General Holocaust Denial Discussion Part II

[000063]

No, you were saying that thousands of prisoners were allowed the free run of the camp unsupervised and unmonitored.

No, he was saying that Team Holocaust claimed that the prisoners were running around all willy nilly. Clay's a Masochistic Liar, remember?

 

[Clayton Moore]

Originally Posted by Clayton Moore View Post

Ignoring the common sense, human nature reactions/behaviors to/in an environment of terror is like removing flinching and mosquito swatting from the scenes of the movie that is life.

000063

You have yet to explain why only the Jews are subject to such a criticism, and not the Soviet POWs or the people killed in ethnic cleansing all the time. Keep running.

How is my comment a criticism?

Lurkers please notice. Jews are added to a nonexistent criticism. That's what Holocaust presenters do.

 

[Nick Terry]

Originally Posted by Clayton Moore View Post

000063

How is my comment a criticism?

Lurkers please notice. Jews are added to a nonexistent criticism. That what Holocaust presenters do.

Strictly speaking, your 'comment' was just babble. I'm quite sure the lurkers are having just as hard a time following what you are trying to argue as people posting on this thread.

 

[thedopefishlives]

How is my comment a criticism?

Lurkers please notice. Jews are added to a nonexistent criticism. That what Holocaust presenters do.

"The lurkers" have been paying plenty of attention to the shenanigans on this thread, as evidenced by not one, but two polls on the subject. Unfortunately for you, they know that the shenanigans are on your side and not on "Team Holocaust"'s.

 

[swright777]

Isn't that exactly what I was saying?

No. It's very different than what you were saying.

You are suggesting that if there were daily atrocities there wouldn't be any trust in the camps. And that there had to be trust for the camps to function. So this means there were not daily atrocities.

A = Daily atrocities were committed
B = The camps functioned

You: B ⇒ ¬A

Me: A and B are unrelated, at least as far as the trust issue is concerned. And they are both TRUE.

 

[Dogzilla]

It's only gotten ridiculous because you wilfully distort and misunderstand perfectly comprehensible history.



And the other part involved the murder of Jews deemed unfit for work or who became unfit for work.

To speak of a rise in the quality of healthcare in the autumn of 1944 is entirely relative depending on which part of the now expanded KZ system you're talking about, and on the type of work carried out.

It was paradoxically, better to be at Auschwitz in the autumn of 1944 than to have been shipped out to a camp in the Reich. The inmate population of Auschwitz was beginning to decline due to transfers, at the same time as the camp facilities were getting to be as complete as they could. A new extension of the main camp opened in the autumn of 1944 for women, and had a very low death toll because there was less overcrowding. But the older main camp hubs like Buchenwald and Ravensbrueck as well as half-completed camps like Gross-Rosen experienced a major rise in their inmate population, so that overcrowding, disease, starvation and so forth rose dramatically through 1944, before the collapse in 1945.

New sub-camps sprung up everywhere, and tended to be appalling if they housed men (of whatever kind) because they involved heavy construction labour or other mankilling forms of work, whereas women's camps tended to be attached to factories for sit-down work. So a huge gender disparity emerged in some camps, like Neuengamme.



Jews sent to Theresienstadt were meant to die a 'natural' death, according to Himmler when he reprimanded Kaltenbrunner for deporting too many from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz in early 1943. That is an interesting turn of phrase since it implies that deportation to Auschwitz would result in an unnatural death.

Since the Final Solution referred to the destruction of the Jewish race in Europe, then it is irrelevant whether that destruction was brought about by one means or another. The bottom line is that the Jews would be no more in the medium term.

Theresienstadt was also one of two camps which served a propaganda function, the other being Belsen in 1943 to mid-1944. Some very few Jews were exchanged for interned German nationals or ransomed, or happened to be citizens of nations which the Nazis did not want to alienate. So they were held in Belsen prior to exchange.

