General Holocaust Denial Discussion Part II

[MaxMurx]

Why?

We aren't forensically reenacting whether Booth could have caused the injury to Abraham Lincoln. We haven't attempted to see just how many students Dylan and Eric could have really killed at Columbine. Mythbusters hasn't done an episode on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.

So, why exactly are we trying to burn pigs to see how much they look like Jews?

You think accusing someone of having murdered 6 Million people is childplay?
Do you think proper forensic investigations insult the dignity of the victim?
Since when does the dignity of a murder victim depend from the identity of murderer and the way the act was committed?
What about the dignity of the alleged perpetrator?

 

[MaxMurx]

Both of those pictures look like they were taken at the same place. The first picture clearly shows bones but the second picture doesn't clearly show skulls.

That makes us to come back to my first question how it can be concluded that those bones are human bones and not a kitchen dump?

 

[Dcdrac]

you do not exactly worry about guidelines when you are mass cremating human beings you have murdered, the only concern going through the minds of those murderers was destroy the evidence of their crimes, like when they blew up the crematoriums at Auschwitz when the Russians were getting close to it.

 

[EtienneSC]

MGK's reply to Holocaust Controversies' Criticism

Readers of this list may be interested to hear that the long-promised rebuttal of the Holocaust Controversies critique of their work on the Aktion Reinhardt camps (Sobibor, Belzec and Treblinka) is now published online and can be downloaded here:
http://codoh.com/library/document/3052

"Holocaust Controversies had all the time they needed to write their “refutation.” They were assisted by a host of Holocaust historians they diligently enumerate in their introduction. It did not help them a bit. […] Since the exterminationist position with regards to these two topics [gas chambers and eyewitnesses] is hopeless from the beginning..."

As it is over 1,500 pages, no doubt it will take some time to absorb, despite the quota of cut and paste.

 

[dafydd]

If you imagine that there is some kind of argument here from pictures of bones, you are sorely mistaken. The quantity of human remains shown in the pictures is totally incompatible with the idea that the cremation of 800,000 bodies was seriously incomplete.

You do realize that all this took place over a period of time? They couldn't photograph all the bones.

 

[Dcdrac]

Slight problem with that document it is from a known denial website and cannot be taken as an independent neutral source.

 

[Loss Leader]

You think accusing someone of having murdered 6 Million people is childplay?

No, I think the facts are so well-established by multiple lines of evidence that there is no need to speculate about who can cremate what under what conditions. We don't need to see if a bad pilot could hit the World Trade Center because we have well-documented evidence that they did.

Do you think proper forensic investigations insult the dignity of the victim?

I think this pretend forensic investigation insults the dignity of the victims. Nothing put forward compares in the slightest to the way the Nazis attempted to burn the bodies of their victims. Furthermore, since we know it happened, pretending to investigate whether it could have happened insults all of those who contributed to documenting the atrocities in the first place.

Since when does the dignity of a murder victim depend from the identity of murderer and the way the act was committed?

The dignity of the murder victim depends on the dignity given his memory. It is undignified to speak of him as a cow or a pig with hoof and mouth disease. It is undignified to ignore the great weight of evidence in the OJ case to focus on one single glove.

What about the dignity of the alleged perpetrator?

You mean the confessed and convicted perpetrators who made contemporaneous written and oral statements about their crimes? I'm not worried about the dignity of the Nazis.

 

[MaxMurx]

It is undignified to ignore the great weight of evidence in the OJ case to focus on one single glove.

I followed the OJ Simpson trial live on TV. The big turn did not come with the non fitting gloves but when it was found beyond any reasonable doubt that the blood stains, the LAPD said to have found on OJ's socks, contained EDTA. EDTA is a preservative for blood samples. EDTA does not occur in native human blood. The presence of EDTA was an irrefutable proof that this part of the evidence had been fabricated or "planted". Judge Ito then had to advise the jury to dismiss ALL evidence presented by the prosecution. That is exactly why in Holocaust evidence all fishy evidence has to be removed. That does not weaken, it strengthens the case for those assuming that it happened how it is said to have happened. If those tons of evidence and Millions of sheets of written documents really exist, who cares removing ten or twenty foul ones which had been forged? The only result would be that "revisonism" and "denial" would be at their end once and forever. Where is the problem? What are you waiting for? Do you think it would have helped the prosecution in further murder trials if the LAPD would have insisted that OJ Simpson unlike anyone else on this planet had EDTA in his blood?

