General Holocaust Denial Discussion Part II

[Matthew Ellard]

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

<snip>

SS-Scharführer Floss "Thank God, now the fire's perfect," he used to say when, with the help of gasoline and the bodies of the fatter females, the pile of corpses finally burst into flames.

Safe Cremation of Large Human Remains
"....the 65 year old female has 89% more body fat. How does this affect cremation? Human remains make up a portion of the combustible material, or fuel, used to complete the cremation. Larger bodies represent more fuel...."

"Why does this happen? During cremation, fat tissue releases about 20,000 BTUs per pound as compared to lean tissue at 1000 BTUs per pound – 20 times more heat.
http://www.matthewscremation.com/Portals/0/101 - Safe Cremations of Large Human Remains.pdf

Edited by Loss Leader: 

Edited. Moderated thread.

 

[Nessie]

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.

This is too vague "They say the wood the camp used was taken from the forest outside of the camp." to say for certain where the wood came, so that anyone can say it was not from an area just out of shot on the ariel photos.

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."

Is it an assumption to say humans are all under 10 feet tall or the Channel is more than a mile wide? Just in case you were thinking they may be....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_people

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Channel

 

[A'isha]

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.

Muhlenkamp isn't making any argument remotely like that, however.

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

How do you reconcile that with Sebastianus' argument that cattle carcasses require less fuel to cremate during mass burns because their body fat helps fuel the cremation?

 

[CaptainHowdy]

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.

True. Logically, if hundreds of thousands of Jews are known to have been sent to the camps they either remained there or they did not remain there. What is the evidence they were sent there in the first place? Are there passenger lists or transport manifests that distinctly give names/dates of Jews embarking from a specific train station and traveling along a specific route with stops along the way that name, say, Treblinka as the final destination? If schedules of such detail survived the war and none of the Jews whose final destination was Treblinka was never seen again, it's pretty obvious what happened. But would the Germans keep records of such detail if they wanted the extermination to remain a secret?

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.

Were all of the death camps refered to as "transit camps" in the German documents? Are there German documents that refer to "transit camps that are recognized as not being a death camp?

 

[CaptainHowdy]

Muhlenkamp isn't making any argument remotely like that, however.

Good. I could dismiss everything he says if he were claim that the fat on our bodies was the only fuel that is needed to sustain cremation. Even saying any of the death camp cremations were sustained largely on the fat from the bodies themselves would earn him a reject. Especially when he continually reminds us how emaciated the ghetto Jews were.

How do you reconcile that with Sebastianus' argument that cattle carcasses require less fuel to cremate during mass burns because their body fat helps fuel the cremation?

He says they require less fuel. He doesn't say they require no fuel.

I'm talking about a body that, once ignited, will not require any additional fuel to burn completely. That won't happen. A body can sustain a fire with only the fat if the fire is low enough to melt fat that is then absorbed into another material that acts like a candle wick and keeps the low flame burning, melting more fat which is absorbed into the material....and so on. Eventually the fire will go out however.

Theoretically I suppose it could happen but it's about as realistic as converting bodies into a liquid form to achieve the theoretical but unrealistic densities of the mass graves.

 

[CaptainHowdy]

This is too vague "They say the wood the camp used was taken from the forest outside of the camp." to say for certain where the wood came, so that anyone can say it was not from an area just out of shot on the ariel photos.

"Vague" is a nice way to say that. I need to stop posting responses at two in the morning without editing them.

I meant that the witnesses say the wood came from the forest outside the camp. None of them report large shipments of wood for fuel coming into the camp by truck or by train. No documents survived to show shipments of wood sent to or arriving in the camp. The witnesses speak of clearing a perimeter around the camp and bring the felled trees inside to use as fuel. Another describes the woodcutting 'worksite' being close enough to the gate of the upper camp to be seen.

That little bit of information indicates that the wood was collected from an area within walking distance of the camp, and not a significant distance away. It is surely possible that wood was brought into the camp from an area of the forest for which no photographs exist. But the history of the camp needs to be constructed from the evidence that exists and not the evidence that might exist.

 

[Matthew Ellard]

Body Volume for mass burial / Hard Evidence

Sebastianus, a holocaust denier, claims that a body has a volume 0.3 cubic metres in a mass grave. However, the standard medical evidence is that a body has a volume of 0.07 cubic metres.