Theresienstadt was the showpiece camp, so it could be used to create a legend that the Nazis weren't treating 'the Jews' badly, and could be shown off to visiting foreign dignitaries and the ICRC. When the action to deport Danish Jews failed, the very few who were caught were sent to Theresienstadt as a means of reassuring Sweden.

Very large numbers of Jews sent to Theresienstadt were then deported to Auschwitz on a repeated basis, despite the intention to let the privileged German Jews croak there 'naturallly' in the world's worst old people's home. Some of the transfers to Auschwitz furthered the deception because they were placed in the 'Theresienstadt family camp', where they were not selected and kept alive in order to write letters home and generally create a further red herring. But the contingents were then liquidated six to seven months after arrival, following a somewhat limited sieving for able-bodied workers.



Indeed not, which is why Poles and Russians will tell you to eff off because of your apologism for a regime that they consider to have committed genocide against them.



Indeed, the Nazis were unique in devising not just one but three plans intended to bring about 7 figure population reductions: the Hunger Plan, the General Plan East, and the Final Solution.



The Hunger Plan and GPO were both considerably bigger visions than the comparatively much more manageable task of eliminating 9-10 million Jews in Europe.



Yes, there was a certain latitude, although the gap between 'kill 'em all' and kill 80% while sparing 20% for a while in order to work doesn't seem very big to me.

It doesn't suggest that there was much in the way of room for maneuver for subordinate Nazi officials to really save lots of Jews just because they felt like it. The economic argument was the only really substantive one, which is why we fete Oskar Schindler and Major Karl Plagge today.

It might help if you appreciated how devolved much of the Nazi state was; Hitler used divide-and-rule to minimise his workload and left details up to subordinates. He provided the 'vision thing', the ideological goals and demands, the strategy, and the subordinates carried them out operationally. There was clearly a strong consensus within the upper echelons of the Nazi hierarchy (Reichsleiter, Gauleiter, Ministers and State Secretaries) around the Final Solution, but there were some disagreements about the urgency of killing labourers.

Goebbels, for example, was really pissed off when he found out that the Wehrmacht had secured exemptions for Jewish armaments workers in Berlin, and pushed to get rid of them. This took time; but it meant that 18 months after the exemption was secured, Jewish armaments workers were deported to Auschwitz. When they arrived there, some were spared to work in Monowitz, because Pohl and Himmler needed more labourers for IG Farben.

Goebbels is very clearly on the 'ideological' side of the regime whereas Speer was much more of a pragmatist. Goering combined both but also internalised conflicts between the agricultural lobby and the industrialists, as the Four Year Plan oversaw both. Thus Goering could literally contradict himself in the same meeting, because he was juggling totally conflicting aims. Himmler was primarily an ideologue, but not quite as tone-deaf to pragmatism as, say, Bormann.



It's a strawman because Hitler did not lay down a five-graph order to a subaltern. When Hitler gave the green light to start the process across Europe, many subordinates had hatched plans for partial or total extermination already. So part of the 'decision' was approving existing plans. Eg Globocnik's plans for Aktion Reinhard, or Greiser's request to reduce the Jewish population of the Warthegau. The approvals were clearly filtered through Himmler

On the other hand, Hitler was also enunciating a strategic ideological goal, eliminating the Jews of Europe, which had been emphasised from 1939 onwards. Since emigration was impossible and 'resettlement' to Madagascar or Siberia wasn't going to happen, the solution chosen was to kill as many as could be killed during the war, while sparing a minority for labour.

The absolute last thing Hitler would have approved, by the way, is a plan to dump unemployed and unemployable unfit Jews anywhere in territory he controlled, where they would eat up resources that were badly needed for the home front and war effort.



