General Holocaust Denial Discussion Part II

[TSR]

That makes absolutely no sense.

Late? Late at night? Late for dinner?

Do you really need it to be explained that the context makes it obvious that Nick referred to "late in the war" which also means "late in the life of the camp as a work camp"?

 

[Nick Terry]

That makes absolutely no sense.

Late? Late at night? Late for dinner?

I'm pretty sure everyone other than you had no problems understanding this sentence:

So, when the order came to evacuate the camp, it came very late. The SS had to leave in a hurry, but took 60,000 prisoners with them. 7,000 were left behind before the SS had a chance to kill them.

Most people understand that to carry out a large task like evacuating a camp of 67,000 people, you need advance warning and coordination.

Here is a simple timeline

January 12 1945: Soviets begin Vistula-Oder offensive operation
January 17 1945: SS get orders to evacuate Auschwitz complex
January 27 1945: Auschwitz complex is liberated by Soviet troops

The complications are that the Auschwitz complex consisted of many camps each with their own commandants and guard forces. The bulk of the evacuation was carried out in just 4 days. Already by the end of that phase, SS men were changing into civilian clothing in order to desert.

 

[Border Reiver]

I'll take this one. Nope. No genocide means there would be no major events of a genocide to be familiar with.

Simply disbelieving that the Holocaust took place? If we took a similar method of thought for another historical event, say the sinking of the USS Liberty, and simply took the view, "Didn't happen. Those sailors, all lying in order to receive compensation. The Liberhoax being the single greatest scam, whereby a group of sailors (damn dispicable group that) fabricated the alleged sinking of a ship, forged documentation in multiple countries, etc all to make money."

That would be very offensive.

Historians look at events and see that there may be different interpretations of those events and that research can turn up new evidence to alter these interpretations. Historians though actually have to research the events and look at a wide range of evidence - documents from the time period, physical structures, and eye witness reports, etc. Your method is to dismiss the event because you do not like where the evidence leads you - to the conclusion that the nazis perpetrated a genocide.

 

[LemmyCaution]

I'll take this one. We have long seen that you negate by incredulity, repetition, and ignorance. What I am after is MadMurx's objections: is his objection that the popular usage doesn't comport with his view of good German, and therefore the Gehsperre deportations from Lodz in September 1942, focusing at the outset on the elderly, the infirm, and children, didn't occur? Because he prefers one term over the one used at the time? Or what exactly was his point?

By the way, Mr Moore, the other reason I ask is that MadMurx has been known to have this sort of rhetorical cigar explode in his face before - http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=173927 - and I don't want to see him hurt himself in the same way in this forum. Perhaps it is best for him to drop the irrelevant lesson vocabulary and - the Gehsperre being called what it was called, good, bad, or indifferent - focus on the fact that the operation is an example of the old, the young, and the infirm being hauled off for death at the beginning of an action.

 

[TSR]

By the way, Mr Moore, the other reason I ask is that MadMurx has been known to have this sort of rhetorical cigar explode in his face before - http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=173927 - and I don't want to see him hurt himself in the same way in this forum. Perhaps it is best for him to drop the irrelevant lesson vocabulary and - the Gehsperre being called what it was called, good, bad, or indifferent - focus on the fact that the operation is an example of the old, the young, and the infirm being hauled off for death at the beginning of an action.

He's had it blow up on him *here*: start at http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?p=8356077#post8356077

 

[Belz...]

I have never said the holocaust wasn't real.

Ok, er... what are you saying, then ?

 

[Belz...]

They started with a religious number, 6 million, and filled in the blanks with numbers until they roughly "fit."

Evidence besides your say-so ?

The 3 million Polish number is absurd. The 3 million alleged gassings of Jewish people is also absurd.

Lots of things are absurd, but other that your incredulity you have not provided a reason why it is untrue.

 

[LemmyCaution]

Ok, er... what are you saying, then ?

I had the same question. With all his evasions, areas of disinterest, issues unilaterally declared irrelevant, convoluted argumentation, and mutually contradictory assertions - coupled with his steadfast refusal to summarize his position - he comes across as a negationist who doesn't want to dig into specifics or sources (e.g., Jaeger), for fear they will scotch his negations. It seems that in this way he feels he can keep his options open and negate as the mood or situation strikes him.

I too am curious as to what he is really trying to say, beyond his negationist jumping around.

 

[Belz...]

That makes absolutely no sense.

Late? Late at night? Late for dinner?

Yep. Deniers: honest to a fault.

 

[000063]

Almost 70 years ago your logical question was anticipated.

"There are mountains of evidence to the contrary and why do you hate Jews."

In other words, Max is basing his argument on incorrect premises. Thanks.

Do you really need it to be explained that the context makes it obvious that Nick referred to "late in the war" which also means "late in the life of the camp as a work camp"?

I...I honestly can't tell if he's being disingenuous, or if he really needs it explained. Statistically, it's probably the former, but I would sure appreciate clarification, Clay.

