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An argument of a holocaust denier

HelPick2

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I was discussing the Holocaust with a holocaust denier on MSN a while ago. Even though I noticed major flaws in his reasoning, I do not have the necessary knowledge to refute some things. He sends a link to a picture:

http://www.geocities.co.jp/SilkRoad-Desert/6794/pic/auschwitz.jpg

This is basically what he says about the picture. He tells me sarcastically that "everyone knows" that it's safe:

-to have a lights witch inside the Gaschamber, considering Zyklon B is higly inflamable.

-and, he says, thats why you also put a bunch of light bulbs inside.

-"The door has a nice space between floor-and door, because German Zyklon B is intelligent Gas, which will say to itself 'Look - there is a slit - better not leak out of there and kill everyone else in the camp!'"

-"The door has a GLASS WINDOW. Jews suffocating to death, will surely watch out not to smash that window - they could cut themselves and that would ....um.....hurt.... or even be leathal!"

-"The door also has a nice Keyhole! The intelligent Gas also knows that its not allowed to escape through that hole and kill Hans and Fritz!"

I am certain this is not difficult to refute for many people here; but I am embarrassed to say I know next to nothing about any of this.

Also, has anyone any links to websites debunking the arguments of Holocaust deniers?
 
There have been studies done comparing the similarity of Creationists and Holocaust deniers.

Here is the best site I know of for all things Holocaust. Also an excellent source of information on logical fallacies.

http://www.nizkor.org/

The questions on the technical aspects of gassing helpless human beings is contained in something called the Leuchter Report.

http://www.nizkor.org/faqs/leuchter/


And a timely quote for these present times:

The attempt to justify an evil deed has perhaps more pernicious consequences than the evil deed itself. The justification of a past crime is the planting and cultivation of future crimes. Indeed, the repetition of a crime is sometimes part of a device of justification; we do it again and again to convince ourselves and others that it is a common thing and not an enormity. (Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1954.)
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Ixabert said:
This is basically what he says about the picture. He tells me sarcastically that "everyone knows" that it's safe:
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If someone wants to be sarcastic, it helps being right. He is not.

Ixabert said:
-to have a lights witch inside the Gaschamber, considering Zyklon B is higly inflamable.
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It is? That's news to me. Where did he learn that?

Ixabert said:
-"The door has a nice space between floor-and door, because German Zyklon B is intelligent Gas, which will say to itself 'Look - there is a slit - better not leak out of there and kill everyone else in the camp!'"

-"The door has a GLASS WINDOW. Jews suffocating to death, will surely watch out not to smash that window - they could cut themselves and that would ....um.....hurt.... or even be leathal!"

-"The door also has a nice Keyhole! The intelligent Gas also knows that its not allowed to escape through that hole and kill Hans and Fritz!"
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The door is not original.

Where did he get the picture?
 

This is basically what he says about the picture. He tells me sarcastically that "everyone knows" that it's safe:

He's not a very intelligent person and isn't thinking critically. But, believers tend not to.


-to have a lights witch inside the Gaschamber, considering Zyklon B is higly inflamable.

Explosion proof lights and lightswitches will keep such flammable gasses from igniting.


-"The door has a nice space between floor-and door, because German Zyklon B is intelligent Gas, which will say to itself 'Look - there is a slit - better not leak out of there and kill everyone else in the camp!'"

A compartment need not be fully air-tight in order to allow a gas to become concentrated enough to be lethal. If gas is introduced, it's not smart enough to say "let's go through the slit but avoid being breathed by anyone on the way out". Flood the room with a gas and the small airslits make little difference.


-"The door has a GLASS WINDOW. Jews suffocating to death, will surely watch out not to smash that window - they could cut themselves and that would ....um.....hurt.... or even be leathal!"

Sometimes glass is made so thick that people can't smash it.


-"The door also has a nice Keyhole! The intelligent Gas also knows that its not allowed to escape through that hole and kill Hans and Fritz!"

Hans and Fritz might be smart enough to stand far away from the door, they could even wear respirators as well.
 