Sebastianus states that 0.07 cubic metres is an "impossibility" to holocaust deniers.

Sebatianus has obviously never been to a magic show with contortionists. (Odd considering Mr Randi is a magician and there is a magician subforum here.)
"His awesome contortionist skills enable him to stuff his body into a box that is 13.5 inches by 16 inches by 19.5 inches and close it"

Calc / 13.5in x 16in x 19.5in = 4,212 cubic inches.
Convert / 4,212 cubic inches = 0.069022m³

Captain Howdy? Sebastianus? Can you explain how a fully grown male, living contortionist can fit into a 0.069022 cubic meter box yet you assert they need 500% more space at 0.3 cubic meters for a dead, half starved, concentration camp victim?

 

[Matthew Ellard]

What is the evidence they were sent there in the first place?

I propose we start by reviewing the Hofle Telegram.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Höfle_Telegram

The Hofle Telegram was decoded in 2,000. It was not decoded in 1943 possibly because "Aktion Reinhardt" was not a known German operation to GCHQ in 1943. The Hofle telegram states the the totals of persons that arrived in the last two weeks, and a total for all accumulative arrivals at the Aktion Reinhard camps, which are listed, up until 31DEC1942.

"State secret! To the Reich Security Main Office, for the attention of SS Obersturmbannführer EICHMANN, BERLIN"

L (Lublin Majdanek) 24,733
B (Bełżec) 434,508
S (Sobibor) 101,370
T (Treblinka) 713,555

I ask you to review this link and then ask you to review the train movement records collected by the Treblinka Station Master, Franciszek Zabecki concerning the arrival of trains and the shuttling of 20 box cars, containing victims, down the single railway line to Treblinka II.

What do you conclude as "probable" from these sources?
Why didn't the Station Master observe and thus record the same victims leaving Treblinka II?

We will move on to further evidence after you have offered your opinion and research.

 

[A'isha]

Good. I could dismiss everything he says if he were claim that the fat on our bodies was the only fuel that is needed to sustain cremation.

That's why I recommend reading what Muhlenkamp did say.

He says they require less fuel. He doesn't say they require no fuel.

Which is precisely Muhlenkamp's argument - not that the cremations at Treblinka required no fuel, but that Mattogno overstates the fuel required for those cremations.

Theoretically I suppose it could happen but it's about as realistic as converting bodies into a liquid form to achieve the theoretical but unrealistic densities of the mass graves.

As Matthew Ellard notes above, living humans can fit inside .07 m³. Why is it impossible for half-starved dead humans to do the same?

 

[Nick Terry]

The Hofle Telegram was decoded in 2,000. It was not decoded in 1943 possibly because "Aktion Reinhardt" was not a known German operation to GCHQ in 1943.

Incorrect, the Hoefle telegram was decoded and was noted in summary reports of intercepts for the relevant period, as I was the first to establish after Tyas and Witte revealed the existence of the raw decrypt.

 

[Nessie]

"Vague" is a nice way to say that. I need to stop posting responses at two in the morning without editing them.

I meant that the witnesses say the wood came from the forest outside the camp. None of them report large shipments of wood for fuel coming into the camp by truck or by train. No documents survived to show shipments of wood sent to or arriving in the camp. The witnesses speak of clearing a perimeter around the camp and bring the felled trees inside to use as fuel. Another describes the woodcutting 'worksite' being close enough to the gate of the upper camp to be seen.

That little bit of information indicates that the wood was collected from an area within walking distance of the camp, and not a significant distance away. It is surely possible that wood was brought into the camp from an area of the forest for which no photographs exist. But the history of the camp needs to be constructed from the evidence that exists and not the evidence that might exist.

So we know from maps and photos there was felling to make space for the camp and thinning of trees nearby. The photos also do not necessarily correspond with precisely where trees were taken from. That matches the witnesses.

What we are left with again is the numbers, this time trees as opposed to people for the revisionist/deniers to get incredulous about.

I some times think that if the dead were measured in tens of thousands the deniers/revisionists would have nothing to go with to try and discredit and so try and deny the commonly accepted Holocaust history.

