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General Holocaust Denial Discussion Part II

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I defy you to explain what type of evidence you would accept. In the meantime, pretend you are walking down the street and a man approaches you and asks if you have any spare change. He's tells you he's out of work and needs some gas money to get to a job interview. You politely refuse so he pulls out a pistol points it at your head and yells at you to give him some spare change or he'll kill you. If you then give him your spare change is it because upon reflection he convinced you that helping a fellow human being in need is the right thing to do or is it because you fear for your life?

What if he approaches you with the pistol pointed at your face and demands your money. If you refuse, could he change your mind by putting the pistol in his pocket and telling you some sob story about needing gas money to get to a job interview?

No salesman training manual is going to tell you that you don't start your sales pitch by threatening to kill your potential customer. That's because most people get that without being told.

That's not a good analogy. It's more like a guy with a gun approaching you and ordering you to get in a car driven by an associate. They tell you they're going to take you to an ATM where they want you to withdraw all your money and give it to them, and tell you that if you refuse they'll shoot you now, but if you follow their orders they'll let you go afterwards.

Do you refuse and get shot now, or do you go with them in the hopes that they actually will let you go instead of merely shooting you later?
 
I defy you to explain what type of evidence you would accept. In the meantime, pretend you are walking down the street and a man approaches you and asks if you have any spare change. He's tells you he's out of work and needs some gas money to get to a job interview. You politely refuse so he pulls out a pistol points it at your head and yells at you to give him some spare change or he'll kill you. If you then give him your spare change is it because upon reflection he convinced you that helping a fellow human being in need is the right thing to do or is it because you fear for your life?

What if he approaches you with the pistol pointed at your face and demands your money. If you refuse, could he change your mind by putting the pistol in his pocket and telling you some sob story about needing gas money to get to a job interview?

No salesman training manual is going to tell you that you don't start your sales pitch by threatening to kill your potential customer. That's because most people get that without being told.

These are pretty unrealistic scenarios that bear little resemblance to the fate of the Jews in WWII. They are, in fact, strawman caricatures of the situations faced by Jews in Nazi hands.
 
Loss Leader said:
The Jews willingly went where the Nazis told them to go because they were promised a better life or the Jews were threatened with death if they didn't go where the Nazis told them to go. It's one or the other but not both.

How on earth are those things mutually exclusive?

What makes it impossible for someone to attempt to entice you into something while also threatening you for not doing it? There's even a name for it - the carrot and the stick.
This is an example of CT by incredulity. You frequently see it in (anonymous) blog responses to mass shootings; "there were more of them than he had bullets, why didn't they just fight back? He couldn't kill them all."

Only in a world view without empathy could someone not realize self preservation is a very human reaction. It's well known and documented in such situations, people will go along with captors demands if they believe (or convince themselves) it will keep them alive or unharmed for just a little while longer. It's human nature.

There is a long list of historical examples of rape victims "willingly" being led away to a more secluded spot by their pending rapist, often without a weapon. Or of murder victims "willingly" kneeling down, facing away from their pending their murder - even climbing into a shallow grave when asked.
 
<snip>

I will close with a few pointers that may stimulate further thought. First, on the burial efficiency of mass graves. The examples of graves in the Balkans offer a useful case study in what kind of burial densities are likely to be achieved in practise. In particular, consider the examples of the graves at Crni Vrh (629 bodies, 40 meters x 5 meters x 4 meters), Kevljani (456 bodies, 17 meters x 6 meters x 6 meters), and Glumina (274 bodies, 51 meters x 9 meters x 2 meters). You can compute for yourself what the densities are in terms of bodies per cubic meter.

