Merged General Holocaust denial discussion thread

[Dogzilla]

Just a few, a small unrepresentative sample of what some Nazi politicos were talking about and thinking about during the war years:

Robert Ley, from The Pestilential Miasma of the World, 1944:

Robert Ley in February 1942, at the Berlin Sportpalast:

Robert Ley, in Der Angriff for 14 June 1942:

Robert Ley in Das Reich, 6 June 1942:

Robert Ley, 2 June 1943:

Robert Ley, quoted in Jeffrey Herf, The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust (The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2006), p. 155:

Okay, enough from Ley. But, first, was he rebuked for these statements? Was he kicked out of the party or told to shut his mouth?

Now just a few from some other Nazi bigwigs . . .

Hans Frank on 25 November 1940:

Ludwig Fischer, governor of the Warsaw district, October 1941:

A personal favorite, from Dr Bruno Beger, of Himmler's Ahnenerbe, memo to Himmler, summer 1943:

So what? There are so many such statements . . . Did Dogzilla truly think there weren't when he challenged, "How many statements do you have from German politicians, as opposed to German military leaders, talking about exterminating the Jewish people?"

I didn't think it would be difficult to answer my challenge. My challenge was in response to Nick when said my sample of quotes from US military and political leaders openly discussing the extermination of the Japanese was a sample of quotes mainly from the military. He tried to pretend that exterminationist rhetoric from the US military isn't the same as exterminationist rhetoric from US politicians and thus cannot be compared to the example of Himmler using exterminationist rhetoric when talking to the military. He must've forgotten that a governor of Alaska isn't military and that Himmler wasn't speaking as a politician or maybe he just got confused. I'm not sure.

But this all old news anyway. Team holocaust has accepted the premise that my random quotes were not over the top exterminationist rhetoric because the US was in fact exterminating the Japanese when these comments were made. So if can all agree that the United States had a policy of "exterminating" the Japanese, the United States did in fact "exterminate" the native Americans, the Soviet Union "exterminated" Germans after the war, and the Israelis are "exterminating" the Palestinians today, then I have no problem saying that the Nazis wanted to "exterminate" the Jews.

A more interesting question is the one about when Westerners were first allowed to visit Auschwitz. Nick is on record as saying he doesn't care when the Soviet/Poles opened the doors to outsiders. He also says that any manipulations the Soviets and Poles made to the camp are products of the post war Communist government and are only relevant to a dead era. So if any disinformation about Auschwitz emanating from behind the Iron Curtain is only relevant to a dead era, then logically anything else about the site, like war crimes trials or forensic research is only relevant to a dead era as well. This is rather disturbing because it means that everything we learned about the camp based upon information from the other side of the Iron Curtain is potentially fabricated. So knowing when Westerners were allowed to visit is important because it is only the research of Westerners that has even a fighting chance of being reliable. So when were we first allowed in? IIRC, the West German prosecutors in the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials needed to visit the camp surreptitiously because of East/West conflicts. That was in the early 1960s. We know that by 1988, the doors were open wide enough to allowed anonymous US citizens to visit the camp and chisel away bricks of the gas chamber. So what's the history of western access? How much of our knowledge of Auschwitz is based upon information that isn't relevant except to a dead era?

 

[Wroclaw]

So if can all agree that the United States had a policy of "exterminating" the Japanese

Nope. The U.S. Army had a policy of exterminating the Japanese Army in battle. There's a difference.

the United States did in fact "exterminate" the native Americans

Well, there's a big problem with the issue of intent in the early stages of this, as more than 90% of Native Americans died of communicable disease and weren't murdered. But I think it's generally a correct statement after a certain point.

the Soviet Union "exterminated" Germans after the war

IIRC, the death rate of these Germans was about 1 in 13. I wouldn't call that "extermination," though I would call it a crime against humanity.

and the Israelis are "exterminating" the Palestinians today

Nice try, but no. As bad as the Israelis' treatment of the Palestinians is, the Palestinian population has quadrupled since 1949. If that's extermination, it's the worst program of extermination ever committed.

Comparably speaking, there are virtually no pure-blooded Native Americans left. Nor are there German-speaking communities left in Eastern Europe, although the vast majority of those Germans survived being deported. Eastern European Jewry in its traditional sense is gone; the communities there now are either remnants or newly religious and from elsewhere (e.g., Chabad).

In contrast, fully 20% of Israel's current legal population speaks Arabic as its first language, and the percentage in the areas that Israel occupied militarily is about 90%. In Gaza, it's 100%.

then I have no problem saying that the Nazis wanted to "exterminate" the Jews.

