General Holocaust Denial Discussion Part II

[Nessie]

This is not a correct assessment of the argument given in the video in question. Just to mention the most obvious point, the video pointed to the fact that the witnesses claim that 2000-3000 bodies were burned at once on one pyre 30 meters long, 1.5 meters wide, and 50 of 70 centimeters off the ground. The video states that this would mean a stack of 20-30 layers of bodies, which it argues could not be cremated via the method described, or anything remotely resembling it.

Thus the attempted refutation fails.

I am not as well read as others here, but from what I have read, many witnesses exaggerated or got it wrong when they remembered what they saw at the camps. But it is quite a leap to them say a witness who exaggerates or gets it wrong means they are lying and a claim is refuted. For example claims about diesel engines and air tight gas chambers at Treblinka II. It turns out that was wrong, the engines were petrol and a gas chamber does not need to be air tight to kill with CO.

There has been a ton of study on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and witnesses and it explains why many Holocaust witnesses have said what they have and the exaggerations and getting it plain wrong.

http://www.freedomfromtorture.org/sites/default/files/documents/JulietCohenRecallandCredibility.pdf

"There is ample evidence that memory is affected by the need to cope with
emotional and traumatic experiences."

Then there are physical effects on memory

"Sutker et al (1986 and 1991) demonstrated that prolonged malnutrition and weight loss can affect memory function. This work was mainly on POWs and holocaust survivors from World War 11 but in medical terms is congruent
with established knowledge on vitamin deficiency disorders especially the B vitamins."

It would in fact be more incredible if the witnesses were consistent, accurate and there was little to no exaggeration. But Holocaust deniers have nothing to say about how memory is affected by trauma as it suits them to argue mis-remembering means lies, lack of credibility and a conspiracy.

 

[Sebastianus]

During the first attempts at cremation, Wiernik said that corpses were soaked in gasoline but that the burning was still not entirely successful (male bodies still not completely cremated).

In the book The Analysis of Burned Human Remains, John DeHaan writes (p. 12)

People often assume that gasoline alone will accomplish great damage to a human body. Gasoline burns off very quickly, however, and damage from the flames will only rarely exceed splitting and charring of the dermis. In one case in the author’s experience, a woman was doused with a gallon of gasoline and set alight while dressed in a shirt, denim pants and cotton socks, lying on a sandy soil surface. She died from shock but her skin was nearly intact, penetrated to any degree only at her ankles where the cotton socks, secured by a leather belt, absorbed enough gasoline to continue to burn for some minutes (Icove and DeHaan, 2004).

In other words, DeHaan is saying that the procedure Wiernik describes would not work - not even to destroy the bodies of women. It wouldn't even be close. How do you account for the fact that Wiernik states that women could be cremated by soaking them in gasoline, while experts deny that this is possible?

This method was replaced by creating pyres, for which Wiernik does not describe the stacking or placing of wood underneath the grate. Concluding therefor that no wood was employed in the cremations, or 'a few dry twigs' as you call them, because Wiernik did not describe them is absurd; it might not have been considered a worthwhile issue to include in a rushed work, as how does a fire of this nature start without wood anyway?

EtienneSC erred in attributing the expression "dry twigs" to Wiernik. It comes from (the English translation of) Chil Rajchman's memoirs. Arad renders the same passage as "dry branches" so there is a need for some clarification over the translation. In a 1988 interview (or rather the English transcript thereof), Rajchman stated that

We took the branches and dried up bushes, and we put them under the tracks and set them on fire. This was dry bushes we set. And this was a half a meter high. And we set it on fire.

Matthes, your other source, refers to brushwood. Do you accept that the fuel described by the Treblinka witnesses consisted of wood of relatively small thickness - whether it is described as brushwood, branches, twigs, or bushes?

 

[CaptainHowdy]

Siddique isn't just an Islamic activist, he is an anti-Zionist. His anti-Zionism has led him to fall down the rabbit hole and embrace lunacy, i.e. Holocaust denial. The causal chain goes Islam > anti-Zionism > Holocaust denial.

Holocaust denial is a minority belief, i.e. the majority of anti-Zionists (if that is their primary identity) don't believe it, and probably the majority of Islamists don't believe it or care about it, never mind the majority of Muslims. But we can find little clusters of people who have been led to embrace denial because of their political identities. Just as we can find correlations between belief in 9/11 conspiracy theories among certain far left and far right groups, as well as among certain Islamists.

Siddique edits an online magazine dedicated to Islamic issues called New Trends. He written a few articles for that magazine spouting denier nonsense, and he has also made some YouTube videos on the subject. He is an Islamic activist and he is a Holocaust denier. His Holocaust denial has also been couched explicitly in contemporary Islamic terms. Eg here (with more examples and discussion)

"For Muslims, it's important that they listen to views opposed to those of the victors of the Second World War. The emergence of Israel as a terrorist entity implanted by force of arms in the heartland of Islam is directly connected to the Jewish version of WWII. The attack on Darfur is coming out of the Jewish Holocaust Museum."

Note that Siddique doesn't just object to USHMM for promoting the Holocaust, he objects to USHMM because they got heavily behind the campaign to publicise Darfur. I.e. he sees USHMM as smearing Muslims, rather than putting the spotlight on human rights violations and atrocities.

The linked exchange is well worth reading, as it provides ample insight into the mind (if it can be called that) of Kaukab Siddique, associate professor of English and wackjob.


Your attempt to create a false equivalence with the opinions of Jews fails rather drastically, because you aren't comparing like with like. To find the Jewish equivalent of Siddique, you'd probably need to look at people who have hung around on the fringes of the Jewish Defense League. Because Siddique isn't really representative of mainstream Islam.

Most Islamists don't really care about the Holocaust and just ignore it. They might even prefer to use Nazi analogies every time Israel retaliates against Hamas rocket attacks and kills a Palestinian civilian. Most mainstream Islamic leaders probably utter a lot of doubletalk and waffle when pressed on whether they might join in an ecumenical celebration of Holocaust Memorial Day in Britain, but they don't start touting David Irving, Fred Leuchter or Germar Rudolf. Ahmadinejad, however, touted the deniers rather publicly, while also threatening Israel rhetorically. Siddique is like Ahmadinejad, only he's a tenured radical at an American university.

