Merged General Holocaust denial discussion thread

[tsig]

And how was I "corrected?" I wasn't wrong. The gas chamber at Auschwitz is not always described accurately by the tour guides. The fact that Sehn described the reconstruction in 1946 doesn't mean I'm wrong. It means the tour guides at Auschwitz don't always know what they're talking about.

This clearly proves there was no Holocaust.

 

[Dogzilla]

This clearly proves there was no Holocaust.

Nobody can prove the holocaust didn't happen. You can't prove a negative. But if you could, and a stupid docent at a museum spouting out rubbish is all the evidence it takes to prove that a historical event didn't happen, there is no history.

 

[Dogzilla]

More of your disingenuousness and another example of your floundering around with historical material. For it matters where a source comes from, when, where, who, right? And it matters in what context a statement was made. And it really matters if the statement is authentic and quoted accurately. A denier, Saggy, posted a statement about quicklime poisoning in trucks - he claimed to have the book in which this statement appeared, but he wasn't able to cite the page. He used this statement to cast doubt on a compilation of interviews and source material called The Complete Black Book of Russian Jewry. Internet hits on the quotation Saggy used all show up referenced to The Black Book of Polish Jewry. Asked a number of times, Saggy failed to come up with a citation for his quotation. Since most of the Internet hits are to denier sites, and since you guys have no compunction about altering statements and misdating documents, asking for a citation before taking Saggy's post at face value was most reasonable - in addition the quotation's being gratuitous in the first instance, as it was entirely irrelevant, according to the denier sites, to the any point Saggy was trying to make about The Complete Black Book of Russian Jewry.

Now what you take from this juvenile nonsense you and your chums play at is . . . "the only reason somebody could cast doubt on it's truthfulness is going to be anti-Semitism." Saggy apparently confuses Poland and Russia and doesn't have a source for his quotation - and you go off about the long shot chance that "the Jew" might not be a liar . . .

And now you wonder why it occurs to people who read your muddling and faffing about that there might be a hint of antisemitism in it?

How long, oh lord, how long . . .

That's all well and good but TSR asked Saggy what was absurd about the quote. He didn't demand a source and then indicate he would reply when Saggy properly sourced the quote. He didn't deny the legitimacy of the quote. The accuracy of the quote was not a problem that TSR was addressing. He simply wanted an explanation of what was so absurd about the passage. So I obliged.

Are you saying that you believe antisemitism is NOT at the root of all holocaust denial?

 

[LemmyCaution]

That's all well and good but TSR asked Saggy what was absurd about the quote. He didn't demand a source and then indicate he would reply when Saggy properly sourced the quote. He didn't deny the legitimacy of the quote. The accuracy of the quote was not a problem that TSR was addressing. He simply wanted an explanation of what was so absurd about the passage. So I obliged.

Well, I asked for a source, didn't I? http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=7878154&postcount=8512. I also said that readers should exercise extreme caution when deniers, like LGR or Saggy, refuse to give citations, because you lot have shown that you have no problem doctoring quotations or misdating or otherwise playing games with sources. I wrote that I didn't know if the material posted by Saggy actually appears in The Black Book of Polish Jewry but that it looks to have circulated among deniers in its disembodied format. No one obliged my queries with a proper citation for the quotation, by the way.

Are you saying that you believe antisemitism is NOT at the root of all holocaust denial?

I think some deniers are motivated mainly by antisemitism, some by a thorough-going racist world-view, some by a misguided iconoclasm, some by far-right ideology, some by confused "pro-German" feelings wherein Germany is conflated with the Third Reich, some by ego and a desire to get people hopping mad. Some of you are so ignorant and incoherent that it is difficult to discern motivation. What is not a motivation is a genuine interest in getting the history right. I have seen only one sign of that - and the person "involved" is no longer a denier. Surprise.

 

[Robrob]

some by confused "pro-German" feelings wherein Germany is conflated with the Third Reich.

Perfect example of which was the CT here who claimed Germans were not genetically disposed to cruelty so the Holocaust had to have been a Russian construct.

 

[Dogzilla]

.
This report includes information abuot who, what, when and where -- which are all separate details in their own right. The how and why we know from other sources.

Then what is it? Which specific detail is endorsed by Klee? Just saying it's there isn't good enough.

Much, much better than your so-called support of your claim that the WJC dictated the content of the NYT (mostly before they even existed)
.

Not my claim.

 

[Dogzilla]

Not at all, what I am seeing is your floundering, your inability to think straight, and your disingenuousness.

