Old Herrings in a New Can: Thomas Dalton’s Debating the Holocaust (1)

They say one shouldn't judge a book by its cover, and I agree with that.

Experience also tells me that one shouldn't praise a book after reading its introduction and the first one or two chapters, for what comes later may fall short of what the beginning makes you hope for.

But does one go wrong in dismissing a book as thinly disguised propaganda, written by an author with an obvious un-confessed agenda, when its introduction and first chapter strongly point in this direction already?

When In A Hole, Stop Digging

The Bundesgerichtshof has ruled on the exclusion of Syvlia Stolz from the Mannheim trial of Ernst Zündel: no surprise, her appeal was rejected. Mr Hard-Hat needs a new lawyer. Ah well.

Something that readers may not be aware of, but which was cited in the Bundesgerichtshof press release and has been picked up by the media and legal analysts in Germany: Stolz threatened the jurors in the trial with the death penalty for 'aiding and abetting the enemy' (Feindbegünstigung)

No shit, she did. In her letter to Judge Meinerzhagen of February 21 this year, and repeated in her appeal of April 10, she claimed that the trial was invalid because the Federal Republic of Germany was illegally founded. She also cited the Reich legal code operative to 1945:

§ 91 b RStGB
Wer im Inland oder als Deutscher im Ausland es unternimmt, während eines Krieges gegen das Reich oder in Beziehung auf einen drohenden Krieg der feindlichen Macht Vorschub zu leisten oder der Kriegsmacht des Reiches oder eines Bundesgenossen einen Nachteil zuzufügen, wird mit dem Tode oder mit lebenslangem Zuchthaus bestraft.

If this is the kind of law that revisionists want to enforce in Germany, then sorry folks, libertarian sympathies go out the window.

Memo to Zündel's new lawyer: when in a hole, stop digging.

Arolsen: AAARGH, all those names....

As Sergey reported earlier this week, this here lil' blog has come to the attention of French deniers AAARGH. Apparently, we are 'intéresant', which is more than can be said for their screeds. But let's not trade insults too early in the debate, since AAARGH saw fit to reprint a post of mine from a month back about the Arolsen archive controversy.

Shame, however, that they didn't bother to read what I wrote very carefully.

Read more...

Even more bemusing is the contention that we're specialists in 'damage control', since the whole raison d'etre of my original post was to point out that deniers seem blithely unaware that materials from Arolsen copied in NARA and Yad Vashem have already transformed historians' understanding of the Holocaust, and also constitute powerful documentary proof of the mass murder of hundreds of thousands. Here's what AAARGH said in their own attempt at spin-doctoring the story:

Les spécialistes du damage control, sur l'intéresant site "Holocaust Controversies" disent qu'une bonne partie des données concerne des non-juifs, qui pourraient réclamer aussi, et sur le sort desquels les révisionnistes sans cœur n'ont pas voulu se pencher. C'est évidemment là un mensonge très grossier.

My translation:

The specialists in damage control, the interesting site "Holocaust Controversies" say that much of the data concerns non-Jews, who could also claim, and about whose fate the heartless revisionists do not want to lean. This is obviously a very coarse lie.

Oh, really? Then perhaps AAARGH might care to commission studies of any of the following groups once the Arolsen archives are open:
a) non-Jewish Fremdarbeiter
b) non-Jewish KZ-Häftlinge
c) German Vertriebene
d) postwar Displaced Persons
since these are precisely the groups that will be best documented amidst the reputed 17 million names to be found in the Arolsen files. Perhaps we'll get clarification of the fate of the seven million plus foreign workers who were brought to Germany during the Second World War, mostly involuntarily. Perhaps we'll be able to clear up a little more of the confusing picture surrounding the 'ordinary' concentration camps, into which at least half a million non-Jews vanished between 1939 and 1945, seemingly not to come out.

Perhaps, once Arolsen is open, we might have a firm indication whether there really were were 2 million dead among the German expellees, or only 500,000 as German historian Rüdiger Overmans has calculated.

Ha. Bet you didn't think of that one, did you?

Maybe, now Arolsen is opening up, we might get an apology from right-wing German nationalists who insist on claiming figures of over 15 million German dead during and immediately after the Second World War,especially from moonbats such as Professor Bellinger who use sources like James Bacque which have been exposed as factually worthless.

Of course, AAARGH are not content to let their case rest there, but bring up a favourite denier meme that sounds, as they so often do, earth-quakingly portentous on first hearing, but really turns out to be the usual same-old, same-old bullshit.
Denier Cliché Number 367 is, of course, the fact that Yad Vashem have not accumulated the names of all five to six million victims of the Holocaust:

Yad Vashem, the Israeli dispensary specialising in the memorial racket had to rapidly engage a thousand inputters to transcribe its files into data-processing data. The result was an immense fiasco: the number of Jewish victims, after 60 years of feverish collection, did not exceed 3 million, and still with many doubled names.The figure is much more probably located between 2 million and 2,5 million. The last hope is Bad Arolsen. The great brothel of Washington, Holocaust Memorial Museum, which already tapped elements of files of Bad Arolsen, wants a copy of these files. (25 km linear, more hundreds of thousands of micofilms and microfiches). Probably, these people there believe as firmly as iron in their myth of the six million and hope to be able to reinflate it, after the puncture of Yad Vashem.

