General Holocaust Denial Discussion Part II

[Loss Leader]

You have not answered my question. I did not ask if the HOLOCAUST is established beyond any reasonable doubt. I was very specifically asking if the details discussed here about TREBLINKA/SOBIBOR/BELZEC are established beyond any reasonable doubt. My opinion is that the discussion alone is proof that there is a lot of reasonable doubt.

Yes. Not all doubt is reasonable. This discussion has raised unreasonable doubt.

What would happen, if the MAFIA in NEW YORK would kill a member of the local Jewish community and dig him in their back yard. Would Jewish Halacha law prohibit law enforcement from excavating the victim and if so, would a member of the MAFIA be brought to court with the murder weapon and the victim missing, based solely on eyewitness testimony of his relatives, even if that testimony contains inconsistencies and details, some people regard to be impossible by applying laws of nature? And if so, would you as a member of the jury convict the accused?

Yes. Keep making the hypotheticals more and more attenuated, though, and eventually I might vote to acquit.

In your hypo above, you state that the victim is missing. There were plenty of human remains - cremated and uncremated - recovered at Treblinka. Your hypothetical also states that the sole eyewitness testimony is that of the victim's relatives. It should be the victim's relatives, other members of the mafia, people near the victim who were not related to him, and the actual defendant himself.

 

[Sebastianus]

ANTPogo gives the following list of sources on cremation, which he suggests show that holocaust cremation claims are indeed possible:

Wilhelm Heepke (who in turn references Lothes and Profé), Richard Kessler, and reference to Hindu funeral pyres, as well as Bruce V. Ettling's "Consumption of an Animal Carcass in a Fire", R.D. Lund, I. Kruger and P. Weldon's "Options for the Mechanised Slaughter and Disposal of Contagious Diseased Animals – A Discussion Paper", and a number of tables referencing everything from wood heating values at a woodburning company's site to the burning of carcasses at the IAEA's website.

Of course, he is unable to explain how they show this. My comments on each of these sources are below.

Lothes and Prufe (also referenced by Heepke):

These authors make some interesting and impressive claims about certain experiments in incinerating single large animals (horses or cows). However, their claimed results have no applicability to the problem at hand, for the following reasons:

- only a single animal was incinerated at a time, so this does not apply directly to mass cremation. Not long ago various posters here were keen to criticise me when I cited studies on the cremation of a single animal.

- the procedure of these authors required that the animals' internal organs be removed before the cremation - not something that would be possible at Treblinka for 6000 corpses per day, nor something any witnesses testify to.

- Heepke notes that the procedure required continual expert management as to the positioning; this kind of fine tuning is not possible in a mass cremation.

- These experiments have never been replicated (in over a century), which casts some doubt on just how practical the procedure described is.

- The animals burned were much larger than humans, and had abundant fat, while the Jews deported to Belzec or Treblinka are supposed to have been starved.

- Modern animal incineration guidelines, even when describing a setup identical to that used by these authors, state that much higher quantities of fuel are required, e.g. here (in the section "Disposal").


Richard Kessler: This is actually a source concerning cremation ovens, not open air cremations. Muehlenkamp has never read it, and it doesn't support his arguments. You can see it discussed in an article by Mattogno.


Hindu Funeral pyres: Muehlenkamp offers no arguments on this subject, and as I have already showed the actual data on Hindu funeral pyres supports my position. Probably you are referring to what Muehlenkamp says about the Mokshda Green Cremation System. He gets things wrong as usual - see the recent book by MGK, chapter 12, points 37 and 38.

Ettling: this is just a silly attempt to suggest that mass body disposal can be modeled on the phenomenon of "spontaneous human combustion", and would not be taken seriously by anyone working in body disposal. The author got excited when he read J.F. Steiner's novel Trebinka, and Muehlenkamp tries to make a big deal out of this.

Lund/Kruger/Weldon: this is a secondary source which references (and misunderstands) the 1994 study of Ford concerning air curtain incineration. The question of the efficiency of air curtain incineration is entirely tangential, as no-one has ever claimed that there were air-curtain incinerators at the Reinhardt camps, and as air curtain incinerators are much more fuel efficient than open air incineration (I can readily provide sources if pressed on this point).

The 1994 study in question stated the following:

A total of 504 head of swine carcasses, weighing 91,060 pounds [41,300 kg] was incinerated during the 3 days. of operation. The average actual incineration day was approximately 7 hours using 11 cords [40 m^3 ] of cut and split dry oak/gum firewood per 7 hour period.

The author also noted that body fat levels were extremely important; this shows that the Jews sent to the Reinhardt camps would have been unusually difficult to cremate:

A very important factor observed during the incineration process was that carcass body fat added significantly to the incineration rate. It was observed that the small carcasses weighing less than 100 pounds [45 kg] were not incinerated as quickly as the carcasses with increased body fat. The body fat appeared to increase the incineration rate and provide higher burn temperatures.

The study also has some interesting content about the possibility of burning bodies in layers. Recall that at Treblinka the stack of bodies was supposedly this high, while I have contended that such a setup simply will not work. My statements about the impossibility of burning many layers of bodies at once on an open air pyre showed that the Treblinka or Belzec cremation problem could not have been solved in the space available. The study shows that even with the help of a air curtain incinerator, burning multiple layers at once just doesn't work very well, and does not improve performance:

An attempt was made during the test to load the trench/pit with two stacked layers of swine carcasses. When this test was tried the smoke and ash emissions increased rather dramatically. The observed problem was that the carcasses were too tightly packed in the center and too close to the trench/pit walls to allow the air curtain to operate effectively. The trench/pit overload prevented the air curtain from penetrating down through the fire thus decreasing combustion and incineration.

