General Holocaust Denial Discussion Part II

[Cyrix686]

I don't read enough Revisionist texts or watch the videos but does anyone here know where the false claim that Sebastianus asserts as true that the Nazis blew up the Birkenau kremas in order to stop the Soviets lying about gassing originates?

 

[Matthew Ellard]

The second image neither is a part of the first one nor a high resolution cut out from the first one. On the other hand people are expected to assume that bot pictures are connected to each other.

That's right. It is assumed that someone who is making comments about the evidence, has bothered to read some the basic evidence. The photos are from the Polish investigations in Treblinka lead by independent Justice Lukaszkiewicz. The photos are different sizes because I loaded them down from two different history websites.

That leads to the questions:why the human remains, assumed that those are human remains, were sorted, by whom and why.

Because Justice Lukaszkiewicz excavated parts of Treblinka looking for evidence, which he found. That's why some of the skulls are burnt and other are not, as the cremation process was not 100% efficient and other bodies could not be removed from the ground for cremation.

Justice Lukaszkiewicz / ".During the inspection, which I made with the assistance of an expert in forensic medicine, it was determined that the ashes are without any doubt of human origin (remains of cremated human bones). The examination of human skulls could discover no trace of wounding".

 

[Mycroft]

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

..

Certainly many people think discussing it is. Anyway, doesn't answer his question.

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

That doesn't answer his question.

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

That doesn't answer his question either.

What about the dignity of the alleged perpetrator?

Pardon... the dignity of the Nazis?!

 

[A'isha]

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.

Yes, and? How is this any kind of argument against the cremations at Treblinka? If there were a sloppy burn, resulting in corpses that resembled the pig in your picture, what do you think the Nazis would have done? Said "oh well, we messed that up" and left the body as it was?

ALL open air cremations are imperfect.

Yes, which is why cremains are still visible at the Nazi's mass murder sites.

Even though the condition of those sites is perfectly consistent with mass cremations and corpse destruction having taken place there, the only objection I'm actually seeing from you is that it doesn't conform to some particular preconceived notion who what the condition of those sites should be or what should be able to be found there, with no explanation as to why the sites should be that way (much less any explanation for why the sites not being that way means that the mass cremations never happened).

Are you denying that mass cremations happened at places like Treblinka at all, or merely, as you implied earlier, their scale?

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.

What are the chances that this 1500 page monstrosity is actually any better than the original books they wrote?

On Muehlenkamp's treatment of decomposition, please explain why the conditions at the Reinhardt camps were particularly suited to making decomposition favor easy incineration.

He goes into quite a bit of detail about that in the links provided above.

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.

You're right; I apologize.

So, lets look at those critiques then.

Regarding the first point, the hydrants: there is nothing in what Muhlenkamp wrote to indicate whether or not he was "imagining" as you claim. But while it's certainly possible that the machines were being doused as they crossed into the pyre, even if they weren't the hydrants would still cause problems. My father was a fire chief for twelve years - I can assure you that hydrants and hoses leak, particularly at the connection points. In addition, the water sprayed on the machines didn't evaporate into thin air. All those hydrants and hoses spraying and leaking all that water next to the pyre would certainly have run into the cremation pit itself, causing problems for the burn exactly as the Epynt report said.

Regarding the second point, the Epynt burn was poorly managed overall: the length of the required pyre being merely one of the many symptoms of that. Other symptoms included the incredibly high amount of combustibles required, and (as you did not dispute) the width of the pyre (and the fact that, as you say, the original plan called for 10 meter wide pyres is even worse, since they apparently didn't think to get machines which could stoke a pyre as wide as they originally planned for, indicating serious mismanagement pretty much from the very beginning). As for your claim that the incompetent management would have been replaced and the burn done right, the documentation in the EAG report shows that this was not done, with problems pointed out during the burn right to the very end. It also shows a rather amusing naivete regarding government responsiveness to their own mismanagement.

Regarding the third point, this is just an argument from incredulity. Neither you nor I know how the Treblinka pyres were stoked or not stoked, because the surviving records simply do not indicate that one way or the other.