 

[EtienneSC]

As it is over 1,500 pages, no doubt it will take some time to absorb, despite the quota of cut and paste.

Sorry to quote myself here, but I take back what I said about MGK's reply taking time to absorb, as much of it is simply a rehash of the usual stuff about the alleged functioning of the AR diesel gas chambers and the supposed destruction of evidence. There is however, an interesting section on pages 645-802 on the resettlement thesis. This is obviously highly unsatisfactory, but it includes interesting incidental accounts of the heightened mortality amongst Soviet Prisoners of war (POWs) through starvation and disease and the suggestion that the deported Jews may have had a similar fate. The fate of POWs on both sides has possibly been put too much into the shade in recent popular culture and historiography. Whilst the details are unclear, MGK would seem to be questioning Arthur Butz's assertion that most deported Jews survived the war.

Their account is also consistent with acknowledged military policy on the Eastern Front on both sides, which was primarily a Soviet responsibility owing to their refusal to sign the Geneva treaties prior to the outbreak of hostilities. It provides a plausible account of German motives, which can be seen as callous treatment through deportation of a civilian population rather than inexplicable and virtually supernaturally demonic, as in the recent, harshly reviewed book by Daniel Goldhagen, The Devil that never dies (2013). The principal interest I have in the matter is the question of motive and I feel MGK's work may help provide more a believable account of this (no doubt you will accuse me of being subjective in my criteria of belief) than Goldhagen, who does at least speak directly about the motives of German Christians (in a broad sense). Even the cover of Goldhagen's book indicates the continuing virtually supernatural nature of the received thesis:

 

[CaptainHowdy]

No, I think the facts are so well-established by multiple lines of evidence that there is no need to speculate about who can cremate what under what conditions. We don't need to see if a bad pilot could hit the World Trade Center because we have well-documented evidence that they did.

But it's important to know if it was a bad pilot who hit the World Trade Center or a very competent pilot with bad intentions who hit the World Trade Center.

I think this pretend forensic investigation insults the dignity of the victims. Nothing put forward compares in the slightest to the way the Nazis attempted to burn the bodies of their victims. Furthermore, since we know it happened, pretending to investigate whether it could have happened insults all of those who contributed to documenting the atrocities in the first place.

Not "whether it could have happened" but HOW it happened. All hail the eternal optimist but I'm reality grounded enough to know that there might be some future catastrophic natural disaster after which knowing how to quickly dispose of hundreds of thousands of bodies would be helpful.

The dignity of the murder victim depends on the dignity given his memory. It is undignified to speak of him as a cow or a pig with hoof and mouth disease. It is undignified to ignore the great weight of evidence in the OJ case to focus on one single glove.

Do you oppose vivisection and other animal testing on the grounds that it is undignified to people to consider them close enough to other species for such testing to have any meaning? Would you refuse an antibiotic that was tested on a monkey because it insults your dignity to be compared to a monkey?

Your analogies are getting weaker.

 

[CaptainHowdy]

That makes us to come back to my first question how it can be concluded that those bones are human bones and not a kitchen dump?

I have seen another picture similar to the first one in which people are present to give us a frame of reference as to the size of the bones. I do agree with your critique that these pictures are not very clear. Compared to some photos of deatj camp mass graves that I have seen these photos don't have the shock value

 

[Sebastianus]

you do not exactly worry about guidelines when you are mass cremating human beings you have murdered, the only concern going through the minds of those murderers was destroy the evidence of their crimes, like when they blew up the crematoriums at Auschwitz when the Russians were getting close to it.

Well, then, a good comparison would be cases of criminals who try to burn the bodies of their victims. There are quite a number of examples of such attempts. They usually fail - burning a body turns out to be very difficult, no matter how little respect you have for it or how much you hate it. Even when they succeed in cremating the body, there are still significant cremation remains left behind. Burning a body NEVER destroys it completely. (For some comments on cremation remains see this post.)

You can also find some comments regarding this type of case in the book Forensic Cremation: Recovery and Analysis (and in a lot of other places, but I'm not going to take the time to try to pull them all together here.)