In short, this source offers still more support for my arguments.

Tables on the IAEA website: amusingly enough, this concerns one of those carcass incineration guidelines that ANTPogo was previously so keen to dismiss. The source in question states that

To destroy 250 carcasses the following are required:
-- 250 railway sleepers
-- 250 bales of straw
-- 6,250 kg of kindling wood
-- 50,750 kg of coal
-- 1 gallon of diesel oil per metre length of pyre

Muehlekamp first simply assumes that these carcasses are cattle and weigh 500 kg on average, even though the guidelines never say this. He then attempts to convert these quantities of fuel into quantities of wood. As usual he makes a mess of things. Just to highlight the most idiotic of his blunders, he calculates the energy value of railroad ties on the basis of assuming that a cord contains ~3.625 cubic meters of solid wood, when in reality it contains ~3.625 cubic meters of stacked wood. To be precise, a cord is 128 cubic feet of tightly stacked wood, but the actual content of solid wood is typically ~80 cubic feet, because even tightly stacked wood does not fill space solidly, but contains gaps. Muehlenkamp's error is somewhat similar to ANTPogo's blunder in assuming that human bodies are a liquid that can simply be poured into mass graves without leaving any empty space.

On the basis of his (seriously problematic) calculations, Muehlenkamp states that these guidelines show that one can burn cattle with fuel consisting of 1.9 times their mass in dry wood. (I won't go into how his google-derived sources for things like the energy content of coal and straw are seriously questionable and undermine his whole approach.) But he later decides to use the value of 0.56 times the mass, so it's not clear how these guidelines can be used to support his position. Moreover, he simply assumes that the ratio of wood to carcass mass for cattle can be transferred to humans. But the literature (e.g. AUSVETPLAN, or the UN FAO guidelines) clearly state that cattle need less fuel relative to their body masses than do smaller species like pigs or sheep. Again, these guidelines offer yet another source that supports my position on holocaust cremation claims.

So much for ANTPogo's list of sources.

 

[Sebastianus]

I agree with you, however, that discarding the traditional narrative for those camps doesn't necessarily mean that the transit camp theory is the right one. I don't know how strong the transit camp theory is. There have been some links provided here to support that theory but I haven't had time to follow them yet. But even those who endorse the transit camp theory say that the evidence isn't overwhelmingly persuasive.

There are a few different lines of argument. One is the simple "tertium non datur": large numbers of Jews were sent to Treblinka; they could not have all been housed there; they could not have all been killed, buried, and cremated there; consequently they must have left the camp and gone somewhere else, i.e. Treblinka must have served as a transit camp of some sort.

The second is the various sources that have been referenced which suggest that groups of Jews that are supposed to have been gassed were later seen at locations further east. These sources (those that we know of so far, at least) are more limited than one would like, but they are there.

The third, which hasn't been mentioned here yet, is that Himmler called Sobibor a transit camp. There are three letters concerning this:

In the first, Himmler orders transit camp Sobibor converted into a concentration camp so that a depot for the handling of captured ammunition can be set up there.

Oswald Pohl, after consulting Globocnik (both of these men had authority over Sobibor) responded and suggested that there is no need to convert transit camp Sobibor into a concentration camp, because it will be possible to set up a depot for the handling of captured ammunition without making such a conversion. Himmler replied and approved this plan. The links above show these documents in the English translation from Nuremberg; however the translation wrongly renders the German Durchgangslager as "transient camp", when it should be "transit camp".

The revisionist view, or course, is that Himmler and Pohl called Sobibor a transit camp because it was a transit camp of some sort.

One orthodox view is that Himmler's use of "transit camp" is an example of "coded language" along the lines of "transit camp to six feet under, ha ha." Another view, sometimes advanced by Raul Hilberg, is that the German leadership invented "coded" terms like "transit camp" to describe extermination in order to protect themselves from thinking about their actions; on this view Himmler called Sobibor a transit camp because he didn't like to think about exterminating the Jews, even though he supposedly played a central role in ordering and implementing their extermination. Finally, I have seen suggestions that Himmler called Sobibor a transit camp because he just didn't know what it was, which seems pretty far fetched give that he is supposed to have played a central role in planning the extermination of the Jews. On this view the reason that Pohl also describes Sobibor as a transit camp is that he was keeping the fact that Sobibor was an extermination camp secret from Himmler.

 

[Sebastianus]

No let's not set that aside. Let's use the standard volume of a human being which is 0.07 square meters.

But as I've already explained, the amount of excavated volume necessary for a grave is not equal to the volume of the bodies to be placed in it.

Try this simple word problem: a bowling ball has volume 0.005 cubic meters. How large of a hole do you need to dig to bury 200 bowling balls? Hint: the answer is certainly not 200 * 0.005 = 1 cubic meter.

You over estimated the volume of a human body by almost 500%. Just admit you were wrong.

Reading comprehension if fundamental, Matthew. The figure I gave was not for the volume of the human body, but the volume of excavation necessary per body buried. Drought affected recently shorn sheep don't have a body volume of 0.3 cubic meters either, but burying them required 0.3 cubic meters of excavated volume per sheep.

You edited out the part of his quote where Łukaszkiewicz clearly states his team excavated further to 7.5 metres.

