Source of yet another fake "fake Holocaust photo" found.

Rick Yair emailed us to tell about the source of one of those photoshopped photos that the Holocaust denier liars like to spread on social networks claiming they are "original" while the actual original photos are fake.

Turned out that it came from a sort of an art project "Revisionist Photos. Removing the Horrors of the Third Reich From the Pages of History", in which various objects and people were photoshopped out of the original Nazi and Holocaust photos:

The Holocaust was one of the most horrific events in human history.

It is also one of the best documented.

Still, there are those who deny it ever happened.

Come with me and visit a world where these revisionists have won. A world where facts too painful to be remembered are simply erased, and the sins of facism are eliminated en masse.

Experience Revisionist Photos

Here is the page with the edited photo in question. Here is the original, which is a part of a series.

While the author of the project might have had good intentions, the idea was extremely dumb, if only because it was to be expected that the dumb and/or dishonest Holocaust deniers will use exactly such images to spread their lies - and voila, they are doing exactly this.

On fakes, misunderstandings and sensationalist headlines.

Update 11.01.20: thankfully, The Tablet has fixed this, the article was renamed to "Did a Supposedly Nazi Document Fool the Experts?".

A few days ago Tablet published an article by Mel Laytner entitled "How a Fake Nazi Document Fooled the Experts".

The article itself is a good piece of research. Laytner points out that many publications and exhibitions have used an alleged document in which the Nazis supposedly calculated the "profitability" of the averge inmate including the allowance for the costs of cremation and the use of ashes and bones. From the information gathered by Laytner it becomes clear that claims about the alleged document are based on the data published by the survivor and historian Eugen Kogon in 1946 and then republished by Reimund Schnabel in the book Macht ohne Moral and then mistaken by various authors as an actual document.

Unfortunately, the title of the article, chosen not by the author but rather by a Tablet editor (acc. to a personal communication from Mel Laytner) is absolutely misleading. There is no actual document involved, so there was no "fake Nazi document" to speak of, nobody forged an actual document in this case.

Fake Footage of Auschwitz-Birkenau Football Match in Hungarian Documentary

As I learned from this youtube clip, there is a documentary KL Auschwitz by Bárány László from 2008 aired on Hungarian television including footage of a football match apparently taking place in Auschwitz-Birkenau (here and here). On a closer look, it turns out that the scenes are not authentic footage from the concentration camp.

Is The French Holocaust Denier Thierry Gosselin As Dense As a Black Hole?

A French anti-denier who goes by the nickname "Max Ou" has written a short post on his interactions with the French Youtube-based denier Thierry Gosselin.

He calls attention to a video in which Gosselin denies the authenticity of the Becker letter (which, by the way, is authentic without question) on the basis of the SS-rune being used in it.

Apparently Gosselin was unaware of the basic well-known fact that many Nazi typewriters had this double rune as an extra key. Need I say more?

Gosselin even promised 1000€ to anyone who could provide evidence of such a typewriter, and upon being showered with evidence deleted the comments, then deleted the video and reuploaded it without the parts which show him to be an imbecilic ignoramus.

Max Ou saved the relevant part of the clip though:

Needless to say, the denier scammer never paid out the promised 1000€ and even claimed that the photos of the German typewriters with the SS rune were made in Hollywood.

I'll just quote Max Ou's summary, to which I have nothing to add:

Anyone familiar with the contemporary documentation knows that there are many examples of "SS" typed in this way. It is common knowledge that the Nazis made typewriters with this special character. Obviously Thierry Gosselin denies the Holocaust without having the slightest notion about the documents of that time and about the Nazi regime. Below I provide a link to high quality photographs of such a typewriter... (which of course strike down all the beautiful "demonstrations" of Gosselin). It is interesting to note that all the "arguments" of Thierry Gosselin, highly technical, elaborate, "scientific" (including technical drawings, AutoCAD measures - no less) on all aspects that allow him to conclude that this and other documents are "fake", are made with the same assurance. This speaks volumes about their real value. All this is only bluff camouflaging gross incompetence.

The tree-hanging photo was not a fake after all...

For years I thought that the famous tree-hanging photo from Buchenwald was a fake. That is, a propaganda photo (or a montage) that was specifically made in order to deceive.

I based this on an article by Wolfgang Ayaß and Dietfrid Krause-Vilmar "Mit Argumenten gegen die Holocaust-Leugnung" in Polis №19, the relevant part of which was based on Herbert Obenaus, "Das Foto vom Baumhängen - ein Bild geht um die Welt", in Gedenkstätten-Rundbrief, №68.

According to these authors the photo was staged by DEFA. But as someone has pointed out, there is now a newer piece of research that establishes the actual origin of the photo. It's Holm Kirsten, "Das Fotoarchiv der Gedenkstätte Buchenwald", Archive in Thüringen, Tagungsband 2010, S.22ff. Kirsten writes that it has recently become possible to find out the name of the photographer - it was the former inmate Willem Hoogwerf from the Netherlands who made the photos with a camera that was a present from an American solider. This and a couple of other similar photos were made between 15 and 26 April 1945. The original description of the photo was found:

Reconstruction of one of the "light punishments". The SS man was forced by the Americans to cooperate. Later the SS personnel were shot, exactly like in Dachau, Neuengamme, etc.

The photo thus was not intended to deceive and was clearly marked as a reconstruction (which represented something that actually had happened). That later propagandists misused it, ignoring the original intent, does not make the original photo a fake, nor does the fact that it does not depict an authentic scene - it's no more fake than Schindler's List or Katyń.

Some will say: well, what's the difference? The difference is intent.

Obviously, deniers have been using it as an example of Allied fakery - and I can't blame them - but if they want to be honest, they should stop doing it now.

Oh, who am I kidding.

The denier logic at its finest: the famous Buchenwald photo.

Deniers wouldn't be deniers if they had a modicum of common sense. Case in point, a guy who goes under the nickname "The Black Rabbit of Inlé".