You've been told over and over by a number of us under what conditions historians, and we, will use, and why, witness testimonies. You absorbed none of it.

I also see the stupidity of how you guys operate - your chums lie about dates, they alter quotations, they make claims they have not a shred of support for - and when their empty claims and yours are refuted or questioned, you guys repeat them ad nausuem, hoping that mere mindless repetition will somehow put them across.

I also see you retreat from every specific case into generalities and incoherence - as the specific cases prove fatal to your denial and whatever "meta" commentary (empty waffle) you try wrapping around it. You cannot stay with a single topic in any depth because you are ignorant and you have no methodological bearings. You even admit your ignorance - but that doesn't stop you from opining on what you say you neither know nor care about.

What I am seeing is a sad, dishonest, routed performance - the usual for denial.

You finally asked where historians use any details, any details at all, from witnesses - two of us posted the first thing that came to mind, out of too many examples to count. And you wouldn't accept the most obvious cases - changing the nature of your request to make it look as though you have some kind of point.

You remain clueless about how historians work. Did you get through even a secondary school history course - were you even graduated from secondary school? Your approach to history shows not a sign of it - but it does show, as noted, many signs of antisemitic bias, a bias which seems to stand in for historical understanding in your case.

So have you now abandoned your previous position that "indiscriminate slaughter of Jews qua Jews" is as specific as the report gets? What are you getting at here? I mean, you say you gave me an example and that you have too many examples to count. But you didn't. Then you pretend you didn't understand the question. I'd say you're trying to buy some time and hope you can come up with something. But when you start throwing in insults about my schooling and, of course, the antisemitism thingy, it looks more like you just don't have an answer.

 

[Dogzilla]

Pay attention. No one has said Sehn described the 'reconstruction', they said he described the Nazi conversion of the crematorium to an air raid shelter. By punching holes in the ceiling? See?

Reconstruction/conversion. Tomato/tomahto. My point was that Nick said he "corrected" me with the Sehn report. What he "corrected" was my statement that the tour guides don't always give the correct information. The Sehn report from 1946 cannot possibly disprove my contention that the tour guides didn't give the correct information in 1992. That's what I was talking about. You don't have to be such a wanker, ya know?

 

[Dogzilla]

Maybe I'll convince Dogzilla.

Convince me of what?

 

[Dogzilla]

Then, if the tour guides are kept in the dark by the museum authorities, logically, the tour guides don't know exactly what they are talking about. But you prefer grand rhetorical flourishes to thinking.

Will you now produce the evidence to support the claim you are making, that the museum authorities feed lies to the tour guides? Names, dates, documents, conversations, etc.?

After showing us that you cannot provide even one specific holocaust claim that has been endorsed by a historian, you're going to play this game? Do you think you are making a point here?

You want evidence? Here: Alicia says all original state.

 

[LemmyCaution]

So have you now abandoned your previous position that "indiscriminate slaughter of Jews qua Jews" is as specific as the report gets? What are you getting at here?

I never claimed this. I listed out what was in Blaskowitz's note instead:http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=7888739&postcount=8700

I mean, you say you gave me an example and that you have too many examples to count. But you didn't.

I listed what was in Blaskowitz's note and then, as you can see from the link, I reminded you about details concerning Ponar. Much the same ground on Ponar had been covered in this post http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=7884751&postcount=8649 discussing your refusal to engage the totality of sources for a single event and this post http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=7883859&postcount=8603, which was my first reply to your bizarre challenge. I had thought of also replying, by the way, citing earlier exchanges in this thread on conditions in concentration camps, on the Auschwitz trial, or on the trial of the Einsatzgruppen leaders. I decided that doing so would give you more than you can handle.

Then you pretend you didn't understand the question.

I didn't pretend anything. I said that I don't know where you are going with this, the challenge being so patently absurd, and that you moved the goal posts when it was quickly answered.

I'd say you're trying to buy some time and hope you can come up with something.

But I "came up with something" right away, so I would say you're wrong.

But when you start throwing in insults about my schooling and, of course, the antisemitism thingy, it looks more like you just don't have an answer.

It does look like I had an answer, because I gave you one, which you ignored, so you could say I had no answer.

