Merged General Holocaust denial discussion Part IV

[Jeffk 1970]

But it would take a while, and I don’t have the patience for it.

Then why did you bother to come here? Is raising a ruckus worth it?

 

[Matthew Ellard]

... Either people like David Irving, David Cole, or Fred Leuchter were lying,...

You really need to keep up with the times.

David Cole recants
"I would like to state for the record that there is no question in my mind that during the Holocaust of Europe's Jews during World War II, the Nazis employed gas chambers in an attempt to commit genocide against the Jews. At camps in both Eastern and Western Europe, Jews were murdered in gas chambers which employed such poison gases as Zyklon B and carbon monoxide (in the Auschwitz camp, for example, the gas chambers used Zyklon B). The evidence for this is overwhelming and unmistakable.
http://wildernesschristianity.net/info/Auschwitz/geniebusters_04h_Cole.html

David Irving recants
"Irving says he was never a denier, though there seems copious evidence that he was. Now he believes at least four million and possibly six million Jewish people died....."
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/lif...d/news-story/f9560bc91a1e1543cc957df5434469ed

 

[LemmyCaution]

You really need to keep up with the times.

David Cole recants

Indeed, and also other oft-quoted deniers like Eric Hunt. I have yet to see any denier deal with David Cole's rather sharp criticisms of denial in his piece Unicornville and the Holocaust Deniers. Perhaps ShamelessGit will be the first to do so . . .

 

[Nessie]

.....

I will prove by contradiction that the official Holocaust story is false.

......

I prefer proof by use of evidence. Got any?

I can prove by evidence from witnesses, documents etc that the British did not gas any German, Austrian or Italian they had interred in camps on the Isle of Man during WWII.

Let me see you prove by evidence from witnesses, documents etc that the Nazis did not gas any Jewish person they had imprisoned in camps in Poland.

Deniers arrogantly think that their opinion and their so called logic can be used in lieu of evidence. Fact is, it cannot.

 

[LemmyCaution]

ShamelessGit,

One reason Eric Hunt abandoned denial is a very simple problem he could not solve. He stated it like this in 2014:

I would like to form a team to get as much new information about where did the Warsaw Jews go from July 22nd - September 21st 1942, specifically individuals talking about being transited during this time period ANYWHERE and surviving.

This is one of the perceived holes in the Revisionist case and if we can help plug it up more than has been done by Mattogno, Graf, Kues, it will do a great service to our cause. In fact if we could get enough information it'd be all over for the Treblinka hoax.

Hunt got not a single taker, removed the webpage with his plea, and eventually came to agree that the Nazis killed 100s of 1000s of Jews in gas chambers at Treblinka.

Can you solve the problem Hunt sketched out? I can. So can Eric Hunt now.

best, LC

 

[beachnut]

Rule Two -

I didn't know ...

Forecasting the future based on the past. Maybe you could have won the million dollar challenge. There will be proof to come.

Rule One -

I didn't put a whole lot of effort into it, ...

Cause and effect.

Claim: Hitler came up with the idea of holocausting 6 million Jews

Claim: Hitler came up with the idea of holocausting 6 million Jews ...

Got a source for this observation based on rule one and two.
How could your hero Hitler come up with anything but love for Jews. Gee whiz the Führer loved Jews. In his super book Mein Kampf he mentions the root word jew 513 times; he must love jews. No wonder Einstein left Germany, he could not stand that much love. With 513 mentions of jew, why is his book not called "Why I love Jews more than life Itself"?

Can't wait for more insight based on rule one, and lots of rule two.

 

[Hans]

A side discussion of the holocaust, Jews, Germans, concentration camps, etc has branched out in the History sub forum in a thread about Finland's independence from Russia for 100 years.

Thread title: Finland celebrates 100 years independence today

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=325395&page=4

I would suggest that some of the experts here might want to drop by and add in their expertise.

