Holocaust deniers, explain this.

[Nick Terry]

Here are a few common-sense observations which deniers tend to ignore when attempting their witness testimony exegeses. Unfortunately, all of them have been proven over and over and over again by experimental psychology and the day-to-day experiences of those who deal professionally with witness evidence, and are far from unique to the Holocaust.

A Few Very Simple Rules For Evaluating Testimonies

1. A testimony contains many statements which correspond to points of fact or details.
2. No one will ever remember all details precisely.
3. Testimonies nearer to the event are more accurate, but still liable to contain mistakes
4. Testimonies many decades after the event are not necessarily worthless, but more liable to be corrupted by time, the telling of "war stories" or interpolations from other sources (things the witness has read about an event, etc)
5. If a witness gives many testimonies over a period of time, they will not give the exact same account each time down to the level of detail.
6. Questioning by an interrogator/cross-examiner/interviewer is likely to elicit different details to a self-composed statement or memoir, and thus elicit new details in many cases.
7. The following numerically expressed measurements are especially subject to inaccuracy: dates, distances, durations, numbers of people.
8. Some of these measurements may be subjected to exaggeration, others to underestimation
9. Memory for faces, colours and other 'shading' type details is also notoriously imperfect.
10. Multiple witnesses describing the same event or measurement are unlikely to do so identically; a totally identical 2nd testimony suggests collusion, a 2nd testimony corroborating most of the same details but with divergences of expression and other differences does not suggest collusion
11. Language barriers matter a lot and can lead to inaccuracies
12. A further source of imperfection is the varying descriptive abilities of a witness.

 

[Meadmaker]

The three different people do NOT say the same thing.

They really do. I know you don't believe that, but that's part of your charm.

David Cole obviously dropped his revisionist activity due to pressure from the JDL. Nobody in their right mind thinks otherwise. If he had really 'seen the light' and believed the holocaust story, he would have answered the unanswered questions that he himself had asked.

More typical CT stuff. You keen insight into human nature allows you to predict exactly what a given person would do under specific circumstances, and infer the existence of the conspiracy when they don't behave according to your expectations.

 

[Meadmaker]

So many contradictions, that this testimony is very close to useless in evidentiary terms. The memories seem jumbled up to me.

I suppose if viewed as evidence, in the sense of trying to establish exactly what happened and a specific sequence of events, that would be a problem. Of course, the filmmaker wasn't trying to do that. The basics of the story, though, remain the same regardless who is telling it. Strip, cut, kill.

I know that those procedures also varied over time, as did the physical layout of the buildings, so minor details might be different.

 

[Saggy]

Bomba is a denier icon based on a sub-Gerstein-type argument to incredulity, since a wilful pedant can interpret Bomba's words as meaning he was supposedly saying the gas chamber was stuffed full of more women waiting for their hair to be cut than seems realistic to wilful pedants, who as we know only ever apply a mindless literalism to these testimonies.

These wilful pedants ignore the fact that Bomba says that haircutting only happened in the gas chamber for about a week. They also ignore the fact that Bomba's statements on this don't make any grammatical or logical sense when one reads the transcript:

I mean, c'mon, how freaking absurd can you get ! A 'wilful pedant' .... LOL. This looks like stundie material to me.

 

[Dogzilla]

I would like you to rephrase that part. Expand it a little to list -and quote from- the other pages where Arad mentions body disposal and its aftermath in his Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka book.
Can you do that or does someone else who read the rest of the book have to correct your dishonesty again by quoting other excerpts from the same text?

That's a direct quote from Arad. I can't "rephrase" it. If somebody else wants to read the book and extract every other reference to body disposal and its aftermath, feel free. What would the point be?

 

[Dogzilla]

The examples of hair collection campaigns from both world wars show that there are reasons to cut hair even from people who don't benefit from hair cuts themselves,

That hair has applications as industrial Ersatz material offers an explanation other than hygiene and removes the reason given by deniers for doubting that people like Bomba were forced to perform those haircuts at Reinhardt camps for -particularly women- on their way to the gas chambers.