Ixabert said:

This is basically what he says about the picture. He tells me sarcastically that "everyone knows" that it's safe:

-to have a lights witch inside the Gaschamber, considering Zyklon B is higly inflamable.
 Uh what were the concentrations of the gas used , were they at a level to cause a spark flash or just enough to kill people. never mind all the eye witnesses who said that they saw people going into the chambers and coming out dead. Or the germans who testified that they did it or saw it.

-and, he says, thats why you also put a bunch of light bulbs inside.

Uh the original pictures of the gas cahmbers have protective covers on the ilights , i could be worng. How does a light bulb ignite a dilute concentration of gas?

-"The door has a nice space between floor-and door, because German Zyklon B is intelligent Gas, which will say to itself 'Look - there is a slit - better not leak out of there and kill everyone else in the camp!'"
I gues he doesn't believe that rags can act as weather stripping, ZB was not a modern nerve agent, the risk was low or the efficient germans would have dealt with it.

-"The door has a GLASS WINDOW. Jews suffocating to death, will surely watch out not to smash that window - they could cut themselves and that would ....um.....hurt.... or even be leathal!"
 Maybe the germans just liked to watch people die. Oh thats right break the glass, fight the gaurd for thier rifle and pole vault over the electric fence. How fast does ZB work and what sort of muscle tome do victims have.

-"The door also has a nice Keyhole! The intelligent Gas also knows that its not allowed to escape through that hole and kill Hans and Fritz!"

Again this is not a modern nerve agent , what was the dilution for toxicity. Is a keyhol;e really a danger, what if they have a vent for the gas, that would create the negative pressure.

Too bad that Hans and Fritz bragged about what they did and thier were tens of thousand of witnesses.

I am certain this is not difficult to refute for many people here; but I am embarrassed to say I know next to nothing about any of this.

Also, has anyone any links to websites debunking the arguments of Holocaust deniers?
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The guy is some sort of delusional whaccko, there is a lot of hard evidence for the deaths at the death camps, maybe they don't believe in WWII at all.
 
Ixabert said:


-to have a lights witch inside the Gaschamber, considering Zyklon B is higly inflamable.
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I've worked with hydrogen within inches of electrial switches. Nothing exploded.
 
Ixabert said:
I am certain this is not difficult to refute for many people here; but I am embarrassed to say I know next to nothing about any of this.
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If nobody's said it yet, allow me to say "Welcome" to the JREF Forums. :D

Never apologize for not knowing something, Ixabert. The only dumb question here at JREF is the one that never gets asked. ;)


On the subject of light switches and explosive gases:

The only reason the power company tells you, "If you smell a natural gas leak, do not turn any light switches on or off!" is because the light switch might cause a spark that might ignite the gas. But it's not guaraneteed, it's not going to happen every time. It's "just in case", "safety first".

And, as someone earlier pointed out, you can get explosion-proof light switches.

http://www.thomasregisterdirectory.com/switches/electric_explosion_proof_switches_0025553_1.html

Nobody ever accused the Nazis running the death camps of being stupid, or incompetent, just evil. They surely would have known better than to install regular, non-explosion-proof light switches in their oh-so-efficient gas chambers. So just because you see a light switch there, doesn't mean you can assume that it must be a regular, spark-prone light switch.

Unless you've got an agenda of disproving the Holocaust, in which case you'd be looking for what you think are nits to pick.
 
Very good responses. I am impressed.

Do you think it would be better for them to order doors without windows?
 
Ixabert said:
Do you think it would be better for them to order doors without windows?
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How would they know what was going on inside then?
 
Ixabert said:
I was discussing the Holocaust with a holocaust denier on MSN a while ago.
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Are you sure it wasn't Mel Gibson, or his father Hutton?

"Hutton Gibson told the New York Times last year that the annihilation of six million Jews must be a hoax, since it would have taken too long for the Germans to cremate that many bodies. He added that many European Jews who were reportedly murdered by the Nazis in fact "fled to countries like Australia and the United States."