Regarding the fourth point, the burial site the Epynt carcasses were exhumed from was dug in boggy, peaty ground (and deep enough to go into the underlying rock layer). The burial pits at Treblinka were not.

Regarding the fifth point, I see that Carcass Disposal, despite being cited by you in ostensible support of numerous other points, was not mentioned by you here. I note that it states "To promote clean combustion, it is advisable to dig a shallow pit with shallow trenches to provide a good supply of air for open-air burning", which may explain why. You also claim that the trench method is not used for a sustained mass burn, implying that the elevated system is preferred for that, but you don't explain how the cooling and ash clearing you say is required of a trench is not needed when re-building the burned elevated pyre using more flammable straw to elevate the pyre again.

In your previous posts, you link to the original pyre plan found in the Epynt Report. Is there a similar diagram for how the actual pyres used were constructed? The report itself highlights in a number of places that the pyres had insufficient airflow for daught.

 

[A'isha]

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 difference is that the guidelines tell us what is necessary for reducing animal carcasses to ash in a way that's as hygenic as possible, reduces the amount of disease and pollution as much as possible, is cited in a location that does not harm or inconvenience the location, takes into account things like the public's concern about diseased animals and their corpses and the increased costs in paying people to get over these fears, is done with an eye for water table contamination and as disposal and decomposition seepage and a whole host of other public-health-related issues that the Nazis did not ever have to bother with.

It's like trying to disprove Nazi slave labor by pointing to modern OSHA and Department of Labor employment guidelines.

 

[CaptainHowdy]

The difference is that the guidelines tell us what is necessary for reducing animal carcasses to ash in a way that's as hygenic as possible, reduces the amount of disease and pollution as much as possible, is cited in a location that does not harm or inconvenience the location, takes into account things like the public's concern about diseased animals and their corpses and the increased costs in paying people to get over these fears, is done with an eye for water table contamination and as disposal and decomposition seepage and a whole host of other public-health-related issues that the Nazis did not ever have to bother with.

It's like trying to disprove Nazi slave labor by pointing to modern OSHA and Department of Labor employment guidelines.

You do have a good point in that any guidelines that are written are going to be written by people who are intending to tell us how to dispose of animal carcasses in a hygienic way without running afoul of any government codes or other laws. But useful information can be teased out of some of these sources. The chapter on incineration in Carcass Disposal: A Comprehensive Review, for example, warns against using rubber as a fuel because it generates black smoke. Obviously, that's not something the Nazis cared about. It's not a fact that could be used to support any argument we're having here. The chapter also says that the higher the fat content, the easier the carcasses will burn. It also says that pigs have a higher fat content than other farm animals. The knowledge that pigs are the easiest farm animal to burn and that pigs and humans are similar anatomically is information that is relevant to our discussion. The similarity of pigs and humans and the fact that pigs are the easiest farm animal to burn are the kinds of facts that don't change because of government regulations or protests from neighbors.

You can't reject all the information in a government guideline because the guideline was written for an intended audience that wasn't Nazis trying to get rid of bodies.

 

[EtienneSC]

I can see that some people might not enjoy reading about animal cremations, but it is fairly easy to see that it is central to investigating the possibility of eyewitness claims.

On MGK's reply, there is an interesting section on pages 84-87 where they refer to German documents that refer "frankly" to Einsatzgruppen killings. This maybe a foretaste of their next project. The section also summarises their views about document destruction in the resettlement thesis section (645-802) which I have already referred to.

