Nick had argued that it was futile to argue against the orthodox history of just one camp out of the five (funny story - it used to be six, but one of them got lost) extermination camps, because if one of them was an extermination camp, then all of them were extermination camps. I pointed out that the argument is equally valid in reverse: if one of them was not an extermination camp, then none of them was an extermination camp. Nick replied that
Oh, dear. Nick claims that the reverse argument is not equally valid. But the reverse argument is just the contrapositive of the initial argument. As everyone with even a rudimentary grasp of logic knows, a statement and its contrapositive are logically equivalent. It astonishes me that even a minor British University could employ a lecturer who can't even identify the contrapositive of a simple logical proposition, or ascertain that the two are logically equivalent.
The problem here is that your reverse argument is
not logically equivalent, because my argument is based on multiple lines of evidence, whereas yours is not.
Treblinka belonged to four sets of camps or sites
1) the three Aktion Reinhard camps (adding Belzec and Sobibor)
2) a set of five camps at which more than 100,000 victims were killed, and at which open-air mass cremation was used (adding Auschwitz and Chelmno)
3) a larger set of camps or sites at which gas and mass cremation was used, involving sites where fewer than 100,000 victims were killed, thus including not only Majdanek, but also Maly Trostinets and Semlin.
4) a much larger set of sites at which mass murder took place involving bullets or gas, where the bodies were cremated in the open, thus including Ponary, Fort IX at Kaunas, Bronnaia Gora, Babi Yar, Plaszow, Klooga and many other locations
The variables include
1) scale
2) the use of gas via multiple methods
3) mass cremation of at least 1,000 corpses
4) burial/non-burial of the bodies prior to this cremation
5) organisational chain of command
along with factors such as the survival or non-survival of documentation, the volume of witness evidence from perpetrators, victims and bystanders, the forensic or archaeological work done after liberation, and other evidentiary issues.
These sites all contributed to the Nazi Final Solution.
We would then divide them regionally to allow for possible differences in the timing or urgency with which the victims were killed, and note that there were varying degrees of selection for labour conducted in various manners (at departure point/on arrival).
So Maly Trostinets + Ponary + Fort IX + Bronnaia Gora all belong together despite differing in the methods of killing because all were located in the Ostministerium-administered regions of occupied Soviet Union. Chelmno and Auschwitz belong together because they were in the incorporated territories annexed from Poland. BST + Majdanek + Plaszow belong together because they were in the Government-General. Chelmno, Auschwitz, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, Majdanek, Maly Trostinets and Fort IX would
also belong together because they saw the killing of Reich Jews from Germany, Austria and the Protectorate.
Or we can look administratively and organisationally: Chelmno belongs together with BST because all four camps were administered by HSSPF apparatuses relatively independently of the WVHA. By contrast, Majdanek, Auschwitz and Plaszow belong together because they were WVHA camps, and belong alongside Mauthausen, Sachsenhausen etc in Germany/Austria. Maly Trostinets and Semlin belong together because they were run by RSHA units, which was not the case for BST and was not strictly the case for Chelmno.
The extermination sites and extermination camps were therefore clearly filiated through multiple links, and have many variables in common, such as use of gas, mass cremation, etc. For Treblinka we have many such filiations:
- Treblinka belonged to a trio of Aktion Reinhard camps all of which were supervised by the same authority (Globocnik and Wirth),
- all of which drew personnel from the euthanasia program
- all of which were guarded by Trawnikis
- all of which were designated SS-Sonderkommando in surviving documentation. Chelmno was also designated an SS-Sonderkommando.
- All four camps (BST + Chelmno) were linked together in the Korherr report, with the original use of Sonderbehandlung obfuscated on Himmler's order into 'evacuation'.
- For Chelmno there is an explicit document about gassing, for BST we know from Globocnik's final report that the camp files were destroyed.
- For BST we still have documents linking the sites with terms understood to mean extermination in multiple other contexts, such as Sonderbehandlung and Vernichtung, and obvious references to mass murder in e.g. the Brack-Himmler letter of 23.6.42
and there are other links and common factors
- We know that personnel were transferred between BST and that these personnel all admitted that there was extermination at all three camps.
