Happy Fuehrertodestag!
Cf. Orac, Andrew.
Sunday, April 30, 2006
Correction Corner #2: Himmler's visit to Birkenau in 1942
This posting could have gone into "That's why it is denial, not revisionism" series, but since it corrects a significant mistake in the mainstream Auschwitz historiography, it is more fit for the Correction Corner.
Historians universally accept that Heinrich Himmler visited extermination camp Birkenau in July of 1942, and personally witnessed the gassing of the Jews in the gas chambers of Bunker 2. Danuta Czech, Raul Hilberg, Franciszek Piper, Jean-Claude Pressac, Robert Jan van Pelt, Laurence Rees and many others have accepted this only on the basis of testimony of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hoess.
However, in 1999 Peter Witte et al. published Der Dienstkalender Heinrich Himmlers 1941/42 - Himmler's diary/appointment book. It mentions Himmler's presence in Auschwitz complex on July 17 and 18 (in accordance with Hoess' testimony), but, strangely, it lacks any mention of his supposed visit to Birkenau.
Here's how the entries for these dates look like in translation.
17 July:
Given that the entries are detailed, it is fair to conclude that the probability that Himmler did not visit Birkenau on his second visit is high. Some argue that Himmler wouldn't mention the gassing because of secrecy concern. The point is that he doesn't even mention a trip to Birkenau, which wouldn't be a secret. Besides, the diary does contain some pretty incriminating stuff concerning the "Final Solution".
(Note: there are many photos of Himmler's visit to Buna-Monowitz sub-camp, but there are no photos of his visit to Birkenau (or to the main camp, for that matter). There seem to be no testimonies mentioning Himmler's visit to Birkenau on the relevant dates, except Hoess'. At least I haven't been able to find any in the records of the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial or in other sources accessible to me.)
Here's Hoess' long account from his autobiography written in Polish prison (Death Dealer, pp. 286ff):
And here's where the difference lies between the real historical methodology and Holocaust denial. In Special treatment in Auschwitz [large PDF] Holocaust denier Carlo Mattogno argues at length that Himmler did not attend the gassing in Birkenau, using both Himmler's diary and some supplemental arguments, which, according to him, show that even if Himmler did visit Birkenau, he could not have witnessed any gassing. He leaves it at that, without trying to find an explanation of the paradox. And why should he? After all, "revisionists" have long ago dismissed Hoess' autobiography and other testimonies as product of coercion and fantasy - by the British captors, by the Nuremberg "thugs", by the "Polish Communists".
Now, whatever can be said about Hoess' treatment in the hands of all of his captors, his testimonies in Polish captivity (the essays he wrote for judge Jan Sehn, his autobiography, his trial testimony) are hardly compatible with coercion. He described how he was brutally mistreated by the British. He described initial mistreatment in Polish prison. He renounced his previous testimony about partial Auschwitz death toll (3 million dead, about 2.5 million of them gassed), providing far lower figures, completely incompatible with the Polish figure of 4 million (or even with 2.5 million). He called survivors' exaggerated estimates figments of their own imagination. Some coercion!
Still, what are we to make of the contradiction between Hoess' testimony and documentary evidence?
When I began to think about this issue seriously, I kept in mind that human memory is such, that different events can become confused or even blended in it. Hoess' memory was not ideal. He frequently misdated events, thus, claiming that Himmler ordered the conversion of Auschwitz into death camp in summer of 1941, mentioning that other camps in the east (meaning Aktion Reinhard(t) camps) were not up to the task for the anticipated large actions. The problem, of course, is that with exception of Belzec, these camps did not exist in 1941 (construction of Belzec began in November of 1941), and their operation began in 1942. Historian Karin Orth cites several more examples, and convincingly argues that Hoess regularly "telescoped" 1942 events into 1941 ("Rudolf Höß und die "Endlösung der Judenfrage". Drei Argumente gegen deren Datierung auf den Sommer 1941", in Werkstatt Geschichte, Heft 18, 6 (1997), S. 45-57). Hoess also misremembered the name of the death camp Sobibor, calling it "Wolzek" (one possible explanation is that he remembered for some reason the name of the village Wolczyn, which was even closer the the camp Sobibor than the village of Sobibor itself; interestingly, deniers who use this mistake as an argument for coercion cannot give any reason for the "torturers" to feed Hoess this misinformation).
So the possible explanation was to look for another notable visit, which happened close to the period in question, and see if Hoess could have blended the details of two visits.
I knew that WVHA chief Oswald Pohl visited Auschwitz on September 23, 1942 (Czech, op. cit., p. 243). I also knew that according to Pohl's itinerary for that day he was supposed to visit "Station 2 der Aktion Reinhardt", which historians Bertrand Perz and Thomas Sandkuehler interpreted as the gas chamber "Bunker 2" - i.e., the same gas chamber, the gassing in which Himmler' was supposed to have witnessed, according to Hoess ("Auschwitz und die "Aktion Reinhard" 1942-45. Judenmord und Raubpraxis in neuer Sicht", Zeitgeschichte 5, 26. Jg., 1999, S. 283-316). Although their conclusion was mostly based on the hunch (they exclude Kanada II in an endnote, as not constructed yet, so they conclude that it was Bunker 2).
Pohl's itinerary
Thus I proposed that Hoess could have mixed the details of the two visits in his narrative. It was a wild guess, frankly. When I proposed this hypothesis, I had not yet analyzed Pohl's itinerary closely. But then something caught my eye. Both Hoess and Pohl's itinerary mentioned visiting DAW (Deutsche Ausrüstungswerke, German armament works). I began to compare further, and, to my surprise, I found a whole slew of "coincidences". They're summarized in a table below.
There may be more coincidences, less obvious ones, but even from these 12 we can make a simple conclusion: Hoess' memory played a trick on him. He blended the two events - Himmler's and Pohl's visits to Birkenau.
Given this, there is no problem at all with stating that Himmler did not visit Birkenau on July 17 or 18 and that he did not witness a gassing in Bunker 2 at that time. It was Pohl who visited Bunker 2 and probably saw a gassing. Thus, we have solved the problem without abandoning the general veracity of Hoess' memoir (although once again confirming that it should not be used uncritically), established that "Station 2 der Aktion Reinhardt" was "Bunker 2" (thus also confirming the link between Auschwitz and Aktion Reinhard(t), posited by several researchers) and corrected a serious mistake in mainstream Auschwitz historiography.
Interestingly, Mattogno, who knows and quotes Pohl's itinerary, and who is allegedly an "accomplished linguist, researcher, and is a specialist in textual analysis", did not think of this simple solution.
There remains a question of whether Himmler was present at any Auschwitz gassing at all. This is possible. The same Mattogno quotes early testimony of Filip Mueller in the book Auschwitz: Crematorium I and the Alleged Homicidal Gassings [large PDF]:
I should also note that there is a third narrative mixed in Hoess' testimony. He describes Himmler visiting the Gypsy camp, but the Gypsies began to arrive en masse only in 1943 (Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, p. 446). Was that a disputed Himmler's third visit to Auschwitz, for which there are only a handful of contradictory testimonies? This also remains to be seen.
I wish to conclude with the quote from Prof. van Pelt's expert report in the Irving vs. Lipstadt trial:
Historians universally accept that Heinrich Himmler visited extermination camp Birkenau in July of 1942, and personally witnessed the gassing of the Jews in the gas chambers of Bunker 2. Danuta Czech, Raul Hilberg, Franciszek Piper, Jean-Claude Pressac, Robert Jan van Pelt, Laurence Rees and many others have accepted this only on the basis of testimony of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hoess.
However, in 1999 Peter Witte et al. published Der Dienstkalender Heinrich Himmlers 1941/42 - Himmler's diary/appointment book. It mentions Himmler's presence in Auschwitz complex on July 17 and 18 (in accordance with Hoess' testimony), but, strangely, it lacks any mention of his supposed visit to Birkenau.
Here's how the entries for these dates look like in translation.
17 July:
12:00 trip, Friedrichsruh airport, Loetzen18 July:
12:45 takeoff Loetzen
RFSS, Prof. Wuest, Kersten, Grothmann, Kiermeier
15:15 landing, Kattowitz
Pick up Gauleiter Bracht, O’Gruf. Schmauser
and Stubaf. Hoess
Trip to Auschwitz
Tea in the Commandant’s quarters
Talk with Stubaf. Caesar and O'Stubaf. Vogel,
Stubaf. Hoess
Inspection of the agricultural operations
Inspection of the prisoners’ camp and of the FKL
Dining in the Commandant’s quarters
Auschwitz-Kattowitz trip
to the residence of
Gauleiter Bracht
Evening with Gauleiter Bracht
09:00 breakfast with Gauleiter Bracht and wifeOn the first day Himmler visited the prisoners' camp and women's camp (FKL). At that time FKL was in the main camp, not in Birkenau (cf. D. Czech, Auschwitz Chronicle, p. 211). Birkenau was not a prisoners' camp, but POW camp (KGL, Kriegsgefangenenlager).
Trip to Auschwitz
Talk with O'Gruf. Schmauser
" Stubaf. Caesar
" the Commandant of the FKL
Inspection of the factory grounds of the Buna
Auschwitz-Kattowitz trip
13:00 flight, Kattowitz-Krakow-Lublin
15:15 landing, Lublin
Pick up O'Gruf. Krueger and
Brigf. Globocnik. tea with Globocnik
Talk with Staf. Schellenberg
Trip to the Jastrow fruit concern
21:00 talk at Globocnik’s with SS O’Gruf. Krueger, SS O’Gruf.
Pohl, SS Brigf. Globocnik, SS O’Stuf. Stier.
Given that the entries are detailed, it is fair to conclude that the probability that Himmler did not visit Birkenau on his second visit is high. Some argue that Himmler wouldn't mention the gassing because of secrecy concern. The point is that he doesn't even mention a trip to Birkenau, which wouldn't be a secret. Besides, the diary does contain some pretty incriminating stuff concerning the "Final Solution".
(Note: there are many photos of Himmler's visit to Buna-Monowitz sub-camp, but there are no photos of his visit to Birkenau (or to the main camp, for that matter). There seem to be no testimonies mentioning Himmler's visit to Birkenau on the relevant dates, except Hoess'. At least I haven't been able to find any in the records of the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial or in other sources accessible to me.)
Here's Hoess' long account from his autobiography written in Polish prison (Death Dealer, pp. 286ff):
The next meeting was in the summer of 1942, when Himmler visited Auschwitz for the second and last time. The inspection lasted two days and Himmler looked at everything very thoroughly. Also present at this inspection were District Leader Bracht, SS General Schmauser, Dr. Kammler, and others. The first thing after their arrival was a meeting in the officers’ club. With the help of maps and diagrams, I had to show the present condition of the camp. After that we went to the construction headquarters, where Kammler, using maps, blueprints, and models explained the planned or already progressing construction. He did not, however, keep quiet about the difficulties that existed which hindered the construction. He also pointed out those projects which were impossible not only to start, but to finish. Himmler listened with great interest, asked about some of the technical details, and agreed with the overall planning. Himmler did not utter a single word about Kammler’s repeated references to the many difficulties. Afterwards there was a trip through the whole area of concern: first the farms and soil enrichment projects, the dam-building site, the laboratories and plant cultivation in Raisko, the cattle-raising farms and the orchards. Then we visited Birkenau, the Russian camp, the Gypsy camp, and a Jewish camp. Standing at the entrance, he asked for a situation report on the layout of the swamp reclamation and the water projects. He also wanted a report on the intended expansion projects. He watched the prisoners at work, inspected the housing, the kitchens, and the sick bays. I constantly pointed out the shortcomings and the bad conditions. I am positive he noticed them. He saw the emaciated victims of epidemics. The doctors explained things without mincing words. He saw the overcrowded sick bays, and the child mortality in the Gypsy camp and he also witnessed the terrible childhood disease called noma (a gangrenous mouth disease in children weakened by disease and malnutrition). Himmler also saw the overcrowded barracks, the primitive and totally inadequate toilet and wash facilities. He was told about the high rate of illness and the death rate by the doctors and their causes. He had everything explained to him in the greatest detail. He saw everything in stark reality. Yet he said absolutely nothing. He really gave me a tongue lashing in Birkenau, when I went on and on about the terrible conditions. He screamed, ‘I don’t want to hear anymore about any existing difficulties! For an SS officer there are no difficulties. His task is always to immediately overcome any difficulty by himself! As to how? That’s your headache, not mine!’ Kammler and Bischoff got the same answers. After inspecting Birkenau, Himmler witnessed the complete extermination process of a transport of Jews which had just arrived. He also looked on for a while during a selection of those who would work and those who would die without any complaint on his part. Himmler made no comment about the extermination process. He just looked on in total silence. I noticed that he very quietly watched the officers, the NCOs and me several times during the process. The inspection continued to the Buna Works, where he inspected the plant as thoroughly as he had done with the prisoner workers and how they did their jobs. [...] From the Buna Works we went to the sewer gas installations. There was no program at all because the materials were not available. This was one of the sorest points at Auschwitz and was everyone’s main concern. The almost untreated sewage from the main camp was draining directly into the Sola River. Because of the continuing epidemics raging in the camp, the surrounding civilian population was constantly exposed to the danger of epidemic infections. The district leader quite clearly described these conditions and begged Weise to remedy this situation. Himmler answered that Kammler would work on the matter with all his energy.So Hoess gives a vivid and detailed description of the supposed visit, upon which Himmler's diary casts serious doubt. Now, does that mean that Hoess lied, was tortured, etc.? "Revisionists" will undoubtedly say "yes".
Himmler was much more interested in the next part of the inspection, the natural rubber plantations Koc-Sagys. [...]
On the evening of the first day of the inspection tour, all the guests and camp officers of Auschwitz were present at a dinner.
After dinner the district leader invited Himmler, Schmauser, Kammler, Caesar, and me to his house near Katowice. Himmler was also supposed to stay there because on the following day he had to settle some important questions concerning the local population and resettlement with the district leader. [...]
