Merged General Holocaust denial discussion thread

[little grey rabbit]

And now we have LGR, fresh from lying about Kruk's diary,

It is irritating to be accused of lying when the information I provided was directly out of Kruk's diary itself.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v25/n10/jenny-diski/tremble-for-tomorrow

Without alerting the German head of the task force, Kruk ran a small cultural resistance movement of his own. He was also in charge of the Ghetto library and declared a public holiday to celebrate when the hundred-thousandth book had been taken out. And, of course, he kept his diary, even under the impossible conditions of the work camps, after a 16-hour, undernourished day building defences for the German front line. ‘I bury the manuscripts in Lagedi, in a barrack . . . right across from the guard’s house. Six persons are present at the burial.’ This was part of Kruk’s last entry on 17 September 1944, the day before he and all the other inmates of the camp were shot and their bodies burned on a pyre of logs they themselves had been forced to build. The following day the Red Army reached the area and the only survivor among the six witnesses dug up Kruk’s buried diary.

Mr Caution quibbles that the parts of this diary that were dug up in such a miraculous manner were not the parts that contained Ponary, these were dug up in an equally miraculous manner from the ruins of the Wilna ghetto - after all its inhabitants had been killed (naturally)

The intelligent and well-balanced reader will have not difficulty in dismissing this quibble, understanding that once significant portions of this Diary have questions raised over its authenticity, this must inevitably spread to the rest of the document.

Out of curiosity does Mr Kruk mention the so-called Little Provocation of Wilna (contained in OSR-24), or has this incident been flushed down the memory hole?

 

[LemmyCaution]

As to the press reports not mentioning the executions at Ponar: Except of course the earlier references already mentioned rubbish your whole line of thought. And besides, what does it prove citing Vilna news items not about Ponar? I am not following this. I should think that we would gain a better sense of Pesye Schloss's, and Herman Kruk's, credibility by engaging with the evidence and sources for these murders, instead of making up porkies - is that the word? - about Kruk's diary (and lord knows what else) and going on about what was not in the news . . .

 

[LemmyCaution]

It is irritating to be accused of lying when the information I provided was directly out of Kruk's diary itself.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v25/n10/jenny-diski/tremble-for-tomorrow


Mr Caution quibbles that the parts of this diary that were dug up in such a miraculous manner were not the parts that contained Ponary, these were dug up in an equally miraculous manner from the ruins of the Wilna ghetto - after all its inhabitants had been killed (naturally)

The intelligent and well-balanced reader will have not difficulty in dismissing this quibble, understanding that once significant portions of this Diary have questions raised over its authenticity, this must inevitably spread to the rest of the document.

Out of curiosity does Mr Kruk mention the so-called Little Provocation of Wilna (contained in OSR-24), or has this incident been flushed down the memory hole?

I am sorry that being called out for lying distresses you so much. But that is what you get for making things up and distorting the record. There is no miracle involved with the hiding of Kruk's journals. Kruk did, of course, refer to keeping his diary in the work camps, after he was removed from Vilna. That is not incompatible with his having buried the vast majority of the portions written in Vilna, not just that for September 1941, in Vilna. An honest and interested reader can find this out on p xlviii of the Harshav's introduction, which says that Kruk buried most of these earlier manuscripts in April 1943 as liquidation actions in the region escalated and he feared for the safety of his diary. This was around the time, IIRC, of the "Kovno action." In an article in Jonathon Rose, ed., The Holocaust and the Book: Destruction and Preservation, p73, David E. Fishman explains that the earlier portions of the diary were hidden in, and retrieved after the war from, the large bunker which Gershon Abramovitsh built in Vilna. In fact, in the English edition of Kruk's diary is included the note that Kruk buried with these manuscripts in Vilna. It reads:

To those who find this material! The materials gathered here - the chronicle along with all the documents, manuscripts, and other texts - were collected, written, and preserved in the most difficult days of my life, from 1941 to April 1943. I beg the honest discoverer to respect my wish, preserve the materials, and carefully ship them to my friends or relatives.

