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Merged General Holocaust denial discussion Part IV

Nessie said:
Name and quote one witness, Jewish or Nazi, who worked inside one of the AR camps, Chelmno or the A-B Kremas and stated somethign other than gassings was taking place.
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This is not a quote from an individual eyewitness but the Nuremberg court took judicial notice of a Polish government report that stated:

The official Polish Government Commissioner Report on the Investigation of German crimes in Poland describes the concentration camp at Treblinka in these terms:

"In March 1942, the Germans began to erect another camp, Treblinka B, in the neighborhood of Treblinka A, intended to become a place of torment for Jews.

"The erection of this camp was closely connected with the German plans aiming at a complete destruction of the Jewish population in Poland which necessitated the creation of a machinery by means of which the Polish Jews could be killed in large numbers. Late in April 1942, the erection of the first three chambers was finished in which these general massacres were to be performed by means of steam. Somewhat later the erection of the real death building was finished, which contains ten death chambers. It was opened for wholesale murders early in autumn 1942 * * *." (3311-PS)
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Or, elsewhere in the Nuremberg trial transcript we find:
"In the summer of 1942 the Reichsfuehrer SS Himmler inspected Auschwitz Camp and ordered it to be greatly enlarged and technically perfected."

I end my quotation here, and I call the attention of the Tribunal to Page 136 on the reverse side of the document book; this is from a report of the Polish Government, which shows that the Camp Sobibur was founded during the first and second liquidation of the Jewish ghetto. But the extermination on a large scale in this camp really started at the beginning of 1943. In this same report, in the last paragraph on Page 136 of the document book, we may read that Camp Belsen was founded in 1940; but it was in 1942 that the special electrical appliances were built in for mass extermination of people. Under the pretext that the people were being led to the

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bath-house, the doomed were undressed and then driven to the building where the floor was electrified in a special way; there they were killed.
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Nessie said:
It is all from others. I don't suppose you are the Hans who complied the list of documents and other from A-B?

http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2012/10/index-of-published-evidence-on.html

I did similar, for what I can find online for TII;

https://www.skepticforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=32918

The claim made by many deniers about the supposed lack of physical evidence I have tried to tackle with details of the physical evidence, primarily archaeological reports here;

https://www.skepticforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=32919

I know there is more out there, which I have seen but now cannot find. One was for Sobibor, which included great aerial photos of the last excavations and a list of various archaeological reports. Another was for Chelmno, which went through each grave one by one. Both were on "museum" sites, and were in English, but I just cannot find them.
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Not me as far as I know! However, I've done a lot of research on many subjects since the late 80's - is this something that was done here or elsewhere?
 
Nessie said:
Wiesel is not a reliable eyewitness. His main issue is that he does not differentiate between what he saw and what he was told, and he thinks nothing of relating atrocity stories. Hence no academic uses him as a witness.
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In the United States, Elie Wiesel is taken quite seriously. Night is often assigned to high school students in both history and literature classes. This book might be a students only exposure to the Holocaust as part of the curriculum. If Wiesel is not a reliable eyewitness, Holocaust education in this country has some serious problems.
 
If, when high-schoolers graduate, they are successfully able to answer "yes" to the true/false question "did the holocaust happen," then that's just fine with me. Even if it's because they read some of Night in English class.

At least that way they won't go through life ignorant of real-world history like a holocaust denier does.
 
CaptainHowdy said:
This is not a quote from an individual eyewitness but the Nuremberg court took judicial notice of a Polish government report that stated:




Or, elsewhere in the Nuremberg trial transcript we find:
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Deniers love to conflate hearsay from people who worked in the camps, but not at the gas chambers, and intelligence reports, with those who actually worked at the gas chambers. Those who worked at the gas chambers all said it was exhaust from an engine, with some (Rajchman) thinking the air was pumped out before the exhaust was pumped in (which seems unlikely). ALL Nazis agree it was exhaust from an engine, with the only disagreement being some thought it was diesel (Gerstein) and others petrol. Significantly, those who ran the engines (Fuchs), all said it was petrol.