 

[Nessie]

That is just a debate about what counts as the Holocaust, with one poster (ddt) calling another (Vixen) a denier because he disagrees with the others definition. But the usual, standard, common definition of the Holocaust is the murder of the Jews. Those with more knowledge of who was gassed and shot includes Roma and other groups also despised by the Nazis.

I do not think that the Holocaust commonly refers to everyone killed by the Nazis during WWII. I also think that it should not be used as the term for all deaths.

There is a difference between war casualties and those targeted in a genocide.

 

[Nessie]

I have now been de facto banned from RODOH.

The final straw has been taking every opportunity possible to turn the debate back on the deniers and ask then to evidence their belief millions were transported back out of the AR camps and were later liberated from camps at the end of the war.

Then the Black Rabbit of Inle made a return and posted this in a thread which was trying to claim various Nazis denied that there was an operation to murder Jews. It is from an interview of Himmler in captivity in 1945;

"I asked Himmler to tell us the number of Jews still alive in the camps, and he listed the following figures:
Theresienstadt 25,000
Rawensbruck 20,000
Mauthausen 20 to 30,000
in addition to smaller numbers in several other camps. Also he claimed that in the camps captured by the Allies, the following number of Jews were left
Auschwitz 150,000
Bergen-Belsen 50,000
Buchenwald 6,000
It seemed to me that his claims were false, and certainly, with respect to Auschwitz, greatly exaggerated.

If denialism was true, those numbers should have been significantly higher and covering far more camps. Himmler is in effect admitting few Jews survived and he goes on;

"In Hungary, Himmler claimed to have left 450,000 Jews "So what were the thanks for this?", he said sanctimoniously, The Jews shot at our troops in Budapest". I objected: If there were 450,000 Jews left of the original 850,000, it means that 400,000 Jews were deported to an unknown destiny. The Jews left in Hungary could not know what fate the Germans had in mind for them, and that was the reason for this kind of reaction." Himmler pushed such arguments aside, apparently he appropriated the well-known verse of LaFontaine "This animal is very bad, when attacked, it defends itself" to his own purpose."

He is admitting the Hungarian Jews taken to Birkenau were not expected to live. Pointing out to the deniers that even Himmler was admitting few Jews were liberated appears to have been the final straw.

 

[teamMerkel]

Hey guys. : )
I don't even know how to begin this post, haha....well, I'll try. English is not my first language so bear with me.
I was never deeply interested in history and besides watching documentaries or listening to some Dan Carlin podcast from time to time, I spent no time reading or studying any kind of historical events.

Some years back I stumbled upon one of those videos where some guy shows you newspapers from the early 20th century with the "6 Million Jews" articles. I thought it was weird, and did some internet research and I guess you guys know where that leads you: Holocaust deniers, their blogs, their websites, their videos, their books.
I never considered myself a denier but I have to admit that I became fascinated with Holocaust denial. Could the gas chambers really be a lie? That would be so unbelievably twisted. I have to say that I wanted it to be true (the gas chambers being a lie) and that at times I was not honest to myself. Because I wanted the deniers to be right, my view was biased.

With all that said, I'm still a skeptic. You can't choose to believe or to not believe something and while I strongly believe that millions of Jews were obviously persecuted, interned, enslaved, tortured and murdered by the Nazis, there are still moments when I doubt that millions of people were gassed with Zyklon B.
I'm just honest, I can't help it and I hope you don't mock me for that.

I'd like to point out some things that I find weird. And maybe some of you can answer a few of my questions as it seems that many of you know a lot more about history than I do.
Those are mostly naive questions of a skeptic that doesn't know better.


1) I read some of the transcripts of the Nürnberg trials (I'm german so I might use some german words at times) and Rudolf Hoess confessed that "at least 2.500.000" people were gassed at Auschwitz while 500.000 died of disease and starvation.
How does he come up with this number? He said Eichmann told him, but how can you be off by almost 1,5 million?

