General Holocaust Denial Discussion Part II

[MaxMurx]

Testimony of Leon Wells during the Eichmann trial. Leon Wells reportedly was lined up in the Janowska Concentration camp as No. 182 to be shot but was not shot to death and escaped. Because the SS allegedly wanted to cover up his escape, he was registered as "Number 182 having been shot". He was however caught again and sent back to Janowska where he became member of the "Sonderkommandos" removing all traces of the "Einsatzgruppen" murders. That meant to "uncover all graves where Jews had been killed within the last three years, to take out the bodies, pile them up in tiers and burn those bodies. To take out all valuables from the ashes, like rings and golden teeth and then grinding the remaining bones. After grinding the powder was "thrown up in the air" and disappeared.

The Brandmeister (master of the flames) was responsible for making sure that the pyramid of bodies did not extinguish the fire; and the Zähler (counter) made sure that all the bodies whom the Nazis had carefully recorded as buried in the mass grave were diligently unearthed. Given such work, the Sonderkommandos developed macabre rituals: as they would head off to work each day (“some days—eight, some days—ten hours; but
normally it was an eight-hour day”), the Brandmeister would “march in front, he was clothed like a devil; he had a special uniform with a hook in his hand and we had to march after him and sing”.
At the end of 1943 he came to the grave "# 182", the grave which was assumed to contain his own dead body.

Quote:

Presiding judge:I didn’t understand your last reply, Dr. Wells.
Witness wells:It was in July, at the end of 1943, I dug up the
grave where I had to be buried the year ahead when I escaped among the
182 people.
Presiding judge:I see.

Because the Nazis had kept precise records of the location of each grave and the number of bodies each contained, and because the Zähler was required to make sure that all the numbers agreed, Wells and the rest of his unit were forced to spend two fruitless days searching for Wells’s missing body.

End of quote

Another quote:

q. . . . Did you get any food?
a. We got a lot of food.
q. Where did you eat? Amongst the corpses?
a. On the corpses.
q. On the corpses themselves?
a. Yes, on the corpses.

According to Wells "some hundred thousand" of Jews were burnt by him and his "Sonderkommando", 30.000 Jews had been shot in front of the burning pyres.

From: Douglas L: The Memory of Judgement - Making Law and History in the Trials of the Holocaust; Yale University Press, New Haven, London; 2001; page 126-128.

 

[A'isha]

Your arguments about corpse disposal have not yet been refuted. There's alot of information out there about this topic. None of it corroborates the theory that the bodies of all the Jews were cremated on site and buried there.

Neither does it contradict the idea that the bodies of all the Jews were cremated on site and buried there. It, in fact, doesn't tell us a whole lot about what the Nazis could do, much less about what they actually did.

That modern American or British governmental authorities following modern guidelines for the disposal of animal carcasses for public health reasons didn't use the same methods that the Nazis were described as using to try and conceal the evidence of their genocide does not actually say anything about the validity of the methods the Nazis were described as using. At most, all it says is that the methods used by modern American or British governmental authorities following modern carcass disposal guidelines are different from the Nazi methods for cremating mass genocide victims, and there are a whole lot of reasons why that is so beyond merely "the Nazi methods are impossible".

Anything beyond that is simply invalid, because (despite your rejection of the notion in your post above), it is very much an apples to oranges comparison to use the documents about animal carcass disposals in 21st Century Britain due to FMD and BSE epidemics to try and show that the Nazi's mass cremation of their human victims' remains was an impossible event.

The reason why Sebastianus has to turn to animal carcass cremations in the US and the UK in the first place is because what the Nazis did was kind of unprecedented, meaning there isn't a whole lot of non-Holocaust-related documentation about the kind of mass human cremations the Nazis did is because not a whole lot of people besides the Nazis have even attempted such a thing.

A much more valid approach is the various experiments and studies cited by both Mattogno and Muhlenkamp, and their efforts to calculate what it would actually take in terms of fuel and time and method to cremate human corpses as the Nazis are described as doing. In other words, stop looking at what they didn't do (ie, use the methods described in the documents Sebastianus is referencing), and start looking at what they did do.

