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Merged General Holocaust denial discussion thread

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The Ghetto Slaughters in Stolin, Rubel, and David-Horodok through the eyes of a survivor 1

More garbage.

Where are the tens of thousands of testimonies?
 
Where are the tens of thousands of testimonies?

How exactly do dead people give testimony?

I suppose this means that the dead soldiers who fell during, say, the Tet Offensive didn't really die because we don't have their testimony?
 
The Ghetto Slaughters in Stolin, Rubel, and David-Horodok through the eyes of a survivor 1

More garbage.

Where are the tens of thousands of testimonies?
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Keep running from your first "proof".

BTW, that CITATION is http://www.holocaust-history.org/short-essays/michael-nosanchuk.shtml.

Now, what, exactly, is printed there, is a lie?

Or is this more of your idiotic "averring by omission"

BTW: Assertion: 1. a positive statement or declaration, often without support or reason: a mere assertion; an unwarranted assertion

Evidence: that which tends to prove or disprove something; ground for belief; proof.

Do you see the difference now, or shall I use smaller words?


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The Ghetto Slaughters in Stolin, Rubel, and David-Horodok through the eyes of a survivor 1

More garbage.

Where are the tens of thousands of testimonies?
Well, ANTPogo's post was very good and very helpful to the discussion, such as it is.

This point made by ANTPogo is very pertinent: "Eckstein told the court that the orders were legal because of Hitler's decisions, and that he felt the orders were binding and that there was no way to avoid carrying out those orders. His former superior, defendant Johann Josef Kuhr, was the one who received the lightest sentence among the six men found guilty, of just 2 1/2 years (the prosecution had asked for 8 years)."

In the NMT Einsatzgruppen trial, many of the defendants testified. And they also used the defense of superior orders. They also argued the danger of Communism, the need to deal with partisans, war-time necessity, and so on.

There is a common theme behind these arguments, right? Guess what? The common theme is the nearly complete acceptance by the defendants that the mass slaughters took place (and also the concession by many of these defendants that they themselves were involved in the mass killings). In other words, many of these men didn't deny the killings; many of these men testified to the killings, estimated the numbers killed, and described the killings; and, finally, many of these men tried to rationalize the killings.

Guess what again? These self-confessed killers of the Einsatzgruppen were treated, in the end, lightly by "the system," by and large. The convictions of these 22 men were for 1 million unlawful killings. Of these victims, 95% were Jews. The result: 14 sentenced to death, 2 given life terms, 3 got 25 year prison terms, 2 given 10 year terms, and 1 released on time served. What happened in the end? 4 of the men sentenced to death received their just punishment and were actually executed; 1 convicted murderer was released at the conclusion of the trial; and between 1951 and 1958, 17 of these convicted mass murderers were released from prison through clemency or by parole.
 
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LC, did any of the defendants flat out deny that mass shootings of Jews took place, or did they merely deny their participation or specific knowledge of the shootings?
 
LC, did any of the defendants flat out deny that mass shootings of Jews took place, or did they merely deny their participation or specific knowledge of the shootings?
According to Hilary Earl, there were five lines of defense:

1) superior orders (that is, the killings occurred and the defendant was involved, based on orders from on high)
2) military necessity (putative justification) (the killings occurred but were legal as acts of self-defense during wartime)
3) personal necessity (the defendant carried out the killings but did so to avoid punishment for not doing so)
4) legal killings (the killings took place and were carried out because the victims had committed crimes deserving of execution)
5) powerlessness (essentially this argument was that the defendant participated in the killings because to oppose them would be futile, since someone else would carry out the killings)

Some other highlights (defendant testimony):

- Blume argued that the killings he had to carry out were distasteful, and he focused on the brutalizing effect of the killings on those who carried them out (not the effect on the victims!).

- Braune, like Ohlendorf, said he led a command that had killed 10s of 1000s, admitting that the murders took place under his responsibility - yet he also pointed the finger at Hitler (conveniently dead), Himmler (dead), and Ohlendorf.