Regarding the destruction of the Auschwitz crematories, the interesting thing is that the "gas chamber' of krema II - supposedly the most lethal building in Auschwitz - was the least damaged part of the kremas. Its roof remains more or less intact, which has greatly strengthened revisionist arguments...

Regarding the motivation for destruction of the kremas, one needs to recall what happened at former extermination camp Majdanek (it was demoted from the ranks of the extermination camps a few years ago). The kremas there were not destroyed; the Soviets then used them to stage effective photographic atrocity propaganda. After this experience, it's no surprise that the Germans would destroy the kremas of a camp that was anticipated to be captured by the Soviets.

 

[Sebastianus]

No, it directly addresses your assertion that the Nazis could not have done an imperfect job of cremation at the death camps because an imperfect job of cremation would have left intact pieces of bodies.

That is not what I argued. Please try to read for comprehension; it would make discussion more productive. I did not say intact pieces of bodies, but intact bodies - like this.

ALL open air cremations are imperfect. The fact that pieces of bone (even supposing that all the human remains in the photos are cremation remains; the apparent lack of heat related fracture in the skulls and some of the long bones makes this somewhat doubtful in my opinion, although I'd like to hear the specific report of an expert before making any definite assertion along these lines) were present after cremations does NOT make them different from other open air cremations.

Regarding Muehlenkamp more broadly, as EtienneSC has mentioned we are now fortunate enough to have available a comprehensive reply. Cremations are covered in Chapter 12.

The work in question is by necessity rather sprawling, as it is a reply to the similarly sprawling "white paper" put out by the bloggers of holocaust controversies. To see the debate from the beginning, one should start with the books on Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibor available from the holocaust handbooks website.

On Muehlenkamp's treatment of decomposition, please explain why the conditions at the Reinhardt camps were particularly suited to making decomposition favor easy incineration. By the way, Muehlenkamp makes a horrible mess of the science about decomposition - I can explain the details, and probably will at some point, but not here - it needs properly formatted references. I probably won't get around to it for a while, though.

Regarding Epynt:

Yes, there has indeed been an effective response. You have provided zero actual critique of that response, nor showed why it's in any way incorrect.

Have you even read the post you linked to, or my posts here and here? I responded to exactly the arguments regarding Epynt in that link, point for point.

 

[Sebastianus]

Looking at the instruction manual for running a crematory might provide useful information as would investigating modern Hindu funeral practices. Burning one body at a time is different than burning thousands at a time but both involve combustion of bodies so some insights might be had.

These are valuable comparisons. Of course, the case of crematory ovens takes us onto a new subject, which is a good direction for the discussion to develop, but one that needs a focused presentation of its own, since cremation in an oven is significantly different from open air cremation. For the moment I'll stick with open air cremation.

Regarding Hindu cremations, here are some sources on fuel consumption:

Arnulf Neumaier's article The Treblinka Holocaust, published in the anthology Dissecting the Holocaust, cites a November 27, 1986, report of the New Delhi Schenectady Gazette, according to which in India 6,433 metric tons of dry wood are used to incinerate 21,000 bodies daily. This comes to 306 kg per body.

The Fuel Efficient Crematorium, described here gives the value of 400-600 kg for the requirements of pyre cremation. The system in question prevents heat loss out the sides - something never described for the Reinhardt cremation facilities - and is claimed to half the fuel requirement.

Even the antirevisionist website HDOT confirms the 400-600 kg number for Hindu funeral pyres.

Now, AUSVETPLAN said that burning a cow requires 1500 kg of dry wood, but economies of scale reduce that to 1000 kg in a mass burn. Taking as a hypothesis the claim that the same reduction of one third would apply with humans, we get the following estimates of fuel required per body in a mass burn:

204 kg per body based on the figure 306 kg
267 kg - 400 kg based on the figure 400-600 kg

These estimates are in reasonably good agreement with my estimate of 250 kg per body.

One thing I need to keep reminding myself is that the Nazis could run as sloppy a cremation as they wanted to run. They had no respect for the bodies they were burning. They didn't need to worry about destroying the bodies so completely that all pathogens and disease vectors were also destroyed.