Let's pause for a moment and consider exactly what the Yad Vashem Database contains: the names of victims based on Pages of Testimony submitted by surviving relatives or friends. So far as I can see, it doesn't seem to have factored in all of the many documentary sources of the kind that are found in Arolsen and a zillion other archives around the world. One of the documentary sources that does seem to have been factored in are the transport lists found by the Dutch Red Cross immediately after the war which gave the full names of all 105,000 Dutch Jews deported to Auschwitz, Sobibor, Theresienstadt and Bergen-Belsen.

Oh yeah, the Dutch Jews. Them. Holocaust deniers tend to keep especially quiet about the Dutch Jews, perhaps because they are aware of precisely how detailed the Dutch records are. And indeed, let's see what Yad Vashem have to say about the numbers of names available from individual countries:

The Database contains 1,260,256 million names occurrences of people from Poland; 225,284 from Germany; 198,189 from the former USSR (1938 borders); 163,628 from Romania; 124,591 from Czechoslovakia and 100,000 from the Netherlands.

To recap vis-a-vis the accepted figures for numbers of Jewish victims from each country:
Holland 100,000 names 100,000 victims
Czechoslovakia 124,591 names 143,000 victims
Germany 225,284 names 160,000 victims
Poland 1,260,256 names 2.7 million victims
USSR(1938 borders) 198,189 names 1.1 million victims

So what do we have here? We have a 100% match for Holland, a better than 80% match for Czechoslovakia, and so many German names that one suspects they mean either Germany and Austria put together (Dimensionen des Völkermords: 160,000 + 65,000 = 225,000), or they are including those who died from suicide and natural causes 'during the Holocaust', but not in a camp.

So we have a considerable degree of overlap in the west, and far fewer names for the east. Hardly surprising when entire communities were wiped out across the whole of Eastern Europe, with few survivors and precious few relatives or neighbours left alive to report the death of their friends and family. Also hardly surprising given the taboo nature of the Holocaust in the former Soviet Union, and the fact that most Soviet Jews were extensively assimilated into Russian society and fluency in Hebrew or Yiddish dropped like a stone after 1945. For this reason, Yad Vashem has just installed a Russian-language search and submission form for its database.

The fact is that both the Yad Vashem database and the Arolsen records pose a bit of a Hobson's Choice for deniers. If they insist on repeating the charge that not all names are in the database, then they have to explain why all the Dutch names are, and what happened to this not inconsiderable group of assimilated, Dutch-speaking, non-Yiddish-speaking Jews of whom nary a living trace has been found, while the ashes of some appear to have been discovered in the 1960s when Hydrokop conducted test borings around the Birkenau camp site and found sixty places where human remains had been buried. Ooops!

Then we have the Czech, Slovak, German, Austrian etc names, all cross-confirmed from archival files in Arolsen and elsewhere. Not to mention the more than 1 million Polish names. And none of this is even reckoning with the fact that the Yad Vashem database does not yet include, so far as can be seen, the name-lists of the Soviet Extraordinary Commission, or it would appear, the name-lists from the more than 1,000 yizkor books compiled by Polish Jewry immediately after the war.

None of this will ever yield the names of all five to six million victims of the Holocaust; the destruction of vital records in Eastern Europe, and the havoc caused in societies such as Poland and the Soviet Union which collectively lost nearly thirty million dead from all causes in the Second World War, mean a full listing will never, ever be possible. Why should that be surprising? The Russian government is still struggling to identify all military dead killed in action while serving with the Red Army.

And deniers should not crow; their heroes in the SS left plenty of evidence of their deeds behind, both in the form of documents as well as the countless mass graves in Russia, Belarus and the Ukraine, left behind by the retreating Germans for the Soviet Extraordinary Commission to uncover, exhume and forensically examine. A subject, incidentally, to which this blog will return fairly soon.

While we're on the subject of Arolsen, I'm grateful to AAARGH for making me re-read the Zundelsite's reprise of the testimony of Arolsen director Charles Biedermann at the 1980s 'false news' trial. Because it provides a classic illustration of how deniers have twisted the facts and mis-cited data.

Those familiar with the argumentational strategy of many Holocaust Deniers may have come across a frequent claim that the ITS Arolsen and ICRC has only documented the deaths of between 300 to 400,000 victims in the German concentration camps. Ever wonder where this figure came from? Biedermann explained how:

Biedermann confirmed that as of December 31, 1983, the total number of deaths registered with the Special Registry Office and various other registry offices was 373,468. (11-2515) This figure represented death certificates issued pursuant to received applications and was based, with respect to the Special Registry Office, on camp records kept by the Nazis during the war. (11-2516, 2517)
Biedermann agreed that at an international conference held by the International Committee of the Camps in Vienna in 1977, the then director of the ITS, Albert de Cocatrix, gave a speech which indicated that as of December 31, 1976 a total of 357,190 names of persons who died in concentration camps had been registered at the Special Registry Office. Biedermann confirmed that these numbers actually came from the ITS. (12-2640 to 2646) He pointed out, however, that these figures resulted from applications. If an entire family had died, there was no one to make an application for a death certificate. Secondly, the ITS had complete documentation for only two of the twenty-two concentration camps. For the remainder, it had either partial or no documentation. Therefore, if an application was made for a person who had allegedly died in one of these camps, the ITS would not have the records to justify a request to the Special Registry Office for a death certificate. (12-2647)

In case there are any dimwits out there, let's just repeat those bolded parts one more time:

He pointed out, however, that these figures resulted from applications. If an entire family had died, there was no one to make an application for a death certificate.

