Merged General Holocaust denial discussion Part IV

[LemmyCaution]

. . . three Einsatz Reinhard camps (Treblinka, Sobibor, Belize) . . .

Just noticed that I (spellcheck?) got Belize messed up in this! Belzec!!!

 

[LemmyCaution]

To the above issue of "millions of people were gassed with Zyklon B," Desbois (in his new book In Broad Daylight: The Secret Procedures behind the Holocaust by Bullets), pp viii, 257 states the Jewish death toll at the hands of various Nazi units in the occupied USSR as 2.2 million, broken down as follows:

* Ukraine 1.6 million (source: Kruglov, The Losses Suffered by Ukrainian Jews in 1941-1945, p 360)
* Belarus at least 0.5 million (source: Arad, The Holocaust in the Soviet Union, p 798)
* Russia 120,000 (source: Altman, Opfer des Hasses, p 348)

80% of the victims died by shooting, according to Father Desbois.

 

[Nick Terry]

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?

Because the Final Solution was suspended at the end of October 1944, which is when gassings ceased at Birkenau.

There were 700,000 prisoners in the concentration camp system in January 1945, several hundred thousand were Jewish forced labourers, whose value increased as the war went on, contradicting the earlier goal of extermination. Nazi Germany had lost most of its empire so there were no substitutes for Jews. Only two years earlier, the Nazis tried to clear out all remaining German Jews employed in forced labour from Germany proper; after May 1944 they had to reverse this policy in a U-turn because of the course of the war. This didn't stop them from killing hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews deemed unfit for work in May-July 1944, but it did mean over 100,000 Hungarian Jews were selected for forced labour after arrival at Auschwitz to be shipped all over, or used in the Auschwitz complex - there were other contingents who were 'luckier' than Jews in 1942, but basically, things changed significantly after the so-called 'Hungarian Action' in the late spring of 1944.

So the existing labour force in the Auschwitz camp complex, ditto the Stutthof camp complex, was valuable enough to evacuate westwards in January 1945, a procedure that still cost thousands of lives on death marches and decimated the surviving inmate population.

There weren't really sufficient SS forces available to kill off the remaining camp inmates if that had been a policy, but killings of prisoners to prevent them from falling into enemy hands happened in a number of locations, e.g. Klooga, a prison near Lodz in '45, Sonnenburg prison at the same time, Lieberose sub-camp of Sachsenhausen, and the Treblinka I labour camp in July 1944. Thousands died that way, but low hundreds of thousands died during or after evacuations.

 

[Nessie]

.....
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.
.....

Those who have an academic background, yet support denial claims, are the hardest to understand. Rudolf is a scientist, he has a degree, he should know what is needed to prove something did or did not take place, but he fails in two really basic ways.

1 - he wants his cake and to eat it. He concludes that gassing as described was impossible, whilst acknowledging that the witnesses give limited information, varying descriptions and like most witnesses are not reliable. The only truly reliable witness is a trained observer who is asked to record some event at a distance without stress or distraction. A scientist should know that. Students are trained to set up experiments, watch and record what took place using detailed accurate notes. Those at Birkenau were under immense stress and were not keeping precise records, checking and verifying as they went.

Rudolf then admits there is limited information from other sources on exactly how the gassing was done, how many were gassed each time and how long it took. It is not as if any Nazi kept records of each gassing, how long it took to clean the chamber etc. There are no photos of inside the kremas.

If the information Rudolf working from is not reliable and has details missing, how can his conclusion be guaranteed to be accurate? It cannot. It is a best guess at most, which is not science, let alone what you would expect from someone who has a degree qualification and is setting out to find proof. It is the logical fallacy of arguments from ignorance and incredulity.

We also know that is a definite fact if you lock people in a room and introduce Zyklon B, they will die. No one was allowed in the delousing chambers when clothes were being fumigated. It is also a fact those rooms could be reused time and time again, by airing them, removing the clothes, filling them up and delousing again. We also know that the kremas could cremate large numbers of bodies. So it is not an absolute physical impossibility for there to have been gassings and cremations in the Birkenau kremas.

