Merged General Holocaust denial discussion thread

[TSR]

Naturally you can cite the specific passage from Klee where he specifically endorses the Germans shooting girls in the foot and taking their shoes. I don't have a copy of "The Good Old Days" or I'd look it up for you.

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Of course, you can cite me saying that any historian had cited that specific passage?

No?

Did you read the part where I said "Since I never claimed any particular number of historians endorsed that detail. I feel no need to look it up, since whether her shoes were stolen or not makes precisely zero difference to the question of whether or not the Holocaust happened. But nice try at a goalpost shift..."?

No?

You asked for "an historian who endorses ANY specific detail found in ANY specific holocaust survivor or perpetrator testimony so we can see what such an "endorsement" looks like."

That's what I gave you.

You went on to suggest a very specific detail, which suggestion I rejected as above.

Now, it's your turn, AGAIN. Cite any historian using Night as a primary source.

Or admit you can't, which means that whether or not anything happened in that book or not, it has no effect on the historicity of the Holocaust.
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[carlitos]

The TOC was copied and pasted from a Word file, it isn't a hyperlinked TOC. One can be found in the blog post.

Actually, if you scroll up to your post, you'll see that each ToC listing has a hyperlink, like URL="http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/#_Toc312451982, 1983, 1984, etc.

 

[LemmyCaution]

Now, all you need to do is find an historian who endorses ANY specific detail found in ANY specific holocaust survivor or perpetrator testimony so we can see what such an "endorsement" looks like. Let's try this one: "Germans (or their collaborators) shot girls in the foot and took their shoes." Tell us how many historians have endorsed this specific detail of the holocaust and when, where, and how this "endorsement" was recorded.

Something about this can be said in regard to the action involving a particular Jewish girl in the pits of Ponar, the one who told Herman Kruk that a soldier had shot her in the leg and taken her shoes.

I know of no historian who subjects the Great Provocation shooting to the kind of detailed analysis you can find for Riga/Rumbula in Angrick & Klein. However, historians do make use of the sources we have been discussing, Kruk, Sakowicz, Jaeger, Dworzecki, and others.

For example, Arad, in Ponary Diary, 1941-1944, cited Trojak's testimony as recorded by Kruk, but not that of Schloss. Years earlier, in his Ghetto in Flames, Arad described the Great Provocation action in more detail: According to Arad, the few survivors, including Trojak and Schloss, were taken to the Jewish hospital on Zawalna Street in Vilna. There, they got medical care and told their version of events. Arad cited the diaries of Kruk and Kaczerginski and Dworzecki's postwar trial testimony. Some of the details common to the different survivors' accounts which Arad mentioned were roundup after Great Provocation, transport to Ponar by way of Lukiszki Prison, groups of ten led to killing pits, victims blindfolded, Lithuanian shooters, survivors all shot at day's end. He did not go into more detail about the mechanics of the shootings or what the victims said they experienced. There is much more, in fact, that Arad could have mentioned in these testimonies, many details, including who the victims were, how the roundups were carried out, the nature of the wounds, the command structure at the killing site, orders to disrobe, theft of property by the shooters, etc.

Arad did explain that doctors at the hospital were the first to hear the survivors' reports and that the reports were kept secret for fear that if the Germans discovered the survivors, they would be seized and returned to Ponar for killing. Word spread anyway, according to Dina Porat in her biography of Abba Kovner, which presumably put the survivors at risk.

Arad also quoted at length from Katz's later testimony (citing Korzcak's diary). And Porat, in her biography of Kovner, mentioned testimonies given by Trojak and Katz, the former to Kovner among others: "Members of the various movements met six other survivors in the ghetto hospital and methodically wrote down there stories and found them almost identical. . . ." (There is an error in this sentence in that the ghetto was not established until 2 days later.)

 

[Nick Terry]

The problem isn't that we reduce the complex events of the holocaust down to a few soundbites and catchphrases. The problem is that if we point out one tiny problem with, for example, #18, you attack it as a hate-based denial of 1 - 25.

You guys are the ones who have the problem distinguishing between the concept of "some of it didn't happen" and "it didn't happen."

Except you guys never, ever discuss coherent samples. It's always a sample of one.