 

[Matthew Ellard]

Sorry, but there is no such quote on page 301.
In addition, I have searched the document for "Above all, it is entirely unclear" and cannot find the passage.

Step 1) Open this link to paper.
http://holocausthandbooks.com/dl/08-t.pdf
Step 2) Scroll down to page 301.
Step 3) Read the entire lower paragraph on page 301 of the document you suggested we should read, which I did and you didn't. Note the exact quote exists as stated earlier.

"Above all, it is entirely unclear where the Jews deported to Treblinka ultimately wound up"

The only occurrence of the phrase "entirely unclear" is a quote from Nicholas Terry, not by one of the authors.

You haven't read their "tome" on Treblinka at all, have you?

 

[Matthew Ellard]

Matthew's attempt to insinuate that I am applying a double standard towards witness testimony fails, because I have not argued that witness testimony for resettlement proves that mass extermination at Treblinka or Belzec did not take place. Rather, my argument is similar to that made by Sherlock Holmes

No. You are applying a double standard.

You claimed that that you don't accept the cremations took place because in your opinion the cremations were impossible based on silly unrelated diversions. We presented many German and Jewish eyewitnesses who not only said it was possible but actually attended the cremations themselves.

Concerning your alternative theory, I then asked you to set out all your eyewitnesses relating stories about arriving at resettlement camps in Russia. I then asked you to set out exactly how the Jews were resettled, the trains they took, the food they received, the name of the German units guarding them at the final resettlement locations, so I could apply your "impossibility test". You ran away.

Considering the "great" researchers for holocaust denial, MGK, say they haven't got a clue where the Treblinka Jews ended up, suggests that you haven't got a clue either. Is that a correct statement?

 

[Matthew Ellard]

Finally, as Matthew mentioned Caroline Sturdy-Colls' research at Treblinka, I should point out that her publications to date contain no information about her actual findings.

New Information provided by Colls
"One is 26m long, 17m wide and at least four metres deep, with a ramp at the west end and a vertical edge to the east".

"Another five pits of varying sizes and also at least this deep are located nearby".

"As well as the pits, the survey has located features that appear to be structural, and two of these are likely to be the remains of the gas chambers"

So you didn't know she found a very large pit with a minimum capacity of 1,768 cubic metres? Wow, you must be quite surprised then!

 

[Matthew Ellard]

Amendment: I see you are citing from an earlier book than the one I cited originally. We were at cross purposes, as you were not directly addressing the suggestion I made.

I just saw this post.

How can I apply Sebastianus's "impossibility test" if the leading lights of holocaust denial, MGK, themselves don't have a clue where the Jews from Treblinka went?

How about you. Can you set out in detail the train route, how they were fed, which German units guarded them and the names of the cities or villages that they were resettled in? (Why did thy take 266,000 overcoats off the Jews at Treblinka?) No? Why not? What's your excuse...

Is it because it never happened?

 

[CaptainHowdy]

Neither does it contradict the idea that the bodies of all the Jews were cremated on site and buried there. It, in fact, doesn't tell us a whole lot about what the Nazis could do, much less about what they actually did.

That modern American or British governmental authorities following modern guidelines for the disposal of animal carcasses for public health reasons didn't use the same methods that the Nazis were described as using to try and conceal the evidence of their genocide does not actually say anything about the validity of the methods the Nazis were described as using. At most, all it says is that the methods used by modern American or British governmental authorities following modern carcass disposal guidelines are different from the Nazi methods for cremating mass genocide victims, and there are a whole lot of reasons why that is so beyond merely "the Nazi methods are impossible".

Anything beyond that is simply invalid, because (despite your rejection of the notion in your post above), it is very much an apples to oranges comparison to use the documents about animal carcass disposals in 21st Century Britain due to FMD and BSE epidemics to try and show that the Nazi's mass cremation of their human victims' remains was an impossible event.