2 - he does nothing to verify or follow up on his conclusion. If he is correct and there were no mass gassings at Birkenau, then there MUST HAVE BEEN mass transports back out of the camp, in particular when the c440,000 Hungarian Jews arrived over a few months in 1944. But there is no evidence of that, from Nazis, Hungarians, others who were prisoners at the camps, from transport records, Polish railway workers doing the transporting, arrivals at other camps, evidence of accommodation or Hungarians returning home or elsewhere after the war. But there is NO EVIDENCE of that happening, at all, from any source.

That alone shows no matter what Rudolph thinks about the impossibility of gassings, gassings is what took place. If, after elimination, the only possible is something that looks improbable, then it is not as improbable at it appears.

 

[teamMerkel]

Thanks a lot Pacal, Lemmy and Nick for the detailed answers.

Regarding 1), the Axis History Forum link helped and explained a lot.

What struck me as weird (reading the conversation between Hoess and Dr. Kauffmann in Nuernberg) was the fact that Hoess would on one hand admit to having killed 2,5 million people in gas chambers while on the other hand he stated that mistreatment and torture was not common and the exception. Staff that did actually mistreat prisoners was allegedly sanctioned and discharged.

Anyway, your explanations for 3, 4 and 5 make perfect sense, thanks.

Regarding the crematoria, I was not suggesting that it would take twice the time for two bodies, Pacal. All I was saying is that I find it weird that Topf&Soehne was capable of building ovens that could burn a body within 30 minutes while present time crematoria apparently take 70-90 minutes.
And why would they not have been interested to burn the bodies to complete ash? Did they have a bone mill in Auschwitz?

Hans, I don't mind you thinking whatever you want about me. I can't find any explanations for this specific question (regarding the cremation), maybe it comes off as insincere but I'm really wondering about details like that. I'm not playing dumb either, I'm genuinely interested in getting answers and erasing my doubts. I don't want to be a denier at all but you can't chose to have doubts about something or not.
I also have no "real position", absolutely not and I can assure you of that. I tried as honestly as I can to describe my doubts and concerns.

Regarding the 300,000 figure, I still don't get it and the explanation that it was referring to Auschwitz I and not Birkenau is incorrect, imho.
At least 3 defendants (I was just randomly checking if all defendants were working at Auschwitz I), Erich Mussfeldt, Maria Mandl and Fritz Buntrock were in Birkenau. At least two of them are said to have selected people for the gas chambers, Mussfeldt even worked under Moll who was supervising the Sonderkommando.
I can't find any transcripts for this trial and apparently there are none in english. (there seem to be very little info on that particular trial overall)
How do you think is it possible that they came up with that number? Were they not aware of the Nuernberg trials and what really happend? Surely, it must have been obvious until 1947 that at least one million people were killed, most of them with Zyklon B.
An easy explanation would be that the broadcast was just wrong, they left something out or made a mistake translating the information.

 

[teamMerkel]

Nessie, good point regarding the disappearing of the hungarian Jews. A good question to ask someone like Rudolf.
Another question I would love to ask a denier is, why does he think the Nazis dismantled the crematoria in late 44. (I'm remembering this correctly, right?)
Like, why would they do this if they had nothing to hide? Makes absolutely no sense to me.

 

[LemmyCaution]

Regarding the 300,000 figure, I still don't get it and the explanation that it was referring to Auschwitz I and not Birkenau is incorrect, imho.

As above, I agree, I think it is rather a matter of recorded deaths of registered prisoners vs deaths of unregistered prisoners, not a case of the Auschwitz Stammlager vs Birkenau.

One reason I think that the reference, if the film clip has it accurately, to 300,000 is to registered prisoner deaths is that the Polish authorities were using different total death figures for Auschwitz in other instances around this time, e.g., as I mentioned in Höss's case. They surely knew the Nuremberg estimates. I am merely speculating . . . someone more knowledgeable about the various Auschwitz trials ... please weigh in!

