General Holocaust denial discussion Part III

[EtienneSC]

General Admission and Apology
OK, I have slept on it, LemmyC is right. I need to step back. I spoke too readily against non-revisionist scholarship as a whole on the basis of an inadequate survey and second-hand knowledge/opinion. That was not appropriate.

My experience was that higher education offers researchers masters degrees, which are general surveys, and doctorates, where you look closely at a small area. So I had assumed that perhaps the doctoral students had accepted the general holocaust narrative too readily and simply embellished it with detail. Even if there is some truth in this, the amount of detail accumulated must by now have weight on its own. The background for me is that there was a period, from Chomsky's Holocaust mini-series in the 1970s to around the 1990s when Goldhagen's book was heavily promoted, when holocaust studies was used to promote negative views of western culture. Hence, it was inevitable that its claims would be looked at more critically by people from outside that field. You can't expect people to make decisions about the values they live by without looking at all the evidence.

Siegmund Rothstein

@ EtienneSC, will you be replying to the questions and concerns which Leo Major and I raised about Rudolf's use of Siegmund Rothstein, or do you prefer to let that lie?

It does not surprise me that there would be several people of the same name born in the same place. I have come across this myself with old birth/death records. Rudolf offers a weak argument for how the supposed same Rothstein would have had to travel from Treblinka to Minsk. It seems to be wishful thinking rather than a lie. I have nothing to add myself.

Reinecke

I need to remind you that YR Büchler's work on Taübner put all the revisionist speculation and wittering about that case to shame, in this very thread.

The point was that I had sought and not found a copy of the original 1943 judgment by Reinecke and only found a court copy from 1959. The smoking gun would something Reinecke published or signed. I did identify that the original SS records are held in Berlin and asked if anyone had written on them in general, as opposed to this single document. No reply as yet.

Hilberg

Can you show that Browning's book, or any of the two others you're familiar with, is structured like this? (i.e. asking "how" instead of first asking "whether")

Faurisson showed this in the case of Hilberg when he had him cross-questioned here by Douglas Christie.

Christie indicated that he wanted a simple answer to his question so that he as a simple person might understand it. I asked you if your method was to find out how it happened, said Christie, not why it happened. Do you agree?

"That's correct," said Hilberg.

I asked you if you ever made an effort to determine if 6 million really died and your answer was you made an initial determination of what happened on the basis of a cursory examination of the available data. Right?, asked Christie.

"That, in order to decide for myself, and myself only, whether to invest my time, and as it turns out my life, in this project...Who would want to spend a lifetime in the study of something that did not happen?, " said Hilberg. He confirmed that he "made an initial determination" that 6 million died: "It would be called a presumption. That is rather rebuttable. It could be destroyed. It could be abandoned upon the finding of contrary evidence." (4-769)

 

[EtienneSC]

Fleming

Anyway, in Fleming's book are at least 33 important reports/sources most of them unknown to EtienneSC because he relies on revisionist glosses on scholarship

That assumes that revisionists have not discussed these reports. They have.

 

[LemmyCaution]

Page reference to Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners (1996) is pages 249-50. Goldhagen cites a book by Hoffmann, not Browning, as I wrongly assumed.

I cannot find anything related to your post on pp 249-250 of the 1997 paperback edition of Goldhagen’s book (I don’t have the 1996 edition); however, on pp 380-381 we can read Goldenhagen’s discussion of Ohlendorf’s testimony about superior orders, which is in line with recent scholarship about the possibility of members of the Einsatzgruppen opting out.

However, I think you’ve confused apples with oranges - or Pollack has. Because Goldhagen wasn’t exactly clear. Goldhagen quotes Ohlendorf’s 1947 NMT testimony about men he deemed unable or unsuitable for the killing duty on account of their mental state - not about men refusing duty, which was the situation you say Pollack addressed ("Ohlendorf admitted to ordering those who refused to take part in liquidations shot”). Evading orders, by request or refusal, would be apples to the oranges of Ohlendorf’s reference to men deemed unsuitable for the killing duty and excused by the command.

The exact wording of Ohlendorf’s 1947 testimony quoted by Goldhagen doesn’t say what your gloss on Pollack says:

I had sufficient occasion to see how many men of my Gruppe did not agree with this order in their inner opinion. Thus, I forbade the participation in these executions on the part of some of these men and I sent some back to Germany.