 

[MaxMurx]

Open Burning of Corpses on Wooden Pyres in France during Neolithic Age

In 2005 in Reichstett-Mundolsheim in France a site was excavated in which 11 dead bodies had been cremated at the same time on a pyre during Neolithic age. The dead bodies (7 adults, 4 children) had been placed in multiple layers on "some kind of pedestal". The cadavers had been cremated using wood. The wood had been placed under the pedestal "but the cadavers during the cremation remained in contact with it". The location of bones and bone fragments found in the pit having a surface area of 4.6 m2 is shown in the attached drawing of the site. Most bones and skulls were fragmented. The bones with the highest degree of fragmentation were those of cadavers in the lower layers, those from higher layers having fallen on them. This finding was different in skulls, those from higher layers being more fragmented after falling from the pyre. The layer was determined by the color of the bones. Those having been exposed to the highest temperatures, closest to the fire wood, were white, those in upper layers were grey or brown. The temperature of the fire was estimated to have been above 800°C (1472° F) because the ground was turned red by the molten iron oxide, an effect being found at temperatures in that region.

http://bmsap.revues.org/pdf/870

The total mass of bones having been recovered was 9257.59 g (20.28 lb) which was far below of what was expected from experience with conventional cremations and experimental open air cremation of animal cadavers. The expected total mass of bone material was between 20 kg (44.09lb) and 30 kg (66.14 lb).

What also was found unexpectedly was the integrity of joints. Human joints during cremations in contrary to animal carcass burning remain intact, mainly the knee joint. In the excavation no intact knees were found but all vertebral columns, some shoulder and some ankles had been found intact.

Those for me were the most interesting differences to the pictures shown from the alleged burning pit posted here. (Refrain from asking me to read more of the original publication. For having an unbiased opinion I will not do it even being asked 100 more times). Because the original text (see link) is French, I could have misunderstood the one or the other point. Feel free to correct me. Explain however the differences to the site in the picture. Color and location of bones, integrity of bones, joints (?), skull color and integrity, color of soil).

Thanks

 

[Sebastianus]

Regarding the point that the "gas chamber" of krema II was left much more intact than other parts, such as the "undressing room", ANTPogo states that the "gas chamber" was

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.

[qimg]http://i479.photobucket.com/albums/rr157/antpogo/krema2_zps556da9db.jpg[/qimg]

Unfortunately for him, the picture he includes doesn't show the "gas chamber"! It's from krema II, but not the "gas chamber". One can easily see this just from the fact that ANTPogo's picture is of an above ground structure, while the "gas chamber" was in a basement.

It's clear that ANTPogo is speaking without any knowledge. Anyone who has studied the Auschwitz gassing story would know that the picture ANTPogo points to is not of the "gas chamber". Even watching Auschwitz: the surprising hidden truth would have saved ANTPogo from this blunder.

 

[A'isha]

Regarding the point that the "gas chamber" of krema II was left much more intact than other parts, such as the "undressing room", ANTPogo states that the "gas chamber" was



Unfortunately for him, the picture he includes doesn't show the "gas chamber"! It's from krema II, but not the "gas chamber". One can easily see this just from the fact that ANTPogo's picture is of an above ground structure, while the "gas chamber" was in a basement.

It's clear that ANTPogo is speaking without any knowledge. Anyone who has studied the Auschwitz gassing story would know that the picture ANTPogo points to is not of the "gas chamber". Even watching Auschwitz: the surprising hidden truth would have saved ANTPogo from this blunder.

So? The Nazis still did substantial damage to the gas chamber when they attempted to destroy the entire structure. The underground part was not exactly unscathed, and its "intactness" which you find so curious (without bothering to explain why you think that's significant) is not for any lack of effort on the Nazis' part.

 

[A'isha]

You can't reject all the information in a government guideline because the guideline was written for an intended audience that wasn't Nazis trying to get rid of bodies.

No, but you do have to be cognizant of the differences. Pretty much nothing regarding costs as described in these guidelines is applicable to what the Nazis did, and a large number of the recommendations for how and where to construct pyres are likewise inapplicable.

 

[Sebastianus]

ANTPogo contends that decayed corpses burn much more easily than fresh corpses. He cites no empirical evidence in favor of this claim, and ignores the fact that the decay of carcasses in the aftermath of Hurricane Floyd made the bodies harder to burn. He also contends that the fact that at Epynt decayed carcasses were also found to be more difficult to burn than fresh carcasses is irrelevant, because conditions at Epynt were not ideal. But even without going into the details of his arguments concerning the conditions at Epynt, we can see that this line of reasoning is fallacious. Even if he is correct about the problems at Epynt, this does not explain why the decayed carcasses were found to be more difficult to burn than fresh ones. Suboptimal conditions would make both decayed and fresh carcasses harder to burn, but they would not make decayed carcasses more difficult to burn than fresh ones when formerly they had been easier to burn.