Mel Gibson had this to say about his father: "My dad taught me my faith and I believe what he taught me. The man never lied to me in his life" Asked by the interviewer if he believed the Holocaust had happened, the actor replied: "Yes, of course. Atrocities happen. War is horrible. World War Two killed tens of millions of people. Some of them were Jews in concentration camps. Many people lost their lives. In the Ukraine, several million starved to death between 1932 and 1933. During the last century, 20 million people died in the Soviet Union."

Mel Gibson may not have been denying the Holocaust, but he was certainly distorting and minimizing it. Instead of acknowledging that the Nazis carried out a deliberate strategy of genocide, he reduced the Jewish victims to the same kind of accidental and random casualties that take place in every war. In his view, the Jews were only "some" of the many people who died in World War Two.
Source

According to David Bernstein,

“Holocaust deniers, at least the sophisticated ones, don't deny that Jews were sent to concentration camps, and don't deny that Jews suffered during the war, and perhaps suffered a bit disproportionately because they were Jews. What they do deny was that the Germans singled out the Jews for genocide, that millions of Jews were murdered, and that Jews were sent to death camps, not simply to labor or concentration camps. Nothing that Gibson said was inconsistent with the views of a Holocaust denier, and, indeed, as I pointed out, his statement sounds a lot like the stated views of the editor of the Holocaust-denying Journal of Historical Review. This all may be innocent on Gibson's part, and, if someone would ask him directly, "do you believe that the Germans murdered approximately six million Jews during World War II" and he said "yes" I would leave it at that. But given that he grew up in an anti-Semitic family, with a Holocaust-denying father, and has now asserted views that are very much consistent with the views of a Holocaust-denier, I can't say that my presumptions are with him at this point.”

It’s interesting that Gibson makes a movie about a likely fictional character who lived 2,000 years ago but he has a hard time believing well documented events that took place only 60 years ago.
 
I once argued with a (non-hysterical) holocaust (disputer).

He was not a denier as he FULLY concurred that the Nazis slaughtered a lot of Jews and they systematically killed them too.

He honestly detested what they did he just disputed the numbers.

He showed me some camp figures and it seemed pretty compelling.

It showed that the camps operating at absolute maximum efficiency could have only killed about 2 million people.. that is if every train load went straight to the chambers.. and remember even in “Schindlers List” the women who went to Aucshwitz went into a real “shower”.. not a Gas Chamber !

I argued that weren’t a lot of the Jewish deaths on the Eastern front where whole villages of Jews were exterminated. He agreed that this could have accounted for many but if the 6 Million figure was attributed to death camps it was very inaccurate..

Any thoughts.. I found it very hard to dispute him..

Unfortunately I didn’t keep his figures but it went something like this.

. They did not start exterminations until 1943 (the final solution)
. They had 4-5 death camps which were dedicated to extermination
. They could kill and dispose of about 500-800 people per day.
. 6-700 days from 1943 to end of the war (cant remember the dates)

(4 x 500 x 600) min – (5 x 800 x 700) max
1.2 million (min) – 2.8 million (max).. average 2.0 million !

Believe me this is ONLY a sceptical exercise.. 1 innocent civilian killed for his race is an abomination (mind you any one killed is pretty sickening).

I did argue that the Rwandans managed to kill 2 million people in a short time recently… But they were not disposed off afterward. !
 
Well, Aussie, it could very well be that the Nazi's didn't kill 6 million, and only 2 million.. It doesn't really matter to me though, because the point is that they were trying to exterminate the entire race and culture. I mean, what does it really matter? Is the guy trying to say that the Nazi's weren't really all that bad because they only killed 2M and not 6?
 
Ken..

No it was purely an exercise in accuracy.

I think I made it clear.. both he and I detested what the Nazis did.. It was not an exercise in excusing them .. or even mitigating their culpability.. as I said even one death in this manner is sickening enough..

I see no difference in culpability from 2 m to 6 m… it did make me wonder where the 6 m figure did come from.. I think it must include the Eastern Front as I said.. I have heard figures from 15-20 million died there and there were large populations of Jews in Russia.
 
First off folks, 13 million people died in the Nzi death factories, they killed a lot of people, and people who don't want to believe it are fools, they killed three million in Cambodia and 800,00 in Rwanda without the indutiral complex.