And, of course, I didn't throw in any insults. I realize that history has general interest, unlike, say, the intricacies of copyright law; but general interest doesn't make people qualified to do history any more than a unique interest makes a person qualified to do copyright law. In fact, a denier once tried to lecture me on "fair use," which happens to be an area I need to know about for my job. Frankly, it was silly to watch this denier copy and paste from what he'd obviously googled and make up his own version of what is well known, because learned, discussed, and practiced, in the field. It is like that watching you flounder around in these discussions. You simply betray no sign of ever having studied history on any level; you probably did, but the discipline seems to have eluded you or you've forgotten what your instructors tried to get across to you. You don't know how to do research or to read the narratives constructed by researchers using the agreed methodologies of the profession - and you don't understand or use the standards of the discipline. Further, you make so many mistakes of logic and comprehension that it is hard to know how old you are or what level of education you successfully attained. In the end, I think it is your beliefs that override whatever education you did attain.

As to your antisemitism, I wasn't the one who referred to an unidentified and unsourced witness as "the Jew," which echoes antisemitic and Nazi rhetoric, and who then appended a bizarre explanation with antisemitic premises (of which you seem blithely unaware).

I don't think I need to, but I will, add again that you flee from specific discussions because such discussions expose your ignorance of the history as well as your lack of standards and approach, which is pure negationism as far as I can tell. Very detailed and specific responses, answers, and rebuttals - which people make trying to sort through your great confusion, your odd challenges, and your empty claims - are ignored - and you even, as in this post of yours, pretend they were never offered.

So, again, for Ponar, historians (I cited Arad's account) have used the details from witness testimony summarized in the links above. I posted my first reply, of course, the same day you posted your silly challenge to

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

- and, instead of replying so we could understand the reason for your "is there air?" type of question, you ignored my reply and now try to put across that I stalled! Such is the way of the world with you guys, I know, but try not to be so crude.

 

[LemmyCaution]

After showing us that you cannot provide even one specific holocaust claim that has been endorsed by a historian, you're going to play this game? Do you think you are making a point here?

You want evidence? Here: Alicia says all original state.

No, I gave an answer to your "challenge" 3 or 4 days ago, which, as noted above, you've ignored, my answer summarizing the contents of some survivor and witness testimony, used by historians in their work on one incident of mass executions by the Germans.

As to Saggy's problem, he made the silly slip, exposing his shoddy thinking, that the tour guides know what they are doing even though they don't and are being manipulated by the museum. So, for his charge that the museum manipulates the tour guides I asked for details, let's say, about as precise as those I've given for how we know about the early September massacre at Ponar. I am being easy on Saggy, because I could have asked for the degree of precision used by Angrick & Klein in their book on Riga or Zbitowski in his essay on Radzilow - which, come to think of it, are two other examples of historians using witness details to reconstruct events from the Holocaust.

 

[TSR]

Then what is it? Which specific detail is endorsed by Klee? Just saying it's there isn't good enough.

.
The entire report is being offered as accurate by Klee, if that's not endorsement perhaps you would be so kind as to share your definition?

The who what where and when are all there in the report. The Who include the Army under his command, the SS assigned to his area, and Polish citizens both Jewish and not, dead and not.

The What is the indiscriminate (no due process, etc.,) slaughter of the Poles, especially the Jews.

The Where is the areas of Poland under his command.

The When is "currently happening.

If you want more detail than that, it is available from other sources -- that's kinda how history works.
.

Not my claim.

.
Lie.
.

Every few years starting in early 1900's there would be some press report (often at the behest of the WJC) about millions of Jews suffering in Europe.

.
And when called on it, you referred to the NYT archives, which you whine you wouldn't link to because some of it was paid info. Informed that I had a subscription so you should link away, you ran and are running still.

And lying about it.

Using your own standards, this means that nothing you post can be taken as being accurate -- bottom line.
.

 

[LemmyCaution]

And to make this even clearer than it already is: TSR has hit only the highlights of the Blaskowitz note, which elaborates on more details, for example, the negative fallout, for the German occupation, from the "wholly misguided . . . slaughter [of] some 10,000 Jews and Poles" by the Germans - as Blaskowitz put it, "our treatment of the Polish population."

Now, Dogzilla may want more details or different details, as his goal-post shifting approach allows him, and that is fine, if he wants to move goal-posts all day - but the point is that here is a report, with this level of detail, answering his initial request 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."

So Dogzilla can keep quibbling and trying to bob and weave - or he can respond to TSR (or me) with some kind of coherence that would show where he is headed with this increasingly odd challenge.

What we have here, it looks like, is the spectacle of someone whose bravado and poor planning have exploded in his face - and now he doesn't know what to do except negate.