2) There is a short clip on youtube called "Auschwitz-Prozeß Krakau 1948" documenting the Auschwitz trial and stating that "alltogether almost 300.000 people from different nations died at Auschwitz".
How is it possible that, in 1948, they came to the conclusion that "only" 300.000 people died at Auschwitz? Also, they don't mention gas chambers.
I looked for a transcript for that trial but couldn't find one. Does anyone have more information?

3) Auschwitz Death Books. I read that many people in those books were either very old (over 70) or very young (under 10). Yet I don't know if I can trust the source. Does anyone know if this is true? How is that possible when the official story is that every child and every old person not suitable for work was gassed on arrival? Is there an online version of the death books?

4) I'm currently reading the book of Shlomo Venezia about his time working in the Sonderkommando. I was under the impression that the men working the Sonderkommando were usually killed after some time to get rid of witnesses. Is that true? Well, he describes that, before the evacuation they were sent to their barrack and specifically told to stay there by the SS. They never said that before, so Shlomo got suspicious and they escaped, posing as regular prisoners being evacuated. The SS would then ask "Who worked at the Sonderkommando?" many times during the evacuation.
So they were really that sloppy with their SoKo prisoners? Just leaving them at the barracks unguarded? And why did the SS not come up with the idea to look up their tattoo? Surely, they must have known which prisoners worked in the Sonderkommando?

5) Why were all these people evacuated anyway? (Same goes for Anne Frank) I was under the impression that the Nazis somehow wanted to exterminate the Jews. Why did they, in times of war, being overran by the Soviets lead so many prisoners westward? Why didn't they let them starve, freeze to death, why didn't they shoot them?

6) How is it that the Nazis could cremate 3 dead bodies in 30 minutes while it takes modern crematoria between 70 and 90 minutes to cremate one body? I know these questions sound super naive, but stuff like that doesn't make sense to me. Why don't these guys today just save time and energy and use the advanced technique the Nazis used?

7) What do you guys think deniers believe? Do you think they secretly believe in gas chambers yet somehow spend so much time trying to debunk them because they want to whitewash Hitler and the 3rd Reich?

That's it for now, thx for reading/answering : )

 

[Hans]

deleted

I have to ask if you are so interested in the subject why didn't you just look up the extensive material of the various subjects? Taking one at random, the cremations, there is lots of information on that subject - how come you couldn't find it?

 

[Cosmic Yak]

7) What do you guys think deniers believe? Do you think they secretly believe in gas chambers yet somehow spend so much time trying to debunk them because they want to whitewash Hitler and the 3rd Reich?

If you'd read any of the previous posts in this thread, you would have found that our resident deniers seem to be motivated by anti-semitism, pure and simple. This leads them to assume that the "Evil Jews" must be lying about everything, and that, by extension, the Holocaust is a hoax. To what extent they actually sympathise with the Nazis is unclear, but there is a fair amount of neo-Nazi propaganda in their posts that gives at least the suspicion that they are indeed pro-Nazi.
This would also explain why they stick to their denial despite every claim being soundly debunked. Skepticism is evidence-based, and denial is more faith/ ideology-based, which is why facts alone cannot shake it.

 

[teamMerkel]

I have to ask if you are so interested in the subject why didn't you just look up the extensive material of the various subjects? Taking one at random, the cremations, there is lots of information on that subject - how come you couldn't find it?

There is no extensive material that I'm aware of, dealing with my questions.
The Holocaust controversies blog has some interesting entries, but I can't remember reading about those specific topics.
(Maybe number 5 is somewhat stupid and not asked in absolute honesty)

I'm dead honest here, if you know of some logical explanation that I can look up somewhere why cremations nowadays take 2 or 3 times as long as 70 years ago, could you please provide me with a link? Or maybe I'm wrong and cremations today don't take 70-90 minutes. I just looked up a couple of crematoria and they had those numbers.