The reason why Sebastianus has to turn to animal carcass cremations in the US and the UK in the first place is because what the Nazis did was kind of unprecedented, meaning there isn't a whole lot of non-Holocaust-related documentation about the kind of mass human cremations the Nazis did is because not a whole lot of people besides the Nazis have even attempted such a thing.

A much more valid approach is the various experiments and studies cited by both Mattogno and Muhlenkamp, and their efforts to calculate what it would actually take in terms of fuel and time and method to cremate human corpses as the Nazis are described as doing. In other words, stop looking at what they didn't do (ie, use the methods described in the documents Sebastianus is referencing), and start looking at what they did do.

I notice that you do not say that what we know about Nazi body burning at the death camps is aligned with what we know about carcass disposal, Hindu cremations, crematorium operation, fire forensics, etc. You say that none of that knowledge is applicable because what the Nazis did was so unprecedented that any comparison is invalid.

You then say that a much more valid approach is the various experiments and studies cited by both Mattogno and Muhlenkamp, and their efforts to calculate what it would actually take in terms of fuel and time and method to cremate human corpses as the Nazis are described as doing. Neither Mattogno nor Muhlenkamp gathered a few hundred hundred thousand Jews, killed them, and then cremated their remains in a controlled experimental environment. So what exactly are they suppose to use to try and calculate what it would actually take to accomplish what the Nazis accomplished?

 

[CaptainHowdy]

I just saw this post.

How can I apply Sebastianus's "impossibility test" if the leading lights of holocaust denial, MGK, themselves don't have a clue where the Jews from Treblinka went?

How about you. Can you set out in detail the train route, how they were fed, which German units guarded them and the names of the cities or villages that they were resettled in? (Why did thy take 266,000 overcoats off the Jews at Treblinka?) No? Why not? What's your excuse...

Is it because it never happened?

How would knowing where the Jews went after the Holocaust help inform us about the ease of cremating human bodies? I'm serious here. Is there some 'seven degrees of separation' like map that you can draw for me to show me the link between the two because I'm just not seeing it at all.

 

[EtienneSC]

You haven't read their "tome" on Treblinka at all, have you? [.....]
I just saw this post.

How can I apply Sebastianus's "impossibility test" if the leading lights of holocaust denial, MGK, themselves don't have a clue where the Jews from Treblinka went?

How about you. Can you set out in detail the train route, how they were fed, which German units guarded them and the names of the cities or villages that they were resettled in? (Why did thy take 266,000 overcoats off the Jews at Treblinka?) No? Why not? What's your excuse...

Is it because it never happened?

It seems we are still at cross purposes. I have read Mattogno's Treblinka book to which the Holocaust Controversies people replied. I then suggested that we discuss MGK's reply to the Holocaust Controversies critique, which you replied to by citing Mattogno's original and partly superseded Treblinka book - which I mistook for an intended offhand dismissal of their reply and had to correct myself.

Mattogno's original argument was roughly to accept the approximate figure of deportees on the basis of the Korherr report supported by the Hoefle telegram, argue that the disposal of bodies was impossible and so infer that the contemporary German description of the camps as transit camps was correct.

In their latest piece, they refer to Hoefle's death shortly before he was due to give evidence at a trial in the 1960s. They also have over 150 pages on the supposed fate of the deportees (pp645-802) which you have not addressed. I find these pages very unsatisfactory, but they qualifies your "entirely unclear" quote from Mattogno. I link to the document below (last link).

As I have already stated, I find the conclusion that the deportees may have shared the fate of many Soviet POWs and died in the course of war work through malnutrition and disease not unlikely in the context of the rules of war in the East - as chosen by the Soviets and which also applied to German POWs. It is startling and tragic, but not out of line with general human behavior in wartime.

I will leave the "impossibility test" to Sebastianus, as it is his phrase. As for the confiscation of 266,000 overcoats from non-combatants in wartime, there is an obvious logical leap from that to the killing of the non-combatants.

I find that the situation is that if you believe in the received narrative on other grounds, you can fit something like the confiscation of overcoats into it as part of a "convergence of evidence", but if you've been given cause to doubt the received version, the evidence adduced doesn't add up to the conclusion.

