General Holocaust Denial Discussion Part II

[Dogzilla]

And by defendant Werner Braune, who headed EK11b, and jumped around, testifying at the same trial that there was a Fuhrer Order to murder Jews because "the vast majority [of Jews] supported Bolshevism" - but, uh, true, if the majority of Jews supported Bolshevism, a minority didn't - well, in his opinion the minority of Jews not supporting Bolshevism was "ten, twenty, or thirty percent" - and these Jewish non-supporters of Bolshevism were killed along with the supporters of Bolshevism because, when it came to saving them, "the possibility did not exist." The best he could argue with regard to Jews in the occupied USSR. And which estimates and self-serving statements, as tomtomkent says, are of no relevance whatsoever concerning the Jews of western Europe, the Reich, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria . . .

A big problem with testimony from trials is that it's self-serving. That's why scholars don't usually rely on courtroom testimony to establish historical truths. Where can we find that sort of evidence for the holocaust? You know, evidence not produced for or produced by a criminal trial?

 

[LemmyCaution]

So you don't have a counter argument, do you?

Counter argument? To that gibberish? Seriously? You mean that I need to point out for you the stupidity of your comparing a mistaken postwar estimate of a death toll made by a Soviet State Commission, which has been demonstrated to be in error and the reasons for its error also explained, to generations of census, official, economic and financial, religious, press, and other records and a vast history of Jewish life in Europe, with all that entails - neighborhoods, businesses, religious institutions, personal biographies, relations with non-Jews, literature, cultural and scientific achievements, etc.? You have got to be kidding.

But, you know, other members have already commented

Edited by Tricky: 

Edited for civility.

 

[LemmyCaution]

A big problem with testimony from trials is that it's self-serving. That's why scholars don't usually rely on courtroom testimony to establish historical truths. Where can we find that sort of evidence for the holocaust? You know, evidence not produced for or produced by a criminal trial?

The Jaeger report.

Self-serving? Of course, sometimes, and that's why witnesses are examined and their testimony is weighed with other evidence like documents and with other testimony.

You are aware of what was the only evidence which the prosecution used against these defendants and their cohorts, aren’t you?

But the sort of testimony which I quoted, without accepting it on face value, is, in fact, useful. It isn't perfect, and I never said it was. It is indicative - and in the Einsatzgruppen trial the inability of these defendants to sustain the argument made by Mr Moore, which the defendants wished to make, is indicative of the problems with that argument. In the case of these two men, they were unable, under questioning, to construct a defense of their actions as directed at dealing with a Communist threat as opposed to carrying out a program of murder of Jews. So the court found. And so the documents you won’t discuss prove as well.

 

[Clayton Moore]

I would not call them "imaginary Jews" per se. But my answer to "where did they go?" is the same answer Team holocaust gives when I ask where did the 2.9 million victims go when Auschwitz lowered the death toll from 4 million to 1.1 million or so?

And don't try the "no scholar ever accepted that number" gambit. Maybe no scholar in the West accepted that number but those on the other side of the Iron Curtain didn't reject it. You guys have no problem accepting the reliability of Eastern bloc forensic reports when they say what you want so you can't reject what they said when it doesn't. Besides, any time the mass media in the West published a death toll for Auschwitz, that death toll was 4 million up until 1989. If holocaust scholars didn't believe that number then I guess that means holocaust scholars don't have much impact on our understanding of the holocaust.

Team Holocaust goes with the lies and the liars as it suits their agenda.

They attempted to use the 6 million lost lie TWICE before WW2.

Auschwitz 4 million: Aside: We never believed that number but the Holocaust impressionable needed to be duped to solidify their imprinting.

 

[Dogzilla]

Well how hard could it be? Unless you're suggesting that in addition to never contacting anyone they knew they also chose not to file lawsuits for lost property, failed to find jobs that paid taxes and thus never claimed any pensions or social security type benefits, then there should be a wealth of documentation. Surely one of your denier friends has researched such matters and found at least some of those six million?