A lot of people died at the death camps from starvation, exposure and typhus, they did not need to be gassed just burned. In fact death camp survivors describe how they could burn three of the emaciated bodies at a time because they were so small.

That doesn't even begin to encompass the scale of the death camps, they were actualy inefficient at killing people, but they were very good at slowly killing them. However they did manage to kill most of the Check jews as soon as they arrived at the camps.
I don't know where they cam up with the very silly figure of 500-800 per day, it is more like ten thousand on up for Oswecim, it has been a while since I read the figures but 500 is way low, that may be the number that died just from exposure.

They started killing the commies and the homosexuals in 1933, they did not wait to kill people until 1943, they started the process as soon as Hitler came to power. Even at Tiereshentat(sorry my spelling is incorrect) , the 'show' camp for the Red Cross and others they managed to kill 600,000 people. People who deny genocide are fools, it is a very old practise, just brought to fuition in the industrial age.

I really question why anyone would even pretend that the 'final solution' did not start in 1940, they are fools, it happened, there are plenty of people who witnessed it on both sides.

Do they dipute the number of German soldiers that died at Stalingrad? Do they dispute the numbers of German soldiers who were captured by the Red Army and never repatriated?
Fools. Very dangerous fools.

PS A quick google search yields these 'biased' historical sites.

http://www.auschwitz-muzeum.oswiecim.pl/html/eng/start/index.php
It was established by the Nazis in 1940,
Beginning in 1942, the camp became the site of the greatest mass murder in the history of humanity
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http://www.nizkor.org/faqs/auschwitz/
According to figures provided by the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, the overall number of victims of Auschwitz in the years 1940-1945 is estimated at between 1,100,000 and 1,500,000 people. The majority of them, and above all the mass transports of Jews who arrived beginning in 1942, died in the gas chambers. (Waclaw Dlugoborski and Franciszek Piper, Eds. Auschwitz 1940-1945. Central Issues in the History of the Camp. The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, 2000, 5 vols., 1799 pp., ISBN 83-85047-87-5)
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Ixabert,

Welcome to the board.

Arguing with a Holocaust denier is difficult as you are automatically handicapped in that you are trying to reason with a moron.

I try to be tolerant of the ignorant but this is a subject I find particularly repugnant. You may find this hard to believe but the atrocities of the Nazis continue to inflict suffering on the living. The events of over 50 years ago cause me pain on a weekly basis even though I was born ten years after the fact and thousands of miles away.

The source of both my pain and my unusually intimate relationship with these horrific events is my Father.

My father, a self-proclaimed dumb Oakie farm boy, did his duty like so many others in World War II. Trained in Oklahoma he was one of only a handful of his original Company to survive the war. He earned two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star and survived Sicily and Anzio and like so many others of his generation was witness to many things that no young person should ever have to see.

But like many others, after the war he was able to eventually adjust and put most of the horrors of what he saw behind him. All except one.

It happened toward the end of the war. He was not part of the invasion of Normandy but was fortunate to land in Southern France, a cakewalk according to him compared to Sicily and Anzio.

Though the fighting was light, compared to what had come before, it was not without danger and one day as they advanced in the woods they were met by a large number of people running at them. My father said it scared the hell out of them and they started to mow them down until the realized that they weren’t soldiers. They were concentration camp survivors. They had overpowered the skeleton SS troops that had been left behind to guard the camp and were making a break for it. They had stumbled upon Dachau.

Once the commanders realized what they had they received orders to seal the camp off and wait for a Colonel from the States to come and document what they had found. My father was assigned the duty of driving the jeep for the Colonel. That is how my father found himself a witness to one of the more horrific events of the century.

But there’s more. My father took photos all throughout the war and when he found himself in such an unbelievable position he asked the Colonel for permission to photograph what he saw. This was strictly against the Colonels orders but I suppose the Colonel understood my father’s need to prove what he had seen so he allowed it anyway.