 

[A'isha]

I notice that you do not say that what we know about Nazi body burning at the death camps is aligned with what we know about carcass disposal, Hindu cremations, crematorium operation, fire forensics, etc. You say that none of that knowledge is applicable because what the Nazis did was so unprecedented that any comparison is invalid.

No, I specifically said that it's invalid "to use the documents about animal carcass disposals in 21st Century Britain due to FMD and BSE epidemics to try and show that the Nazi's mass cremation of their human victims' remains was an impossible event". That doesn't mean that no conclusions can be drawn from those documents, but that their direct usefulness for the purpose of investigating the Nazis' crimes is severely constrained by the factors I've previously described, and Sebastianus' particular conclusions are unwarranted and unsupported by those documents.

And far from saying that none of that knowledge is applicable, I referred you to the sources and studies that Muhlenkamp cited, which do in fact include those things you mention.

Sebastianus complained that people were not paraphrasing his arguments correctly; please don't do that to me.

Neither Mattogno nor Muhlenkamp gathered a few hundred hundred thousand Jews, killed them, and then cremated their remains in a controlled experimental environment.

That's why other methods are required, and my point is that not all methods are equally valid or useful.

So what exactly are they suppose to use to try and calculate what it would actually take to accomplish what the Nazis accomplished?

I told you: the studies and experiments they actually cite. I didn't detail them because I don't want to run afoul of Rule 4, but I'd be happy to actually go through Muhlenkamp's footnotes and list them for you.

 

[Sebastianus]

Standartenfurher Floss' personnel file

Herbert Floss was not a Standartenführer (Colonel) but a Scharführer (Sargeant).

Should Herr Floss' pers file indicate that he was trained in cremation techniques, was employed as such by the SS, was posted to Treblinka and was evaluated in his role there, then we can presume with a more than reasonable degree of accuracy that that is what he did there.

Maybe so, but if Floss' personal file did contain any such material, I suspect holocaust historians would have jumped on it immediately. I have never seen a reference of this sort, which makes me suspect that there is no such information in Floss' personal file (assuming it is extant). If you are aware of any such reference, please provide it.

 

[Sebastianus]

To the various contentions put forth by ANTPogo, I can only say: that's not an argument, it's just contradiction.

Saying that my references are "debunked nonsense" is not an argument. Nor is it an argument to say that Muehlenkamp provides references that refute my claims. Which references? How do they refute my claims?

As for the particular issue we were discussing, ANTPogo has still not offered any empirical evidence that decomposed bodies burn more readily than fresh bodies. Nor has he offered any evidence that the bodies of the Jews at Treblinka of Belzec would have been easier to burn than bodies burned in all well documented cases of carcass incineration, including a wide range of animal incinerations, cremations in India, and the Alamo cremations

 

[Sebastianus]

You can't conclude that the extermination story for Treblinka or Belzec isn't possible because the way the eyewitnesses describe disposing of the bodies isn't possible. Turning that argument around, if the eyewitnesses described a cremation method that would work, would you say the extermination story is true? You have to have positive evidence and not just the absence of negative evidence to say something is true.

You can conclude--must conclude--that the bodies were not disposed of the way the eyewitnesses say they were because what they say happened is impossible. However, to say that because the way the eyewitnesses describe disposing of their bodies is impossible, they must've survived and continued on to other destinations is limiting. Those aren't the only two things that could've happened.

We can eliminate the impossible explanation--that their bodies were cremated as described by the eyewitnesses. But we can't simply accept the improbable explanation--that they continued on to other destinations. What it means is that we don't know what happened.