On the second day Schmauser and I picked him up at the district leader’s house, and the inspection continued. He looked at the original camp, the kitchen, and the women’s camp. At that time the women were located in the first row of barracks, numbers 1 to 11, then next to the SS Headquarters building. Then he inspected the stables, the workshops, Canada, and the DAW (German armaments factories), the butcher shop, the bakery, the construction units, and the planning board for the troops. He examined everything thoroughly and saw the prisoners, asked about their reasons for being there, and wanted an accurate count. He did not allow us to lead him around. Instead he demanded to see the things he wanted to see. He saw the overcrowding in the women’s camp, the inadequate toilet facilities, and the lack of water. He demanded to see the inventory of clothing from the quartermaster, and saw that everywhere there was a lack of everything. He asked about the food rations and extra rations given for strenuous labor down to the smallest detail. In the women’s camp he wanted to observe the corporal punishment of a woman who was a professional criminal and a prostitute. She had been repeatedly stealing whatever she could lay her hands on He was mainly interested in the results corporal punishment had on her. He personally reserved the decision about corporal punishment for women. Some of the women who were introduced to’ him and who had been imprisoned for a minor infraction he pardoned. They were allowed to leave the camp. He discussed the fanatical beliefs of the Jehovah’s Witnesses with some of the female members. After the inspection we went to my office for a final discussion.
[...]
This is how Himmler finished his important inspection of Auschwitz. He saw everything and understood all the consequences. I wonder if his ‘I am unable to help you’ statement was intentional? After our meeting and discussion in my office, he made an inspection of my home and its furnishings. He was very enthusiastic about it and talked at length with my wife and the children. He was excited and in high spirits. I drove him to the airport; we exchanged brief goodbyes, and he flew back to Berlin."
And here's where the difference lies between the real historical methodology and Holocaust denial. In Special treatment in Auschwitz [large PDF] Holocaust denier Carlo Mattogno argues at length that Himmler did not attend the gassing in Birkenau, using both Himmler's diary and some supplemental arguments, which, according to him, show that even if Himmler did visit Birkenau, he could not have witnessed any gassing. He leaves it at that, without trying to find an explanation of the paradox. And why should he? After all, "revisionists" have long ago dismissed Hoess' autobiography and other testimonies as product of coercion and fantasy - by the British captors, by the Nuremberg "thugs", by the "Polish Communists".
Now, whatever can be said about Hoess' treatment in the hands of all of his captors, his testimonies in Polish captivity (the essays he wrote for judge Jan Sehn, his autobiography, his trial testimony) are hardly compatible with coercion. He described how he was brutally mistreated by the British. He described initial mistreatment in Polish prison. He renounced his previous testimony about partial Auschwitz death toll (3 million dead, about 2.5 million of them gassed), providing far lower figures, completely incompatible with the Polish figure of 4 million (or even with 2.5 million). He called survivors' exaggerated estimates figments of their own imagination. Some coercion!
Still, what are we to make of the contradiction between Hoess' testimony and documentary evidence?
When I began to think about this issue seriously, I kept in mind that human memory is such, that different events can become confused or even blended in it. Hoess' memory was not ideal. He frequently misdated events, thus, claiming that Himmler ordered the conversion of Auschwitz into death camp in summer of 1941, mentioning that other camps in the east (meaning Aktion Reinhard(t) camps) were not up to the task for the anticipated large actions. The problem, of course, is that with exception of Belzec, these camps did not exist in 1941 (construction of Belzec began in November of 1941), and their operation began in 1942. Historian Karin Orth cites several more examples, and convincingly argues that Hoess regularly "telescoped" 1942 events into 1941 ("Rudolf Höß und die "Endlösung der Judenfrage". Drei Argumente gegen deren Datierung auf den Sommer 1941", in Werkstatt Geschichte, Heft 18, 6 (1997), S. 45-57). Hoess also misremembered the name of the death camp Sobibor, calling it "Wolzek" (one possible explanation is that he remembered for some reason the name of the village Wolczyn, which was even closer the the camp Sobibor than the village of Sobibor itself; interestingly, deniers who use this mistake as an argument for coercion cannot give any reason for the "torturers" to feed Hoess this misinformation).
So the possible explanation was to look for another notable visit, which happened close to the period in question, and see if Hoess could have blended the details of two visits.
I knew that WVHA chief Oswald Pohl visited Auschwitz on September 23, 1942 (Czech, op. cit., p. 243). I also knew that according to Pohl's itinerary for that day he was supposed to visit "Station 2 der Aktion Reinhardt", which historians Bertrand Perz and Thomas Sandkuehler interpreted as the gas chamber "Bunker 2" - i.e., the same gas chamber, the gassing in which Himmler' was supposed to have witnessed, according to Hoess ("Auschwitz und die "Aktion Reinhard" 1942-45. Judenmord und Raubpraxis in neuer Sicht", Zeitgeschichte 5, 26. Jg., 1999, S. 283-316). Although their conclusion was mostly based on the hunch (they exclude Kanada II in an endnote, as not constructed yet, so they conclude that it was Bunker 2).
Pohl's itinerary
Thus I proposed that Hoess could have mixed the details of the two visits in his narrative. It was a wild guess, frankly. When I proposed this hypothesis, I had not yet analyzed Pohl's itinerary closely. But then something caught my eye. Both Hoess and Pohl's itinerary mentioned visiting DAW (Deutsche Ausrüstungswerke, German armament works). I began to compare further, and, to my surprise, I found a whole slew of "coincidences". They're summarized in a table below.
No. | Hoess' description | Corresponding item in Pohl's itinerary |
1 | After that we went to the construction headquarters, where Kammler, using maps, blueprints, and models explained the planned or already progressing construction. Anschließend ging es zur Bauleitung, wo Kammler an Hand von Karten, Bauplänen und Modellen die beabsichtigten oder im Bau befindlichen Bauvorhaben erklärte... | Discussion of the construction projects of the KL Auschwitz in the construction headquarters. Besprechung der Bauvorhaben des KL Auschwitz in der Bauleitung |
2 | Afterwards there was a trip through the whole area of concern: first the farms and soil enrichment projects, the dam-building site ... Hiernach Fahrt durchs ganze Interessen-Gebiet. Zuerst die landwirtschaftlichen Höfe und Meliorationsarbeiten, den Dammbau... | Dam-building site at Vistula Dammbau an der Weichsel |
3 | ... the laboratories and plant cultivation in Raisko ... ... die Laboratorien und die Pflanzenzucht in Raisko ... | Raisko |
4 | Standing at the entrance [tower], he asked for a situation report on the layout of the swamp reclamation and the water projects. Vom Eingangsturm aus ließ er sich die Lage-Einteilung und die im Bau befindlichen Be- und Entwässerungsanlagen erklären, ebenso die beabsichtigten Erweiterungen. | Inspection of the whole area from the tower of HWL. Besichtigung des gesamten Gelaendes vom Turm des HWL |
5 | After inspecting Birkenau, Himmler witnessed the complete extermination process of a transport of Jews which had just arrived. (From an earlier testimony: "During his visit in the summer of 1942, Himmler very carefully observed the entire process of annihilation. He began with the unloading at the ramps and completed the inspection as Bunker II was being cleared of the bodies.") Nach der Besichtigung in Birkenau sah er sich den gesamten Vorgang der Vernichtung eines gerade eingetroffenen Juden-Transportes an. ("Der Reichsführer SS sah sich anläßlich seines Besuches im Sommer 1942 den gesamten Vorgang der Vernichtung genau an, angefangen von der Ausladung bis zur Räumung des Bunkers II.") | Station 2 of operation Reinhardt Station 2 der Aktion Reinhardt |
6 | From the Buna Works we went to the sewer gas installations. Vom Buna-Werk ging es zur Faulgas-Anlage... | Sewer gas installations Faulgasanlage |
7 | Then he inspected the workshops, the stables ... ... die Werkstätten, die Ställe ... | new stables neuer Pferdestallhof |
8 | ... Canada ... ... "Kanada" ... | Disinfestation and effects chamber /operation Reinhard/ Entwesung u. Effektenkammer /Aktion Reinhard/ |
9 | ... and the DAW (German armaments factories) ... ... und DAW ... | DAW |
10 | ... the butcher shop ... ... Fleischerei ... | Inspection of the butcher shop Besichtigung der Fleischerei |
11 | ... the bakery, the construction units ... ... und Bäckerei, Bauhof ... | Construction yard Bauhof |
12 | ... and the planning board [?] for the troops. ... und Truppenwirtschaftslager. | Troops' camp at Birkenau Truppenlager Birkenau |
There may be more coincidences, less obvious ones, but even from these 12 we can make a simple conclusion: Hoess' memory played a trick on him. He blended the two events - Himmler's and Pohl's visits to Birkenau.
Given this, there is no problem at all with stating that Himmler did not visit Birkenau on July 17 or 18 and that he did not witness a gassing in Bunker 2 at that time. It was Pohl who visited Bunker 2 and probably saw a gassing. Thus, we have solved the problem without abandoning the general veracity of Hoess' memoir (although once again confirming that it should not be used uncritically), established that "Station 2 der Aktion Reinhardt" was "Bunker 2" (thus also confirming the link between Auschwitz and Aktion Reinhard(t), posited by several researchers) and corrected a serious mistake in mainstream Auschwitz historiography.
Interestingly, Mattogno, who knows and quotes Pohl's itinerary, and who is allegedly an "accomplished linguist, researcher, and is a specialist in textual analysis", did not think of this simple solution.
There remains a question of whether Himmler was present at any Auschwitz gassing at all. This is possible. The same Mattogno quotes early testimony of Filip Mueller in the book Auschwitz: Crematorium I and the Alleged Homicidal Gassings [large PDF]:
It may have been June [an obvious mistake for July - SR] 17 or 18, 1942. On that fine sunny day everything was hastily cleaned, ‘general cleaning’ was the order of the day. We watched the excited SS people and realized that something was going on, but we did not know what, we could only surmise that some visitor was expected. Around ten o’clock, a high-ranking SS officer appeared in the door, wearing a white uniform, accompanied by two SS men - it was Himmler himself. He inspected everything meticulously. He saw us in the room, in which the clothes and underclothes of those executed were stored. When he saw those blood-stained clothes, he was surprised and asked our SS bosses why there was this blood. Not satified with their answer, he became angry and said sharply: ‘We need the clothes of these dirty dogs for our German people! It is a waste to gas those people with their clothes on!’Did Himmler also witness a gassing in crematorium I? We don't know, but further research may help to answer this question.
I should also note that there is a third narrative mixed in Hoess' testimony. He describes Himmler visiting the Gypsy camp, but the Gypsies began to arrive en masse only in 1943 (Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, p. 446). Was that a disputed Himmler's third visit to Auschwitz, for which there are only a handful of contradictory testimonies? This also remains to be seen.
I wish to conclude with the quote from Prof. van Pelt's expert report in the Irving vs. Lipstadt trial:
So what can we learn from the archive. First of all, the archive contains some copies of paperwork that was in general circulation among the various departments in the camp, and which more than hint at the possibility that Auschwitz was not a normal concentration camp. One such document is a copy of a pep-talk given by Oswald Pohl, the business administrator of the SS, to senior SS personnel during his visit to Auschwitz on September 23, 1942.During today’s observations I have silently noticed that you have an ideal inner relation to the issue at stake and an ideal attitude towards the tasks at hand. This conclusion is especially necessary in relation with the issues and the special tasks, about which we do not have to speak words—issues that belong however to your responsibilities. I observe that you do your duty from an inner obligation and this is the precondition for results.In what way was Auschwitz vastly different from other concentration camps? In what way could the job of a concentration guard be compared to that of a soldier in the field? It is obvious that Pohl referred to the so-called “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” that, shortly before, had become an official part of the operation of Auschwitz.
There remains a very large field of action ahead, on which we may create furthermore great values. In this respect you have ahead of you a wide and vast terrain.
In the last months I have made many of these inspections, and I am pleased to state here that Auschwitz significantly transcends everything else. I have noted a very good relationship between men, NCO’s and officers, and I call upon you to remain conscious of your responsibility in this matter.
I would like to remind you about the importance about the tasks set by the Reichsführer-SS, tasks that will be very important for the time when we will have achieved the final victory. Even when you are not with the fighting troops, your tasks do not demand less from you, tasks the importance of which will only be recognized in the time after the victory. It are those tasks that on the other hand put great pressure on each individual, pressures that are equal to those faced by the fighting troops on the front.
WJC removes Stern's comments
Apparently, WJC became embarrassed of Maram Stern's comments on the issue of Auschwitz renaming, because the news note can no longer be found in the archive. For some time it will be available through the Google cache.
Friday, April 28, 2006
The Thin Edge of the Wedge Gets a Big Thicker
The deniers have been concentrating their efforts primarily on the Middle East for some time, seeing a general opportunity to exploit anti-Zionist sentiment in the region. While it's true that they have gained significant ground in the region and that anti-Semitism has grown by leaps and bounds, every now and then a prominent Arab from the region comes along and shoots the deniers down.
The latest to do so is Israel Knesset member Dr. Ahmad Tibi of the United Arab List party. Tibi published an article Wednesday on Al-Arabiya's Web site in which he denounced Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial and the denial by other Arabs and Muslims.
Dr. Tibi wrote, "The Holocaust was the expression of one of the most despicable crimes against humanity carried out by the Nazi enemy during one of the human history's most shameful eras." He added, "We mustn't deny the fact that the Jews were victims of the Nazis. Denial is an immoral act. We need to understand the other and its distress, and recognize its sacrifice."
Dr. Tibi now joins several prominent Palestinian spokespersons who have unequivocally rejected Holocaust denial, including Ali Abuminah, Hussein Ibish, and Mahmoud Darwish. And what interest would the rest of the Arab world have in denying the Holocaust if the Palestinians themselves refused to?
The latest to do so is Israel Knesset member Dr. Ahmad Tibi of the United Arab List party. Tibi published an article Wednesday on Al-Arabiya's Web site in which he denounced Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial and the denial by other Arabs and Muslims.
Dr. Tibi wrote, "The Holocaust was the expression of one of the most despicable crimes against humanity carried out by the Nazi enemy during one of the human history's most shameful eras." He added, "We mustn't deny the fact that the Jews were victims of the Nazis. Denial is an immoral act. We need to understand the other and its distress, and recognize its sacrifice."
Dr. Tibi now joins several prominent Palestinian spokespersons who have unequivocally rejected Holocaust denial, including Ali Abuminah, Hussein Ibish, and Mahmoud Darwish. And what interest would the rest of the Arab world have in denying the Holocaust if the Palestinians themselves refused to?
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Zichronem livracha
Today is Yom ha-Shoah (literally "Day of the Holocaust" in Hebrew), an observance of the Holocaust instituted by the State of Israel in 1959. It has become for many countries an official or unofficial observance of Holocaust remembrance. However, other countries observe Holocaust remembrance on other days. The U.K. commemorates the Holocaust on January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Germany, over the sixty years since the Holocaust ended, has commemorated it either on January 27 or on November 9, the anniversary of Kristallnacht.