Your strawman is showing. Nobody says that Germans didn't cut off the hair of incoming prisoners or that they didn't force other inmates to do it.

Would it not be more honest to reference such historical precedents rather than pretend there is only one possible reason to cut hair in deceptive attempt to cast doubt on statements from Bomba and others?

Then wouldn't it be more honest to wax poetically about the possibility that the US Army used the hair from inductees to make textiles?

There are many posssible reasons why Germans would cut prisoners hair but delousing is the reason it was done. Nobody doubts Abe Bomba's testimony because he says he cut hair. It's all the other stuff he says that casts doubt on his testimony.

Or are world war 1 era German high school girl diary entries, news paper clippings and posters about hair collection campaigns early zionist plants in that vast conspiracy that also includes people from that time worrying about pogroms and famine?

Was?

Is it not reasonable to conclude that hair does have value as a industrial raw material from sources independent of the nazi state?
You appear to be conceding the point but for some reason add a little spin to steer away from the actual point made.

The value of human hair as a raw material is immaterial. The hair was cut for delousing. Other suggested use fit into the other horror show stories about exploiting dead Jews. Soap from fat, the lampshades, Jewhair socks for U-boat crews...sounds like the Nazis used every part of the Jew, just like the Indians and the buffalo.

Besides, Felt cloth manufactured with human hair is on display at Auschwitz.

They also have a "gas chamber" in its "original state" and a chimney that isn't connected to the crematorium. Don't believe everything you see at Auschwitz.

Are you going to quote what Arad wrote -on page 109- about Oswald Pohl's order or not?

No.

 

[Bluespaceoddity]

That's a direct quote from Arad. I can't "rephrase" it. If somebody else wants to read the book and extract every other reference to body disposal and its aftermath, feel free. What would the point be?

Not all of it was a direct quote from Arad. The first part I included was a sentence you constructed. I would like you to rephrase that to accurately reflect Arad's book.

The point would be to show that there is no contradiction between Arad's text as a whole and " ... inspections done at these sites in 1944-45 which documented sites strewn with cremains, bones, and other human remains..."

 

[Dogzilla]

Yes, indeed. That other Jew cut the hair from his wife and his daughter, not mother.

And Gustav Boraks tells the same tale as Abe Bomba.

And you have an argument from personal incredulity that "proves" it could not be true.

You're wrong again. It's sad that it is true, but it is true. Maybe, it is possible, that there are some elements of it that are personal embellishments, but the core story is corroborated by multiple witnesses, and at Auschwitz by a really large pile of human hair.

Nobody says Abe Bomba didn't cut the hair off of women prisoners. Abe Bomba describes a very routine procedure that happened at all the camps. He just didn't understand what was happening (or he does know but he lied.) According to Abe, women come in. They are shaved. They are gassed. Two minutes later, they are dead and their bodies are cleared out of the gas chamber. Then the next group of women are brought in.

Abe Bomba accurately describes what he sees. Women come in and get their hair shaved. He then leaves the room. He doesn't see what happens next. The women are deloused. Two minutes later, the women have left the shower room and they're on their way. Then Abe goes back in and sees and empty room.

If he is predisposed to thinking that the Germans are killing the Jews, then that is what he thinks he just saw. Polish Jews had a long established fear of the delousings that went back at least sixty years before the war. Such fear was written about by Jews in diaries and correspondence. It's likely Abe was afraid of this unknown procedure and misinterpreted what he saw. Or it is possible that he knew what happened all along but decided to play dumb so he could become a holocaust hero.

One thing for certain, if Abe says the gassing took place in two minutes, it wasn't a gassing. There's no way a gas chamber using CO gas from an old Soviet submarine engine is going to kill everybody in a room in two minutes. A delousing might take five minutes, which Abe would reasonably estimate took two minutes.

Besides Abe Bomba was at Treblinka, not Auschwitz where all the hair was found. Gustave was at Treblinka as well.