I specifically mentioned this exact fact. Do you even read my posts before replying?

Are you pretending a bomb "introduced mixed human ash and sand" into the walls of the pit at 7.5 metres on its own although its crater was only 6 meters deep??

I am pretending nothing. What I am doing is explaining how the formation of bomb craters works, based on the work of Joe Hupy, a professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire. This image of his shows how things work. A bomb crater always has a layer of disturbed soil in its bottom. Roughly speaking, this comes about as follows: the bomb throws a lot of material in the air. Some of it comes down outside the crater, some of it comes down in the crater. The latter portion then forms the layer of disturbed soil in the bottom of the crater.

Now, the fact that Treblinka was bombed, and that the bombing created large craters, shows that the volume of the pits that can now be detected there exceeds the volume of the pits that were dug by the Germans (for whatever purpose).

Matthew goes on to state that

26,000 is based on a 4 metre depth minimum. Colls said "minimum" based on GPR. Łukaszkiewicz found human ash at 7.5 metes when he excavated.

Concerning the number 26,000, he still hasn't figured out that you can't treat the volume of solid objects as though they were a liquid. Concerning the depth, yes, Colls said that they were at least this depth; on the other hand, she also said that they had a ramp, i.e. non-vertical walls. The sloping of the walls of any realistic deep pit in sandy soil will significantly decrease its volume.

Concerning Judge Łukaszkiewicz, as I have already explained he was investigating a bomb crater, the disturbed soil in which does not tell us what the depth of anything was before the bombing.

Since we're speaking of Judge Łukaszkiewicz and the bombing, it's worth mentioning that another bomb crater which he investigated (which would presumably also be one of Sturdy Colls' pits) had no human remains. He wrote on November 9, 1945

The excavations began at the location described by the witness Rajzman on November 6, where the so-called ‘camp hospital’ had stood and where, according to the witness, a mass grave is supposed to exist. Since a bomb crater 4 to 5 meters deep is present at the said location – two bombs still lie at a slight distance from this crater – the digging was begun in this crater. In the course of this work numerous Polish, as well as Russian, German, Austrian, and Czech coins and broken pieces of various kinds of containers were discovered. At the end of the work, at approximately 3 pm, at a depth of 6 meters, we encountered a layer which had not been reached previously. No human remains were found.

The next day he wrote

The work was continued, with 36 workers who had been commandeered for roadwork. At a depth of 6 meters begins a layer which has never before been uncovered by anyone. It consists partly of all sorts of kitchen utensils and different kinds of household objects; there are also pieces of clothing. At a depth of 7 meters, we reached the bottom of the pit – a layer of yellow sand which is not mixed with gravel.

This pit offers another illustration of why the burial space is inadequate, because it would be included among Sturdy Colls' pits, but obviously had nothing to do with burials.

Note also that Judge Łukaszkiewicz says that the bomb crater had a depth of 4-5 meters, but that "at a depth of 6 meters begins a layer which has never before been uncovered by anyone", i.e. people before him had been digging up the bottom of the bomb crater. This shows yet again why you can't take the statement that in late 1945 human remains were found at a given depth to indicate that the Germans dug a grave of that depth.

You keep ignoring that children were also buried.

Already addressed in another post. Next time read my posts before criticizing them.

You keep ignoring that not all victims were buried and some were cremated after gassing without being buried. You even agreed with me and offered a lower figure of 715,000.

This remark shows a truly spectacular incompetence. The number was 713,000, and that was through December 1942. But the burials are supposed to have continued through February or March 1943. Consequently the number buried would be (assuming the truth of the orthodox Treblinka story) higher. Following the same methodology of the holocaust controversies bloggers (pro-rating the Arad transport lists according to the Hoefle telegram) yields a number of roughly 760,000 buried. If you don't like it, take it up with the holocaust controversies people, not me.

You keep ignoring all the other pits volume and that other pits have yet to be located.

Go back and read what I actually wrote, Matthew. As I stated, the total surface area of the pits is roughly 5 times the surface area of the largest (26x17 meter) pit. If you disagree with this figure, provide your own using Colls' maps.

Concerning whether other pits have yet to be located, as I stated above we will see; if much larger pits are not located than the official Treblinka story is dead.

That's why Colls is going back to Treblinka in 2014 to finish the survey.

Source?

 

[Sebastianus]

The Nazis were the only people in history to try to systematically exterminate millions.

This is a very funny statement, given that not long ago on this thread Nick Terry was keen to dismiss the holocaust uniqueness thesis as a strawman that no scholar today believes.

 

[Sebastianus]

As elements of this discussion is maths based I thought I'd determine what percentage of Treblinka's land would need to be burial pits.

* Treblinka II Camp = 17 Hectares or 170,000 square metres.
* An adult body (ignoring children) has a volume of 0.07 cubic metres
* Assume that 700,000 adults (ignoring children) were buried prior to Dec42
* Assume that pits are 7 metres deep

1) 700,000(people) x 0.07(cubic metres) = 49,000 cubic metres.
2) 49,000 cubic metres divided by 7 metres depth = 7,000 square metres.
3) 7,000 square metres is only 4.11% of 170,000 square metres.

Many things are wrong about this. First and most important is that the question is not whether the bodies could be buried on the site on a strictly theoretical basis, but whether or not the archaeological evidence rules out the possibility that they were. You can't just ignore the actual archaeological data when examining this problem.

Second, necessary excavated volume for mass graves is not equal to the volume of the bodies to be buried, but much greater than this. Bodies are not liquid.