Goldhagen also cites the testimony of one of the members of Einsatzgruppe D to the effect that the men in the unit knew that those “unfit for the performance of such tasks” would be “released.” Goldhagen’s point here is that men could find a way out of duty and Ohlendorf’s testimony on unfitness is just one of the examples he gives.

Ohlendorf’s 1947 testimony is in line with his earlier IMT testimony (1946) in which he discussed both

- cases of unfitness for duty (“I excluded some whom I did not consider emotionally suitable for executing these tasks and I sent some of them home”), and
- cases of attempts to evade or opt out of the duty (“the result would have been a court martial with a corresponding sentence”)

Despite Ohlendorf’s testimony on this, scholars agree that the search for any such cases (death penalty for refusal to participate in the killing operations) has proven fruitless. In its judgment, in fact, the NMT already stated (NMT, Green Series, vol IV, p 482) that

Ohlendorf himself 'could have got out of his execution assignment by refusing cooperation with the army. He testified that the Chief of Staff in the field said to him that if he, Ohlendorf, did not co* operate, he would ask for his dismissal in Berlin.

I don’t have Pollack’s book, so I don’t know what he wrote. Nor do I get your point: if it is that different writers like Pollack and Goldhagen will interpret testimony and events differently, meh; if it is that Ohlendorf may have made some untrue and/or some contradictory statements, meh. I mean, in 1946 Ohlendorf was trying to prove his value to the allies, whilst in 1947 the man’s life hung in the balance.

As an aside, during his NMT examination Ohlendorf further testified (p 249), in line with the superior orders defense many of the defendants in the NMT trial tried using, as follows ( ):

The men of my group who are under indictment here were under my military command. If they had not executed the orders which they were given, they would have been ordered by me to execute them. If they had refused to execute the orders they would have had to be 'called to account for it by me. There could be no doubt about it. Whoever refused anything in the front lines would have met immediate death. If the refusal would have come about in any other way, a court martial of the Higher SS and Police Leader would have brought about the same con* sequences. The jurisdiction of courts martial was great, but the sentences of the SS were gruesome. The orders for the execu* tion in the past given in Pretzsch went to all Einsatzgruppen commanders or Einsatzkommando leaders who went along during the beginning of the Russian campaign. They were never revoked. Thus they were valid for the entire Russian campaign as long as there were Einsatzgruppen. Thus it was, therefore, unneces* sary at any time to give another order of initiative and I did not give any individual order to kill people.

Perhaps Pollack was referring to this passage. I don’t know - and I still don’t know what point you tried making.

 

[LemmyCaution]

Faurisson showed this in the case of Hilberg when he had him cross-questioned here by Douglas Christie.

This does not support your contention. Here, Hilberg says that he did preliminary research to "scope" the topic he wanted to study and carry out an "initial determination." Moving through a topic with tentative ideas about it is hardly unusual and hardly evidence of what you claimed, namely that historians proceed like this:

Holocaust narratives are more like: "These people were so bad you wouldn't believe it and deserved what they got. Don't be like them! This is the best documented genocide ever." "OK, about these footnotes, where are the documents?" "The Germans destroyed them. That's how cunning they were." "That's not what you said at first...(turns to Germar Rudolf)"

In fact, Hilberg's three volumes, as I've written a number of times, are based squarely on the German documents your claim says that Holocaust narratives are not based on.

But worse for your contention, the IHR article itself disproves your claim when it says,

He [Hilberg] confirmed that he 'made an initial determination' that 6 million died: 'It would be called a presumption. That is rather rebuttable. It could be destroyed. It could be abandoned upon the finding of contrary evidence."

So even your IHR piece acknowledges, at least in this verbiage, that Hilberg was open to his initial determination being rebutted.

In fact, again contrary to your implication, Hilberg did not end up concluding that 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust, his initial determination, but rather, after further study and evaluation of the archives, he concluded that about 5.1 million Jews had perished.

This is a huge own goal for you. The only example you could come up with says the opposite to what you claimed.

 

[LemmyCaution]

Fleming

That assumes that revisionists have not discussed these reports. They have.

No, it doesn't assume that at all. It simply informs you that there is voluminous documentary evidence where you keep acting like there's almost none. Also, Fleming goes well beyond what Evans has written on the reports from Poland and their reception in Britain.