- Naumann argued that he didn't kill anyone personally and that, while men under his command did so, these killings were part of security operations against partisans and thus justified.

- Naumann also tried arguing that because the orders to commit mass murder preceded his tour of duty, he could not be implicated in them.

- Jost blamed superior orders, along with the threat of punishment for disobedience, and tried to paint himself as morally upset by what the order had required him to do.

- Sandberger tried arguing that, on account of the nature of the tasks required, that is, mass murder, he tried to get out of his EG assignment.

- Blobel mounted a line of defense that said the numbers of his victims were exaggerated - 10-15,000 rather than 60,000; Blobel also claimed to have been ill during much of the period.

- Ohlendorf was one of the architects of the so-called Hitler order: he argued that the order was immoral, yet he was bound to carry it out. Ohlendorf had given statements during his interrogation, starting as early as August 1945, and testified at the IMT (Major War Criminals trial) consistently with the contents of the Ereignismeldungen, which had not yet been analyzed by the Allies. To cite two specifics, Ohlendorf gave detailed information to the British in September on the massacres at Nikolajev and Simferopol. And, in later interrogations by the Americans, Ohlendorf gave a rationale for these killings consistent with his later testimony (that the killings were legal and done under superior orders). During this time, that is, before the prosecution was familiar with the contents of the reports, Ohlendorf gave a figure of 90,000 killings for EG-D. Also, Ohlendorf's defense at the NMT boiled down to (1) Ohlendorf had directed civilian executions in the USSR but only perhaps as many as half the civilians were killed as he was charged with, (2) the executions were justified because of a state of emergency arising from the war and the need to defend the Reich from the Soviets, (3) military orders given to Ohlendorf required him to direct the execution operations, and (4) the Jews were not killed as part of a genocide but rather in antipartisan operations because Ohlendorf considered Jews to be the embodiment of Bolshevism. Ohlendorf was free to offer a defense in line with his life beliefs, or not; free to challenge the EG Reports, or not; free to deny his earlier statements, or not; free to deny the killings, or not. What he chose, with counsel, to do was to admit mass killings and then to defend himself in line with his view of the world, his earlier statements, his acknowledgments of the executions, and his justifications for them.

There were two or three "deniers" among the defendants, including Nosske, who maintained innocence until the final day of questioning from the judge, when he, according to Earl, "begrudgingly succumbed . . . . and admitted that his unit 'might be' responsible for the murder of as many as 244 people." Haensch played Sgt Schultz, his memory had failed, and he knew nothing. 


All in all, a disgusting display. The travesty of justice in this case, contra the bizarre inversions which deniers attempt, was the leniency afforded these mass murderers.
 
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But none of the defendants got up there and said, "The Nazis never shot nobody never"?
 
But none of the defendants got up there and said, "The Nazis never shot nobody never"?
As far as I know, Nosske disclaimed responsibility - arguing that his squad hadn't committed murders - and Haensch said he knew nothing about the EG murders. There was evidence against both men, of course; the others, with so much evidence against them, made arguments as to why they should not be convicted for murder even while admitting to the mass killings.
 
Questioned on why the Romanians were driving Jews from Transnistria into Soviet territory occupied by Germany, Nosske said, "So we could shoot them."

I wouldn't call that denying shootings.

Haensch claimed that the entire time he served in the USSR, he never encountered a single Jew, which sort of strains credulity.

I'd say that's lying.
 
It should also be borne in mind that of all the NMT trials, the Einsatzgruppen is the best known for having the greatest leeway allowed to the defendants in terms of their defense — with Justice Musmanno famously allowing the "penguin defense":

The defense can introduce any evidence short of describing the lives of the penguins in the Antarctic and, if the defense can convince me the habits of the penguins are relevant evidence to the case, then the lives and times of those white-fronted creatures can also be admitted as evidence.

In other words, the trial was notoriously fair.
 
Questioned on why the Romanians were driving Jews from Transnistria into Soviet territory occupied by Germany, Nosske said, "So we could shoot them."