You probably could if you dug deep enough find a Jewish associate professor of some humanities subject with a track record of pro-Israel activism spouting rubbish about the Holocaust. And their pro-Israel track record would make what they say politically motivated, because their primary identity would be as political activists.

The same would not apply to a rabbi who happened to mention the Holocaust in a religious service, or to a local Jewish community leader making a speech on a Holocaust Memorial Day which was all fluffy and ecumenical. If the Jewish community leader was a major supporter of AIPAC and banged on about another Holocaust being threatened because of Iranian nuclear weapons program, then duh, the invocation of the Holocaust would be politically motivated. Just as it was when Menachem Begin resorted to Holocaust comparisons in 1982, and just as it was when Netanyahu responded to Ahmadinejad's denial of the Holocaust by piling on the Holocaust rhetoric himself.



The absolute most that one can deduce from someone's ethnic identity is that it may cause them to put a nationalist spin on things. The best way to illustrate this is comparing with Ukrainian attitudes to the Holodomor. That is now nationally enshrined as a major object of commemoration in post-Soviet, post-Orange Revolution Ukraine. The Holodomor is considered to be an act of Soviet (i.e: Russian) genocide against the Ukrainian people. However, Russians do not agree. Nor do many historians outside of Ukraine. Nor do quite a few Ukrainians, including a number of Ukrainian-origin historians, especially in North America. Some are especially critical of the nationalist myth-making, just as there are and have been mainstream Jewish critics of the myth-making that comes along with some forms of Holocaust commemoration (for example, Peter Novick).

The situation with the Holocaust is somewhat different to the situation with the Holodomor. The Germans - as a state, society, on the regional, local and personal level, in the media, in culture and in their scholarship - collectively agree with the Jews that yes, they committed genocide against the Jews back in the 1940s. And so both societies commemorate and remember the Holocaust, intensively.

Everyone else sane agrees with both of these ethnicities. However, everyone can recognise that some Jews inside Israel as well as outside Israel have a particularist spin on the Holocaust, while others do not. There is a Jewish or Israeli nationalist take on the Holocaust in the same way that there is an Irish nationalist take on the Potato Famine. In both cases, Jews and the Irish have also produced some coldly objective scholarship questioning earlier nationalist myths.

We're discussing history, for God's sake. There isn't any aspect of history that isn't subject to some form of nationalist mythologising or influenced by national-ethnic spin. But all of that can be corrected for, because there are always people of a different background looking at the same stuff.

Political or nationalist bias can and does lead to pseudo-history or pseudo-archaeology, or to its acceptance. Indian nationalists argue vehemently against the archaeological record to claim that Hindus always lived in the subcontinent. A Russian mathematician, Fomenko, erased the Middle Ages to reorder history to suit his nationalist requirements. Greeks have been known to play up rather shabby tombs as "pyramids" and claim that they are the ones who invented pyramids, not the Egyptians. Black nationalists and Martin Bernal similarly claim that ancient Egypt was essentially a black Nubian society and thus, they gave birth to civilisation. A nutty Royal Navy officer wrote a book claiming that China discovered the New World before anyone else, and his nonsense had some extra appeal in China.

Holocaust denial is pseudo-history. That is a very different beast to the mythologisation of actual history.

As I said, I agreed in general with what you said. However our difference is that I'm willing to recognize that I'm harboring an anti-Muslim bias that is subtle and which is a characteristic I don't particularly enjoy seeing in myself. You seem to go to great lengths to rationalize your bias with pseudo-intellectual jabberwocky and convince yourself that it is not prejudice.

There is no attempt on my part to create a false equivalency. You identified a person being "a Muslim" as a relevant characteristic of that person. You said that I would need to look at people who have hung around on the fringes of the Jewish Defense League to find the equivalent of Siddique. If Irv Rubin had written a history of the Holocaust and I made a list of non-academics who had written about the Holocaust, would anybody have any objection to me listing, e.g., "Irv Rubin: domestic terrorist, a Jew"?

Listing somebody as "a Muslim" without any context to explain why that appellation is appropriate is the same thing.

 

[LSSBB]

In the book The Analysis of Burned Human Remains, John DeHaan writes (p. 12)



In other words, DeHaan is saying that the procedure Wiernik describes would not work - not even to destroy the bodies of women. It wouldn't even be close. How do you account for the fact that Wiernik states that women could be cremated by soaking them in gasoline, while experts deny that this is possible?



EtienneSC erred in attributing the expression "dry twigs" to Wiernik. It comes from (the English translation of) Chil Rajchman's memoirs. Arad renders the same passage as "dry branches" so there is a need for some clarification over the translation. In a 1988 interview (or rather the English transcript thereof), Rajchman stated that



Matthes, your other source, refers to brushwood. Do you accept that the fuel described by the Treblinka witnesses consisted of wood of relatively small thickness - whether it is described as brushwood, branches, twigs, or bushes?

Tell me exactly how you can apply a single incident of gasoline soaked burning of one individual, to a mass burning?

 

[Nick Terry]

What is the definition of "YouTube-style video"?

Any amateur-produced documentary. The archetypal example is 'Loose Change'.

Are all videos posted on youtube YouTube-style videos, orthodox holocaust documentaries included?

You're asking me about my YouTube video watching habits. I stated I don't 'do' YouTube style videos. I do not get my news from YouTube, nor is my knowledge of current affairs informed by YouTube. I prefer things in textual form.

I am also not a fan of the Hitler Channel or the 'reenactment' style of documentary seen in the mainstream.

Historical documentaries can be useful when they contain film footage or interviews which as Loss Leader pointed out, could be considered primary sources. If they are raw footage or contemporary films then they're worth watching or indeed showing.

If you don't watch a video, how can you tell whether it is a YouTube-style video?

Because some geezer on the internet links to YouTube or a similar platform where there is a "video" which supposedly will Reveal All. Instead of referring to a text.