 

[Nessie]

I propose we start by reviewing the Hofle Telegram.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Höfle_Telegram

The Hofle Telegram was decoded in 2,000. It was not decoded in 1943 possibly because "Aktion Reinhardt" was not a known German operation to GCHQ in 1943. The Hofle telegram states the the totals of persons that arrived in the last two weeks, and a total for all accumulative arrivals at the Aktion Reinhard camps, which are listed, up until 31DEC1942.

"State secret! To the Reich Security Main Office, for the attention of SS Obersturmbannführer EICHMANN, BERLIN"

L (Lublin Majdanek) 24,733
B (Bełżec) 434,508
S (Sobibor) 101,370
T (Treblinka) 713,555

I ask you to review this link and then ask you to review the train movement records collected by the Treblinka Station Master, Franciszek Zabecki concerning the arrival of trains and the shuttling of 20 box cars, containing victims, down the single railway line to Treblinka II.

What do you conclude as "probable" from these sources?
Why didn't the Station Master observe and thus record the same victims leaving Treblinka II?

We will move on to further evidence after you have offered your opinion and research.

Which Treblinka is being referred to?

 

[MaxMurx]

The complete text of the last part of the much longer message is:

Einsatz REINHARDT. SS und Pol.fuehrer LUBLIN sends the Befehlshaber der
Sipo KRAKAU a report on Einsatz REINHARDT for the 14 days up to 31.1.42.
Increase to 31.12.42: L12761, B 0, S515, T 10335, altogether 23611. Totals on
31.12.42: L24733, B 434508, S 101370, T 71355: altogether 1274166 (355a 13).


http://www.whatreallyhappened.info/decrypts/hw16_65_zip_os6_28.1.43.html

 

[Cyrix686]

Nessie...

As far as I understand it, T.II is another way of referring to Treblinka camp. Treblinka I also as far as I understand it, was a work camp. T.II always refers - though I'm willing to be corrected on this - to what we think of as the Treblinka death camp.

The Stroop report concerning the clearing of the Warsaw ghetto says,

'Of the total of 56,065 caught about 7,000 were destroyed in the former Ghetto during large scale operation. 6,929 Jews were destroyed by transporting them to T.II.'

That ties it up for me that the abbreviation "T.II" is Treblinka death camp.

 

[Nick Terry]

Which Treblinka is being referred to?

Based on the invocation of the term Einsatz Reinhardt, it can only be Treblinka II.

There is a promotion list from 1943 for Aktion Reinhard with the names of SS officers and men on it, including Kurt Franz.

Kurt Franz signed orders (which survive) relating to admin/personnel matters for SS-Sonderkommando Treblinka.

Treblinka I was designated an SS-Arbeitslager in posting lists of Trawnikis.

Belzec and Sobibor were designated as SS-Sonderkommando in posting lists of Trawnikis.

There are no surviving posting lists of Trawnikis sent to Treblinka II, but there is a surviving strength report of the company attached to SS-Sonderkommando Treblinka from January 1943, counting 125 men.

Trawniki personnel files (survival incomplete, but a significant percentage do survive) include quite a few posted to Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka, often also adding the SS-Sonderkommando designation (that depended on the whim of the clerk recording the details).

 

[CaptainHowdy]

I propose we start by reviewing the Hofle Telegram.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Höfle_Telegram

The Hofle Telegram was decoded in 2,000. It was not decoded in 1943 possibly because "Aktion Reinhardt" was not a known German operation to GCHQ in 1943. The Hofle telegram states the the totals of persons that arrived in the last two weeks, and a total for all accumulative arrivals at the Aktion Reinhard camps, which are listed, up until 31DEC1942.

"State secret! To the Reich Security Main Office, for the attention of SS Obersturmbannführer EICHMANN, BERLIN"

L (Lublin Majdanek) 24,733
B (Bełżec) 434,508
S (Sobibor) 101,370
T (Treblinka) 713,555

I ask you to review this link and then ask you to review the train movement records collected by the Treblinka Station Master, Franciszek Zabecki concerning the arrival of trains and the shuttling of 20 box cars, containing victims, down the single railway line to Treblinka II.

What do you conclude as "probable" from these sources?
Why didn't the Station Master observe and thus record the same victims leaving Treblinka II?