I can't find any transcripts for this trial and apparently there are none in english. (there seem to be very little info on that particular trial overall)

As it took place in Poland in '47, I doubt that transcripts are readily available if they exist at all.

 

[LemmyCaution]

N. . . Another question I would love to ask a denier is, why does he think the Nazis dismantled the crematoria in late 44. (I'm remembering this correctly, right?)
Like, why would they do this if they had nothing to hide? Makes absolutely no sense to me.

You remember correctly. In December 1944 prisoners from the camp were brought to the Krema areas to assist in dismantling the Kremas, beginning with Krema III. On 15 January 70 prisoners who had been in the Sonderkommando, now making up Detail 104 B (Krema demolition detail), continued working at dismantling the Kremas, taking salvaged equipment to the railway siding from where it was shipped out to Gross Rosen. Demolition work included dynamiting the Krema and gas chamber buildings. A squad of Sonderkommando members, about 30 in number, was also assigned burning corpses in Krema V. On 18 January prisoners were marched out of Auschwitz, the demolition work not completed as the Red Army approached the camp. On 20 January the SS had a group of inmates bring dynamite to Kremas II and III; an SS unit under SS-Unterscharführer Herschel dynamited the structures. Another SS unit blew up Krema V on 26 January. The final evacuation transport left Auschwitz on 27 January 1945.

 

[Loss Leader]

Hans, I don't mind you thinking whatever you want about me. I can't find any explanations for this specific question (regarding the cremation), maybe it comes off as insincere but I'm really wondering about details like that.

Except that you've already received detailed answers. There should be no reason for you to wonder.

Modern cremation standards are designed specifically to render the remains inert and safe for humans. This has been done with great care, for example, with livestock believed to be infected with mad cow disease. Aditionallty, cremation laws are designed to preserve the integrity of each individual. Bodies are never cremated together and the chamber must be cleaned between each use. That's so family can be sure they have their loved ones' ashes and nothing else.

The Nazis just didn't care about any of this. They didn't care about rendering the remains inert. They certainly didn't care about mixing remains. With no health standards, these things go much more quickly.

There are plenty of documents about this at, for example, the Nizkor Project.

 

[LemmyCaution]

. . . Regarding the crematoria. . . And why would they not have been interested to burn the bodies to complete ash? Did they have a bone mill in Auschwitz?

More from Gideon Greif, based on his interviews of Sonderkommando members: there were "six stations" in the Kremas with Sonderkommado crews at each: undressing room, gas chamber, "dentists" (those searching the corpses for valuables), cremation ovens, bone crushers, team hauling ashes to Vistula and Sola rivers; Greif said that although SK members worked in teams, basically all SKs ended up working on all teams and doing all parts of the work at some point.

Some background on the disposal of bones and ashes at Birkenau: There were of course 4 crematoria at Birkenau for the incineration of corpses - as well as open pits for corpse burning when the capacity was required. Initially, the bodies of those gassed in the so-called little white and little red houses were buried nearby; starting fall 1942, following a visit by Himmler that summer and with assistance from Blobel, the camp SS began to exhume and cremate the corpses of these victims, burning over 100,000 corpses by the end of November. The work was executed by Sonderkommano members and the ashes were distributed into the Sola and Vistula rivers - “dropped into the river current at various points so that they would not accumulate.” (Bunker 2 - the little white house - was pressed back into service, and renamed Bunker 5, during May 1944 for the Hungarian action and new cremation pits dug at that time. For the Hungarian action, several pits were also dug near Crematoria 5, under Möll’s direction, for open-air burning to help with the large volume of dead during 1944; the famous open-pit cremation photo taken by Sonderkommando members - David Szmulewski and Stanislaw Jankowski - was from this area.) In the crematoria, quantities of bone remained after cremation. This material was collected and ground using mallets and special mortars (sledgehammers and a steel plate for the bone that was in Möll’s Crematoria 5 cremation pits). The ash/bone remains were stored temporarily in pits near each crematorium, later to be removed and discarded in various ways (ash remaining in these pits was covered over before evacuation of the camp): “buried in pits, dumped into the waters of the Sola and Vistula rivers and the fish ponds near the Birkenau camp, used to fill in low ground and marches, and spread as fertilizer on the farms belonging to the camp. . . . [H]uman remains were also used in building and repairing the roads in camp, for making walkways near the houses where the staff lived, and as insulating material in various camp buildings.” According to Höss, the intent was to disperse the evidence. Some crushed bone was sold to “Strem,” a company that delivered the remains to the Rendziny factory for use in fertilizer production. Fat from the corpses burnt in the open air was used to feed the fire in the corpse burning pits (this process was also credited to Möll). A small number of corpses was provided to SS doctors for experimentation. In fall 1944, in the vicinity of the bunkers, the “ashes were removed from the pits and the whole site was levelled.” Nevertheless, in 1965 a geological study of the area was conducted, and 303 bore holes dug - “Human ashes, bones and hair were found in 42 of the holes.”

