Mattogno on Photographic Documentation

This article contains very graphic images that may disturb sensitive readers.

On page 402 of his recent Einsatzgruppen "masterpiece",^[1] Carlo Mattogno writes the following:

If these extraordinary Soviet discoveries, of which I have used those relating to the Ukraine as an example, were authentic, they should be confirmed by hundreds of photographs of mass graves and of exhumations taken by the various warcrimes commissions, and showing hundreds of thousands of bodies. However, photographs of this type are incredibly scarce. This is also true for the most prestigious among Holocaust archives, such as those at Yad Vashem, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Ghetto Fighter House.

Over this and the following 7 pages (402 to 410), Mattogno then treats his readers to a litany of juxtapositions between the number of corpses (if any) that can be seen on published photographs of a number of killing sites and the number of people killed at these sites according to various sources – German documents (namely the Jäger Report^[2]), Soviet investigation reports or historical writing.

In this article I will test the aforementioned arguments for substance.

Smoke Over Birkenau in 1943

A reader of this blog called to our attention a ground photograph from the album of the construction offices in Auschwitz showing plums of smoke rising above Birkenau and wondered if it could be "smoke from bunker 1 and 2".

Yad Vashem Archives, Photo Archive, album FA157/74, item 46043

Location

The photograph was taken from about 500 m South-East of Auschwitz Birkenau with view on its South-East corner on the left and the main entrance gate on the right.

Date

Crematorium 3 seems to be visible on the far left of the picture, which was completed in 1943.  According to a document in Bartosik et al., The Beginnings of the Extermination of Jews in KL Auschwitz in the Light of the Source Materials, p.175, the vegetable storage houses in the foreground was still under construction in July 1943. Hence, the photograph was probably taken in summer 1943.

Origin of the Smoke

While the direction of the smoke could roughly correspond to the locations of Bunker 1 and Bunker 2 extermination sites, it is presumed that those sites were not in operation anymore in summer 1943 as the crematoria took over the extermination. Open air cremation might have taken place in August 1943 especially at crematorium 5 (see Open-Air Cremations in Auschwitz, August 1943). The exact origin of the smoke on the photograph seems unclear. Other than from cremation, it could be smoke from the chimneys of kitchens, delousing facilities or a narrow gauge railway transporting material to construction sites.

Bunker 2 Extermination Site in Auschwitz-Birkenau in Contemporary Photographs

The Auschwitz State Museum has published a 26-page booklet dedicated to Bunker 2 in Auschwitz-Birkenau (Bartosik & Martyniak, "Biały domek". Historia zagłady w bunkrze II, 2017). As already suggested by the front cover, the gassing facility known as Bunker 2 (in some accounts also Bunker 5) has been spotted on a photograph taken by the SS - AFAIK its only appearance in a contemporary ground photograph (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Construction site in Auschwitz-Birkenau, 1943 (Yad Vashem Archives, Photo Archives, Album FA157/344, Item 66393)

Evidence of Extermination in Pyatigorsk, North Caucacus

Back in 2011, Roberto included this image of a child called Svetlana in his excellent article The Atrocities committed by German-Fascists in the USSR (1). By comparing the image with this Yad Vashem page, I was able to establish that her full name was Svetlana Rudinskaya, she was killed on December 31, 1942 (or the following day), at the Mashuk Mountain overlooking Pyatigorsk in Stavropol Krai of the North Caucacus, and her body was exhumed on January 13, 1943.

The killing of the Jews of Pyatigorsk began on September 6-8, 1941, at the glass factory of Mineralnye Vody, according to the testimony of Pfeifer at his Soviet trial in 1968, after Jews from Essentuki and Zheleznovosk had been killed on September 2-5 and before Kislovodosk Jews were killed on September 9 (source: The Complete Black Book of Soviet Jewry). This was followed in October by murders in gas vans, according to testimonies here. The final action of the New Year was just prior to the German retreat and seems to have targeted professionals.

Mattogno on the Mass Graves at Ponary (Part 4)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

We now get to what are probably the most interesting images in the Yad Vashem collection of photos captioned as having been taken at Ponary.