And is this the same Gustav who testified in 1987 in Israel during the Demanjuk trial? Here's what the NY Times said about that: "Maybe one of the saddest moments in the trial came with the testimony of an 86-year-old Treblinka survivor, Gustav Boraks, who testified in Yiddish. At one point, it seemed that he could not remember the name of his youngest son, Yosef, who was killed by the Nazis, but suddenly it came back to him.

''I didn't forget!'' he defiantly told the judge.

Mr. O'Connor asked Mr. Boraks if he remembered giving ''certain testimony in the United States?'' ''Yes,'' he said. ''Do you remember the year?'' Mr. O'Connor asked. ''No,'' Mr. Boraks said. ''How did you travel to America?'' asked Mr. O'Connor.

''By train,'' said the elderly witness, whose answer was followed by a gasp from the audience.

As Mr. Boraks was helped out of his chair, the Chief Judge, Dov Levin, wished him a long life and said he hoped that he would never have to testify on his camp experiences again."

I'm sure his testimony was accepted as important evidence. You can't make this stuff up!!!

 

[Bluespaceoddity]

Nobody doubts Abe Bomba's testimony because he says he cut hair.

It doesn't work so well in print. Say "... except that's not how it would have worked... etc" out loud in an ugly voice. I'm sure you've figured it out. The point of the hair cut before being gassed and being thrown in a pit is to collect the hair because it can be used to, among other things, make felt ... for boots.

 

[Saggy]

It doesn't work so well in print. Say "... except that's not how it would have worked... etc" out loud in an ugly voice. I'm sure you've figured it out. The point of the hair cut before being gassed and being thrown in a pit is to collect the hair because it can be used to, among other things, make felt ... for boots.

Every American army movie I've seen showed the new inductees getting all their hair cut off. Another diabolical plot to make felt, mattresses, etc.

 

[eerok]

David Cole obviously dropped his revisionist activity due to pressure from the JDL.

Could you explain in detail exactly how Cole was pressured by the JDL? Cites are expected, and you will be held to the same standards that you routinely apply to witnesses of the Holocaust.

Otherwise you are obviously making up your crapola as you go along.

 

[Dogzilla]

Could you explain in detail exactly how Cole was pressured by the JDL? Cites are expected, and you will be held to the same standards that you routinely apply to witnesses of the Holocaust.

Otherwise you are obviously making up your crapola as you go along.

You can read about it here. BEWARE: This is a denier website. If you wear rubber gloves and a respirator and do not stare directly at the screen you can stay long enough to read the material without becoming contaminated. I would direct you to the JDL website itself where they used to proudly documented their terror campaign against David Cole. But they did a major redesign of their website and it's no longer available. Fortunately, our friends at CODOH preserved the pages from the old JDL website.

 

[Bluespaceoddity]

...

I see my name on the replies but are you really talking to me?

A holocaust denial promotion clip questions the reasons for cutting the hair at a particular moment. The ugly voice suggests there is only one point for cutting hair in a nazi camp. You're both parroting him and in addition you're pretending I don't understand my own comments.

My comments weren't about "whether or not hair was cut" but about explanations "why" hair was cut even at that particular moment. Right before the women are gassed.

Your friend -who appears to think his own comments disappear when a page is turned- was well aware that the point was about explanations when he wrote: "... if the hair could then be used for manufacturing textiles, then good for the Germans for thinking of doing that."

The record of hair collection in Germany during both World Wars shows that hair was cut and collected. The record shows that textiles were in fact manufactured out of it.
Matthew Ellard provided a link to images which show boots made out of felt. Felt is made out of hair. Felt (Filz, Filzstoffe) is mentioned in Oswald Pohl's order and in the order addressed to the BDM from the nazi era. Making felt is also stated among the reasons for collecting hair during WW1.

Dogzilla refused to quote Arad from page 109. He seems to think that things don't exist unless they're posted in this thread. He furthermore seems to think that whatever was posted before doesn't exist anymore either.