 

[Nick Terry]

And how was I "corrected?" I wasn't wrong. The gas chamber at Auschwitz is not always described accurately by the tour guides. The fact that Sehn described the reconstruction in 1946 doesn't mean I'm wrong. It means the tour guides at Auschwitz don't always know what they're talking about.

You were wrong to say "Please read up on the changing history of the holocaust before you make grand pronouncements" since the history has never changed. What might or might not have been stated by a few museum tour guides 20-30 years ago isn't even vaguely close to what most people would consider to be 'history'. And yet this is the best that the deniers can muster on this issue.

 

[LemmyCaution]

Let's try and get somewhere with, or wrap up, this rather unproductive line of questioning which Dogzilla's introduced. Since he wants to know what it looks like when historians use witness testimony, here is what he should do. Chapter 5 from this book on Riga http://books.google.com/books?id=dv...DEQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=angrick & klein&f=false appears in its entirety in Google Books. The advantages of this are that it's complete and that it uses not a single but many witness and other sources. Also it's free and available to any of us with a click of the old mouse. The account runs from page 130 to 175 with its footnotes. So Dogzilla can read this chapter and report back to the forum on it and perhaps in that context tell us what he makes of how historians work and also explain where the heck he means to go with his challenge.

I was hoping he'd reply to the cases he was first given, but the chance of this, judging from his posts, seems increasingly remote.

 

[Nick Terry]

Let's try and get somewhere with, or wrap up, this rather unproductive line of questioning which Dogzilla's introduced. Since he wants to know what it looks like when historians use witness testimony, here is what he should do. Chapter 5 from this book on Riga http://books.google.com/books?id=dv...DEQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=angrick & klein&f=false appears in its entirety in Google Books. The advantage of this example is that it's complete and it uses not a single but many witness and other sources. The account runs from page 130 to 175 with its footnotes. So Dogzilla can read this chapter and report back to the forum on it and perhaps in that context tell us what he makes of how historians work and also explain where the heck he means to go with his challenge.

I was hoping he'd reply to the cases he was first given, but the chance of this, judging from his posts, seems increasingly remote.

LOL. Dogzilla will now cry 'unfair' because he has to read a whole chapter which doesn't reproduce the whole testimonies and he can't check them personally on the internet. Or something.

 

[Saggy]

Convince me of what?

I was wrong ! LOL !

OK, I'll spell it out ..... converting the crematorium to an air raid shelter was not the 'reconstruction' of the hoax gas chamber, the 'reconstruction' consisted of punching holes in ceiling. Our esteemed holohoax scholar Nick Terry, and you, want to conflate these two separate events that occurred years apart, the conversion by the Nazis, the 'reconstructon' by the Poles/Soviets. Confuse the issue. Absolutely mind boggling that they are so obvious and shameless about their lies, but, if you can't see it, who can? Do you understand now?

Here is the reality - the gas chamber hoax was exposed to the academic/research community by Pressac in 198?.

The tour guides do not do their own research on the camp history, they rely on what the museum administration tells them. They are preforming their job exactly as they are supposed to when they unknowing give a false history of the hoax gas chamber. The persons who wrote the history for them, F. Piper, for example, do know the actual history of the 'reconstruction' of the hoax, as we know from David Cole's interview.

 

[LemmyCaution]

LOL. Dogzilla will now cry 'unfair' because he has to read a whole chapter which doesn't reproduce the whole testimonies and he can't check them personally on the internet. Or something.

Couldn't he just say it's not part of the Holocaust because there's no written order from Hitler and also he's not sure what HSSPF's did, what were the KdS and BdS, and someone needs to tell him more about the RKO first?

 

[Nick Terry]

Dogzilla of course can find many examples of a

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

in the critique linked to in my signature. I will highlight one example of weighing and comparing testimonies which can be found on pp.235-6, footnote 451. It discusses whether or not Trawniki auxiliaries took part in the mass executions at Poniatowa during Operation 'Erntefest' in November 1943.

This section was written by me, and I am a historian, so it irrefutably qualifies.