Capisce? So next time you come across denier pond-life using the argument that the ITS or ICRC only calculated x many dead in the concentration camps, tell 'em how the figure was arrived at, and tell 'em where to stick it.

That's why it is denial, not revisionism. Part IV: Deniers and Babiy Yar massacre (2)

A well-known denier gambit concerns the witnesses statements about blood appearing in the places of mass executions. Most famous is perhaps Bradley Smith's accusation against Elie Wiesel:

EW claims that after Jews were executed at Babi Yar in the Ukraine, "geysers of blood" spurted from their grave for "months" afterward (See Paroles d'etranger, 1982, p. 86). Impossible? Yes, it is. Do the professors believe it matters?

First of all, as John Silber points out, this cannot be but hearsay, so Smith's point is weak.
Nevertheless, Wiesel's account is partially corroborated by a contemporary diary of Irina Khoroshunova, who on 14.10.1941 wrote:

We know, we already know for certain, that the blood from Babiy Yar flowed and was flowing at a distance of kilometers from the cemetery.

(Source: E. Wiehn, Die Schoah von Babiy Yar, Konstanz, Hartung-Gorre, 1991, p. 304; presumably, Lukjanovskoje cemetery is meant.)

Of course, deniers will say that it is impossible. Now, I am not a specialist, but here's an extract from the report made after Kurenyovka tragedy (which also destroyed the ravine itself) entitled "Geological characteristic of the emergency strip in Babiy Yar region" (1961; emphasis mine):

[...]
The strip on which on March 13, 1961 catastrophic movement of earth masses happened is confined to upper and middle part of Babiy Yar, which was 35-40 m deep. The ravine cuts through the aquifers, which is the reason why the bottom part of slopes and the bottom itself are partially waterlogged.

The permanent waterway at the bottom usually has the flow rate of 8-10 lit/sec. Together with the broadly developed system of upper branches, Babiy Yar is a large catchment area and that's why when it rains the flow rate suddenly increases.
[...]

(Source: Babij Jar: chelovek, vlast', istorija, vol. 1, compiled by T. Yevstafjeva, Vitalij Nakhmanovich; Kiev, Vneshtorgizdat Ukrainy, 2004.)

Given that the ravine cut through aquifers, presumably it wouldn't be surprising that liquids from the corpses would appear elsewhere.

But would they spurt like geysers above the graves? Well, "geyser" is probably a wrong word to use here. But consider this report, "1,500 sheep to be dug up as body fluid leaks" (emphasis mine):

THE carcasses of 1,500 sheep slaughtered five weeks ago because they were infected with foot and mouth are to be dug up and burned by Maff after blood was found bubbling up from the ground.

[...]

It follows the discovery a week ago that 15,000 sheep buried on the Army firing ranges at Epynt, mid-Wales, were leaking body fluids into the water table and would have to be dug up and burned. Richard Tutton, who farms at Buttington Hall, said: "They were buried five weeks ago. The pit was very tidy, efficient and deep.

"We have had horrendous rain since then. Water has got in beneath and it was sort of bubbling up. It has not reached the river or anything. They are catching it before anything happens."

That's 1500 sheep. Now imagine what would happen with 34,000 corpses in the Indian summer of 1941.

Previous << Part III: Deniers and Babiy Yar massacre (1)

Next >> Part V: Deniers and Babiy Yar massacre (3)

Babiy Yar documentary forthcoming

JTA:

A new documentary, co-produced by the Los Angeles-based Shoah Foundation, is shooting in Ukraine.

The film should be completed by September, in time for the 65th anniversary of the Babi Yar massacre.

The 70-minute documentary will focus on Babi Yar, the infamous ravine just outside Kiev where some 33,000 Jews were slaughtered in the last few days of September 1941.

Expect much squealing from the deniers, and more lame, debunked arguments.

Update on SK1005

After having posted about deniers' treatment of SK1005, I received information about PRO decodes mentioning SK1005 (and Blobel). I am not free to divulge the details, but the article quoting these documents may be published in the near future. So keep this in mind when deniers repeat their debunked arguments.

That's why it is denial, not revisionism. Part III: Deniers and Babiy Yar massacre (1)

On September 28, 1941 people of Kiev saw this notice on walls and fences all around the city:

All Jews of the city of Kiev and its vicinity are to arrive by 8 o'clock on the morning of Monday, September 29th, 1941, to the corner of Mel'nikova and Dokterivskaja streets (near the cemeteries).
They are to take with them documents, money, valuables, as well as warm clothes, underwear, etc.
Any Jew not carrying out this instruction and who is found elsewhere will be shot.
Any citizen entering flats abandoned by the Jews and stealing property will be shot.

(Note 1: A. Kuznetsov quotes another version of the notice, in which the names of the streets were transcribed as "Mel'nikovskoj i Dokhturovskoj", not as "Mel'nikovoj i Dokterivskoj"; the real streets were actually called Mel'nikova street and Degtyaryovskaja street - it is obvious that the Germans used some bad translator, not a local.
Note 2: the word used in the Russian version is "zhidy", at that time an offensive term, probably better translated as "kikes".
Note 3: the notice actually consists of 1 column - the first part is in Russian, the second in Ukrainian, the third - in German.)