Second, concerning resettlement, I will mention the statement of August Weilemann when in British custody. He claimed to have worked in 1942 as a guard at a camp in Kriwoy Rog in the Ukraine, which he said held 80,000 prisoners, including a section (whose size he did not specify, although he gave it prominent mention) that held Jews from all countries, in particular from Poland, whom he said were harshly treated and somethimes killed. Of course, this is a mere witness statement, and is hardly proof of anything. Nevertheless, it's yet one more piece of evidence that undermines the notion that it's impossible that Jews were resettled in the east. It should be considered in addition to the writings by Thomas Kues to which I have already pointed. Of course, the evince might be characterized as sparce, but then so is the evidence for the story of extermination at the Reinhardt camps once you put aside the absurdity-ridden testimonies. It is simply absurd to argue that the sparce nature of the record of resettlement in war-torn eastern Europe proves that the laws governing all documented human experience in cremation and in mass burial were systematically violated at Treblinka and Belzec.
 
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<snip>

I will close with a few pointers that may stimulate further thought. Kevljani Glumina (274 bodies, 51 meters x 9 meters x 2 meters). You can compute for yourself what the densities are in terms of bodies per cubic meter.

I did exactly that.

51m X 9m X 2m = 918cubic metres
918 cubic metres divided by 274 bodies = 3.3cubic meters per body.
The average height of a human is 1.7meters

You are claiming that 1.7meter tall humans "are being crammed" into a 3.3 meter cubic space and buried. Here is a picture of your bizarre claim.
 

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Second, concerning resettlement, I will mention the statement of August Weilemann when in British custody.
Who and what rank and unit does August Weilemann belong to?
In what manner of British captivity was he held?
Where is the citation for this man and his direct quotes?
 
.......

Second, concerning resettlement, I will mention the statement of August Weilemann when in British custody. He claimed to have worked in 1942 as a guard at a camp in Kriwoy Rog in the Ukraine, which he said held 80,000 prisoners, including a section (whose size he did not specify, although he gave it prominent mention) that held Jews from all countries, in particular from Poland, whom he said were harshly treated and somethimes killed. Of course, this is a mere witness statement, and is hardly proof of anything.

How have you determined his statement is "hardly proof of anything"?

Nevertheless, it's yet one more piece of evidence that undermines the notion that it's impossible that Jews were resettled in the east.

There is a conflict which you need to reconcile. "Hardly proof of anything" is now "yet one more piece of evidence". Please explain your thinking.


It should be considered in addition to the writings by Thomas Kues to which I have already pointed. Of course, the evince might be characterized as sparce, but then so is the evidence for the story of extermination at the Reinhardt camps once you put aside the absurdity-ridden testimonies. It is simply absurd to argue that the sparce nature of the record of resettlement in war-torn eastern Europe proves that the laws governing all documented human experience in cremation and in mass burial were systematically violated at Treblinka and Belzec.

OK, please name one Jew re-settled in the East and left by the Nazis in their new settlement. Please name one of the settlements.
 
How have you determined his statement is "hardly proof of anything"?



There is a conflict which you need to reconcile. "Hardly proof of anything" is now "yet one more piece of evidence". Please explain your thinking.




OK, please name one Jew re-settled in the East and left by the Nazis in their new settlement. Please name one of the settlements.

I it interesting there are mountains of documentary evidence for the labour and death camps but none I know of for any resettlement areas/communities nor extant lists of people living in such areas.
 
That's not a good analogy. It's more like a guy with a gun approaching you and ordering you to get in a car driven by an associate. They tell you they're going to take you to an ATM where they want you to withdraw all your money and give it to them, and tell you that if you refuse they'll shoot you now, but if you follow their orders they'll let you go afterwards.

Do you refuse and get shot now, or do you go with them in the hopes that they actually will let you go instead of merely shooting you later?

Your analogy omits the part of the scenario where the threat to kill you doesn't work so then they try some other emotional or logical persuasion that doesn't involve killing you and you relent.