Third, relevant figures go through February/March 1943, not through December 1942.

Fourth, the figure of 17 hectares is irrelevant, as the gassed Jews are said to have been buried within the fenced-in "upper camp", which had an area of 4 hectares even according to recent models, while some earlier maps gave it a smaller area.

Fifth, operating 7 meter deep burial pits with vertical walls in sandy soil is a practical impossibility.

One additional point: even with the volume of 0.07 cubic meters per body which Matthew uses, the alleged Belzec burials would have been impossible (they require over 20 bodies per cubic meter, even before we take into account the diggings at the camp by locals, the fact that the archaeologist Kola clearly overstated pit volume in some cases, and more - see the recent MGK work, chapter 11). An archaeological work at Belzec is complete.

Ms Colls is working on finding the rest of the pits.
Caroline Colls / "I really hope this is the first stage in a long-term programme to seek out those hidden graves of the Holocaust"

She's talking about investigations at other locations.

 

[MaxMurx]

Not all doubt is reasonable. This discussion has raised unreasonable doubt.

"Not all doubt is reasonable" translates into: "Some doubt is reasonable". That means: "Some evidence is unreasonable". To my understanding that is a problem in court. In a court ALL EVIDENCE must be reasonable, guilt has to be established beyond ALL reasonable doubt.

 

[MaxMurx]

For better understanding: I do not want anyone to "acquit" the Nazis. I want to know why we silently accept religious laws to prevent us from collecting evidence while in other places we don't and why we throw away our own principles of justice in the most severe murder case in the history of mankind.

 

[A'isha]

It's not clear what it means that this is "cherrypicked". Perhaps ANTPogo is insinuating that I have not seen the relevant passage in the actual book. If this is what he is claiming, he is wrong.

I mean you

Here are some more relevant quotations on decomposition supporting it, and refuting Muehlenkamp's understanding of decomposition (none of this, of course, should be taken as attacking the statement that carcasses lose fluid through leachate as they decompose. Of course they do. But this fact alone does not suffice to support the position of Muehlenkamp and ANTPogo):

Um, actually, it does, since Muhlenkamp's position is that the fluid loss of the corpses buried at Treblinka outbalances the loss of flammable materials in those corpses during decay.

Forensic anthropology by Peggy Thomas states that

I'm not sure why you think that's relevant, since Muhlenkamp did not assert that the corpses at Treblinka were completely skeletonized.

The Wiley encyclopedia of forensic science states that

Again, that talks about the length of time required for final skeletonization.

Carcass Disposal: a comprehensive review states that

Again, skeletonization. And it notes, exactly like I did, that actual decomposition rates are affected by a lot more factors than just burial depth.

and that

Same thing as above: it's talking about the time until skeletonization, and clearly notes the numerous factors besides burial depth that affect the decomposition rate.

Next, ANTPogo turns to the question of decomposition byproducts, but as he nowhere addresses what I have actually argued, there's no point in my replying.

Of course.

I am still waiting for ANTPogo to explain in detail what evidence he has that the bodies at Treblinka and Belzec would have been rendered much more flammable by decomposition. The closest he comes to offering an argument is this:

Yes, showing that just as Muhlenkamp has argued, the corpses at Treblinka were mostly buried long enough to have extensive, if not total, fluid loss, meaning that fuel during the cremations of those corpses need not have wasted heat energy boiling those fluids away, as it would with fresh corpses.

This data is of course imperfect, but it does suffice to highlight the fact that most of the available leachate is lost early in the process of decomposition. ANTPogo claims that the loss of fluid from leachate dramatically increased the combustibility of the carcasses at Treblinka or Belzec, but that this did not happen at Epynt or in the aftermath of hurricane Floyd because they did not proceed to the same stage of decomposition.

Exactly. The carcasses in North Carolina were burned within a week or so of death (in addition to the waterlogging), and the carcasses at Epynt were not buried as long as most of the corpses at Treblinka (in addition to the other factors involved there), meaning that they were not at the same stage of decomposition as the corpses at Treblinka and hasn't lost as much fluid as the corpses at Treblinka, so therefore they would not have burned the same as the corpses at Treblinka.

This is why I formulated my arguments as I did: if Sturdy Colls does not find more pits, with a much greater volume, then the Treblinka burial story has been conclusively refuted by the archaeological evidence.

Hardly.

Note also that at Belzec, where the archaeological work is complete, the same considerations of burial space also serve to refute the orthodox account of the camp's history. See chapter 11 of the recent MGK publication, as well at Mattogno's book on Belzec.

The latter of which is long since debunked, and the former of which is clownshoes nonsense that does nothing to refute that debunking.

Concerning the discussion of the UK FMD mass burial sites, I will simply observe that ANTPogo's arguments do nothing to refute the actual thrust of the argument in that series of blog posts. There's little point in responding to ANTPogo's long string of one-liners that never fit together into an argument addressing the central issues at hand.

Does this mean you have no explanation for their colossal variance in their "Treblinka had to be this big in order to contain all the bodies buried there" calculations, or why their dramatically-decreasing minimums for the ostensibly-required burial area don't show up their assertions to be the conclusion-first, evidence-later nonsense that they actually are?

As an example of the inanity of ANTPogo's arguments, consider the following:



But the source in question did not "admit that they may have overstated the burial volume by a factor of three" but merely suggested that the data from a certain source was rather uncertain, and stated that even if it overstated the burial volume by a factor of three, it would still be consistent with revisionist assertions about mass burial.