Well, I agree that the negation of "the Jews were killed and later cremated" is not "they continued on alive to other destinations." However, I would extend the argument as follows:

The body disposal problem was not solvable at Treblinka or Belzec via open air cremation, period, due to space limitations and limited access to the site (only a single road) to trucks for delivering fuel. To solve the body disposal problem onsite with crematory ovens would have required a gargantuan cremation facility with hundreds of muffles. How could such a construction project have gone unnoticed by all of the witnesses, generated no paperwork, and left no archaeological trace? To solve the body disposal via rendering would have required massive rendering plant capacity, and the construction of such enormous factories would have left a mark archaeologically (even it they could have fit on the site). To dispose of the bodies via composting would have required too much space. As for the idea that the bodies were buried and primarily left on site, this is also contradicted by the archaeological evidence.

In sum, the body disposal at Treblinka or Belzec could not have been solved on site at all. We can conclude from this that the people sent to Treblinka must have continued to other destinations. We cannot say from these considerations alone whether they continued alive or dead. But which is more plausible? That the witnesses told the truth about mass killing in gas chambers and then told outrageous lies about cremation while suppressing the truth about the shipping of the bodies off site, or that the witnesses' entire extermination narrative was dishonest? How much credibility does the extermination narrative have once it's conceded that the story told by all the witnesses is false?

 

[Sebastianus]

I am mystified by Matthew's figure of 266,000 overcoats allegedly confiscated at Treblinka. Where does this figure come from? Perhaps he means the 262,000 outfits (not overcoats) that were confiscated according to the document NO-1257. But this figure is not from Treblinka, but the cumulative total from Aktion Reinhardt and Auschwitz; moreover Aktion Reinhardt encompasses not just the three Reinhardt camps but also the property confiscated from the ghettos (e.g. that which was left behind by deported Jews). See the recent publication by MGK, chapter 8.1, point 83.

 

[Sebastianus]

New Information provided by Colls
"One is 26m long, 17m wide and at least four metres deep, with a ramp at the west end and a vertical edge to the east".

"Another five pits of varying sizes and also at least this deep are located nearby".

"As well as the pits, the survey has located features that appear to be structural, and two of these are likely to be the remains of the gas chambers"

So you didn't know she found a very large pit with a minimum capacity of 1,768 cubic metres? Wow, you must be quite surprised then!

You would be a more efective debater, Matthew, if you paid more attention to reading comprehension. I stated that her publications to date contain no information about her actual findings, and that the only details we had about her findings come from statements to the media. The passage which you quote comes from those statements to the media, exactly as I said (see Thomas Kues' discussion). Her publications, i.e. actual scholarly papers, however, have not to date contained any such details - again, exactly as I said.

Now, let's turn to those findings reported in the media. Let's leave aside the fact that you can't calculate the minimum volume of the pit in question by multiplying 26 * 17 * 4, because its surface is not rectangular and its depth not uniform. Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that its volume is 1,768 cubic meters, and that this represents the volume used for a burial pit (rather than, say, soil disturbed in the bombing of the site - although I remind you that according to Judge Łukaszkiewicz the largest pit at Treblinka was a bomb crater). How many bodies could fit in such a pit?

Well, let's turn to the expert literature on mass carcass burial. For large scale burial of sheep, the figure most commonly cited is 0.3 cubic meters of excavated material per sheep. For instance, the AUSVETPLAN states

The following guidelines may help in determining the pit volume required for straight-sided pits.
[...]
Volume required:
1.5 m^3 per cow
0.3 m^3 per pig or sheep

Now, at 0.3 cubic meters per Jew, the largest pit's alleged volume of 1,768 cubic meters could hold just under 5,900 Jews. So where were the other 750,000 Jews buried?

The value of 0.3 cubic meters per sheep was also used in planning for carcass piles in the UK:

Dr White calculated that an area 60 meters by 30 meters by five meters high could take up to 30,000 sheep

That's 0.3 cubic meters per sheep: 60 * 30 * 5 / 0.3 = 30,000.

With very large scale burials, is may be possible to achieve a somewhat higher efficiency, as the percentage of the volume taken up by the overburden decreases. But even the best results achieved at mass burial sites in the UK FMD epidemic are nowhere near those needed for the extermination story at Treblinka or Belzec.

 

[A'isha]

To the various contentions put forth by ANTPogo, I can only say: that's not an argument, it's just contradiction.