Kindly stop distorting the provenance of Kruk's diaries. Your fiction is helpful to your attempt to tear down their credibility, but that is all you have: misinformation, fiction, and dissembling. The alleged tampering that creates suspicion about these diaries could not have taken place - leaving aside matters like examining the originals and finding evidence of manipulation - for the simple reason that the relevant diaries were safely in a bunker over, as I have pointed out, 600km from the so-called suspect activity!

Out of curiosity, how is your case against OSR 24 coming along? We have been patient.

 

[Nick Terry]

Out of curiosity, how is your case against OSR 24 coming along? We have been patient.

I am also curious about his cases against OSRs 1 through 23 and OSRs 25 through 195. Judging by the drivel belched up-thread, bunny has still not understood these documents in the slightest.

 

[LemmyCaution]

At this point it also bears mention that last February, on the 11th to be precise, LGR tried a different story to cast doubt on Kruk's diaries. At that time, he wrote, in contradiction to the facts, to physical possibility, and to his claims this weekend, that

Kruk was in Kovno and probably rewrote large parts of his diary after the war anyway, so anything he said is hearsay after how many chinese whispers.

 

[LemmyCaution]

I am also curious about his cases against OSRs 1 through 23 and OSRs 25 through 195. Judging by the drivel belched up-thread, bunny has still not understood these documents in the slightest.

He just makes stuff up, or places things he finds out of context, as he has done during his interventions in this discussion, in the hopes that intelligent and reasonable people will not take the effort to track down facts and context and with the certainty that deniers and some of the lazy will be taken in. It's an old methodology, which has failed him elsewhere just as miserably as it does here.

 

[Dogzilla]

And how else would you judge a witness's reliability, a witness you don't know? Because of conformance to other witnesses and documents? Or because of conformance to your prior assumptions, biases, and wishes?

Just a quick note on this comment. There are a multitude of ways of determining the reliability of an eyewitness statement. But let's say you don't have any preconceived notions about a certain incident. You're an investigator just trying to determine what happened.

In scenario one, you have an eyewitness named Pesye Schloss. Pesye Schloss is standing in front of you and tells you exactly what she saw.

In scenario two, you have an eyewitness named Pesye Schloss. She's dead. Seventeen years ago a diary written by a guy name Kruk was dug up at a former Nazi labor camp. Kruk is also dead but he buried the diary just before he was killed in the hope that one day somebody would find it and read about the horrors inflicted upon the Jewish population by the Germans and Poles and Lithuanians. In this diary, Kruk wrote down a lot of different things that a lot of different people told him about what was happening to the Jews. One of the people Kruk talked to was Pesye Schloss. He wrote down in his own words what Pesye told him and a sentence or two of direct quotes.

You're saying you could be equally confident of the information learned in either of these scenarios?

 

[LemmyCaution]

Just a quick note on this comment. There are a multitude of ways of determining the reliability of an eyewitness statement. But let's say you don't have any preconceived notions about a certain incident. You're an investigator just trying to determine what happened.

In scenario one, you have an eyewitness named Pesye Schloss. Pesye Schloss is standing in front of you and tells you exactly what she saw.

In scenario two, you have an eyewitness named Pesye Schloss. She's dead. Seventeen years ago a diary written by a guy name Kruk was dug up at a former Nazi labor camp. Kruk is also dead but he buried the diary just before he was killed in the hope that one day somebody would find it and read about the horrors inflicted upon the Jewish population by the Germans and Poles and Lithuanians. In this diary, Kruk wrote down a lot of different things that a lot of different people told him about what was happening to the Jews. One of the people Kruk talked to was Pesye Schloss. He wrote down in his own words what Pesye told him and a sentence or two of direct quotes.

You're saying you could be equally confident of the information learned in either of these scenarios?

Please show me where I so much as implied that, let alone said that.