It's more a reflection of how the Nazis themselves came to distinguish between the strategic goal of the Final Solution and the operational details. But they did so inconsistently depending on their vantage point. Eichmann spoke of 'exempting' Jews from the Final Solution on a few occasions. He used this to describe leaving Jewish workers in Galicia behind when everyone else was being deported westwards to Belzec. Meanwhile, the Final Solution at Auschwitz meant the process of receiving Jews uprooted en bloc from the Netherlands, France etc and then sorting them into useless and useful components. So the FS carried much more of a labour connotation in that context. But then, Auschwitz was run by a different branch of the SS.

Exemptions were obviously on a continuum. Mischlinge and Jews in mixed marriages were exempted from deportation from the get-go, as is clear from the Wannsee protocol. But their 'case' was the subject of further deliberations and regulations, which encompassed deciding what to do if the 'Aryan' spouse died or divorced a Jew in a mixed marriage, and which of the very complex gradations of Mischlinge should be sterilised and if that was possible.

Still, it's clear that Mischlinge and Jews in mixed marriages were not subjected to the Final Solution as a practical measure. They were, however, biologically and genetically part of the Jewish race in Europe, and they were also biologically and familialy part of the non-Jewish 'Aryan' people of Germany. Had the Nazis won the war, and implemented compulsory sterilisation, or deported more of the exempted groups, then this would have been a change, i.e. henceforth they would have been subjected to the Final Solution.

Privileged Jews, i.e. elderly German and Austrian Jews plus WWI veterans, were not deported to the east. They were deported to Theresienstadt. From an operational perspective, then they were not subjected to the Final Solution, which meant deportation, selection and extermination. From a strategic perspective, Theresienstadt would still contribute to the destruction of the Jewish race in Europe by confining a relatively small number of Jews away from good 'Aryans' and in a place where they were expected to perish. Theresienstadt also served as part of the cover story and deception plan.

Some of the confusion comes from looking at what is being discussed. Heydrich brings up Theresienstadt at Wannsee, which was a meeting about the Final Solution of the Jewish Question. He lays down the strategy, and the strategy clearly includes Theresienstadt as a means of cutting down on internal protests. So in January 1942, Theresienstadt is clearly part of the FS. Once things are implemented, however, the Final Solution takes on other meanings in the minds of Nazi bureaucrats and SS officers like Eichmann, so they start to differentiate their language.




It's much more likely that someone will say 'Hitler wanted to kill the Jews' or 'the Nazis killed millions of Jews' and they won't say 'all'. Neither statement can be refuted by pointing to a few exempted or privileged categories of Jews, or to the minority spared for forced labour.

The Nazis did indeed kill millions of Jews in Europe during WWII, as part of their goal of eliminating the Jewish race from Europe. They did not finish the job, and suspended the Final Solution in its classic form in late 1944.

Hitler did indeed want to kill the Jews, but laying down a strategic vision is different to implementing it operationally. It's also very clear that Himmler wanted to kill the Jews, but like Hitler he was amenable to a smidgeon of pragmatism and saw the value in sparing a minority for work.

The bold face is all that needs to be said. I guess that is how a distant relative of mine, Hanna Goldfinger who was born in 1840 and died in 1943 in Theresienstadt is among the six million who were "murdered by the Nazis."

With a definition like that, I guess you're right: there was a plan to physically exterminate all the Jews in Europe.

 

[A'isha]

The bold face is all that needs to be said. I guess that is how a distant relative of mine, Hanna Goldfinger who was born in 1840 and died in 1943 in Theresienstadt is among the six million who were "murdered by the Nazis."

With a definition like that, I guess you're right: there was a plan to physically exterminate all the Jews in Europe.

What crime did your "distant relative" commit to get sent to a KL?

 

[Dogzilla]

This lengthy explanation is exposed as a fabrication on the fly by its but after but after but. 12 in all. Can you imagine the stern German hierarchy making exception after exception? Like some teen making up his own rules in a game of clothes poker with his girl friends.