We will move on to further evidence after you have offered your opinion and research.

There isn't any link except for the wikipedia article. Is that the link you ask us to review? Where are the train movement records collected by the Treblinka station master? Those sound exactly like the kind of evidence that proves Jews were transported to Treblinka that I asked about. The Hofle telegram is only one telegram that wasn't discovered until 2000. How important can it be unless it changed the world's understanding of the death camps after 2000? Wikipedia doesn't say that it did.

You've asked us to review two types of primary evidence. I realize the value in that type of evidence, but for historians. I was asking for secondary sources of information. I'm not a historian. I like to read what the experts have summarized and then look at the footnotes if I want to check facts or learn more. I'm looking for a well sourced history of the death camps with a chapter or two that tells us how we know and how much detail we know about the Jews that were sent to the death camps. I would like to see primary sources, of course, but there must be thousands of primary sources of which very few are online or available for purchase on Amazon and I'll bet very few of them are written in English. I'm sorry if I wasn't clear.

If you say there are records kept by the station master at Treblinka, I'll take your word for it and that's good enough for me. Unless someone else says you're lying.

 

[Nessie]

Based on the invocation of the term Einsatz Reinhardt, it can only be Treblinka II.

There is a promotion list from 1943 for Aktion Reinhard with the names of SS officers and men on it, including Kurt Franz.

Kurt Franz signed orders (which survive) relating to admin/personnel matters for SS-Sonderkommando Treblinka.

Treblinka I was designated an SS-Arbeitslager in posting lists of Trawnikis.

Belzec and Sobibor were designated as SS-Sonderkommando in posting lists of Trawnikis.

There are no surviving posting lists of Trawnikis sent to Treblinka II, but there is a surviving strength report of the company attached to SS-Sonderkommando Treblinka from January 1943, counting 125 men.

Trawniki personnel files (survival incomplete, but a significant percentage do survive) include quite a few posted to Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka, often also adding the SS-Sonderkommando designation (that depended on the whim of the clerk recording the details).

Thanks for the clarification.

 

[Sebastianus]

Are there passenger lists or transport manifests that distinctly give names/dates of Jews embarking from a specific train station and traveling along a specific route with stops along the way that name, say, Treblinka as the final destination?

There are some descriptions of transports, although for only a fraction of the total. Here is one such document. I do not know of any that give the names of those transported.

Were all of the death camps refered to as "transit camps" in the German documents?

No, at least not in the surviving documentation. But with respect to the "pure death camps" (Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, Chelmno) as opposed to the "combined labor/death camps" (Auschwitz and Majdanek), there are very few documents in existence.

Are there German documents that refer to "transit camps that are recognized as not being a death camp?

I believe so. The term was frequently used, I believe even for resettlement camps for Germans being resettled in the Reich as part of population exchanges. Westerbork should be an example of a camp with this designation

 

[CaptainHowdy]

So we know from maps and photos there was felling to make space for the camp and thinning of trees nearby. The photos also do not necessarily correspond with precisely where trees were taken from. That matches the witnesses.

What we are left with again is the numbers, this time trees as opposed to people for the revisionist/deniers to get incredulous about.

I some times think that if the dead were measured in tens of thousands the deniers/revisionists would have nothing to go with to try and discredit and so try and deny the commonly accepted Holocaust history.

Good point. Holocaust deniers say they don't deny the Holocaust. Is it just the numbers killed at the death camps that sounds implausibe? If the numbers were in the thousands instead of the hundreds of thousands would there be any dispute?

People dispute historical events and their meaning all the time. Take the rape of Nanking or the Armenian genocide. People argue about whether those events really happened. I've heard arguments about the numbers of people raped or killed but I cannot remember hearing the argument that it would be impossible for the victim count to be as high as it was.

 

[CaptainHowdy]

There are some descriptions of transports, although for only a fraction of the total. Here is one such document. I do not know of any that give the names of those transported.

The first report on that page you linked to said that the final destination was Treblinka. If Treblinka was a transit camp, would that be the final destination for some passengers? I'm thinking of a transit camp as a camp people pass through on their way to somewhere else. Maybe I'm not understanding it properly.

The paragraph after that report says that similar reports were made for every transport. Did all these reports say that Treblinka was the final destination?