Merged General Holocaust denial discussion thread

[little grey rabbit]

We do, do we? Pray tell how and what.

You've said now, a few times, that Kruk's diary is suspect, even down to his street address, for some obscure reason. And that the diary fell into Soviet hands and that is how it became unreliable. What we know is that there are problems with this account of yours, not with the diary.

As to the diary, and its problems, please elaborate.

Well perhaps you would like to describe the provenance of the various parts of the diary and how they are supposed to have ended up Jerusalem.

We have already observed how anybody mentioned who is non-famous never seems to appear in the May 1942 census - we have at least 3 absences. We also notice that names of survivors of Ponary who in other accounts are seen as pivotal in bringing news of Ponary don't appear in his account. Whereas the names that appear in his account don't appear in other people's account. There seems to be a suspicious silence about the Little Provocation of early July 1941, when the Germans plastered Wilna with placards about a reprisal shooting for supposed firing on a administrative building. And that's just without even opening a page of the blessed document.

Now let me propose a possible solution. Here we see Kruk's name on a list of the killed found at Klooga

Notice the amount of detail, name, home town, occupation, camp number etc. Bit hard to understand how this information could have been derived from those smouldering pyres.

Now suppose we take it as granted that there Krege was right, and there are no bodies buried at Treblinka, that I am right and Krema II and III were really bakeries. Then there is no real reason to believe that the Germans shoot anyone when they evacuated Klooga any more than when they evacuated Buchenwald or Dachau. The pyres were nothing more than the same Soviet propaganda that brought us chimneys with scaffolding at Majdanek.

In which case this list would be the list of the people who were LIBERATED at Klooga - and we know that live people find it much easier to provide biographical data than dead people.

This then would solve the mystery of Kruk's diary surviving. Although it wouldn't tell us why parts, eg the Klooga parts, were suppressed for decades.

Thoughts?

 

[LemmyCaution]

Well perhaps you would like to describe the provenance of the various parts of the diary and how they are supposed to have ended up Jerusalem.

No, I am interested in your claims about Kruk's diary and how you support them. You have made different claims at different times, so I would like you to state the definitive case for the charges you made for "problems" with it. On a time line faster than the one you have for your case against OSR 24 (Nick Terry also wondered, as I did about how you are coming with OSR 24). My request of you above was direct and simple: Give us evidence, including names of individuals, for the charges you made that the Soviets "contaminated" the diary, at least as specific as the details we have presented regarding Ponar. And tell us how you know about the details.

Why are you trying to wriggle out of giving an answer?

We have already observed how anybody mentioned who is non-famous never seems to appear in the May 1942 census - we have at least 3 absences. We also notice that names of survivors of Ponary who in other accounts are seen as pivotal in bringing news of Ponary don't appear in his account. Whereas the names that appear in his account don't appear in other people's account.

This is party not true and partly not relevant. We have already seen that half the Jews alive in Vilna after the Great Provocation in September 1941 were dead by December 1942 and thus would be "unlikely" to appear in a 1942 census. We have not done anything but a random search of a few names. We have not checked the 1931 census or archives not accessible through Google for other information about individuals. But we have seen that names that appear in Kruk's account (Tema Katz, Yudis Trojak) appear in other accounts, contrary to your gloss; I have stated this more than one time, and you ignore the fact in order to try and score a polemical point. These sorts of low tactics are your standard modus operandi.

There seems to be a suspicious silence about the Little Provocation of early July 1941, when the Germans plastered Wilna with placards about a reprisal shooting for supposed firing on a administrative building. And that's just without even opening a page of the blessed document.

Sources refer to snatchings and shootings in July, including Kruk on the day in question. He doesn't mention any posters in Vilna. A reasonable inference is that he didn't see the posters or didn't connect them with the snatchings and killings - that's a far more reasonable supposition than that there is a mystery about that action, given that he and others mention a mass shooting that day. How is the case against OSR 24 coming along, by the way?

Now let me propose a possible solution.

To what? You weren't asked to solve anything, and there's no mystery to solve. You were asked for your positive case that there are problems with Kruk's diary. To be thorough, you really also need to include your statement as well of the errors in the accounts in favor of its reliability given by the Harshavs and others. Stop dodging.

Here we see Kruk's name on a list of the killed found at Klooga

[qimg]http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/2830/klog2.jpg[/qimg]

Notice the amount of detail, name, home town, occupation, camp number etc. Bit hard to understand how this information could have been derived from those smouldering pyres.

Now suppose we take it as granted that there Krege was right, and there are no bodies buried at Treblinka, that I am right and Krema II and III were really bakeries. Then there is no real reason to believe that the Germans shoot anyone when they evacuated Klooga any more than when they evacuated Buchenwald or Dachau. The pyres were nothing more than the same Soviet propaganda that brought us chimneys with scaffolding at Majdanek.