I have very mixed feelings about Yom ha-Shoah, though I think it’s obvious I find value in Holocaust remembrance, or I wouldn’t be involved with this blog, with the Holocaust History Project, or with RODOH, all of which I view as important ways of keeping memory alive. However, as I have written earlier, I am among the minority of Jewish Holocaust scholars who are not Zionists, and, as such, I shy away from Israeli-ordained commemorations. Two chief considerations cause me to reject Yom ha-Shoah as a date of commemoration of the millions of victims of the Nazis.
First, it is not a rejection of Israel’s legitimacy that moves me to instead observe Holocaust remembrance on 10 Tevet, a minor fast day and the day set aside on the Jewish calendar for those people whose yahrzeit (death anniversary) is not known. It is what I would consider the highly politicized use of the Holocaust by the Zionist movement from the discovery of the Holocaust to the present day. For instance, one might consider why, given the Holocaust’s obvious role in the immediate superpower recognition of the State of Israel, why it took until 1959 to set a day aside on the Jewish calendar to commemorate the day.
The answers are several, but principal among them were the political considerations of David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel, who was dealing with a handful of scandals in the same period of time, among them the Lavon Affair becoming public knowledge and a highly controversial arms deal with West Germany (Ben-Gurion agreed to sell weapons to Konrad Adenauer, a move many Israelis saw as treasonous). To raise his political capital, Ben-Gurion signed into law the creation of Yom ha-Shoah. At the same time, he prepared to bring Adolf Eichmann to Jerusalem to try him for crimes against the Jewish people.
In the end, Ben-Gurion ended up retiring before Israel’s next turning point in its relationship with the Holocaust, the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. Genuinely faced with destruction for the first time since its independence, Israel found itself face to face with a possible second Holocaust. The effect on the state has been profound. Not only did history repeat itself with the 1973 war, but the aftermath of that war catapulted into power the only leader of Israel who lost his family in the Holocaust –- Menachem Begin.
Begin made immense use of the Holocaust in his leadership over Israel, comparing Yasir Arafat to Hitler, comparing every enemy of Israel’s to Nazi Germany, and evoking the memory of 1.5 million murdered Jewish children in justifying his military actions against Lebanon and the Palestinians. The height of immorality is for the Jewish State to use the Holocaust as a bludgeon to beat down the Palestinian people, but far too often this has been the case in Israel over the last thirty years. The New Historians in Israel, most notably Tom Segev in his landmark study The Seventh Million, have made this a focus of their research.
The second consideration upon which my rejection of Yom ha-Shoah is based is the question of whether it is appropriate that Holocaust remembrance take place in every nation of the world. Certainly it is appropriate in Israel, and I do not begrudge the state its right to set aside a day for remembrance. But is it necessary, for instance, for the U.K. to have an official day of remembrance for the victims of the Holocaust? After all, the U.K. did not carry out the Holocaust. Neither did the United States, but there are more Holocaust museums in this country than there are in Israel. Granted, there are also more Jews here than in Israel, but the largest museum is in the nation’s capital where the Jewish community is rather small. New York’s museum in Battery Park seems appropriate (over 10 percent of New York’s population is Jewish), but an American landscape dotted with Holocaust museums seems a bit much to me.
What would be appropriate, then? Well, it seems that Germany, being the successor to the perpetrator state during the Holocaust has done a fine job of creating memorials where concentration camps once stood, as have the Poles, who live where most of the mass killing was carried out. Russia lost an immense number of people in World War II, both in the Holocaust and in other circumstances, and Holocaust remembrance there seems logical and right.
But what of the U.S., U.K., and other European nations who were more victimized than victimizers during the Third Reich? I would much rather see a museum in Washington, D.C., dedicated to remembrance of the tens or perhaps hundreds of millions of aboriginal peoples of this continent exterminated by successive French, Dutch, British, and American regimes. And it would seem also seem right that the U.K. and other nations with colonialist histories build museums and set aside days of remembrance for the victims of imperialism.
As David E. Stannard, author of American Holocaust, points out in his brutally frank essay, “Uniqueness as Denial: The Politics of Genocide Scholarship,” to commemorate the Holocaust and promote its uniqueness at the expense of remembering other equally brutal genocides both before and since degrades both Holocaust remembrance and the memory of peoples who have been made to disappear from the face of the earth in the name of white supremacy in the Western Hemisphere or fell victim to political democide in Europe and Asia in the twentieth century. I, for one, could not agree more.
Nevertheless, all that being said, as a Jew it is important to me to remember the Holocaust, not just on a day set aside by a government, but every day that genocides continue to be carried out all over the world. And so I say “Zichronem livracha” (“May their memories be a blessing”) and bow my head for a moment of silence in spite of myself.
I have very mixed feelings about Yom ha-Shoah, though I think it’s obvious I find value in Holocaust remembrance, or I wouldn’t be involved with this blog, with the Holocaust History Project, or with RODOH, all of which I view as important ways of keeping memory alive. However, as I have written earlier, I am among the minority of Jewish Holocaust scholars who are not Zionists, and, as such, I shy away from Israeli-ordained commemorations. Two chief considerations cause me to reject Yom ha-Shoah as a date of commemoration of the millions of victims of the Nazis.
First, it is not a rejection of Israel’s legitimacy that moves me to instead observe Holocaust remembrance on 10 Tevet, a minor fast day and the day set aside on the Jewish calendar for those people whose yahrzeit (death anniversary) is not known. It is what I would consider the highly politicized use of the Holocaust by the Zionist movement from the discovery of the Holocaust to the present day. For instance, one might consider why, given the Holocaust’s obvious role in the immediate superpower recognition of the State of Israel, why it took until 1959 to set a day aside on the Jewish calendar to commemorate the day.
The answers are several, but principal among them were the political considerations of David Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel, who was dealing with a handful of scandals in the same period of time, among them the Lavon Affair becoming public knowledge and a highly controversial arms deal with West Germany (Ben-Gurion agreed to sell weapons to Konrad Adenauer, a move many Israelis saw as treasonous). To raise his political capital, Ben-Gurion signed into law the creation of Yom ha-Shoah. At the same time, he prepared to bring Adolf Eichmann to Jerusalem to try him for crimes against the Jewish people.
In the end, Ben-Gurion ended up retiring before Israel’s next turning point in its relationship with the Holocaust, the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. Genuinely faced with destruction for the first time since its independence, Israel found itself face to face with a possible second Holocaust. The effect on the state has been profound. Not only did history repeat itself with the 1973 war, but the aftermath of that war catapulted into power the only leader of Israel who lost his family in the Holocaust –- Menachem Begin.
Begin made immense use of the Holocaust in his leadership over Israel, comparing Yasir Arafat to Hitler, comparing every enemy of Israel’s to Nazi Germany, and evoking the memory of 1.5 million murdered Jewish children in justifying his military actions against Lebanon and the Palestinians. The height of immorality is for the Jewish State to use the Holocaust as a bludgeon to beat down the Palestinian people, but far too often this has been the case in Israel over the last thirty years. The New Historians in Israel, most notably Tom Segev in his landmark study The Seventh Million, have made this a focus of their research.
The second consideration upon which my rejection of Yom ha-Shoah is based is the question of whether it is appropriate that Holocaust remembrance take place in every nation of the world. Certainly it is appropriate in Israel, and I do not begrudge the state its right to set aside a day for remembrance. But is it necessary, for instance, for the U.K. to have an official day of remembrance for the victims of the Holocaust? After all, the U.K. did not carry out the Holocaust. Neither did the United States, but there are more Holocaust museums in this country than there are in Israel. Granted, there are also more Jews here than in Israel, but the largest museum is in the nation’s capital where the Jewish community is rather small. New York’s museum in Battery Park seems appropriate (over 10 percent of New York’s population is Jewish), but an American landscape dotted with Holocaust museums seems a bit much to me.
What would be appropriate, then? Well, it seems that Germany, being the successor to the perpetrator state during the Holocaust has done a fine job of creating memorials where concentration camps once stood, as have the Poles, who live where most of the mass killing was carried out. Russia lost an immense number of people in World War II, both in the Holocaust and in other circumstances, and Holocaust remembrance there seems logical and right.
But what of the U.S., U.K., and other European nations who were more victimized than victimizers during the Third Reich? I would much rather see a museum in Washington, D.C., dedicated to remembrance of the tens or perhaps hundreds of millions of aboriginal peoples of this continent exterminated by successive French, Dutch, British, and American regimes. And it would seem also seem right that the U.K. and other nations with colonialist histories build museums and set aside days of remembrance for the victims of imperialism.
As David E. Stannard, author of American Holocaust, points out in his brutally frank essay, “Uniqueness as Denial: The Politics of Genocide Scholarship,” to commemorate the Holocaust and promote its uniqueness at the expense of remembering other equally brutal genocides both before and since degrades both Holocaust remembrance and the memory of peoples who have been made to disappear from the face of the earth in the name of white supremacy in the Western Hemisphere or fell victim to political democide in Europe and Asia in the twentieth century. I, for one, could not agree more.
Nevertheless, all that being said, as a Jew it is important to me to remember the Holocaust, not just on a day set aside by a government, but every day that genocides continue to be carried out all over the world. And so I say “Zichronem livracha” (“May their memories be a blessing”) and bow my head for a moment of silence in spite of myself.
Sunday, April 23, 2006
"JC Superstar" in Majdanek?
New York, NY, April 18, 2006 …The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today said it was "appalled" by plans to present the musical "Jesus Christ Superstar" at the Majdanek Concentration Camp outside Lublin, Poland.Musical in Majdanek? What kind of idea is that?
Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, and a Holocaust Survivor, issued the following statement:
We are appalled at the poor taste behind the decision to present this musical at the site where Jews were enslaved and killed. A site such as Majdanek, the second largest Nazi concentration camp in Europe, cannot be treated as if it were a public park or an entertainment venue. It is a sacred place dedicated to the memory those who suffered and to the more than 230,000 Jews and others killed within its gates.
We call on the organizers of this event to move it to another venue.
Also, note the inertia of scholarship - it has been established that about 78,000 people died in Majdanek, about 59,000 of them Jews. Foxman still uses the old figure. And who can blame him, if the Museum itself didn't care to update its own website?
28/10/2009 update: the site has been updated.
A note on UKAR. "Barry the Terrible of Wherever".
[Also see this update.]
Some of you may know the ukar.org website. It was run by Lubomyr Prytulak, a retired Ukrainian-Canadian psychology professor. It contained lots of Holocaust denial materials, written mainly by Prytulak himself. Unfortunately, LP decided to close his site for the reasons stated in the letter posted at the Cesspit.
I say "unfortunately", because for a long time UKAR has been a rich source of comic relief for anti-deniers. Prytulak's pompous style, coupled with silly conclusions he derived from evidence were a perfect example of "revisionism". Fortunately, the copies of UKAR have been saved by the Wayback Machine, so we can still savor those unintentionally funny pieces. One of them is entitled "Barry the Terrible of Wherever", and it gives us a chance to analyze "revisionist" methodology (i.e., tricks) once more.
Prytulak's thesis is simple. Both Sobibor and Treblinka survivors describe in similar terms the dog "Barry", St. Bernard, which was trained to bite prisoners at its master's command. Therefore:
First, here are the undisputed facts:
1) There indeed was Barry at Treblinka, though it was not a pure St. Bernard, but rather a hybrid. It is pictured in Kurt Franz's album Schoene Zeiten ("Good times").
A significant part of the verdict of the Duesseldorf Treblinka trial is devoted to Barry. It states that Barry was brought to Treblinka at the end of 1942 or in the beginning of 1943. After Treblinka was dismantled, Barry was given to some "Dr. Stru." (the names in German verdicts are usually abbreviated because of privacy laws). Later, Dr. Stru.'s brother took care of Barry, and the dog was killed in 1947 because of old age.
Kurt Franz himself did not deny that he had Barry, but, of course, he disputed witnesses' testimonies. The defense argued that the stories couldn't be true, because later, under Dr. Stru.'s supervision Barry was a good-natured dog. Prosecution summoned the famous Austrian zoologist, animal psychologist and future Nobel laureate Konrad Lorenz, whose specialty was animal aggression. He explained that Barry and Franz had a special bond, and, basically, Barry's behavior was mirroring Franz's own behavior. When Barry was given to another man, its behavior also changed.
Perhaps one of the earliest mentions of Barry is contained in Oskar Strawczynski's (presumably) still unpublished memoir Ten Months in Treblinka, which he wrote in early 1944 after escape from the camp (the copy is in YIVO). He was writing it in the forest, where he resided with the partisans of Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa, so his account should be relatively free of any cross-pollination:
2) There are indeed testimonies about St. Bernard Barry belonging to a Sobibor SS-Unterscharfueher Paul Groth. In addition to the testimonies cited by Prytulak, Sobibor survivor Thomas (Toivi) Blatt also mentions Barry, which belonged to Groth, although only from hearsay. (T. Blatt, Sobibor. The Forgotten Revolt, 2004, 5th edn., p. 52).
Given the undoubtable presence of Barry in Treblinka, what are we to make of Sobibor testimonies and Prytulak's conclusions?
First of all, let's note the usual "revisionist" innuendo:
Now, does Prytulak offer alternative explanations to his hypothesis about lying survivors? Yes, in passing:
Indeed, Thomas Blatt states in his book, in a footnote:
That Barry belonged to Stangl before it belonged to Franz was confirmed by SS-Unterscharführer Franz Suchomel (G. Sereny, Into That Darkness, p. 202):
When I pointed out this simple explanation to Prytulak, he replied (February 9, 2005, 3:46 am):
Prytulak's treatment of Barry story has been hailed by a Cesspit member as "the best anywhere". I can't add much to that.
Some of you may know the ukar.org website. It was run by Lubomyr Prytulak, a retired Ukrainian-Canadian psychology professor. It contained lots of Holocaust denial materials, written mainly by Prytulak himself. Unfortunately, LP decided to close his site for the reasons stated in the letter posted at the Cesspit.
I say "unfortunately", because for a long time UKAR has been a rich source of comic relief for anti-deniers. Prytulak's pompous style, coupled with silly conclusions he derived from evidence were a perfect example of "revisionism". Fortunately, the copies of UKAR have been saved by the Wayback Machine, so we can still savor those unintentionally funny pieces. One of them is entitled "Barry the Terrible of Wherever", and it gives us a chance to analyze "revisionist" methodology (i.e., tricks) once more.