But I am certain that if we had, say in 1961, a survivor of Vilna ghetto or Ponar testifying in front of you, you would come to the testimony with your a priori biases and dismiss it for reasons as unfounded as those with which you've approached evidence for the Ponar murders.

This whole line of argument is rather silly, in that historians take it upon themselves to reconstruct events, like Ponar, when they cannot interview witnesses directly. In any case, they don't rely on single data points, one "top" witness, or unsupported claims. Of course, finding survivor-witnesses from Ponar, people like Pesye Schloss, Yudis Trojak, or Tema Katz, was a little challenging, no? Why was that, Dogzilla? Why didn't historians interview these people? But, of course, they did interview others - interviews of Vilna survivors can be seen in movies, encountered in books, or probably even Googled on the Web. These interviews too, along with memoirs, are sources which historians use - even they generally don't value them as much as contemporary sources.

Even though historians rarely are able to sit down face to face with witnesses, they have methods to "do history." That, in fact, is the "usual case": witnesses gone, witnesses unavailable, many pieces of evidence - some good, some not - left behind. You have read other works dealing with history and observed that, with some exceptions (in the area of "oral history"), historians do really work without directly interviewing people who lived in the past and were involved in the actions they study? Right?

 

[TheRedWorm]

...<snip>...
Y'see, there's a wee problem with the standard denier modus operandi, which is that unlike deniers, sane people actually consider more than one piece of evidence before arriving at a conclusion. In some cases they even consider hundreds of pieces of evidence. Perhaps deniers never made jigsaws when they were kids, who knows. But pretending that a single piece of the jigsaw is the equal of the whole is a whopping great big strawman.

...<snip>...

You actually see this a lot with the conspiratorially inclined. It makes sense when you think about it; the majority of evidence is not on their side so they have to latch onto a singe (or very select few) piece of seemingly anomalous evidence as proof of their case. I guess you would see this with a lot of views outside the mainstream.

 

[LemmyCaution]

So Dogzilla, are you going to dodge my request that you explain your own methodology? Nick and I have been generous explaining how we think the past is understood. I asked you directly how you came to write this about the sections of Kruk's diary we've been discussing:

and a subsequent year in death camps in Estonia in a diary which he managed to bury just hours before he and other camp inmates were shot to death but was dug up a few days later when the Russians liberated the camp and first published seventeen years after that, I don't think you'd be able to give much credence to the events she reported.

I told you I'd already pointed out twice, before you made this claim, that the relevant part of the diary was never in Estonia, much less taken by the Russians. I wrote that this material was never, not once, in Estonia. That it was not buried in Estonia. That it was not discovered by Soviet troops in Estonia. Because it was 600km south, in Vilna. I told you I had an idea. For you to explain to us why you thought, with certainty, stating it as fact, that this manuscript was in Estonia. For you to give us your source.

You haven't done so. Why not?

 

[little grey rabbit]

At this point it also bears mention that last February, on the 11th to be precise, LGR tried a different story to cast doubt on Kruk's diaries. At that time, he wrote, in contradiction to the facts, to physical possibility, and to his claims this weekend, that

Actually I was confusing him with Avraham Tory and his Kovno diary which he toured the world with in the 80s and 90s looking for refugees from Soviet oppression to deport back to the tender mercies of Mother Russia and generally soliciting donations.

What with the miraculous survival of so many detailed (and highly instrumental...) diaries, is it any wonder one sometimes confuses them?

It seems every ghetto is blessed with a couple of diaries that clearly sets out the details that seemed to have flummoxed the various underground resistance organisations then in regular communication with London. Just like every mass killing seems to have been survived by at least one Jew who pretended to be dead, causing the ground to heave for several days, crawling out under cover of darkness, dodged the jets of blood spurting out of the ground and raced off to chat with the diarist closest to them.


BTW does Kruk mention the Little Provocation of July 1941 or not? I seem to recall Filbert being upset because the Propaganda Department printed placards about it. Something Hermie might have found worth recording.

 

[little grey rabbit]

Are there actually any indication of the historical existence of this Pesye Schloss?