 

[LemmyCaution]

Siegmund Rothstein

It does not surprise me that there would be several people of the same name born in the same place. I have come across this myself with old birth/death records. Rudolf offers a weak argument for how the supposed same Rothstein would have had to travel from Treblinka to Minsk. It seems to be wishful thinking rather than a lie. I have nothing to add myself.

A correction, in the interest of accuracy. Rudolf's "weak argument" - and it is worse than weak, it is false - isn't on account of multiple individuals with the same name. Rather, as I posted above,

... there are 4 records at YV for Siegmund (Zigmund) Rothstein from Kitzingen (Mainfranken), born there in 1867. It would be beyond strange indeed if there were 4 people with that name born in 1867 in the same place. (One of Siegmund's nephews was named Siegfried Rothstein and was deported from Mainfranken but to Izbica, probably perishing in Bełzec or Sobibór, not to Theresienstadt or Minsk.)

Rudolf dishonestly linked the 4 records with conflicting information for this man, Siegmund (Zigmund) Rothstein, to create a false itinerary in service of his dishonest "thesis" about resettlement. He knew what he was doing, and he did it to falsify the history. You may not call that a lie; but it is a lie.

 

[Ivanesca]

Fleming

That assumes that revisionists have not discussed these reports. They have.

No, it doesn't assume that at all. It simply informs you that there is voluminous documentary evidence where you keep acting like there's almost none. Also, Fleming goes well beyond what Evans has written on the reports from Poland and their reception in Britain.

[/QUOTE]

Both the authors of EtienneSC's nonsense missed the point of Cavendish's statements, much like EtienneSC himself did months ago. As he had been told before, Cavendish cast doubt on the claim that Poles were being systematically put to death in gas chambers. He is quoted as saying such in the spam, and much more besides.

I do not believe that there is any evidence which would be
accepted in a Law Court that Polish children have been killed on the
spot by Germans when their parents were being deported to work in
9 Roger Allen to Victor Cavendish-Bentinck, 27th August 1943, FO 371/34551
Page 5 of 18
Germany, nor that Polish children have been sold to German settlers.
As regards putting Poles to death in gas chambers, I do not believe
that there is any evidence that this has been done. There have been
many stories to this effect, and we have played them up in PWE
rumours without believing that they had any foundation. At any rate
there is far less evidence than exists for the mass murder of Polish
officers by the Russians at Katyn. On the other hand we do know that
the Germans are out to destroy Jews of any age unless they are fit for
manual labour.

The Spam And Cavendish's statements and actions really don't lend credence to the claim that the British "Fabricated" the evidence for the Holocaust. It actually shows the opposite

The words “where they are now being systematically put to death in gas
chambers” were removed from the statement before it was published
simultaneously in London and Washington.1

Far from fabricating "atrocity stories" as the authors claim, it now seems as if the Allied Governments avoided using "atrocity stories" because of the Antisemitism within their own intelligence agencies. The spam wastes a lot of time talking about and trying to prove an imaginary "hoax", but instead, what it actually does is disprove the "hoax" by showing how intelligence agencies doubted the reports coming from occupied Europe and acted on these doubts by editing their propaganda accordingly. Fail.

 

[LemmyCaution]

Ivanesca, your patience exceeds mine great detail - I will add that Fleming's argument is very much in line with what you say about the doubt and suppression of reports coming from Poland, for a variety of reasons within the British government - but the reports remain sources to be dealt with and explained . . .

 

[LemmyCaution]

Siegmund Rothstein

It does not surprise me that there would be several people of the same name born in the same place. I have come across this myself with old birth/death records. . . .

To make this clearer to you than I did before, I searched for population data for Kitzingen, where Rothstein was born. The Jewish population of Kitzingen in 1880 was 337. Yet you imagine, to help Rudolf wriggle out of his lie, that he made an honest mistake, leavened with wishful thinking, that 4 males with the same name were born there in 1867. Seriously?

 

[Ivanesca]

Moreon EtienneSC's painful ignorance and assumptions vis a vis British wartime intelligence on the Holocaust.

Dr. Jonathan Harrison of Holocaust Controversies was kind enough to share the interrogation protocol of one Robert Barth, an SS officer captured by the British in 1943.

Barth described the formation of the Einsatzgruppen in May 1941 and their tasks—fighting partisans and Communism and carrying out general intelligence duties. He admitted that commissars and leading Communists were arrested and shot but misleadingly claimed that the Order Police (“Schupos”) and Waffen-SS did the shooting. (They did, but the Einsatzgruppen did even more.) Barth revealed that Jews were almost invariably shot and in later stages gassed. He then discussed the 1943 activities of Einsatzgruppe E [sic] in Serbia and Croatia [see note 60].