You spoke of witnesses from Treblinka I. Such witnesses could not be direct witnesses to trainloads of people entering, but never leaving, Treblinka II. Therefore as far as that is concerned they are at most witnesses to a rumor, not witnesses to an event. But the matter at hand was their witnessing of cremations, and on that point there is no question that their statements are compatible with either the orthodox or the revisionist position.

Actually you snipped the remark about Treblinka I witnesses out of a much longer post which made many more points. Bystander witnesses such as the Polish station workers certainly could testify to trains entering but not leaving. And did.

My remarks about Treblinka I witnesses were made solely to correct EtienneSC on his confusion between Treblinka I and II; he was evidently using Treblinka I to refer to outer-camp Treblinka II witnesses.

Treblinka I witnesses on their own might "only" be able to testify to smoke rising from Treblinka II, but this is still eyewitness evidence to cremation. They were only some of the witnesses from the vicinity who could testify to this. That's a point which has been discussed on here before, and was discussed in the critique.

Isolating a very small part of the evidence for cremation and declaring it 'compatible' with a fantasy position that exists only by virtue of ignoring the rest of the evidence is rather pointless.

If you don't watch "YouTube style" videos, how can you determine whether they are worthy of consideration or not? Are you making the a priori assertion that all video content is beneath contempt? How would you defend this claim?

Look around this forum and especially next door at the 9/11 conspiracy theories forum. YouTube videos are a ridiculous vehicle for serious argument. For starters, they take far longer to watch than most adults can read text. Many of them seem to run for hours and hours which is more time than I honestly need spend on an issue.

Secondly, they vary wildly in quality. As I am not exactly a big fan of "mainstream" documentaries then I'm even less likely to be impressed by home-made guff.

Thirdly, YouTube videos are not an acceptable format to present serious ideas in order to gain qualifications. They are not essays, they are not dissertations, they are not journal articles, they are not monographs. They are not even seminar or conference presentations, or conventional lectures.

Finally, the ideas in question are already presented by and large in conventional textual form - in 'revisionist' books and articles. Most of the videos do not seem to be presenting any new ideas worth mentioning.

If they are presenting new ideas, then they need to be recast into text format both in order to meet conventional expectations and in order to see if they work when written out. That is because 'fringe' beliefs like Holocaust denial and 9/11 conspiracy theories produce a cacophony of variations on cliched themes ('free fall speed', 'cremation impossible'). Past experience with the few videos I did bother to watch tells me that video-makers are liable to produce ideas that contradict the writings of revisionist book authors, or which are so nutty that they will not survive in the medium term. Accordingly, I see no reason to waste my time on videos. If the videomakers want to have their ideas considered seriously, then someone is going to have to write it out sooner or later.

In the end, given that holocaust controversies has spent considerable time responding to the video One Third of the Holocaust, your assertion of video worthlessness rings hollow.

But I didn't take part in the debunking of 'One Third of the Holocaust'. I also don't now write actively for the Holocaust Controversies blog. I haven't done for several years now. We came together to produce the critique as a separate project, for all intents and purposes. Others on the critique team likewise have not blogged for some time, or did not participate in the debunking of the 'One Third of the Holocaust' videos.

The very fact that I did not bother to take part in that debunking underlines my feelings about YouTube-style videos.

In the work which you link in your signature you state that

The position you took in this passage is that if someone has responded to any work by a given author or group of authors, he thenceforth has no right to dismiss any work of the same author(s).

This passage doesn't say what you want it to say. The Holocaust Controversies blog has since 2006 criticised the work of Mattogno and Graf. Since then Mattogno has responded on several occasions to these criticisms. The remark quoted came long after he responded to HC blog criticisms; it's pretty easy to establish that Mattogno wrote a whole pamphlet responding to Roberto Muehlenkamp. The bolded sentence clearly refers to what was almost a volte-face by Mattogno. Instead of responding to HC criticisms, he resorted on a blog of his own to a handwave. As you quoted from the introduction:

Mattogno had earlier chastised Holocaust Controversies as being “held in no account by Holocaust historians” and its writers “have published nothing in printed form.” Such an excuse came about after Mattogno had already responded to some of our blog posts, and so seems rather desperate.

The joke is purely on Mattogno; if the HC blog is really 'held in no account by Holocaust historians' then why did he already bother to respond at length to Roberto, and indeed why are MGK still evidently hard at work responding to us? The fact that HC bloggers "have published nothing in printed form" did not stop Mattogno from writing out dozens of pages and 10s of 1000s of words in response to a mere amateur blogger, Roberto Muehlenkamp.

Mattogno's remark is just a variation of the credentials game, one that he would ultimately lose. 'denierbud' rather famously tried to specify that he wanted criticisms of 'One Third of the Holocaust' from 'associate professors or above'; every single tenured historian simply ignored him. The only response he got was a counter-video by a totally anonymous amateur who has since vanished, and a series of blogs written by three non-historians none of whom were or are tenured academics.

Clearly denierbud didn't get what he wanted there. Nor has Mattogno got the attention he clearly thinks he deserves. He must really want to provoke responses from Van Pelt and other full professors; instead he gets told he's an idiot by some no-names.

Applying the same principle to the holocaust controversies group, we see that since holocaust controversies has responded to One Third of the Holocaust, they are therefore required to respond to any video by the same author, including Auschwitz: the surprising hidden truth.

You are therefore hoist by your own petard.

No, I'm not. You are comparing apples with oranges. Nobody is under any obligation to respond to anything if they don't want to. Case in point: I didn't take part in the OTOH debunkings and I'm not even an active member of the HC blogging team any more. I don't remember anyone committing the HC blog to responding to every single revisionist production out there.

Your analogy with our comments about whether MGK might respond to our critique is simply wayward. There was a dialogue of sorts between MGK and the HC blog/critique team; that is what the intro commented on. There was no dialogue between denierbud and the HC Blog; he put out a video, three of the bloggers criticised it. He did not respond to these criticisms nor did he edit the OTOH video to remove the more glaring errors that were pointed out.