- Survivors exist from all three camps all of whom testified to extermination
- Bystanders from nearby villages all testified to extermination
- All three camps were identified in Polish underground sources as extermination camps
- All three camps were identified in Jewish underground sources as extermination camps
- All three camps were investigated by the Soviets in 1944 and Poles in 1945 who all found that they had been extermination camps
- All three camps left physical traces of mass cremation visible in the 1944-45 investigations
- Physical traces of mass cremation and mass graves are discernible to contemporary archaeological investigations in all three cases
If the issue at hand is whether these camps were extermination camps or not, then under no circumstances can the three camps be isolated from each other. Evidence for one camp contributes towards evidence for all three camps quite explicitly. Due to the Korherr report and other points of comparison, Chelmno is also linked in fairly clearly.
The differences between the camps include scale. Treblinka was the biggest for sure. But it is not possible to isolate that variable from the similarities, and use one variable to transform our entire understanding of the purpose of the three camps.
That is because each similarity and each variable produces its own body of evidence, for example the set of 38 SS men who testified to mass extermination at the AR camps, or the common evidence of the purpose being mass extermination derived from documents generated by men like Hans Frank, Globocnik, Victor Brack and Adolf Eichmann.
These lines of evidence combine to produce the conventionally accepted explanation, and multiple lines of evidence were combined in this way from the war years onwards, with more and more lines of evidence accumulating.
The lines of evidence are further combined when we observe similarities with closely comparable camps. Once we cite Korherr, then documentary evidence for Chelmno is also relevant. As Hoess visited Treblinka, then there are other ties. In evaluating the evidence for BST, we note that part of one line of evidence was generated by West German investigations, and the West Germans also investigated Chelmno, Auschwitz, Maly Trostinets, etc. In evaluating the archaeological evidence, we note that Polish archaeologists looked not only at Belzec and Sobibor but also Chelmno, while foreign archaeologists looked at Sobibor and Treblinka, with Polish assistance.
So when I say 'If Belzec and Sobibor were extermination camps, so was Treblinka', then what that means is the above.
When you say 'the reverse applies', you have created a massive asymmetry in the argument.
Because my argument is based on multiple lines of evidence, whereas yours has hitherto been based on arguments about one aspect only, at most two if we include the thoroughly beaten trash about false confessions.
Nick argues that
But this is not what you need to show. Revisionists have no problem with mass cremation at these sites. The issue is a quantitative one: are we talking about mass cremation involving 800,000 Jews resulting from an extermination camp, or of (for instance - this is in no sense a firm number) 20,000 who died on the trains or from other causes. Saying "there was mass cremation" does nothing to settle the dispute.
Physical and archaeological evidence proves beyond a reasonable doubt that mass cremation occurred at those sites. Other physical and archaeological evidence proves that there were also quite enormous mass graves at those sites, graves which could accommodate vastly more corpses than 20,000 who died on trains en route. Already the physical evidence alone contradicts your downplaying of the number of victims. Evidence of emptied mass graves is good evidence of scale, but it is not the only evidence of scale.
The most probable scale for these camps is however derived primarily from documentary evidence, eg the Hoefle telegram, combined with other documentary sources.
This is then contrasted with the physical evidence of mass graves, along with the physical evidence reported in 1945 at e.g. Treblinka, where a 2 hectare area was found to be covered by ash, and human remains were scattered over the site, or the archaeological evidence found at Belzec, where unburned corpses were found at the bottom of very deep mass graves. The two lines of evidence are clearly compatible within the same order of magnitude (six figures at each site).
The documentary and physical evidence would suffice in the absence of
any witness evidence to the best explanation of BST as extermination camps. The documentary evidence does not of course consist solely of the Hoefle telegram, but of all documents related to Aktion Reinhard and BST.
Your argument hitherto has revolved around nitpicking and cherrypicking a handful of witness statements regarding the
manner of cremation. This is an inadequate method because you are effectively quibbling with the details as described by a few witnesses, while ignoring all the other evidence.
The bigger problem comes when you try to rewrite the history of the camps. If you think that because Rajchman or Wiernik described the cremations 'funny' that the scale was much less, then you run into a big problem. You simply don't have
any historical evidence allowing you to rewrite the history of the camps.
Without such historical evidence, then any hypothetical 'remodelled' version of the kind where you stupidly claimed that pyres accommodated 165 bodies at a time, will fail.