The sequence and emphasis of Barth's testimony is noteworthy. He describes and moreover defends or justifies the Einsatzgruppen's policies by saying that their main task was "fighting partisans, communists, and carrying out intelligence duties". He acknowledges that they killed and gassed Jews, but his recollection almost downplays these atrocities by describing them as an afterthought. Such self justifying testimony hardly corresponds to what EtienneSC calls "fabrication" or "propaganda", or telling EtienneSC's fantasy British forgers "what they wanted to hear". Based on his statements, particularly the self justifications, it sounded more like Barth was telling his interrogators what he knew, and he was trying to defend the Einsatzgruppen by downplaying their atrocities against Jews and instead showing how useful they were against communists. This was a man putting his own spin on events that actually happened, and neither "coached" nor "fabricates" in the interests of "Propaganda". The British "hoax" never happened. The authors of EtienneSC's spam are liars, just like the one who shared the spam in the first place.

 

[Ivanesca]

Moreon EtienneSC's painful ignorance and assumptions vis a vis British wartime intelligence on the Holocaust.

Dr. Jonathan Harrison of Holocaust Controversies was kind enough to share the interrogation protocol of one Robert Barth, an SS officer captured by the British in 1943.



The sequence and emphasis of Barth's testimony is noteworthy. He describes and moreover defends or justifies the Einsatzgruppen's policies by saying that their main task was "fighting partisans, communists, and carrying out intelligence duties". He acknowledges that they killed and gassed Jews, but his recollection almost downplays these atrocities by describing them as an afterthought. Such self justifying testimony hardly corresponds to what EtienneSC calls "fabrication" or "propaganda", or telling EtienneSC's fantasy British forgers "what they wanted to hear". Based on his statements, particularly the self justifications, it sounded more like Barth was telling his interrogators what he knew, and he was trying to defend the Einsatzgruppen by downplaying their atrocities against Jews and instead showing how useful they were against communists. This was a man putting his own spin on events that actually happened, and neither "coached" nor "fabricates" in the interests of "Propaganda". The British "hoax" never happened. The authors of EtienneSC's spam are liars, just like the one who shared the spam in the first place.

I recant this post, as my interpretation of Barth's testimony was incorrect. The Black Rabbit of Inle (a self admitted ex denier) pointed out to me that Barth was a known anti-nazi.

That said, Barth's statement and his questioning at British hands still.don't support the notion of a "British Hoax". The Black Rabbit shared some of the directives/guidelines followed by the British interrogators. These guidelines did not contain any directive to ask about Gas vans, and the interrogators actually mentioned that Barth volunteered his information before any such questions were asked, or questionnaires provided. The information in the interrogation summary shows us exactly what the British needed and expected from such interrogations: Military intelligence. Thus, the interrogation summary emphasizes the limited intelligence contacts the Einsatzgruppen had with the Abwehr.

fotos.fotoflexer.com/794d2e7bec1ce6cb537335673eada11e.jpg

ETA: Barth was a self admitted Anti Nazi who willingly surrendered and, the actual interrogation transcripts may indicate that he had a lot to say about gassings and other atrocities. But, it's worth noting that the summary prepared by the British instead focuses on the bits of Barth's statements relating to military intelligence, while relegating his statements about the killings of the Jews to an afterthought. The significance of this was not that Barth downplayed the Einsatzgruppen's atrocities and played up their counter-insurgency functions, as I previously thought. It was that the British Did Not Care about such atrocities and were more interested in military intelligence. No "coaxing", "fabrication" or "fishing".

Close, but no cigar. The British did not need to "prod" or "coax" anyone into providing information about atrocities against Jews. Their interrogation practices make it clear that was not their aim or agenda. No British "hoax"

 

[Jeffk 1970]

Looks like it's pretty quiet over here, same at Skeptics.

 

[A'isha]

Looks like it's pretty quiet over here, same at Skeptics.

It tends to come and go in cycles. There are bursts and a flurry of denier activity, then long periods of quiet, then it starts up again.

 

[KDLarsen]

An interesting new archive is about to be opened to the public (or so it sounds anyway), namely that of the United Nations War Crimes Commission: https://www.theguardian.com/law/2017/apr/18/opening-un-holocaust-files-archive-war-crimes-commission

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

The movie, Denial, was excellent.