If you'd read any of the previous posts in this thread, you would have found that our resident deniers seem to be motivated by anti-semitism, pure and simple. This leads them to assume that the "Evil Jews" must be lying about everything, and that, by extension, the Holocaust is a hoax. To what extent they actually sympathise with the Nazis is unclear, but there is a fair amount of neo-Nazi propaganda in their posts that gives at least the suspicion that they are indeed pro-Nazi.
This would also explain why they stick to their denial despite every claim being soundly debunked. Skepticism is evidence-based, and denial is more faith/ ideology-based, which is why facts alone cannot shake it.

Sure, internet deniers often come off as trolls, Jew-haters and Nazis. Agree 100%.
I was thinking about guys like Germar Rudolf who spent over 25 years trying to disprove the Holocaust. And I was wondering if he really believes that gas chambers in Auschwitz are a lie. If he is a normal human, he must have doubts about his truth too, right? But then, 25 years of writing, reading, researching, sitting in jail would be for nothing.
So I agree with you, denial is faith/ideology based. It has to be this way (gas chambers and mass murder with Zyklon B are a lie), there is no other option and all research has to reach the same conclusion.

On the other hand, people who believe in the official narrative seem to follow an ideology too. Their truth is set in stone so there is no way that reality can diverge from that truth.
Back in the day people seemed to believe that people were gassed in Dachau. I would guess that, if you had questioned that at some point of time, you would have been called a denier.
Which can't lead us to the conclusion that there were no gassings in Auschwitz, obviously.

One thing that bothers me the most is that people go to jail for saying what they believe. Whatever their motives are, be they Nazis, Antisemites or truly convinced that the official Holocaust story is a lie.
Someone in this thread stated that Haverbeck should have been sent to jail for 5 years and I couldn't disagree more. I don't get that opinion, it doesn't make any sense to me, from a logical perspective.
There is a guy in my town who stands in the city centre on most days, waving the Sovjet flag and trying to convince people that communism is the best **** ever.
Would he be waving the Nazi flag repeatedly, he'd go to jail.
Yet in the Sowjet Union, people were killed by the thousands when Hitler was not even close to coming to power and they still killed people by the thousands when Hitler was dead.
Glorifying one regime that killed millions, no problem, glorifying the other, jail time. Don't get me wrong, I don't think you should glorify either but I'm absolutely convinced that you should be able to state your opinion, however stupid or evil it is.

 

[Pacal]

Hey guys. : )
I don't even know how to begin this post, haha....well, I'll try. English is not my first language so bear with me.
I was never deeply interested in history and besides watching documentaries or listening to some Dan Carlin podcast from time to time, I spent no time reading or studying any kind of historical events.

Some years back I stumbled upon one of those videos where some guy shows you newspapers from the early 20th century with the "6 Million Jews" articles. I thought it was weird, and did some internet research and I guess you guys know where that leads you: Holocaust deniers, their blogs, their websites, their videos, their books.
I never considered myself a denier but I have to admit that I became fascinated with Holocaust denial. Could the gas chambers really be a lie? That would be so unbelievably twisted. I have to say that I wanted it to be true (the gas chambers being a lie) and that at times I was not honest to myself. Because I wanted the deniers to be right, my view was biased.

With all that said, I'm still a skeptic. You can't choose to believe or to not believe something and while I strongly believe that millions of Jews were obviously persecuted, interned, enslaved, tortured and murdered by the Nazis, there are still moments when I doubt that millions of people were gassed with Zyklon B.

First of all it is doubtful that millions were gassed with Zyclon B and I doubt any serious Holocaust historian, (Deniers by definition are not serious anything.), would say so. The great majority of Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust were killed by bullets, starvation and gassed by stuff like carbon monoxide. The number of Jews killed by Zyklon B is almost certainly less than 2 million but probably over a million. The total of Jews slaughtered in the holocaust is still somewhere between 5.5-6.5 million.