In which case this list would be the list of the people who were LIBERATED at Klooga - and we know that live people find it much easier to provide biographical data than dead people.

This then would solve the mystery of Kruk's diary surviving. Although it wouldn't tell us why parts, eg the Klooga parts, were suppressed for decades.

Thoughts?

Sure. Even your fantasy, on its own terms, makes no sense. And it certainly is missing the kind of positive evidence you were requested to offer. Get busy dealing with the provenance of Kruk's diary and the problems you claim in it. With details and with attribution for the sources you have for those details. Instead of offering up paranoid speculation in order to avoid answering and spinning up farcical fantasies of "what if" piled on "what if," deal with actual evidence. Note: You fantasy about bakeries, and the fantasies of others about Treblinka, are not evidence of what went on with Kruk's diary.

You could also, once you've located Chaim Rumkowski, pitch in and help Dogzilla explain the fate of 30,000+ Vilna Jews still alive in September 1941, not to mention those who went missing that summer.

After you've explained your views on the problems with Kruk's diary, OSR 24, and the fate of Vilna's Jewish population, we can move along to your case for Klooga. But let's go a step at a time, not jumping into new issues scattershot. You know, doing so simply muddies the waters, almost as though it were a dodging strategy of some sort.

Thanks.

 

[little grey rabbit]

Happy days, Mr Caution. I have located yet another survivor of Ponary who seems blissfully unaware of the existence of Peyse Schloss

…During the first couple of months we stubbornly refused to give credence to those few who managed to return from Ponary, declaring their tales of what was happening there as the sign of psychotic delirium - so much did it seem monstrous and impossible. When one of the two survivors of Ponary, my future son-in-law Vova Gdud (William Good) reached his home, only his parents believed him; all the neighbours thought him insane…

Vova Gdud’s testimony:
“…In the morning we were taken on trucks to Ponary, a place about 15 miles outside of Wilno, unknown at that time. Now it is infamous because 100,000 people were killed and buried there, of whom 80,000 were Jews. There are only two known survivors who escaped from Ponary alive, and I am one of them.

When we came to Ponary there was a huge mass grave excavated, ready for us. There were two machine-guns standing in front of the truck. The first thing they told us was we couldn't talk, scream or move - if there was any commotion coming out of the truck the two machine-guns would open fire.
They took us one at a time from the truck to the grave, shooting each one in the back of the head. I was standing in the truck looking at the executions - nobody said a word, nobody moved. When my turn came I got off the truck and went toward the grave like everybody else and, just a few feet before the grave, I fell. At the same time, synchronous with my falling, the Lithuanian executioner shot at me with his handgun. I happened to fall, but not as a consequence of his shooting - I just fell and he fired in the same second. He believed that he had shot me and that was the reason for my falling.

There was not a scratch on me, but he did not question this. The next victim they killed just about where I was. [He] fell on top of me and soaked me with his blood. They brought all the trucks, took off everybody (maybe 30 people to each truck) and killed all the people from the Bernardynka Park. After everything was finished the machine-guns sprayed the bodies in and around the grave because not everybody was quite dead, a lot of people were still moaning. There was a lot of shooting for several minutes. I don't know what happened to me at that time. I have no exact recollection of when the shooting stopped - I have a blank, I may have passed out.

When I opened my eyes, saw nothing, moved my head and saw nobody around, I got up and started to walk toward the gate where we had entered, because the place was fenced with barbed wire. There were two guards at the gate who saw me and one of them took a shot at me, but it was hilly terrain, so I dropped down and he did not hit me. I ran back to the grave which was next to the barbed wire. That was the most horrible moment of my life - here I was, young and healthy but terrified because I couldn't get out. It was daytime and if I would try to climb over the barbed wire the guard would probably see me from far away and shoot me. My only chance of getting out was to dig under the barbed wire. I dug with my bare hands, scared that if I was not fast enough they would catch me. That was the most terrible, the worst moment of my life. I don't know how long it took me, but I squeezed through and ran away.
I was all bloody and in tatters from the barbed wire. On the road I stumbled into the hut of a Polish peasant I did not know and told them my story; they were kind to me. I washed up, they gave me some clothes and I went home.

None of the Jews who lived in our apartment building believed me when I told my story - they said I was crazy, I must have had a nervous break-down after having my friend killed on the way to Minsk. My father believed my story and he said: 'They are out to kill us all - we are not going to the ghetto (there was talk about that), we are not going to let them lock us up, we are getting out!'
We packed up, we took some money with us and my father hid some money and Swiss watches in the attic of the house we lived in - this turned out an important factor later

Why did they think he was crazy since Peyse Schloss had already come back warned everyone?