You're also not pointing out 'one tiny problem' with #18, since #18 in my post referred to a massive literature on witnesses, testimonies, memoirs and diaries. #18 means the work of scholars like

James Young
Lawrence Langer
Inga Clendinnen
Andrea Reiter
Zoe Waxman
Alexandra Garbarini
Annette Wieviorka

just to name a few off the top of my head. And I'm pretty sure that you haven't read a single one of those scholars. Their work analyses groups of survivor testimonies, memoirs and diaries, often applying the tools of literary criticism, which incidentally are de rigeur for early moderrnists. Many of the people named come from the English departments, and are interested in the extent to which survivors use literary artifice, simile and metaphor, and how they construct their texts, how they are narrated and what is omitted. Because it is patently obvious that memoirists and others writing down their experiences will inevitably resort to all of those things. It would be just as hard to find a sample of soldier's memoirs which didn't throw in allusions to 'hell' or make other comparisons to their experiences.

Now, whatever you may think of English departments, there are certain standards and expectations which apply to their scholarship just as there are in other disciplines. One of the standards which cuts across all disciplines is constructing a proper sample if you're going to generalise.

I've pointed out often enough in these discussions that there are literally thousands of testimonies and memoirs from Hungarian Jews, yet we only ever seem to hear from you guys about two, Elie Wiesel and Irene Zisblatt. It really, really ought to be very obvious that whatever is said about those two is utterly meaningless when set against the sum total of testimonies from Hungarian Jews.

So actually, you're not really attacked very often for what you think is raising 'one tiny problem' with a memoir or testimony. You're jeered at and laughed at for failing to apply an absolutely basic principle, constructing a coherent sample.

At the end of term, my students had to turn in a 2000 word essay in which they were expected to analyse at least 20 separate sources systematically. They had to construct a sample and define it so that the sample was complete. Then they had to mention/reference each source once. Many found it as easy to generalise about a group of 30, if not in fact easier. The larger the sample, the more confident they were. And quite a few looked at testimonies from Hungarian Jewish survivors since there is an online database with more than 4,000 such statements from 1945, all gathered using a questionaire by interviewers (which is noticeable; all the testimonies end with some reference to their future plans, for example), and many of which have been translated into English.

A few years back, another student took a set of 240 testimonies of Hungarian Jewish survivors from this database - that was every single testimony translated into English from a female survivor. That was for a 4000 word essay.

I've had other students applying the same principles and methods to the eyewitness testimonies of sailors caught up in the Pearl Harbor attacks who gave evidence to the various investigative commissions.

 

[Clayton Moore]

Except you guys never, ever discuss coherent samples. It's always a sample of one.

You're also not pointing out 'one tiny problem' with #18, since #18 in my post referred to a massive literature on witnesses, testimonies, memoirs and diaries. #18 means the work of scholars like

James Young
Lawrence Langer
Inga Clendinnen
Andrea Reiter
Zoe Waxman
Alexandra Garbarini
Annette Wieviorka

just to name a few off the top of my head. And I'm pretty sure that you haven't read a single one of those scholars. Their work analyses groups of survivor testimonies, memoirs and diaries, often applying the tools of literary criticism, which incidentally are de rigeur for early moderrnists. Many of the people named come from the English departments, and are interested in the extent to which survivors use literary artifice, simile and metaphor, and how they construct their texts, how they are narrated and what is omitted. Because it is patently obvious that memoirists and others writing down their experiences will inevitably resort to all of those things. It would be just as hard to find a sample of soldier's memoirs which didn't throw in allusions to 'hell' or make other comparisons to their experiences.

Now, whatever you may think of English departments, there are certain standards and expectations which apply to their scholarship just as there are in other disciplines. One of the standards which cuts across all disciplines is constructing a proper sample if you're going to generalise.

I've pointed out often enough in these discussions that there are literally thousands of testimonies and memoirs from Hungarian Jews, yet we only ever seem to hear from you guys about two, Elie Wiesel and Irene Zisblatt. It really, really ought to be very obvious that whatever is said about those two is utterly meaningless when set against the sum total of testimonies from Hungarian Jews.

So actually, you're not really attacked very often for what you think is raising 'one tiny problem' with a memoir or testimony. You're jeered at and laughed at for failing to apply an absolutely basic principle, constructing a coherent sample.