The ugly voice asked "what is the point" in an attempt to discredit Bomba's statements. Collecting the hair was the point of the haircut even for women who are about to be gassed. Bomba may not have known every aspect of the process he was involved in. Oswald Pohl did have a much better view of the bigger picture.That's probably why ugly voice doesn't refer to a page in Arad at that particular point. Ugly Voice also seems to think that whatever he doesn't mention, doesn't exist.

You've suggestively hinted that reconstruction of a building to a previous state must mean other elements were altered as well. You've made your generalizations about alternate explanations. You successfully steered the thread in the direction of Bomba. The ugly voice has been "promoted". Does hair need to be spun further or can the tangent be abandoned now? Perhaps the men cutting their wives' and daughters' hair before these women were gassed haven't been ridiculed sufficiently yet?

For whom is your act performed?

 

[eerok]

You can read about it here. BEWARE: This is a denier website. If you wear rubber gloves and a respirator and do not stare directly at the screen you can stay long enough to read the material without becoming contaminated. I would direct you to the JDL website itself where they used to proudly documented their terror campaign against David Cole. But they did a major redesign of their website and it's no longer available. Fortunately, our friends at CODOH preserved the pages from the old JDL website.

This is no surprise to me at all. You can wave away thousands of eyewitness accounts, tons of court testimony and scholarly analyses, and abundant physical evidence relating to the Holocaust, and yet you claim that a bit of innuendo and hearsay (and a huge pile of wild speculation) amount to obvious fact.

I'm willing to believe that even now you're clueless as to the double standard I'm highlighting here. You just don't see what you don't want to see. Perhaps you're not able to. Simply amazing.

Why did David Cole recant? I don't know, and neither do you.

 

[Meadmaker]

terror campaign against David Cole.

"Terror campaign"?

Seriously?

Yeah, JDL doesn't exactly like holocaust deniers for some reason, but I just don't think it's legitimate to say that there was a "terror campaign".

As eerok said, we can't know why David Cole recanted, but I can think of two possible reasons.

1.) He was threatened and harassed and feared for his life, safety, or some other aspect of his personal well being if he kept telling The Truth.

2.) He realized he had been wrong.

The outward manifestation of each reason is identical. I'm curious how you can be so certain that number 2 is impossible. After all, darned near everyone else in the world believes the "standard version" of the holocaust story. Is it inconceivable that someone might decide that the rest of the world may actually be right?

 

[Dogzilla]

Here are a few common-sense observations which deniers tend to ignore when attempting their witness testimony exegeses. Unfortunately, all of them have been proven over and over and over again by experimental psychology and the day-to-day experiences of those who deal professionally with witness evidence, and are far from unique to the Holocaust.

A Few Very Simple Rules For Evaluating Testimonies

1. A testimony contains many statements which correspond to points of fact or details.
2. No one will ever remember all details precisely.
3. Testimonies nearer to the event are more accurate, but still liable to contain mistakes
4. Testimonies many decades after the event are not necessarily worthless, but more liable to be corrupted by time, the telling of "war stories" or interpolations from other sources (things the witness has read about an event, etc)
5. If a witness gives many testimonies over a period of time, they will not give the exact same account each time down to the level of detail.
6. Questioning by an interrogator/cross-examiner/interviewer is likely to elicit different details to a self-composed statement or memoir, and thus elicit new details in many cases.
7. The following numerically expressed measurements are especially subject to inaccuracy: dates, distances, durations, numbers of people.
8. Some of these measurements may be subjected to exaggeration, others to underestimation
9. Memory for faces, colours and other 'shading' type details is also notoriously imperfect.
10. Multiple witnesses describing the same event or measurement are unlikely to do so identically; a totally identical 2nd testimony suggests collusion, a 2nd testimony corroborating most of the same details but with divergences of expression and other differences does not suggest collusion
11. Language barriers matter a lot and can lead to inaccuracies
12. A further source of imperfection is the varying descriptive abilities of a witness.