Remember, Loss Leader is arguing that if threatening to kill you doesn't persuade you to go along, it is still possible to persuade you with a different type of appeal. I say that once you cross the threshold and demand that somebody do what you say or you will kill them, you don't have another opportunity to persuade them by some other non-lethal threat. The death threat will be a factor in any subsequent negotiation even if the death threat is explicitly removed. Besides, if you threaten to kill somebody if they don't go along and you don't kill them for resisting, you've proven yourself unwilling to deliver the consequences you promised. If you threatened to kill me and you didn't, why would I trust you to provide me with a better life if that is what you're promising me the second time?

Offering the Jews cookies and milk and promising a better life if they come out of hiding might work. If it doesn't, then threatening to kill them might get them to come out of hiding. But once you threaten to kill them and that doesn't work, cookies and milk and empty promises isn't going to do it.
 
Threatening to kill someone's spouse/child/parent or the knowledge that if you do not do something a whole community can suffer is a very powerful incentive.
 
Offering the Jews cookies and milk and promising a better life if they come out of hiding might work. If it doesn't, then threatening to kill them might get them to come out of hiding. But once you threaten to kill them and that doesn't work, cookies and milk and empty promises isn't going to do it.
Speculation on your part. Do you have research to back that up? Good Cop Bad Cop (Known in US interrogation as Friend and Foe) works with threats and then follows with cajoling. The intent is to create a shock to unsettle the psyche and then create a bonding afterwards.
 
Your analogy omits the part of the scenario where the threat to kill you doesn't work so then they try some other emotional or logical persuasion that doesn't involve killing you and you relent.

Remember, Loss Leader is arguing that if threatening to kill you doesn't persuade you to go along, it is still possible to persuade you with a different type of appeal. I say that once you cross the threshold and demand that somebody do what you say or you will kill them, you don't have another opportunity to persuade them by some other non-lethal threat. The death threat will be a factor in any subsequent negotiation even if the death threat is explicitly removed. Besides, if you threaten to kill somebody if they don't go along and you don't kill them for resisting, you've proven yourself unwilling to deliver the consequences you promised. If you threatened to kill me and you didn't, why would I trust you to provide me with a better life if that is what you're promising me the second time?

Offering the Jews cookies and milk and promising a better life if they come out of hiding might work. If it doesn't, then threatening to kill them might get them to come out of hiding. But once you threaten to kill them and that doesn't work, cookies and milk and empty promises isn't going to do it.

How about, instead of inventing fanciful scenarios which bear no resemblance to the historical record, you actually pay attention to the historical record.

Jews were first and foremost coerced. Coercion implies a threat of violence if someone does not comply with the strictures laid down in the coercion. Indeed, the populations of many European nations were collectively coerced through occupation regulations that decreed the death penalty for a substantially increased range of offences, e.g. giving shelter to Jews was punishable by death in Poland.

Within this inherently coercive situation, Jews were lied to at crucial moments. When the deportations from Warsaw began, notices went up stating that non-compliance with the deportation orders would be punishable by death. At the same time false rumours were spread telling the Jews of Warsaw that this was 'only' a resettlement and not a one way ticket to an extermination camp. Upon arrival at Treblinka, as previously mentioned, more lies were told before the Jews were killed.

There's nothing in any of this about the Nazis offering Jews milk and cookies, and summoning them like the Pied Piper of Hamelin to march to their deaths. The Nazis used force and they offered false blandishments.

You also seem to be overstating the extent of force necessary to populations to comply with directives. It really isn't as large an amount as 'shoving a gun into someone's face'. Millions of people were deported across Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, 12 million Germans alone in 1945, in many cases under far freer circumstances, i.e. from villages or other situations where theoretically they could have tried to avoid this fate.

If you are ordered by a state authority to leave, you leave, because you know the state authority possesses enough means of violence to kill you if you don't leave. If you are ordered by a state authority to move into a ghetto, then you move into a ghetto, because non-compliance triggers a worse outcome.