(Summarized from Chapter XII in Auschwitz: 1940-1945, vol. II, published by the Auschwitz Museum; data provided by Höss and taken from WVHA reports is provided on pp 416-418, addressing quantities and the disposition of hair and dental metals. Also pp 134-175, Vol. III; Strzelecki, The Evacuation, Dismantling, and Liberation of KL Auschwitz,, pp 51-57, 111-118, 229-232; Pressac, Auschwitz: The Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, pp 165, 179-180, 253, 389, 420, 422-424; Dwork & van Pelt, Auschwitz, pp 313-353)

 

[Pacal]

Regarding the crematoria, I was not suggesting that it would take twice the time for two bodies, Pacal. All I was saying is that I find it weird that Topf&Soehne was capable of building ovens that could burn a body within 30 minutes while present time crematoria apparently take 70-90 minutes.

And why would they not have been interested to burn the bodies to complete ash? Did they have a bone mill in Auschwitz?

Firstly the people running the death camp at Auschwitz were not interested in reducing human bodies to complete ash. They were interested in reducing the bodies to a form that could be easily disposed of. The result is that if you go to Auschwitz today you can still find along with heaps of ash in fields bits and pieces of human bone. A relative of mine who visited Auschwitz in the early 1990s, was freaked out when she found the soil in places was impregnated with ash along with many bits of bone.

Secondly since modern day Crematoria are only interested in burning one body at a time I doubt that a facility that was burning people en-mass would have much to teach them.

Thirdly the usual time given for burning the bodies at Auschwitz was the time it took to burn the body, ( According to witnesses c. 20 minutes.), so that the remains fell through the grill. Actually the remains continued to be "cooked" in the ash channels of the furnaces for a further 20 minutes.

Fourthly the temperatures in the Auschwitz crematoria were higher than the usual c. 569 Celsius used in modern day crematoria.

Fifthly It takes time to heat up a crematoria of any kind so that the first cremation of the day takes longer than subsequent unless you allow the crematoria to cool off.

Sixth the Auschwitz crematoria was frequently operating 24 hours a day so that it was probably much more "efficient" than modern Crematoria.

Seventh My comment about twice the time for two bodies was not just aimed at what I thought was your misunderstanding but to point out that even assuming c. 70 minutes to burn a body that still means that you can burn two bodies in 70 minutes. And if the facility can burn 10 bodies at a time in 70 minutes that means at least 200 bodies in 24 hours. And since how fast bodies burn depends on all sorts of factors including, body fat, temperature of the crematoria etc., I suspect each crematoria could burn well over 500 bodies in 24 hours.

To repeat since modern day Crematoria are only interested in burning one body at a time. I rather suspect the ruthless efficiencies of large scale burning at Auschwitz and other places does not interest them.

I now have to take a shower. Revisting this topic is simply revolting.

 

[Hans]

Secondly since modern day Crematoria are only interested in burning one body at a time I doubt that a facility that was burning people en-mass would have much to teach them.