Or, you can use the R. J. Shafer checklist for evaluating eyewitness testimony. I bold-faced the items that are particularly relevant for our purposes:

1. Is the real meaning of the statement different from its literal meaning? Are words used in senses not employed today? Is the statement meant to be ironic (i.e., mean other than it says)?
2. How well could the author observe the thing he reports? Were his senses equal to the observation? Was his physical location suitable to sight, hearing, touch? Did he have the proper social ability to observe: did he understand the language, have other expertise required (e.g., law, military); was he not being intimidated?
3. How did the author report?, and what was his ability to do so?
1. Regarding his ability to report, was he biased? Did he have proper time for reporting? Proper place for reporting? Adequate recording instruments?
2. When did he report in relation to his observation? Soon? Much later? Fifty years is much later as most eyewitnesses are dead and those who remain may have forgotten relevant material.
3. What was the author's intention in reporting? For whom did he report? Would that audience be likely to require or suggest distortion to the author?
4. Are there additional clues to intended veracity? Was he indifferent on the subject reported, thus probably not intending distortion? Did he make statements damaging to himself, thus probably not seeking to distort? Did he give incidental or casual information, almost certainly not intended to mislead?
4. Do his statements seem inherently improbable: e.g., contrary to human nature, or in conflict with what we know?
5. Remember that some types of information are easier to observe and report on than others.
6. Are there inner contradictions in the document?

Other factors useful in evaluating eyewitness testimony include:

It appears that witnesses tend to be poor at recalling the actual words used in conversations but are reasonably accurate at remembering the gist, or overall meaning of the conversation.

The kind of questions to which people tend to provide the most accurate answers (i.e. where the proportion of correct to incorrect information is greatest) are open, uninterrupted, free recall questions. Broadly speaking, as questions become more specific and closed, responses become less accurate.

If it can be shown through independent evidence that an eyewitness is inaccurate in some aspect of his or her testimony, this increases the likelihood that other aspects of the person’s testimony will be inaccurate too.

 

[Saggy]

A Few Very Simple Rules For Evaluating Testimonies

1. A testimony contains many statements which correspond to points of fact or details.

Or, it doesn't. What is the point of this idiocy?

 

[Dogzilla]

As eerok said, we can't know why David Cole recanted, but I can think of two possible reasons.

1.) He was threatened and harassed and feared for his life, safety, or some other aspect of his personal well being if he kept telling The Truth.

2.) He realized he had been wrong.

The outward manifestation of each reason is identical. I'm curious how you can be so certain that number 2 is impossible. After all, darned near everyone else in the world believes the "standard version" of the holocaust story. Is it inconceivable that someone might decide that the rest of the world may actually be right?

First of all, No. 1 could also be stated as He was threatened and harassed and feared for his life, safety, or some other aspect of his personal well being if he kept lying or misrepresenting the truth. In David Cole's case, your characterization is correct. But if he stopped lying because he was threatened, it was still the threat that made him stop.

But No. 2 is impossible because except in very rare cases, nobody in the western world learns about the holocaust as a fraud. People believe the holocaust for the same reason they believe that Columbus landed in the Americas in 1492 or that slavery existed in America until 1865: it's what they were taught. Very few children disbelieve everything they are taught in school. Even if somebody really really really hates the Jews, when they first learn about the holocaust their initial reaction is not going to be that it's all a lie. An anti-Semite might think that the Jews deserved it but they won't think it didn't happen. An anti-Semite won't learn about the holocaust and believe that it happened but will realize that SAYING it didn't happen will be a good way for them to hurt the Jews. It's not obvious to anybody except the Jews that six million Jews not being exterminated is a hateful thought.

So everybody believes the holocaust story when they first hear it. It's only when you go beyond the superficial facts of the holocaust and get into the detail that you're going to notice that there might be some problems. When you first notice that there are some problems, your initial reaction is that there must be an explanation. The facts of the holocaust are so well established that it is impossible to accept the notion that these facts might be wrong. So you dig deeper. It takes a long time to get through all the books in your local library and bookstore before you accept the fact that there are some fundamental questions that haven't been answered anywhere.