Combining types of evidence requires respecting the hierarchy of evidence, which deniers are fond of invoking but seemingly have no understanding of how it actually works. If we had no witnesses from BST, then we would only have documents + physical evidence. If we conclude from those documents + physical evidence that the best explanation for the sites is mass extermination, then no amount of fuss-making over witness testimony and no demands for precise descriptions of how cremation unfolded would change the conclusion that the best explanation of BST is that they were mass extermination sites.
The only way to change this is to come up with a better explanation, which requires finding new historical evidence that would incorporate all of the existing elements (all documents and all physical evidence). It is far from unknown that a new piece of evidence can transform our understanding of a phenomenon. Unfortunately for you, recent discoveries and the addition of new pieces of evidence have firmed up extermination rather than the reverse.
If we add the witnesses back in then the same thing still applies. It would be extraordinarily odd if not one witness testified to the actual purpose of the camps if it wasn't extermination. Given that witnesses are the most superabundant form of evidence in the modern era, if you have literally
no witnesses who testify to your preferred explanation of not-extermination, then you have a huge, huge problem.
If however you could produce witnesses who testified to (a) the actual purpose of the camp and (b) the massaging/fabrication/manipulation of the existing testimonial evidence, then you'd be in business.
A deathbed confession from Kurt Franz might have done the trick. Oops, he died 15 years ago and nothing like such a retraction and clarification has emerged.
Now, Nick attempts to argue from historical precedent:
Actually, a comprehensive look at FMD cremations and other cases of mass carcass incineration is exactly what my claims are based on. My previous posts have already developed this theme at some length, and I may develop it further in the future.
But as we've now seen, your 'comprehensive' look at FMD cremations consists of cherrypicking a disastrously mismanaged example and ignoring other cases.
The brute point with FMD is that a state was able to organise the incineration of vastly more animal carcasses than needed to be cremated in the Holocaust, within a similar time-frame. The very fact that multiple sites were used in 2001 also underscores exactly why you cannot reduce the Holocaust to Treblinka.
For now, though, a word about Dresden.
Nick claims that the bodies were reduced "to ash" in the Dresden pyres on the basis of an uncritical acceptance of secondary sources (and one document, which I'll happily expand on if he requires), specifically the book of Taylor:
But are there adequate sources to demonstrate that Taylor's account is accurate? No. Nick gives an example of this when he argues about the Dresden fueling:
He cites "the descriptions." But where do these descriptions come from? Nick doesn't say, because he's embarrassed to admit that his source is David Irving's book on Dresden. And what does Irving cite as a source for these statements? Nothing. Presumably he has a source - something someone told him sometime, I suppose - but he gives absolutely no citation. This illustrates the poverty of the evidence for Nick's version of what happened at Dresden.
In short, Nick's attempt to refute our entire body of knowledge on carcass incineration on the basis of what some witnesses have said or what some secondary sources have claimed about events in Dresden in 1945 is entirely unconvincing.
As for Nick's number of 8-10 cubic meters of ash, it's too low to represent even the cremated remains of the number of people allegedly cremated even if they were cremated in crematory ovens. When one considers the larger volume of remains in open air incinerations, never mind the ashes left by the fuel, it becomes completely clear that the picture Nick (and Taylor, and Irving) paint of the Dresden cremations is not correct.
Firstly, you missed where I referenced David Irving in an earlier post. I am far from embarrassed, precisely because David Irving was a sometime hero of Holocaust deniers. It is naturally piquant to use evidence from an erstwhile denier sympathiser against Holocaust denial arguments.
Frankly, your fuss-making over Dresden betrays signs of extreme desperation. You seem wholly unable to concede the possibility that the Nazis could organise the cremation of fewer than 7,000 bodies in 12 days at Dresden. You invent scenarios where this wasn't actually cremation but mere carbonisation, and dispute the details.
But that simply reminds us of the dozens of other examples of mass cremation which you are ignoring in this discussion: Ponary, Fort IX, Bronnaia Gora, Babi Yar, etc. All of which involved
very well documented killing actions, and which also left documentary evidence about Sonderkommando 1005 which make it quite clear that SK 1005 was engaged in mass cremation.
The Nazis were evidently cremating thousands of bodies in multiple locations across Eastern Europe, in the open air. They did this using a variety of methods. These mass cremations took varying amounts of time, involving varying numbers of workers and evidently, fuel resources.
That variety reminds us that your attempts to model the One True Pathway to cremation are essentially bogus.