One additional factoid, modern ones often, if not always, put the body in a coffin or other container, something the Nazis of course did not do.

 

[Loss Leader]

I don't know why I bother posting in this thread. You guys are much better than I am at saying facts.

 

[Nessie]

.....Another question I would love to ask a denier is, why does he think the Nazis dismantled the crematoria in late 44. (I'm remembering this correctly, right?)
Like, why would they do this if they had nothing to hide? Makes absolutely no sense to me.

That point is worth expanding. Deniers often like to pretend the Holocaust is on trial, they are the defence and all they need to do is show reasonable doubt, the Nazis are innocent and crucially, they do not need to prove innocence. That way they can excuse themselves from dealing with the problem of no evidence of mass survival.

But, when determining guilt, motive, opportunity, ability and guilty conduct after the crime is all part of the evidencing.

When the Nazis razed certain camps to the ground and even buried the buildings, that has to cause reasonable suspicion. When those camps were the AR camps where they are reported to have had gas chambers, that is even more suspicious. When the kremas at Birkenau were either demolished or blown up, that is also suspect.

Those involved in the running of the AR camps had to sign a confidentiality agreement;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Höfle#Crimes_against_humanity

A prisoner at TII, Yankel Wiernik reported in his memoires published in 1945, that after the discovery of mass graves of Polish soldiers at Katyn, the Nazis had realised they would need to make body counts at their mass graves impossible. So at camps like TII which had no crematoriums, the graves were exhumed, the bodies cremated and the remains were buried. Birkenau already and crematoriums, so body disposal was by that means anyway.

Buried buildings and large areas of cremated remains that had not been marked in any way is suspect. That each site also had a guard housed there and the sites were planted over (lupins at TII) is clearly a cover up.

Very few documents survive relating to the AR camps, those which do are not from the camps themselves, but are documents referencing them, such as transport records showing people being taken to the camps. If they were just delousing centres or transit camps, why destroy the records? Those records would be worth their weight in gold to accused Nazis, as they would disprove the claims that the camps were death camps. In the end, no Nazi ever claimed the AR camps were transit/delosuing camps. That does not stop deniers from making those claims!

All of that is guilty conduct after the crime, where it can be inferred that they are the actions of a guilty person trying to cover up the extent of their crime.

 

[Nessie]

Nessie, good point regarding the disappearing of the hungarian Jews. A good question to ask someone like Rudolf.
...

It is THE question. It is the reason why some deniers have realised they are wrong and agreed there was a Holocaust involving the numbers claimed. If they are correct, then people who arrived at certain places, must have then left in mass transports and arrived somewhere else. Where is the evidence that happened? The specific Holocaust incidents I tend to concentrate on are;

1 -the 34,313 Dutch Jews sent from Westerbork in the Netherlands to Sobibor between March and July 1943. Only 18 are reported to have survived. Where are the rest?

https://www.sobiborinterviews.nl/en/nederlandse-overlevenden

2 - the 33,771 Jews who gathered at Babi Yar in Kiev, after an order to appear there on the 29th September 1941 and whom were recorded as shot by the Einsatzgruppen in their OSR 101. If they were not shot, where were they taken?

http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/einsatz/babiyar.html

3 - the arrival of around 430,000 Hungarian Jews at Birkenau between May and July 1944. Their arrival was well documented (the famous photos of selections) and those registered to work were mainly taken out of the camp to elsewhere in the Auschwitz camp complex (see paragraph 8 onwards below)

http://konfliktuskutato.hu/index.ph...n-jews-in-auschwitz-birkenau&catid=36:english

If deniers are correct, then around 430,000 people were transported back out of the camp, taken elsewhere and accommodated. But Auschwitz-Birkenau itself I am sure had a maximum population of around 50,000. Where could take that amount of people in such as short space of time?

In 1945, whilst in prison awaiting trial, Himmler was interviewed by a Norbert Masur and was asked about the camps on liberation and in particular about the Hungarian Jews;

"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.
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."