Precisely because the Nazis shunted so many Jews around in 1939-early 1942 in expulsions, concentrations and ghettoisations before they began deporting the relevant communities to death camps, their false promises of resettlement were probably believed by at least some of the victims. We cannot say how many believed the promises for sure, because they're dead, and we cannot ask them.

But we know from the survivors that a lot of them didn't believe the promises; while others were evidently entirely fatalistic since they saw no chance of escape. In a hopeless situation, better to cling on to false blandishments, as Robrob has noted, than not.
 
Your analogy omits the part of the scenario where the threat to kill you doesn't work so then they try some other emotional or logical persuasion that doesn't involve killing you and you relent.

Because that part of the scenario, as Dr. Terry pointed out, doesn't bear any resemblance to what the Nazis did to the Jews.

Remember, Loss Leader is arguing that if threatening to kill you doesn't persuade you to go along, it is still possible to persuade you with a different type of appeal.

Actually, no, that was your restatement of what he was arguing, not what he was actually arguing. What Loss Leader actually said was "What makes it impossible for someone to attempt to entice you into something while also threatening you for not doing it?"

The Nazis didn't say "get on the trains, or we'll shoot you!", and then when the Jews didn't get on the trains say "okay, how about if you get on the trains, we'll take you to a nice farm in the country?"

They said, "Get on the trains...we're going to take you a nice farm in the country, and if you don't get on the trains, we'll shoot you."
 
<snip>

I will close with a few pointers that may stimulate further thought. First, on the burial efficiency of mass graves. The examples of graves in the Balkans offer a useful case study in what kind of burial densities are likely to be achieved in practise. In particular, consider the examples of the graves at Crni Vrh (629 bodies, 40 meters x 5 meters x 4 meters), Kevljani (456 bodies, 17 meters x 6 meters x 6 meters), and Glumina (274 bodies, 51 meters x 9 meters x 2 meters). You can compute for yourself what the densities are in terms of bodies per cubic meter.

Second, concerning resettlement, I will mention the statement of August Weilemann when in British custody. He claimed to have worked in 1942 as a guard at a camp in Kriwoy Rog in the Ukraine, which he said held 80,000 prisoners, including a section (whose size he did not specify, although he gave it prominent mention) that held Jews from all countries, in particular from Poland, whom he said were harshly treated and somethimes killed. Of course, this is a mere witness statement, and is hardly proof of anything. Nevertheless, it's yet one more piece of evidence that undermines the notion that it's impossible that Jews were resettled in the east. It should be considered in addition to the writings by Thomas Kues to which I have already pointed. Of course, the evince might be characterized as sparce, but then so is the evidence for the story of extermination at the Reinhardt camps once you put aside the absurdity-ridden testimonies. It is simply absurd to argue that the sparce nature of the record of resettlement in war-torn eastern Europe proves that the laws governing all documented human experience in cremation and in mass burial were systematically violated at Treblinka and Belzec.

You have made some very provocative points. The Balkan grave information is interesting. I was seeking out information about the density of bodies in other mass graves and have had trouble finding all three dimensions and the number of bodies for a single grave. I can find surface area and number of bodies but not the depth. Thank you for providing this information but what is the source?

I have done the calculations and it appears to me that the bodies in these mass graves occupy more than .07 cubic meters per body. Are there any mass graves statistics that Sebastianus won't tell us about that are closer to the density of bodies in the death camp mass graves?
 
I it interesting there are mountains of documentary evidence for the labour and death camps but none I know of for any resettlement areas/communities nor extant lists of people living in such areas.
It may have just been a Russian POW holding area. Unless we have further details, who knows?

I assume this is the place. "Рог" in Кривой Рог, translates as Rog, letter for letter, from Russian.



Kryvyi Rih
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kryvyi_Rih
 
Your analogy omits the part of the scenario where the threat to kill you doesn't work so then they try some other emotional or logical persuasion that doesn't involve killing you and you relent.
You realize that the carrot and stick are offered simultaneously, right? That's the point of the metaphor. Compliance leads to a reward, defaulting leads to punishment.