There are contradictory testimonies regarding the presence of Trawnikis in the sentry screens surrounding the execution sites at Poniatowa and Trawniki. According to one SS NCO at Poniatowa, none were present. Vernehmungsniederschrift Stephan Baltzer, 14.4.1970, StA Hamburg 147 Js 43/69, Bd.85, p.16115. According to one Trawniki also stationed at Poniatowa, the shooting was done by Germans while the Trawniki guards remained at their posts around the camp. Protokol doprosa, Ivan Vasilevich Lukanyuk, 12.4.1948, ASBU Ivano-Frankivsk 5072-2123, pp.10-22. However, a rare survivor testimony from the same camp suggests that Trawnikis were involved in rousting Jews from hiding places in the barracks. Andrzej Żbikowski, ‘Texts Buried in Oblivion. Testimonies of Two Refugees from the Mass Grave at Poniatowa’, Holocaust. Studies and Materials, 1/2009, pp.76-102, here p.89. At Dorohucza, the camp was surrounded by a police unit who demanded that all Germans as well as Ukrainians surrender their weapons while the inmates were rounded up. The use of troops who had had no personal contact with the inmates was thus evidently a deliberate strategy.Cf. Vernehmung Robert Jührs, 13.10.1961,BAL B162/208 AR-Z 252/59, Bd.8, pp.1486-7. Jührs had previously served at Belzec.

The preceding and ensuing pages (pp.233-237) give many more sources on the context for 'Erntefest'. Indeed I cite from materials taken from seven different archives just on the direct circumstances of 'Erntefest' and another two archives on the context. Yet this was just a brief sketch; the most comprehensive account of 'Erntefest' is an edited collection that is 500 pages long.

The footnote summary was also brief; and that highlights something which may not have occurred to Dogzilla, which is that many issues cannot be explored in exhaustive detail or resolved once and for all in the space of even a lengthy text. There are dozens of other relevant testimonies to the issue at stake; they were not cited for space reasons. The reason to discuss this at all was because of the oddity of the Nazis moving six full battalions of police troops into the Lublin district to carry out the mass executions when they had several battalion equivalents of Trawnikis already in place. Juehrs' testimony from Dorohucza confirms one common sense inference why they did this, i.e. to use troops that had not hitherto guarded the victims.

Another example, from p.174, also written by me. This example shows how the initial phase of Aktion Reinhard was evidently conceived by the SS as a limited action. To support this point I make note of

a) how few personnel from T4 compared to the total number of T4 personnel were sent to Lublin at first
b) a contemporary document which confirms this in writing
c) two testimonies, cited indirectly in this case, but with direct citations for corroboration, speaking of an initially limited program:

The more striking point is the initially relatively small size of the T4 contingent assigned to Belzec and its progressive reinforcement in the spring of 1942 after the operation was expanded. As Victor Brack later wrote to Himmler on June 23, 1942, “in accordance with my orders from Reichsleiter Bouhler, I have long ago put at Brigadeführer Globocnik’s disposal part of my manpower to aid him in carrying out his special mission (Sonderauftrag). Upon his renewed request, I have now transferred to him additional personnel.”[1]
The evidence examined so far points to the interpretation that Belzec, soon to be joined by Sobibor, were intended to carry out what was still a relatively limited killing program. Indeed, Adolf Eichmann later testified that Globocnik had at first been authorised to kill around 100,000 people, and then secured a further authorisation to murder another 150 to 250,000 from Heydrich.[2] Josef Oberhauser similarly testified that at first:[3]
only Jews unfit for work from various ghettos were to be liquidated. There was not yet any talk of a grand-scale extermination action. I learned of the plan to systematically exterminate the Jews when Brack went to Globocnik in Lublin in April or May 1942 and told him that the former members of Aktion T4 would be placed at his disposal for the carrying out of the extermination of the Jews

[1] Brack an Himmler, 23.6.1942, BA NS19/1583, p.16, also NO-205; our emphases.

[2] Longerich, Holocaust, p.331.

[3] Pohl, Judenpolitik, pp.125-6, citing Vernehmung. Oberhauser, 10.11.1964, Oberhauser Bd. XV, Bl. 2918-20 (StA München 1 110 Ks 3/64); a similar description of Brack’s visit is in Vernehmung Josef Oberhauser, 14.12.1962, BAL B162/208 AR-Z 252/59, Bd. 9, p.1681ff, also excerpted in Klee, The Good Old Days, p.229.

I discuss Brack's letter to Himmler further on pp.203-4, quoting it in full and noting how the document cannot be read as indicating anything other than a plan of systematic mass murder as of June 1942, and cite a further, less well known document corroborating the use of T4 personnel to achieve this goal. The preceding and subsequent pages show how in comparison to spring 1942, during June-August 1942 a demonstrable extension and acceleration of the killing program occurred.