Well, thank God for small favors.

A more interesting question is the one about when Westerners were first allowed to visit Auschwitz...

Yeah, not really...

 

[LemmyCaution]

Nope. The U.S. Army had a policy of exterminating the Japanese Army in battle. There's a difference.



Well, there's a big problem with the issue of intent in the early stages of this, as more than 90% of Native Americans died of communicable disease and weren't murdered. But I think it's generally a correct statement after a certain point.

I would add that the Americans were willing to carry out a campaign of mass murder of Japanese civilians in 1945. Not to exterminate all Japanese civilians but to force surrender.

Dogzilla's musings on this are confused because of the small problem of reading comprehension - specifically that sentences have subjects and predicates - the subject saying who does an action, the predicate including both the action and the object of the action. It is useless to flap around about "extermination" without looking at subjects and objects. This ability - to read sentences - is how we know, for example, that the Allied statements almost always targeted combatants for annihilation. Similarly, when the Nazi politicos used "the Jews" or "the Jewish race" or "their race in Europe" or "the last Jew . . . from the face of Europe" we can understand that specific groups of combatants were not the object of the specific proposed action. Rather, it was very large entire populations of Jews - even in the Fuhrer's view, all the Jews in the world - whom the Nazis targeted, in these comments, for extermination.

I will second your "Yeah, not really" comment - probably by re-stating it "Hardly."

 

[Robrob]

I didn't think it would be difficult to answer my challenge. My challenge was in response to Nick when said my sample of quotes from US military and political leaders openly discussing the extermination of the Japanese was a sample of quotes mainly from the military. He tried to pretend that exterminationist rhetoric from the US military isn't the same as exterminationist rhetoric from US politicians and thus cannot be compared to the example of Himmler using exterminationist rhetoric when talking to the military. He must've forgotten that a governor of Alaska isn't military and that Himmler wasn't speaking as a politician or maybe he just got confused. I'm not sure.

But this all old news anyway. Team holocaust has accepted the premise that my random quotes were not over the top exterminationist rhetoric because the US was in fact exterminating the Japanese when these comments were made. So if can all agree that the United States had a policy of "exterminating" the Japanese, the United States did in fact "exterminate" the native Americans, the Soviet Union "exterminated" Germans after the war, and the Israelis are "exterminating" the Palestinians today, then I have no problem saying that the Nazis wanted to "exterminate" the Jews.

Wow, what an amazing tap dance. You must be exhausted.

Your earlier quotes were nearly 100% from the military and confined to describing the US military's declared war against the Japanese military.
Of course the German government carrying out the "extermination" of their own unarmed citizenry is not the same. To claim so is deceitful.

Please tell me you understand an existential declared war waged between two armed nations is slightly different than a government exterminating its own citizens.

Or is this just your clever way of admitting the German government was indeed waging war against the Jews?

 

[Nick Terry]

You're back to 'where did they go?' You and all of Team holocaust will continue to fail with this gambit because they're not where you think they are. If they're not there, they must be somewhere else. Do you not understand the concept of mutual exclusivity?

Since you're evidently going to ignore my reply to this post, it's worth seeing whether we can get you to realise the illogic in your argument.

The main illogic is you assert your position as fact without presenting a shred of proof that it is so. You just assume that the denier meme of no mass graves or insufficient mass graves or whatever argument you're taking now, has been proven, when it is precisely the issue in contention. If you were really serious, then you'd seek out Roberto Muehlenkamp who has written 130 pages on the issue, presented here, and critique his arguments properly. Indeed, you're certain to be referred to that discussion if you try to repeat your previous kindergarten level attempts to handwave away the issue.

Because you are pyramiding a contentious issue into a proven fact, then your reasoning is flawed. Precisely because the issue is contentious, many observers of and participants in these discussions of 'revisionist' claims will inevitably ask deniers 'so what happened to them then?'. The reason to ask this question is rather simple. If you could show that the camps were transit camps then the mass graves issue would become moot. Your claims about mass graves would become more plausible by default, since you would have another way of proving that the Holocaust "didn't happen" as claimed. If there was clear and convincing evidence that the camps were transit camps, then the discussion could move forward instead of stagnating.