The authors of that blog can't even keep their own numerous revisionist assertions about mass burial consistent with each other.

Moreover, the figure of 0.65 which ANTPogo obtains by dividing a certain area by 3 is concerned with measurements derived from an entirely different source - in fact, from official maps of the site.

They argue that a total pit volume of 202,500 m³ required 1.4 hectares of surface area, with a carcass density of 2.44 sheep-equivalent carcasses per cubic meter. However, they admit that their pit volume calculations may be off by a factor of three, meaning that the carcass density could in actuality be a lot higher than that, at least 7.33 sheep-equivalent carcasses per cubic meter, because the total pit volume was smaller than they assumed it was.

Unfortunately for them, their calculated required surface area does not change even though the pit volume underneath that surface area could be different by a favor of three. Meaning that their extrapolations of required surface area for a given number of carcasses are unreliable at best and meaningless at worst, since that surface area could contain beneath it up to three times as many bodies as the per-carcass density they're basing their calculations on.

In other words, when they observe that the pits at Birkshaw take up 1.4 hectares of surface area, they have no idea whether that covers 202,500 m³ of burial space with 2.44 carcasses per cubic meter, or 67,530 m³ of burial space with 7.33 carcasses per cubic meter. According to them, both the larger pit size and the higher density are entirely plausible for mass burial pits with a surface area of 1.4 hectares...so what happens when you calculate the capacity of the Birkshaw pits using both the larger possible pit size accepted by the denier blog and the the higher possible density accepted by the denier blog?

Suddenly, using just the deniers' own plausible numbers for pit size and density, 1.4 hectares of surface area could have 1,484,325 bodies beneath it. And, using the same scaling they use, that translates to 720,000 bodies at Treblinka needing just .69 hectares of surface area, not the 1.96 hectares the denier blog claims the camp would have to have (and awfully close to my earlier .65 hectare number).

Edited by zooterkin: 

<SNIP> for Rule 12

Of course.

 

[Nessie]

You have not answered my question. I did not ask if the HOLOCAUST is established beyond any reasonable doubt. I was very specifically asking if the details discussed here about TREBLINKA/SOBIBOR/BELZEC are established beyond any reasonable doubt.

I answered that question, I said yes and then added to it.

My opinion is that the discussion alone is proof that there is a lot of reasonable doubt.

There is doubt by some people who have a clear agenda and their doubt is not that reasonable.

The problem is that Jewish religious law prevents us from removing that reasonable doubt simply by collecting the necessary evidence.
Nothing against religious laws. What would happen, if the MAFIA in NEW YORK would kill a member of the local Jewish community and dig him in their back yard. Would Jewish Halacha law prohibit law enforcement from excavating the victim and if so, would a member of the MAFIA be brought to court with the murder weapon and the victim missing, based solely on eyewitness testimony of his relatives, even if that testimony contains inconsistencies and details, some people regard to be impossible by applying laws of nature? And if so, would you as a member of the jury convict the accused?

Scotland has had murder convictions without recovery of the body or recovery of only a small part of a body that cannot be definitely identified as a particular person. So if there was evidence beyond reasonable doubt but no body, or unidentified remains I would convict.

 

[Nessie]

If the argument were correct, of course. Take an example: consider this argument that a human cannot jump across the English channel.

1. The English channel is over a mile wide.
2. Humans are under ten feet tall.
3. No human can jump a distance of more than ten times his height.
4. Ten times ten feet is much less than a mile.
5. Therefore it is not possible for a human to jump over the English channel.

I think this argument is correct, even though it contains a lot of assumptions. If I wanted to contest this argument, then I would contest one of the assumptions. You should do the same.

Your example contains no assumptions or estimations, only known proven facts.

Look at the aerial photos yourself, from the link I gave you. There may have been thinning, sure, but not on anything like the scale that would have been necessary to fuel the alleged cremations.

What about the areas just outside of the photos? You are making the assumption the photos cover the exact area where wood was collected and felled.

 

[Loss Leader]

"Not all doubt is reasonable" translates into: "Some doubt is reasonable". That means: "Some evidence is unreasonable". To my understanding that is a problem in court. In a court ALL EVIDENCE must be reasonable, guilt has to be established beyond ALL reasonable doubt.

I'm sorry, but this post is nonsense. I'm an actual practicing lawyer and your post makes no sense.

 

[A'isha]

I made two errors in my earlier post. In one, I mis-copied one of my hectare numbers: the .69 hectares should be .68 hectares.

In the other, I forgot to finish part of the post, leaving a sentence fragment. The full response to that part is below.

It's not clear what it means that this is "cherrypicked". Perhaps ANTPogo is insinuating that I have not seen the relevant passage in the actual book.

I mean you have yanked out one single quote from a much larger article which dealt with the variables and factors affecting decomposition, of which burial depth (as even your own additional quotes clearly state) is only one among a great many.

The research library at the university in town happens to have a copy of the book in question.

ANTPogo gives the following list of sources on cremation, which he suggests show that holocaust cremation claims are indeed possible:

I said that they were sources which Muhlenkamp used to address Mattogno's false claims that the the Holocaust cremations were impossible.

Lothes and Prufe (also referenced by Heepke):

These authors make some interesting and impressive claims about certain experiments in incinerating single large animals (horses or cows). However, their claimed results have no applicability to the problem at hand, for the following reasons:

Then I'm curious as to why you think Mattogno also relied on them.