Prytulak's thesis is simple. Both Sobibor and Treblinka survivors describe in similar terms the dog "Barry", St. Bernard, which was trained to bite prisoners at its master's command. Therefore:
the most plausible explanation is that a story of Barry the Terrible was floating around among prosecution witnesses, and the two Sobibor witnesses Dov Freiberg and Moshe Bahir became confused as to which camp the dog was supposed to have been at, and appropriated him to bolster their stories of Sobibor.So survivors' testimony is unreliable, case closed. Or is it?
First, here are the undisputed facts:
1) There indeed was Barry at Treblinka, though it was not a pure St. Bernard, but rather a hybrid. It is pictured in Kurt Franz's album Schoene Zeiten ("Good times").
A significant part of the verdict of the Duesseldorf Treblinka trial is devoted to Barry. It states that Barry was brought to Treblinka at the end of 1942 or in the beginning of 1943. After Treblinka was dismantled, Barry was given to some "Dr. Stru." (the names in German verdicts are usually abbreviated because of privacy laws). Later, Dr. Stru.'s brother took care of Barry, and the dog was killed in 1947 because of old age.
Kurt Franz himself did not deny that he had Barry, but, of course, he disputed witnesses' testimonies. The defense argued that the stories couldn't be true, because later, under Dr. Stru.'s supervision Barry was a good-natured dog. Prosecution summoned the famous Austrian zoologist, animal psychologist and future Nobel laureate Konrad Lorenz, whose specialty was animal aggression. He explained that Barry and Franz had a special bond, and, basically, Barry's behavior was mirroring Franz's own behavior. When Barry was given to another man, its behavior also changed.
Perhaps one of the earliest mentions of Barry is contained in Oskar Strawczynski's (presumably) still unpublished memoir Ten Months in Treblinka, which he wrote in early 1944 after escape from the camp (the copy is in YIVO). He was writing it in the forest, where he resided with the partisans of Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa, so his account should be relatively free of any cross-pollination:
Untersturmfuehrer - Lalka is the representative of the Camp Commander. He is tall, strong, athletic and good looking, with a round doll-like face and a pair of gleaming eyes. He walks rolling from side to side, haughty and self-satisfied. Barry, his big hairy dog trots behind him lazily. But woe to the person that Lalka points to, saying: "Barry, get him". Many a Jewish behind has been tasted by Barry’s teeth...Note the missing "man, get the dog" and "bitten genitals" motifs. This signifies that it is indeed an independent account, although the motifs themselves are not necessarily false or embellished.
2) There are indeed testimonies about St. Bernard Barry belonging to a Sobibor SS-Unterscharfueher Paul Groth. In addition to the testimonies cited by Prytulak, Sobibor survivor Thomas (Toivi) Blatt also mentions Barry, which belonged to Groth, although only from hearsay. (T. Blatt, Sobibor. The Forgotten Revolt, 2004, 5th edn., p. 52).
Given the undoubtable presence of Barry in Treblinka, what are we to make of Sobibor testimonies and Prytulak's conclusions?
First of all, let's note the usual "revisionist" innuendo:
After having sent off the letter to Eli Rosenbaum below, it came to my attention that Barry might be a favorite name given in children's stories of brave St. Bernards, as evidenced for example in Amazon offering the following two books for sale:Oh gee. So what is that supposed to mean? We know for a fact that Barry was in Treblinka. How are children's books relevant here? Note that Prytulak never explicitly says that survivors just applied the common St. Bernard name to the Treblinka dog, but merely implies that they did.
B. Hurlimann, Barry the Story of a Brave St. Bernard, and
Lynn Hall, Barry: The Bravest St. Bernard, whose cover is shown on the left.
Now, does Prytulak offer alternative explanations to his hypothesis about lying survivors? Yes, in passing:
Although it is possible to imagine that two almost-identical dogs existed, one at Sobibor and one at Treblinka, or that a single dog Barry spent some of his time at Sobibor and some at Treblinka, perhaps the most plausible explanation is that a story of Barry the Terrible was floating around among prosecution witnesses...The first explanation is implausible. But what about the second one - that Barry was both at Sobibor and Treblinka at different times? Did Prytulak cite any evidence to refute this alternative? No. He just brushed it off as implausible. But what is so implausible about Barry first living in Sobibor, and then being transferred to Treblinka?
Indeed, Thomas Blatt states in his book, in a footnote:
Barry was later taken to Treblinka by Stangl.We know that there was a rotation of Aktion Reinhard(t) men between the camps. Thus, Stangl served in Sobibor and Treblinka, Kurt Franz served in Belzec and Treblinka, Groth served in Belzec and Sobibor.
That Barry belonged to Stangl before it belonged to Franz was confirmed by SS-Unterscharführer Franz Suchomel (G. Sereny, Into That Darkness, p. 202):
"Stangl did improve things", Suchomel said later. "He alleviated it a bit for people, but he could have done more, especially from Christmas 1942; he could have stopped the whipping post, the 'races', 'sport', and what Franz did with that dog, Bari - he was Stangl's dog originally. He could have stopped all that without any trouble for himself.So the most plausible explanation is that Barry originally belonged to Paul Groth in Sobibor. Later Stangl, then at Sobibor, adopted Barry (probably after Groth had been transferred elsewhere for drunkenness) and brought it with him to Treblinka. Later it became Kurt Franz's dog.
When I pointed out this simple explanation to Prytulak, he replied (February 9, 2005, 3:46 am):
As we know that witnesses testifying about their experiences at such death camps are lying, then it becomes much more likely that they are passing along a fantasy that they have heard, and have become confused about which camp to attribute the fantasy to, than that the dog was moved from one camp to another.I replied as follows:
you seem to be arguing in circle. Why are witnesses' testimonies discredited? Because they placed Barry in a wrong camp. Why assume they placed Barry in a wrong camp? Because their testimonies are discredited.Prytulak's suprising (... well, OK, not suprising) reply (February 9, 2005. 12:33 pm):
The simple truth is that whether AR camps were extermination centres or not,witnesses' testimonies are not contradictory on this particular point. At first Barry was with Paul Groth at Sobibor (and possibly Belzec), then it was with Kurt Franz at Treblinka.
To repeat - one can assume, of course, that it is the instance of one motif repeated in different stories, but _only_ if one assumes that testimonies are already discredited. One cannot then prove that Bahir's or Freiberg's testimonies are discredited _because_ they repeat this motif.
You have a point if you disregard the vast amount of evidence on ukar.org that these and similar witnesses were lying.So, the witnesses were lying in this case because allegedly they had been lying in other cases, no matter that the contradiction between the testimonies about Barry existed only in Prytulak's imagination. How can one argue with such "logic"?
Prytulak's treatment of Barry story has been hailed by a Cesspit member as "the best anywhere". I can't add much to that.
Friday, April 21, 2006
Germar Rudolf's Odyssey Through The US Asylum System
The charges announced this week against Germar Rudolf and Siegfried Verbeke, though hardly unexpected, have stirred up much familiar argument against the German Penal Code's Section 130 provision against incitement (Volksverhetzung), and concerning the United States' position regarding free speech.
The issues are complex, and best taken one at a time.
The involvement of the US immigration authorities is much more easily discussed. The facts are these: after fleeing a 14-month sentence for incitement and leaving Germany in 1996, and spending time first in Spain then in the United Kingdom, Germar Rudolf arrived in the United States circa 1999, criss-crossing between Mexico and the US until he filed a claim for asylum in 2000. This application was rejected in the summer of 2003 by the INS as a 'frivolous'; Rudolf appealed. In September 2004, he married a US citizen, at a ceremony performed by the late Robert Countess and witnessed by Fredrick Toben; Arthur Butz was also present for the festivities. Two months later, his appeal was also turned down by the BIA. The following month, he filed for a change of status on the grounds of his marriage to a US citizen. The INS rejected this change of status in March 2005, on the grounds that a change of status cannot be filed when an asylum seeker is in the midst of proceedings, a contentious interpretation of the relevant legal statute.
In April 2005, Rudolf was ordered to present himself to the Chicago Immigration and Customs Executive for deportation; he absconded. On October 19, 2005, he appeared at the Chicago office of US Citizenship and Immigration Services to apply for a green card based on his marriage to a US citizen; a records check indicated he had missed his April 2005 appointment and he was taken into custody. He was deported on November 15, 2005 and handed over to the German Federal police to begin the 14-month sentence resulting from his 1995 conviction under Section 130. Though he had been deported, a renewed appeal against the INS decision of March 2005 continued to perk its way through the courts.
Last week, the US 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Rudolf's appeal. We received the judgement from an anonymous source involved in the legal side of the case, but it is also available online (large PDF). The appeals court judge upheld the denial of Rudolf's asylum claim, rejected its characterisation by the INS as 'frivolous', and reversed the BIA's denial of motion to reopen proceedings based on his change of status.
In short, the US court system, all the way up to one level shy of the Supremes, has repeatedly rejected Rudolf's claim to asylum on grounds of his alleged 'persecution' by the German authorities. Legally, the US courts were being entirely consistent with their own practice and philosophy. One of the chief strikes against Rudolf's claims was the fact that his original 1995 sentence was only 14 months of a possible 5 years, whereas others have received much longer sentences under the same statute. As an American law professor, Catherine Smith, has pointed out regarding this case, US law does not recognise as persecution sentences that have been handed down by properly constituted courts, in comparable legal systems, with the right to a defence, an appeals process and so forth. All of which characterises the German legal system, even when prosecuting Section 130 offences. Rudolf's original trial lasted 19 days. Nor can Rudolf claim to be making a valid claim of asylum under the UN Convention of Torture, even though he and his lawyers have hyperbolically invoked it repeatedly. To give a comparison, the US courts rejected a claim of asylum from an Iranian convicted of selling Western pop music CDs, because this was the locally enforced law, but accepted a claim from an Iranian translator of Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, because an associate had been tortured to death.
The reversal on appeal of the characterisation of the asylum application as 'frivolous' does not, however, undermine or contradict the denial of the overall claim for asylum. In legal terms, all it does is restore potential benefits which are made available to legitimate asylum claimants which a characterisation of 'frivolousness' withdraws. Yet in case there's any doubt how unusual the Rudolf case is, let's take a look at the available INS statistics for asylum claims granted to German and EU citizens from 1990 to 2003 (Excel spreadsheet). These show that out of 207,527 claims of asylum accepted by the US, only 91 can be definitively shown to have come from countries within the EU. Greece and the United Kingdom are the largest, with 27 apiece, while France and Germany tied with 17.
So who are these dissidents from Euro-totalitarianism that have been granted a safe haven in the Land of the Free? Almost none of them, it turns out, are native-born citizens of the respective countries. Indeed, the sole German national granted asylum is a Scientologist who it seems fraudulently claimed refugee status in order to avoid tax enquiries. The remaining German applicants seem to be mainly refugees from Iran, Afghanistan or Middle Eastern countries who left German to avoid racist attacks and direct physical violence. Cases can be found where such claims for asylum were accepted as well as rejected by the US courts. So it would seem that those few from Germany granted asylum in the US are fleeing from Nazis, not Nazis fleeing German state 'persecution'.
The only legal leg that Rudolf had left to stand on vis-a-vis the United States immigration authorities was his change of status. The INS interprets existing US law to mean that a change of status such as marriage is irrelevant to an ongoing appeals process under the asylum regulations. The 11th Circuit appeals court ruled against the INS on this aspect of the case, dissenting from rulings made in some appeals court circuits while affirming and agreeing with rulings handed down by other appeals court circuits. Chances are, this point of statute interpretation will go to the Supreme Court for a final ruling, or the law will be redrafted.
Yet what does his change of status come down to? A marriage to a US citizen. Anyone who's seen the movie 'Green Card' will know that arranged marriages for the purposes of gaining citizenship are on the one hand easy to sort out, but on the other hand vulnerable to checks by officials and demands for proof. Much the same applies in other countries. I'm not a lawyer, but I strongly suspect that the alternative route of entering under a tourist visa and promptly finding a US citizen to marry would bring down just as much scrutiny from officialdom as an asylum claim.
The bottom line, then, is that Germar Rudolf was deported from the US having exhausted a protracted appeals process after his claim of asylum was denied; a claim that stood next to no chance of succeeding under the US regulations. Had he wanted to secure resident-alien status more swiftly, he should have shacked up with someone a lot sooner than he did. The IDGR page on Rudolf relates a sad tale, derived from his own writings, of him romancing a Texan woman who turned out to be a Christian fundamentalist and thus incompatible with Rudolf's worldview.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but surely Bradley Smith, Mark Weber or Robert Countess had a daughter or grand-daughter somewhere to spare? One finds it hard to believe that somewhere within US revisionism, there wasn't someone who had a spare female. But then maybe all the sisters or daughters of the relevant revisionists hate their brother's/father's guts for lying about the Holocaust. At the end of the day, the US revisionist movement needs to find a suitable supply of willing partners for arranged marriages to fleeing German revisionists if it wants to avoid legal fiascos such as the Rudolf case happening again...
In the next post about Rudolf, we'll turn to the view from Germany, and why this blog disagrees with his forthcoming trial under Section 130.
The issues are complex, and best taken one at a time.
The involvement of the US immigration authorities is much more easily discussed. The facts are these: after fleeing a 14-month sentence for incitement and leaving Germany in 1996, and spending time first in Spain then in the United Kingdom, Germar Rudolf arrived in the United States circa 1999, criss-crossing between Mexico and the US until he filed a claim for asylum in 2000. This application was rejected in the summer of 2003 by the INS as a 'frivolous'; Rudolf appealed. In September 2004, he married a US citizen, at a ceremony performed by the late Robert Countess and witnessed by Fredrick Toben; Arthur Butz was also present for the festivities. Two months later, his appeal was also turned down by the BIA. The following month, he filed for a change of status on the grounds of his marriage to a US citizen. The INS rejected this change of status in March 2005, on the grounds that a change of status cannot be filed when an asylum seeker is in the midst of proceedings, a contentious interpretation of the relevant legal statute.
In April 2005, Rudolf was ordered to present himself to the Chicago Immigration and Customs Executive for deportation; he absconded. On October 19, 2005, he appeared at the Chicago office of US Citizenship and Immigration Services to apply for a green card based on his marriage to a US citizen; a records check indicated he had missed his April 2005 appointment and he was taken into custody. He was deported on November 15, 2005 and handed over to the German Federal police to begin the 14-month sentence resulting from his 1995 conviction under Section 130. Though he had been deported, a renewed appeal against the INS decision of March 2005 continued to perk its way through the courts.