 

[000063]

Because when you boil it all down, arguments from ignorance are all the deniers have. Any attempt to assemble the basic literature into an alternate narrative falls apart.

It also explains why some keep trying to pretend to be knowledgeable, but backpedal frantically whenever someone actually asks them for evidence.

Some don't even bother pretending to be knowledgeable. They just keep repeating the same points over and over, and ignore all evidence to the contrary or requests for logical discussion or even evidence of the claims they make.

 

[Dogzilla]

Dogzilla cannot accept that the Jews caught up in Belsen, or Theresienstadt, or the Warsaw ghetto, were persecuted because they were Jewish, because the Nazis hated Jews, and ended up in life-threatening situations because they were Jews. He does not understand the absolute central core of the Holocaust, which is racial persecution.

Wrong as usual. What I can't accept is that the conditions in camps like Belsen or Dachau or Buchenwald or any of the places British and American soldiers liberated were the result of a deliberate German policy intending to cause mere suffering for the non-Jews in the camp but to be the result of a failed Nazi policy of exterminating the Jews for the Jews in the camp. I also cannot accept that all the Jews in the camps were there as Jews qua Jews.

There are no good reasons why the Jews were persecuted, because the reasons the Nazis gave themselves were based on fantasies. It's as if they decided that Belgians were the epitome of all evil, and proceeded to annihilate most of the Belgian population. The population numbers are comparable - there were nearly 9 million Belgians on the outbreak of war, and the country suffered 88,000 fatalities in WWII. Oops 24,000 of those were Jews so the numbers would be even lower.

Maybe if Belgians had been living in the Pale of Settlement instead of Belgium, they might've suffered a similar fate.

I like they way you take the Jews out of the 88,000 fatalities suffered by Belgian citizens. I guess you don't consider Jewish citizens of Belgium to be citizens of Belgium. That little sleight of hand also helps you up the Jewish death toll. Nice work.

 

[Dogzilla]

Sergy Eisenstien introduced the jump cut into modern cinema. The first Russian feature film was Stenka Razin (1908). The first American feature film was Oliver Twist (1912). You probably think Kirk Douglas (И́сер Даниело́вич) was a real American cowboy.

Gee whiz. If the Russians knew so much about cameras, why didn't they take any pictures of the heaps of corpses they found at Auschwitz like the British found at Belsen? Is that because maybe there weren't any?

 

[Border Reiver]

Gee whiz. If the Russians knew so much about cameras, why didn't they take any pictures of the heaps of corpses they found at Auschwitz like the British found at Belsen? Is that because maybe there weren't any?

You apparently do not know how to use Google. I found such photos in about 30 seconds with the words auschwitz liberation photos.

I am not posting the link as I am on an iPhone and I haven't figured out cut and paste with this yet.

 

[A'isha]

Gee whiz. If the Russians knew so much about cameras, why didn't they take any pictures of the heaps of corpses they found at Auschwitz like the British found at Belsen?

You mean like this? Or the footage used to assemble this documentary?

 

[Nick Terry]

I also cannot accept that all the Jews in the camps were there as Jews qua Jews.

This is one of the core incomprehensions in your understanding of the Holocaust, and as such a very large number of the mistakes you make (and they are certainly howlers) flow from this.

Firstly, most of the Jews of Europe in Nazi hands never even saw a concentration camp. More than 2 million were shot where they lived. More than 1.5 million were deported to Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka and Chelmno, which were not concentration camps but pure extermination sites. Hundreds of thousands died in ghettos, which interned exclusively Jews. Nearly 80% of the Holocaust, measuring by fatal casualties, did not involve "concentration camps".

The universal fate of these victims was to be ghettoised, killed, deported and killed again as Jewish communities. Shtetl after shtetl was wiped out in Eastern Europe for no other reason than these communities were Jewish. The pattern of slaughter spanned the Nazi-Soviet border, with more than half west of that dividing line, so excuses about 'partisans' and 'communists' simply do not fly. The Nazis slaughtered those communities because they were Jews. Period.

Secondly, the pattern of deportations to concentration camps quite clearly involved the mass deportation of entire communities and Jewish populations, overwhelmingly to Auschwitz. The Jews of Salonika had done absolutely eff all to the Nazis, yet in early 1943 they were deported en masse to Auschwitz, with only a small handful saved by the intervention of the Spanish consul and eventually let go to forestall diplomatic outcry from one of the few neutrals in wartime Europe.

Before and after the Jews of Salonika were deported en bloc, the Jews of Upper East Silesia were progressively deported to Auschwitz - an entire community in one region annexed by the Nazis from Poland, salami-sliced by mass deportations, carried out in the initial stages by ordering entire communities to a local sports stadium for a mass selection.

Significantly under 1.5 million Jews were deported to Nazi concentration camps in the narrow sense of the term. That's during the entire Third Reich. But that is out of the 9+ million total population of Jews in Europe during WWII. No other people was deported as fast or as frequently to KZs as the Jews were. Indeed, there were probably fewer non-Jews sent to KZs in this period than Jews were.