Jews never contacted anyone they knew? Jews never filed lawsuits? They never found jobs or paid taxes? They didn't make any claims for any benefits? There's no evidence of Jews engaging in any activity like this after the war? I don't think that's actually true.

If you're missing anybody, try looking wherever it is that you recovered the Auschwitz 2.9 million. That's where might be able to find some more.

 

[Dogzilla]

Counter argument? To that gibberish? Seriously? You mean that I need to point out for you the stupidity of your comparing a mistaken postwar estimate of a death toll made by a Soviet State Commission, which has been demonstrated to be in error and the reasons for its error also explained, to generations of census, official, economic and financial, religious, press, and other records and a vast history of Jewish life in Europe, with all that entails - neighborhoods, businesses, religious institutions, personal biographies, relations with non-Jews, literature, cultural and scientific achievements, etc.? You have got to be kidding.

But, you know, other members have already commented

Edited by Tricky: 

Edited for quote of modded post.

So how many Jews were there in Europe around the time of the Wannsee conference?

 

[Robrob]

Jews never contacted anyone they knew? Jews never filed lawsuits? They never found jobs or paid taxes? They didn't make any claims for any benefits? There's no evidence of Jews engaging in any activity like this after the war? I don't think that's actually true.

Thanks for admitting they were never heard from again after the Holocaust.

 

[A'isha]

So how many Jews were there in Europe around the time of the Wannsee conference?

Less than there were before the Nazis started murdering them a few years before, and more than there were before the Allied victory in Europe stopped the murders altogether a few years later.

 

[Garrison]

Jews never contacted anyone they knew? Jews never filed lawsuits? They never found jobs or paid taxes? They didn't make any claims for any benefits? There's no evidence of Jews engaging in any activity like this after the war? I don't think that's actually true.

If you're missing anybody, try looking wherever it is that you recovered the Auschwitz 2.9 million. That's where might be able to find some more.

Desperate misrepresentation duly noted. I was, as I am sure you know perfectly well, referencing the six million you are so certain didn't die in the camps; where is the evidence for their postwar existence?

 

[000063]

Team Holocaust goes with the lies and the liars as it suits their agenda.

They attempted to use the 6 million lost lie TWICE before WW2.

Auschwitz 4 million: Aside: We never believed that number but the Holocaust impressionable needed to be duped to solidify their imprinting.

I linked to a page discussing the discrepancy, which mentions a book which called out the figure as early as 1961. I also pointed out that the figure was openly contradicted by non-Soviets, and that no one at all used the incorrect numbers after the USSR dissolved.

The denier tactic of pretending that this number was widely accepted by everyone, when it was rejected by just about every historian, is a transparent lie. Also transparent is your complete lack of evidence for the Jews' Red connection, or even the Nazis alleging same. Gosh, if it were true (and it's not), it would make McCarthy look like Mary Poppins. I'm also betting you'll never show us "Team Holocaust" using the "6 million Jews lost lie" before WW2 at all.

 

[Dogzilla]

Thanks for admitting they were never heard from again after the Holocaust.

Wait a minute! I thought there were some survivors. Not many. But some. You're saying there weren't any Jews heard from after the holocaust? Who are all those people going to the synagogue?

 

[Nick Terry]

A big problem with testimony from trials is that it's self-serving. That's why scholars don't usually rely on courtroom testimony to establish historical truths. Where can we find that sort of evidence for the holocaust? You know, evidence not produced for or produced by a criminal trial?

You wouldn't have a clue what scholars do and don't use to establish historical truths.

It also appears you're deeply confused about the Jaeger report, which is a contemporary Nazi document, and was neither produced for or by a trial. It was captured by the Soviets and sat in an archival file alongside many other archival files in the Special Archive in Moscow, one of many treasure troves of historical sources which historians can use to reconstruct what happened under Nazi rule. I took a copy of the document from this archive along with copies of many other documents in the same archive.

The fact that the Jaeger report was later on copied out of the same file for a late trial doesn't taint it, because the file was archived long before the subsequent trial. It's simply unsurprising that evidence of this kind would be used in a criminal trial because it, duh, deals with mass murder.