In addition to these two examples showing the greater difficulty of burning decayed carcasses, one might add the leading "sonderkommando 1005" witness Leon Wells, who (as Carlo Mattogno points out in his recently published work linked above) wrote that the combustibility of corpses

depends also on whether the corpses are decayed. If they are decayed, they burn less well. In any case, the difference in time needed for the cremation of a pile of decayed corpses and one of fresh corpses amounts to one day.

It would seem even during the holocaust decayed bodies were harder to burn than fresh ones, except at the Reinhardt camps!

In short, we still haven't seen any reason why it should have been possible to have burned bodies at the Reinhardt camps with far less fuel in far less space and in far less time than in well documented incinerations.

As I pointed out earlier, ANTPogo's comments on Epynt are not relevant to the matter at hand, because they do not explain why decayed carcasses should have been more difficult to burn than fresh ones. Nevertheless I will briefly indicate some answers.

Regarding the fact that Carcass Disposal: a comprehensive review recommends the trench system - yes, they do; however as I pointed out the USDA and the Texas A&M group recommend the elevated system. My point is that both systems are still considered acceptable today.

ANTPogo's statement that the "burial site the Epynt carcasses were exhumed from was dug in boggy, peaty ground (and deep enough to go into the underlying rock layer)" is simply wrong; the peat was only a shallow surface layer. The statement that the pit went down to rock is also wrong. In fact, wells were drilled to 20 meters, far greater than the depth of the pit. The actual base of the burial pit was a layer of crushed stone that was placed in the bottom of the pit for the purpose of establishing proper drainage for leachate from the carcasses. The fact that such provisions for drainage were made refutes the argument that the poor drainage of the clay soil at Epynt is the reason that the decayed carcasses burned more poorly there.

Regarding the argument that practical problems in a sustained mass burn also apply to systems without a trench, this is of course true; the point, however, was that there is no reason to try to insist on a trench system for a cremation lasting for months when that trench is going to become useless after the first few days.

The argument that the plan for a 10 meter wide pyre shows incompetence cannot be sustained unless ANTPogo can show that the width in practise was no greater than 10 meters.

As for ANTPogo's other statements, I cannot see what argument he is trying to make. Pointing to the fact that some cremation took place at a site cannot prove that it was an extermination camp. You might as well argue that Ohrdruf was an extermination camp on the basis of the cremations that took place there in 1945.

 

[Sebastianus]

The chapter also says that the higher the fat content, the easier the carcasses will burn. It also says that pigs have a higher fat content than other farm animals. The knowledge that pigs are the easiest farm animal to burn and that pigs and humans are similar anatomically is information that is relevant to our discussion.

The similarity between pigs and humans has to do with things like patterns of fat distribution rather than levels of body fat; this makes the similarity relevant when studying something like decomposition dynamics, but not so clearly relevant when studying the difficulty of cremation. The Jews cremated at the Reinhardt camps are said to have been highly emaciated, which would have made them harder to burn.

This table gives a summary of the body fat levels in sheep at different body weights. As you can see, at a weight of 50 kg (the average weight of sheep in the 2001 UK FMD epidemic, according to the NAO report) sheep typically have a body fat level of around 30% or slightly higher. Thirty percent body fat is rather plump woman or a downright fat man. Emaciated Jews would have had much lower levels of body fat even than sheep, but pigs have even higher levels of body fat.

 

[Sebastianus]

CaptainHowdy mentioned the example of crematory ovens in connection with the incineration of bodies. This is a good direction for this discussion to develop, although of course cremation in an oven differs greatly from open air cremation. In speaking of cremation in ovens, we are leaving the Reinhardt camps and focusing our attention on Auschwitz and Majdanek.