Do authorities who cremate animals really have so much respect for the bodies that they undergo unnecessary expense? Regarding pathogens and disease vectors, these are not totally destroyed either. The ash (something like 120,000 tons of it, as I recall) from the 2001 UK FMD pyre cremations had to be removed from the incineration sites and taken to biosecure landfills. Open air incineration is also regarded as unacceptable for dealing with prion diseases, because prions are so difficult to destroy.

Note also that the Hindu cremations are not for the purpose of destroying disease, but they don't seem to be any more fuel efficient. You can also readily find discussion of the environmental problem caused in India by the disposal of incompletely cremated bodies in rivers. The poor are often unable to afford enough fuel for a complete cremation (and even an incomplete cremation takes a huge amount) - this is a documented phenomenon not just in the case of modern India, but throughout history. (There are references to this fact in the Encyclopedia of Cremation and in Jacqueline McKinley's article in the book The Analysis of Burned Human Remains.)

 

[MaxMurx]

Goldhagen and Haavara / Hitler's Willing Executioners?

Thank you for mentioning Goldhagen. In his "Hitler's Willing Executioners" he constructs the case of Millions of bloodthirsty Germans having nothing in mind but to exterminate their Jewish co citizens. I did not read the book and never will read it. I assume Goldhagen has an extra chapter about the Haavara agreement which the Jewish virtual Library describes as follows (have a special look at the last part of the text in bold and the conclusions of the second link I will provide.

The anti-Hitler protest movement culminated in a gigantic rally at Madison Square Garden on March 27, 1933, organized by Rabbi Wise and the American Jewish Congress. More than 55,000 protesters crammed into the Garden and surrounding streets. Simultaneous rallies were held in 70 other metropolitan areas in the U.S. and in Europe. Radio hookups broadcast the New York event to hundreds of cities throughout the world.

The boycott unnerved the Nazis, who believed that Jews wielded supernatural international economic power.

<snip>

From the Zionist point of view, the boycott did succeed. Without it, there would never have been a Transfer Agreement, which contributed immeasurably to a strengthened Jewish community in Palestine and the creation of the State of Israel. And Transfer would never have happened had American Jews not mobilized as quickly as they did, only days after Hitler rose to power.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/Black.html

The Transfer Agreement was the most far-reaching example of cooperation between Hitler’s Germany and international Zionism. Through this pact, Hitler’s Third Reich did more than any other government during the 1930s to support Jewish development in Palestine.

http://www.effedieffe.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=9185&Itemid=152

Is that typical behavior of someone being accused to be "willing executioners" of 6 Million people?

Edited by Loss Leader: 

Edited in accordance with Rule 4. Do not paste large amounts of copyrighted text.

 

[A'isha]

Well, then, a good comparison would be cases of criminals who try to burn the bodies of their victims.

Not unless said criminals were attempting to burn thousands of bodies, several hundred at a time.

There are quite a number of examples of such attempts. They usually fail - burning a body turns out to be very difficult, no matter how little respect you have for it or how much you hate it. Even when they succeed in cremating the body, there are still significant cremation remains left behind. Burning a body NEVER destroys it completely. (For some comments on cremation remains see this post.)

Which is why the Nazis employed grinders to try and dispose of the cremains, and also why there are still some cremains in the mass graves.

Regarding the destruction of the Auschwitz crematories, the interesting thing is that the "gas chamber' of krema II - supposedly the most lethal building in Auschwitz - was the least damaged part of the kremas.

...which is still pretty substantially damaged. The Nazis weren't able to completely demolish it down to the last brick, but they sure were able to blast the heck out of it in their attempts.

Regarding the motivation for destruction of the kremas, one needs to recall what happened at former extermination camp Majdanek (it was demoted from the ranks of the extermination camps a few years ago).

Majdanek was a labor camp later refitted and used for mass killing operations.

The kremas there were not destroyed; the Soviets then used them to stage effective photographic atrocity propaganda. After this experience, it's no surprise that the Germans would destroy the kremas of a camp that was anticipated to be captured by the Soviets.

The Soviets didn't need to stage anything, after what the Nazis did, which is why the Nazis tried so very hard to destroy all evidence of their mass murders at the camps. Unfortunately for them and fortunately for history, they weren't entirely successful.