I'm just honest, I can't help it and I hope you don't mock me for that.

I'd like to point out some things that I find weird. And maybe some of you can answer a few of my questions as it seems that many of you know a lot more about history than I do.
Those are mostly naive questions of a skeptic that doesn't know better.


1) I read some of the transcripts of the Nürnberg trials (I'm german so I might use some german words at times) and Rudolf Hoess confessed that "at least 2.500.000" people were gassed at Auschwitz while 500.000 died of disease and starvation.
How does he come up with this number? He said Eichmann told him, but how can you be off by almost 1,5 million?

It appears that Hoess, just like Eichmann, exaggerated his "accomplishment". If you read Hoess truly sick memoir it is clear that he took a perverse pride in his "accomplishment" and thus exaggerated it. Eichmann's postwar talks with his fellow former Nazis in Argentina also display a perverse pride in his "accomplishment" and sadness that he didn't complete his "task". I.e., that some people escaped him.

2) There is a short clip on youtube called "Auschwitz-Prozeß Krakau 1948" documenting the Auschwitz trial and stating that "alltogether almost 300.000 people from different nations died at Auschwitz".

How is it possible that, in 1948, they came to the conclusion that "only" 300.000 people died at Auschwitz? Also, they don't mention gas chambers.
I looked for a transcript for that trial but couldn't find one. Does anyone have more information?

If it's the trial I'm thinking of the 300,000 dead refer to those who were shot, starved and worked to death in the labour camp at Auschwitz and does not refer to those sent to be gassed at the nearby death camp of Birkenau, which is often included in what people describe has Auschwitz.

3) Auschwitz Death Books. I read that many people in those books were either very old (over 70) or very young (under 10). Yet I don't know if I can trust the source. Does anyone know if this is true? How is that possible when the official story is that every child and every old person not suitable for work was gassed on arrival? Is there an online version of the death books?

Only a few of the older or younger people escaped being murdered as a result of the selection process. Mainly those with useful skills or those for medical experimental purposes. Virtually none of the Jewish survivors of Auschwitz were very young or very old. However the camp also contained a large number of non Jews, sent there has hostages, forced labour etc. In fact a large number of Gypsies were held there in a "Family" camp in complete families. (Most of them were eventually murdered.)

4) I'm currently reading the book of Shlomo Venezia about his time working in the Sonderkommando. I was under the impression that the men working the Sonderkommando were usually killed after some time to get rid of witnesses. Is that true? Well, he describes that, before the evacuation they were sent to their barrack and specifically told to stay there by the SS. They never said that before, so Shlomo got suspicious and they escaped, posing as regular prisoners being evacuated. The SS would then ask "Who worked at the Sonderkommando?" many times during the evacuation.
So they were really that sloppy with their SoKo prisoners? Just leaving them at the barracks unguarded? And why did the SS not come up with the idea to look up their tattoo? Surely, they must have known which prisoners worked in the Sonderkommando?

The number of survivors of the Sonderkommando's was pathetic. It was routine to murder them and then replace them. Frankly in the last few weeks before the Russians came in late January 1945 things were utterly chaotic in Auschwitz. In fact there were orders to kill all those prisoners who couldn't be marched out. Despite this thousands of very sick but alive prisoners were left for the Russians. Those who were marched out died by thousands from exhaustion, being shot etc.

Shlomo Venezia explanation of his survival rings true to me at least.

5) Why were all these people evacuated anyway? (Same goes for Anne Frank) I was under the impression that the Nazis somehow wanted to exterminate the Jews. Why did they, in times of war, being overran by the Soviets lead so many prisoners westward? Why didn't they let them starve, freeze to death, why didn't they shoot them?

