the air raid in Budapest (see here and here). In Vienna, eight explosive bombs hit the Ostmärkische Mineralölwerke on the floodplain Lobau (BArch R 58/3580, p. 237).

The Allied press celebrated the Soviet coup to strike the (former) Austrian and Hungarian capitals together with the British bombing of Bremen (with at least 116 deaths). The German side commented that the Soviet bombings were "nuisance raids" with "slight damage and some casualities" and "one plane was shot down" (The Vancouver Sun, 5 September 1942). Another article reported that "Russian planes in difficult weather on Friday night started 33 fires in Budapest...Thirty raiders participated in the Budapest attack, and they dropped 17 heavy bombs in the centre of the city" (The Argus, Melbourne, 7 September 1942).

Figure 1: Newspaper report,The Vancouver Sun, 5 September 1942.

Along their flight paths in the Generalgouvernement, the Soviet bombers already let down some of their load on a number of sites. As the air-planes followed the railway line Kattowitz-Vienna as guidance, four explosive bombs were dropped over Auschwitz, hitting the so-called area of interest of the concentration camp Auschwitz.

Still lying about Wiernik... and others.

In 2006, in the article Lying about Wiernik I exposed Mattogno and Graf's mendacity by showing that their accusations of plagiarism against Yankiel Wiernik were completely unfounded - they failed to prove that the map included in an early edition of his book was claimed to have been drawn by him (yet they still made the false claim of plagiarism) and they further falsely claimed that Wiernik claimed to have drawn his map in 1943 (he made no such claim) and by omitting the part where he explicitly says he drew it in 1944.

In a 2007 article If they're the best, what about the rest? I exposed Mattogno and Graf's dishonest omissions of eyewitness descriptions of openings on the roofs of the Treblinka gas chambers that would have been used to avoid overpressure in the chambers (even if some witnesses were unsure about their function). I pointed out that they ignored the cache of the 1944 Treblinka survivor statements given to the Soviets even while using some sketches from the same file. This alone tells everything one needs to know about their level of "research".

In the failed response (The "Extermination Camps" of "Aktion Reinhardt", 2013) to our debunking of denial on Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor Mattogno returns to the topics of these posts insofar as they were discussed in our critique.

Demjanjuk and Holocaust deniers (Part II)

In part I we have seen how both the German wartime documents and Demjanjuk's own handwritten postwar entries show that he was a Trawniki man.

In this post the authenticity of the service identity pass no. 1393 will be briefly discussed. The deniers have, of course, invented numerous excuses in order to dismiss this authentic document as a Soviet forgery.

The forensic expertise on which the German court relied renders these excuses null and void.

On that Netflix documentary about Demjanjuk...

Updated on 26.01.2020.

Not going to watch it, to be honest. But I see some ignorance-based commentary around it, namely that there's still some kind of a lingering unresolved mystery around Demjanjuk's identity.

There simply isn't. It is known for a fact that he wasn't Ivan the Terrible. Period.

Already pointed this out here, but let's recap very briefly.

The two basic facts:

What's There to Hide? Camouflage and Secrecy of Nazi Extermination Sites

Contemporary German documents referring to the fate of Jews considered unfit for forced labour often do so in a conspicuously vague way. Instead of spelling out actual destinations or camps, general phrases like "eastwards" and "Russian East" were employed.

Elsewhere I've pointed out how the killing of Poles and mentally ill people in 1940 in East-Prussia was disguised by the Nazis. For "camouflaging" the "liquidation" of members of the Polish intelligentsia in the camp of Soldau, "the Poles in question had to sign a declaration of the content that they agreed with their deportation to the Generalgouvernement". The "mentally ill prisoners...liquidated by a special commando" were "evacuated" and "placed somewhere else" in SS correspondence.

The concept to camouflage murder with none or vague destinations was later also implemented for disguising the extermination of the Jews. The deception could work as it had a true core. The Jews had to gather in the towns and villages and were brought away. For the population and authorities parts of the operation could have appeared more or less like a real resettlement. Except that they never heard anything of those "resettled" again, as the "resettlers" were executed, buried and incinerated at the next extermination site.

Dividing the Dead – or not (Part 3)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

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.

Dividing the Dead – or not (Part 2)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

In this article, the Soviet prosecution’s case at Nuremberg regarding War Crimes will be addressed, with a focus on how the Soviet prosecutors addressed the genocide of Europe’s Jews by Nazi Germany.

Düsseldorf to Minsk via Malkinia

On 22 November, 1941, an officer named Meurin submitted a report (translation and transcription here) regarding the deportation of Jews from Düsseldorf, Essen and Wuppertal to Minsk. This revealed an original route that included Lodz, Warsaw, Malkinia (near the site of future Treblinka II death camp) and Bialystok, but then noted a detour (due to fears of partisan attack) via Czeremcha. The train stayed in Malkinia for 1.5 hours but there was no mention of any need to delouse these Jews nor to switch trains due to different rail gauges.