Mattogno on the Mass Graves at Ponary (Part 3)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Now, let’s look at the Ponary photos that Mattogno "examined", and at what (other) photos that may be relevant to Mattogno’s argument regarding the exhumed corpses mentioned in the 26 August 1944 report (and/or to his other arguments presented in this context) are available in the online archives of The Ghetto Fighters House and Yad Vashem. All photos must, of course, be credited to the respective institution in whose archives they are featured, respectively The Ghetto Fighters’ House and Yad Vashem. Photos that appear in both collections are shown only once, with the references in each of these collections.

Whether or not they were taken at Ponary, some of these photos are very graphic and should not be viewed by sensitive readers.

Photographic Documentation of the Shooting of a Woman and Child in Miropol

This photograph was taken by the Slovak soldier, Skrovina Lubomir, in Miropol, Ukraine in October 1941. It is one of two known photographs documenting the shooting of women and children at close range in a public park by Ukrainian policemen attached to Order Police Battalion 303. Lubomir testified in Prague in 1958 that he was in a unit guarding bridges when he and two others were assigned to attend the execution, at which 94 Jews (including 49 children) were murdered. The two shooters on the photo are Ukrainian, the 3 Order Police commanders are German.

Source of the photo is USHMM, originally from Security Services Archive, Prague, H-770-3.0020. Source of the context and archival reference is Wendy Lower, 'Axis Collaboration, Operation Barbarossa, and the Holocaust in Ukraine', in A. Kay, J. Rutherford, & D. Stahel (eds.), Nazi Policy on the Eastern Front, 1941: Total War, Genocide, and Radicalization, Boydell & Brewer, 2012, p.200.

A Charge of Forgery Supported by Forgery: The Smearing of a Genuine Auschwitz Photo

a guest post by Andras Szilagyi

[An introductory note by Sergey Romanov: as I was browsing through the denier accounts on Twitter, I noticed that a new wild denier "theory" has appeared regarding the famous Auschwitz Sonderkommando photos (whose authenticity is not in any doubt despite the denier allegations). Turns out the CODOH zombies discussed it too, in all earnestness. I also found a very neat refutation of this claim on a Hungarian skeptics blog, asked the author if I could re-blog it here and got the permission. This case shows once again that there is no half-baked, harebrained conspiracy scheme that the deniers won't latch onto in order to deny the proven facts of history.]

Unsurprisingly, the process of industrial-scale genocide perpetrated in the Auschwitz death camp has been documented only by a few photographs taken on the spot. The exceptions include four photographs clandestinely taken by a few members of the Sonderkommando, the prisoners forced to dispose of the huge amount of corpses coming from the gas chambers. The photos were smuggled out of the camp in a tube of toothpaste, along with an accompanying letter. Out of the four photos, the best known is this one, showing the area of an open-air burning pit behind Crematorium V:

No Sonderkommando Prisoners on the Auschwitz Album Photograph In Front of Crematorium 5

Still stunned that Eric Hunt, who used to be one of the leading and most prominent deniers active on the internet, quit Holocaut denial. As Sergey has pointed out, while his main arguments to reject Holocaust denial (lack of evidence to account for the missing Jews and generally the wide range of evidence on Nazi atrocities) are no doubt good ones, some of his minor points he raised still have potential for improvement, so to say.

One such example is his treatment of the Auschwitz Album photograph showing a Jewish woman held by Jewish men near the crematorium 5. In the known context of the extermination of unfit Jews in Auschwitz-Birkenau it is likely that they were about to get murdered at crematorium 5. Quite possibly, the woman remembered rumors or sensed what was about to come and refused to advance further. Not unlikely given the close proximity to the killing site where they are.

Das Auschwitz Album, Wallstein Verlag, p. 240

According to Hunt, the three men who "almost look like gangsters" were members of the so called Jewish Sonderkommando working at the extermination site. But it's probably more simple than that.

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.

Mattogno and Father Patrick Desbois (3)

Mattogno and Father Patrick Desbois (1)
Mattogno and Father Patrick Desbois (2)
Mattogno and Father Patrick Desbois (3)
Mattogno and Father Patrick Desbois (4)
Mattogno and Father Patrick Desbois (5)

The previous blog of this series dissected Mattogno’s attacks on Desbois’ methodology for establishing mass killing sites, and his accusations of "numerical nonsense".

In this blog, we will have a look at Mattogno’s attempt, in sections 4 and 7 of his critique, to discredit witnesses interviewed by Desbois whose testimonies are rendered in Desbois’ book.

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".

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.