The next day thousands of Jews gathered for a "resettlement". The fate of these Jews is described in at least 9 German war-time documents.

1. Operational Situation Report USSR No. 97, 28.09.1941:
   

   On September 24, violent explosions in the quarters of the Feldkommandatur; the ensuing fire has not yet been extinguished. Fire in the center of the town. Very valuable buildings destroyed.
   
   [...]
   
   As has been proved, Jews played a pre-eminent part. Allegedly 150,000 Jews living here. Verification of these statements has not been possible yet. 1,600 arrests in the course of the first action, measures being evolved to check the entire Jewish population. Execution of at least 50,000 Jews planned. German Army welcomes measures and demands drastic procedure. Garrison commander advocates public execution of 20 Jews.

   Source.
2. Operational Situation Report USSR No. 101, 02.10.1941:
   

   Sonderkommando 4a in collaboration with Einsatzgruppe HQ and two Kommandos of police regiment South, executed 33,771 Jews in Kiev on September 29 and 30, 1941.

   Source.
3. Secret report of Hans Koch about the situation in Kiev, 05.10.1941:
   

   Fire in Kiev on Sepember 24-29, 1941 has destroyed the center of the city, i.e. its most beautiful and majestic part... The fire affected an area of about 2 square kilometers, about 50 thousand were left without shelter; with difficulty they're quartered in abandoned flats. In punishment for an obvious sabotage, on September 29-30 Jews of the city have been exterminated, all in all (according to operational SS detachments) about 35 thousand persons, half of them - women...

   Quoted by Mikhail Koval' in "Tragedija Babjego Jara: istorija i sovremennost'", Novaja i novejshaja istorija, 1998, no. 4. He quotes another secondary source, but gives the archival source as GARF, f. 7445, op. 2, d. 138, l. 269.
4. Operational Situation Report USSR No. 106, 07.10.1941:
   

   As a result of the destruction of buildings in particular and of the evacuation of the endangered districts ordered by the authorities, approximately 25,000 persons were deprived of shelter and had to spend the first few days of the occupation outdoors. The inconveniences resulting from this were accepted by the population with calm. No serious incidents or panic occurred. Meanwhile the evacuated apartments, as far as they were not destroyed by fires or explosions, have again been put at the disposal of the population. Besides an adequate number of apartments has been evacuated through the liquidation of approximately 35,000 Jews on 29 and 30 September 1941, so that now shelter for the homeless is secured and has meanwhile also been allocated.
   
   [...]
   
   Partly because of the better economic situation of the Jews under the Bolshevist regime and their activities as informers and agents of the NKVD, partly because of the explosions and the resulting fires, the public feeling against the Jews was very strong. As an added factor it was proved that the Jews participated in the arson. The population expected adequate retaliatory measures by the German authorities. Consequently all Jews of Kiev were requested, in agreement with the city commander, to appear on Monday, 29 September by 8 o'clock at a designated place. These announcements were posted by members of the Ukrainian militia in the entire city. Simultaneously it was announced orally that all Jews were to be moved. In collaboration with the group staff and 2 Kommandos of the police regiment South, the Sonderkommando 4a executed on 29 and 30 September, 33,771 Jews. Money, valuables, underwear and clothing were secured and placed partly at the disposal of the NSV [Nazi Party Public Welfare Organization] for use of the racial Germans, partly given to the city administration authorities for use of the needy population. The transaction was carried out without friction. No incidents occurred. The "Resettlement measure" against the Jews was approved throughout by the population. The fact that in reality the Jews were liquidated was hardly known until now, according to up-to-date experiences it would, however, hardly have been objected to. The measures were also approved by the Wehrmacht. The Jews who were not yet apprehended as well as those who gradually returned from their flight to the city were in each case treated accordingly.

   Source.
   
   (Note: the difference in numbers in this report most probably stems from the fact that it was automatically compiled from earlier reports. Figures "35,000" and "33,771" are situated in two separate parts of the report - "Kiev" and "Executions and Other Measures"; cf. Koch's report)
5. Operational Situation Report USSR No. 111, 12.10.1941:
   

   Sonderkommando 4a now has reached the total number of more than 51,000 executions. Apart from the special action in Kiev of 28 and 29 September, for which 2 Kommandos of the Police Regiment South were detached, all executions carried out so far were made by that special Kommando without any assistance from outside. The executed persons were mainly Jews, a minor part was political officials as well as saboteurs and looters.

   Source.
6. Activity Report of 454th Security Division For Period From 1-10 October 1941, 12.10.1941:
   

   The Jews of the city were ordered to present themselves at a certain place and time for the purpose of numerical registration and housing in a camp. About 34000 reported, including women and children. After they had been made to give up their clothing and valuables, all were killed; this took several days.

   Source.
7. Activity and Situation Report no. 6. of the Task Forces of the Security Police and the SD in the USSR, covering 01-31.10.1941:
   

   The embitterment of the Ukrainian population against the Jews is extremely great, because they are thought responsible for the explosions in Kiew. They are also regarded as informers and agents of the NKVD, who started the terror against the Ukrainian people. As a measure of retaliation for the arson at Kiew, all Jews were arrested and altogether 33,771 Jews were executed on the 29th and the 30th September. Money, valuables and clothing were secured and put at the disposal of the National-Socialist League for Public Welfare [NSV], for the equipment of the National Germans [Volksdeutschen] and partly put at the disposal of the provisional city administration for distribution to the needy population.