 

[Pacal]

I'm glad that this thread is quiet. Holocaust denial is a truly sick topic that brings out the very worst in people. (In this case it is the deniers.) The amount of sheer hateful ugliness is breath taking.

The other thing it brings out is sophistical arguments and idiotic nit-picking from the deniers. That are frankly exhausting to refute. And what is impressively bad is how deniers over and over again get people on the defensive in terms of having to falsify their idiotic points. It is reverse the onus stuff. Sorry but the onus is on the deniers and people should not let them get away with reversing the onus.

Before this thread became quiet again we were treated from a person using the just asking questions gambit to a variation of the argument from incredulity. In this case it was that given his understanding of "Human Nature" that the descriptions of the behavior of Germans didn't ring true to "Human Nature". Actually this person struck me has being disingenuous and / or naïve. Any reading of history will show that humans are capable of truly bestial behavior towards their fellow man. May I suggest has a start Bartolome de Las Casas's A Short History on the Destruction of the Indies.

 

[Ivanesca]

I'm glad that this thread is quiet. Holocaust denial is a truly sick topic that brings out the very worst in people. (In this case it is the deniers.) The amount of sheer hateful ugliness is breath taking.

The other thing it brings out is sophistical arguments and idiotic nit-picking from the deniers. That are frankly exhausting to refute. And what is impressively bad is how deniers over and over again get people on the defensive in terms of having to falsify their idiotic points. It is reverse the onus stuff. Sorry but the onus is on the deniers and people should not let them get away with reversing the onus.

Before this thread became quiet again we were treated from a person using the just asking questions gambit to a variation of the argument from incredulity. In this case it was that given his understanding of "Human Nature" that the descriptions of the behavior of Germans didn't ring true to "Human Nature". Actually this person struck me has being disingenuous and / or naïve. Any reading of history will show that humans are capable of truly bestial behavior towards their fellow man. May I suggest has a start Bartolome de Las Casas's A Short History on the Destruction of the Indies.

Disingenuous indeed. That same person repeatedly ignored or dismissed the actual literature on the subject of perpetrator motivation. What's even more disingenuous is that he had been told about this years ago, and yet he waited for things to die down before repeating the same debunked "arguments" all over again.

Deniers are, to a man, liars.

 

[Saggy]

Hey, let's revive the thread .... I've discovered a couple of web sites with new info, and a couple or 3 vids ..... all of which decimate the hoax ....

Web sites
http://www.holohoax101.org 50+ proofs of the hoax
www.antisemitism101.com for context

Vids
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acPfPG457cw Begins 'The holocaust is a preposterous hoax based on literally millions of lies, but it all rests on one big lie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RddqP0ABzwM Did you know that the US bombed Nordhausen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuAAjrbbBiM The Treblinka archaeology hoax .... another classic from E. Hunt

And, how about a trick question - how many bombs did the US drop on the Muslims last year, and what is the connection to the holohoax ?

 

[Saggy]

This is a vid made by Irving in 1994 about his confrontation with Lipstadt at the lecture that is, needless to say, falsely fictionalized in the movie ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyeSdtEiEk8

Also, just for laughs, here is an article by Lipstadt where she reports that the figure of 11 million total holohoax vicitms was made up out of thin air by Simon Wiesenthal ...

https://web.archive.org/web/2013022...ahoo.com/group/ReportersNotebook/message/5556

Plus a couple of remarkable vids by Irving ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_S7BrcH-6Yw when the hoax was reported by H. Morgenthau and the US govt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNnSnpt7Xzg Churchill as an art forger, Zionist agent

 

[Jeffk 1970]

Hey, let's revive the thread .... I've discovered a couple of web sites with new info, and a couple or 3 vids ..... all of which decimate the hoax ....

Web sites
http://www.holohoax101.org 50+ proofs of the hoax
www.antisemitism101.com for context

Vids
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acPfPG457cw Begins 'The holocaust is a preposterous hoax based on literally millions of lies, but it all rests on one big lie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RddqP0ABzwM Did you know that the US bombed Nordhausen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuAAjrbbBiM The Treblinka archaeology hoax .... another classic from E. Hunt

And, how about a trick question - how many bombs did the US drop on the Muslims last year, and what is the connection to the holohoax ?

LOL

You are behind the times, Saggy. Hunt's no longer a denier.