Dividing the Dead – or not (Part 1)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

1. Introduction

In an earlier article^[1], I suggested that one of the reasons why the Soviet Union held back until 1963 the report dated 1.12.1941 by SS-Standartenführer Karl Jäger, commander of Einsatzkommando 3 (the 2nd Jäger Report)^[2], notwithstanding the document’s damning explicitness, was its incompatibility with a Soviet policy against "dividing the dead" when documenting crimes committed by Nazi Germany on the territory of the USSR.

This policy, as characterized in the secondary sources referred to in my earlier article, did not imply concealing the mass murder of Jews on Soviet territory. It did, however, imply presenting it as part and parcel of no-holds-barred, systematic violence directed against the Soviet population in general. Jews were to be seen not as the targets of the Nazis’ most concentrated violence, an extermination program that was a breed apart from the occupiers’ terror in general, but as victims of Nazi mass murder just like all other peoples of the occupied Soviet territories.

This series is about that policy, with a focus on the Soviet prosecution case at the Nuremberg Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal.

Short debunking of Steven Anderson's video "The Holocaust Hoax Exposed".

This video by a nutty religious fanatic is popular enough to merit some attention, so here it goes.

Needless to say, the man is a total hack who is ignorant about the very trivial basics of the Holocaust. Like, its definition.

1:32: "The issue is: whether or not 6 million Jews died in gas chambers and were subsequently cremated".
3:27: "The question is: were 6 million Jews gassed and then cremated?"

Since nobody serious has ever claimed that 6 million Jews died in gas chambers, Anderson shows that he has not even bothered to look up what the Holocaust is supposed to be before barging in to "debunk" it!

It's like trying to "debunk" quantum physics while thinking that Newton's laws are paragraphs of the British penal code.

There, I could end this review right now. No one who's uttered something this stupid deserves to be taken seriously.

But just for the fun of it let's see what else he has to say.

The Rothstein canard

In a vain attempt to find a single Jewish prisoner transited through Belzec, Treblinka, Chelmno or Sobibor to the "Russian East" the Holocaust deniers turned to the electronic Holocaust names databases. In "Gassed at Treblinka and deceased in Minsk" Jean-Marie Boisdefeu claimed to have found one such person:

Finally, a taker

Yesterday I received the following e-mail message, in response to my 2011 Challenge to Supporters of the Revisionist Transit Camp Theory:

I, Jake O'connor, hereby accept your Challenge to Supporters of the Revisionist Transit Camp Theory as stated on the Holocaust Controversies blog site under [url of Challenge blog], and undertake to, within 365 days after this date, provide proof of at least one person identified by name who was transited through either of the camps Chełmno, Bełżec, Sobibór or Treblinka to the Nazi-occupied Soviet territories in 1942/43, in the manner more precisely described in the Challenge, to the Arbiter(s) chosen by me from among those mentioned in the Challenge. You will be immediately notified of the Arbiter(s) identity and the proof submitted to such Arbiter(s).»
I do not have a website/blog and have not engaged in online discussion about the holocaust before, but I can answer this challenge and as soon as they activate my RODOH account I'll post about it.

So Mr. Jake O’Connor thinks he can accomplish what no "Revisionist", including our usual customers Mattogno and Graf, has been able to accomplish in almost 72 years since the end of World War II. He thinks he can provide proof that at least one named Jewish individual was transported to Chełmno, Bełżec, Sobibór or Treblinka in the years 1942 or 1943, and then taken from there to a destination in the Reichskommissariat Ostland, the Reichskommissariat Ukraine or the Soviet territories under German military administration. He has undertaken to, until 25.03.2018, submit such proof to the Arbiter(s) chosen by him from among those mentioned in the Challenge.

Well then, good luck, Jake. And please send me the link to that RODOH post you’re announcing.

Update, 28.03.2017: Jake O'Connor's submission and my reply thereto can be read here.

Mattogno on Klooga

In chapter 13 of Mattogno, Graf and Kues’ magnum opus^[1], with the self-descriptive title "Asinine, Judeophantic Arrogance", Mattogno dwells at length (pp. 1481 to1484, plus images on pages 1485 and 1486) on the massacre of mostly Jewish inmates of the Klooga forced labor camp in Estonia in September 1944. I’ll address his arguments in this respect because they briefly touch the subjects of fuel requirements and duration of cremation^[2] and my name is mentioned, and also because they further reveal Mattogno’s ill-reasoning and intellectual dishonesty.

Mattogno’s Cremation Encyclopedia (Part 4)

Introduction and Part 1, Section 1
Part 1, Section 2a
Part 1, Section 2b
Part 2, Section 1
Part 2, Section 2
Part 2, Section 3
Part 2, Section 4
Part 2, Section 5
Part 3, Section 1
Part 3, Section 2
Part 4


Cremation Remains

As Mattogno rightly pointed out in his otherwise self-defeating statement addressed in Part 2, Section 5, it follows from my assumption of an incomplete combustion of the corpses on the extermination camps’ pyres (an assumption that, as we have seen, is borne out by ample evidence) that I must consider an amount of human cremation remains "much higher than the theoretical".