No, it's been direct responses to your claims showing them to be incorrect, such as your statement about the soil at Epynt or about Muhlenkamp not addressing the flammabiity of decomposition products.

Saying that my references are "debunked nonsense" is not an argument. Nor is it an argument to say that Muehlenkamp provides references that refute my claims. Which references? How do they refute my claims?

What you said:

Against this theoretical argument, one can oppose another one, which points out that during decomposition the energetic components of the body decay into less energetic components, the flammable components into less flammable components; one could argue that therefore decomposed corpses are more difficult to burn.

What Muhlenkamp said:

Mattogno claims that the favorable effect of decomposition on corpse burning due to the loss of water would have been set off by the loss of fat devoured by bugs during the butyric fermentation phase, the "thermal balance" between water as a factor of heat loss and fat as a factor of heat gain remaining the same if a certain amount of fat is lost. Where the loss of water is compensated by the loss of fat as concerns the "thermal balance", the same amount of wood would be required to burn a decomposing corpse weighing 17.5 kg as to burn a fresh corpse weighing 35 kg, if Mattogno’s theory is correct. Yet Mattogno provides no information about the expectable amount of fat loss during decomposition, merely calculating what would be required to put the "thermal balance" back to what it was before decomposition. The only basis for his conjectures about fat loss due to bugs seems to be Dr. Maccone’s mention that the type of insects feeding on the body during the butyric fermentation phase are well known to grocers and furriers, since they destroy lard and furs. However, it’s not like these insects munch away the body fat the way Mattogno apparently assumes. What actually happens is a hydrolysis in which the fat is broken down into substances no less flammable. According to an article in a Brazilian entomology journal[247], what this source calls the "adipocere-like stage" of the decomposition process (and obviously corresponds to what the Australian Museum and other above-mentioned sources call the butyric fermentation stage, "... is characterized by hydrolysis of the carcass fatty tissue. The carcass loses its shape completely and becomes a mass of non-decomposed hair, fat, skin, and cartilage. Decomposition occurs firstly in the subepitelial fat, which becomes a mass containing parts of the digestive tract". So it looks like by the end of this stage the carcass, while having lost most of its water (which in the human body is mostly contained in the blood and non-adipose tissue [248]), still retains a significant part of its fat. The designation "adipocere-like stage" is probably related to the fat's breaking down into glycerol and fatty acids [249] (namely the butyric acid [250] that leads to this stage also being characterized as butyric fermentation), which under favorable conditions may lead to the formation of adipocere [251]. Fat with a lower water content burns better than fat with a higher water content[252],and the products of fat hydrolysis - glycerol, butyric acid and eventual adipocere - are also flammable or combustible[253].

You are welcome to visit the link I provided before and examine the sources cited in Muhlenkamp's footnotes for yourself, such as number 253 there, which reads

[253] Robert Burke, Organic Acids; Flammable/Combustible Liquids 155; Wikipedia page Butyric Acid (as note 248). The flash point of butyric acid is 161º Fahrenheit or 72º Celsius, lower than the flash point of animal fats, which according to Mattogno's article about his burning experiments (note 196) is 184º Celsius. According to an online factsheet, butyric acid has a combustion heat of 10,620 BTU/lb or 5,900 cal/g (= 5,900 kCal/kg). Safety data for glycerol tell us that glycerol has a flash point of 160º Celsius. According to the article Diversified Energy Demonstrates Glycerol Combustion System, "The combustion of glycerol will produce 16 MJ of heat per kilogram of glycerol burned which could be provided back to the biodiesel process, another co-located system, or converted into other energy forms like electricity." 16 MJ/kg = 3,824 kcal/kg. As to adipocere: "It floats on water, and dissolves in hot alcohol and ether. When heated it melts and then burns with a yellow flame".

As for the particular issue we were discussing, ANTPogo has still not offered any empirical evidence that decomposed bodies burn more readily than fresh bodies. Nor has he offered any evidence that the bodies of the Jews at Treblinka of Belzec would have been easier to burn than bodies burned in all well documented cases of carcass incineration, including a wide range of animal incinerations, cremations in India, and the Alamo cremations

Because, as I have said, Muhlenkamp has already addressed this old claim of Mattogno's, so I refer interested readers to his work.