I have already explained that aerial photos show that while open air cremation did take place at Auschwitz-Birkenau, its scale was quite modest. The Auschwitz open air incinerations might have been capable of incinerating perhaps dozens of bodies per day, but they certainly did not incinerate thousands of bodies per day. This means that if the flurry of extermination alleged to have taken place at Auschwitz really occurred, then the bodies (up to 10,000 per day) must have been disposed of almost entirely in the crematory ovens. For an explanation of how the system supposedly worked, and for an intuitive look at the problem of cremation capacity, the video Auschwitz: the surprising hidden truth is highly valuable.

Birkenau had 46 muffles for cremation - five triple-muffle ovens in kremas II and III, and an 8-muffle oven (in 2 x 4 configuration) in krema IV and V. By 1944 the 6 muffles of the main camp were no longer in service. There is also agreement on both sides of the holocaust debate that krema IV was no longer in service in 1944. This reduces the maximum number of muffles available to 38.

Now, how many bodies could these ovens have cremated, and how much fuel would it have taken? And what about the need for repairs?

Let's start with the issue of cremation capacity. How long does it take for a crematory oven to burn a body? We might start by looking at the performance of modern crematory ovens. For instance, the top of the line model from Matthews Cremation advertises a capacity of up to 15 cremations in 18 hours

We might also examine the scientific literature. One of the best sources for the duration of cremation is the paper The degree of destruction of human bodies in relation to the duration of the fire, which can be downloaded here. It shows quite clearly that the main cremation phase can be expected to take an hour or so. A cremation is not complete after the main cremation, but if the oven is equipped with a secondary combustion chamber into which the remains can fall (as the Auschwitz ovens were) a new body can be introduced once the main cremation of the last one is finished.

Now, compare this to the witness testimonies from "sonderkommando" witnesses, who claim (generally speaking) that several corpses could be burned in one muffle in around 20 minutes. These testimonies are presented in a comprehensive fashion in chapter 8.8.7 (begins on p. 310) of Carlo Mattogno's book Auschwitz: the case for sanity. It's clear that the witnesses did not give a truthful account of cremation.

Moreover, since the 38 muffles in service in 1944 could have cremated only one body per hour, even if we assume (contrary to fact) that they could operate 24 hours per day they could only have cremated 24 * 38 = 912 bodies per day. Adding in the contribution of the open air cremations (likely a few dozen a day at the very most) we come to a cremation capacity at Birkenau in 1944 of no more than 1,000 bodies per day. Disposing of the 10,000 bodies per day that Birkenau allegedly faced, or even with an averaged out rate of some 5,000 bodies per day, would have been completely impossible.

There are no documents of witness accounts to support some alternative body disposal scheme, such as shipping the bodies out on trucks to some alternate body disposal site. All testimonies on body disposal explicitly state that the bodies of all of the killed were disposed of at the camp. Since it was not possible to dispose of the number allegedly killed, and since the bodies were clearly not left there to pile up, we can conclude that the claims made about the extermination of the Hungarian Jews and other groups of Jews at Birkenau in 1944 at the rate of several thousand per day are false.

------------------

It is worth summarizing the background to the holocaust cremation debate - with respect to cremation ovens this time, not open air cremation. With any luck, someone will engage in some background reading and avoid repeating certain silly errors.

The historical starting point to this debate came when revisionists asked cremation professionals about holocaust cremation claims, and found that said professionals supported revisionist claims. Perhaps the first such case was Ivan Lagace, who testified at the Zundel trial. As Lagace did not fully understand the particular design of the Auschwitz crematory ovens, some of his statements are erroneous, but his testimony is still worthwhile as an example of how a cremation professional reacts when confronted with holocaust cremation claims.

Another cremation professional to discuss holocaust cremation claims is found in this video, in the segment beginning at 31:35. Again, the discussion is not as detailed as one might hope, but the interview is still valuable for the opportunity of seeing a professional's response to the claims made about cremation during the holocaust. It's also worth watching the witness claim about gassing and pit cremation starting at 28:50 (cremation part starts at 30:15).