The fact that denierbud went on to make other silly videos became less pressing as the years rolled on from 2006, and as it became clear that YouTube style videos were greeted with ever more disdain by intelligent internet surfers. This is why you won't find many detailed rebuttals of other recent YouTube-style videos whereas you can find detailed rebuttals of 'Loose Change', dating from 2005.

Which documents do you have in mind, precisely? The ones you mentioned in your white paper as "Globocnik’s letter of October 1 and the Lublin meeting of October 17", or others?

Read what I wrote again. I spoke about all documents referring explicitly to Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka. I spoke about documents referring indirectly, i.e. to Einsatz/Aktion Reinhard(t) and to Globocnik. The two you mentioned would be some of the rather large number of such documents, all connected directly or indirectly to BST. A number are discussed in the critique; there are many more which were not included.

By "we skeptics" I suppose you mean yourself. Let's see just how skeptical you are being. First, your reference is wrong; the quote is from page 92. Second, Graf mentions a document about Belzec on the very same page (pages 91-92, actually). Therefore your reading of the quotation cannot be correct. How can Graf be telling a flat-out lie when he contradicts that lie on the very same page? If you checked the English translation, you would have found what I believe is the correct reading: "no wartime German documents have survived from these three camps." (p. 72 of the English edition). That is, Graf is distinguishing between documents from the camp and documents that are merely about the camp. Whether it is correct that no documents from these camps survive does depend on the precise definition of "from" which you are using, but it is certainly true that there are no camp archives from the Reinhard(t) camps in the sense that there are camp archives from Auschwitz or Majdanek.

Plainly Nick Terry, speaking on behalf of "we skeptics", was not being very skeptical - or very perceptive.

Once again you misread what I wrote and twisted things. I said rather clearly that Graf alleges at several points in his body of work that there are no documents whatsoever relating to BCST. Your reading of the one comment I quoted failed to take into consideration the other cases where he has made similar remarks. And thus I quote further:

Graf in 'Neue Weltordnung', p.54: “Das vierte und letzte der angeblichen „reinen Vernichtungslager“ war laut der offiziellen Geschichtsschreibung das nordwestlich von Lodz gelegene Chelmno, zu deutsch Kulmhof. Soweit ich weiss, ist kein einziges deutsches Dokument der Kriegszeit über dieses Lager erhalten.”

This doesn't allow for your weaselling; here Graf is clearly stating that there isn't a document 'about' the camp. The reader comes away with the impression that there aren't even any documents referring to Chelmno or Kulmhof, which is already contradicted by the '97,000 processed' gas vans letter, but which is flatly destroyed by the survival of the bank account records for Sonderkommando Kulmhof, along with a variety of other sources 'from' that camp, in addition to other documents which refer directly to the camp or its staff (since it was also known as Sonderkommando Lange/Bothmann after the names of its commanders).

Secondly, your weaselling fails since there certainly are documents for all three Reinhard camps as well as Chelmno which put the unit designation at the top of the page, i.e. were generated within those four camps by their staffs.

My point about Graf's comments is that this fact is obfuscated.

You are correct that I mistyped the page number of the Graf quote (from the German original). The p.92 quote is not as suitable towards weaselling as you'd like:

Da es über diese drei Lager – sowie das westlich von Lodz gelegene Chelmno (Kulmhof) – keinerlei deutsche Dokumente der
Kriegszeit gibt

This is a pretty blunt statement, and it's flatly wrong.

On p.91 Graf also says as you acknowledge from the English edition:

Für die vier „reinen Vernichtungslager“ Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor und Treblinka sind keine schriftlichen Unterlagen erhalten

which comes fairly close to saying that there are not files from BCST. I'll grant you that.

You note that Graf then contradicts himself and then discusses a document which refers to Belzec, but is not 'from' Belzec.

How can Graf be telling a flat-out lie when he contradicts that lie on the very same page?

Because Graf is lying to himself and to his readers about what constitutes a documentary source about these camps. Because Graf has moved the goalposts so many times he has gotten dizzy. He first states that there are no files 'from' BST. Then he discusses a document 'about' Belzec. Then he reiterated his statement, subtly mutated, into 'no documents'.

This kind of slippage and goalpost-moving is completely typical of denier argumentation, and indeed of conspiraloony argumentation of all kinds.

In actual fact, Graf was and is evidently ignorant of the true documentary situation for these camps. There are no big fat 'files' of documents, but quite a few documents which have as mentioned SS-Sonderkommando Belzec/Sobibor/Treblinka at the top of the page, produced inside the camp. They are found in SS personnel files, Trawniki camp files and railway records; also documents from the Lublin centre. Graf has supposedly read works that discuss these sources, but doesn't seem to have digested their contents properly.

Incidentally, Graf isn't alone in underplaying the extent of documentary evidence for these camps. Mattogno too is quite keen on making bare assertions like:

Mattogno, Chelmno, p.147: "No documentary or material trace exists for the use of “gas vans” in this camp." - wrong about documents, see 97,000 processed letter clearly referencing Kulmhof
Mattogno, Schiffbruch, p.276, denies there are documents about gas vans for Chelmno - ditto
Mattogno, Chelmno, p.147: “The camp’s claimed death toll number is not based on any documentation”. Then immediately cites the Korherr report, which is the documentation on which the serious claimed death toll is primarily based.
Mattogno, Schiffbruch, p.75 - der Legende von den “Gaswagen”, die ausschließlich auf wertlosen Zeugenaussagen und Urteilen bei politisch motivierten Prozessen beruht” - this is utter nonsense, due to the existence of several very well known contemporary German documents about gas vans

Mattogno previously asserted that there was no contemporary German document on the Warsaw ghetto action of summer 1942, which is falsified multiple times over, and has made many other similar 'no document' assertions which turn out to be wrong on closer examination.

It would not be difficult for Mattogno or Graf to make coherent, defensible assertions about the documentary evidence - it's well known there are major gaps - but instead, they seem unable to stop themselves from exaggerating the gaps and lying to themselves as well as their readers.