Well first of all the Nazis did in fact allow prisoners to starve to death, die of disease, worked them to death, shot them and gassed them. Anne Frank for example died of starvation in Belsen. At least 1.5 million Jews were shot by Einsatzgruppen. Jews routinely starved to death in the ghettos set up by the Nazis. However the Nazis wanted a more "scientific", "rational" way of killing people. Shooting by bullets was too hard on the would be murderers, so gassing was considered a less traumatic, for the killers, way of murdering people. I should also point out, that working a cross purposes to the aim of mass murder was the desire to get some use of the able bodied prisoners by working them to death.

But the goal was in the end to kill.

6) How is it that the Nazis could cremate 3 dead bodies in 30 minutes while it takes modern crematoria between 70 and 90 minutes to cremate one body? I know these questions sound super naive, but stuff like that doesn't make sense to me. Why don't these guys today just save time and energy and use the advanced technique the Nazis used?

Modern day crematoria generally burn one body at a time and seek to reduce the body to complete ash. Are you seriously suggesting that if you put two bodies in the same crematoria it would take 140-180 minutes to burn them to ash? That is like saying that with a conventional oven if it takes 30 minutes to bake one cake it would take 60 minutes to bake two cakes. Further since the Nazis weren't interested in burning bodies to complete ash it would of course take less time. Human fat burns so a pile of human bodies burning would generate a lot of heat and accelerate the burning process. Since, I hope!, modern day crematoria aren't interested in mass burning of piles of dead humans I suspect they would have little to learn from Nazis techniques of burning the bodies of murdered men, women and children.

7) What do you guys think deniers believe? Do you think they secretly believe in gas chambers yet somehow spend so much time trying to debunk them because they want to whitewash Hitler and the 3rd Reich?

That's it for now, thx for reading/answering : )

If you have been truly reading denier blogs and watching denier youtube videos then you would be well aware that the great majority of deniers are anti-semites of a truly repellent variety. And in fact many while denying that the Holocaust happened, say they wish it had happened

Frankly your post reminds me a little too much of the "Just asking questions" gambit.

 

[Loss Leader]

First of all ...

Thank you for the detailed and informative post. Saved me an hour of research.

 

[LemmyCaution]

there are still moments when I doubt that millions of people were gassed with Zyklon B.

You are right to doubt this, because only deniers claim such a thing. Roughly put, scholars conclude that

* about 900,000 Jews perished in Auschwitz-Birkenau, most but not all from Zyklon B gassing
* about 150,000-175,000 Jews were killed using carbon monoxide in gas vans at Chelmno in the Warthegau
* about 59,000 Jews perished at Majdanek, fewer than 20,000 of them from CO in fixed gas chambers (possibly a few 1000s of these from Zyklon B)
* about 1,400,000 Jews were murdered in gas chambers using CO from engine exhaust in three Einsatz Reinhard camps (Treblinka, Sobibor, Belize)

That is a total of less than 2,500,000 Jews killed in gas chambers, of them fewer than 900,000 from Zyklon B.

* 1,500,000 Jews were slaughtered in open-air shootings (and some 1000s gassed by CO in mobile vans) in the occupied USSR
* about 2,100,000 Jews perished in the Transnistria and a variety of camps - from privation and other indirect means
* about 800,000 Jews died in ghettos from privation, beatings and shootings, etc

That gives a total of Jewish deaths of somewhat more than 5,100,000. Some estimates have about 5,500,000 or more Jews dying. The proportions are about the same as I’ve given here.

As to your individual points 1-7, these are very common denier objections, which have been looked at in depth. I don’t want to reply offhandedly, so I will come back and post later, with links to where others have answered.

 

[LemmyCaution]

Thank you for the detailed and informative post. Saved me an hour of research.

ditto, I will instead of reinventing Pacal's wheel, annotate Pacal's post with some links and references, taking teamMerkel at his/her word that more sources and in-depth reading are desirable

 

[Hans]

There is no extensive material that I'm aware of, dealing with my questions.

Hahahahahaa

Well you see there is this thing called the internet & google and you use key words....lol

.....oh yeah the classic 'playing dumb and just asking questions routine'.....okay have fun but I'm not playing.