So many first survivors of Ponary.....

 

[LemmyCaution]

Sounds like we're getting down to the absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence line of reasoning.

I see you haven't been paying attention again. There is evidence about Pesye Schloss - it is found in Kruk's diary. Since there is evidence for Pesye Schloss's experience at Ponar, and since she doesn't appear in a May 1942 Census taken in Vilna, one can conclude that she left Vilna, she was somehow missed in the census, or that she was among those killed in the fall 1941 actions. It is reasonable, but not proven by any means - and I never claimed or implied it was proven - to assume that she was killed in the fall, since half those Jews living in Vilna following the Great Provocation were murdered in German extermination actions that fall.

Now, one wonders whether you are dodging, like your friend LGR.

Most important, you have offered us nothing on the relationship of Schloss to other witnesses in Kruk or to other witnesses and sources apart from Kruk. You are utterly silent on these other witnesses and sources.

You have offered us no reason for distrusting Kruk, other than to echo LGR's mistaken claim that Kruk's manuscript was at Klooga. You didn't bother responding to the problems, which I posted about, with that claim.

You have offered us no explanation about the fate of Vilna's Jews, over 30,000, in fall 1941.

Yet you remind us of your floundering on double standards. Here's yours: In the face of many details, with sources for most of them (and if you are curious about a source where one wasn't provided, just ask), and with corroborating sources (that is, not just a single data point but meshing testimony and documents), you choose to believe "what if's" that are presented without substantiation, charges thrown as recklessly as a drunk tosses darts in a bar, and paranoid speculation. Rather than reasonably evaluating the totality, putting pieces alongside each other and comparing them, you leap from doubt to doubt, detached from reality, grasping for straws to uphold your original reflex and bias. Now that is a double standard, when you and other deniers require of yourselves nothing but the stubbornness not to inquire and yet you demand of historical explanation increasingly microscopic detail, which we can provide in fact, offering nothing on your own behalf and falling silent on difficult questions.

 

[LemmyCaution]

Happy days, Mr Caution. I have located yet another survivor of Ponary who seems blissfully unaware of the existence of Peyse Schloss

…During the first couple of months we stubbornly refused to give credence to those few who managed to return from Ponary, declaring their tales of what was happening there as the sign of psychotic delirium - so much did it seem monstrous and impossible. When one of the two survivors of Ponary, my future son-in-law Vova Gdud (William Good) reached his home, only his parents believed him; all the neighbours thought him insane…

Vova Gdud’s testimony:. . .

Why did they think he was crazy since Peyse Schloss had already come back warned everyone?

So many first survivors of Ponary.....

You really should stop trolling. No one claimed that Pesye Schloss was a first survivor, whatever that means, or a survivor whose testimony was well known. Nor did Pesye Schloss come back to Vilna to warn people - she came to the hospital for treatment after her ordeal, Kruk heard rumors about the fate of those taken from Vilna, friends put him in touch with those in the hospital, he found Schloss, Trojak, and others there. Trojak was also put into contact with Kovner. How multiplying the names and accounts of survivors of Ponar shootings in any way helps your case is beyond me. Your account doesn't give a date - but there is at least one other case of a survivor returning to Vilna (this one during the Great Provocation), giving her testimony, and seeing people doubt it - this is from testimony at the Eichmann trial, which I wrote about upthread. Your attempt to reduce a large and complex series of events to a few flippant quips is duly noted. Contempt, it is, for the victims. Your usual.

What I know your trolling does accomplish is delay your answering specific questions with sourced details. Keep it up. You are adding to your predicament. I doubt it is lost on reasonable readers that you are dodging questions you've been asked, to support claims you've made.

 

[Matthew Ellard]

Now suppose we take it as granted that Krege was right......Any thoughts?

What an interesting thought. You can now apply your unique research skills and let us all know which university tested Krege's control and location soil samples, supplied a GPR data analysis and you can provide us with that establishment's final written report. As Krege is a fellow Australian and fellow holocaust denier this will take you no time at all! Now off you go....hop to it. Make sure you don't come back until you gathered all the information for us!

 

[LemmyCaution]

What an interesting thought. You can now apply your unique research skills and let us all know which university tested Krege's control and location soil samples, supplied a GPR data analysis and you can provide us with that establishment's final written report. As Krege is a fellow Australian and fellow holocaust denier this will take you no time at all! Now off you go....hop to it. Make sure you don't come back until you gathered all the information for us!

"Take it for granted" is actually hysterical - and pretty much the only card, aside from the forgery card LGR waves around wildly, that these guys have left.

But the problems for the "manufactured mystery" peddled by Dogzilla and LGR magnify.