 

[Nick Terry]

As I said, I agreed in general with what you said. However our difference is that I'm willing to recognize that I'm harboring an anti-Muslim bias that is subtle and which is a characteristic I don't particularly enjoy seeing in myself. You seem to go to great lengths to rationalize your bias with pseudo-intellectual jabberwocky and convince yourself that it is not prejudice.

There is no attempt on my part to create a false equivalency. You identified a person being "a Muslim" as a relevant characteristic of that person. You said that I would need to look at people who have hung around on the fringes of the Jewish Defense League to find the equivalent of Siddique. If Irv Rubin had written a history of the Holocaust and I made a list of non-academics who had written about the Holocaust, would anybody have any objection to me listing, e.g., "Irv Rubin: domestic terrorist, a Jew"?

Listing somebody as "a Muslim" without any context to explain why that appellation is appropriate is the same thing.

It's not really the same thing, because Jew is an ethnic as well as a religious identifier. You are ignoring the long history of modern antisemitism which prevents Jews from escaping their ethnic identity even if they are not religiously observant or interested in Israel.

Stating that Tony Blair is "a Christian" is a perfectly reasonable comment to make about his politics, because his Christian beliefs did on occasion come to inform his worldview and arguably, his decision-making. Moreover, saying someone "is a Christian" means they are a practicing Christian, just as saying if someone "is a Muslim" means they are practicing Islam.

I'll accept some of the criticism of my original tone. I should have noted that Kevin Barrett is a Muslim also, and that Roger Garaudy was, too. These facts are highly pertinent to their commitment to or flirtation with denial. I already noted that Ditlieb Felderer is a Jehovah's Witness, even though that has nothing to do with his Holocaust denial. It just happens to illustrate that he's an exception in many ways.

When religion influences political views, then someone's religion becomes very relevant. This would be the case for Jewish fundamentalists or indeed for ultra-Orthodox Jews; it's certainly the case for Christian fundamentalists. In the case of Siddique I could have said he was an Islamist and this would have explicitly identified him with a political interpretation of Islam, in much the same way as saying a US politician is a fundamentalist would point to political context more clearly.

So I should have not written 'a' Muslim, and preferably written Islamist, for Siddique.



There is nothing wrong with identifying people's religions or ethnicities when surveying a group, which is what I was doing.

Your false equivalence was created by asymmetry. Your discussion has tried to compare individual to individual rather than cohort to cohort. You were commenting on a list of 86 individuals of whom only one was identified as Muslim, while two more were also Muslim and not identified as such. 3 out of 86 is not a dominant characteristic. The most common denominator of the 86 individuals listed is that they are men - to the tune of 84 out of 86 named individuals. The next most common denominator is that they did not hold down academic jobs - 62 out of 86. Then there is a disproportionate number of Germans - 30 out of 86 (including Austrians, Swiss Germans and self-declared expat Germans), with several others of likely Germanic origin. Nearly the same number belonged to an explicit far-right tradition including the original NSDAP, which is what prompted the list in the first place. My claim is that the rest are generally antisemites.

Islam ranks somewhat below explicit belief in 9/11 conspiracy theories (about 5 out of 86 have formally endorsed 9/11 CTs). It ranks above endorsement of occultism (about 1 out of 86) and in the sample, above overt Christian fundamentalists, and above the number of explicit creationists in the cohort. Moreover, being a practicing Muslim ranks above the number of ethnic Jews among the 86 in the cohort of book/pamphlet authors + academics who have endorsed denial - there was only one Jew, J.G. Burg, among the 86. Islam also ranks slightly below the number of self-identifying socialists, communists and leftists - which total 4, of whom one overlaps as a PCF member who converted to Islam.

If we widen out the cohort to include other deniers who have made public statements, then other names pop up, like Ahmadinejad, Ahmed Rami, Bishop Williamson, and David Cole, for many of the respective profiling categories. Indeed, we also find other Muslim converts in the wider pool of 'public deniers', like Ahmed Huber.

Historically, the revisionist movement made considerable efforts to make friends in the Middle East, trying to organise conferences in Beirut and stimulate interest in Holocaust denial among Muslim and Arab intellectuals. This was part of a wider flirtation in the first part of the 2000s which was discussed in a political science monograph, The Enemy of My Enemy, by George Michael (no, not that one).

All this makes religion, and Islam, relevant. It's even more relevant that only 1 out of 74 book/pamphlet authors was Muslim, which suggests that Islamic Holocaust denial isn't very articulate and doesn't contribute much to the development of revisionism. But it definitely exists. We've only just said goodbye to an Iranian President who was evidently very much a practicing, believing Muslim, and a Holocaust denier.

 

[Matthew Ellard]

You now appear to be making a different argument:

No. Look at the video. It hand waves the Treblinka cremations as impossible and then claims to show evidence by showing a video of a totally different unrelated method of cremation using a bonfire. It is that simple.

Do you think the video provides evidence about Treblinka's cremations with its unrelated bonfire video?

Secondly, the video claims bodies were too high to burn without providing anything but it's own estimate, but ignores the confession of the Commanding officer at Treblinka explaining how he did it. It also ignores the eyewitnesses who say petrol was used.

Franz Stangl Commanding Officer
It must have been at the beginning of 1943. That’s when excavators were brought in. Using these excavators, the corpses were removed from the huge ditches which had been used until then [for burial]. The old corpses were burned on the roasters, along with the new bodies [of new arrivals to the camp]. During the transition to the new system, Wirth came to Treblinka. As I recall, Wirth spoke of a Standartenführer who had experience in burning corpses. Wirth told me that according to the Standartenführer’s experience, corpses could be burned on a roaster, and it would work marvelously. I know that in the beginning [in Treblinka] they used rails from the trolley to build the cremation grill. But it turned out that these rails were too weak and bent in the heat. They were replaced with real railroad rails.

http://holocaustcontroversies.blogs...-sobibor-treblinka-holocaust_3633.html#_ftn33

 

[Sebastianus]

Mattogno's allegation here is rather easily shown to be false. The map was in Polish, Wiernik's work was written in Yiddish, for one. If Wiernik wanted to use the map for his book, why not unify the language?

Where did you get the idea that Wiernik's book was originally written in Yiddish? It wasn't.