There seems to be no record of her in the 1942 May census of the Ghetto. Schloss is not a spelling used in the birth lists or tax records of the Jewish community that can be found online. And searching Yad Vashem we only find this

Schloss Mose WILNA WILNO WILNO POLAND 1889 Page of Testimony
Schloss Sie WILNA WILNO WILNO POLAND 1895 Page of Testimony
Schloss Taiba VILNO WILNO WILNO POLAND 1919 List of persecuted
Shloss Taiba VILNO WILNO WILNO POLAND List of persecuted
Shlos Avraham VILNA WILNO WILNO POLAND 1923 List of persecuted

I hardly need remind readers that if we are looking for a 16 year old girl, we are looking for some born around 1925. Outside Mr Kruk's miraculous diary, there seems to be no indications of her existence.

 

[little grey rabbit]

Here is the list of Slos [sic] from the May 1942 Census

SLOS, Abraomas 1923 Dysnos 5 - 5 Vilna Gaon State Museum of Lithuania Vilnius Ghetto: Lists of Prisoners Volume 1 84 Vilnius Vilnius Vilnius May 1942
SLOS, Mosek 1893 Dysnos 5 - 5 Vilna Gaon State Museum of Lithuania Vilnius Ghetto: Lists of Prisoners Volume 1 84 Vilnius Vilnius Vilnius May 1942
SLOS, Sima 1898 Dysnos 5 - 5 Vilna Gaon State Museum of Lithuania Vilnius Ghetto: Lists of Prisoners Volume 1 84 Vilnius Vilnius Vilnius May 1942
SLOS, Tauba 1919 Dysnos 5 - 5 Vilna Gaon State Museum of Lithuania Vilnius Ghetto: Lists of Prisoners Volume 1 84 Vilnius Vilnius Vilnius May 1942

as can be seen, there seems reasonable agreement. But no one that looks to be Peyse. Of course quite possibly Kruk denounced her to the Gestapo to curry favour and preserve his plum job working for Alfred Rosenberg.

 

[LemmyCaution]

Actually I was confusing him with Avraham Tory and his Kovno diary which he toured the world with in the 80s and 90s looking for refugees from Soviet oppression to deport back to the tender mercies of Mother Russia and generally soliciting donations.

What with the miraculous survival of so many detailed (and highly instrumental...) diaries, is it any wonder one sometimes confuses them?

All you need to do to keep matters straight is pay attention. In this case, it's easy - Tory/Kovno; Kruk/Vilna. You shouldn't try rubbishing Kruk's diary by bringing in Tory's to a discussion on Vilna. Seems pretty elementary. Not clear why you'd do that.

It seems every ghetto is blessed with a couple of diaries

Really? There were ~1,100 ghettos. But, leaving aside that we have yet to establish a couple diaries for each, is it really hard to understand that people kept diaries during the twentieth century? For you maybe this common fact is mysterious, but then again you need to play-act that things are out of the ordinary or miraculous, so you imbue the mundane with extensive confusion and vexation. Another of your old tricks. Diaries? In large numbers? Suspicions abound. LOL

that one that clearly sets out the details that seemed to have flummoxed the various underground resistance organisations

Well, first, of course, we have to leave aside the small problem that the underground organization called the Oyneg Shabes was not in the least flummoxed. You tried getting around this point with the supposedly telling blow that the Oyneg Shabes archive was dispersed into three locations, of which only two were found, and from this you somehow concluded that you can reject the evidence from the archives.

Then we confront the matter that diaries were private, mostly, and thus not an especially good medium for the instantaneous transmission of news to the public or to far-flung places.

So, other than the fact that the underground was hearing what you say it wasn't and the fact that diaries have nothing to do with transmitting this sort of news, I see what you mean.

Just like every mass killing seems to have been survived by at least one Jew who pretended to be dead, causing the ground to heave for several days, crawling out under cover of darkness, dodged the jets of blood spurting out of the ground and raced off to chat with the diarist closest to them.