So you see, people don't doubt aspects of the holocaust until they've learned a great deal about certain aspects of the holocaust. If you've studied the holocaust enough to go from being a believer to being a skeptic, you won't go back to being a believer until you get a satisfactory answer to all your questions. If you're the type of independant thinker who is able to reject the status quo enough to identify yourself as a revisionist, you're not the kind of person who is going easily slip into a 'go along to get along' mentality and believe the holocaust just because everybody else does.

I'll believe that David Cole is actually a believer when he answers all the questions he raised during his brief period as a revisionist.

 

[Dogzilla]

Dogzilla refused to quote Arad from page 109. He seems to think that things don't exist unless they're posted in this thread. He furthermore seems to think that whatever was posted before doesn't exist anymore either.

I refused to quote Arad from page 109 because I'm not your typist. If you want to quote something on page 109, you retype it. Clearly page 109 of Arad has no relevance or you would have quoted it.

 

[Meadmaker]

First of all, No. 1 could also be stated as He was threatened and harassed and feared for his life, safety, or some other aspect of his personal well being if he kept lying or misrepresenting the truth. In David Cole's case, your characterization is correct. But if he stopped lying because he was threatened, it was still the threat that made him stop.

But No. 2 is impossible because except in very rare cases, nobody in the western world learns about the holocaust as a fraud. People believe the holocaust for the same reason they believe that Columbus landed in the Americas in 1492 or that slavery existed in America until 1865: it's what they were taught. Very few children disbelieve everything they are taught in school. Even if somebody really really really hates the Jews, when they first learn about the holocaust their initial reaction is not going to be that it's all a lie. An anti-Semite might think that the Jews deserved it but they won't think it didn't happen. An anti-Semite won't learn about the holocaust and believe that it happened but will realize that SAYING it didn't happen will be a good way for them to hurt the Jews. It's not obvious to anybody except the Jews that six million Jews not being exterminated is a hateful thought.

So everybody believes the holocaust story when they first hear it. It's only when you go beyond the superficial facts of the holocaust and get into the detail that you're going to notice that there might be some problems. When you first notice that there are some problems, your initial reaction is that there must be an explanation. The facts of the holocaust are so well established that it is impossible to accept the notion that these facts might be wrong. So you dig deeper. It takes a long time to get through all the books in your local library and bookstore before you accept the fact that there are some fundamental questions that haven't been answered anywhere.

So you see, people don't doubt aspects of the holocaust until they've learned a great deal about certain aspects of the holocaust. If you've studied the holocaust enough to go from being a believer to being a skeptic, you won't go back to being a believer until you get a satisfactory answer to all your questions. If you're the type of independant thinker who is able to reject the status quo enough to identify yourself as a revisionist, you're not the kind of person who is going easily slip into a 'go along to get along' mentality and believe the holocaust just because everybody else does.

I'll believe that David Cole is actually a believer when he answers all the questions he raised during his brief period as a revisionist.

People wonder why I do this, and it's for posts like this one. When I encountered and started engaging holocaust deniers, I expected hatred and paranoia, but, really, Dogzilla has displayed hardly and hatred and only a bit of paranoia. Instead, his denialism seems to be born of pure arrogance. Anyone sufficiently enlightened to see through the veil of lies that is the holocaust could not possibly, under any circumstances, go back to believing all that stuff that everyone else in the world believes. The only possible explanation is that the recanter is now lying. Of course, there's a wee bit of paranoia thrown in just for fun, because he is lying in order to avoid the actions of the Jewish conspiracy, but I think that's just a sideline to the main theme, which is that Dogzilla is "the type of independant thinker" (and speller) and "not the kind of person who is going easily slip into a 'go along to get along' mentality", like all those other people.

Yes, Dogzilla, you are truly special, and you have much to teach the world. I know I'm learning more every day.