 

[Sebastianus]

Roberto Muehlenkamp rather strongly rebuts the open-air cremation arguments of Carlo Mattogno. As Mattogno is the basis upon which your video link as well as the One Third of the Holocaust series stand, they simply become falling dominoes in this regard.

Did you watch the video in question (the first one, not One third of the holocaust)? It makes no mention of Carlo Mattogno, and draws on none of Mattogno's arguments. How then can you defend your claim that Mattogno is the basis on which it stands?

BTW, more fuel types than wood were employed in the AR cremations as well.

EtienneSC referred to multiple forms of solid fuel being used in the UK FMD pyres. Do you claim that solid fuels other than wood were used at the Reinhardt camps, and if so which fuels at which camps?

Since you mention the topic, it's also worth asking how you justify any claims you might make about the use of liquid fuels. According to Arad's standard book on the subject (p. 175) the use of liquid fuels was discontinued because "the SS men in charge of the cremation became convinced that the corpses burned well enough without extra fuel." You apparently disagree. Why?

 

[Sebastianus]

I prefer things in textual form.

Glad to hear it, Nick. One of the references from the video (on the topic of cremation) was the study The Revival of Prehistoric Burial Practices: Three Archaeological Experiments by Tõnno Jonuks and Marge Konsa, published in Folklore, vol 37 (2007). It is, in fact, in textual form, although you will also have to strain your conscience enough to look at the additional pictures they took documenting the course of their cremation.

Once again you misread what I wrote and twisted things. I said rather clearly that Graf alleges at several points in his body of work that there are no documents whatsoever relating to BCST. Your reading of the one comment I quoted failed to take into consideration the other cases where he has made similar remarks.

Your position seems to be "I was wrong, but if I had written something different I might have been right." Why not just acknowledge the error and move on without all the silly sniping and accusations of twisting things?

 

[Sebastianus]

No. Look at the video. It hand waves the Treblinka cremations as impossible and then claims to show evidence by showing a video of a totally different unrelated method of cremation using a bonfire. It is that simple.

As far as I can tell, Matthew, you did not finish the video, or if you did you certainly didn't understand it. No honest person who watched the full video (whether agreeing or disagreeing with it) would accept your summary.

Now, one of the issues you seemed to be attempting to raise was that of scale. To put this in perspective, I think we should look at what a real expert says. In his book Mass Fatalities: Managing the Community Response, Peter R. Teahen writes (pp. 275-276) that in cases of mass fatality, cremation

should never be considered as a viable option. [...] in a catastrophic situation where [cremation] would be considered, the reality is that funeral pyres, and/or the use of a traditional crematory retort, will create more challenges than they solve. Factors that minimize the value of cremation as a means of disposition or storage, include: there are simply not enough crematory retorts to process the potentially large numbers of deaths and most retorts are designed to cremate one remains at a time and can require three to four hours per cremation cycle. In addition to the time required to cremate, most crematory retorts have a useful working capacity of one thousand cremations before the unit would need to be rebricked, which could take up to several weeks in the best of circumstances, and several months in a long-term mass fatalities situation. [...] The operation of crematory retorts, as well as the utilization of funeral pyres, would demand large amounts of fuel, either natural gas or wood, to generate the intense fire required to destroy remains. [...] Finally the logistical challenges of funeral pyres are very problematic, ranging from the stacking of the remains, the ongoing stoking of the fire to ensure the thorough completion of the first step of the cremation process, and the need to re-cremate partially cremated remains.

Clearly experts consider the cremation of large numbers of bodies to be an immense challenge. How could it have been resolved in accordance with the statements of the Treblinka witnesses, in which it came down to (at most) piling up a few dry bushes, perhaps sprinkling them with a liquid fuel, and lighting them on fire?

It's also interesting that the argument put forth by Carlo Mattogno concerning the durability of refractory brick (the refractory bricks in the Auschwitz crematoria were never replaced, but according to van Pelt's numbers the ovens of krema II would not have needed to cremate 33,000 bodies per retort) is echoed by Teahen.

 

[Loss Leader]

Clearly experts consider the cremation of large numbers of bodies to be an immense challenge. How could it have been resolved in accordance with the statements of the Treblinka witnesses

Because the Nazi's didn't care if they did it well?

Your post is equivalent of reading out of Howard Hunter's Modern Law of Contracts and then asking how it's possible for millions of people to form contracts each day every time they buy a pack of gum or a newspaper.

 

[Sebastianus]

Because the Nazi's didn't care if they did it well?

If you don't perform an open air cremation well, then you're still left with a body, so if the open air cremations at the Reinhardt camps were not performed well there would have been hundreds of thousands of charred bodies lying around for the Soviets to find when they got there.

Incidentally, if you're interested in poorly executed cremations, you might want to look at the paper 'Half-Burnt on an Emergency Pyre': Roman Cremations Which Went Wrong by David Noy [Greece & Rome Second Series, Vol. 47, No. 2 (Oct., 2000), pp. 186-196].

 

[Nick Terry]

Glad to hear it, Nick. One of the references from the video (on the topic of cremation) was the study The Revival of Prehistoric Burial Practices: Three Archaeological Experiments by Tõnno Jonuks and Marge Konsa, published in Folklore, vol 37 (2007). It is, in fact, in textual form, although you will also have to strain your conscience enough to look at the additional pictures they took documenting the course of their cremation.

I said nothing about pictures; I simply prefer published work to videos.

The academic source which you say was cited in the video would be just as dubious if cited in a journal article about the Nazi death camps, because the cremation experiment discussed burned one carcass only.

But thanks for illustrating the point about why videos are a waste of time. In a journal article or even a blog, it would be immediately apparent to educated readers, trained to check references and supporting sources, what the supporting source was. How long would I have had to listen to a video voice-over before I got to the citation of this article from Folklore? Probably quite a while.

Moreover: will we see other citations of the same article in other revisionist sources? Over the years revisionists have cited a variety of technical sources which they think support their arguments. Some have become staples in the debates and are used by both sides, with differing interpretations.

Others, meanwhile, have been floated by deniers, then dropped.