When you don't have a clear unambiguous expression of a policy and you have this many exceptions to that policy, you need to ask yourself if there really was a policy. What's funny is it almost sounds like Nick is telling us about all these exceptions as if it is evidence that there was in fact a policy.

This is why it's good to look at the evidence and go where the evidence takes you rather than start with your conclusion and then try to explain away all the evidence that doesn't fit your conclusion.

 

[Dogzilla]

As countless people have written already in this thread, the Nazi goal was to eliminate the biological seed of Jewry as quickly as possible given the constraints they faced. One of those constraints was the need to avoid the kind of protests that got in the way of T4. Since they knew the German population would be particularly galled by the extermination of the elderly, they set up a special camp for them, knowing they wouldn't reproduce and would die within a few years. Playing semantic games won't fool anyone.

That is one compartment in the holocaust. Another compartment can be seen in the film "Children of Terezin" Reconcile those two compartments.

Oh, let me try: Thereisenstadt was something of a transit camp for younger Jews who were briefly interred there for a few years before being shipped to a death camp. Oh Oh and the thing about Czech Jews being sent to this camp that set up for privileged German and Austrian Jews, uh, Czechoslovakia wasn't a country then so Czechs were Germans. Yeah. That's the ticket.

 

[Clayton Moore]

As countless people have written already in this thread, the Nazi goal was to eliminate the biological seed of Jewry as quickly as possible given the constraints they faced. One of those constraints was the need to avoid the kind of protests that got in the way of T4. Since they knew the German population would be particularly galled by the extermination of the elderly, they set up a special camp for them, knowing they wouldn't reproduce and would die within a few years. Playing semantic games won't fool anyone.

BUT it seems the Germans decided they should gather Jewish seed. Will somebody explain why?

Speaking of mild sexual content in holocaust testimony, here's a gem I found from the Claims Conference: This man is describing the horrific medical experiment he suffered.



Quote:
Mr. K, Age 80

Place of Persecution: Auschwitz
Dates: 1942 to 1945

"As soon as I arrived in Auschwitz I was taken into a room and there I was undressed and made to kneel down … on my knees and my hands. The SS officer [who] was probably a doctor, dressed in white robe, shoved an iron stick, which had a handle on its end, right into my rectum. He then turned the stick and caused an involuntary ejaculation of sperm. A female SS officer [who] worked with the other officer held two pieces of glass underneath my genitals in order to collect a sample of my sperm for the lab. They then made me stand up on a special machine that gave electric waves to both sides of my genitals until again a sperm was ejaculated. After the liberation I was taken to Sanatorium Gauting next to Munich. There I was bedridden for almost a year starting with a weight of only 30 kilograms. During that year I was operated for serious medical problems."




Is there no limit to your gullibility?

I guess the Germans destroyed that machine too. Bastards.

 

[LemmyCaution]

Careful the trap repeated over and over and over by repeating a lie until everyone accepts it as the truth.

I have never even said the word revolt in any of my previous JREF posts.

I never criticized Jewish camp inmates for not revolting in the camps. So I have no prisoner "revolt theory."

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8275579&postcount=1609

Nick Terry leaps in with both feet to buddy up with you by confiding to you how heinous my view, now embellished to several points and the grossest misrepresentations, was and that I should apologize.


Actually Clayton made several points and the grossest misrepresentations were addressed very comprehensively. Civilised discussion would normally require the person making a misrepresentation to apologise for inventing nonsensical gibberish and restate their case minus the blatant errors.


Dogzilla, don't get lulled into thinking the Holocaust presenters are any less than the dark side.



http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=7217882&postcount=2374

Originally Posted by little grey rabbit View Post


Clayton Moore
It's odd how a lie starts out super ugly and over the top. Then it winds up, after being tempered over and over and over, still a lie but now tolerable/feasible in comparison. Reasonable, almost a relief from the original lie, which of course was never labeled a lie, just misinformation. A fog of war thing. Sound familiar?