Modern animal incineration guidelines, even when describing a setup identical to that used by these authors, state that much higher quantities of fuel are required, e.g. here (in the section "Disposal").

You mean where it talks about "general recommendations" and "approximate quantities", and not bare minimum amounts?

Richard Kessler: This is actually a source concerning cremation ovens, not open air cremations. Muehlenkamp has never read it, and it doesn't support his arguments. You can see it discussed in an article by Mattogno.

It supports the specific point he was using it to make (regarding cremation energy and body fluids).

Hindu Funeral pyres: Muehlenkamp offers no arguments on this subject, and as I have already showed the actual data on Hindu funeral pyres supports my position. Probably you are referring to what Muehlenkamp says about the Mokshda Green Cremation System. He gets things wrong as usual - see the recent book by MGK, chapter 12, points 37 and 38.

Can you provide a summary?

Ettling: this is just a silly attempt to suggest that mass body disposal can be modeled on the phenomenon of "spontaneous human combustion", and would not be taken seriously by anyone working in body disposal. The author got excited when he read J.F. Steiner's novel Trebinka, and Muehlenkamp tries to make a big deal out of this.

How does that actually address the source in any way, particularly the parts of it which Muhlencamp quoted?

Lund/Kruger/Weldon: this is a secondary source which references (and misunderstands) the 1994 study of Ford concerning air curtain incineration. The question of the efficiency of air curtain incineration is entirely tangential, as no-one has ever claimed that there were air-curtain incinerators at the Reinhardt camps, and as air curtain incinerators are much more fuel efficient than open air incineration (I can readily provide sources if pressed on this point).

And Muhlenkamp mentioned that, but also cited sources indicating otherwise.

The 1994 study in question stated the following:

...which is exactly what the Lund/Kruger/Weldon paper quoted by Muhlenkamp said, so I'm not sure what your point is or what you claim they misunderstood.

The author also noted that body fat levels were extremely important;

...which, again, was also exactly what the Lund/Kruger/Weldon paper quoted by Muhlenkamp said.

this shows that the Jews sent to the Reinhardt camps would have been unusually difficult to cremate:

Setting aside the fact that Muhlenkamp addresses the body fat issue elsewhere, how do you conclude from the report's mention that carcasses with more body fat had shorter burn time that the Jews sent to the Reinhardt camps would have been "unusually difficult to cremate"?

The study also has some interesting content about the possibility of burning bodies in layers. Recall that at Treblinka the stack of bodies was supposedly this high, while I have contended that such a setup simply will not work. My statements about the impossibility of burning many layers of bodies at once on an open air pyre showed that the Treblinka or Belzec cremation problem could not have been solved in the space available. The study shows that even with the help of a air curtain incinerator, burning multiple layers at once just doesn't work very well, and does not improve performance:

No, it describes the layout as used in that cremation with an air curtain incinerator ran into problems with the air curtain. Open-air pyre burning with multiple layers can indeed take place, such as at Dresden.

Tables on the IAEA website: amusingly enough, this concerns one of those carcass incineration guidelines that ANTPogo was previously so keen to dismiss.

I dismissed them as completely definitive for determining the absolute values of fuel required by the Nazis, which is how you used them. Muhlenkamp does not use them that way.

Muehlekamp first simply assumes that these carcasses are cattle and weigh 500 kg on average, even though the guidelines never say this.

No, he notes that "the context of the article allows for the conclusion that bovine cattle carcasses are being referred to", then makes his calculations based on the weight of a "moderately fat" cow, then notes that his derived ratio is consistent with the upper range of the TAHC's ratio.

He then attempts to convert these quantities of fuel into quantities of wood. As usual he makes a mess of things. Just to highlight the most idiotic of his blunders, he calculates the energy value of railroad ties on the basis of assuming that a cord contains ~3.625 cubic meters of solid wood, when in reality it contains ~3.625 cubic meters of stacked wood. To be precise, a cord is 128 cubic feet of tightly stacked wood, but the actual content of solid wood is typically ~80 cubic feet, because even tightly stacked wood does not fill space solidly, but contains gaps.

The energy values of oak he used were per cord of 3.625 m³, not per solid oak block of 3.625 m³ (the source he cites very specifically is talking about cords with variable weights and amounts of wood). So when he compares a solid wood sleeper of .0975 m³ to the energy value of .0975 m³ worth of a cord of wood that has air gaps in it, he's understating the energy value of the railroad sleepers.

On the basis of his (seriously problematic) calculations, Muehlenkamp states that these guidelines show that one can burn cattle with fuel consisting of 1.9 times their mass in dry wood.

Can you recalculate the energy value of the railroad sleepers the way you say he should have calculated it, and tell us how that final value is both different from his and how that affects his overall calculated energy values?

(I won't go into how his google-derived sources for things like the energy content of coal and straw are seriously questionable and undermine his whole approach.)

Why not?

But he later decides to use the value of 0.56 times the mass, so it's not clear how these guidelines can be used to support his position.

Where does he use that value?

Moreover, he simply assumes that the ratio of wood to carcass mass for cattle can be transferred to humans. But the literature (e.g. AUSVETPLAN, or the UN FAO guidelines) clearly state that cattle need less fuel relative to their body masses than do smaller species like pigs or sheep.

Which Muhlenkamp addresses by considering corpse liquid amounts as well as by calculating wood requirements for both high and low ratios.

 

[CaptainHowdy]

I have offered you parameters for burials at Treblinka that indicate that only 4.11% of the camp land area could accommodate 700,000 bodies. Are you still in the mind that burial at Treblinka II was impossible? Please show me your mathematics that indicate it was impossible.