It is very suspicious that there were survivors? Of course, at Ponar there were several survivors, not one, and at Ponar the survivors didn't run off to chat with a diarist closest to them - a person who kept a chronicle of the ghetto sought them out, doctors treated them, activists were put in touch with them. So much suspicious activity. The survivors from Ponar, according to their accounts, invariably were people taken to the pit late in the day, when the shooters were liquored up and close to done for the day - and when, overlooked, they were left near the top of the graves, without being suffocated by victims who fell on top of them.

You fare so poorly with Vilna, why don't you turn your attention to Libya?

BTW does Kruk mention the Little Provocation of July 1941 or not? I seem to recall Filbert being upset because the Propaganda Department printed placards about it. Something Hermie might have found worth recording.

Did you lose your copy of Kruk Or did Google break?

 

[LemmyCaution]

Here is the list of Slos [sic] from the May 1942 Census

SLOS, Abraomas 1923 Dysnos 5 - 5 Vilna Gaon State Museum of Lithuania Vilnius Ghetto: Lists of Prisoners Volume 1 84 Vilnius Vilnius Vilnius May 1942
SLOS, Mosek 1893 Dysnos 5 - 5 Vilna Gaon State Museum of Lithuania Vilnius Ghetto: Lists of Prisoners Volume 1 84 Vilnius Vilnius Vilnius May 1942
SLOS, Sima 1898 Dysnos 5 - 5 Vilna Gaon State Museum of Lithuania Vilnius Ghetto: Lists of Prisoners Volume 1 84 Vilnius Vilnius Vilnius May 1942
SLOS, Tauba 1919 Dysnos 5 - 5 Vilna Gaon State Museum of Lithuania Vilnius Ghetto: Lists of Prisoners Volume 1 84 Vilnius Vilnius Vilnius May 1942

as can be seen, there seems reasonable agreement. But no one that looks to be Peyse. Of course quite possibly Kruk denounced her to the Gestapo to curry favour and preserve his plum job working for Alfred Rosenberg.

Well, since the census you reference was taken in May 1942, and the Vilna ghetto was set up after the Great Provocation in September 1941, and combed over several times thereafter, with, according to Arad, between 17,000 and 27,000 Jews murdered in the 10 or so additional actions before Christmas 1941, what reason is there to believe that you'd find Pesye Schloss on the census list, assuming you can spell her name the way it appeared in the census?

 

[little grey rabbit]

I have no doubt that the intelligent and well-informed reader is doubtless like me collapsed in laughter as Mr Caution struggles with the unfortunate fact that his great eye-witness has left to record in pages of testimony, ghetto census, or records of births of Wilno Jewry before German occupation or indeed any signs of existence outside of Kruk's diary what-so-ever.

Be my guest Mr Caution
http://www.jewishgen.org/databases/Lithuania/

The non-existent Pesye Schloss is not the only person who claimed to be the first person to have survived Ponary. We have Solomon Garbel