   Source.
8. Operational Situation Report USSR No. 128, 03.11.1941:
   

   Several retaliatory measures were carried out as large-scale actions. The largest of these actions took place immediately after the occupation of Kiev. It was carried out exclusively against Jews and their entire families.
   The difficulties resulting from such a large-scale action, in particular concerning the round-up, were overcome in Kiev by requesting the Jewish population to assemble, using wall posters. Although at first only the participation of 5-6000 Jews had been expected, more than 30,000 Jews arrived who, until the moment of their execution, still believed in their resettlement, thanks to extremely clever organization.

   Source.
9. Finally, Christopher Browning provides the following information:
   

   Undersecretary Luther himself wrote a summary of the sixth report, noting that in the Ostland all male Jews over 16 other than doctors and council members would be executed, and that at the conclusion of the action only 500 Jewish women and children would be left alive. He also noted that 33,000 Jews in Kiev, 3,000 in Vitebsk and 5,000 east of the Dnieper had been shot. The summary was initialed by State Secretary Weizsaecker the day it was written.

   The Origins of the Final Solution, 2004, p. 402.

(Note: thanks go to David Thompson for collecting 7 of these documents in one place.)

From testimonies of survivors, perpetrators, bystanders, and from the extraordinary set of photos made by Johannes Haehle we know that the massacre happened in the ravine known as Babiy Yar (Babij Jar, Babyn Yar, Baby Yar). Given the wealth of documentary evidence, I won't even start citing the testimonial evidence for the massacre.

Now, no sane and smart person would even think of challenging the event supported by such iron-clad evidence. But, of course, Holocaust deniers do just that - they either deny or minimize the massacre. Let's see what tricks they use.

---

Our first patient is certain Herbert Tiedemann, who has written an article "Babi Yar: Critical Questions and Comments" (old version) for Rudolf's Dissecting the Holocaust.

There is not much sense in responding to each and every little "point" Tiedemann makes. It will be sufficient to point out the most significant flaws.

1) Tiedemann does not deal with the documents quoted above except in the most general terms. For example, he mentions the document no. 7 only to cast doubt on it, by citing its exaggerated estimate of pre-war Jewish population of Kiev, as if that could discredit the document in any way. He doesn't quote the incriminating part.

2) In the old version Tiedemann was not even aware of Anatolij Kuznetsov's magnificient Babi Yar: A Document in the Form of a Novel, which just shows that this ignoramus undertook his "debunking" without ever reading one of the most important books on the subject.

3) In both versions Tiedemann quotes only one Jewish Sonderkommando, Vilkis (without designating him as such). Even after finally finding Kuznetsov's book, he doesn't mention Vladimir Davydov, whose testimony is contained therein. Neither is he aware of Kaper, Budnik or Trubakov. Such ignorance is breathtaking.

4) Tiedemann shows his total lack of understanding of Holocaust historiography in general. Consider this:

According to the Brockhaus Enzyklopädie the "order for the final solution of the Jewish question" was issued on July 31, 1941 (Nuremberg Trial Document NG 2586e), and was announced on the occasion of the 'Wannsee Conference' (January 20, 1942).

Quite aside from the fact that historians and other interested persons are still searching in vain for this order for mass extermination, it is more than odd that many tens of thousands would have been slaughtered in Babi Yar before the order was even made known.

Well, duh! Anybody seriously interested in the matter knows that Wannsee conference was concerned with the "solution of the Jewish question" not on the Soviet territory, but rather in a pan-European framework. Genocide of the Jews in USSR started much earlier than in the rest of Europe, and before Hitler decided that all European Jews were to be killed. This is Holocaust Historiography 101.

5) Tiedemann uses the most important rule of denial: if any source reporting about an event is wrong, the event itself is to be doubted. Tiedemann's article consists mainly of quotes of secondary sources, reporting (often incorrectly) about the massacre, and his silly comments. Consider this example:

On July 20, 1942, the Podziemna Obsluga Prasy Pozagettowej, the Warsaw ghetto's underground press agency, claimed:

"Not a single Jew is left in Kyiv because Germans have thrown the entire Jewish population in Kyiv into the river Dnjepr."
Was there not one among all those tens of thousands who could swim? This killing method would have endangered the troops' own water supply, while also causing a very considerable danger of epidemic - a nightmare for any troop commander.
The bodies would have drifted downstream and been noticed by countless witnesses. Why are there no such witnesses?

Pray tell, how this is relevant at all? Yes, an underground agency made a wrong claim. How does this affect the historicity of event itself?

Note Tiedemann's "poignant" questions. Since nobody argues that the Jews were drowned in Dniepr, why ask them? Beating dead horses seems to be Tiedemann's hobby.

Another example:

A physician named Dr. Gustav Wilhelm Schübbe allegedly killed 21,000 persons single-handedly, with morphine injections. 110,000 to 140,000 victims were allegedly killed in this way at the "German Annihilation Institute" in Kyiv.
Injections of morphine, which was in very short supply and badly needed for wounded soldiers? And how long would it take one physician to give 21,000 injections?
According to the files of the US Document Center in Berlin, which holds more than one million records pertaining to members of the NSDAP ('Nazi' Party), Dr. Gustav Wilhelm Schübbe was never stationed in Kyiv.
Why did neither the USSR nor the Jews ever search for the location of this "Annihilation Institute"?