The first person to look in detail into the German cremation technology of the third Reich was Carlo Mattogno. His article in the anthology Dissecting the Holocaust (p. 373ff) is an excellent starting point. From the orthodox standpoint, the only major critique of revisionist arguments is the work of John C. Zimmerman, who published two articles attacking Mattogno's writings. (They can be found on the holocaust history project website, but at the moment the site seems to be down.) Mattogno responded in two articles of his own, after the second of which Zimmerman failed to reply. Both of Mattogno's articles replying to Zimmerman were reproduced in the book Auschwitz Lies, p. 87ff.

A somewhat more detailed treatment of the Auschwitz crematories is found in chapter 8 of Auschwitz: the case for sanity. Finally, Mattogno's full study on the crematories of Auschwitz (in two volumes) has been published in Italian, but is not yet out in English. Orthodox holocaust writers have not had anything significant to offer on the topic of cremations in crematory ovens since John C. Zimmerman lost his debate with Carlo Mattogno.

 

[Nessie]

Nessie: like all other posters here with the exception of CaptainHowdy, you have misread my argument concerning false confessions. Go back and read what I actually wrote.

I have learned enough from what you posted below, where you claim if something is not possible the testimony is false. When you describe testimony as "false" do you mean it is a lie or that the witness has just made a mistake?

Do you think that unless testimony is in your opinion accurate it is therefore false?

I have indicated one basic way to test eyewitness testimony, and that is to ask whether what is described is possible or not. If it is not possible

On the basis of the experience of groups that have carried out large and well documented incinerations of carcasses, we know that the cremations described at the Reinhardt camps were not possible, and that the stories told about them are therefore false.

This does not of course prove that there were no cremations at said camps - a position I never argued for. It does, however, prove that the story told by the witnesses at Treblinka or Belzec about the incineration of hundreds of thousands of bodies on rather small open air pyres with a very modest quantity of fuel is false.

So some traumatised witnesses come out with exaggerations. Others make mistakes in the details. Some possibly are out and out liars who were not there. Your error is to dismiss the lot because it does not fit with your narrative.

Is it true that false confessions cannot corrupt other evidence? Well, perhaps you should have watched the video I linked, 6:45 to the end.

Or you could read a relevant paper.

That does not show how a false confession will bring down an entire case. Think about it. If it was a fact that a false confession would stop a whole case in its tracks, such would be used all the time as a way for people to get off with charges. Get some mug to go along and make a false confession.

If there is physical evidence and eyewitnesses who back up the physical evidence and one eyewitness who lies, the lying eye witness will not cause the whole case to end. Instead either their evidence will be disregarded or they end up charged for contempt of court.

 

[Nessie]

A study of Hindu Cremations

http://factsanddetails.com/world.php?itemid=1343=55=354

Millions of cremations a year, issues with partly burned remains going into the Ganges, the speed of the cremations, most are single cremations with wood but poor families will use common pyres with dung for fuel.

Just like so much of the Holocaust and indeed many horrific events during the Second WW and other times witnesses have exaggerated. But what is known about cremations from Dresden to the Ganges to the animal pyres of Cumbria, many remains can be disposed of quickly.

 

[Matthew Ellard]

In 2005 in Reichstett-Mundolsheim in France a site was excavated in which 11 dead bodies had been cremated at the same time on a pyre during Neolithic age...........Feel free to correct me. Explain however the differences to the site in the picture. Color and location of bones, integrity of bones, joints (?), skull color and integrity, color of soil).

The cremation remains you are mentioning are more than 5,000 years old. The article is comparing mid neolithic burials to late neolithic burials as is clearly described in the paper's abstract. It has nothing to do with modern forensics.

If you are after a qualified forensic expert with expertise in the identification of human remains and various aspects of crime scene investigation, you should read Caroline Colls' papers.

Holocaust Archaeology: Archaeological Approaches to Landscapes of Nazi Genocide and Persecution / Caroline Colls

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/maney/jca/2012/00000007/00000002/art00002

 

[Nessie]

As for the idea that the Germans only needed to do a sloppy job of cremation, I suggest looking at this series of images. Note how intact the pig's body is after the initial attempt of cremation. For an example for a mass cremation, look at this image. A sloppy job of cremation leaves intact bodies.