I'll just sit back and watch as your real position becomes very clear as others pick up your challenge.

 

[LemmyCaution]

Here are some quick thoughts/riffing on Pacal's post . . .

It appears that Hoess, just like Eichmann, exaggerated his "accomplishment". If you read Hoess truly sick memoir it is clear that he took a perverse pride in his "accomplishment" and thus exaggerated it. Eichmann's postwar talks with his fellow former Nazis in Argentina also display a perverse pride in his "accomplishment" and sadness that he didn't complete his "task". I.e., that some people escaped him.

Reflections on Höss's two differing estimates of the Jewish death toll at Auschwitz are found in the links below (I am sure there are many more such discussions but let's start with these):

Axis History Forum starting here

Nizkor FAQ’s on Höss

Roberto Muehlenkamp at the Rodoh forum

If it's the trial I'm thinking of the 300,000 dead refer to those who were shot, starved and worked to death in the labour camp at Auschwitz and does not refer to those sent to be gassed at the nearby death camp of Birkenau, which is often included in what people describe has Auschwitz.

I don't think a lot has been written about this. Revisionist Michael Mills has told David Irving about this trial that

The 300,000 figure most probably refers to the number of registered prisoners who died. [Gerald] Reitlinger quoted a similar figure in his 1953 book The Final Solution; as I recall, he wrote that something like 400,000 persons were registered as prisoners at Auschwitz-Birkenau, and of these some 300,000 were recorded as having died.

http://www.fpp.co.uk/Letters/History/Mills060899.html

Here is some background on the death books: https://www.hdot.org/debunking-denial/ab2-death-books/, differentiating between registered prisoners and unregistered prisoners. And here is additional information on the registration process and death books: http://www.skepticforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=26581#p503377

IIRC in Höss's Polish trial he was charged with a much higher number of deaths - I'd have to check but millions for sure.

The number of survivors of the Sonderkommando's was pathetic. It was routine to murder them and then replace them. Frankly in the last few weeks before the Russians came in late January 1945 things were utterly chaotic in Auschwitz. In fact there were orders to kill all those prisoners who couldn't be marched out. Despite this thousands of very sick but alive prisoners were left for the Russians. Those who were marched out died by thousands from exhaustion, being shot etc.

Shlomo Venezia explanation of his survival rings true to me at least.

Recently, I had the good fortune to attend a talk by Gideon Greif, an Israeli scholar whose work focuses on the Birkenau Sonderkommando. I posted my notes on his talk at another forum (SSF). Here are some excerpts that are pertinent to this point:

* Greif estimates that 80-100 SK members survived, that by 1986 when his research began 31 remained alive - Greif attributed the survival of the 80-100 to laxness and negligence by Camp SS as the Germans faced the advance of the Red Army - I believe that he said it was on the night of 16-17 January in block 16 that the survivors decided to slip away from their barrack and "mingle" (I didn't get to ask about SS pursuit of survivors within Birkenau or to other camps); because they were well fed and in good physical condition, virtually all those SK members who departed Birkenau on the death marches survived the marches

* SK members were all male, aged 15-1/2 to 42 years old; aside from some Poles, mostly early on - and the 20 or so Russians from Majdanek - they were Jews; non-Jews were overrepresented among the functionaries - Grief called out the roles of Vorarbeiter, Kapo, Oberkapo (for a long time, before being shot, Jakob Kaminsky was Oberkapo)

* SK members survived at Birkenau from 1 hour to 2-1/2 years; from time to time groups of 300-400 were removed from the squad and shot (on a single occasion gassed) and replaced with new members selected from incoming transports

The periodic liquidations of some members of the Sonderkommando which Greif has identified were seen by some contemporary witnesses as complete liquidations: they were not complete, regular killings. Strzelecki's book, The Evacuation, Dismantling and Liberation of KL Auschwitz, confirms what Greif said in his talk about the chaos and breakdown of order in the camp which enabled Sonderkommando members to escape (by joining to death march).