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=7352665&postcount=3673

This post could not be written in a way that would make it more imprenetrable than it is. If it means anything, I will be shocked. Perhaps Clayton will translate from gibberish into something we can all read and appreciate?

 

[LemmyCaution]

Isn't that exactly what I was saying?

It is very difficult to determine what you are arguing - why don't you try stating it clearly and in summary form?

 

[Nick Terry]

The bold face is all that needs to be said. I guess that is how a distant relative of mine, Hanna Goldfinger who was born in 1840 and died in 1943 in Theresienstadt is among the six million who were "murdered by the Nazis."

With a definition like that, I guess you're right: there was a plan to physically exterminate all the Jews in Europe.

Right down to the last unthreatening 103 year old, it would seem.

Anyway, it's nice to identify one of your sockpuppets because of this anecdote. I'm curious where else you have trolled under anonymous usernames - care to fess up for the record?

 

[Nick Terry]

When you don't have a clear unambiguous expression of a policy and you have this many exceptions to that policy, you need to ask yourself if there really was a policy. What's funny is it almost sounds like Nick is telling us about all these exceptions as if it is evidence that there was in fact a policy.

This is why it's good to look at the evidence and go where the evidence takes you rather than start with your conclusion and then try to explain away all the evidence that doesn't fit your conclusion.

Try parsing these two documents together

Wannsee Protocol (January 1942)
Korherr report (1943)

paying attention to the numbers, and tell us what proportion were treated in a privileged or semi-privileged fashion.

That's of Jews under Nazi control, not just in Germany or Austria.

Oh, and tell us what happened to the German and Austrian Jews who were deported to the east in 1942, where they went, who greeted them on arrival and in what way, etc.

 

[LemmyCaution]

No. It's very different than what you were saying.

You are suggesting that if there were daily atrocities there wouldn't be any trust in the camps. And that there had to be trust for the camps to function. So this means there were not daily atrocities.

A = Daily atrocities were committed
B = The camps functioned

You: B ⇒ ¬A

Me: A and B are unrelated, at least as far as the trust issue is concerned. And they are both TRUE.

Agreed, Clayton's also thrown in, in similar vein, that had the camps brutalized inmates and been sites for mass murder, then the inmates a) would have been time bombs, ready to explode in anger at any moment (a revolt by another name, I guess), b) the prisoners would have fought or revolted against the authorities who mistreated them, just as union workers fought company goons for less reason, and c) the Germans would have been petrified to hold people in a camp whose family members they had mistreated or killed. For these reasons, had there been atrocities, Clayton has argued, the camps could not have functioned. So, as you summarized Clayton's garbled and often cryptic comments, Clayton says that the fact that the camps functioned and prisoners were not constantly venting their rage in doomed fights against the authorities is a proof that atrocities, brutality, and mass murder could not have occurred in the camps. Thus, he ignores the techniques which the Nazis used in exercising power over inmates to succeed in regulating and controlling their lives on behalf of the Reich, brutalizing and exploiting them and even disposing of many of them, those deemed useless to the Reich or sufficiently harmful to it, which system of control in fact enabled camps to function, such as they did, while terror, brutality, and even murder occurred as part of that same system.

Further, Clayton erroneously stated that a) prisoners were free to navigate and rove around Treblinka on their own recognizance (which, he says, wouldn't have happened without the guards' trusting the prisoners, b) prisoners spent their daily lives in Treblinka going about their own business, and c) there were 1000s of prisoners roving around Treblinka in 1943 without being guarded. Clayton's depiction of Treblinka makes it sound like after-school detention, at worst, a place without a control system, punishment, or labor - without guards, watchtowers, guns or whips, etc. - a place where the 1000s of residents roved, navigated, and pretty much did what they wanted on their own. These claims are gross misstatements made without foundation. Treblinka, to say the least and to try not to burst out laughing at Clayton's goofiness, was a place in which prisoners were eminently replaceable - and, in fact, during its early days prisoner workgroups were "turned over" quickly. As the authorities saw the benefit of some continuity in the camp labor force, they kept the prisoners in line and almost universally compliant to Nazi claims over them, no matter how horrific the assignments (the authorities used brute compulsion, threat of violence, strict punishment, violence, threat of death and outright killing). That said, some prisoners managed to find opportunity to organize revenge and rebellion in secret within this highly oppressive, barbaric system - and almost all of them, judging from testimonies and memoirs, bitterly despised those who held them captive.