3. The Story of Solomon Garbel
On 5 April 1942 four thousand Jews were executed; they were supposed to be taken to Kovno but were taken to Ponary instead. The next day Weiss rode into the ghetto on a bicycle and ordered ten Jewish men to come and bury the ones who had been murdered. So we set out, with Weiss leading us.
We began seeing bodies half a kilometre from Ponary, near the railroad lines; they were the ones killed while trying to escape. There was a sign hanging on the gates leading to the execution site: “Entrance is forbidden even to German officers!”
Rails were laid passing through the gates, so that the trains carrying the victims could pull right up to the pits. The farther we went, the more terrible the scene that unfolded before us. The grass was read with blood. The entire field was littered with bodies. The trees were splattered with brains. Mutilated children lay beside the tree trunks, many of whom were torn in half, with one leg lying here, another there. There was a whole pile of children’s heads. Identification papers, visitor’s cards, photographs and banknotes were scattered everywhere. In one spot lay the body of a German with his throat torn out: apparently a Jew had killed him.
Weiss gave us vodka and said, “Work diligently! See to it that the bodies are undressed and neatly buried. Place the coats to the side, men’s coats in one pile and women’s coats in another. If you happen to find any gold, put it in the bucket. Anyone who dares to take anything for himself will be shot.”
He led us to the closest mound. Then he pointed out various areas that had been covered over and announced: “That is where the Jews captured by the ‘hunters’ are (he used the Yiddish word for ‘hunters’ and smirked). Farther on are the gypsies. Over here are the ones who said, ‘We’ll never surrender!’ – that is, the Poles. Here lie the hunters who turned on us. And here prisoners of war. Over there, however,” he pointed in the distance, “no one lies buried. But not for long. There are still many people left in the world!”
Among the bodies there were some people who were still alive. We did not know what to do with them. Many were wearing a tallis. Others had letters in their pockets that they had written on their way to their execution. I remember one letter that said, “Jews, they are taking us to be shot! Avenge us! Flekser from Sventsyan.”
Curled up among the blood-stained packages that we loaded into the train cars was a little boy who was still alive; he had hidden, and they did not notice him. His name was Bernie Goldshtein from Mikhalishek.
When he realized that we were Jews, he started begging us, “Save me!” We hid him from Weiss and got him back into the ghetto.
We buried about five hundred people. They were scattered all over the field, having tried to run away, they were stilled dressed. The others were lying in a ditch all that remained to be done was to pour lime over them. We were certain that we would never return from that place, that Weiss would have us shot. But suddenly he came up to us, drunk, and said, “You are the only ones ever to visit Ponary and return home.”
At the exit I saw a terrible sight.
The mass grave in which we had buried the Jews strated moving and was heaving higher and higher….
Weiss calmed us down: It’s just the bodies swelling and making the earth rise.”

Damn those SS and their alcohol consumption. What a dumb mistake to make. But surely Mr Garbel would have been well aware of the account of Ms Schloss already, over six months before hand? Surely an account like hers would have raced through the ghetto like wild fire?

Incidentally, do we know how Mrs Kruk - later Paulina Vardia, managed to survive?

 

[Dogzilla]

So Dogzilla, are you going to dodge my request that you explain your own methodology? Nick and I have been generous explaining how we think the past is understood. I asked you directly how you came to write this about the sections of Kruk's diary we've been discussing:
I told you I'd already pointed out twice, before you made this claim, that the relevant part of the diary was never in Estonia, much less taken by the Russians. I wrote that this material was never, not once, in Estonia. That it was not buried in Estonia. That it was not discovered by Soviet troops in Estonia. Because it was 600km south, in Vilna. I told you I had an idea. For you to explain to us why you thought, with certainty, stating it as fact, that this manuscript was in Estonia. For you to give us your source.

You haven't done so. Why not?

I have told you that this is not a part of the holocaust with which I am intimately familiar. I never heard the name Pesye Schloss until she was nominated as the gold standard for credible witnesses to the holocaust. My knowledge of this subsubsubtopic is primarily gleaned from this discussion and a little bit of googling on the side. If I misunderstood that the diary was buried in Estonia when it was actually buried in Vilna or part of it was buried in Vilna and part of it was buried in Franistan or it was written on golden plates and buried in upstate New York to be dug up and read with special glasses or whatever then I guess I was wrong.

My initial interest in this was that when asked for an example of a credible eyewitness to the holocaust, this is what you offered. The more I learn about it from you guys and your vehement defense of it's credibility, the worse it gets.

I had always assumed that the whole 'holocaust by bullets' side of the story was well documented. Maybe that's because I know that guns exist and that they can kills hundreds of people at one time-unlike gas chambers. There's also plenty of contemporary German documents that openly discuss mass shootings without any of that silly euphemistic language. But if this is an example of good evidence for mass shootings I'm going to need to reconsider.

As to my methodology, when it comes to these mass shootings of tens of thousands of people, I would go for the physical evidence first. Got any mass graves? Where are they?