Last week, the US 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Rudolf's appeal. We received the judgement from an anonymous source involved in the legal side of the case, but it is also available online (large PDF). The appeals court judge upheld the denial of Rudolf's asylum claim, rejected its characterisation by the INS as 'frivolous', and reversed the BIA's denial of motion to reopen proceedings based on his change of status.
In short, the US court system, all the way up to one level shy of the Supremes, has repeatedly rejected Rudolf's claim to asylum on grounds of his alleged 'persecution' by the German authorities. Legally, the US courts were being entirely consistent with their own practice and philosophy. One of the chief strikes against Rudolf's claims was the fact that his original 1995 sentence was only 14 months of a possible 5 years, whereas others have received much longer sentences under the same statute. As an American law professor, Catherine Smith, has pointed out regarding this case, US law does not recognise as persecution sentences that have been handed down by properly constituted courts, in comparable legal systems, with the right to a defence, an appeals process and so forth. All of which characterises the German legal system, even when prosecuting Section 130 offences. Rudolf's original trial lasted 19 days. Nor can Rudolf claim to be making a valid claim of asylum under the UN Convention of Torture, even though he and his lawyers have hyperbolically invoked it repeatedly. To give a comparison, the US courts rejected a claim of asylum from an Iranian convicted of selling Western pop music CDs, because this was the locally enforced law, but accepted a claim from an Iranian translator of Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, because an associate had been tortured to death.
The reversal on appeal of the characterisation of the asylum application as 'frivolous' does not, however, undermine or contradict the denial of the overall claim for asylum. In legal terms, all it does is restore potential benefits which are made available to legitimate asylum claimants which a characterisation of 'frivolousness' withdraws. Yet in case there's any doubt how unusual the Rudolf case is, let's take a look at the available INS statistics for asylum claims granted to German and EU citizens from 1990 to 2003 (Excel spreadsheet). These show that out of 207,527 claims of asylum accepted by the US, only 91 can be definitively shown to have come from countries within the EU. Greece and the United Kingdom are the largest, with 27 apiece, while France and Germany tied with 17.
So who are these dissidents from Euro-totalitarianism that have been granted a safe haven in the Land of the Free? Almost none of them, it turns out, are native-born citizens of the respective countries. Indeed, the sole German national granted asylum is a Scientologist who it seems fraudulently claimed refugee status in order to avoid tax enquiries. The remaining German applicants seem to be mainly refugees from Iran, Afghanistan or Middle Eastern countries who left German to avoid racist attacks and direct physical violence. Cases can be found where such claims for asylum were accepted as well as rejected by the US courts. So it would seem that those few from Germany granted asylum in the US are fleeing from Nazis, not Nazis fleeing German state 'persecution'.
The only legal leg that Rudolf had left to stand on vis-a-vis the United States immigration authorities was his change of status. The INS interprets existing US law to mean that a change of status such as marriage is irrelevant to an ongoing appeals process under the asylum regulations. The 11th Circuit appeals court ruled against the INS on this aspect of the case, dissenting from rulings made in some appeals court circuits while affirming and agreeing with rulings handed down by other appeals court circuits. Chances are, this point of statute interpretation will go to the Supreme Court for a final ruling, or the law will be redrafted.
Yet what does his change of status come down to? A marriage to a US citizen. Anyone who's seen the movie 'Green Card' will know that arranged marriages for the purposes of gaining citizenship are on the one hand easy to sort out, but on the other hand vulnerable to checks by officials and demands for proof. Much the same applies in other countries. I'm not a lawyer, but I strongly suspect that the alternative route of entering under a tourist visa and promptly finding a US citizen to marry would bring down just as much scrutiny from officialdom as an asylum claim.
The bottom line, then, is that Germar Rudolf was deported from the US having exhausted a protracted appeals process after his claim of asylum was denied; a claim that stood next to no chance of succeeding under the US regulations. Had he wanted to secure resident-alien status more swiftly, he should have shacked up with someone a lot sooner than he did. The IDGR page on Rudolf relates a sad tale, derived from his own writings, of him romancing a Texan woman who turned out to be a Christian fundamentalist and thus incompatible with Rudolf's worldview.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but surely Bradley Smith, Mark Weber or Robert Countess had a daughter or grand-daughter somewhere to spare? One finds it hard to believe that somewhere within US revisionism, there wasn't someone who had a spare female. But then maybe all the sisters or daughters of the relevant revisionists hate their brother's/father's guts for lying about the Holocaust. At the end of the day, the US revisionist movement needs to find a suitable supply of willing partners for arranged marriages to fleeing German revisionists if it wants to avoid legal fiascos such as the Rudolf case happening again...
In the next post about Rudolf, we'll turn to the view from Germany, and why this blog disagrees with his forthcoming trial under Section 130.
It would be a bad joke, if it weren't for real...
From the report of Ortskommandatur II/347, Borislav (July of 1941):
RGVA, f. 1275, op. 3, d. 663, l. 4, cited in A. Kruglov, Sbornik dokumentov i materialov ob unichtozhenii natsistami jevrejev Ukrainy v 1941-1944 godakh, Kiev, 2002, p. 318.
Population is still strongly irritated because of murder of many Ukrainians by the Russians during their retreat. After Russians left, Ukrainians took revenge and killed about 350 Jews.
RGVA, f. 1275, op. 3, d. 663, l. 4, cited in A. Kruglov, Sbornik dokumentov i materialov ob unichtozhenii natsistami jevrejev Ukrainy v 1941-1944 godakh, Kiev, 2002, p. 318.
Thursday, April 20, 2006
"CODOH" my ass - Bradley Smith's hypocrisy
"CODOH" stands for "Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust", the Holocaust denial organization founded by Bradley Smith.
Recently the so-called "Revisionist Forum" has become the official forum of CODOH's website. For several years the forum has been run by UCLA library assistant Jonnie Hargis ("Hannover"), though now several other persons may help to moderate it. The forum is known for its severe censorship of opposing viewpoints - many prominent online anti-deniers have been banned from it basically for effectively debunking deniers' arguments (though false excuses have been given for their banning). But not only anti-deniers are banned. For example "revisionist" Scott Smith, head of alternative forum "RODOH" ("Real Open Debate on the Holocaust") has also been banned.
Bans are not the only tools of censorship at CODOH forum. Many posts just do not make it there (if the poster is in pre-moderation mode), many are deleted, some are edited before appearing. I have experienced this myself, as did many other participants, whether "revisionists" or anti-"revisionists". Not a perfect "1984" emulation, but pretty close.
Recently a Portuguese denier AS Marques, who for some time has been participating in discussions at CODOH forum (and was initially welcome there) complained about Hargis' practices at Bradley Smith's blog. After several replies Smith has simply deleted the whole thread, but you can read most of it here.
So, what do we have here? A "revisionist" complains about Orwellian practices at a "revisionist" forum. Bradley Smith, this self-described libertarian, striving for the "Open Debate on the Holocaust", turns the blind eye on the complaint, dreams up excuses for Hargis' behavior, and then sends the complaint and the ensuing discussion to the Memory Hole.
That's Open Debate for you, folks.
Update: AS Marques says in the comments that his comments were deleted by his request.
Recently the so-called "Revisionist Forum" has become the official forum of CODOH's website. For several years the forum has been run by UCLA library assistant Jonnie Hargis ("Hannover"), though now several other persons may help to moderate it. The forum is known for its severe censorship of opposing viewpoints - many prominent online anti-deniers have been banned from it basically for effectively debunking deniers' arguments (though false excuses have been given for their banning). But not only anti-deniers are banned. For example "revisionist" Scott Smith, head of alternative forum "RODOH" ("Real Open Debate on the Holocaust") has also been banned.
Bans are not the only tools of censorship at CODOH forum. Many posts just do not make it there (if the poster is in pre-moderation mode), many are deleted, some are edited before appearing. I have experienced this myself, as did many other participants, whether "revisionists" or anti-"revisionists". Not a perfect "1984" emulation, but pretty close.
Recently a Portuguese denier AS Marques, who for some time has been participating in discussions at CODOH forum (and was initially welcome there) complained about Hargis' practices at Bradley Smith's blog. After several replies Smith has simply deleted the whole thread, but you can read most of it here.
So, what do we have here? A "revisionist" complains about Orwellian practices at a "revisionist" forum. Bradley Smith, this self-described libertarian, striving for the "Open Debate on the Holocaust", turns the blind eye on the complaint, dreams up excuses for Hargis' behavior, and then sends the complaint and the ensuing discussion to the Memory Hole.
That's Open Debate for you, folks.
Update: AS Marques says in the comments that his comments were deleted by his request.
Don't Know Much About History...
Kathryn Hughes, a British writer and journalist, made a sharp observation in
The Guardian yesterday about the comprehension of history among the general public:
But... surely there are Professors for the Public Understanding of History? They're called TV professors, and in the UK we not only have a surfeit of them (Simon Schama and Bettany Hughes being the best-known right now), we even export them to the US. Yet Kathryn Hughes is right that there is something of a problem of popular understanding of history.
The responses in today's letters page have however pointed out that the failings are not to be blamed exclusively on the credulous public, but also point to a failing of academics to engage with populist hokum:
Paul Anderton's letter drew an even more explicit implication from Hughes' article:
Indeed. Yet the problem won't go away, especially with anything related to the Third Reich, the Second World War or the Holocaust. TV history has been well-served by the work of the BBC Timewatch team led by Laurence Rees and Tillman Remme, whose various series 'The Nazis - A Warning From History', 'War of the Century' and 'Auschwitz' have drawn on research expertise of Ian Kershaw, Andrej Angrick, Christian Gerlach and many another 'name' academic. But these are jewels in the mire, whereas the majority of programs screened on the Hitler Channel are dross. Not only that, but in Britain, much of Channel Five, part of Channel 4 and several other cable channels seem to be turned over to similarly bad documentaries, so much so that the late comedian Linda Smith said there was going to be only one channel left within a few years, UK TV History Nazi Gold.
Nor does the matter rest there. Academics might be comfortably familiar with the subject matter, but it takes, it would seem, years for the fruits of the cutting edge research to filter down into popular understanding. In part, this is a product of the lamentable offerings of the publishing industry, who seem more content to offer endless reprints of Guderian's and Hoess's memoirs than to commission new books, but also because academics have become too esoteric for their own good. Increasingly, too, the products of postgraduate research are too far removed from the needs of even university undergraduates to be of much use in teaching.
Which brings me to the vexed subject of the internet, these days one of the prime sources of information on matters historical available to the general public, and increasingly also one used and abused by university students. With a very few exceptions, such as the University of the West of England's Web Genocide Documentation Centre, universities have scarcely scratched the surface of the possibilities now available for outreach and the dissemination of ideas because of the net.
And this is where the remarks of the two letter-writers come back in. Academic historians might well sneer at the conspiracy-theory output of cranks, lunatics and Holocaust Deniers, but they reckon without the pervasiveness of this stuff. As Dr Gilchrist so rightly pointed out, 'We need to get involved, not just turn a blind eye as if it were beneath our dignity.'
The Guardian yesterday about the comprehension of history among the general public:
These days there is no excuse for not understanding science. Every university with its eye on the zeitgeist, not to mention public funding, has a kindly professor whose job it is to help those of us who left school with a single O-level in biology to get to grips with the exciting world of genomes and string theory. Richard Dawkins holds just such a chair at Oxford, while at Bristol the telegenic Kathy Sykes does the same sort of thing, only with more screen time. Professors Lewis Wolpert, David Phillips and Susan Greenfield, meanwhile, head up committees and win honours that have "public understanding of science" somewhere in their unwieldy rubric....
What a shame that we don't have professors for the public understanding of other subjects. I'm thinking of history.
But... surely there are Professors for the Public Understanding of History? They're called TV professors, and in the UK we not only have a surfeit of them (Simon Schama and Bettany Hughes being the best-known right now), we even export them to the US. Yet Kathryn Hughes is right that there is something of a problem of popular understanding of history.
We are surrounded by books, television programmes and heritage sites peddling their version of the past, yet we have no way of knowing which of these productions matter and which are dreamscapes dressed up in crinoline. We are left to muddle through, hoping the version we're getting of Anglo-Saxon England, the slave trade or the Victorian music hall is more or less kosher, in a manner that would seem casual if applied to a television programme about global warming or a book on Parkinson's disease.
The reason for this unwillingness to ask an expert must be that, while few of us would fancy ourselves as scientists, most of us are happy to think of ourselves as soi-disant historians.... This is not to suggest that history should be professionalised (which means academised), so that only people with a lot of letters after their name are allowed to do it.... None the less, if we are to avoid using the past as a kind of personal playpen, then we need someone on hand to act as an astringent warning voice. For the past really is another country, and we need guidebooks, translators and mountain guides to ensure it doesn't trip us up.
The responses in today's letters page have however pointed out that the failings are not to be blamed exclusively on the credulous public, but also point to a failing of academics to engage with populist hokum:
Kathryn Hughes is right about the lack of quality control in popular history (This historical swaggering, April 17). I find the proliferation of shoddy scholarship and crackpot theories being peddled as "history" in the bestseller market very disturbing: look in any bookshop for works on such subjects as ancient Egypt, the Albigensian Crusade or the Templars and you will find pseudo-mystical, pseudo-histories side-by-side with works of reputable scholarship, and nothing to help the novice know what to choose.
There are also the "popular" histories which aim to make areas of the past more "accessible", yet are riddled with factual errors and discredited interpretations. I should like to see more professional historians entering the fray and demolishing the amateurs and cranks with reasoned argument and primary sources. We need to get involved, not just turn a blind eye as if it were beneath our dignity.
Dr MM Gilchrist
Glasgow
Paul Anderton's letter drew an even more explicit implication from Hughes' article:
Kathryn Hughes is right to reject a professionalised authority for history, but wrong in equating professional with academic. On her own analogy with science it is clear that it is not professionalism (ie earning a living by) which gives the Dawkins of this world their status, it is their method of acquiring knowledge - scientific method. So the historian is one who is academic - scholarly transparent in showing how all the available evidence leads to justified conclusions. This is why we need to stop calling the likes of David Irving "historians" just because they write about the past.