Nor is the Jaeger report the only source for the Holocaust in Lithuania. You have been familiarised with Herman Kruk's diary - that wasn't produced by or for a trial. You have been told about the diary of Kazimierz Sakowicz - nor was that produced for or by a trial. There are many contemporary Nazi documents from the Kommandeur der Sicherheitspolizei Litauen in the Lithuanian Central State Archive, including monthly reports and one off communications documenting and detailing the exhumation of corpses from Ponary and Fort VII outside Kaunas by Sonderkommando 1005.

So basically that's a whole series of denier arguments entirely frakked, because documents are the recognised standard bread and butter of writing history, and they exist to document the historical fact that the Nazis mass murdered Lithuanian Jews then exhumed and cremated their bodies.

Technically, the war crimes investigations after liberation also weren't produced by or for a trial, although they were certainly used in trials later on. Given the usual forensic fundamentalism of deniers it would be churlish to deny historians of the Holocaust in Lithuania like Christoph Dieckmann the right to use such sources. Which he does, in what is the current definitive account of this process, published last year by Wallstein Verlag in Germany as part of his exhaustive two volume study of the Nazi occupation of Lithuania.

There were certainly trials of the war criminals responsible for the genocide of Lithuanian Jews, and they're perfectly good sources alongside other materials. Indeed, the whole process of investigation, interrogation, comparison and cross-examination which takes place in a thorough criminal proceedings is an excellent way to arrive at the truth. It is not the only way, but it's a widely recognised method of achieving that goal.

How stupid would historians be if they ignored such voluminous bodies of evidence as can be found in a good trial? That's why colleagues of mine use trials as sources for countless topics. I can think of at least four other fellow members of my department who use trials as sources for modern history topics.

So not only are you flatly wrong in claiming that scholars don't use courtroom testimony to establish historical truths, you are doubly wrong because historians of the Holocaust use

- contemporary Nazi documents from all manner of agencies and ministries
- personnel files
- documents of Jewish councils and organisations like Oneg Shabes
- documents of underground resistance movements
- diaries of Nazis, bystanders and Jews
- contemporary private letters
- manuscripts produced by individuals during the war

along with
- manuscripts written immediately after the war found in various archives
- testimonies gathered by historical commissions in 1945
- published memoirs [which is standard in other fields too]
- interrogations of witnesses of all kinds taken outside the courtroom, under oath and not under oath
- forensic reports
- archaeological and scientific studies

and many more types of evidence.

You know this, of course, since you've been told this many times previously. Perhaps you might deign to show some awareness of the full range of evidence before you shoot your mouth off about what scholars do and don't use.

Otherwise people might think you were simply ignorant of the evidence, strawmanning it as the product of a handful of trials, and engaging in blatant well-poisoning by insinuating that somehow the fact that some of the evidence appeared at trials casts doubt on all the other evidence.

But hey, maybe you can tell us about your many months spent going through Nazi records and convince us that you know what you are talking about.

 

[Dogzilla]

Less than there were before the Nazis started murdering them a few years before, and more than there were before the Allied victory in Europe stopped the murders altogether a few years later.

That's as precise as you can be? The best data available from generations of census, official, economic and financial, religious, press, and other records and a vast history of Jewish life in Europe, with all that entails - neighborhoods, businesses, religious institutions, personal biographies, relations with non-Jews, literature, cultural and scientific achievements, etc. and you can't even come up with a number?

But when you say you're missing six million of them, this time I'm suppose to just believe you?

 

[000063]

Say, Dogzilla, what's your criteria for relevance again? Do you actually have one that could be written down, on paper? Or is it something you feel in your gut?

 

[LemmyCaution]

So how many Jews were there in Europe around the time of the Wannsee conference?

According to Heydrich's protocol, there were 11 million Jews in Europe. This is a somewhat higher number than the usual estimate of 9.5 million in the 1930s. Leaving aside definitional and methodological issues in the counts, it is clear that 9 plus million Jews lived in Europe on the eve of the Holocaust. Holocaust historians usually say about 9 million, the low side of these estimates.