The reasons why are simple: non-Jews were arrested generally as individuals or in quite small groups. Jews were deported en bloc as Jews, either as whole communities or in the course of emptying France, Holland, Belgium, Germany, etc of their Jewish populations.

Sure, there were Jews who were arrested and sent to KZs for resistance, for homosexuality, for being supposedly 'habitual criminals'. 86,000 French men and women were sent to Nazi KZs in the war - separate to the 75,000 deported from Drancy and other holding camps as Jews. Some of the 86,000 were Jews, either unbeknownst to the Nazis or known to be Jewish, who were caught up in this or that action.

Thousands of Jews were deported as individuals in mixed Sammeltransporte. But more than a million were deported qua Jews in Sondertransporte to Auschwitz.

By all means, tell us what proportion of the 1.1 million Jews deported to Auschwitz were sent there for reasons other than being Jewish. The evidence is perfectly clear that the overwhelming majority were deported because they were Jews.

The Nazis scarcely deported any ethnic Hungarians after occupying Hungary, but organised the deportation of 437,000 Jews in a matter of a few months, with the connivance of the Hungarian state, all of whom were sluiced through Auschwitz. There is not the slightest justification for this which can be mentioned; no reason why the Nazis would have done this except to victimise a people who were the #1 ideological enemy of National Socialism.

I've mentioned 3 substantial groups within the 1.1 million deported to Auschwitz - the pattern is going to be the same for the other nationalities.

So go ahead - give us some numbers and some justifications which can explain why anyone should regard your inability to accept the blindingly obvious as something other than your ostrich-like denial of historical reality.

 

[LemmyCaution]

Gee whiz. If the Russians knew so much about cameras, why didn't they take any pictures of the heaps of corpses they found at Auschwitz like the British found at Belsen? Is that because maybe there weren't any?

Simple. The situations of Belsen and Auschwitz differed, and there were Soviet photographs of bodies found at Auschwitz.

Given the hasty retreat of the Nazis from Auschwitz, and the 7000 prisoners left behind, most of them needing medical assistance, Soviet photographers documented survivors after the camp's liberation. They also photographed the site; an iconic photo, echoing the Majdanek shoes photo, is Vladimir Yudin's eyeglasses photo, showing a prisoner in striped prison garb searching for glasses. In addition, a layout of Auschwitz photographs in Ogonyok (June 1945) showed the Stammlager gate, with Arbeit Macht Frei featured prominently.

According to David Shneer, in reviewing the images Soviet photographers shot of Auschwitz, "One does find the formulaic images of barracks, barbed wire, and corpses [as at Majdanek], but there are also extensive pictures of the Catholic funeral at Auschwitz . . . show[ing] townspeople carrying coffins that hold bodies exhumed from mass grave to be placed in a proper burial site." Prisoners in their striped clothing were photographed as part of the procession. (Through Soviet Jewish Eyes, p 177) A layout in Ogonyok has a photo of the corpses of children. Still, it was not as though the Nazis left behind 100k's of corpses, the gas chambers having been closed down for months and the camp SS having had, just barely, time to cover over their work and clear out. A Google search will find you some of the corpses that were found and photographed by the Soviets.

So, what the Soviets found reflected the efforts, only partially accomplished, of the Nazis to erase signs of their crimes at the camp. Andrzej Strzelecki describes how camp authorities had SK members, after removing human remains, fill in and cover over the ditches where Jewish victims had been cremated (The Evacuation, Dismantling and Liberation of KL Auschwitz, pp 115-116). Of course, the bodies of the murder victims were being cremated at Auschwitz in both ovens and open pits concurrently with the murder operations. Still, the corpses of about 600+ people - mostly shot in the evacuation - were discovered when soldiers of the 60th Army of the First Ukrainian Front searched the camp after its liberation.

 

[000063]

Wrong as usual. What I can't accept...I also cannot accept ...

Doggie, no one here gives a crap about what you or anyone can or cannot accept. We care about what you or anyone can or cannot prove. And by your own admission, you cannot prove anything about what happened to 6 million Jews, but are apparently convinced the official story is wrong. I really cannot understand the logic. Please explain it for the class.

 

[Dogzilla]

Ok, er... what are you saying, then ?

The evidence for gas chambers is not convincing. The evidence of a plan by the Nazis to exterminate the Jews is not convincing. The death toll of six million Jews was established before the war was over and at a time when the chaos in Europe would have made any meaningful estimate impossible. I'm not saying Jews weren't persecuted or that Jews didn't suffer. But their suffering was not unprecedented nor unique.

 

[Dogzilla]

You apparently do not know how to use Google. I found such photos in about 30 seconds with the words auschwitz liberation photos.

I am not posting the link as I am on an iPhone and I haven't figured out cut and paste with this yet.

I googled Auschwitz liberation photos and got a bunch of pictures of some chubby kids standing behind barbed wire and some other photos of a pile of eyeglasses, a pile of household items, a pile of toothbrushes, etc. Nothing like the Bulldozing Bodies of Belsen.