So yes, Rudolf and the rest need to explain, where is the evidence all those people left the camps and other places and were resettled till liberation? If they cannot produce the evidence, what does that mean?

 

[teamMerkel]

Except that you've already received detailed answers. There should be no reason for you to wonder.

Well, no I haven't at the time I was writing the bit you responded to. There was one answer (which is not "answers") and it could, at least in my opinion, not be described as "detailed".

More from Gideon Greif....

Thanks, great source, gonna look into his work in the future.

Fourthly the temperatures in the Auschwitz crematoria were higher than the usual c. 569 Celsius used in modern day crematoria.

Thanks for the detailed answer. Everything regarding the cremation makes a lot more sense to me now.
Your fourth point, however, doesn't make any sense, that's not a big deal though.
Modern crematoria use temperatures between 800 and 1200 degrees Celsius. That's at least what 3 random german crematoria that I looked up state.

A prisoner at TII, Yankel Wiernik reported in his memoires published in 1945...

Nessie, thanks for your contribution. I agree with a lot of what you said, especially concerning all the missing Jews from Hungary that disappeared in Auschwitz.
I don't want to get into Treblinka here, but in my opinion Yankel Wiernik is full of it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Treblinka didn't exist or no one was murdered there. But "A Year in Treblinka" is full of exxagerations if not flat out lies.

Quoting from chapter 7:
"One of the Germans, a man named Sepp, was a vile and savage beast, who took special delight in torturing children. When he pushed women around and they begged him to stop because they had children with them, he would frequently snatch a child from the woman's arms and either tear the child in half or grab it by the legs, smash its head against a wall and throw the body away. Such incidents were by no means isolated. Tragic scenes of this kind occurred all the time."
Tearing children in half, yeah right.

"The number of transports grew daily, and there were periods when as many as 30,000 people were gassed in one day..."
Ok, but considering all his exaggerations, I don't buy it.

Chapter 9:
"The gangsters are standing near the ashes, shaking with satanic laughter. Their faces radiate a truly satanic satisfaction. They toasted the scene with brandy and with the choicest liqueurs, ate, caroused and had a great time warming themselves by the fire."

"The hangmen stood warming themselves by the fire, drinking, eating and singing."
Really?

"Gradually, the fire began to die down, leaving only ashes which went to fertilize the silent soil."
Weird, I wasn't under the impression that an open air cremation of 3,000 bodies would leave only ashes.

Again, I'm not saying Treblinka or every word in Wierniks book is a lie. I just don't trust people who are full of it. And Wiernik clearly was.

Anyway, thanks a lot for all the detailed answers and contributions. Most questions were sorted out, which is great.

 

[LemmyCaution]

I think that Wiernik wrote in a literary style and may have had ambitions as a writer (native Polish speakers I know have told me that passages of his book are extremely well written, even lyrical), he quite often used figurative language, which is different to being full of it. Recall, too, that for this figurative prose you seem to be quoting from an English translation. (Note: Before being taken to Treblinka, Wiernik had been a employee and friend of Stefan Krzywoszewski, a Polish newspaper editor, theater director and well known writer; it was to Krzywoszewski that Wiernik originally brought his Treblinka story after his escape and before writing his mss.)

In regards to the children, there are so many testimonies from camps and from the killing fields, which parallel Wiernik's, about extreme cruelty on the part of perpetrators, crushing skulls, throwing children into ravines, etc, that I am not bothered by what Wiernik says - it aligns with many other testimonies. Right now I'm reading Father Desbois' new book on the mass shootings in the occupied east; for example, among other instances, he quotes from the testimony of Gregory, given to the Yahad-In Unum team, where Gregory says that at Kondrachov "The children were simply thrown into the quarry. They took them by the feet and threw them to the bottom." And from the testimony of Lydia (Khemelnitsky region, Ukraine), who told investigators that "There were some mothers who had babies in blankets in their arms. The were told to put them down around the ditch; they did it. That's when Dioma, the policeman [Demiane Podnevitch, a Ukrainian in service of the Germans], came. He kicked all the babies down into the ditch; they were alive." And so on.