I don't think it was impossible. When I became aware of the parameters of Treblinka it struck me as extraordinary. By the parameters of Treblinka I mean the number of people who were buried and then cremated within the physical space and the length of time their burial and subsequent disinterment and cremation took place. Intuitively, it sounded impossible but I have been surprised by human accomplishments in the past so I kept an open mind. Comparing the cremation at the death camps with other similar events was the topic of discussion here and it's a good way to put the death camp story in context. If there are other events where so many bodies have been cremated in such a small space over a period of a few months, then the performance at the death camps wouldn't be so extraordinary. Sebastanius and Nessie have offered information about carcass disposal and Hindu funeral ghats for comparative purposes. I've looked into arson forensics and crematorium operation as well. From what I've learned, the Treblinka story really is extraordinary. Nobody has provided any examples of anything that is remotely similar or given me any reason to believe that the cremation pyres at Treblinka or the mass graves are similar to anything else in history.

Along the way I've learned that my skepticism is not just extreme but must be bordering on a pathological cynicism. I say that because when I hear a story that sounds extraordinary, I try to fit it within my understanding of the way the world works, I question it. The Treblinka story sounds extraordinary so I question it. That questioning seems to make alot of people uncomfortable. So maybe I am simply too incredulous for my own good.

But I don't think so because when I ask if Treblinka was extraordinary, I'm not presented with examples of similar events that achieve the performance that Treblinka achieved. I'm told that I can't compare Treblinka with any other event because Treblinka was unprecedented. Nobody ever tried to do what the Nazis did. Comparing similarities between Treblinka and other events creates a false analogy because of the differences between Treblinka and other events. So, essentially, it's impossible to know if Treblinka was extraordinary or not because you can't analyze the claims within the context of the known universe.

So I'm expected to accept that it's impossible to know if Treblinka was extraordinary or not. I don't buy that. In parallel with this reasoning is the insistence that the Treblinka claims are true because what happened at Treblinka was unprecedented. I asked up thread if there was a body count too high, or an area too small, or a time frame too short for Treblinka to be believable. I didn't get an answer. I imagine because nobody wants to go on record as believing that nothing is impossible if the historians say it is possible.

Far more revealing is that while looking for answers about the extraordinariness of Treblinka, I've been finding out what actual evidence we have for Treblinka. Matthew Ellard has been good about showing us actual photographs of the mass graves at Treblinka. I've been seeking others on my own and I can't find very many other than what Matthew Ellard has shown us. He's also made extensive references to a Polish or Soviet judicial investigation in 1944 or 1945 and a yet unpublished work in progress from Prof. Colls. I've also found references to trials of Treblinka personnel in Dusseldorf. Are there other photographs of Treblinka besides what a google search for "Treblinka mass graves" will find? Are there any formal investigations of Treblinka conducted after the Polish post-war report and before the ongoing research of Prof. Colls? I've looked for books about the Treblinka trials using an Amazon search for "treblinka trials in dusseldorf" and I am returned a few general reference books and quite a few revisionist works. Has there been nothing written about those trials (in English, as I am limited to one language)?

That was a long tortueous road to answer a simple question. No, I don't believe the burials at Treblinka II were impossible. I cannot show you mathematically that they were impossible. I don't know enough about mathematics to know if it is even possible for me to show you that it was impossible. I believe the the bodies buried and the bodies cremated at Treblinka are extraordinary by any measure. I think the amount of bodies buried and then cremated in the space of the camp and the time frame is highly improbable given the process that eyewitnesses have described and historians accept as true. I emphasize that point because to accept the Treblinka story as true, it has to be true the way we're told it happened. Saying that it could be true if it had been done differently means that the story as is, isn't true.

I don't think the Treblinka story as told by historians is impossible. Is it possible? probable? plausible? Those are different questions that are answered by looking at the evidence. I think the Treblinka story is possible but not probable or plausible. But there was a time when I would have said that a guy kidnapping three teenage girls and keeping them as sex slaves in his 1,400 square foot suburban home for a decade or longer while holding down a full time job and appearing relatively normal to his neighbors and family would be implausible and improbable, maybe even impossible. But I would have been wrong.

 

[MaxMurx]

I don't think the Treblinka story as told by historians is impossible. ... I think the Treblinka story is possible but not probable or plausible.

200.000.000 guns are owned in the USA. That makes it 200 Million times possible to shoot someone. Nobody is convicted for such a possibility. People are accused and convicted for what they did, not for what was possible for them to do.

 

[CaptainHowdy]

Your example contains no assumptions or estimations, only known proven facts.




What about the areas just outside of the photos? You are making the assumption the photos cover the exact area where wood was collected and felled.

If there were photographs of the larger area outside of the camp that did show deforestation you still wouldn't have evidence that wood was brought to Treblinka from the outside because no eyewitness narrative says that is what happened. They say the wood the camp used was taken from the forest outside of the camp.

If you want to say the Treblinka narrative would work, it has to work the way the narrative says it worked. I'm disturbed by the willingness to defend the narrative by saying it could've worked if it was done differently.

 

[CaptainHowdy]

Your example contains no assumptions or estimations, only known proven facts.

And you assume that all those "known proven facts" are in fact true and additionally that they are facts that are relevant. That two assumptions you must make for each "known proven fact."