Well first of all the Nazis did in fact allow prisoners to starve to death, die of disease, worked them to death, shot them and gassed them. Anne Frank for example died of starvation in Belsen. At least 1.5 million Jews were shot by Einsatzgruppen. Jews routinely starved to death in the ghettos set up by the Nazis. However the Nazis wanted a more "scientific", "rational" way of killing people. Shooting by bullets was too hard on the would be murderers, so gassing was considered a less traumatic, for the killers, way of murdering people. I should also point out, that working a cross purposes to the aim of mass murder was the desire to get some use of the able bodied prisoners by working them to death.

But the goal was in the end to kill.)

Specifically on the 1944-1945 evacuations of Auschwitz, Majdanek and other KLs, it should be noted that German labor policy, due in part to wartime military requirements which depleted the German workforce, changed in the course of the war; by war's end, the labor situation was so desperate that the Nazis were moving Jews back to factories in Germany to fill workforce shortages, as well as locating factories in KLs. As the KL system came apart, the Nazis tried to preserve labor - the process was neither organized nor efficient; it was, in fact, as chaotic as one would expect as Germany was losing the war. Also, Himmler, trying to curry favor with the Allies and save his own neck, had terminated the Final Solution and specifically the gassing program at Birkenau in fall 1944. Without this background, the evacuations don't make sense, indeed. A good book on this is Daniel Blatman, The Death Marches: The Final Phase of Nazi Genocide. The killing didn't stop but the systematic extermination of the Jews was no longer underway by winter 1944-1945.

There is truly a massive quantity of research and writing on the main issues of the Holocaust. Here is a handy list of typical questions deniers raise, with short answers, from Sergey Romanov at HC: http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2017/05/rebutting-twitter-denial-most-popular.html

 

[Hans]

There is truly a massive quantity of research and writing on the main issues of the Holocaust. Here is a handy list of typical questions deniers raise, with short answers, from Sergey Romanov at HC: http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2017/05/rebutting-twitter-denial-most-popular.html

Excellent response and resources

I especially like the 'typical questions'.

1. Revision of the Auschwitz plaque.
2. Detached Krema I chimney?
3. Flimsy gas chamber door with a window?
4. Leuchter's report.
5. Alleged lies by the British government.
6. The First Holocaust canard.
7. Auschwitz swimming pool, hospital etc.
8. Arbeit macht frei.
9. The World Almanac canard.
10. The Red Cross stats canard.
11. The Red Cross inspected the death camps?
12. Gas chambers not mentioned in the memoirs of Churchill, Eisenhower, de Gaulle?
13. Elie Wiesel did not mention gas chambers?
14. Elie Wiesel an impostor?
15. More Wiesel stuff.
16. Auschwitz decodes.
17. Survivors did not see or hear about gas chambers?
18. Anne Frank diary.
19. Rassinier denied Auschwitz gas chambers. Or was that Thies Christophersen?
20. The Larson canard.
21. Fake, unreliable or mistaken witnesses.
22. Scratched gas chamber walls?
23. Dachau gas chamber.
24. Survivor Lieberman and the Auschwitz ovens.
25. The Lachout document.
26. Fake Holocaust photos?
27. Science debunks Holocaust?
28. No Britannica mention of gas chambers?
29. Dr. Listojewski? Simon Wiesenthal's quote?
30. Small children and people unfit for work in Auschwitz?
31. Jews lie about the Holocaust?
32. Predetermined death toll?
33. Hilberg and famous witnesses shown to be liars, impostors during the Zündel trial?
34. Schindler's list a tale of fiction?
35. Bruno Baum admitted that false propaganda was created in Auschwitz?
36. Changing camp death tolls?
37. Death camps found only by the Soviets?
38. Rick debunks the Holocaust?