Well, let's turn to the expert literature on mass carcass burial. For large scale burial of sheep, the figure most commonly cited is 0.3 cubic meters of excavated material per sheep. For instance, the AUSVETPLAN states

"Guidelines" which "may help".

Now, at 0.3 cubic meters per Jew, the largest pit's alleged volume of 1,768 cubic meters could hold just under 5,900 Jews. So where were the other 750,000 Jews buried?

From whence does this calculation that each deceased Jew required the same space as a sheep or pig carcass derive?

And I see, from Carcass disposal: a comprehensive review that there's quite a large disparity in volumes required per carcass as listed in various sources.

For example, it says "Based on the information in Table A2, estimates of the required excavation volume to accommodate mature cattle carcasses include 1.2 yd³ (McDaniel, 1991; USDA, 2001a), 2 yd³ (Agriculture and Resource Management Council of Australia and New Zealand, 1996), 3 yd³ (Lund, Kruger, & Weldon), and 3.5 yd³ (Ollis, 2002)."

That gives a range of .9 m³ to 2.7 m³ required per cattle carcass, neatly illustrating the problem with relying on modern public agency guidelines about animal carcass disposal. And at the lower number there, .9 m³ per cattle carcass (since 1 cattle carcass is equivalent to 5 sheep carcasses according to "several sources") means that a pit of the dimensions being described could hold just a shade under ten thousand sheep carcasses, a 166% increase over your calculated number, and only 60% of the volume per carcass as the figures you cite.

That kind of variance is why you, quite simply, cannot use the modern public health guidelines as a basis with which to declare that what the Nazis did was impossible. And that's even before you start taking into account the fact that these numbers aren't the "absolutely crammed in and mashed and stamped down with no regard for leaching or pollution or environment or outgassings from decomposition or anything else" numbers that the Nazis would have been able to achieve, either, but the proper, regulated, proper-disposal-for-the-safety-and-health-of-the-populace numbers. And then you have to figure out how many dead-Holocaust-victim equivalents there are per each cattle or sheep carcass.

But even the best results achieved at mass burial sites in the UK FMD epidemic are nowhere near those needed for the extermination story at Treblinka or Belzec.

That's because the public health authorities were trying to bury carcasses in a way that would limit their impact to the environment and to the populace, concerns which were not exactly at the forefront of the Nazis' minds when they buried their death camp victims.

 

[A'isha]

Actually, a closer look at Carcass disposal: a comprehensive review (I think I got the title wrong in my previous post; my apologies!) reveals just how misleading it is to reference the guidelines it describes in the context of the Nazi mass burials.

I've mentioned before how the guidelines in these documents recommend things that the Nazis quite simply did not have to bother with. For example, the burial pits and trenches described in Carcass disposal are actually dug deeper than is required for the carcass volume, because the pits and trenches are supposed to have a layer of cover from backfill sufficient to prevent the problems associated with masses of bodies buried too shallowly. The per-carcass volumes take that additional soil volume into account, and are not the actual full carcass capacities of the pits and trenches. That's why Sebastianus' documents talk about excavated volume per carcass, because more soil is being dug up than is required merely to provided room for carcasses, but also to dig up the recommended amount of backfill and cover soil. This also explains why there is such variance in the excavated volumes that I mentioned in my earlier post: different sourced and studies recommend different amounts of cover and backfill, which changes the recommended excavated volume per carcass.

In one of the studies cited in the appendix, for instance, the volume of the overall burial pit was calculated based on a pit depth of 3.5 meters, with carcasses filling 1.5 meters and backfill filling the remaining 2 meters, for an overall volume required of .3 m³ per sheep carcass. Within that 1.5 meter depth of carcasses, though, one cubic meter of pit space is described as holding 8 to 10 sheep carcasses.