Nor were the UK FMD cremations all that thorough. Consider this image of the ashes from a UK FMD cremation, and note the uncremated hoof in the foreground. In fact, the literature is clear that open air mass cremation is never as thorough as other cremation methods. This is part of all open air mass cremations, not just the German experience.

Also the Indian experience where the Government built a modern crematorium to try and stop partial human remains continuing down the Ganges. So it is not the most efficient way of disposing of human remains. What does that evidence? That it never happened?!

It's worth noting that mass cremation is expensive. If it were possible to reduce resource usage by doing a sloppy job of it, people would be doing it. But this is not the case. According to Carcass Disposal: a comprehensive review, 5% of the carcasses in Taiwan's 1997 FMD epidemic were cremated, but this cremation cost 41.4% of all body disposal expenses in that epidemic.

With truly large scale mass cremation, the situation is even worse, as one runs into the problem of fuel inflation. Carcass Disposal: a comprehensive review notes that during the 2001 UK FMD epidemic



Clearly there was an enormous incentive to reduce fuel requirements, and if the holocaust story is correct this should have been easy to do - by orders of magnitude. But the British were unable to do this. If holocaust cremation claims are really possible, then why has everyone (US, UK, Australia, Taiwan, France, Canada...) been wasting large amounts of money on burning bodies when it could be done drastically more efficiently? Fuel would have been even more scarce than usual during wartime. If the mass cremations alleged at Belzec and Treblinka really took place, this should have shown up in massive fuel inflation. Where is the evidence of this? Holocaust cremation claims are rather like the claim that the Third Reich had a truck that could drive 3,000 miles in one hour on one gallon of gas while hauling a 100 ton load. If this were really possible, then why can't anyone else attain anywhere near this level of performance?

You have proved that due to supply and demand such as F&M epidemics the goods needed for mass pyres rises. What does that evidence? That the likes of the UK government had to pay extra in the short term when caught out by such an epidemic. That it was still the most effective means of dealing with the problem, preferred over mass vaccination. Cost was not the only consideration, nor even the most important. Stopping the epidemic was.

Meanwhile in India where mass pyres go on all year round, the cost is kept down by using dung.

As for the fantasies about Dresden, I can only repeat what I have already said: an account of the Dresden cremations based on claims in the secondary literature cannot be used to overturn the facts about mass cremation derived from well documented experience. If ANTPogo's imagined cremations were really possible in the fashion he claims, then why is it that in every well documented instance of mass cremation, the time, space, and fuel requirements are orders of magnitudes higher than he imagines to be necessary?

To the question of why open air cremation was necessary at Auschwitz in light of its substantial crematories, that's easy. They were out of service. This is not an unusual problem, and is discussed in texts on body disposal in the aftermath of mass fatality events - crematory ovens are frequently in need of repairs. The details of exactly which ovens were in service on which days are sometimes difficult to ascertain, but even exterminationists concede that some of the ovens were out of service; for further details on this problem see Auschwitz: the case for sanity, chapter 8.8.1.

Finally, I note that ANTPogo has attempted to beg off from an analysis of cremation by referencing Muehlenkamp's essay. I have already refuted a number of Muehlenkamp's arguments here, and no-one has been able to reply. The fact is, Muehlenkamp is simply incompetent in a grand scale; it is one of the signs of the bankruptcy of the holocaust story that he is the best they can manage. Thoroughly documenting Muehlenkamp's errors is beyond the scope of a forum post, and in any case Carlo Mattogno has already replied on this score, in a work that should be published sometime soon. But just for fun, let's look at a single example of Muehlenkamp's incompetence. In his table 8.39 he announces (to the alert reader's considerable surprise) that 76 kg of wood has the same energy content as 18 kg of wood. He then goes on to assert the same thing in table 8.40, and then tells the astonished reader that 50 kg of wood has the same energy content as 12 kg of wood three times (tables 8.41, 8.42, and 8.43). The poor guy just couldn't get his units right.