On Wiernik's use of language and stylistic issues, here and here are posts I made in another forum a couple years ago. The context for the notes is the well-known passage in which Wiernik writes about the gas chambers and the fate of those crammed into them.

Like Nessie, I find Wiernik a credible, useful source, corroborated on key points by other testimonies. You dismiss Nessie's citation of Wiernik on the exhumation and burning of corpses at Treblinka whilst writing "I'm not saying Treblinka or every word in Wierniks book is a lie. I just don't trust people who are full of it. And Wiernik clearly was." Yet there are other sources on the exhumation and burning of corpses by the Nazis in the east, including at Treblinka. E.g., Samuel Rajzman:

As soon as we came to Treblinka, we could smell the stench of tens of thousands of corpses. When I arrived, the Germans weren’t cremating the corpses; they were burying them, tens of thousands of people in ditches. They later figured that burying the victims was not such a good idea, because someday those ditches would be dug up and what had gone on there would become known. So they made these fires with grates and they brought steam shovels. They dug the dead out of the ditches and loaded them on the fire, where they burned 24 hours a day. The Germans poured oil on the corpses and oil underneath, and the fire burned continuously.

Donat, The Death Camp Treblinka, p 232 - Why should one disbelieve Wiernik on this corroborated point because some details aren't expressed as you might express them?

 

[LemmyCaution]

Let me add one more example of how children were treated during murder actions, also from Desbois' book where he quotes from the well-known deposition of a German Hermann Graebe, a manager stationed in the east, concerning the action in Sdoblunov on 13 October 1942. During this action a German perpetrator named Wacker pulled an old woman and her child out of a house: "Wacker grabbed the child by the legs, swung him around several times and then hit his head against the doorpost. It sounded like an exploding tire. When the child was dead, the inhabitants of the house came out without any resistance, completely resigned. I heard how Wacker said to his comrades: 'It's the best method, we just have to understand this.'"

There are different ways of conveying the horror of such actions; there is IMO nothing wrong with how Wiernik chose to express his horror in what you quoted above.

 

[Nessie]

.....
Nessie, thanks for your contribution. I agree with a lot of what you said, especially concerning all the missing Jews from Hungary that disappeared in Auschwitz.
I don't want to get into Treblinka here, but in my opinion Yankel Wiernik is full of it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Treblinka didn't exist or no one was murdered there. But "A Year in Treblinka" is full of exxagerations if not flat out lies.

Quoting from chapter 7:
"One of the Germans, a man named Sepp, was a vile and savage beast, who took special delight in torturing children. When he pushed women around and they begged him to stop because they had children with them, he would frequently snatch a child from the woman's arms and either tear the child in half or grab it by the legs, smash its head against a wall and throw the body away. Such incidents were by no means isolated. Tragic scenes of this kind occurred all the time."
Tearing children in half, yeah right.

"The number of transports grew daily, and there were periods when as many as 30,000 people were gassed in one day..."
Ok, but considering all his exaggerations, I don't buy it.

Chapter 9:
"The gangsters are standing near the ashes, shaking with satanic laughter. Their faces radiate a truly satanic satisfaction. They toasted the scene with brandy and with the choicest liqueurs, ate, caroused and had a great time warming themselves by the fire."

"The hangmen stood warming themselves by the fire, drinking, eating and singing."
Really?

"Gradually, the fire began to die down, leaving only ashes which went to fertilize the silent soil."
Weird, I wasn't under the impression that an open air cremation of 3,000 bodies would leave only ashes.

Again, I'm not saying Treblinka or every word in Wierniks book is a lie. I just don't trust people who are full of it. And Wiernik clearly was.

Anyway, thanks a lot for all the detailed answers and contributions. Most questions were sorted out, which is great.