What that means is if the Nazis didn't worry about such niceties as recommended backfill depth, and instead crammed the pit to the ground-level brim with corpses and mounded the excavated dirt on top of the pile before tamping it down, the 1768 m³ pit at Treblinka could have held not 5,900 sheep carcasses, or 9,800, but almost eighteen thousand.

In addition, the recommended burial guidelines are for pits with carcasses that are not packed together as closely as they could be. One of the cited studies is noted as specifically warning: "Do not pack the trench – decomposition and gas formation will crack a tightly packed trench causing it to bubble and leak fluids," something that is described quite often in as happening with Nazi mass graves.

 

[Matthew Ellard]

How would knowing where the Jews went after the Holocaust help inform us about the ease of cremating human bodies? I'm serious here. Is there some 'seven degrees of separation' like map that you can draw for me to show me the link between the two because I'm just not seeing it at all.

Try this logic.

Sebastianus says "If something is impossible then it didn't happen"
Sebastianus then asserts that cremation of 800,000 bodies at Treblinka is impossible based on the eyewitness accounts description of method, although these eyewitnesses did not offer technical explanations.

However Sebatianus asserts the same victims were resettled in Russia but refuses to offer any details because we will apply his own logic to his assertion. Holocaust deniers can't state where the jews went. That's why I quoted the holocaust deniers, MGK, saying they didn't have a clue.

I can supply twenty eye witnesses, both German and Jewish victims who confirm that the cremations took place. I can see the 1946 forensic evidence that the 20,000 square meters of ash at Treblinka was human ash. I even have the photos. The 800,000 Jews never left Treblinka. Sebastianus must offer his alternative theory in detail of how the Jews left Treblinka, how they went to Russia, how they were fed on the train, etc to allow us to apply his "impossibility" theory to his assertion. Sebastianus won't do this because he can't and he know that there is not a scrap of evidence that any Treblinka Jew resettled in Russia. (He also hasn't bothered to explain where the 20,000 square metres of human ash at Treblinka came from anyway. I thought you understood this gap)

 

[Matthew Ellard]

It seems we are still at cross purposes. I have read Mattogno's Treblinka book to which the Holocaust Controversies people replied.

So did I. I read their specific paper on Treblinka too. That's why I knew that MGK's conclusion was they didn't have a clue where the Jews ended up and quoted it for everyone here.

I then suggested that we discuss MGK's reply to the Holocaust Controversies critique, which you replied to by citing Mattogno's original and partly superseded Treblinka book

Where does MGK say that their book on Treblinka has been partially superseded? Can you link me to where they say that?

I find the conclusion that the deportees may have shared the fate of many Soviet POWs and died in the course of war work through malnutrition and disease not unlikely in the context of the rules of war in the East

So the children sent to Treblinka died due to "war work". Was that after the 266,000 overcoats were taken off them at Treblinka? What war work were these children doing at Treblinka? What food was sent to feed these 800,000 "workers" at Treblinka? Oddly, Franciszek Zabecki, the Treblinka station master didn't notice or record food trains coming in each week nor trainloads of Jews leaving Treblinka. Why is that? How many trains have you identified leaving Treblinka with Jewish workers, to support your "theory"?

I will leave the "impossibility test" to Sebastianus, as it is his phrase. As for the confiscation of 266,000 overcoats from non-combatants in wartime, there is an obvious logical leap from that to the killing of the non-combatants.

And the gold teeth sent from Treblinka to the SS in Warsaw? Dead people don't need overcoats or teeth. (or underpants or shoes or children's aprons or any of the other "profit items" the SS detailed in existing documents as taken from the Jews at Treblinka. Would you like to see the document?

 

[Matthew Ellard]

I am mystified by Matthew's figure of 266,000 overcoats allegedly confiscated at Treblinka.

I accept that I should have stated Aktion Reinhard and occupied areas. I now increase the tally accordingly and link to the document in full concerning the 825 train cars of clothing taken from Jews.


To : The personal staff of the Reichfuhrer SS

"The enclosed statement gives an account of the quantity of old garments from the Jewish resettlement.....

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