More Photographic Evidence of Exhumed Corpses in the USSR (Warning: Contains Links to Graphic Content)

Further to this previous post by Roberto, I add the following from the Yad Vashem site:

Bogdanovka

Krasnodar

Kramatorsk

Utena

Chernovtsy

Films and photos of Nazi crimes on Youtube

Last week I came upon this trailer of a History Channel documentary called "The Unseen Holocaust", which announces "newly discovered footage" showing Nazi mass killings "on the Eastern Front", i.e. in the areas of the former Soviet Union occupied by Nazi Germany during World War II.

Judgment at Nuremberg (1961 movie)

The 1961 movie Judgment at Nuremberg, starring Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark and Maximilian Schell, is a fictionalized dramatization of the Nuremberg "Justice Case", officially called "United States of America vs. Josef Altstoetter, et al".

Before I state my opinion about this film, some cautionary remarks about what I consider its weakest part, the presentation of documentary footage about Nazi crimes commented by prosecuting attorney Colonel Tad Lawson (Richard Widmark) after having been sworn in as a witness (1:30:22 to 1:36.07).  

Personal Movement in the Auschwitz-Birkenau Compound on 25 August 1944 Aerial Photographs

The mosquito aircraft targeting the Buna area in the late morning of 25 August 1944 had at least two vertical (but slightly shifted) cameras still on when passing over the nearby Auschwitz-Birkenau site. The cameras were taking pictures every few seconds. Given the height & speed of the aircraft and the comparable short interval time, the frames of each camera are largely overlapping and objects on the ground were captured three times by each camera. With image processing programs, animated gif files can be created revealing the movement of groups of people or single vehicles, which took place within those few seconds.  

Friedrich Jansson tries to help Mattogno …

… who, as I pointed out in the blog Friedrich Jansson responded …,, produced no arguments of significance against my substantiated assumptions regarding the height and weight of Polish Jews murdered at the AR camps. In his latest piece, with the amusingly (and characteristically) blusterous and accusatory title Muehlenkamp’s body-mass delusion: a case of BMI abuse, Jansson starts out bragging as follows:

Foundational to Roberto Muehlenkamp’s misrepresentations of the realities concerning burial space at the Reinhardt camps is his claim that Polish Jews weighed an average of 34 kilograms (75 pounds). This claim is based on the assumptions that (1) one third of the Jews were children (meaning under the age of 15), that (2) the adults weighed an average of 43 kg, and that (3) the children weighed an average of 16 kg.

This post will show how worthless are Muehlenkamp’s claims, and how mendacious his analysis. The passage under discussion is from Muehlenkamp’s contribution to the holocaust controversies manifesto, pp. 416-418, especially pp. 417-418; the results of this vital passage exert themselves throughout the rest of Muehlenkamp’s discussion of both burial space and cremation.

The Photograph of the Crematorium Site Undressing Scene in Auschwitz-Birkenau

A snapshot of a wooden area from Auschwitz (ASM neg. 282, close up from Swiebocka, Auschwitz: A history in photographs): Four naked women are walking to the left. Several other, unidentifiable persons and benches with clothes can be seen in the blurry background as well as two dressed male persons. The scene resembles the undressing of women. Without further context, it might show the bathing of people.

To say one thing straight away, the photograph was taken in Auschwitz-Birkenau. More precisely, the scene is taken place at the front yard of crematorium 5. Its eastern chimney is visible in the bottom right corner as observed by Auschwitz researcher Jean-Claude Pressac (Pressac, Technique, p. 424)

The Kamenets-Podolsky Massacre

Photographs of mass executions by Nazi mobile killing squads, shown by the poster "Northman" on the RODOH thread The einsatzgruppen reports, real or propaganda? (specifically here and here), led to an intense discussion with apostles of the "Revisionist" faith. One of the "Revisionist" participants, noted for both his verbosity and the repetitiveness of his feeble arguments, was my old acquaintance "k0nsl", who on another RODOH thread vehemently denied being the person he had been identified as by EXPO.

[Caution: links lead to graphic images.]
The (main) bones of "k0nsl"’s contention were a photo of a mass grave in the Bikernieki forest near Riga, shown in the blog Photos from the German East, and one of the three photos in the Yad Vashem photo archive linked to below, which are also linked to in the blog June 22, 1941:

USSR, dead bodies in a mass grave.
USSR, dead bodies in a mass grave. 
USSR, dead bodies in a mass grave.