I wouldn't call that denying shootings.

Haensch claimed that the entire time he served in the USSR, he never encountered a single Jew, which sort of strains credulity.

I'd say that's lying.
Both were dissembling, according to Earl. The evidence against these two was as overwhelming as the evidence against all the rest. I haven't read the testimony of those two, only Earl's summary of it. Some of the testimony, like Ohlendorf's of course, makes fascinating reading. Admitting the murders, they give multiple reasons for why they themselves shouldn't be found guilty of criminal behavior. But nearly all of it proceeds from the accepted core fact that mass murders were carried out by their commands.

Three other points about the silly arguments deniers make need to be stated:

1) Deniers try to make out that postwar convictions for the killings of Jews, and even historical works, rely on iffy and sometimes forced confessions and testimony. In the Einsatzgruppen case, we have Ohlendorf offering incriminating information to his captors before a prosecution was even being prepared. In the trial itself, IIRC the prosecution, far from being reliant on testimony and forced confessions and the rest, called 2 witnesses, to validate the EG reports. The prosecution's case relied on written documents, and made no use of confessions, defendant testimony, etc. It was the defendants themselves who chose to testify and testified in a manner that they felt would give them the best chance of acquittal. Given that nearly every one of them conceded mass murder, the denier forced confessions canard is somewhat beaten up by this trial.

2) Again to the point of fairness, yes. The head judge in the EG case bent over backwards, with the famous Penguin Rule and so on, to admit any and all possibly exculpatory evidence on behalf of the defendants. He himself examined the defendants to elicit their rationale and arguments. Musmanno's anticommunist credentials were as strong, as well, as those of the defendants, and nonetheless the court didn't accept, or fall for, the argument that the victims were Bolsheviks and thus had to be dealt with. Musmanno was a strong opponent of the death penalty and took a somewhat counterintuitive stance on imposing it: the 14 (of 22) defendants whom he sentenced to death all admitted their part in the execution program, their commanding of execution actions, and large numbers of victims. Musmanno, whose opposition to the death penalty centered on the impossibility of remedying a mistaken conviction after an execution, seems to have settled on death where defendants most freely admitted their actions and conducted the larger killing operations. That a committed opponent of the death penalty saw fit to impose it in this case, I think, speaks to the magnitude of the crimes, this being, for Musmanno, the exception that proved the rule.

3) The postwar clemency and parole actions took place during the Cold War and had much to do with public opinion in Germany and nothing to do with the facts of the case itself. In fact, the rules around the clemency proceedings specifically said that the facts of the case were not to be reassessed in deciding on leniency. The point is that the releases were not based on anyone's doubting the killings or the roles of the convicted murderers but were based in other reasons.
 
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So, in the end, on the issue of the Einsatzgruppen, the "best" (all things being relative) argument they can go with is a lack of mass graves. But, of course, there are multiple mass graves, and they appear in places where the NKVD is not known to have conducted mass executions, as with Vinnitsya, e.g.

Thus, we return to a point made months ago, which is this: Knowing that the Nazis shot thousands of innocent Jews on the Eastern front, what exactly would have kept the Nazis from killing them in the camp system as well?

And, then, given that we have documents, testimony, and forensics proving both gas chambers and mass casualties at the death camps, what left do the deniers have on which they can rely to make their case?

Because if the answer is "our shared incredulity," then who exactly is still buying that one?
 
Particularly since we can trace the evolution of methods other than pit or open-air shootings to some extent from within the progress of (and fall-out from) the open-air shootings themselves.

The two "tranches" are interconnected, the gas "solution" developed from within the shooting "solution," to address problems and issues (notoriously, the psychological impact of the mass shootings on the killers themselves; also the public nature of the open-air actions) with the shooting program.

Importantly, the open-air shootings did not stop but continued as an extermination methodology supplemented by fixed-site extermination.