Leaving aside the fate of the Lagedi portion of Kruk's diary - and LGR will not only need to keep making up wild fantasies and telling untruths about this but, as he knows, there is more witness testimony about what became of the Klooga/Lagedi diaries as well as to the camp inmates - LGR and Dogzilla ask us to take their claims for granted but won't use simple reason to evaluate the actual evidence about Vilna's Jewish population. Let's return for a moment to the matter of why we shouldn't find it mysterious for Pesye Schloss not to be in the May 1942 Census. As we have discussed, there were 40,000 or so Jews living in the two Vilna ghettos immediately after their formation in September 1941; according to Jaeger, there were but 15,000 Jews left in Vilna by December - and the May 1942 Census is not far off this number. I've given the most obvious reason why the absence of Pesye Schloss's name in the 1942 census doesn't cast doubt on her experience in September 1942 - that she was among the 20,000+ Vilna Jews exterminated at Ponar in the Germans' fall actions which reduced the large ghetto and eliminated the small ghetto.

But there is another aspect to this. I've already mentioned that a few thousand Jews lived illegally in the ghetto at Vilna that fall, making Jaeger's 15,000 survivors figure low. Those who lived illegally were Jews unable to get hold of a Schoen, or work permit issued by the German authorities. So simple logic tells us - recall that Abba Kovner was not in the May 1942 registry - that a few thousand Jews living illegally without work permits or otherwise hiding underground would not be listed in any official records after they went into hiding. Here is another possible "place" where Schloss would be without leaving an official trace - in hiding, living without a work permit.

There is another aspect to the work permit situation. Because of the illegality, tantamount to a death sentence, of being in the ghetto without a proper work card, many families took in children, like Pesye Schloss, who had lost their parents, in order to protect them. False marriages and informal adoption were ways of keeping members of the Jewish community alive. It is possible, then, that Pesye and her surviving brother were taken in by a family with a different last name or an aunt and uncle with a different surname or split up and "adopted" by two different families. The census is full of candidates with the first name Pesye and another last name than Schloss. Given the information available to us, there is simply no way of knowing if Pesye survived and was adopted. The database is useless in such cases - and given the various possibilities - dead, in hiding, adopted - the census is not remotely definitive as LGR and Dogzilla, ignorant of the conditions in Vilna, pretend.

All this aside, I think it most probable that Pesye was killed during the fall. That is because of simple math. Half the Jews who settled in Vilna's ghettos had been murdered by December. And, here is where work permits come in again, children were less likely than adults to receive the work permits and thus more susceptible to selection for Ponar in the fall extermination actions. This decreases Pesye's chance of surviving to below 50%.

At this point, I do not expect a reasonable reply for Dogzilla or LGR to any of the facts against their special pleading.

 

[Wroclaw]

I would add that a targeted search of the census revealed one household with two women named Pesye living there and the same last name, which strongly suggests cousins or sisters-in-law, rather than sisters.

One of those two women was born in 1925.

However, I agree with LC that she was likely shot.

 

[Robrob]

Notice the amount of detail, name, home town, occupation, camp number etc. Bit hard to understand how this information could have been derived from those smouldering pyres.

Argument from incredulity, that's your point?

Without even researching the subject I can think of a number of reasons why there would be that much info contained on a list. Don't mistake your failings for a lack of rational explanation.

 

[little grey rabbit]

You really should stop trolling. No one claimed that Pesye Schloss was a first survivor, whatever that means, or a survivor whose testimony was well known. Nor did Pesye Schloss come back to Vilna to warn people - she came to the hospital for treatment after her ordeal, Kruk heard rumors about the fate of those taken from Vilna, friends put him in touch with those in the hospital, he found Schloss, Trojak, and others there. Trojak was also put into contact with Kovner. How multiplying the names and accounts of survivors of Ponar shootings in any way helps your case is beyond me. Your account doesn't give a date - but there is at least one other case of a survivor returning to Vilna (this one during the Great Provocation), giving her testimony, and seeing people doubt it - this is from testimony at the Eichmann trial, which I wrote about upthread. Your attempt to reduce a large and complex series of events to a few flippant quips is duly noted.

Mr Caution misses the point, perhaps deliberately, perhaps because he is unable to understand it.

What even undergraduates are taught in history courses is the need to interrogate the documents: who produced it? when and why? whom does it benefit? are there possible concealed motives or agendas at work. This history 101.

In the case of Ponary we have a series of people each who tell the same story. A miraculous escape from Ponary, staggering back to the Ghetto and then being disbelieved by all the Ghetto's inhabitants, except for the wise, far-seeing person who is providing the testimony.