Bear in mind, back in 1945, many people were war weary, propaganda cautious and not inclined to believe the stories about mass gassings. In effect, the early Holocaust reports had to compete with all the othere atrocities and horros of the war.

Wiernik was not writing copy for a news paper report, or an account to published in a hsitorical journal. He was writing his memoires, possibly as part of his recovery from PSD.

Wiernik's style is repeated again and again with recollections of the camps. They are all people reliving painful, traumatic events. If you read German Nazi recollections, they have a far more matter of fact, blase style where they are almost disconnecting themselves from what they saw. That is what I would expect from victim and perpetrator.

The denier tactic of trying to wrote off all witnesses as liars because some did lie, or exaggerate, or failed to differentiate between what they saw and what they heard about, is dishonest. No other investigatory discipline treats witnesses that way. The police, historians, journalists. They check what witnesses say and accept errors, exaggerations and even lies are not reasons to dismiss all testimony.

 

[LemmyCaution]

On the issue of what Wiernik said in his book about the incineration of corpses at Treblinka, consider additional corroborating evidence, from Arad's BST:

Yechiel Reichman, a member of the “burning group,” writes:

The SS “expert” on body burning ordered us to put women, particularly fat women, on the first layer on the grill, face down. The second layer could consist of whatever was brought—men, women, or children—and so on, layer on top of layer.... Then the “expert” ordered us to lay dry branches under the grill and to light them. Within a few minutes the fire would take so it was difficult to approach the crematorium from as far as 50 meters away.... The work was extremely difficult. The stench was awful. Liquid excretions from the corpses squirted all over the prisoner-workers. The SS man operating the excavator often dumped the corpses directly onto the prisoners working nearby, wounding them seriously. . . .

Arad, p 175

A prisoner at “Treblinka I” described what he saw:

The spring winds brought with them the smell of burning bodies from the nearby extermination camp. We breathed in the stench of smoldering corpses We heard the clatter of the excavators for days and nights on end…. At night we gazed at skies red from the flames. Sometimes you could also see tongues of flame rising into the night…

Arad, p 177

SS Oberscharführer Heinrich Matthes, the commander of the “extermination area” in Treblinka, testified:

At that time SS Oberscharführer or Hauptscharführer [Herbert] Floss, who, as I assume, was previously in another extermination camp, arrived. He was in charge of the arrangements for cremating the corpses. The cremation took place in such a way that railway lines and concrete blocks were placed together. The corpses were piled on these rails. Brushwood was put under the rails. The wood was doused with petrol. In that way not only the newly accumulated corpses were cremated, but also those taken out from the graves.

Arad, p 174

Bryant - in Eyewitness to Genocide, p 79 - covers the corpse burning, naming the specialist (Herbert Floss), as did SS-man Matthes (Wiernik's "Tadellos"), sent to Treblinka from Sobibór to correct and oversee the process, which involved the large fire pits with grates and a quota system. Bryant cites the 1961 interrogation, for the Eichmann trial, of Eliasz Rosenberg. Rosenberg testified at the 1965 Düsseldorf trial that SS-man Munzberger had once led a mother and her child to the cremation grill, where he shot them before having their bodies burned (Bryant, p 216). Also, Glazar testified at the same trial about the corpse-incineration that took place during the winter of 1943 (Bryant, p 106); Wiernik testified about Matthes' role in the cremation process (Bryant, p 84).

In his book on Sobibór, Jules Schelvis summarizes the cremation processes used at Einsatz Reinhard camps, first quoting the 1961 testimony of SS-man Heinrich Gley about the exhumation/cremation process, using pyres, at Bełżec (pp 99-100). Then, Schelvis describes the Sobibór process (p 112) citing testimonies of SS-men Ittner and Bauer, Ukrainian guard Danilstjenko, and Piwonski, a railway employee from the nearby village of Zlobek. Schelvis also discusses specialist Herbert Floss's stint at Sobibór.

Were these accounts ginned up, coordinated, and "full of it" - or, perhaps, these different witnesses were describing something that occurred, each from his own vantage point and in his own manner?