Experiments (gas vans in a few places) and local methodologies (Chelmno, AR camps, Birkenau) were explored and eventually settled upon. Why gassing? Because of feasability reasons. Promoting in fact feasibility studies by the SS. And adoption of a range of unimproved and improved methods for extermination.

Why would it be difficult to understand that the SS tried to improve killing methods, once it is understood that messy, semi-public, psychologically difficult methods were used to killed 100s of 1000s across a wide range of sites and over many months? The argument from incredulity can be turned on its head - why would the SS not improve their methods?
 
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Indeed. And, to reiterate another point from months ago, few deniers bother to deny the T4 euthanasia program, from which the idea of gassing as a method primarily arose. Once you accept that part of the development of Nazi "medical" policy, it's not exactly a quantum leap to applying those methods to the Jewish question.

To summarize, once you accept mass shootings on the Eastern Front and once you accept the T4 program for euthanasia, both of which are supported not only by testimony but very importantly by documents and by forensic examination, why would you deny the use of gas to kill Jews? It's utterly counterintuitive, not to mention that it negates the equal, if not greater, amount of evidence that supports the use of poison gas at the AR camps, Chelmno, Majdanek, and Auschwitz-Birkenau, not to mention Stutthof, where (contrary to what many would claim) there were even autopsies performed on gassing victims.

Nevermind all of this. Some of our denier set here will gladly accept (as will I and, I think, you) that the NKVD and Red Army slaughtered millions in the USSR. However, they will accept that point with perhaps 1% of the evidence readily available for the Holocaust.
 
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Exactly. We all "accept" a lot from history without as much evidence as we have for the Holocaust. We have good evidence for these events, as you mention, but not as much as we have for T-4, the open-air shootings, and the death camps. So, then, of course, deniers create special hierarchies of evidence types designed especially, well, to deny the Holocaust in particular, for their own ideological and other reasons. Evidence types from which conclusions are drawn in other cases, thus, are devalued and even discarded for the Holocaust. As the "trap" closes, we end up hearing about Moscow Forgery Factories and more and more absurdities - along with out and out know-nothingism.
 
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Do you see the difference now, or shall I use smaller words?


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Where are the tens of thousands of testimonies?

They certainly are not readily available.

Your site is little more than a defensive smokescreen against the truth.
 
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You could start here;

http://www.library.yale.edu/testimonies/

And google will find you many more.

It's a common misconception that there are thousands or even tens of thousands of credible Jewish eyewitness accounts of the holohoax.

In fact there are none, and I recently challenged the resident hoax scholar, Nick Terry, to name just one. He demurred, and instead produced a list of 200 names that included Rudolf Hoess (not Jewish) and Elie Wiesel (who doesn't mention gas chambers in his account of his stay at Auschwitz).

The director of Yad Vashem, Yehuda Bauer, is thouroughly versed in the hoax, and he writes in the preface to 'Three Years in the Gas Chambers, and All I Got was this Lousy T-Shirt' by Filip Meuller - "This is an account of the only man who saw the Jewish people die and lived to tell about it."

So, according to Bauer there is only one credible Jewish eyewitness. Now, read the first few pages of Meuller's book, and you'll see what an obvious and pathetic liar Meuller is.

So, there was one, but he is an obvious fraud. That leaves none. There is not a single credible Jewish eyewitness to the holohoax.
 
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Your ignorance, incredulity, and dishonesty are not reasons to to dismiss a historical event, sag.
 
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Where are the tens of thousands of testimonies?

They certainly are not readily available.

Your site is little more than a defensive smokescreen against the truth.
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What tens of thousands of testimonies are promised by THHP? Please post a direct link to this promise.

Or don't you remember that this is your claim?

You know, the one you offered proof of be referring to a page you didn't even bother to try to say anything was a lie, hoping no one would notice?

And, it is obvious that you have no proof that THHP offers anything but the truth.

It is equally obvious to anyone not blinded by hate that you have no such proof, because none such exists.

Which makes *you* the very degenerate liar you decry.

*That* is the truth you deny. How does it feel to be so emotionally invested in a lie?
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