Indeed. Yet the problem won't go away, especially with anything related to the Third Reich, the Second World War or the Holocaust. TV history has been well-served by the work of the BBC Timewatch team led by Laurence Rees and Tillman Remme, whose various series 'The Nazis - A Warning From History', 'War of the Century' and 'Auschwitz' have drawn on research expertise of Ian Kershaw, Andrej Angrick, Christian Gerlach and many another 'name' academic. But these are jewels in the mire, whereas the majority of programs screened on the Hitler Channel are dross. Not only that, but in Britain, much of Channel Five, part of Channel 4 and several other cable channels seem to be turned over to similarly bad documentaries, so much so that the late comedian Linda Smith said there was going to be only one channel left within a few years, UK TV History Nazi Gold.
Nor does the matter rest there. Academics might be comfortably familiar with the subject matter, but it takes, it would seem, years for the fruits of the cutting edge research to filter down into popular understanding. In part, this is a product of the lamentable offerings of the publishing industry, who seem more content to offer endless reprints of Guderian's and Hoess's memoirs than to commission new books, but also because academics have become too esoteric for their own good. Increasingly, too, the products of postgraduate research are too far removed from the needs of even university undergraduates to be of much use in teaching.
Which brings me to the vexed subject of the internet, these days one of the prime sources of information on matters historical available to the general public, and increasingly also one used and abused by university students. With a very few exceptions, such as the University of the West of England's Web Genocide Documentation Centre, universities have scarcely scratched the surface of the possibilities now available for outreach and the dissemination of ideas because of the net.
And this is where the remarks of the two letter-writers come back in. Academic historians might well sneer at the conspiracy-theory output of cranks, lunatics and Holocaust Deniers, but they reckon without the pervasiveness of this stuff. As Dr Gilchrist so rightly pointed out, 'We need to get involved, not just turn a blind eye as if it were beneath our dignity.'
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Those "Nazi analogies"
There's simply no way comparison to the Nazis is inapplicable to recent outbursts of a certain savage:
They are very depressed by the weakness that America is showing to these psychotics in the Muslim world. They say, "Oh, there's a billion of them." I said, "So, kill 100 million of them, then there'll be 900 million of them." I mean, would you rather die -- would you rather us die than them? I mean, what is it going to take for you people to wake up? Would you rather we disappear or we die? Or would you rather they disappear and they die?Or take Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler's hysterical rant:
The majority of paleswinians just decided that they want war until every last Joooo is dead. They had a choice. They made the wrong one.What about children? Should they be murdered?
Now wipe the kaffiyeh’ed genocidal subhumans out.
No excuses, no more diplomatic kabuki theater, no more waffling.
Wipe them out.
They want war.
Let them have it.
Now.
NEVER AGAIN!
Why not? Think of it as post partum abortion…Now, this is a very familiar logic. Here's what police secretary Walter Mattner (from Vienna) was writing from Mogilev to his wife in October of 1941 (C. Browning, The Origins of the Final Solution, 2004, University of Nebraska Press, p. 298; emphasis mine):
After all, they just grow up to be mass murderers...
When the first truckload [of victims] arrived my hand was slightly trembling when shooting, but one gets used to this. When the tenth load arrived I was already aiming more calmly and shot securely at the many women, children, and infants. Considering that I too have two infants at home, with whom these hordes would do the same, if not ten times worse. The death we gave to them was a nice, quick death compared with the hellish torture of thousands upon thousands in the dungeons of the GPU. Infants were flying in a wide circle through the air and we shot them down still in flight, before they fell into the pit and into the water. Let's get rid of this scum that tossed all of Europe into the war and is still agitating in America. ... I am actually already looking forward, and many say here that after our return home, then it will be the turn of our own Jews. Well, I'm not allowed to tell you enough.
Henryk Świebocki answers Maram Stern
Swiebocki:
I wish to believe, that when you made the statement you were not driven by ill will. But it rather resulted from your unfamiliarity with the subject. I do not dare to suspect you of making a suggestion that Poles are, to a certain degree, responsible for Auschwitz, and “The government in Warsaw wants […] make clear that Poland had no involvement in the death camp”.Note: I don't think it has been proven that one of the aims of the Nazis when establishing the camp has been extermination of the Poles. But that does not diminish Swiebocki's other points.
Are you aware of the fact, that Auschwitz, before it became one of the death centers for Jews, had been established by Nazi Germany to exterminate Polish population? And of the fact that its first victims were Polish citizens? And that at least 75 000 Poles perished in the camp, being the second largest group of victims?
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Rudolf and Verbeke charged
It's all kicking off today...
According to SWR.de, a Baden-Württemberg news site, Rudolf and Verbeke are being charged with incitement(Volksverhetzung) under Article 130 of the Federal German Basic Law, in particular with 'antisemitic agitation', and also with insulting and defaming the memory of the dead. The trial is set for the second half of this year in the same court-district as Ernst Zündel is currently undergoing trial.
Just the news for now. Comments later.
2 charged for Holocaust denial
18/04/2006 22:26 - (SA)
Berlin - German prosecutors say they have charged a German far-right activist, extradited from the United States, and a Belgian man, handed over by the Netherlands, with incitement for allegedly denying the Holocaust. On Tuesday, prosecutors in the western city of Mannheim said Germar Rudolf and Siegfried Verbeke were accused of "systematically" denying or playing down the Nazi genocide of Europe's Jews in documents and on the internet, and of stirring anti-Semitic hatred.
Denying the Holocaust is a crime in Germany. It carries a maximum sentence of five years imprisonment. Rudolf, 41, published a study claiming to prove that the Nazis did not gas Jews at the Auschwitz concentration camp. He was deported to Germany from the US in November, to serve a 14-month prison sentence for a 1995 conviction on similar charges. Verbeke, 64, was arrested in the Netherlands and also extradited to Germany in November. Prosecutors in Mannheim are leading a similar, but unrelated case, against Ernst Zundel, a German deported from Canada last year.
According to SWR.de, a Baden-Württemberg news site, Rudolf and Verbeke are being charged with incitement(Volksverhetzung) under Article 130 of the Federal German Basic Law, in particular with 'antisemitic agitation', and also with insulting and defaming the memory of the dead. The trial is set for the second half of this year in the same court-district as Ernst Zündel is currently undergoing trial.
Just the news for now. Comments later.
Arolsen Archive To Open
Just in:
alas, the right-wing Jerusalem Post has gotten a little confused in its choice of headline:
But... there weren't even 17 million Jews on the planet in the 1940s! Luckily the article does clarify:
Goofs like this aside, just as we said last month, this is great news for historians, and will no doubt lead to new discoveries about the manifold forced migrations, population displacements and deportations that took place across Europe between 1939 and 1950 - not just the Holocaust.
Last update - 20:29 18/04/2006
Germany agrees to open Holocaust records for use by historians, survivors
By The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Germany agreed Tuesday to clear the way for the opening of Nazi records on some 17 million Jews and enslaved laborers who were persecuted and slain by the Nazis and their collaborators more than 60 years ago during the Holocaust.Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries said at a news conference in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum that Germany would work in partnership with the United States to assure the opening of the archives, held in Bad Arolsen, Germany, and allow historians and survivors access to some 30 million to 50 million documents.Until now, Germany resisted providing access to the archives, citing privacy considerations. "We always put it forward that way in meetings," Zypries said.
But in a meeting Tuesday with Sara Bloomfield, the museum's director, Zypries said Germany had changed its position and would seek immediate revision of an 11-nation accord that governs the archives.She said that should take no more than six months.Speaking in German, the minister said, "We now agree to open the data in Bad Arolsen in Germany," she said. "We now assume the data will be safeguarded by those countries that copy the material and use it, and now that we have made this decision, we want to move forward."In an interview, Bloomfield called the decision "a great step; a really important step."She said, "I will be completely thrilled when I get the material in the archives."For 60 years, the International Red Cross has used the archived documents to trace missing and dead Jews and forced laborers, who were systematically persecuted by Nazi Germany and its anti-Semitic confederates across central and eastern Europe before and during World War II.The archives have remained off-limits over the decades to historians and the public.Zypries and Bloomfield credited France and Poland with being especially helpful in trying to resolve the dispute. However, the German minister said, "the ICRC has not been particularly helpful."
alas, the right-wing Jerusalem Post has gotten a little confused in its choice of headline:
Germany to open Holocaust records on 17 million Jews
But... there weren't even 17 million Jews on the planet in the 1940s! Luckily the article does clarify:
Germany agreed Tuesday to clear the way for the opening of Nazi records on some 17 million Jews and enslaved laborers who were persecuted and slain by the Nazis and their collaborators more than 60 years ago during the Holocaust.
Goofs like this aside, just as we said last month, this is great news for historians, and will no doubt lead to new discoveries about the manifold forced migrations, population displacements and deportations that took place across Europe between 1939 and 1950 - not just the Holocaust.
Update on Pet'ko and Pegov
Nick has found a document which proves that Pet'ko and Pegov escaped on May 27, 1944 (the same day as Czeslaw Mordowicz and Arnost Rosin). That means that for unknown reason the date of escape given in the report is wrong. Well, that is not a big issue - we know that they did escape, after all.
According to this document they arrived in Auschwitz in April of 1943.
From this it follows that:
a) they could have witnessed the pits dug near the crematoria in May of 1944, or could have heard about these pits;
b) however, it also means that they couldn't have witnessed the crematoria construction.
The point (b) can be addressed as follows: Zentralsauna was being constructed throughout 1943, and was being finished in autumn. Probably, Pet'ko and Pegov mistook it, with its smoking chimneys and "[" shape, for two crematoria they write about. And especially since it was, basically, a "bath", this connotation probably led them to believe this was to be new homicidal installation(s).
This mistake is not so serious, and does not diminish the value of the report, which mostly correctly describes the operation of crematoria II and III (apparently, Pet'ko and Pegov did not know much about crematoria IV and V).
And now the document:
According to this document they arrived in Auschwitz in April of 1943.
From this it follows that:
a) they could have witnessed the pits dug near the crematoria in May of 1944, or could have heard about these pits;
b) however, it also means that they couldn't have witnessed the crematoria construction.
The point (b) can be addressed as follows: Zentralsauna was being constructed throughout 1943, and was being finished in autumn. Probably, Pet'ko and Pegov mistook it, with its smoking chimneys and "[" shape, for two crematoria they write about. And especially since it was, basically, a "bath", this connotation probably led them to believe this was to be new homicidal installation(s).
This mistake is not so serious, and does not diminish the value of the report, which mostly correctly describes the operation of crematoria II and III (apparently, Pet'ko and Pegov did not know much about crematoria IV and V).
And now the document:
++ KL AUSCHWITZ NR. 5405 28.5.44 150 = SCHA
1. AN DAS RSHA ROEM 4 C BERLIN -
2. AN DAS RKPA POTSDAM -
3. AN DAS SS-WVHA. AMTSGRUPPE D, ORANIENBURG. -
4. AN ALLE OESTL. STAPO-LEIT- KRIPO-LEIT STELLEN
UND GREKO BESONDERS NUERNBEERG/FUEHRT [SIC]
DRINGEND SOFORT VORLEGEN.
BETR.; FLUCHT DER SCHUTZHAEFTLINGE
1. MORDOWICZ CZESLAUW ISRAEL, GEB. AM 2.9.1911 ZU MIELAU, EINGELIEFERT AM
17.12.42 VOM RSHA.
2. LEYSMAN ABRAM ISRAEL, GEB. A29.2.24 ZU MACKHEIM, EINGELIEFERT AM 10.12.42
VOM RSHA.
3. ROSIN ERNST ISRAEL, GEB. AM 20.3.13 ZU SNINA. - ZULETZT WOHNHAFT GEWESEN:
SNINA/SLOW. - EINGELIEFERT AM 18.4.42 VOM RSHA.
- DES RUSSISCHEN SCHUTZH. -
4. ZEMENKO BORIS, GEB. AM 24.6.07 ZU BOROWIEJTZE, EINGELIEFERT AM 13.5.43
VON DER STAPO NUERNBERG/FUERTH. ZUM AKTZ. NR. 581 KL. G/43 ROEM. 2 A
(62KGF.)
DER RUSSISCHEN KRIEGSGEFANGENEN
5. ASTACHOW, WASILIJ, GEB. AM 3.5.21 ZU OSORKI, EINGELIEFERT AM 1.11.43 VOM
STALAG 358. KENN-NR 28822
6. RADJONOWSKI, DMITRY, GEB AM 15.10.14 ZU NAGADA, EINGELIEFERT AM 7.10.41
VOM STALAG 308. KENN-NR 35008
7. ILJIN, IWAN, GEB. AM 1.5.23 ZU KIEW, EINGELIEFERT AM 12.11.43 VOM OFLAG
58, KENN-NR 9667
8. POPTSCHENO, MICHAEL, GEB. AM 29.4.19 ZU PYCHAU, EINGELIEFERT AM 12.11.43
VOM KR. GEF. L. ZEITHAIN, KENN-NR 4163
9. MASURENKO, WOLODYMYR, GEB. AM 14.11.20 ZU TSCHESNOPIL, EINGELIEFERT AM
8.10.43 VOM STALAG 318, KENN NR 65245
10. PJETKO, ANATOLY, GEB AM 19.4.18 ZU HORBARZOW, EINGELIEFERT AM 16.4.43
VOM STALAG 318, KENN-NR 36074
11. PJEGOW, WLADIMIR, GEB, AM 22.12.19 ZU RAZNIEZJE, EINGELIEFERT AM 14.4.43
VOM STALAG 318. KENN NR 38.- [SIC]
DIE UMSEITIG GENANNTEN SIND AM 27.5.44 VON VERSCHIEDENEN AUSSENKOMMANDOS AUS
DEM KL. AU. ROEM. 2 ENTFLOHEN. DIE SOFORT EINGELEITETE SUCHAKTION BLIEB
BISHER OHNE ERFOLG. ES WIRD GEBETEN, VON DORT AUR WEITERE
FAHNDUNGSMASSNAHMEN EINZULEITEN UND IN ERGREIFUNGSFALLE DAS KL. AUSCHWITZ
UMGEHEND ZU BENACHRICHTIGEN. DIE AUSSCHREIBUNG DER 7 KRIEGSGEFANGENEN WURDE
BEI DER ZUSTAENDIGEN KRIMINALPOLIZEI BEANTRAGT.
