I'm sorry if you don't like our cretinous repetitive arguments but if you had a cogent response to them we wouldn't repeat them. If you don't want us to say there are no documents, stop saying there are documents. When asked for a document that unambiguously says "extermination," don't offer one that says "special treatment." If you say that a German saying "ausrotten" in connection with the Jews is irrefutable proof of the intent to exterminate all the Jews, explain why Americans saying "exterminate" in connection with the Japanese is just flowery language. Don't say that the documentary evidence of a planned ethnic cleansing is evidence of an extermination. Don't say that one ambiguous word that appears once in one memo is the smoking gun that proves gas chambers at Auschwitz. Don't quote the opinion of a court that convicted members of the SS of treating Jews inhumanely as evidence that there was a policy of physically annihilating all the Jews. Don't offer a report that says X number of Jews were shot in retaliation for the murder of a German soldier as evidence that all the Jews were going to be killed.
So we did have one of your cabal offer this: "The history of this place is very turbulent. On 10 July 1941, in Vilnus, on the corner of Wielka and Szklana street, a corpse of a German soldier was found. Jews were accused of the murder and, the same day, 123 people were executed." So let's think this suggestion about a corpse of a German soldier lying in a Vilna intersection in July 1941, murdered perhaps by Jews.
- The above is from a commemorative Website, and thus a terrible source. We do have two contemporary sources for an incident in Vilna about this time. One, a report from the 403rd Security Division, said that "shots were ostensibly fired at the SD accommodations building"; OSR 24 reported, "Einsatzkommando 9 Location: Vilinius . . . Because of a short surprise fire fight against the Vilnius Security Police Headquarters a special liquidation was carried out in excess of daily liquidation quotas." No mention in either report, right?, of a dead German soldier.
- More importantly, this is one shooting action, which resulted in, according to the reports a liquidation action "in excess of daily liquidation quotas" or in which "the SD had 300 Jews shot on Sunday."
- But according to OSR 24 there were ongoing liquidation actions outside Vilna starting July 1941 - unconnected with "ostensible" (even the German military doubted the pretext!) shots being fired by Jews.
- Yitzhak Arad, among others, has studied the shootings of Jews in Vilna during summer and fall 1941. He has summarized the following actions and his sources for them (where sources vary, I am giving the lowest estimate of victims):
1) July 2-August 8: 5,000 victims shot by EK9, the above shooting just one of these many
2) August 9-30: 444 victims of EK3 shootings
3) Great Provocation (a 2nd ostensible reprisal) September 2: 3,700 victims
4) transfer to the ghetto, September 12: 3,334 victims
5) Getto No. 1 Aktion, September 17: 1,267 victims
6) Yom Kippur Aktion, October 1: 2,300 victims
7) Ghetto No. 2 Aktion, October 4: 1,983 victims
8) Ghetto No. 2 Aktion, October 16, 1,146 victims
9) Liquidation ghetto no. 2, October 21: 1,500 victims (the German source gives 2,367)
10) Aktionen against Elderly and Sick, October 21: 120 victims
11) First Yellow Pass Aktion, October 25, 27: 2,833 victims
12) Transfer to ghetto, October 30: 1,533 victims
13) Second Yellow Pass Aktion: November 6: 1,200 (German source 1,303)
(and 3 more small actions in December with several hundred victims)
- Now, one of the two "ostensible" reprisals involved the following deaths, again according to Arad, although some sources vary: 2 Jews falsely accused of firing shots at German soldiers, 864 Jewish men, 2,019 Jewish women, and 817 Jewish children. On the best interpretation, the 2 shooters were killed immediately following the shooting - and then two days later ~3,700 Jews were killed in reprisal, including 817 children. That is being charitable. More likely, the area was cleared, Jewish ranks were thinned out by the mass killings, two ghettos were set up, and the "thinning out" continued through the fall.
The fall actions were generally to clear sections of the city, liquidate areas of the ghetto, or eliminate non-working Jews. Not on account of "ostensible" shots at Germans.
As you know, there are many sources for all this; I am citing Arad because it is compact and summarizes a lot of the disparate evidence.
- As to no documents and the rest of your folderol, you seem allergic the Jaeger Report, which said about events in Lithuania (emphasis added), "I can state today that the goal of solving the Jewish problem for Lithuania has been achieved by Einsatzkommando 3.
In Lithuania, there are no more Jews, other than the Work Jews, including their families. They are:
In Schaulen around 4,500
In Kauen “ 15,000
In Wilna “ 15,000
I also wanted to kill these Work Jews, including their families, which however brought upon me acrimonious challenges from the civil administration (the Reichskommisar) and the army and caused the prohibition: the Work Jews and their families are not to be shot! The
goal of making Lithuania free of Jews could only be attained through the deployment of a raiding commando with selected men under the leadership of SS First Lieutenant Hamann, who completely and entirely adopted my goals and understood the importance of ensuring the co-operation of the Lithuanian partisans and the competent civilian positions. The implementation of such activities is primarily a question of organization. The
decision to systematically make every district free of Jews necessitated an exhaustive preparation of each individual operation and reconnaissance of the prevailing circumstances in the applicable district."
(Note that Jaeger's Report lists Jews and Jewesses separate from Communists.)
Here is about when deniers, without any grounds, squeal "Forgery!"
As to this waffle -
And ferchrissakes, stop offering findings of fact from the judgement of a post-war war crimes trial as documentary evidence of anything--show us the evidence that the court relied upon to determine the finding of fact
- well, that is precisely why I have a number of times suggested the Einsatzgruppen trial as a good topic for discussion, in order to review the evidence by which the court found the defendants guilty of murdering Jews, not in retaliation for something the individuals did but because of operations to kill Jews. You have demurred, of course, just as you have demurred when it comes to discussing and assessing the multiplicity of evidence for the murders at Ponar. The matter of this trial of EG leaders reminds me, too, that you do not seem particularly strong on the Ereignismeldungen; your errors of fact and miscues raise, in fact, the question whether you have read them.