 

[Loss Leader]

I followed the OJ Simpson trial live on TV. The big turn did not come with the non fitting gloves but when it was found beyond any reasonable doubt that the blood stains, the LAPD said to have found on OJ's socks, contained EDTA. EDTA is a preservative for blood samples. EDTA does not occur in native human blood. The presence of EDTA was an irrefutable proof that this part of the evidence had been fabricated or "planted". Judge Ito then had to advise the jury to dismiss ALL evidence presented by the prosecution.

That literally did not happen. I don't want to get off topic but everything you just said is absolutely, demonstrably, unquestionably false.

But it's important to know if it was a bad pilot who hit the World Trade Center or a very competent pilot with bad intentions who hit the World Trade Center.

What on earth? Why?

Not "whether it could have happened" but HOW it happened. All hail the eternal optimist but I'm reality grounded enough to know that there might be some future catastrophic natural disaster after which knowing how to quickly dispose of hundreds of thousands of bodies would be helpful.

So your argument is that we need to study the Nazi cremation practices of the 1940s in order to learn how to prepare for some upcoming disaster? The extremely detailed reports from the 2000s on how to dispose of animal carcasses in a complete, thorough and systematic manner with breakdowns of costs aren't enough? If the Nazis did burn all those murder victims, then we should do things the way they did? Complete and utter nonsense.

 

[Loss Leader]

Is that typical behavior of someone being accused to be "willing executioners" of 6 Million people?

Yes.

 

[CaptainHowdy]

Do authorities who cremate animals really have so much respect for the bodies that they undergo unnecessary expense? Regarding pathogens and disease vectors, these are not totally destroyed either. The ash (something like 120,000 tons of it, as I recall) from the 2001 UK FMD pyre cremations had to be removed from the incineration sites and taken to biosecure landfills. Open air incineration is also regarded as unacceptable for dealing with prion diseases, because prions are so difficult to destroy.

My point is that those who dismiss the various guidelines for animal carcass disposal because the guidelines consider cost and environmental impact and other aspects that the Nazis didn't worry about aren't understanding the value of those guidelines. The guidelines tell us what is necessary for reducing animal carcasses to ash. The Nazis reduced hundreds of thousands of bodies to ash. Therefore, the Nazis had to do what the various guidelines tell us needs to be done. The big question is how were the Nazis able to do it so much more efficiently? I wish somebody could come up with an unbiased resource that could explain this to me instead of pretending that these different scenarios don't matter. Because they do matter and I'm not finding the answers on my own.

Note also that the Hindu cremations are not for the purpose of destroying disease, but they don't seem to be any more fuel efficient. You can also readily find discussion of the environmental problem caused in India by the disposal of incompletely cremated bodies in rivers. The poor are often unable to afford enough fuel for a complete cremation (and even an incomplete cremation takes a huge amount) - this is a documented phenomenon not just in the case of modern India, but throughout history. (There are references to this fact in the Encyclopedia of Cremation and in Jacqueline McKinley's article in the book The Analysis of Burned Human Remains.)

True. The HC blog resource ANTPogo has referred to is the best answer to these cremation questions. I cannot entirely dismiss what is says. But I wonder why, if it is right, why does every government recommendation and guideline for body disposal recommend vastly more complicated and expensive systems?

 

[Cyrix686]

Goldhagen's book was controversial at the time because whilst he got a lot of things right, he was panned for the central part of his thesis, that Germany was seized by irrational and murderous Anti Semitism. This panning was for reasons that others more erudite and learned than me can elaborate upon. The case studies on the German police battalions were fascinating however and also utterly chilling.

The academic verdict was that the situation was far more complex than that however and that hallucinatory murderous Anti Semitism did not explain it satisfactorily. Still no need to throw the baby out with the bath water as HWE is still a good book. A more balanced approach to the battalions of the order police was written by Christopher Browning in his book "Ordinary men." This too was about Reserve Police Battallion 101 and its murderous activities but it did not use the "irrational murderous Anti Semitism" line to explain how German men unfit for military service were drafted into the police and ordered to kill Jews in the occupied Eastern territories. OM is another book that Max will no doubt proudly never read.

Why I should take seriously the opinion of someone on a book when they are proudly and loudly shrieking that they have not read it I do not know. But its Michealmas so.

Sebastianus, little suggestion, you were insulting to Roberto earlier. To my knowledge he doesn't post at JREF much so...why don't you go and post your contradictory cremation findings to Roberto Muehlenkamp directly to the new RODOH forum where he does entertain challengers?