So that’s what my father did. He pulled out his trusty Brownie and took roll after roll of the most hideous and gruesome photos you can imagine. Many are far worse than anything I’ve ever seen published. My family still possesses this grim gallery.

When he returned to his unit he told the rest of his comrades what he had seen and many did not believe him. This was very hurtful for him but understandable. There were a great number of rumors at that time and the story my father told seemed too far fetched, even for these battle hardened veterans and of course he did not have time to develop the film to show them the evidence.

In the years that followed, back in the States, my father, like so many others was able to, for the most part, put the war behind him and go on with his live.

That all changed about 10 years ago when he suffered a mild stroke. Shortly after he was diagnosed as having Alzheimer’s. As a result his memory began to erode. At first he was simply confused but as the illness progressed he lost more and more of his memory. Sometimes he knew who I was, now he never recognizes me.

This can be hard under the best of circumstances but he eventually reached a point that was especially hurtful. He once asked me if I had met ‘Marie’ (my mother). He no longer remembered me or my siblings or anything of our life together.

But he still remembered Dachau.

I remember visiting with him, making small talk as he had no idea who I was when he suddenly asked me if I believed him. At first I didn’t know what he meant and then I realized he was back at Dachau still trying to convince his buddies of what he saw.

I can think of no greater injustice than this kind and gentle man would in the last years of his life be slowly robbed of every sweet and tender memory and left only with these vile and inhuman images. I cannot deny that even though I know he loved me dearly, my 49 years as his son could not leave an impression on his consciousness as deep as that brief time he spent within the barbed wire fence of Dachau.

Now, mercifully I guess, he seems to have forgotten even about the war and I am grateful for that.

But when I hear some fool trying to deny what happened in those camps it takes every ounce of composure I can muster to keep from wringing their silly necks.

Sorry for the rant but I’m not sure how much longer my father is going to be around and once I started posting I couldn’t stop. I guess I just had to get it off my chest.

Unfortunately there will soon be no living eye-witnesses to these atrocities left alive.
 
David,

I didn’t mean to get emotive..

And I apologise if you think me questioning the numbers in ANY way mitigates the crime.

It is just that bodies are not that easy to dispose of …

In Both Cambodia where they killed over about 4 years and In Rwanda where they killed a lot very quickly we still had millions of bones etc…..

I feel guilty arguing about this as it seem to imply that I am somehow a holocaust denier… which couldn’t be further from the truth..

David.. its horrible maths do but the numbers don’t add up..

If you check the numbers of ovens and the time it took to cremate then the numbers of 800 per day actually seem high (even with 3 per oven).. bodies take a lot to cremate.

Blue Monk,

That is horrible about your Pop.. you almost wish he had never seen it.. denial might almost be better.

No one but an idiot denies that Nazis had a horrible death machine that exterminated almost every Jew they could get their hands on.
 
David, (addendum)

Actually using the numbers supplied from your site (and they seem pretty well researched).. Auschwitz/Birchenau alone could have exterminated over 2 million.

Figures I was shown EXCLUDED crematoria that were later razed and disputed wether they existed. ( I don’t doubt they existed !)

Maybe the guy I was arguing with did have a subtle agenda ??? Can’t work out what it was.. maybe to “lessen” the impact.. funny we both agreed in the end that most of the 6 million figure came from other more random extermination on the eastern Front.. so neither of us disputed the 6 million figure… just from death camps.

He was on another Board BTTS.. so I will try and track him down and give him these figures.
 
Aussie Thinker said:
I feel guilty arguing about this as it seem to imply that I am somehow a holocaust denier… which couldn’t be further from the truth..
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I don't think you should feel guilty about questioning the actual numbers involved as to me that exhibits critical thinking.

I think any informed person should understand that it will always be impossible to determine an accurate number. Some of the numbers commonly stated were arrived at after the war and in years to come there may be revisions.

It is a far different thing to speculate on the numbers involved which in most cases must be deduced indirectly from often incomplete and chaotic data as opposed to selective data mining to support a preconcieved political view.

While we may disagree on the actual numbers I think we all agree that it was considerable and that it really happened and that is a far cry from the nonsense spouted by the deniers.
 
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