Last, Clayton stated some bizarre and unsubstantiated conclusions about human behavior in extreme circumstances, namely, a) people of "that time" valued their lives very little and so revenge came easily to them, as they cared more about revenge than about staying alive, thus groups of people could not be mistreated without their fighting back and b) it is abnormal for people to succumb to superior power and the use of force or to try to find individual advantages in oppressive systems or to hope to maintain their lives even in dire conditions. There are simply no grounds I know of to draw such conclusions - and, as usual, Clayton hasn't supported his views in any way other than by assertion and repetition.

In all this, as you indicate, Clayton ignores or handwaves away a) evidence of savage conditions, mistreatment of inmates, and mass murder in the camps and b) the efficacy of Nazi control systems and tactics in rendering inmates in the various camp systems as well as the ghettos powerless and defenseless (through such devices as divide and conquer routines - the system of Kapos and elders, the Judenrate and Order Service, through terror, through force and "muscle," through use of informants, through individual and collective punishment, through dehumanization and maltreatment). Nazi camps - some holding political prisoners and asocials, for example, some for Jews, others for POWs, some for labor, etc. - managed to exert nearly total control over their varied prisoner populations. Still, there were cases of flight, individual non-cooperation and violence, and organized resistance - as we've discussed in the case of camps dealing with Jews. On every ground - logic, factual accuracy, human behavior - Clayton's one-liners fail.

 

[Clayton Moore]

Agreed, Clayton's also thrown in, in similar vein, that had the camps brutalized inmates and been sites for mass murder, then the inmates a) would have been time bombs, ready to explode in anger at any moment (a revolt by another name, I guess), b) the prisoners would have fought or revolted against the authorities who mistreated them, just as union workers fought company goons for less reason, and c) the Germans would have been petrified to hold people in a camp whose family members they had mistreated or killed. For these reasons, had there been atrocities, Clayton has argued, the camps could not have functioned. So, as you summarized Clayton's garbled and often cryptic comments, Clayton says that the fact that the camps functioned and prisoners were not constantly venting their rage in doomed fights against the authorities is a proof that atrocities, brutality, and mass murder could not have occurred in the camps. Thus, he ignores the techniques which the Nazis used in exercising power over inmates to succeed in regulating and controlling their lives on behalf of the Reich, brutalizing and exploiting them and even disposing of many of them, those deemed useless to the Reich or sufficiently harmful to it, which system of control in fact enabled camps to function, such as they did, while terror, brutality, and even murder occurred as part of that same system.

Further, Clayton erroneously stated that a) prisoners were free to navigate and rove around Treblinka on their own recognizance (which, he says, wouldn't have happened without the guards' trusting the prisoners, b) prisoners spent their daily lives in Treblinka going about their own business, and c) there were 1000s of prisoners roving around Treblinka in 1943 without being guarded. Clayton's depiction of Treblinka makes it sound like after-school detention, at worst, a place without a control system, punishment, or labor - without guards, watchtowers, guns or whips, etc. - a place where the 1000s of residents roved, navigated, and pretty much did what they wanted on their own. These claims are gross misstatements made without foundation. Treblinka, to say the least and to try not to burst out laughing at Clayton's goofiness, was a place in which prisoners were eminently replaceable - and, in fact, during its early days prisoner workgroups were "turned over" quickly. As the authorities saw the benefit of some continuity in the camp labor force, they kept the prisoners in line and almost universally compliant to Nazi claims over them, no matter how horrific the assignments (the authorities used brute compulsion, threat of violence, strict punishment, violence, threat of death and outright killing). That said, some prisoners managed to find opportunity to organize revenge and rebellion in secret within this highly oppressive, barbaric system - and almost all of them, judging from testimonies and memoirs, bitterly despised those who held them captive.