Mattogno’s Cremation Encyclopedia (Part 3, Section 2)

Introduction and Part 1, Section 1
Part 1, Section 2a
Part 1, Section 2b
Part 2, Section 1
Part 2, Section 2
Part 2, Section 3
Part 2, Section 4
Part 2, Section 5
Part 3, Section 1
Part 3, Section 2
Part 4


Duration of Cremations (2)

Based on a number of eyewitness testimonies and a secondary source, the construction and size of a Bełżec cremation grate was reconstructed by Sara Berger as follows^[271] (my translation):

Together with some comrades and guards Gley obtained ten railway rails about ten meters long, trolley rails and huge stones. They mounted the rails onto the stones, so that these, together with the trolley rails meant to keep the corpses from sliding through, formed a heightened grid roaster. With the help an excavator and the reinforced working detachment they alternately placed corpses and wood on the railway rails, poured flammable liquid like oil and gasoline over the corpses and ignited them. The Jewish »burning detachment« had to keep the fire going and see to it that the corpses burned completely.

Mattogno’s Cremation Encyclopedia (Part 3, Section 1)

Introduction and Part 1, Section 1
Part 1, Section 2a
Part 1, Section 2b
Part 2, Section 1
Part 2, Section 2
Part 2, Section 3
Part 2, Section 4
Part 2, Section 5
Part 3, Section 1
Part 3, Section 2
Part 4


Duration of Cremations (1)

Mattogno commences this section on p. 1416, insisting that in his statement whereby an excavator could dig up 3,000 corpses "at one time", survivor eyewitness Jankiel Wiernik^[237] had indeed meant "at one time" and thus "uttered a monstrous nonsense"

Mattogno’s Cremation Encyclopedia (Part 2, Section 5)

Introduction and Part 1, Section 1
Part 1, Section 2a
Part 1, Section 2b
Part 2, Section 1
Part 2, Section 2
Part 2, Section 3
Part 2, Section 4
Part 2, Section 5
Part 3, Section 1
Part 3, Section 2
Part 4


Fuel requirements (5)

In the context of my previous calculations of gasoline requirements for burning corpses at the extermination camps (table 8.4 on p. 486 of the critique), I referred to the cremation of corpses on the Dresden Altmarkt, in which the main combustion fuel was gasoline. The Dresden pyres, as we have seen already, pose a big problem for Mattogno, and his utterances in this respect are accordingly incoherent and even counterproductive.

Mattogno’s Cremation Encyclopedia (Part 2, Section 4)

Introduction and Part 1, Section 1
Part 1, Section 2a
Part 1, Section 2b
Part 2, Section 1
Part 2, Section 2
Part 2, Section 3
Part 2, Section 4
Part 2, Section 5
Part 3, Section 1
Part 3, Section 2
Part 4


Fuel requirements (4)

As concerns the Minnesota Starvation Experiment (MSE) data, Mattogno complains that I "unbelievably" think the MSE volunteers lost 9.1 kg of their fat, without mentioning that I took these 9.1 kg directly from his writings about Sobibór^[173]

Mattogno’s Cremation Encyclopedia (Part 2, Section 3)

Introduction and Part 1, Section 1
Part 1, Section 2a
Part 1, Section 2b
Part 2, Section 1
Part 2, Section 2
Part 2, Section 3
Part 2, Section 4
Part 2, Section 5
Part 3, Section 1
Part 3, Section 2
Part 4


Fuel requirements (3)

In what concerns the effects that dehydration during the decomposition process on the one hand and malnutrition on the other had on fuel requirements, Mattogno (p. 1384) takes issue with the following statement on pp. 469f. of the critique, conveniently leaving out the first sentence (highlighted below) from his quote:

In the later stages of the decomposition process, butyric fermentation and dry decay, a corpse is left without most, and finally without all, of the water that makes up most of the human organism. One would expect this to positively influence external fuel requirements in two respects, one being the much lower mass to be burned and the other that little or no heat is expended in evaporating body water. This assumption is supported by evidence whereby at Treblinka extermination camp corpses removed from the graves required less fuel for burning than fresh corpses.

Mattogno’s Cremation Encyclopedia (Part 2, Section 2)

Introduction and Part 1, Section 1
Part 1, Section 2a
Part 1, Section 2b
Part 2, Section 1
Part 2, Section 2
Part 2, Section 3
Part 2, Section 4
Part 2, Section 5
Part 3, Section 1
Part 3, Section 2
Part 4


Fuel requirements (2)

On p. 136 of MGK’s Sobibór book Mattogno had dismissed as possible indicators of fuel requirements in mass cremation a number of directives stating fuel requirements "either because they also mention fuels other than wood (straw, coal, liquid fuels) or because they refer to the initial layout of the pyre, allowing for the addition of fuel depending upon the progress of the incineration" – hardly a convincing argument, as I pointed out in the critique (note 105 of p. 462). He then postulated that the only reliable data refer to the operational results of the Air Curtain Burner, and presented a source about air curtain incinerations in which the fuel consumption had been 3.04 kg of timber per kg of carcass.