The Dutch Red Cross did not need to physically visit the Sobibor crime scene to investigate Sobibor when they interviewed all the survivors of the deportations to that camp from the Netherlands. They could be sent the results of the Polish investigation, which is what happened.
Then that is the nature of the evidence.
Nor did the French need to have access to Auschwitz in order to carry out their investigation when they interviewed French Auschwitz survivors. They sent their results to Poland, who carried out a separate investigation which included inspecting the site and conducting chemical tests, among other things.
Then that is the nature of the evidence.
When the West Germans came to investigate Treblinka, they were sent the results of the Polish investigation in 1945, including the crime scene reports and crime scene photos. They did not need to reinvestigate the site because there was nothing there that would help them prove or disprove the guilt of the suspects. They were dealing with an already proven fact that was simply not in dispute by any of the suspects, none of whom denied that Treblinka had been an extermination camp.
Then that is the nature of the evidence.
Likewise, when a West German state attorney's office was investigating Auschwitz, it too was sent the older results, and then brought the case to trial, at which point it was felt that to resolve issues arising from court testimonies, a visit to Auschwitz would be helpful. So they arranged a visit and walked the ground, which led to a number of eyewitnesses' testimonies being thrown out since they could not physically have seen what they claimed from the vantage points they had described. The same consideration wouldn't have applied to Treblinka, because the entire camp was dismantled, whereas the main camp at Auschwitz was still standing.
Then that is the nature of the evidence.
As the materials available to the West Germans included the 1946 Sehn report, then the West German investigators would have known that whatever they were presented with in the 1960s when they saw Krematorium I was a reconstruction. Whether or not that fact was stressed, noted or emphasised was however irrelevant to the purpose of the trip, which was to establish whether eyewitnesses had line of sight to events they had claimed.
Then that is the nature of the evidence.
In the 1970s, East German investigators were sent materials from a Soviet province showing the precise locations of graves of partisan suspects who had been executed by the Secret Field Police. These materials included the 1944 exhumation reports and photos taken at the time showing the condition of the ground and also showing where memorial markers were placed to commemorate entire villages that had been wiped off the map, along with maps showing where they had been.
Your apparent pseudolegal proceduralism is a dead end for the following reasons:
1) crime scenes are generally investigated once. Very few crime scenes are revisited over and over again and dug up or retested. There is especially little reason to revisit crime scenes when no defendant or suspect is raising any issues which might actually be resolved by revisiting the crime scene or metaphorically "exhuming the corpse". None of the recent archaeological investigations were conducted in a legal context; archaeology is a separate endeavour to criminal investigation.
2) it is perfectly possible for investigations to yield concrete results about crimes without involving forensics. This happens all the time when different police forces cooperate with each other. A crime happens in one district and is investigated there, but ramifications emerge which require the involvement of a neighbouring police force, who are sent the results and then generate new leads by standard police investigative means - interviewing witnesses. Or someone is sent off to check records (documents) and this yields results.
3) the basic point of what I wrote in the previous post to which you replied is this. The Polish and Soviet investigations were trusted on the crucial points from the 1940s onwards because there were other investigations unfolding entirely independently of these two states which came to the same results by other routes. Thus legal investigators, commentators and historians could see that there was evidence from this country, that country and the other country, and it matched the picture being developed by the Polish state and the Soviet Union, but especially the Polish investigations when talking about the death camps.
Those investigations were clearly trusted, because the Holocaust became an accepted historical fact by the end of the 1940s, as a result of combining the evidence uncovered in the east with the evidence uncovered in the west.
Cold War suspicions meant that there was probably more distrust of the Soviets, who were also more secretive and did not do much to publicise their investigations. But this only reinforces the basic point about the independence of the investigations.
The Einsatzgruppen trial relied exclusively on documents; only 2 witnesses were presented by the prosecution and there were no forensic reports used. The Americans could have asked the Soviets for thousands of forensic reports which had been drawn up from 1943-45 as the sites were investigated, but they didn't, because the trial took place in the time frame between the Soviet rejection of the Marshall Plan and the start of the Berlin Blockade.
Then that is the nature of the evidence.
Today, we can easily compare the two halves of the torn-up card and find oodles of corroboration, convergence and game-of-snap matches between the US investigation and trial of the Einsatzgruppen leadership, and the Soviet Extraordinary Commission investigations. These two investigations took place entirely independently. That is the best guarantor possible that neither was fraudulent.
Quite clearly, the results of the Einsatzgruppen trial were enough to convince western historians as well as western legal investigators through the whole of the Cold War that the Nazis had carried out mass murder in the occupied Soviet territories. That is what happened - people were convinced by the evidence in the west alone on this part, because they simply didn't know about the full extent of the Soviet investigations. It wasn't until well into the West German investigations of the 1960s that copies of the 1940s Soviet investigative reports were sent to West Germany. But once they were sent, then these confirmed what was already being developed from the documents and the witnesses. They were independent sources.