Because you are right. The Eichmann trial does have another testimony - a long the same pattern (bearing in mind that Ponary was originally an air-base and the pecular round mass graves were originally dug out as fuel tanks, and equally the tendancy for Germans to use Jewish labour in air-field construction)

A. The Germans said they were taking the Jews to the labour camp of Ponar. But the Poles were saying that they heard shots at Ponar. Ponar is a beautiful forest beyond Vilna. We, the Halutzic youth used to gather at Ponar for Lag baOmer* {*A Jewish holiday which youngsters celebrate by lighting bonfires in open fields.} celebrations. It was impossible to imagine at first that this lovely forest, the forest for Lag ba-Omer outings, would be turned into a forest for the extermination of Vilna Jewry.

Q. You did not believe it?

A. At first we did not believe it.

Attorney General: Do you recollect the incident when a woman with wild hair and barefooted appeared on the streets of Vilna?

A. I remember that day, it was 3 September 1941, three days after a strange "action" in Vilna which was called "the action of provocation."

Q. We shall come to that. Tell us about this woman, about Sonia.

A. I was, at that time, a doctor in Vilna, I lived near the square of Novigored Street. One morning I saw in the street, a woman with dishevelled hair, barefoot, walking with flowers in her hands and giving the impression of a woman who had gone out of her mind. The woman came into my room and said to me: "I have come from Ponar." I asked: "Have you come from the labour camp at Ponar?" She said: "No, it is not a labour camp. They are killing the Jews there." She described how, on the night of 31 August 1941, she was brought there together with her two children, from Shawneski Street, to the goal at Lukiszki, and from there, great masses of Jews, about ten thousand Jews, were transported to the large clearing in Ponar forest.

And there the Jews were taken out group after group and sounds of shooting were heard. Her little boy begged for a little water, and she wanted to give him a thermos flask with water. A German policeman came up to them - he threw away this flask. She began to comfort the boy, telling him not to be afraid, that he would soon ascend to a quiet place, to the Garden of Eden, where it would be good for him and all the children. After that they took her.

She saw how Jews were saying the confession prayer, how others were concealing memoir books, how others were tearing up bank notes so that they should not fall into the hands of the Germans. Afterwards she heard the sounds of shots. She fell into a pit together with the children, felt that the blood of the children was pouring, streaming over her, but she was alive. And she remained amongst the dead bodies until sunset. And that night when she heard the voices of the Lithuanian pogromists who carried out the murder, she got out from amongst the bodies. She crossed the barbed wire fence, escaped, ran through the forest until she came to a little valley, and there she found a simple Polish peasant woman.

The peasant woman made a bandage for her from a towel, gave her flowers in her hand and said to her: "Run away from here, but go with the flowers as if you are a plain peasant woman, so that they should not realise that you are a Jewess." And then she came up to me and opened the towel-bandage and I saw the wound, the bullet hole, and ants were crawling in the hole - ants of the forest.

Then I realized the truth about Ponar. I went out into a street in the suburb of Novigored. Not far off could be seen the house of Leckert* {*Lekert Hirsch - a member of the Bund who shot the governor of Vilna in 1902 because the latter had ordered a group of demonstrators to be flogged.} who, during the reign of the Czar, killed the Czar's commissioner - a simple hero. I turned to the Jews and said: "Jews, Ponar is not a labour camp - in Ponar they are killing Jews." And they said to me: "Doctor, you too are creating a panic? Instead of consoling us, instead of encouraging us, instead of giving us hope, you tell us horror tales - that there are killings in Ponar? How could it be that they should simply take Jews and kill them?" Afterwards I saw her in the ghetto - she had changed her name.

The gapping problem is that a diary doesn't collate all these rumours from all these multiple surivivors. Instead it just does one and sort of says: Right that's Ponary proved. Next!

 

[Wroclaw]

I would suggest, then, that our rabbit friend begin producing evidence of forgery or, you know, shut the hell up.

Click for theme song!

 

[LemmyCaution]

Mr Caution misses the point, perhaps deliberately, perhaps because he is unable to understand it.

What even undergraduates are taught in history courses is the need to interrogate the documents: who produced it? when and why? whom does it benefit? are there possible concealed motives or agendas at work. This history 101.

In the case of Ponary we have a series of people each who tell the same story. A miraculous escape from Ponary, staggering back to the Ghetto and then being disbelieved by all the Ghetto's inhabitants, except for the wise, far-seeing person who is providing the testimony.

Because you are right. The Eichmann trial does have another testimony - a long the same pattern (bearing in mind that Ponary was originally an air-base and the pecular round mass graves were originally dug out as fuel tanks, and equally the tendancy for Germans to use Jewish labour in air-field construction)



The gapping problem is that a diary doesn't collate all these rumours from all these multiple surivivors. Instead it just does one and sort of says: Right that's Ponary proved. Next!

Your argument is that survivors of an incident give somewhat similar descriptions of the incident - and that is the problem? Please. Try better.