Your position seems to be "I was wrong, but if I had written something different I might have been right." Why not just acknowledge the error and move on without all the silly sniping and accusations of twisting things?

Because on the quoted point I was right, and you were twisting things I had written. In general your comments on my posts have snipped small sections out of context, or ignored the fact that I was making a wider point, or selectively focused on one piece of evidence while ignoring the rest.

 

[Sebastianus]

Tell me exactly how you can apply a single incident of gasoline soaked burning of one individual, to a mass burning?

Well, it's not only a single incident, but an overall assessment by John DeHaan, a leading expert.

As for extrapolation to large scale burning, I will offer three arguments.

First, let's look at the general principle behind gasoline's failure to work for cremation. The problem was that the gasoline burned off too quickly; the only way it was slightly able to burn the body was when it soaked into clothing (the socks). Unless there's clothing to absorb it, most of the gasoline will just run off into the ground. Even with clothing, only a modest quantity can be absorbed.

The problem of the gasoline burning off quickly would remain the case in mass cremation, so there's no reason to believe that it would be any more effective. Moreover, the bodies at the Reinhardt camps were supposedly cremated naked. Therefore there would be no clothing to absorb gasoline, and the expected results would be even worse. In short, theoretical considerations do not suggest any advantage for a larger scale cremation, and the absence of clothing does suggest a disadvantage.

Second, there is the case of body disposal after the battle of Sedan. Sanitary measures consisting of pouring fuel (tar and mineral oil) into the graves and lighting it were tried, but the results were unsatisfactory even from the standpoint of sanitation, which requires only the charring of the soft tissue and not complete cremation.

Third, nowhere in the modern literature on open air burning for carcass disposal does anyone even suggest the possibility that soaking carcasses in gasoline might suffice for body disposal. If soaking carcasses with gasoline is sufficient for the cremation of the women (thus presumably also of animals with a higher fat content, e.g. pigs) then why do people go to such expense to use far more resource intensive methods of incineration, even for fat animals such as pigs?

 

[Nick Terry]

Clearly experts consider the cremation of large numbers of bodies to be an immense challenge. How could it have been resolved

The issue of scale ought to prompt a consideration of the very many other sites where the Nazis used mass cremation to eliminate large numbers of corpses. There were dozens of such sites where 10,000 or more bodies were burned, eg at Ponary outside Wilno, and five where more than 100,000 bodies were burned in the open, i.e. Chelmno, Sobibor, Birkenau, Belzec and Treblinka.

in accordance with the statements of the Treblinka witnesses

The problem is that revisionists have a well-deserved reputation for cherrypicking, selective citation, quote-mining and misrepresentation. Case in point:

in which it came down to (at most) piling up a few dry bushes, perhaps sprinkling them with a liquid fuel, and lighting them on fire?

The statements of "the Treblinka witnesses" indicate considerably more than a 'few' dry bushes were used to fuel the pit-furnaces. We will never know precisely how much fuel was used, which is one reason why these debates have become tedious beyond belief.

Abstract speculation about how much fuel 'must' have been required founders against the evidence of mass cremation across 100 or more sites in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe. Clearly, the Nazis had little problem in organising mass cremation not just in the camps but elsewhere; we can even document knowledge transfers and awareness of different methods by comparing the different sites.

That's the problem with arguing about scale, as I've pointed out to more than a few revisionists on these threads. If the Nazis could manage to burn even 10,000 bodies in one site, then it's difficult to see that they would have had a really serious problem getting to six figures. If they could burn 150,000 bodies at say Chelmno, then they could probably work out how to burn larger numbers elsewhere.

Which means that the proper sum total of evidence = all evidence (which is not just witness testimony evidence) relating to mass cremation in the open from at the very least, five sites (Chelmno, Sobibor, Birkenau, Belzec, Treblinka). Not just one.

Because I've yet to see a coherent revisionist argument that can help us specify how many human corpses it is physically possible to cremate in the open air, and somehow eliminate six figure mass cremation when conducted over a period of many months.

Whereas we've got plentiful evidence from the turn of the millennium that even larger quantities of animal carcasses could be burned in the open, during the UK foot-and-mouth epidemic.

 

[Nick Terry]

If you don't perform an open air cremation well, then you're still left with a body, so if the open air cremations at the Reinhardt camps were not performed well there would have been hundreds of thousands of charred bodies lying around for the Soviets to find when they got there

And in actual fact, there were intact skulls, bones and bits of charred flesh lying around sites like Treblinka when the Soviets arrived. Subsequent archaeological investigation at Belzec and Sobibor has found deeply buried layers of intact corpses and what amounts to human sludge (layers of adipocere). So the process of cremation was by no means complete.

 

[Nick Terry]

Well, it's not only a single incident, but an overall assessment by John DeHaan, a leading expert.

As for extrapolation to large scale burning, I will offer three arguments.

First, let's look at the general principle behind gasoline's failure to work for cremation. The problem was that the gasoline burned off too quickly; the only way it was slightly able to burn the body was when it soaked into clothing (the socks). Unless there's clothing to absorb it, most of the gasoline will just run off into the ground. Even with clothing, only a modest quantity can be absorbed.

The problem of the gasoline burning off quickly would remain the case in mass cremation, so there's no reason to believe that it would be any more effective. Moreover, the bodies at the Reinhardt camps were supposedly cremated naked. Therefore there would be no clothing to absorb gasoline, and the expected results would be even worse. In short, theoretical considerations do not suggest any advantage for a larger scale cremation, and the absence of clothing does suggest a disadvantage.

Second, there is the case of body disposal after the battle of Sedan. Sanitary measures consisting of pouring fuel (tar and mineral oil) into the graves and lighting it were tried, but the results were unsatisfactory even from the standpoint of sanitation, which requires only the charring of the soft tissue and not complete cremation.

Third, nowhere in the modern literature on open air burning for carcass disposal does anyone even suggest the possibility that soaking carcasses in gasoline might suffice for body disposal. If soaking carcasses with gasoline is sufficient for the cremation of the women (thus presumably also of animals with a higher fat content, e.g. pigs) then why do people go to such expense to use far more resource intensive methods of incineration, even for fat animals such as pigs?