Far from casting any serious doubt on the historicity of the Holocaust, the east-west split negates the quibbling of Holocaust deniers because the investigation of the crimes proceeded independently on both sides of the Iron Curtain to the point where it is impossible to claim a massive forgery/fabrication exercise.
I'm not sure if I have said this before but, then that is the nature of the evidence.
What you have done here is describe the nature of the evidence for various investigations. That's all I'm asking. When I ask when westerners were allowed access to Auschwitz, that's what I want to know. It is important because it *might* impact the reliability of the evidence. If westerners weren't allowed in until 1988, then that is the nature of the evidence. There's no value judgement on that.
When Saggy asks when the Poles admitted the hoax gas chamber at Auschwitz was a hoax, there's a little bit more of a value judgement but his question is legitimate. You said the West German prosecutors had been given the Sehn report when they conducted their investigation for the trials. So, IF they read the report that said the "gas chamber" had been converted into an air raid shelter by the Germans, then..if they thought about it..they would know that obviously the "gas chamber" they were looking at had to be a "reconstruction" because it didn't look like an air raid shelter (when in fact it really does). But you said they were there to verify lines of sight, not to investigate the "gas chamber" so whatever the Sehn report says about modifications wasn't relevant at all to them. Or to answering the question. The question is when were visitors told that the "gas chamber" was a "reconstruction"? The question is not when were visitors given a copy of the Sehn report and could read about the gas chamber into air raid shelter conversion and figure out for themselves what had happened.
It's a reasonable question because it addresses how open the Poles are about the site. If the Poles tell tourists the "gas chamber" is in the original state and not a reconstruction, then they're being deceptive. It's legitimate to ask why.
If I ask when westerners were allowed in to inspect the site or Saggy asks when they admitted the modifications to the "gas chamber" and you say you don't know and you don't care and asking the question is stupid, that makes me think that either YOU don't care how reliable the evidence is as long as it supports your per-determined conclusion OR that you know the evidence is weak and are afraid that answering the question will lead to the same conclusion.
You didn't answer our specific questions but you did share some insights into how information passed back and forth between the East and the West. I guess you believe that the results of Soviet bloc investigations were trusted because the holocaust became an accepted historical fact by the end of the 1940s. That sort of sounds like a predetermined conclusion but maybe not.
A big problem I have with the trustworthiness of Soviet investigations into holocaustic crimes is Katyn. Actually, Katyn offers us many valuable lessons. For one, I assume that the Soviets blocked westerners from both Auschwitz and from Katyn right after the war. That impediment didn't prevent the Americans and the British from reaching the proper conclusion regarding Katyn, did it? So blocked access doesn't automatically mean any evidence is worthless and you don't need to get your tits in the wringer when someone asks when we did gain access.
Katyn also offer us a guide for assessing the relative value of the investigation of WWII atrocities. We know the Soviets investigated Katyn when they drove the Germans out. IIRC, it was a very complete and reasonably open process--certainly more extensive than their investigations of any death camps on Polish territory. We know they had expert witnesses brought in and were able to find Germans who freely and openly confessed to their involvement in the massacre. Did any of the Germans in Soviet custody deny the Katyn massacre? Did any of them blame it on the Soviets? Perhaps they denied their own responsibility for the crime but they didn't deny the crime itself, did they?
Now, let's pretend the Dutch wanted to put Germans on trial for Katyn. They would not need to physically visit the Katyn crime scene to investigate Katyn if they could interview Dutch citizens who were witnesses to the crime. They could be sent a copy of the Soviet investigation, right?
Likewise, the French wouldn't need access to Katyn if they wanted to carry out an investigation. They could have interviewed French eyewitnesses, produce a report and then they could sent their report to the Soviets who carried out a separate investigation which included expert testimony and perpetrator confessions, right?
If the West Germans traveled to Katyn because they wanted to verify lines of sight, and subsequently threw out hundreds of eyewitness statements because their investigations showed these eyewitnesses were mistaken, their investigation would be complete because they could use the results of the Extraordinary State Commission for ascertaining and investigating crimes perpetrated by the German–Fascist invaders and their accomplices, and the damage inflicted by them on citizens, collective farms, social organisations, State enterprises and institutions of the U.S.S.R report to fill in the details, right?
So if the East and the West had come to the conclusion that the the Germans were responsible for the Katyn incident, we could trust the Soviet investigation into Katyn because it agreed with our investigations. So the Soviet report would be valuable if a western government wanted to convict Germans of the crime. But how valuable would it be if they wanted to get to the truth?
So, yes, I am a bit suspicious of the Soviets. Don't get me wrong. The western allies aren't much better. Those were our shrunken heads and lampshades displayed to the world. And the United States produced a report saying that the conditions in the concentration camps were a result of deliberate German policy. So we're liars too. But it's helpful to know how long we had to rely on Soviet lies before we could start making up some of our own.