There are many potential ways you could try and prove that the Holocaust didn't happen. Saggy relies on asserting that the Holocaust was a hoax and thus appeals to an unstated conspiracy to fabricate the evidence. If Saggy could prove there was such a conspiracy then again the mass graves issue would be moot. If there was clear and convincing evidence of a conspiracy and a good explanation for why all the witnesses told untruths about the camps, then the discussion could move forward instead of stagnating.

It's also worth noting that you don't have any explanation for how the story arose or why the witnesses supposedly told untruths, either. Your 'hoax' argument is nonexistent. But that is then another loose end. There are two big fat loose ends already, your inability to tell us what actually happened ('where did they go') and your inability to tell us how the world was hoodwinked into believing something that you say is wrong. Because you've also dodged that question in the past.

If you were serious about making a proper argument, then you'd proceed on all fronts simultaneously. That's actually what the denier gurus have tried to do. I certainly don't think that the arguments of Mattogno, Graf and Kues are even vaguely convincing or correct, and I rather enjoyed showing up the fallacies in quite a few of their arguments in our recent critique, but I will state that they at least tried to proceed on a logical basis and tried to deal with all of these issues simultaneously.

The fact is, your position contradicts the position taken by the leading denier gurus MGK, and it also contradicts the position taken by Saggy, who is a fervent believer in the hoax theory, whereas you avoid it like the plague. Given these major internal contradictions within the denier camp, one is tempted to ask that you talk to each other and sort yourselves out. If your "logic" is right, then it would negate MGK's work totally. So you ought to be talking to MGK and getting Team Denial on the same page. You certainly ought to be talking to Saggy and working out a common position on this thread. If you don't, then you are stuck in a circular firing squad where all your arguments cancel each other out.

 

[Dogzilla]

It's a bit much for Dogzilla to call my giving a partial answer to his own direct question - "How many statements do you have from German politicians, as opposed to German military leaders, talking about exterminating the Jewish people?" - quote mining. What did he want? A full study of the Third Reich with background for each example? Oh, wait, Nick already gave the context for the types of statements being made by Nazi politicos and why these statements do matter (http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=7946743&postcount=9245) - and Dogzilla ignored that.

Are you able to follow a conversation at all? Nick accused me of quote mining because I quoted Joachim Neander. Nick quoting a German politician making a statement about exterminating the Jews in response to my asking for one isn't "quote mining" any more than my quoting an American politician making a statement about exterminating the Japanese in response to Nick's request for one is.

 

[Dogzilla]

My car got stolen by Nazis and destroyed. You, however, say it never got stolen (or sometimes you claim that it was stolen, but was later returned...you're pretty inconsistent), and that my car is really safe and sound and secretly manipulating the world's finances and government from behind the scenes.

So, show me where my car is, if it wasn't destroyed.

lame argument by analogy is lame.

 

[MG1962]

Are you able to follow a conversation at all? Nick accused me of quote mining because I quoted Joachim Neander. Nick quoting a German politician making a statement about exterminating the Jews in response to my asking for one isn't "quote mining" any more than my quoting an American politician making a statement about exterminating the Japanese in response to Nick's request for one is.

The obvious difference comes from how the context was changed by you leaving certain parts of the quote out. If you claim Nick did the same it should easy for you to prove it.

 

[TSR]

lame argument by analogy is lame.

.
Ummm. DZ?

You *do* remember that it was *your* analogy to start with, don't you?

That all AntP did was supply some relevant details which you left out (which was why your post was called lame and AntP's isn't)?

And this is also why your quote was mined and Mr. Terry's was not?

Do you see the pattern here that everyone else does?
.

 

[Dogzilla]

It's quite clear you haven't even comprehended Joachim Neander's article if you can say something as stupid as this.

It's precisely because of a concern for accuracy that Joachim Neander took the time and trouble to research Zisblatt and test her story rigorously, and precisely because of a concern for accuracy that we published it on our blog; the article is the #1 search result for 'zisblatt' and one of the most read articles in HC history (after the photo galleries of mass graves, go figure).

Joachim Neander has no concern for accuracy and he took no time and went through no trouble to research Zisblatt. Eric Hunt did all the research into Zisblatt's scatological fantasies and exposed her as the lying sack of diamonds that she is. Neander read what Hunt wrote, realized Team holocaust had another Mischa in the works, plagiarized Eric's hard work, put a 'let's be nice to the old lady' spin on it, and published it on an anonymous blog that nobody ever reads.

Joachim isn't a native speaker of English,

His English seems fine to me but what does that have to do with anything anyway?

and he's also the kind of writer who takes an extremely even-handed approach to everything. I don't read the 'offending' concluding remark at all in the same way that you do; it is for starters extremely unlikely that Irene Zisblatt is going to change her story.