 

[Nick Terry]

I have told you that this is not a part of the holocaust with which I am intimately familiar. I never heard the name Pesye Schloss until she was nominated as the gold standard for credible witnesses to the holocaust.

Since Pesye Schloss was never nominated as a gold standard witness, but because of the convergence of evidence surrounding Ponary, this is a spectacularly dishonest strawman. Could you possibly stop being dishonest, or is it too late to expect that from you?

My knowledge of this subsubsubtopic is primarily gleaned from this discussion and a little bit of googling on the side. If I misunderstood that the diary was buried in Estonia when it was actually buried in Vilna or part of it was buried in Vilna and part of it was buried in Franistan or it was written on golden plates and buried in upstate New York to be dug up and read with special glasses or whatever then I guess I was wrong.

My initial interest in this was that when asked for an example of a credible eyewitness to the holocaust, this is what you offered. The more I learn about it from you guys and your vehement defense of it's credibility, the worse it gets.

I had always assumed that the whole 'holocaust by bullets' side of the story was well documented. Maybe that's because I know that guns exist and that they can kills hundreds of people at one time-unlike gas chambers. There's also plenty of contemporary German documents that openly discuss mass shootings without any of that silly euphemistic language. But if this is an example of good evidence for mass shootings I'm going to need to reconsider.

You're going to need to consider? Why? Have you yet marshalled a single argument against the Jaeger report, Sakowicz's diary, or the other evidence regarding Ponary? No, you have not. Instead, you are utterly fixated on the supposed status of Pesye Schloss's testimony written up in a contemporary diary. Are you seriously that incapable of weighing up several pieces of evidence together?

As to my methodology, when it comes to these mass shootings of tens of thousands of people, I would go for the physical evidence first. Got any mass graves? Where are they?

Where do you think they are? At Ponary, outside Vilnius. Marked with a memorial. Excavated in 1944-45 by the Soviet Extraordinary Commission, who discovered ash, bones, human remains, as befits a site that had been worked over by Sonderkommando 1005. The commission found seven empty and three full graves as well as 10 places where open air cremations had taken place. (GARF 7021-94-1, pp.1-8).

In case you're having difficulty believing that such an operation took place, In November 1943, the KdS Litauen reported that members of the Kaunas criminal police (Lithuanian collaborators) knew about the similar exhumations and cremations at Fort IX, the counterpart site to Ponary: "worum es sich bei den naechtlichen Feuern am Fort 9". They knew that "oben 'Judenknochen' verbrannt... In der Stadt Kauen ist z. Zt das Geruecht verbreitet, dass Litauen an Russland abgegeben werden soll, zu diesem Zwecek wuerden jetzt die Judenreste verbrannt werden". (KdS Litauen, Vermerk, 7.11.1943, LCVA R1399-1-64, pp.49-R).

in December 1943, the KdS Litauen reported that "in den Abendstunden des 25.12.43 brachen 64 im Fort IX eingesetzte Arbeitskraefte des Unternehmens 1005 B aus, ohne dass die Flucht zunaechst bemerkt wurde. Im Zuge der sofort eingeleiteten Fahndungen gelang es bisher, insgesamt 37 der Fluechtlinge wieder zu erfassen, wovon 5 auf der Flucht erschossen wurden" (KdS Litauen, Lagebericht Dezember 1943, LCVA R1399-1-61, p.359)

14 of the escapees managed to reach the Kaunas ghetto, by this time formally a 'Konzentrationslager', and write down an account of 1005. As did Avraham Tory, the major diarist of the Kaunas ghetto, on January 9, 1944 (Tory, Surviving the Holocaust, pp.508-519)

All citations from Christoph Dieckmann, Deutsche Besatzungspolitik in Litauen 1941-1944. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2011, pp.1322-3. All the documents mentioned can be read at USHMM in Washington, DC on microfilm.

I'm looking forward to the metaphysical gyrations that all this evidence will undoubtedly prompt in you.