II/84216/ 28.5.44 SCHU.-BR.- KL .AU. AU. II
GEZ. KRAMER
From APMO microfilm no. 90/118, 119, published as facsimile in Henryk
Swiebocki (ed.), 'London Has Been Informed'. Reports By Auschwitz Escapees,
Oswiecim, 2002, pp. 50-51
Monday, April 17, 2006
Galloway: 'I’m always telling Muslims never to get involved in the debate about the Holocaust'
George Galloway is a name now familiar even to many Americans after the left-wing British Member of Parliament pwn3d a Senate committee enquiring into his involvement over the Iraqi oil-for-food program last year. Over in Britain, we're more weary of his antics, which have stretched from saluting Saddam Hussein for his 'courage and indefatigability', to unseating a popular Labour MP in Bethnal Green under the banner of the Respect Party in the 2005 British General Election, to appearing on Celebrity Big Brother earlier this year and crawling round the floor pretending to be a cat.
After that particular embarrassment, his latest stunt, however, has many cheering him on again. For years, the British Sunday tabloid has been employing the services of an undercover reporter, Mazher Mahmood, who is most famous for posing as a rich Middle Eastern sheikh and catching out a collection of celebrities (including England manager Sven-Goran Eriksson), royalty (Sophie Wessex, Princess Michael of Kent) and professional criminals. The 'fake sheikh', as Mahmood is known, has claimed more scalps than any other undercover reporter in Britain.
Unfortunately for Mahmood, he has now met his match in Galloway. On March 31, Galloway announced that Mahmood and an accomplice had "sought to implicate me in what would be illegal political funding and sought my agreement to anti-Semitic views, including Holocaust denial"..
The reason that this story has bubbled up again is because the News of the World sought an injunction preventing Galloway from publishing a photo of Mahmood on his website, claiming that this would place his life in danger from criminals he has exposed; a High Court judge, however, ruled that all that was endangered was the 'fake sheikh's livelihood.
The facts are these: two men posing as businessmen approached him to discuss matters relating to the British Muslim community, one of Galloway's strongest bedrocks of support in his Bethnal Green constituency. According to Galloway, they offered to 'sponsor' Members of Parliament, an offer he claims to have refused, saying 'absolutely not, it's completely illegal'.
As Galloway's statement indicates, the most controversial aspect of the meeting is where we at Holocaust Controversies take an interest. Galloway claims that his discussion partners
Galloway is here referring to Richard Desmond, owner of the Express Group, who built his fortune selling adult magazines. Then came the crunch:
When one of the most prominent pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel leftwing politicians in Britain says don't go there, then you have to conclude that he knows what he's talking about. Not only does Galloway's statement undermine the efforts of the Muslim Parliament to create a moral equivalence between the Holocaust and the treatment of Palestinians, it also calls into question the sanity of Revisionists eager to ally with President Ahmadinejad of Iran - ironically, another Mahmoud...
After that particular embarrassment, his latest stunt, however, has many cheering him on again. For years, the British Sunday tabloid has been employing the services of an undercover reporter, Mazher Mahmood, who is most famous for posing as a rich Middle Eastern sheikh and catching out a collection of celebrities (including England manager Sven-Goran Eriksson), royalty (Sophie Wessex, Princess Michael of Kent) and professional criminals. The 'fake sheikh', as Mahmood is known, has claimed more scalps than any other undercover reporter in Britain.
Unfortunately for Mahmood, he has now met his match in Galloway. On March 31, Galloway announced that Mahmood and an accomplice had "sought to implicate me in what would be illegal political funding and sought my agreement to anti-Semitic views, including Holocaust denial"..
The reason that this story has bubbled up again is because the News of the World sought an injunction preventing Galloway from publishing a photo of Mahmood on his website, claiming that this would place his life in danger from criminals he has exposed; a High Court judge, however, ruled that all that was endangered was the 'fake sheikh's livelihood.
The facts are these: two men posing as businessmen approached him to discuss matters relating to the British Muslim community, one of Galloway's strongest bedrocks of support in his Bethnal Green constituency. According to Galloway, they offered to 'sponsor' Members of Parliament, an offer he claims to have refused, saying 'absolutely not, it's completely illegal'.
As Galloway's statement indicates, the most controversial aspect of the meeting is where we at Holocaust Controversies take an interest. Galloway claims that his discussion partners
then made offensive statements about Jewish people and invited me to agree with them. For example, when I said the Daily Express was the worst pro-war, anti-Muslim paper in the land they asked, "Because it's owned by a Jew?"
"No," I said, "Because it’s owned by a pro-war anti-Muslim pornographer."
Galloway is here referring to Richard Desmond, owner of the Express Group, who built his fortune selling adult magazines. Then came the crunch:
More seriously, they then moved on to doubt the Holocaust. "You're not allowed even to quibble about the numbers," said Fernando, "Not even to say it might have been 5 million..."
I weighed in, “People should never go down that road….David Irving isn't quibbling about the numbers…in his heart he supports the Holocaust… I’m always telling Muslims never to get involved in that debate. The Holocaust is the greatest crime in human history and it should be accepted as such."
When one of the most prominent pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel leftwing politicians in Britain says don't go there, then you have to conclude that he knows what he's talking about. Not only does Galloway's statement undermine the efforts of the Muslim Parliament to create a moral equivalence between the Holocaust and the treatment of Palestinians, it also calls into question the sanity of Revisionists eager to ally with President Ahmadinejad of Iran - ironically, another Mahmoud...
Persecution Mania: Please, Mr Blair, Make Me A Martyr!
Persecution mania is one of the unfortunate side-effects from swallowing Denier bullshit whole, and over at the the Cesspit, some members of the great British Commonwealth have lately gotten a bad case of it.
A panicky 'Jordan' (we understand this person is a he, and not the paramour of Peter Andre, but you never know) asks:
Alas, the best that his interlocutor Kiwichap could come up with was a statement made before Tony Blair was even elected Prime Minister in the UK, almost ten years ago. Any such plans were dropped over six years ago, in January 2000.
Not content with letting the matter rest there, Kiwichap dug up this statement from sociologist Anthony Giddens, former director of the London School of Economics and now a Labour peer in the House of Lords:
Woo, scary! The Thought Police are coming!
Actually, no. A swift search on the same website as Kiwichap quote-mined reveals just 19 mentions of the term 'Holocaust Denial' in both Houses of Parliament since December 2000, an average of one mention every three months, in almost all cases representing concerns with Arab anti-semitism or ritual denunciations of the far right. The few times the term comes up in a legislative context, the political consensus is clear: while Holocaust Denial is for the Lords, Ladies and Right Honourable Gentlemen of both houses something to be deplored, there is zero interest in legislating over the issue and 'banning' it. A typical statement involving the term looks like this:
Indeed, and that's why 'revisionists' in Britain are denied (heh) their eagerly sought-after victim status. Because while we abhor your shitty speech, we uphold your right to say it.
A panicky 'Jordan' (we understand this person is a he, and not the paramour of Peter Andre, but you never know) asks:
'Has anyone heard anything recently on the possibility of a "Holocaust denial law" being passed in the UK? Didn't Blair say he was considering it?'
Alas, the best that his interlocutor Kiwichap could come up with was a statement made before Tony Blair was even elected Prime Minister in the UK, almost ten years ago. Any such plans were dropped over six years ago, in January 2000.
Not content with letting the matter rest there, Kiwichap dug up this statement from sociologist Anthony Giddens, former director of the London School of Economics and now a Labour peer in the House of Lords:
Europe is the home of freedom of speech, but I remind noble Lords that Europe is also the home of the Holocaust. In Germany, the Netherlands and Austria, you can be imprisoned for making public remarks about the Holocaust. You can be imprisoned for Holocaust denial - someone is on the point of being imprisoned for that - and for making various kinds of anti-Semitic remarks. These, in a sense, are our sensitivities. They are a part of our sacred values in a European context.
Woo, scary! The Thought Police are coming!
Actually, no. A swift search on the same website as Kiwichap quote-mined reveals just 19 mentions of the term 'Holocaust Denial' in both Houses of Parliament since December 2000, an average of one mention every three months, in almost all cases representing concerns with Arab anti-semitism or ritual denunciations of the far right. The few times the term comes up in a legislative context, the political consensus is clear: while Holocaust Denial is for the Lords, Ladies and Right Honourable Gentlemen of both houses something to be deplored, there is zero interest in legislating over the issue and 'banning' it. A typical statement involving the term looks like this:
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: What about someone who writes and publishes in Britain a book or article denying the Holocaust that is then circulated in Germany? Germany, of course, has strict laws about Holocaust denial; it is an offence punishable by a term of three years. They have that offence because they want to assuage their guilt about what happened under the Nazi regime, including the Holocaust and all the other awful things that were done. There is no reason, however, why we should suffer for that as well.
Indeed, and that's why 'revisionists' in Britain are denied (heh) their eagerly sought-after victim status. Because while we abhor your shitty speech, we uphold your right to say it.
Sunday, April 16, 2006
If you cannot refute the evidence, you can always abuse the witness
Believe it or not, a denier by the name of Barrington James actually has the audacity to use the idiotic slogan above as his tagline at The Cesspit. It nicely sums up Holocaust Deniers' approach to eyewitness testimony, a truly vexed subject for the dear little moonbats, since there happen to be rather a lot of them, saying things that are somewhat inconvenient to the Denier Faith, i.e. that gas chambers did indeed work properly and killed people.
Read on...
While it's fine for internet Nazis to abuse those who were there as 'Lie-Witnesses', and impute either that all testimonies were tortured out of the SS or were deliberately concocted in some mysterious telepathic mind-meld conspiracy between concentration camp inmates, such crude verbal bully-boy tactics are too lowbrow for denier Gurus. Indeed, the Pope of Revisionism, Robert Faurisson, began his career in Denial by espousing a so-called Ajax Method, applying the techniques of French literary criticism to deconstructing eyewitness testimony until it had been scoured clean of that nasty, inconvenient stuff about the gas chambers.
Faurisson's disciples are many, and one of the most devoted followers in his footsteps is of course Italian denier Carlo Mattogno. Indeed, Mattogno is scrupulous enough to present masses of verbatim citations of testimonies, and to identify as many witnesses to the camps as possible, thereby going far beyond his own guru's lazy efforts to refute one witness at a time.
Yet we'd like to point out a simple methodological problem with Mattogno's approach to eyewitness testimony, that seems to recur again and again in his work. Having predetermined his conclusion, namely that witnesses contradict themselves, therefore they are all lying, Mattogno has neglected to provide a coherent methodology of how one evaluates witness statements. This is a notoriously tricky area, one which both lawyers and historians spend much time learning during their respective educations, since eyewitnesses, as is well-known, rarely have perfect recall of their memories, especially of events that might have happened months or even years ago, as was invariably the case when testimonies relating to the camps were recorded after the war.
Indeed, even a cursory perusal of Mattogno's writings reveals a consistent niggle in his approach to testimony: he is seemingly incapable of understanding the concept of hearsay. This curious blind-spot is especially apparent in an article in which he tackles the testimony of a former Sonderkommando, Charles Bendel, who gave evidence at the Belsen trial in 1945 and subsequently at the trial of Tesch & Stabenow, the manufacturers of Zyklon-B. Bendel, let it be said, is far from the perfect witness. He does indeed give differing dates and observations in differing testimonies. So far, so normal. But is Mattogno content to let his case rest on pointing up these contradictions? No, he also has to invent wholly imaginary conflicts based on a wilful misreading of the facts.
Charles Sigismund Bendel was a Romanian Jewish doctor arrested in Paris in late 1943 and was deported from Drancy on December 10, 1943 to Auschwitz. He claimed to have worked with Mengele in the 'Gypsy Camp' - not unplausible, given his medical qualifications. Some time between June and August 1944, he was assigned, he claimed, to a Sonderkommando at one of the four crematoria. While most of Bendel's testimony concerned what he saw in the summer of 1944, he also testified to other things as well, testimony which particularly exercises Mattogno, because he spots a contradiction or two to the Known Facts:
Hello? Carlo? Bendel wasn't even in Auschwitz when either of these events happened! Of course he isn't going to know the precise details! In short, this part of the testimony is hearsay. Pointing out a factual mistake in testimony relating to events before a witness arrived at Auschwitz is no proof whatsover that the subsequent testimony is also false. In fact, it looks like overkill - and thereby creates the suspicion that Mattogno doth protest too much.
This suspicion is only strengthened by Mattogno's handling of other witnesses. In Auschwitz: The First Gassing (large pdf), our friend makes much hay of the fact that many 'key witnesses' to events at Auschwitz don't mention the first experimental use of Zyklon-B to execute prisoners in their postwar testimonies. The dating, by the way, of this event is notoriously controversial: some witnesses claim August, some September 1941 - a subject which this blog will return to in due course. Hint: might there have been several experimental gassings? Just a thought.
You might think, perfectly reasonably, that Mattogno has found many 'key witnesses' who were present at Auschwitz in August and September 1941 who simply 'forgot' to mention this epochal, world-historical event in their testimonies, thereby proving Denial correct in its contention that Nazi Gassings Never Happened. Ah, but you reckoned without Mattogno's clumsy use of evidence. On closer inspection, it turns out that almost all of these forgetful witnesses arrived at Auschwitz no earlier than December 1941, several months after the first gassings are considered to have taken place. Indeed, most of the witnesses Mattogno cites for ignoring the subject of the first gassing arrived in the spring of 1942, including Alfred Wetzler (registered April 13, 1942) and Rudolf Vrba (registered as Walter Rosenberg on June 29, 1942), who escaped Auschwitz in April 1944 to bring the first detailed description of the gas chambers to the West. So why didn't they mention the first gassings in August or September 1941?
Hello again! Carlo! They weren't there - the fact that they did not include what would have been hearsay in their testimonies proves nothing. Once again, Mattogno's refusal to use the concept of hearsay properly renders his critique worthless. Why clutter up your argument with easily disprovable contentions? Why make rookie mistakes in handling the evidence that call into question everything else you are proposing?
In short, 'Revisionism' really has to learn that Deny Everything, Admit Nothing, is an approach which is almost guaranteed to make even the smartest Denier bunny look like a complete fessacchione*.
We''ll return to this theme, and also propose our own, more coherent methodological approach to eyewitness testimony, in the coming weeks and months.
*fessacchione: It., fucking idiot (coll.)
Read on...