The early Polish reports came from prisoners who had escaped the AR camps, such as Krzepicki in 1942 from TII, who had not worked at the gas chambers. He had sorted clothing. He said gas chambers, but described them as like bathhouses and referred to steam and death by asphyxiation. So we even know the source of the Polish intelligence reports and why they said steam.

Many of the earliest investigations were by people, such as Judge Lukaszkiewicz, who took a series of statements in 1945 from escapees and locals, and failed to ask them if they were relating what they had seen, or what they had been told. It does not appear to matter in Poland, if what a witness said is hearsay or not.

Considering what the witnesses were being asked about, many of the statements are very brief and fail to ask many key questions. We still suffer today due to the low standard of investigation by the Poles, as it gives deniers lots of cause to criticise the witness evidence.
 
CaptainHowdy said:
In the United States, Elie Wiesel is taken quite seriously. Night is often assigned to high school students in both history and literature classes. This book might be a students only exposure to the Holocaust as part of the curriculum. If Wiesel is not a reliable eyewitness, Holocaust education in this country has some serious problems.
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I agree. Using Wiesel gives deniers ammunition to attack Holocaust witnesses. Yet again, it means hearsay and eyewitness evidence is conflated and obvious exaggerations and mistakes are not challenged. That means deniers can claim that Holocaust witnesses are able to pretty much say what they want, with little to no challenge, which feeds into their conspiracy beliefs.

I think students should study witnesses such as Tauber and Wiernik, who saw gassings and in particular the Nazis. It needs to be hammered home that whilst senior Nazis, who mostly stayed away from the AR camps and A-B Kremas, claimed they did not know about and were not responsible for gassings, none denied gassings happened. ALL of the Nazis who worked inside those places admitted gassings happened.

They are the witnesses people should know about, not Wiesel or "The tattooist of Auschwitz".
 
carlitos said:
If, when high-schoolers graduate, they are successfully able to answer "yes" to the true/false question "did the holocaust happen," then that's just fine with me. Even if it's because they read some of Night in English class.

At least that way they won't go through life ignorant of real-world history like a holocaust denier does.
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Only using Wiesel means that any high school graduate who comes up against a denier will lose the debate. The high school graduate will be ripped to shreads as the flaws in Wiesel's testimony are pointed out, and the graduate will have no come back.

They need to be also taught about the witnesses who actually saw what happened and how they all agree on gassings. Deniers have no come back when it is pointed out to them that all of the Nazis admitted to gassings, except to start claiming wack job conspiracy theories about Soviets and or Jews conspiring to make all of them lie, somehow.

The German trials of the AR camp personnel in the late 1950s to 1970s, need to be taught, where there is no evidence at all, of witnesses being coerced, that none were facing the death penalty and all agreed gassings took place.
 
Warp12 said:
Holocaust denial doesn't bother me as much as it's criminalization by some countries does.
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How unsurprising. :rolleyes:

Warp12 said:
My largest question about the accuracy of holocaust data, would be in the total numbers. Maybe it is just because it is hard to comprehend the logistics involved with even the 1.1 million estimated deaths at Auschwitz, alone. I am not disputing the numbers given, I just find them so staggering.
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:rolleyes:
 
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Mild curiousity, is the quote from van Pelt
Edited by xjx388: 
<SNIP>Rule 0; Rule 12
("Ninety-nine per cent of what we know we do not actually have the physical evidence to prove") genuine? It's only found on Holocaust denial websites......
 
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Nessie said:
Only using Wiesel means that any high school graduate who comes up against a denier will lose the debate. The high school graduate will be ripped to shreads as the flaws in Wiesel's testimony are pointed out, and the graduate will have no come back.
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Not quite sure why every high school graduate needs to be able to debate against deniers of the Holocaust. Deniers are a fringe, loony subsection.
 