Of course she won't. There's no incentive for her to tell the truth. She gets fame and fortune by lying. The fact that JN thinks that Irene Zisblatt has any story to tell as a survivor, and the fact that you defend JN's defense of Irene just proves how abysmal the standards of holocaust "scholarship" really are.

After researching her odyssey through the camp system, it's clear that Joachim wished she had told that story and not the fantasy she did tell. It may help to remember that Joachim has written peer-reviewed articles chronicling other camp inmates' journeys through the system in 1944-45. He did his doctorate on the evacuation of Dora-Mittelbau. The conclusion reads to me far more like an expression of regret than 'giving her a pass'.

Frankly, it's pretty obvious that nothing will ever satisfy you short of the witch-burning you clearly desire. But that doesn't entitle you to spin Joachim's article as a 'defense'. It's quite clearly not a defense, but a very trenchant and very well researched critique of a memoir that is clearly worthless as a historical source.

Neander's only regret is that Irene Zisblatt lied as badly as she did. He has no concern about the truth because, like everybody on Team holocaust, it doesn't matter what you say as long as what you say sounds really bad.

 

[Dogzilla]

Yeah, I don't think he understands that an analogy is supposed to help MAKE your point...

I think the problem is that his analogy doesn't make any sense. He tried to answer my analogy with one of his own but he hopelessly muddled it up. Car was stolen....Jewish conspiracy? WTF? But that's level of intelligence you get from these people.

 

[Clayton Moore]

No, I read Neander's summary of Neander's analysis of Irene Zisblatt's story. He says she is an authentic survivor of Auschwitz and the holocaust. She has an interesting and instructive story to tell--a story of endless humiliations, extreme suffering, and survival against all odds. It's a story that hundreds of survivors could tell. It's a story that should be told. But it's a story that should be told without exaggerations and implausibilities so it is in accordance with historically established facts. It would be then be a really true story. Not just a true story. But a really true story.

You say he's taking her to task...ripping her a new one...putting her through the meat grinder by calling her exaggerations and untruths not worth telling. What do you mean by saying that lies aren't worth telling? Are lies sometimes worth telling? The problem that you and Neander have with her story is that it's fine except she tells some stories that are so implausible that they might not be believed even in a cultural milieu conditioned to genuflect in front of all survivors and believe any nonsense that comes out of their mouths. You believe that if she would just stick to the "established facts" there wouldn't be any problems. Is your brain so lacking in critical thinking skills that you can't see that when you have a person who has already gone on record with as many impossible fantasies as Zisblatt has, she simply cannot be trusted? If she dropped the story about how she saved her diamonds while in Auschwitz, dropped the story about being pushed out of the gas chamber and hiding under the eves, dropped the story about being thrown over the fence into the open boxcar, dropped the story about almost being skinned by Ilse Koch, dropped the story about Mengele tattoo removal experiments (which worked so well she doesn't have any evidence of ever having a tattoo), and dropped the story about the eye color injections, would you believe she saw a women beaten to death at roll call because other survivors have said they saw women beaten to death at roll call? Just because something happened to other prisoners doesn't mean it happened to Irene. I realize that Team holocaust doesn't concern itself with accuracy about the holocaust as long as it sounds bad. But the way the Gerstein Syndrome manifests itself with you guys is appalling. At least Irene Zisblatt, unlike Pesye Schloss, can be proven to have actually existed.

What Neander did and what you are doing is called giving her a pass. An appropriate response to Irene Zisblatt would be greeting her public appearances with the same enthusiasm that David Irving receives.

Can you imagine the rage that would befall someone who dared speak up and out at an Irene Zisblatt appearance? A teacher questioning her lies? A parent demanding she not be allowed to lie at her child's school?

That's what the Holohoax has done to free speech.

Can any average person with a working family take that risk?

 

[Dogzilla]

And yet previous 'steps forward' have been dismissed by you with the usual handwave. Which makes the following

This was billed as the first study of it's kind. How can there have been previous steps forward if this is the first? Did you get your doctorate in box of crackerjacks?

 

[TSR]

Can you imagine the rage that would befall someone who dared speak up and out at an Irene Zisblatt appearance? A teacher questioning her lies? A parent demanding she not be allowed to lie at her child's school?

That's what the Holohoax has done to free speech.

Can any average person with a working family take that risk?