At the end of term, my students had to turn in a 2000 word essay in which they were expected to analyse at least 20 separate sources systematically. They had to construct a sample and define it so that the sample was complete. Then they had to mention/reference each source once. Many found it as easy to generalise about a group of 30, if not in fact easier. The larger the sample, the more confident they were. And quite a few looked at testimonies from Hungarian Jewish survivors since there is an online database with more than 4,000 such statements from 1945, all gathered using a questionaire by interviewers (which is noticeable; all the testimonies end with some reference to their future plans, for example), and many of which have been translated into English.

A few years back, another student took a set of 240 testimonies of Hungarian Jewish survivors from this database - that was every single testimony translated into English from a female survivor. That was for a 4000 word essay.

I've had other students applying the same principles and methods to the eyewitness testimonies of sailors caught up in the Pearl Harbor attacks who gave evidence to the various investigative commissions.

Why don't you post direct links to your precious testimonies. One at a time please.

 

[LemmyCaution]

The problem isn't that we reduce the complex events of the holocaust down to a few soundbites and catchphrases. The problem is that if we point out one tiny problem with, for example, #18, you attack it as a hate-based denial of 1 - 25.

You guys are the ones who have the problem distinguishing between the concept of "some of it didn't happen" and "it didn't happen."

This is silly, but it well describes your position. The problem with you guys is that you find one thing to latch onto - sometimes grossly misunderstanding your one thing - and you use this to assure yourselves you needn't deal with everything else.

You kind of have it right in this post: You all are about one or two or three items plucked from the totality of sources and fixating on those items - when the challenge, as it is with any history, is to view the totality of the sources and understand their burden. Of course, no one can read and analyze all the sources, so, well, historians read samples (trying to make them as representative of the universe they're looking at as possible) and, well, there are many historians working the same totality. As a result, historians have no problem saying that this or that probably didn't happen, based on the sources - but not on your handy version of common sense. But they can also say what, based on a large sample of evidence, they understand to have happened and why.

As to your "common sense," as Wroclaw always points out, what experience do you have with a gun at your temple? Standing in a pit of dead people, ones you've just helped murder, drunk out of your gourd? And yet you have the presumption to declare what is absurd and not in such situations - and doing this without benefit of having read the sources describing such situations.

What a joke.

 

[LemmyCaution]

Why don't you post direct links to your precious testimonies. One at a time please.

Please. Grow up. Every source isn't on the Web, in the first instance. In the second, you guys can't be arsed to look into reference after reference cited here. Third, ask politely, if you want someone else to do your work for you.

Edit: Whoopsie . . . I missed the online database mention in Nick's post. Strike first point!

 

[Nick Terry]

Why don't you post direct links to your precious testimonies.

www.degob.hu

One at a time please.

and that's precisely where you go wrong. There is no 'one at a time please' in analysing historical sources.

 

[Saggy]

How is it that the "gas chamber" at Madjanek was closed when you were there? The gas chamber is what everybody wants to see when they visit a camp. Even when they say the gas chamber was never used, it's what the tourists visit the camp to see. It'd be like going to Disneyland and finding that Space Mountain, the Haunted Mansion, and Pirates of the Caribbean were closed.

The hoax gas chamber was closed because it was Sunday. I didn't know anything about Majdanek when I visited, and I think I remember that something was said about a gas chamber being closed, but just by looking around I did not see any buildings that remotely looked like what I expected a gas chamber to look like, so I thought nothing of it. There are just a few buildings there, ramshackle wooden affairs, not much of anything. There are shoes on display or some such. Mostly it's just open space.

 

[Wroclaw]

Yeah, I went to Disneyland when I was seven and Space Mountain was closed...

 

[Saggy]

Glass? As in unbreakable glass? I wonder why the victims didn't break it?

Glass as in window glass.

At Auschwitz the glass window is in a typical wooden office door that goes directly into the hoax gas chamber. On scrapbook pages the writer describes his visit to the hoax gas chamber - he asked the guide why the prisoners didn't break the window, and the guide replied that the Nazis stationed a guard outside the door with the window with a gun and instructions to shoot anyone breaking the window. Oy vey ! How freaking idiotic can they get ?

At Majdanek the glass window is to the outside, so anyone being gassed could just break the glass and crawl out.

 

[Saggy]

Yeah, I went to Disneyland when I was seven and Space Mountain was closed...

Sounds to me like you never left.

 

[LemmyCaution]

Sounds to me like you never left.

What were the name, copyright date, publisher, city of publication, ISBN no., etc., of that book you thought was about Russia?

 

[Clayton Moore]

Glass as in window glass.