While it's fine for internet Nazis to abuse those who were there as 'Lie-Witnesses', and impute either that all testimonies were tortured out of the SS or were deliberately concocted in some mysterious telepathic mind-meld conspiracy between concentration camp inmates, such crude verbal bully-boy tactics are too lowbrow for denier Gurus. Indeed, the Pope of Revisionism, Robert Faurisson, began his career in Denial by espousing a so-called Ajax Method, applying the techniques of French literary criticism to deconstructing eyewitness testimony until it had been scoured clean of that nasty, inconvenient stuff about the gas chambers.
Faurisson's disciples are many, and one of the most devoted followers in his footsteps is of course Italian denier Carlo Mattogno. Indeed, Mattogno is scrupulous enough to present masses of verbatim citations of testimonies, and to identify as many witnesses to the camps as possible, thereby going far beyond his own guru's lazy efforts to refute one witness at a time.
Yet we'd like to point out a simple methodological problem with Mattogno's approach to eyewitness testimony, that seems to recur again and again in his work. Having predetermined his conclusion, namely that witnesses contradict themselves, therefore they are all lying, Mattogno has neglected to provide a coherent methodology of how one evaluates witness statements. This is a notoriously tricky area, one which both lawyers and historians spend much time learning during their respective educations, since eyewitnesses, as is well-known, rarely have perfect recall of their memories, especially of events that might have happened months or even years ago, as was invariably the case when testimonies relating to the camps were recorded after the war.
Indeed, even a cursory perusal of Mattogno's writings reveals a consistent niggle in his approach to testimony: he is seemingly incapable of understanding the concept of hearsay. This curious blind-spot is especially apparent in an article in which he tackles the testimony of a former Sonderkommando, Charles Bendel, who gave evidence at the Belsen trial in 1945 and subsequently at the trial of Tesch & Stabenow, the manufacturers of Zyklon-B. Bendel, let it be said, is far from the perfect witness. He does indeed give differing dates and observations in differing testimonies. So far, so normal. But is Mattogno content to let his case rest on pointing up these contradictions? No, he also has to invent wholly imaginary conflicts based on a wilful misreading of the facts.
Charles Sigismund Bendel was a Romanian Jewish doctor arrested in Paris in late 1943 and was deported from Drancy on December 10, 1943 to Auschwitz. He claimed to have worked with Mengele in the 'Gypsy Camp' - not unplausible, given his medical qualifications. Some time between June and August 1944, he was assigned, he claimed, to a Sonderkommando at one of the four crematoria. While most of Bendel's testimony concerned what he saw in the summer of 1944, he also testified to other things as well, testimony which particularly exercises Mattogno, because he spots a contradiction or two to the Known Facts:
According to him, the construction of crematoriums 1 and 2 (II and III in the official German numeration) began in March 1942: "The foundations of these imposing red brick buildings were laid in March 1942."
This is not correct, because the Central Construction Office of the Waffen-SS and Police in Auschwitz took bids for the construction of the first Birkenau crematorium on 1 July 1942 ....
Once again according to Dr. Bendel, the crematoriums were completed in January 1943: "Completed in January 1943, their dedication was honored by the presence of Himmler in person".
This is likewise incorrect. The Construction Office of the Waffen-SS and Police of KGL-Auschwitz finished construction on crematoriums II and III on 31 March and 25 June 1943 respectively. It is also untrue that Himmler was present for the openings.
Hello? Carlo? Bendel wasn't even in Auschwitz when either of these events happened! Of course he isn't going to know the precise details! In short, this part of the testimony is hearsay. Pointing out a factual mistake in testimony relating to events before a witness arrived at Auschwitz is no proof whatsover that the subsequent testimony is also false. In fact, it looks like overkill - and thereby creates the suspicion that Mattogno doth protest too much.
This suspicion is only strengthened by Mattogno's handling of other witnesses. In Auschwitz: The First Gassing (large pdf), our friend makes much hay of the fact that many 'key witnesses' to events at Auschwitz don't mention the first experimental use of Zyklon-B to execute prisoners in their postwar testimonies. The dating, by the way, of this event is notoriously controversial: some witnesses claim August, some September 1941 - a subject which this blog will return to in due course. Hint: might there have been several experimental gassings? Just a thought.
You might think, perfectly reasonably, that Mattogno has found many 'key witnesses' who were present at Auschwitz in August and September 1941 who simply 'forgot' to mention this epochal, world-historical event in their testimonies, thereby proving Denial correct in its contention that Nazi Gassings Never Happened. Ah, but you reckoned without Mattogno's clumsy use of evidence. On closer inspection, it turns out that almost all of these forgetful witnesses arrived at Auschwitz no earlier than December 1941, several months after the first gassings are considered to have taken place. Indeed, most of the witnesses Mattogno cites for ignoring the subject of the first gassing arrived in the spring of 1942, including Alfred Wetzler (registered April 13, 1942) and Rudolf Vrba (registered as Walter Rosenberg on June 29, 1942), who escaped Auschwitz in April 1944 to bring the first detailed description of the gas chambers to the West. So why didn't they mention the first gassings in August or September 1941?
Hello again! Carlo! They weren't there - the fact that they did not include what would have been hearsay in their testimonies proves nothing. Once again, Mattogno's refusal to use the concept of hearsay properly renders his critique worthless. Why clutter up your argument with easily disprovable contentions? Why make rookie mistakes in handling the evidence that call into question everything else you are proposing?
In short, 'Revisionism' really has to learn that Deny Everything, Admit Nothing, is an approach which is almost guaranteed to make even the smartest Denier bunny look like a complete fessacchione*.
We''ll return to this theme, and also propose our own, more coherent methodological approach to eyewitness testimony, in the coming weeks and months.
*fessacchione: It., fucking idiot (coll.)
Saturday, April 15, 2006
Ahmadinejad is at it again
Mahmoud the Moonbat sez about the Holocaust:
Or is Ahmadinejad under impression that without the Holocaust there would be no Israel? Well, he's predictably wrong. Evyatar Friesel, Professor Emeritus of Modern Jewish History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, concludes in "The Holocaust: Factor in the Birth of Israel?":
If such a disaster is true, why should the people of this region pay the price? Why does the Palestinian nation have to be suppressed and have its land occupied?Pray tell, what does the Holocaust have to do with the Palestinian situation?
Or is Ahmadinejad under impression that without the Holocaust there would be no Israel? Well, he's predictably wrong. Evyatar Friesel, Professor Emeritus of Modern Jewish History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, concludes in "The Holocaust: Factor in the Birth of Israel?":
On May 15, 1948, the State of Israel was proclaimed. A new political reality was thus established. In the words of the Israeli diplomat Walter Eytan: If this Jewish state came into being...it was not primarily because the United Nations had recommended it...When the day of independence dawned, the decision was Israel's alone.
[...]
Was there, then, a connection between the Holocaust and the creation of Israel? Is it conceivable that the two most decisive events in modern Jewish history could occur almost simultaneously and not be linked? Is it possible that the emergence of the Jewish state was unrelated to the terrible disaster of the Jewish people and to the remorse of the nations of the world? Regarding the deliberations of the United Nations and its bodies in 1947-1948, it is difficult to find evidence that the Holocaust played a decisive or even significant role. No bloc of nations proclaimed during the UN discussions on Palestine that its foremost aim was the creation of a Jewish state. (On the other hand, an important group of countries did favor the transformation of Palestine into an Arab state.) What impelled the international body was the practical problem of the Jewish refugees and, even more, the awareness that the Palestinian problem was drifting toward chaos and war.
[...]
True, some of the countries of the Western bloc did display an understanding - and, in a few cases, even a genuine interest - in Jewish and Zionist aspirations, but, for most of the states represented at the UN, the Jewish problem was something far removed from their concerns. It was, however, natural and understandable for them to go along with the Soviet-American proposition, given the great political and moral weight of such an agreement between the super-powers.
And since the measure of agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union neutralized clear-cut international rivalries, their tendency was to consider the Palestine question in terms of political realities. Factors such as the historical connection of the Jewish people to Palestine, or feelings of remorse because of the recent Jewish tragedy were hardly heard, if at all. Indeed, were they to be expected? It is only reasonable to assume that the great majority of UN members considered the Palestine question in "practical" terms. That attitude was well expressed in Article XII of the UNSCOP principles, which stressed that there could be no connection between the Palestinian issue and the Jewish problem.
Consequently, when at the beginning of 1948, it became increasingly clear that partition was not going to prevent a war in Palestine, the UN (spurred by the United States) started looking for a different, "practical" solution. All of which only emphasizes how modest a role the facts about and the reactions to the Holocaust played in the considerations of the international community. Even if there were a similarity in the actual outcome under consideration, there was little in common between the reasons impelling Jews and Zionists toward Jewish statehood and the reasoning behind the United Nations resolution for the partition of Palestine.
Just another poor, persecuted "revisionist" victim
Certain "Haldan" at the Cesspit writes:
Ah, those evil "exterminationists"! Why would they call an honest seeker of Truth a Nazi?
Here's why.
This "Haldan" (also known as "k0nsl", "Franz Holtzhaeuser", "Micke Andersson", "Jonathan Andersson", "System33r"; "JackBQuick"; apparently he resides in Sweden) has left quite a "paper trail" of the quotes such as these:
Um. Why would anybody assume that such a nice guy is a Nazi?
I have been involved in several discussions lately and all I hear in response is how evil those who does not believe in the allegations that the Germans are supposed to have "gassed" people are, all they can come up with in response is that he or she is a "nazi", and my discsussion partners will even use the quote at the index of the NIZKOR organisation to prove that it is the aim of not believing in such absurdities to "white-wash" National Socialism. A quote from somebody who NIZKOR probably believes represents our thoughts and feelings--what else could they be thinking when they put such tripe so prominently; in any case people will use it to win the argument by labeling the non-Believer a "nazi" and somebody who wants to "white-wash", or as the quote alleges, make National Socialism an "acceptable political alternative again". I just shake my head. I don't know what to reply to such idiocy.
Instead of trying to prove how evil those who does not share their belief are, why can't they explain the procedure of burning one thousand or two thousand people in a swamp, each day and night? Perhaps they would be willing to explain the procedure required for maintaining and cleaning a "gas chamber" in which two thousand bodies has been "gassed" with a fumigant? Why do they not answer such questions. How does one cremate multiple bodies in mere minutes, when it is perfectly known, that it takes sometimes more than one hour to burn just one?
These are just three questions which I have never seen one answer for.
Ah, those evil "exterminationists"! Why would they call an honest seeker of Truth a Nazi?
Here's why.
This "Haldan" (also known as "k0nsl", "Franz Holtzhaeuser", "Micke Andersson", "Jonathan Andersson", "System33r"; "JackBQuick"; apparently he resides in Sweden) has left quite a "paper trail" of the quotes such as these:
Let us make a new beginning today so that we can annihilate the Jew[*]
the Jews are our misfortune. [meta tag at *]
Thanks for giving us such interesting insights of this ancient race of coprophiliacs, urolagniacs, menstruophobes, incest addicts, child rapists, child murderers, slavers, pimps, pornographers, con artists, genocide artists, bloodsuckers, extortioners, and purveryors of filth etc,. etc,. -- the JEW. [*]
[About the above quote:] Those were not insults but rather ambient facts. I need not insult the Jews, one may only note their behaviour; but doing so will earn you the well-known 'anti-Semite' label, which Jews are generous of handing out whenever they wish. [*]
Two thousand children rejoiced with Julius Streicher....
The Gauleiter [Streicher] told the little ones about the terrible times after the war, when the Devil dominated mankind. "Do you know who the Devil is," he asked his breathlessly listening audience. "The Jew, the Jew," resounded from a thousand children's voices.[*]
Obviously untrue and only a Jew would continue after being instructed that the claim is not true. [*]
It is true, isn't it, Mathis? Somebody instructs you that your claims has no basis in reality, that they lack merits and that there simply isn't any proof whatsoever for your claims - yet you continue in the same spirit. It is only possible in the mind of a Jew. They never get it, and when you tell them, they just deny the information, pretend they never saw it, and repeat their false claims. [*]
Maybe you two should ask the question why Jews lie so often and so much. It should prove interesting even for your low standards. [*]
Jews' are famous for arson.
:) [*]
It does make a difference to point out that you are a Jew, another one in the line, to make false and fictitious claims. This is what Jews are famous for and I don't understand why it should be considered 'anti-semitism' to point that out. [*]
Jewish logic is incredibly awkward. It is truly idiotic. [*]
No, Mathis, you're a Jew. A quick look in the mirror will certainly tell, those 'eyes of death' [yes; they truly look lifeless], the ugly shape of the thin cranium, those obscenely huge ears, lets not even mention the nose. The mouth looks like a small hole, lips are hard to tell, probably a puffy under-lip. Apart from that, it looks like your forehead is retreating. No manly traits, either.
You're a Jew. Be proud
[*]
Dear Mr. Mathis,
Can you verify if it really is you on the below photograph or if it isn't?
andrew.mathis.net/mathis.jpg
The eyes of that person look very deceitful. You say you are a Jew and
I have seen this trait in other Jews aswell. I can give examples.
Faithfully,
-F. H [*]
Well, that at least proves that you're not an anti-Semite.Exactly. I hope you mean it, because it is a well-known fact, that many Jews will write one thing and it will mean something entirely different. [*]
If there was a "holocaust" it must have been of insignificant and absolutely laughable proportions; if so, why are the Jews moaning about it so much, whenever they get a chance?
The German civilian population who was the victim of repeated fire-bombs are "holocaust" victims a hundred times more than the Jews who were just sent to concentration camps (safe-keeping), where they learned how to work, how to be somewhat decent.
There was no "jewish holocaust", no "gas chambers" and no "systematic extermination". A couple of them died in the end of the war because of the conditions imposed on Germany by the Allied bombers (the infrastructure broke down completely), and a couple of them died while trying to play soldiers without belonging to a proper army, and whilst not wearing a recognized uniform -- you know, terrorists or as it used to be called; partisans. Cowards who usually ambushed the victims, but never engaged the enemy in a honest way.
To hell with the "holocaust" lies and those who try to uphold them. [*]
Germany was forced into war. The jews declared war on Germany 1933[*]
I guess you have just verified that what I said in regards to Jews, making false claims whilst having been informed of their false nature, was true afterall. [*]
Bring every little Jud' with you from America and various European countries so that we might have some peace, decency and also a reinstatement of morals, values and such.
With your people at the controls there is nothing else to expect but a decline of what I just mentioned above. These are perfectly normal observations and is not "hatred", which I am sure you will probably "spew" out from the tip of the lip, its always like that, when confronted with something you cannot handle. [*]
Um. Why would anybody assume that such a nice guy is a Nazi?
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