 

[LemmyCaution]

As to my methodology, when it comes to these mass shootings of tens of thousands of people, I would go for the physical evidence first. Got any mass graves? Where are they?

I see, you cribbed it from the rabbit who has yet to admit his error. Nicely done. And you then decided not to click on the link I provided to photographs of bodies exhumed at Ponar. You are aware, no doubt, that the Germans tried cleaning up the site, or did you miss this too?, in late 1943 and 1944 but failed to erase all the evidence of their crimes?

You are still, now, ignoring Sakowicz, the Jaeger report, and the other sources mentioned upthread - this is so you can continue to remain not very knowledgeable about the open-air shootings. It's working.

 

[LemmyCaution]

I have no doubt that the intelligent and well-informed reader is doubtless like me collapsed in laughter as Mr Caution struggles with the unfortunate fact that his great eye-witness has left to record in pages of testimony, ghetto census, or records of births of Wilno Jewry before German occupation or indeed any signs of existence outside of Kruk's diary what-so-ever.

Be my guest Mr Caution

What I struggle with is why anyone would think that Schloss's name, however it is spelled, not being in a census carried out 5-6 months after the extermination actions of fall 1941 would prove anything about her existence. Nor have I ever claimed Schloss to be a "great eye-witness" - I have been almost emphatic that Schloss was simply one eyewitness along with other sources for the executions at Ponar. Still, it is nice to see you're reduced to the level of the strawmanning and know-nothingism in which "One Witness" Saggy and Dogzilla specialize. How cheery.

The non-existent Pesye Schloss is not the only person who claimed to be the first person to have survived Ponary. We have Solomon Garbel

Pesye Schloss never claimed to be the first person to have survived a mass killing at Ponar; all that we know she related was her observations and experiences at the Ponar killing site. Please try following along and refrain from making things up (as you made up the provenance of Kruk's ghetto diaries, a small sin for which you have yet to fess up). At any rate, your source has some problems - some sources do, of course - unless you know of something on a killing action claiming 4000 lives at Ponar in early April 1942 - I sure don't. In July 1942 there was an action against the elderly, in which IIRC fewer than 100 were killed. In April 1943 the "Kovno action," which your source (the Black Book?) seems to have misdated, was carried out. Since that is more likely than your gloss, Garbel was thus one of the Jews from Vilna taken to the site of the execution of Jews from small communities in the region (I believe that the transports came from Swieciany and Oszmiana) to deal with bodies left as disembarking Jews attempting to flee were shot dead. This would not make Garbel a survivor of Ponar at all but a member of the cleanup detail. The "Kovno action" was treated at length, including the recruitment and work of the 30-member cleanup detail and its command by Martin Weiss, by Kruk, as well as described by Sakowicz; the extermination action is also summarized in Arad. I know you are trying to be flippant about this, but you need to get the facts and main contours of the events right: Garbel was chosen to clean the killing site, he was not a survivor of it. The "Kovno action" was unusual and memorable because of the very successful deception involved, the resistance offered by many of the victims, the fact that its victims were brought to the site by train from outlying communities, and the use of members of Gens's police force to deal with the corpses left behind.

Damn those SS and their alcohol consumption. What a dumb mistake to make. But surely Mr Garbel would have been well aware of the account of Ms Schloss already, over six months before hand? Surely an account like hers would have raced through the ghetto like wild fire?

I hate ruining a good laugh at the expense of murdered Jews but it was not the SS who carried out the shootings - and I am not familiar with any reports of the SS men at Ponar that week drinking. According to Sakowicz, the Lithuanian riflemen "shot while they were drunk." Sakowicz's observation meshes with reports from other extermination sites in the east about alcohol consumption during killing actions.

Incidentally, do we know how Mrs Kruk - later Paulina Vardia, managed to survive?

My recollection is that Kruk's wife never reached Vilna after leaving Warsaw in September 1939 and was taken by the Soviets to a labor camp that fall. Another manufactured mystery spoiled by the mundane . . .