 

[Matthew Ellard]

Body Volume at burial in mass grave

But as I've already explained, the amount of excavated volume necessary for a grave is not equal to the volume of the bodies to be placed in it. Try this simple word problem: a bowling ball has volume 0.005 cubic meters. How large of a hole do you need to dig to bury 200 bowling balls? Hint: the answer is certainly not 200 * 0.005 = 1 cubic meter.

Bowling balls don't bend regardless of 6 meters of bodies buried on top of them. Please observe the photo of another Nazi mass grave with bodies in it at the bottom of this post.

Reading comprehension if fundamental, Matthew. The figure I gave was not for the volume of the human body, but the volume of excavation necessary per body buried. Drought affected recently shorn sheep don't have a body volume of 0.3 cubic meters either, but burying them required 0.3 cubic meters of excavated volume per sheep.

No. You gave the volume recommended for a sheep animal carcass being buried on the top layer, under government recommended health standards. The human bodies at Treblinka were not all buried in the top layer, not buried under any health standard, nor were they animal carcasses. You reading comprehension needs a lot of work. You were out by almost 500% per body.



Holocaust Denier / Editing Łukaszkiewicz's statement.

I specifically mentioned this exact fact. Do you even read my posts before replying?

You are lying. You specifically edited the Łukaszkiewicz's statement to hide evidence Here is your original post.
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9542137&postcount=6562
Your aim was to hide the fact that Łukaszkiewicz "further excavated" to reach 7.5 meters and the human remains stopped at 7.5 metres. You specifically removed these words. You then pretended that a bomb would blow a crater to 6 metres and magically add human remains both around it and for another meter and a half below it. Where do you think these human remains at 7.5 meters came from? The bomb?



Łukaszkiewicz excavates a garbage pit.

Since we're speaking of Judge Łukaszkiewicz and the bombing, it's worth mentioning that another bomb crater which he investigated (which would presumably also be one of Sturdy Colls' pits) had no human remains.

That's right. Łukaszkiewicz specifically said that this pit was "near the so called hospital" That's why there were no human remains but rather "numerous Polish, as well as Russian, German, Austrian, and Czech coins as well as broken pieces of various kinds of containers were discovered" "all sorts of kitchen utensils and different kinds of household objects; there are also pieces of clothing"


Treblinka Gold Rush

Note also that Judge Łukaszkiewicz says that the bomb crater had a depth of 4-5 meters, but that "at a depth of 6 meters begins a layer which has never before been uncovered by anyone", i.e. people before him had been digging up the bottom of the bomb crater.

That's why I linked you to The Treblinka Gold Rush. Are you now claiming that the locals digging before Łukaszkiewicz, added human remains to bomb crater and kept adding human remains to 7.5 metres and covered it up again? Why would they do that?



Holocaust Denier ignores other pits at Treblinka

You keep ignoring all the other pits volume and that other pits have yet to be located.

Go back and read what I actually wrote, Matthew. As I stated, the total surface area of the pits is roughly 5 times the surface area of the largest (26x17 meter) pit. If you disagree with this figure, provide your own using Colls' maps.

You are lying. You have never posted anything about Colls looking for the other missing pits. You don't actually know how many pits there are at Treblinka, do you?


Colls Returning to Treblinka

Source? She's talking about investigations at other locations.

Caroline Colls: "It’s absolutely an ongoing project. The survey demonstrated that the site has got huge potential in terms of what we can learn from the application of archaeological method and very much was the tip of the iceberg in terms of being the first survey of what I hope will be many more to come. I hope to return to the site later on this year and there will be subsequent seasons of fieldwork in coming years."
http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/accessibility/transcripts/Caroline-Sturdy-Colls-Treblinka.aspx


Sebastianus "knows" where the pits are

Fourth, the figure of 17 hectares is irrelevant, as the gassed Jews are said to have been buried within the fenced-in "upper camp", which had an area of 4 hectares even according to recent models

Pits 1# and 2# are outside the upper camp. Try harder next time.
http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/thomas-kues-on-recent-archaeological.html

Colls GPR could only search 4 meters in depth.
Caroline Colls / "Unfortunately no, the survey technology doesn't allow us to go to certain depths. I know that it’s over 4 meters …"

 

[Matthew Ellard]

I don't think it was impossible. When I became aware of the parameters of Treblinka it struck me as extraordinary.

800,000 Tutsis were killed in a four month period in 1994. Russia moved 1,503 factories behind the Urals in 1942 while losing the war. More civilians died of starvation in Leningrad than all the allied casualties added together. 21 million Russians lost their lives during the Great Patriotic War.

These things happen. All of them are extraordinary.

 

[CaptainHowdy]

How does that actually address the source in any way, particularly the parts of it which Muhlencamp quoted?

When you said "Ettling" I assume you're talking about the Bruce Ettling article that Muhlencamp refers to?

If so, Muhlencamp uses that reference in support of the importance of the "right position," one that provides for good air circulation and in which the corpses burned largely on their own combustible substances. If any of his estimates of fuel required to cremate the corpses rely on anything more than an insignificant percentage of the fuel coming from the melting fat of the corpses themselves he's engaged in wishful thinking. A corpse can be cremated with the fat from its own body under very unusual circumstance. I don't know of any instance where a corpse has burned itself completely with only the fat on its body. The cases of "spontaneous human combustion" are thought be the rare examples of corpses burning themselves. And as any of the photographs of that phenomenon show, the limbs are invariable left behind.

That Muhlencamp even mentions human fat fueling the cremations is enough to question his competence in this area.