Remember, Loss Leader is arguing that if threatening to kill you doesn't persuade you to go along, it is still possible to persuade you with a different type of appeal.
Uh, no he ain't.

How on earth are those things mutually exclusive?

What makes it impossible for someone to attempt to entice you into something while also threatening you for not doing it? There's even a name for it - the carrot and the stick.
Not "then threatening" or "after threatening". "While also threatening". The punishment and reward are presented as options at the same time.

Even assuming you were right, offering a reward for compliance often works better than just offering a punishment alone, and vice versa, even if the reward is "I won't kill you for another few seconds".

Also, in the post LL was responding to, you said that it's impossible for the jews to be threatened with death and promised a better life. You have presented no evidence whatsoever, barring your own incredulity, why it would not be effective. And, of course, you studiously ignore Dr. Terry's post #6674 explaining the matter.

I say that once you cross the threshold and demand that somebody do what you say or you will kill them, you don't have another opportunity to persuade them by some other non-lethal threat. The death threat will be a factor in any subsequent negotiation even if the death threat is explicitly removed. Besides, if you threaten to kill somebody if they don't go along and you don't kill them for resisting, you've proven yourself unwilling to deliver the consequences you promised. If you threatened to kill me and you didn't, why would I trust you to provide me with a better life if that is what you're promising me the second time?
You are assuming a capacity for rational thought which, as has already been pointed out, people commonly do not exhibit in comparable circumstances.

Offering the Jews cookies and milk and promising a better life if they come out of hiding might work. If it doesn't, then threatening to kill them might get them to come out of hiding. But once you threaten to kill them and that doesn't work, cookies and milk and empty promises isn't going to do it.
You're strawmanning. The choice presented to the Jews was basically between immediate, certain death, and postponed, uncertain death and an uncertain reward. The usual reaction is to pick B. The logical choice is to pick B.
 
OK. You've all convinced me I was wrong. Death threats are just one more way of winning friends and influencing people, no different than any other method of persuasion. A credible death threat isn't going to permanently alter whatever relationship two people or group of people have with one another. I don't know what I was thinking.

Now, back to death camp mass graves. I haven't found any information about a mass grave that has packed its bodies as densely as the death camps did. There isn't anything that comes close. Has anybody read about an example of a non-Holocaust mass grave that has achieved the body density of the Holocaust mass graves?
 
They said, "Get on the trains...we're going to take you a nice farm in the country, and if you don't get on the trains, we'll shoot you."
That and they said it while shooting a few as examples.

You're strawmanning. The choice presented to the Jews was basically between immediate, certain death, and postponed, uncertain death and an uncertain reward. The usual reaction is to pick B. The logical choice is to pick B.
There are so many, many similar examples of persons in extreme situations doing whatever it takes to live just a few minutes longer - one really has to wonder how anyone could be unaware of such a normal human reaction?
 
I will mention the statement of August Weilemann when in British custody. He claimed to have worked in 1942 as a guard at a camp in Kriwoy Rog in the Ukraine, which he said held 80,000 prisoners, including a section (whose size he did not specify, although he gave it prominent mention) that held Jews from all countries, in particular from Poland, whom he said were harshly treated and somethimes killed. Of course, this is a mere witness statement, and is hardly proof of anything.

I'm now thinking that Kriwoy Rog is the German name for Kryvyi Rih. I didn't find any information on a "August Weilemann" anywhere. However I did find a newsreel from The German Weekly Review called "Die Deutsche Wochenschau - 1941 - Kriwoy Rog und Reval". In this newsreel, at 3 minutes, is footage of a large number of captured Russian POWs at this location in 1941. However Sebastianus claims "August Weilemann" said he was there in 1942.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBCe7h4jeMw

Sebastianus needs to supply a citation for his claim to get to the bottom of this story.
 
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