ANTPogo (following Muehlenkamp) argues that decomposition would make bodies easier to incinerate. This stands in direct opposition to the experience of the Epynt cremations, where the bodies that were buried and then exhumed and burned were harder to incinerate. This is one of the reasons Muehlenkamp has to try and argue that Epynt was mismanaged (Nick Terry's arguments along these lines are simply copied from Muehlenkamp). Carcass Disposal: a comprehensive review also includes another example showing that decomposition hinders rather than helping cremation. In the aftermath of Hurricane Floyd, North Carolina attempted to incinerate the carcasses of the animals killed in the flooding, but it took some time until it was able to get to most of the bodies, with the result that in addition to difficulties caused by waterlogging,



In short, the truth is exactly the opposite of what Muehlenkamp and ANTPogo assert. This is just another example of how supporters of holocaust cremation claims rely on analysis that is based not on the actual facts about mass cremation, but on wishful thinking and fantasy.

We also are still not exactly sure of the science behind stone age vitrified forts. How did they heat stone so that it melted? Yet it still happened as we have the remaining physical evidence.

 

[Nessie]

This may be a little off topic but it pertains to the idea of human corpses fueling their own incineration.
In a discussion of alleged spontaneous human combustion (this thread) I looked at a case, an elderly man in Oklahoma who died earlier this year, whose body was ignited by a cigarette after his death. Without external fuel or accelerant or any intervention, less than 18kg of material remained of the corpse. With assistance I see no reason why cumbustion could not be more complete.

We are still not sure of the science behind that either. Yet the denier/revisionists have decided it is not possible to cremate lots of remains without having lots of combustible material.

 

[MaxMurx]

The cremation remains you are mentioning are more than 5,000 years old. The article is comparing mid neolithic burials to late neolithic burials as is clearly described in the paper's abstract. It has nothing to do with modern forensics.

If you are after a qualified forensic expert with expertise in the identification of human remains and various aspects of crime scene investigation, you should read Caroline Colls' papers.

Holocaust Archaeology: Archaeological Approaches to Landscapes of Nazi Genocide and Persecution / Caroline Colls

http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/maney/jca/2012/00000007/00000002/art00002

The article above is very interesting. To my understanding it asks for proper archeological investigations of Holocaust sites and deplores their non existence. That is exactly my point. Only the non existence of proper evidence necessitates memory hooks like comparing neolithical cremation residuals with those, presented as photographic evidence of alleged Holocaust cremation residuals by yourself and my question, if those can be human cremation residuals at all. If those sites would have been investigated properly, that question never would be asked again.
Concerning your question if I am a qualified forensical expert, the answer is: no. I am professor for anesthesiology, intensive care and emergency medicine. Working for 30 years in a "Play and Stay" system of emergency medicine, in which in contrary to the US American "Scoop and Run" system physicians are driven by so called "Rendez vous" cars to the site of emergency, I have since 30 years the obligation to decide if someone deceased by natural cause or accident or if there is any sign of foul play. In the death certificates I write I must attest "natural cause", "unnatural but known cause" (accidents and suicides) or "unnatural and unknown cause" like criminal acts and have to present the evidence to law enforcement to even start a criminal investigation. That makes "forensic medicine" since 30 years part of my job, although I am not a specialist in it. Secondly I am working a great part of my professional life in research. In research I am specialized in medical gases. Which has another important parallel to what is discussed here. Third I have German parents, born in 1919 and 1920. Both died at the age of 81. According to Goldhagen the Germans of that period were deep rooted anti semites, even willing executioners. In those 43 years my own life was crossing the life of my parents, those not one single time accused Jews to be responsible or guilty for anything or to be subhuman because being Jewish. Not one single time in 43 years. Not even in the most intimate discussions and conversations within the family. That is incompatible for me with deeply convinced anti semites, educated to be anti semite since early childhood. Therefore I asked and will continue to ask: "What about the dignity of the alleged perpetrators?