Again, one strives to find a reason for inclusion of this into the article about Babiy Yar, and doesn't find it. Worst of all, Tiedemann does not even mention the most relevant fact - that Schuebbe was a crippled drug addict.

Since Tiedemann employs this trick throughout the article, it can be safely dismissed as one big non sequitur.

6) Tiedemann shows absolute lack of comprehension of Soviet realities. All his examples of official Soviet reactions to Babiy Yar (Khrushchev's remarks, garbage dump, etc.) are not in the least surprising to those knowledgeable about post-war Soviet Jewish policy. One could think that Tiedemann's treatment of this topic could not have been more ridiculous, but he surpasses himself by asking:

Was he able to find a 'Tiraspolskaja Street' (that's how it would be written correctly!) on a street map of Kyiv, and near the 'place' Babi Yar (which is not a 'place' at all)?

As any decent map of Kiev will show, there still IS Tiraspolskaja street, which is indeed situated not far from former Babiy Yar. How even the idea itself to ask such a question came into poor Tiedemann's head? Oh, inanity!

Well, enough of this. Even reading through this "study" makes one feel stupid. There are still some points to be addressed, such as the overall number of victims and aerial photos, and that will be done in due time.

Previous << Part II: Deniers and the graves of Marijampole

Next >> Part IV: Deniers and Babiy Yar massacre (2)

That's why it is denial, not revisionism. Part II: Deniers and the graves of Marijampole

[Updated on 03.10.2012 by Roberto Muehlenkamp to replace broken link to an extinct forum site.]

On September 1, 1941 Einsatzkommando 3 murdered more than 5,000 human beings in the Lithuanian town of Marijampole. Later that year the commander of the Security Police and the SD dryly summarized the body count as follows:

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

Fast forward to the summer of 1996: the town of Marijampole decided to erect a Holocaust memorial at the place of the massacre. According to the Lithuanian newspaper Lietuvos Rytas (21.08.1996), presumed site of the massacre was excavated. There were no bodies.

Soon Holocaust deniers began to actively use the Lietuvos Rytas' account. Here are some quotes from the "revisionist" literature:

• Germar Rudolf in the introduction to Dissecting the Holocaust:

  In the summer of 1996 the town of Marijampol, in Lithuania, decided to erect a Holocaust Memorial to the tens of thousands of Jews allegedly slaughtered and buried there by German Einsatzgruppen. In order to build the Memorial at the correct location, they tried to find where the mass graves are. They excavated the site described by the witnesses, but did not find a trace. Further digging throughout an entire year, all around the alleged killing site, has revealed nothing but undisturbed soil. So, did the Germans do a perfect job by destroying all traces and even restoring the original sequence of soil layers? Did they perform miracles? Or are the witnesses wrong?

• Almost identical quotation in G. Rudolf's and S. Schroeder's "Partisan War and Reprisal Killings".
• Juergen Graf, "Raul Hilberg's Incurable Autism":

  Finally, material evidence of a mass murder of Jews in the alleged numbers is totally nonexistent. In the Lithuanian city of Marijampol in 1996, it was decided to erect a monument to tens of thousands of Jews who had allegedly been shot by the Germans. They began excavations at the site designated by eyewitnesses in order to locate the mass grave, but lo and behold, there was nothing there. Even if the Germans had posthumously exhumed and cremated those tens of thousands of corpses, as Hilberg and his consorts allege, any mass grave would still be easily identifiable because of altered configurations of the soil.

• Carlo Mattogno and Juergen Graf simply quote Rudolf in their book about Treblinka.
• And a lesser denier Jonnie Hargis ("Hannover") made the same claim, mistaking the Lithuanian newspaper for a Latvian one.

Deniers' conclusion is simple - the report, mentioning this massacre, is unreliable, and, by induction, all other Einsatzgruppen reports are suspect.

As usual, a little bit more of research would help deniers not to look like idiots.

One of the leading online anti-deniers, Roberto Muehlenkamp, decided to investigate the matter, and wrote to Mayor of Marijampole municipality, Mr. Vidmantas Brazys. He received the following reply on 20.05.2003:

Dear Roberto Muehlenkamp,

I would like to inform you, that in the Internet page of Marijampole Municipality, on line presentation of “Places to visit” under item 10 contains the following passage: “In the valley of the Sesupe river 5090 Jewish and people of other nationalities were killed in 1941 by Nazi forces.” This fact is confirmed by the documents.

In 1970 the cemetery were included into the list of Culture Monuments. The area, where is thought were graves, is planted with olive trees and placed the monument.

Because the exact location of the graves was not known, in 1996 were done archaeological excavations and the place of fusillade was found (about 50 m to the west from registered graves).

Doctor of Archaeology Science of Vilnius University Mr Algimantas Merkevicius did archaeological excavations. All the documents of excavation keep Chief Specialist of Architecture and Urbanity Division of Marijampole Municipality Mr Gedeminas Kuncaitis.

Facts in the article of Germar Rudolf are primary and not final results of archaeological excavations.