/
Yes, I can imagine exactly what would happen: in the first case, that someone would likely be asked to leave -- not because they had the truth (which has been established for years) but for disrupting the proceedings. In the second case, the cube root of **** all. In the third, a hearing held in public during which that parent would be allowed to make their case.

Other than the risk of tripping and falling while being escorted out, or being made to look like a fool at that hearing, what risk can you *document* occurring, and why have you, Saggs and SZ (or indeed, any denier) not fallen afoul of those risks?

And do tell us: which denier publicly spoke out on the topic prior to, say, Mr Neander's article?
/

 

[FluffyPersian]

It's a bit much for Dogzilla to call my giving a partial answer to his own direct question - "How many statements do you have from German politicians, as opposed to German military leaders, talking about exterminating the Jewish people?" - quote mining.

I realize that, but I--like other readers of this thread--wanted to see Dogzilla present actual evidence for his claims instead of making pointless meta-comments about the discussion.

 

[TSR]

I realize that, but I--like other readers of this thread--wanted to see Dogzilla present actual evidence for his claims instead of making pointless meta-comments about the discussion.

/
Yeah, good luck with that, my friend...
/

 

[Clayton Moore]

Listen up Holocaust neophytes

Irene Zisblatt

the story

about how she saved her diamonds while in Auschwitz,

about being pushed out of the gas chamber and hiding under the eves,

about being thrown over the fence into the open boxcar,

about almost being skinned by Ilse Koch,

about Mengele tattoo removal experiments (which worked so well she doesn't have any evidence of ever having a tattoo),

about the eye color injections,


The above has been obvious to Holocaust Historians and the Holocaust Community since 1994 when she became a traveling spokesperson for the Holocaust. In 1995 Steven Spielberg interviewed her for his The Last Days documentary.

And all was good?

How could all those super educated Holocaust scholars let her dispense all those lies?

And more importantly, WHY?

Since that time, she has been traveling across the U.S., sharing her experience with high school and college students, always receiving broad coverage in the local media. According to The Press of Atlantic City NJ from April 28, 2009, she "is booked twice a day between two and five times a week," and until the end of 2009 she "will have shared her story of surviving the Holocaust with about as many people as Jewish lives were claimed during World War II," i.e. "six million" listeners and viewers.

http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2010/01/irene-zisblatt-diamond-girl-fact-or.html

Her only current Wiki mention is

The Last Days is a documentary, directed by James Moll and produced by June Beallor and Kenneth Lipper in 1998. Steven Spielberg was one of the executive producers, in his role as founder of the Shoah Foundation. The film tells the the stories of five Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust. It focuses on the horrors of life in the concentration camps, but also stresses the optimism and desire to survive of the survivors.

The film won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.[1]


Survivors featured in the film:

-Bill Basch

-Irene Zisblatt

-Rene Firestone

-Alice Lok Cahana

-Tom Lantos

-Dario Gabbai

-Randolph Braham

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

The page "Irene Zisblatt" does not exist. You can ask for it to be created, but consider checking the search results below to see whether the topic is already covered.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Search&search=Irene+Zisblatt&button=

I guarantee that there was once a wiki entree "Irene Zisblatt."

Where did it go?

Why isn't it still there and her lies documented?

It seems that a Holocaust truth is often a lie you can get away with. If you can't get away with it IT DISAPPEARS and the only place you can find it is on a Revisionist web site.

 

[TSR]

I guarantee that there was once a wiki entree "Irene Zisblatt."

/
But with your history of posting lies, why should anyone believe you?
/

It seems that a Holocaust truth is often a lie you can get away with. If you can't get away with it IT DISAPPEARS and the only place you can find it is on a Revisionist web site.

/
Which, again, have zero credibility.

Are you ever going to get around to documenting, say, those risks you were as recently as a few hours ago whining about?

Then we can start working backwards to, oh I dunno, that THHP page which is only 14 lines long you claimed was "nothing but lies" but on which you have *yet* to even try to demonstrate a lie?

You would appear to be the only one trying to "get away" with lies here...
/

 

[SanityGap]

This was billed as the first study of it's kind. How can there have been previous steps forward if this is the first? Did you get your doctorate in box of crackerjacks?

Please show evidence of previous studies involving GPR.
Otherwise it is the first study of it's kind.

 

[LemmyCaution]

Joachim Neander has no concern for accuracy and he took no time and went through no trouble to . . .

Can you enlighten us as to why Neander, allegedly with no concern for accuracy, has spent so much effort arguing against the Jewish soap legend?