Last, Clayton stated some bizarre and unsubstantiated conclusions about human behavior in extreme circumstances, namely, a) people of "that time" valued their lives very little and so revenge came easily to them, as they cared more about revenge than about staying alive, thus groups of people could not be mistreated without their fighting back and b) it is abnormal for people to succumb to superior power and the use of force or to try to find individual advantages in oppressive systems or to hope to maintain their lives even in dire conditions. There are simply no grounds I know of to draw such conclusions - and, as usual, Clayton hasn't supported his views in any way other than by assertion and repetition.

In all this, as you indicate, Clayton ignores or handwaves away a) evidence of savage conditions, mistreatment of inmates, and mass murder in the camps and b) the efficacy of Nazi control systems and tactics in rendering inmates in the various camp systems as well as the ghettos powerless and defenseless (through such devices as divide and conquer routines - the system of Kapos and elders, the Judenrate and Order Service, through terror, through force and "muscle," through use of informants, through individual and collective punishment, through dehumanization and maltreatment). Nazi camps - some holding political prisoners and asocials, for example, some for Jews, others for POWs, some for labor, etc. - managed to exert nearly total control over their varied prisoner populations. Still, there were cases of flight, individual non-cooperation and violence, and organized resistance - as we've discussed in the case of camps dealing with Jews. On every ground - logic, factual accuracy, human behavior - Clayton's one-liners fail.

I kinda feel badly for people who try so hard to skew my words. You lurkers be sure to notice that LemmyCaution's vociferous rant doesn't follow his usual retort format of quoting my comment and attacking it.


Maybe he can share the reference for these two observations.

a) people of "that time" valued their lives very little and so revenge came easily to them, as they cared more about revenge than about staying alive, thus groups of people could not be mistreated without their fighting back


b) it is abnormal for people to succumb to superior power and the use of force or to try to find individual advantages in oppressive systems or to hope to maintain their lives even in dire conditions.


And these two?

a) people of "that time" valued their lives very little and so revenge came easily to them, as they cared more about revenge than about staying alive, thus groups of people could not be mistreated without their fighting back

b) it is abnormal for people to succumb to superior power and the use of force or to try to find individual advantages in oppressive systems or to hope to maintain their lives even in dire conditions.

The following I supposedly hand waived. I must have missed that.


a) evidence of savage conditions, mistreatment of inmates, and mass murder in the camps and

b) the efficacy of Nazi control systems and tactics in rendering inmates in the various camp systems as well as the ghettos powerless and defenseless (through such devices as divide and conquer routines - the system of Kapos and elders, the Judenrate and Order Service, through terror, through force and "muscle," through use of informants, through individual and collective punishment, through dehumanization and maltreatment).

This is planet Earth is it not? Treblinka was a work camp. Camps weren't prisons and people walked unguarded to perform their daily regimen.

 

[Clayton Moore]

I just happened on this one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treblinka_extermination_camp#Treblinka_I
Eberl's poor organizational skills soon caused the operation of Treblinka to turn disastrous. At the very beginning, the corpses were buried in mass graves, but within days the burial pits were overflowing with bodies, and corpses were instead piled up in camp II because the workers did not have proper time to bury them. At the same time, the gas chambers continually broke down. Therefore, the SS resorted to shooting incoming Jews in the arrival area of the camp and piling bodies throughout the camp.

How the hell does a gas chamber break down?

 

[Dogzilla]

If you're actually interested, read the Pelt report properly to get you started.