You were asked how you can generalise from trying to burn one body with gasoline to discussing the burning of many bodies with gasoline.

Gasoline was used in combination with wood on the Altmarkt pyres in Dresden at the end of February/beginning of March 1945 to cremate masses of corpses; according to witness statements, one pyre held about 500 corpses, and one pyre per day was set alight, for a total of 6,865 bodies cremated, over a period of twelve days.

Cremating an individual corpse would certainly cause most gasoline to run off; a mass of corpses whether naked or clothed would however create a surface area that could retain some gasoline, while if this was combined with wood either layered between corpses or burning from a pyre underneath (the method used at Dresden and evidently, at the Reinhard camps), then gasoline could also be absorbed by the wood.

It is not difficult to envisage gasoline being poured into the centre of a mass of corpses arranged in the manner described or depicted (see the Dresden photos), losing a certain percentage to outright run-off, while some remained on the top, and some seeped down to lower layers of corpses, or ran off through the entire mass into the wood piled beneath the pyre.

On its own, gasoline wouldn't necessarily work; that is what Wiernik reports regarding the first attempts at cremation at Treblinka. Together with wood, and exploiting the varying conditions of the corpses to mix in decomposed and fresh corpses with those of men and women with varying body mass indexes, gasoline evidently becomes one of several fuels in a mass cremation.

In such a scenario, gasoline is an accelerant that combines with the wood and the economies of scale derived from cremation en masse, to start an at least partially self-sustaining cremation which also exploits body fat as a further fuel supplement. Such a method no doubt requires some stoking or the addition of further fuel depending on how successfully the quantities were balanced at the outset.

In a scenario requiring serial mass cremation, as we find already with the burning of nearly 7,000 bodies over 12 days, it is of course quite possible that some piles of corpses might not 'catch', and require rearrangement or refuelling in some fashion. But this possibility is acknowledged for Treblinka in the testimony of Wiernik and others, who note that the first attempts didn't work.

Since we're also talking about serial and parallel mass cremation on several pyres over a period of many months, then the practitioners had every chance to work out the best combination of fuel sources and methods to achieve their goal, or to try again with the same partially burned pyre. And they evidently still didn't fully succeed in eliminating all human remains.

Further examples and discussion of many variables regarding pyre size, grate capacity as well as comparisons with Dresden + FMD pyres was written up here by Roberto Muehlenkamp.

The bottom line is, if the Nazis could burn nearly 7,000 bodies over 12 days using gasoline and wood with pyres of 500 corpses at a time, then they could certainly burn much larger numbers over longer periods by expanding the size of the pyres and running several pyres in tandem, achieving similar or better rates of fuel expenditure.

 

[Sebastianus]

The academic source which you say was cited in the video would be just as dubious if cited in a journal article about the Nazi death camps, because the cremation experiment discussed burned one carcass only.

The fact that the situations are not identical does not imply that no inference can be drawn between them. The following two arguments connect the experiment to the Treblinka cremations.

1. A higher stack of a denser fuel was put under a single carcass in the experiment than was put under a stack of 20-30 carcasses at Treblinka, but the cremation was still unsuccessful. A stack of 20-30 carcasses is harder to burn than a single carcass is, therefore the Treblinka cremation method could not work.

2. One reason the initial attempt at cremation did not work is that the fuel burned too fast - the pyre was largely burned down in 52 minutes, leaving the pig still intact. This is too fast for successful open-air cremation.

Bushes, branches, twigs, and brushwood burn faster than does the firewood used in the initial attempt at cremation (because they consist of smaller pieces - see the pictures). Adding liquid fuels would only make them burn faster. Therefore the fuel in the Treblinka cremations (consisting as it did of bushes, branches, twigs, and brushwood) would have burned down faster than did the fuel in the experiment. Therefore the Treblinka cremations would not have worked.

 

[Sebastianus]

The issue of scale ought to prompt a consideration of the very many other sites where the Nazis used mass cremation to eliminate large numbers of corpses. There were dozens of such sites where 10,000 or more bodies were burned, eg at Ponary outside Wilno, and five where more than 100,000 bodies were burned in the open, i.e. Chelmno, Sobibor, Birkenau, Belzec and Treblinka.

Sorry Nick, but the fact that a story was told several times or in several variants does not change a technical analysis of that story. No matter how many witnesses tell me that the cow jumped over the moon, cows cannot jump over the moon. If some witnesses told me that the elephant jumped over the moon, and that the mouse jumped over the moon, could I prove that the cow jumped over the moon by arguing that if mice and elephants can do it, why not a cow? Of course not. It is impossible for a cow to jump over the moon for technical reasons. Technical arguments must be approached via a technical analysis, not mere enumeration of stories.

The statements of "the Treblinka witnesses" indicate considerably more than a 'few' dry bushes were used to fuel the pit-furnaces. We will never know precisely how much fuel was used, which is one reason why these debates have become tedious beyond belief.

If it makes you happier to specify that, for instance, Rajchman specified a 50 cm thick layer of bushes and branches, that's fine with me. This has no impact on my argument. Keep in mind, though, that a 50 cm tall bush is not a very large bush.

You specify that Treblinka had "pit furnaces". Do you mean pits excavated below ground level, or are you indicating that the cremating structure had four walls built above ground level, thus forming a pit? As you make reference to Muehlenkamp I will assume the former for the moment. How do you defend the claim that the Treblinka cremating structures has a pit excavated below ground level? Arad, for example, does not mention any pit. Neither does Wiernik, neither does Rajchman. Do you know of any witness statement supporting your claim of "pit furnaces" other than perhaps the testimony of Pavel Leleko?

Whereas we've got plentiful evidence from the turn of the millennium that even larger quantities of animal carcasses could be burned in the open, during the UK foot-and-mouth epidemic.

Indeed. I'm very happy you brought this up, and am eager to talk about it some more - but after I reach 15 posts and become able to make external links. For the moment I'll just ask one question. Do you know how many cremation sites were used in the UK FMD epidemic?