While it is important for students to know what happened and the why and who of the Holocaust the impact of the event like WWII will slowly decrease over the next centuries until it is a footnote. It is what happens to horrible incidents; everyone who was affected dies, then their children and when you get a few generations from any terrible tragedy they become muted.

It would be interesting to see in say 2321 if any but the hardcore history fan remembers the JFK killing, the Moon Hoax believers, 911, Holocaust, Covid, etc. At best they will be minor footnotes. WWII will still remain - I believe - hopefully as the example of the last large scale war humanity fought.

Who remembers who was assassinated in 1610? One Henry IV of France.

It would be fantastic to see what 'actions' from the 20th would be important 300 years from now.
 
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RolandRat said:
Not quite sure why every high school graduate needs to be able to debate against deniers of the Holocaust. Deniers are a fringe, loony subsection.
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-47015184

"Five per cent of UK adults do not believe the Holocaust took place and one in 12 believes its scale has been exaggerated, a survey has found."

https://www.theatlantic.com/interna...he-world-is-full-of-holocaust-deniers/370870/

"The World Is Full of Holocaust Deniers
A new survey suggests that many Asians, Africans, Middle Easterners, young people, Muslims, and Hindus believe that facts about the genocide have been distorted."

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/...st-knowledge-among-millennials-gen-z-n1240031

"Just 90 percent of respondents said they believed that the Holocaust happened. Seven percent were not sure, and 3 percent denied that it happened. One of the most disturbing revelations, the survey noted, is that 11 percent of respondents believe Jews caused the Holocaust. The number climbs to 19 percent in New York, the state with the largest Jewish population."
 
Nessie said:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-47015184

"Five per cent of UK adults do not believe the Holocaust took place and one in 12 believes its scale has been exaggerated, a survey has found."

https://www.theatlantic.com/interna...he-world-is-full-of-holocaust-deniers/370870/

"The World Is Full of Holocaust Deniers
A new survey suggests that many Asians, Africans, Middle Easterners, young people, Muslims, and Hindus believe that facts about the genocide have been distorted."

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/...st-knowledge-among-millennials-gen-z-n1240031

"Just 90 percent of respondents said they believed that the Holocaust happened. Seven percent were not sure, and 3 percent denied that it happened. One of the most disturbing revelations, the survey noted, is that 11 percent of respondents believe Jews caused the Holocaust. The number climbs to 19 percent in New York, the state with the largest Jewish population."
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In a way the scale of the Holocaust, now almost 80 years ago, helps the deniers. It's so horrible, so wide-scale, that it is genuinely hard to believe for many. Of course there's that pesky evidence.
 
See this kind of thing is why I think everyone should, during school, be made to go to either a holocaust museum at worst, or one of the camps at best. Everyone should see things like the IWM display of a small number of the shoes taken from the victims (there are hundreds. It's terrifying) or the documentation of the extermination of the Jews. I cannot imagine someone who isn't a hard core commited racist scumbag seeing these things and being able to deny what happened and what was planned.

I don't agree with laws against holocaust denial, but outside those who are gullible enough to be swept up in the lies and believe them holocaust deniers are some of the worst people on the planet. I shed no tears for them, especially the scum like Irving who know they're lying and do it to grift the rubes.
 
Nessie said:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-47015184

"Five per cent of UK adults do not believe the Holocaust took place and one in 12 believes its scale has been exaggerated, a survey has found."

https://www.theatlantic.com/interna...he-world-is-full-of-holocaust-deniers/370870/

"The World Is Full of Holocaust Deniers
A new survey suggests that many Asians, Africans, Middle Easterners, young people, Muslims, and Hindus believe that facts about the genocide have been distorted."

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/...st-knowledge-among-millennials-gen-z-n1240031

"Just 90 percent of respondents said they believed that the Holocaust happened. Seven percent were not sure, and 3 percent denied that it happened. One of the most disturbing revelations, the survey noted, is that 11 percent of respondents believe Jews caused the Holocaust. The number climbs to 19 percent in New York, the state with the largest Jewish population."
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As I said. Deniers are a lunatic fringe.
 
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