And, to clarify, not all those who made their way back to the ghetto were disbelieved - two were, that we know of. In fact, Kruk makes a point of stating his belief in Trojak and Schloss, and even says that the peasants who brought them back to the city confirmed their stories. Apparently, Kovner also believed Trojak. And Kruk clearly found Katz reliable. Your glosses, which contain distortions, help give your game away.

As to the need to interrogate the documents (who produced it? when and why? whom does it benefit? are there possible concealed motives or agendas at work) you are the one posting about documents you do not attribute and asking us to take wild claims for granted.

Spare us, and as Wroclaw said, make the case for your position concerning the "contamination" of Kruk's diary - keeping in mind that Kruk's diary is far from the only source we have, and that, yes, the sources for this incident have a great deal in common, based as they are on similar experiences.

 

[LemmyCaution]

The gapping problem is that a diary doesn't collate all these rumours from all these multiple surivivors. Instead it just does one and sort of says: Right that's Ponary proved. Next!

It would help if you interrogated documents not with crazed leaps of faith and your warped wishful thinking but with other documents, reason - and the facts. Here is a case in point: Kruk's diary does not "do" just one witness and "sort of" conclude anything from just one. Kruk recounts interviewing six survivors at first, elaborating on the testimony of two of these; then he says he spoke to peasant witnesses; a day later he explains that he met with five more survivors and that they confirmed the earlier reports; he notes corpses lying around in Vilna after the action. A month after this he interviewed at length yet another survivor. And so on. The gaping problem is your dishonesty and how you play fast and loose with facts and sources.

 

[LemmyCaution]

It appears that LGR does not wish to produce and explain his positive evidence for the "contamination" of Kruk's diary. As he claims to know how the diary came to be contaminated, his reticence is odd. He is also shy about his case against OSR 24 and the fate of Vilna's Jews. In this silence he is joined by the laconic Dogzilla, who has yet to explain for us, despite gentle invitations for him to do so, his view of the relationship of Schloss to other witnesses in Kruk and to other witnesses and sources apart from Kruk; his reasons for distrusting Kruk, other than this echoing LGR's mistaken claim that Kruk's manuscript was at Klooga; and what became of Vilna's Jews, over 30,000 of them, in fall 1941.

These important issues - along with German labor policy, the work-permit system, a number of German killing actions, and the establishment of a ghetto in Vilna, and conditions there, have all been raised in our discussion of the young eyewitness Pesye Schloss and the people and events to which she was connected.

 

[Dogzilla]

But let's go a step at a time, not jumping into new issues scattershot. You know, doing so simply muddies the waters, almost as though it were a dodging strategy of some sort.

Thanks.

You are definitely going to be awarded the Ironic Cross. First Class for that comment.

Let us all remember that this discussion of Kruk and Vilna and the forest, etc. was sparked because Pesye Schloss was singled out as an example of one "credible Jewish eyewitness" to the holocaust.

 

[Dogzilla]

In this silence he is joined by the laconic Dogzilla, who has yet to explain for us, despite gentle invitations for him to do so, his view of the relationship of Schloss to other witnesses in Kruk and to other witnesses and sources apart from Kruk; his reasons for distrusting Kruk, other than this echoing LGR's mistaken claim that Kruk's manuscript was at Klooga; and what became of Vilna's Jews, over 30,000 of them, in fall 1941.

I prefer to not spew rubbish without having sufficient knowledge upon which I can base an opinion. As I've stated before, this isn't my thing. I didn't know there were mass shootings for which the evidence was as weak as for the gas chambers. As to how I can reconcile Schloss' testimony with that of other witnesses is moot at this point. If Pesye Schloss is a real person her testimony is second hand--i.e., through Kruk. If she is a figment of Kruk's imagination it only makes sense that he fabricates a witness who corroborates the story he wants to tell. The first hurdle is proving she existed. My reason for distrusting Kruk is based partially on the information LGR has provided but primarily upon your responses to it, keeping in mind always that Pesye Schloss is an example of a "credible" eyewitness. What happened to Vilna's Jews is yet another manifestation of the "where did they go?" that gets you nowhere. You said Kruk's wife was taken into Soviet custody and then we lost track of her. Maybe that's what happened to the others as well? If that doesn't work for you, then I guess they all went to the same place the 2.5 million Auschwitz victims went in 1990.

 

[TSR]

Let us all remember that this discussion of Kruk and Vilna and the forest, etc. was sparked because Pesye Schloss was singled out as an example of one "credible Jewish eyewitness" to the holocaust.

.
No one here has forgotten this.

They were introduced as support for that credibility -- other unrelated (except by this subject) sources reported the same things. So either they were all lying whether Jewish or not (Sagg's take on the matter) or they were all retelling the same set of events.