Sincerely,

Mayor Vidmantas Brazys

Then Roberto wrote to Mr. Algimantas Merkevicius, and the latter replied on 17.06.2003 as follows:

Dear sir Roberto Muehlankamp,
Sorry for late answer, but I was outside of me office.Yes, I excavated mass grave territory in Marijampole in 1996. The purpose was to finde exact place of the graves. The supposed burrial place was emty and I found the mass graves about 100 m outside of this supposed territory. People were kiled and burried in a big dich. But after finding the exact place, my work was over. I don't know how much people were kiled and how big the mass grave territory.
Best regards,sincerely yours
Algimantas Merkevicius

A simple e-mail request was all that was needed. But why try and spoil the useful argument, right?

---

The usual deniers' response to the above would be:

1) the graves were in the wrong location;
2) the number of bodies has not been established;
3) identity of the bodies has not been established.

This misses the point badly. 100 meters outside of the presumed area is not at all bad, if the area was presumed to be the site of the massacre on the basis of testimonies. Testimonies are bound to get such thing wrong to some extent. Especially if they were late testimonies, taken after half a century. Whether identities of the corpses were established is not clear from the report, but until it is established that they were not Jewish, and that there are not enough bodies, deniers simply don't have a case: the whole argument was based on the premise that there were no bodies whatsoever. The bodies are there. If deniers wish to claim that those are wrong bodies, it's up to them to prove it.

So, once again deniers are shown to be sloppy "researchers".

Oh, and the memorial to 5090 Jews and people of other nationalities who were murdered on September 1, 1941 has been erected, after all:



More to follow, so stay tuned.

Previous << Part I: Deniers on Sonderkommando 1005

Next >> Part III: Deniers and Babiy Yar massacre (1)

That's why it is denial, not revisionism. Part I: Deniers on Sonderkommando 1005

In the book Treblinka. Extermination Camp or Transit Camp? Holocaust deniers Carlo Mattogno and Juergen Graf show blatant disregard for truth, by denying events for "reasons", which turn out to be bogus when the minimal amount of research is performed.

Let's start with the simplest case - that of Aktion/Sonderkommando 1005.

The gist of what Aktion 1005 was about you can glean at death-camps.org:

Under the code name "Aktion 1005" the Germans tried to cover all tracks of Nazi extermination policy in the east, by opening mass graves and cremating hundreds of thousands of bodies.

Here's what Mattogno and Graf have to say about it:

The decision to allow this operation to start up is supposed to have been made in Berlin at the beginning of 1942. A letter of February 20, 1942, from the Chief of the Gestapo, Heinrich Müller, to Martin Luther of the Foreign Office, in which the subject of the unsatisfactory burial of corpses is raised and which is supposed to have been written after Müller "had received an anonymous letter complaining about the corpses flooding the Warthegau area," is cited as proof. This letter bears the file designation "IV B 4 43/42 gRs (1005)," and the alleged 'Operation 1005' is supposed to have gotten its name from this document!

But Alfred Streim, who cites the relevant letter based on first-hand knowledge, writes:

"On November 20, 1942, Himmler ordered SS-Gruppenführer Müller, Chief of Department IV in the RSHA, in writing (Zst. Dok. Slg. Ordner 3, Bl. 583): '...You must give me a guarantee that the bodies of these deceased Jews will either be burned or buried in every location, and that nowhere can anything else of any kind happen with these bodies..."

He does not say that this letter bore the heading "IV B 4 43/42 gRs (1005)," does not assign to it the designation '1005,' and confines himself to the following comment:

"The undertaking received - in accord with a nomenclature procedure of the RSHA - the designation '1005.'"

Thus, the letter concerned dates from November 20, 1942, and not from February 20. This would mean that the designation '1005' for the operation would have been assigned a full five months after its start! On the other hand, in the letter the Jews are referred to as "dead," not 'shot' or 'killed.' Moreover, the disposal of the bodies could take place by cremation or burial, which means that the Himmler letter need have no connection with the excavation and cremation of corpses of Jews who had been shot, and what we are dealing with here is a primitive hoax.

[...]

Now, if one considers that according to the most comprehensive studies on this subject that exist, the Einsatzgruppen alone are supposed to have shot 2,200,000 people (Jews and non-Jews), that Wehrmacht, SS, and police units are also accused of hundreds of thousands of murders, and that - as already emphasized - neither the Soviets nor the Poles have found any mass-graves with even only a few thousand bodies, the 'Sonderkommandos 1005' must have exhumed and burned between one-and-a-half and three million bodies. This means that within a period of 13 months they had to have emptied thousands of graves at hundreds of locations, which were scattered over an enormous area - all of this without leaving behind any material or documentary traces!

Without having thousands of maps, on which the graves were marked, it would quite obviously have been impossible to locate those thousands of mass graves in a territory of more than 1.2 million square kilometers, but neither are such maps mentioned in even a single Einsatzgruppe report or any other document, nor have such maps ever been found among the German documents captured by the victors of World War II. And if - as the witnesses report - thousands of pyres were burning during the night despite blackout regulations, no Soviet reconnaissance plane discovered and photographed them - for otherwise the photographs would have been exploited at once for propaganda purposes.

Thomas Sandkühler plays this down:

"Due to the extreme secrecy of the 'Operation 1005,' written sources on this are very rare."

In other words, there are none! Sandkühler 's statement reflects the total embarrassment, which orthodox historians feel in the face of this outrage, while simultaneously serving up the customary stale explanation: the documents do not exist "due to the strict secrecy"! This hypothesis stands in glaring contrast to a fact, which Gerald Reitlinger describes:

"The original series [of Einsatzgruppen reports] consisted of nearly two hundred reports with a circulation list of sixty to a hundred copies each. [...]