Drilling down a bit, the German census of June 1933 counted 505,000 Jews living in the Reich, the number somewhat reduced since the Nazi seizure of power. By 1939 only 214,000 Jews remained in the Reich. We could productively discuss what became of these people. Or rather, someone other than you could . . .

And I've asked for discussion of five occupied cities, in order to get a bottoms up view of what was happening to Jews during the war years. (This is the discussion you've avoided with such gems as

What is there to discuss? I reject the evidence for gas/plan/six

. . . . http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8417955&postcount=3672 . . . ):

The 403d Security Division recorded 80,000 Jews living in Vilna when the German occupied the city, probably an overestimate by 10,000+, but a start. A January 1942 registration of Jews in Warsaw ghetto put their number at 368,902, a figure corresponding to estimates made by Jewish relief organizations in early 1942 (these estimates don't count any Jews in hiding on the Aryan side). Lodz ghetto housed about 160,000 Jews, to which were added about 20,000 from the Reich, Austria, and the Protectorate in late 1941 and 1942 and 20,000 from the Warthegau (also 5,000 Zigeuner were shipped to Lodz). In Riga, on the eve of the war, there were an estimated 40,000 Jews; Riga, like Lodz, saw Jewish transports from the Greater Reich during winter 1941-1942 - I believe about 20,000. According to OSR 97, there were 150,000 Jews living in Kiev in September 1941.

So in these 5 cities there were approximately 840,000 Jews living at the time of the German occupation, give or take. 840,000 people: a large enough number, from just these 5 places, that their whereabouts need explanation, especially considering that in each of these cities, by war's end, the large pre-war Jewish population was simply gone - a demographic gap of very large proportions.

We could discuss these case studies - or you could continue to ask questions you know the answers to and pretend there's nothing to discuss. Really, 840,000 people - some of whom were victims of the Holocaust or not, perhaps part of the overall death toll - and you ask what there is to discuss! If you don't want to discuss the Holocaust, and its elements, why in the heck are you even here?

 

[Clayton Moore]

I linked to a page discussing the discrepancy, which mentions a book which called out the figure as early as 1961. I also pointed out that the figure was openly contradicted by non-Soviets, and that no one at all used the incorrect numbers after the USSR dissolved.

The denier tactic of pretending that this number was widely accepted by everyone, when it was rejected by just about every historian, is a transparent lie. Also transparent is your complete lack of evidence for the Jews' Red connection, or even the Nazis alleging same. Gosh, if it were true (and it's not), it would make McCarthy look like Mary Poppins. I'm also betting you'll never show us "Team Holocaust" using the "6 million Jews lost lie" before WW2 at all.

Team Holocaust was attempting to fabricate a holocaust long before the Holocaust. Not unlike the old standard joke question "Why do teachers make the best lovers?"

 

[000063]

That's as precise as you can be? The best data available from generations of census, official, economic and financial, religious, press, and other records and a vast history of Jewish life in Europe, with all that entails - neighborhoods, businesses, religious institutions, personal biographies, relations with non-Jews, literature, cultural and scientific achievements, etc. and you can't even come up with a number?

But when you say you're missing six million of them, this time I'm suppose to just believe you?

Dogzilla, he is mocking you.

Just FYI.

 

[000063]

Team Holocaust was attempting to fabricate a holocaust long before the Holocaust. Not unlike the old standard joke question "Why do teachers make the best lovers?"

I see. Can you elaborate on these attempts? Did they fail or succeed?

 

[LemmyCaution]

Say, Dogzilla, what's your criteria for relevance again? Do you actually have one that could be written down, on paper? Or is it something you feel in your gut?

Relevance = topics that do not make deniers feel uncomfortable, ignorant, or out of their depth - Dogzilla definition, gleaned from context clues.

 

[TSR]

There was no mass extermination of Europe's Jews, and the by-and-large Communist-affiliated Jews deserved it.FTFY
I guess it's time to remind the Holocaustics that the reason Jewish people were being sent to concentration camps was their Communist affiliations.

And again, time to ask you to document the "Communist affiliations" of the little guy to my left...