Now, you can either take Sagg's claim, and be left with trying to explain why all of those people were lying. You could take the other extreme and say they were all telling what they knew and are therefore credible as regards what they personally witnessed. Or you can try to make a case that everyone was reporting hearsay, but first you might want to look up that word -- your first attempts to so label these events failed miserably.

That failure should be noted, as should your attempt to go back to the "absence of evidence" thing (when there is no such lack). It should also be noted that Kruk and Vilna and the forest actually relate to each other in determining Schloss' credibility, unlike Krege and that bakery crap which are uncorroborated and have no such credibility given a very real and complete lack of evidence supporting either.

They have only the most tenuous relationship to the question of Schloss' credibility and therefore actually *are* a scattershot attempt to distract from that question.
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[TSR]

I prefer to not spew rubbish without having sufficient knowledge upon which I can base an opinion.

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And yet, you proceed to do exactly that.
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You said Kruk's wife was taken into Soviet custody and then we lost track of her. Maybe that's what happened to the others as well?

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Got any of that, you know, evidence thingy showing that these people were taken into Soviet custody, the way we do for Mrs. Kruk?



No?


Got any of that, you know, evidence thingy showing that these people (who, it must be noted, did not know the culture, least of all the language involved) were, as a group, split up into one or two people per town so that they could be assimilated in a way that no one commented on it?



No?



Got any of that, you know, evidence thingy showing that *any* group of people this large were assimilated into their new homes all in one fell swoop at any time without a single comment being made on the matter?




No?





Failed comparison .... fails.
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If that doesn't work for you, then I guess they all went to the same place the 2.5 million Auschwitz victims went in 1990.

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Got any of that, you know, evidence thingy showing that any single one of those 2.5 million was claimed to have individually existed in the first place?



No?




0 for five, just in this post alone.



You ought to just take the IW and pitch to another batter, or get Sagg's handler to put in your relief.
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[LemmyCaution]

You are definitely going to be awarded the Ironic Cross. First Class for that comment.

Let us all remember that this discussion of Kruk and Vilna and the forest, etc. was sparked because Pesye Schloss was singled out as an example of one "credible Jewish eyewitness" to the holocaust.

And was offered in place of an answer to a request for the names of individuals, with specifics, who contaminated the diary. LGR is off in Klooga, while the relevant portion of the diary is back in Vilna - and neither he nor you has spoken to that little issue yet. So, yes, sorting out Klooga without sorting out Vilna first, as requested, is obfuscation.

Tell us, since you've leaped into this and want to talk about Klooga before answering any of the other questions put to you, about the list of the dead from Klooga, how it was compiled, what it indicates about the diary, how accurate it is, where the information on it came from.

 

[LemmyCaution]

I prefer to not spew rubbish without having sufficient knowledge upon which I can base an opinion.

But that's exactly what you've been doing.

As I've stated before, this isn't my thing. I didn't know there were mass shootings for which the evidence was as weak

So you say. But you also say that you won't look at the totality of the sources. Almost with pride. So how would you know that the evidence is weak? Oh, I remember, by saying so. And simply by doubting it and ignoring much of it.

As to how I can reconcile Schloss' testimony with that of other witnesses is moot at this point.

"Moot at this point"? Why? So you can excuse yourself from dealing with it? It does constitute after all mutually reinforcing elements of the case for Ponar and for the credibility of what Kruk took down from Schloss, Trojak, and Katz. On what ground can you dismiss Sakowicz, for example? Or Jaeger? Your implication that you can do so because Schloss is suspect in your eyes is absurd. First, what if Schloss were suspect? That says nothing about independent elements of testimony or sources. You are simply making up reasons not to deal with elements of the testimony. You've ignored the totality of sources since the outset, now you have yourself what you imagine a new reason for doing this. Second, you still haven't replied to any of the specific problems with LGR's trolling regarding Schloss - and not below either, because below you still don't deal with specifics. You doubted Schloss from the moment you heard of her, on no grounds; now you doubt her because, despite Kruk's account, and despite the irrelevancy of LGR's gambits, you say that she never existed. What is consistent here is your bias, which prevents you from considering the actual documents and facts in favor of insinuations and fantasy.

If Pesye Schloss is a real person her testimony is second hand--i.e., through Kruk.

So what? This is one reason you need to tackle the other witnesses and sources. But it's also irrelevant unless you can explain why Kruk's record isn't to be trusted. Hint: It was never in Klooga, Kruk himself explained this in the diary, others explained this. So that's a non-starter, to which LGR has yet to reply I remind you.