I have read the van Pelt report as well as it commercial spinoff "The Case for Auschwitz." I know that he acknowledges Hoess' importance to our knowledge of Auschwitz and of Auschwitz to our knowledge of the holocaust in general. If I recall correctly, van Pelt spends a great deal of time going over the various permutations of Hoess' statements. I know what van Pelt says about Hoess because I am actually interested.

But you said:

LOL, you evidently don't know much about Hoess's statements. Hoess testified under oath to the same numbers deported from individual countries in his very first affidavit. He repeated them to GM Gilbert at Nuremberg, and he repeated them in a signed statement in November 1947 (the one published in Polish in 1951, and in German and English in 1958), then repeated them in court (and thus under oath) in March 1947, also while explaining why he gave a higher number for the overall death toll initially, and why he changed his mind.

So your argument is screwed.

My argument as regards Hoess is that Hoess did not testify under oath to 1.1 million deaths at Auschwitz (gassed or otherwise) at any time and that he was dead before we heard anything close to that number in connection with his name. You corrected me with the information that Hoess testified under oath in his very first affidavit to the "same numbers deported from individual countries." You said that he repeated these numbers to Gilbert at Nuremberg and in a signed statement in November 1947 (after he was dead, btw) as well as in court under oath in March 1947. What was that number or numbers? If it wasn't 1.1 million, how does it "screw" my argument?

 

[Dogzilla]

Ignoring the common sense, human nature reactions/behaviors to/in an environment of terror is like removing flinching and mosquito swatting from the scenes of the movie that is life.

I don't think people would necessarily revolt if they were subjected to the environment of terror that we're expected to believe the Nazis created in their death camps. But anybody with any knowledge of industrial psychology knows that workers toiling in an unpredictable state of terror after watching their friends and family being murdered are not going to be the human cogs in the most efficient factory of death that the world has ever seen. Even though physical punishment was more common back in the day and human factors engineering was pretty much unknown, most managers even then would know that simply holding a gun to someone's head isn't going make them give 110%. Even slave owners and overseers knew that if you whipped your slave too much it's going to cause a decline in productivity.

Because the death camps were able to kill as many people as they did on a daily basis and dispose of the bodies within such a tiny area using primarily manual labor and whatever technology they had laying around, we know the workers weren't starved, beaten, terrorized, and tortured daily before being knocked off after a few weeks on the job.

 

[Dogzilla]

Careful the trap repeated over and over and over by repeating a lie until everyone accepts it as the truth.

I have never even said the word revolt in any of my previous JREF posts.

I never criticized Jewish camp inmates for not revolting in the camps. So I have no prisoner "revolt theory."

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8275579&postcount=1609

Nick Terry leaps in with both feet to buddy up with you by confiding to you how heinous my view, now embellished to several points and the grossest misrepresentations, was and that I should apologize.


Actually Clayton made several points and the grossest misrepresentations were addressed very comprehensively. Civilised discussion would normally require the person making a misrepresentation to apologise for inventing nonsensical gibberish and restate their case minus the blatant errors.


Dogzilla, don't get lulled into thinking the Holocaust presenters are any less than the dark side.



http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=7217882&postcount=2374

Originally Posted by little grey rabbit View Post


Clayton Moore
It's odd how a lie starts out super ugly and over the top. Then it winds up, after being tempered over and over and over, still a lie but now tolerable/feasible in comparison. Reasonable, almost a relief from the original lie, which of course was never labeled a lie, just misinformation. A fog of war thing. Sound familiar?

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=7352665&postcount=3673

I'm sorry if I have mischaracterized what you have been saying. I was under the impression you believe the Jews wouldn't stand for the treatment they received. I interpreted that as expecting them to revolt, rebel, etc. Believe me, I know how these people misinterpret what I say. I think it's usually malicious but I'm willing to entertain the possibility that they really are that stupid. I'm certainly not going to rely on their interpretation of what you or anybody else said to inform me as to what was actually said,