It is not easy to see why the murderers left such an abundant testimony behind them, [...]"

The Event Reports USSR comprise a total of "over 2,900 typewritten pages," and each of them was distributed with a minimum circulation of 30 copies. The Germans are therefore supposed to have distributed tens of thousands of pages of documents concerning the mass shootings committed by the Einsatzgruppen, then quite suddenly have grasped the necessity of exhuming and burning the bodies, but have forgotten to destroy the incriminating documents!

The fact is, the story of 'Operation 1005' is based upon some few completely unreliable witness statements.

[...]

The designation 'Sonderkommando 1005' was invented by the Soviets.

I emphasized several key claims made by the authors.

Now, what someone researching these matters, and especially someone who is "skeptical" about these matters, should have done in the first place? (S)he should have consulted authoritative studies of other scholars on this topic, working from them, rebutting or adding information along the way.

Currently, the definitive scholarly study of Aktion 1005 is Shmuel Spector's article "Aktion 1005 - Effacing The Murder of Millions" (Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 1990, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 157-173).

Graf and Mattogno never mention this article. Indeed, they're obviously unaware of it, because it completely debunks their "analysis", quoted above.

1) First of all, the article makes clear that there was an inscription "IV B 4 43/42 gRs (1005)" in the upper left corner of the letter sent by Mueller to Luther on February 28, 1942 (not February 20, as the authors state). "IV B 4" was a designation of Eichmann's department of Jewish affairs. "43/42" was the number and year of the letter. "gRs" is "Geheime Reichsache", "secret Reich matter". Finally, 1005, whatever it was initially, would later become the code name of the operation to erase traces of mass murder.

The second document the authors mention as quoted by Streim (Spector quotes it too) is the letter not from Mueller to Luther, but from Himmler to Mueller, written not on February 28, but on November 20. From this the authors should have guessed that they were dealing with different letters. Duuuuh! So they reach the height of idiocy when they write:

But Alfred Streim, who cites the relevant letter based on first-hand knowledge...
[...]
Thus, the letter concerned dates from November 20, 1942, and not from February 20. This would mean that the designation '1005' for the operation would have been assigned a full five months after its start!

To reiterate: it is so freakin' obvious that these are the different letters. What kind of idiots are we dealing with here?

Also, I haven't seen any historian claiming that it was Himmler's November letter that started the whole operation. In his letter Himmler did not order to start Aktion 1005 - he was merely reacting to the rumors that the Nazis had been making soap from Jewish bodies, and was making sure that nothing of that kind would really happen.

2) The point about locating the mass graves is mostly a straw-man. Nobody argues that SK1005 cleared all the graves. In fact, Spector states:

The Nazis were not succesful in removing the signs of the murder because of the vast numbers, the wide distribution of the mass graves, and because of the swift advance of the Soviet army.

The graves themselves could be located by questioning the local population and those who took part in the killings, thus there was no need in extensive maps, etc. Historians indeed point out that surviving Sonderkommando 1005/Aktion 1005 documentation is scarce, but they never say that it is non-existent, contrary to what M&G deceptively state. In fact, in his article Spector quotes April 1944 intelligence report of the army activities in Pinsk area (by no means it should be assumed that this is the only such document):

By special order of the Reichsfuehrer SS, Sonderkommando 1005 arrived, to execute special duties in the area of the army.

Thus, contrary to M&G, Sonderkommando 1005 was not a Soviet invention.

Now think about it: how much embarrassment Mattogno and Graf would avoid if they would simply read Spector's article? Such is the best "revisionist" research.

And that's only the first example. More to follow.

Update: Also see PRO decodes about SK1005.

Next >> Part II: Deniers and the graves of Marijampole

Zündel's Defence Lawyer Removed By Court

Just as Sergey predicted, Sylvia Stolz is history:

German court removes defence lawyer from trial of alleged Holocaust denier Canadian Press Friday, March 31, 2006,BERLIN (AP)
- A German court removed a defence lawyer Friday from the trial of far-right activist Ernst Zundel, charged with denying the Holocaust, accusing the lawyer of trying to sabotage the proceedings.
Zundel, 66, who emigrated to Canada from Germany in 1958 and lived in Toronto and Montreal until 2001, returned to court Thursday to face charges of incitement, libel and disparaging the dead. He went on trial before a state court in Mannheim in November, but proceedings have bogged down in a string of motions, objections and interruptions from his defence team.
On Friday, the superior state court in Karlsruhe said it suspected defence lawyer Sylvia Stolz of illegally obstructing proceedings "with the sole goal of sabotaging the trial . . . and making it into a farce." Stolz has a week to appeal the decision. Prosecutors accuse Zundel of years of anti-Semitic activities including denying the Holocaust - a crime in Germany - in documents and on the Internet. The presiding judge halted the trial on March 9 to ask for Stolz's removal after she denounced the court as a "tool of foreign domination" and described the Jews as an "enemy people" in earlier sessions.

Lesson #1: Don't listen to Horst Mahler

Lesson #2: It sometimes helps to find a defence lawyer least like yourself. Female was a good start; shame Stolz turned out to be a barking-mad Moonbat.

Oh yeah, this got posted before the doofuses at CODOH realised their hero just lost another lawyer. Heh.

Update: The Cesspit finally notices their hero's lawyer is in trouble.