Further, you have yet to state your basis for doubting Schloss is real. Hint: you have to tackle Kruk, which you keep failing to even assay, since he recorded her testimony and other testimony; you have to show problems with Kruk's Vilna manuscript. Hint: you also have to deal with a number of arguments which and I others have offered about Schloss which you have also totally ignored.

If she is a figment of Kruk's imagination it only makes sense that he fabricates a witness who corroborates the story he wants to tell.

You are still making the illogical argument, which I pointed out above, that Kruk took testimony from Trojak and Katz - then fabricated Schloss. You are offering no reason for Kruk to fabricate Schloss, let alone proof he did so or fabricated anything else. None in general, none in the context of his giving accounts from two other people, ones who "appear" elsewhere on the Internet.

The first hurdle is proving she existed.

Which was not your first hurdle in the beginning of this discussion. Right? At that time, without doubting she existed, you weren't going to believe her testimony anyway, despite its conformance with other testimony and sources, because you said, not understanding what an eyewitness is, her testimony was only hearsay.

My reason for distrusting Kruk is based partially on the information LGR has provided

LGR has provided the information that Schloss's name doesn't appear in a census taken in 1942 and that he can't find any other references to her on the Internet. That is the sum total of the relevant information he has provided. Is this what helps convince you, against the multiple corroborating witnesses and sources for the extermination actions of fall 1942 in Vilna, some cited in this thread? Against the likely fate of Schloss? We are venturing back into that double standards area again, you know. You doubt Schloss, you ignore all other testimony and sources as moot at this point - but you draw conclusions from a supposed mystery that has been explained quite easily.

As to Klooga, LGR has completely botched the facts, been caught out, ignored the problems raised with his account, and continued to blithely pile absurdities on top of his fanciful foundation. He refuses to answer how he knows that the relevant manuscript was in Klooga and what happened to it. He engages in his usual distortion of the facts to show what might have happened, concludes on that dubious ground that what might have happened must have happened, ignores all the sources indicating that both ground and conclusion are mistaken, and hopes to take in a few suckers like you. You are certainly gullible enough to fall for it. It seems in the process that you are almost trying to demonstrate how the double standards of deniers operate.

primarily upon your responses to it, keeping in mind always that Pesye Schloss is an example of a "credible" eyewitness. What happened to Vilna's Jews is yet another manifestation of the "where did they go?" that gets you nowhere.

Actually, it gets you nowhere. You have to account for the population estimates and the population decline, documented even (boastfully in fact) in a German source, which meshes well enough with Kruk's estimates for example. At the very least, you have to explain how Vilna's Jewish population went from 70,000 in 1939 to 15,000 or so in December 1941. I've already given you an explanation. You have, like LGR, simply ignored it rather than try to demonstrate how it is wrong, what the sources show happened, and where you can document Vilna's Jews going. Using the totality of the evidence. Another huge failure for you, and a case of know-nothingism in action.

You said Kruk's wife was taken into Soviet custody and then we lost track of her.

No, I said she was taken to a Soviet camp and I don't know what happened to her after that. I and we are too different concepts. Before it can be concluded that we don't know what happened to her, I would have to do some research specifically regarding Kruk's wife. As would you. You are making one of LGR's leaps of faith here - and leaping to conclusions without any foundation, causing yourself to doubt simply because of doubt itself. Or maybe because of the bias which causes you to spin up doubt in the face of every bit of evidence. Here, you draw a conclusion without even bothering to look for the evidence.



Recall too that Kruk's wife was never in Vilna, so her fate isn't directly relevant to the question asked. She was a refugee trying to get from Warsaw to Vilna, crossing through Soviet occupied territory in 1939. In other words, she was in a situation different to that of Jews living in Vilna in 1941 and her fate is simply not relevant to theirs.

Maybe that's what happened to the others as well? If that doesn't work for you

So here's the thing, according to this page http://www.eilatgordinlevitan.com/vilna/vilna_pages/vilna_stories_kruk.html, Paulina Kruk ended up in Tel Aviv. Mystery solved? You tell me. It's your theory that her fate was that of Vilna's Jews. But be specific about how this went down. Please don't keep citing doubts, what ifs, and possibly could haves as evidence and proof.

I have already told you my theory for what happened to Vilna's Jews, which, again, you ignore in favor of spinning up illogical and irrelevant what ifs - just as you refuse to respond specifically to specific arguments.

As I was certain, neither you nor LGR has given a rational reply to the material. In your case, the double standard that is your modus operandi is in full force - that is, your readiness to believe groundless and even refuted insinuations and your readiness to dismiss, usually without engaging it, documentary evidence, and how it meshes. Do you think anyone here finds it surprising that you continue to skip over giving specific answers to questions in favor of stubborn ignorance - and introducing irrelevancies like the fate of Kruk's wife in 1939 to help explain what you can't explain about Vilna's Jews in 1941-1942?