At Auschwitz the glass window is in a typical wooden office door that goes directly into the hoax gas chamber. On scrapbook pages the writer describes his visit to the hoax gas chamber - he asked the guide why the prisoners didn't break the window, and the guide replied that the Nazis stationed a guard outside the door with the window with a gun and instructions to shoot anyone breaking the window. Oy vey ! How freaking idiotic can they get ?

At Majdanek the glass window is to the outside, so anyone being gassed could just break the glass and crawl out.

It is simply amazing. The believers don't understand glass is glass when your being gassed guns or no guns. Well they do understand but it's part of protecting their access to the Holocaust Passes.

If you noticed none of the believers commented on the reason for the Holocaust Extravaganza, Holocaust Passes.

 

[Wroclaw]

Glass as in window glass.

At Auschwitz the glass window is in a typical wooden office door that goes directly into the hoax gas chamber.

So is it "obviously a reconstruction" or was there really supposed to be a window in there? Do you realize you can't simultaneously allege both? Do you also realize that if you believe a hoaxing gang of Joos were responsible for this reconstruction, then they're the stupidest hoaxers ever?

Also, why do you people hammer on Auschwitz I when Birkenau was the death camp?

 

[Saggy]

Do you also realize that if you believe a hoaxing gang of Joos were responsible for this reconstruction, then they're the stupidest hoaxers ever?

Yes and no. The hoax is completely transparent, stupid beyond belief, preposterous, etc. The hoax gas chambers are just one example there are thousands, you can read about them in the Black Book, or read the 'testimony' of any of the Jewish eyewitnesses, all preposterous. Occassionally it is exposed as in the case of the woman who lived with the wolves, but usually it isn't. Or take the woman who pooped the diamonds, featured by Spielberg, vetted by the USHMM and the Jewish rabbis and academics, given an Academy award ..... how freaking stupid can it get, has she been exposed ..... or not? Tell us, W.

The Auschwitz hoax gas chamber is completely stupid as a gas chamber, and it's completely stupid as a reconstructed gas chamber. It is just completely stupid, as any fool can see by looking at the pics ...

http://www.historiography-project.org/misc/doors.html

And yet it fooled someone as sharp as Dogzilla. Go figure. It might have fooled me (but I don't think so).

The thing the hoax had going for it was that Jews were in key places in the government in the US I know (thanks to Butz) and Britain and the USSR I assume, and also in the media, Hollywood, the NYT, etc. A government hoax can be completely idiotic, but with a vast cadre of committed players, they have pulled it off.

But only because the hoi polloi, the people, are, stupid is not the word, I was one of them !, but uninformed, gullible, not curious, easily led, sheep really.

 

[Humanzee]

Ok... I want to know more about the glass window at Majdanek. Please post more information if you have it. All I can find are references to a high window without bars that are by recent visitors. I cannot tell if its original or not. Whats the earliest mention of this window?

 

[Saggy]

Ok... I want to know more about the glass window at Majdanek. Please post more information if you have it. All I can find are references to a high window without bars that are by recent visitors. I cannot tell if its original or not. Whats the earliest mention of this window?

Here's a pic showing the window. If you google a bit you can come up with lots of pics of the other rooms in the building housing the hoax gas chamber. The room was in actuality a disinfection room where clothing was deloused, you'll see that there are many rooms in the building, showers, windows for light, slats of the floor as in wet areas, etc.

http://www.historiography-project.com/images/19440101majdanek.jpg

No one serious really disputes this any more I don't believe. The hoaxers have about given up on Majdanek, and now the estimates of the deaths there are on the order of 50,000 by both revisionists and hoaxers. The hoax has evaporated at Majdanek, just as it evaporated at Belsen, Dachau, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, etc.

 

[LSSBB]

The Auschwitz hoax gas chamber is completely stupid as a gas chamber, and it's completely stupid as a reconstructed gas chamber. It is just completely stupid, as any fool can see by looking at the pics ...

Saggy, the pictures you show are good enough for any fool, I guess, but they are after conversion to an air raid shelter and thus can't be adequately used by the non-fool.

 

[Humanzee]

Yes I have seen photos, thanks. I have no idea when it was put in place. I cannot tell how high off the ground it was.

More importantly I have read there were more than one gas chamber at Majdanek. Certainly the one with the window could have been a delousing room and the others gas chambers.

The window argument has come up often. If you have definitive evidence for it being in place during the holocaust then please pass that along.