The e-mail we sent out to Mattogno/Graf/Kues.

To the attention of Jürgen Graf, Carlo Mattogno, and Thomas Kues: 

Please see the attached critique of your works concerning Aktion Reinhard. It has also been made available on Google Documents, RapidShare, and Wayback Machine. 

Over one year ago, Mr. Graf challenged the Holocaust Controversies blog to provide a “detailed and comprehensive critique” of one of a number of books he offered. By that time we had already decided not to limit ourselves to one Revisionist work, but the three works on the Reinhard camps (Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibor, which was earlier discussed in the Akte Sobibor brochure). These three works repeat and rely upon one another to such an extent that it would be silly to look at one in isolation. More information on our motivations can be found in the introduction to the work. 

Our formal critique also provides a test for those Revisionists who claim to be interested in ‘open debate’. We encourage those Revisionists who control their own public website to announce the existence of the critique as well as provide a direct link to its contents. We have also established conditions for a response in our conclusion.

Since the critique originally began to appear on the HC blog on Christmas Eve, various responses have arisen from Revisionists on internet forums. When one HC supporter posted web links and a brief introduction to the critique on the CODOH Revisionist Forum and invited critical Revisionist comments on the work (open debate, right?) his post was quickly deleted by the powers-that-be. This was the second time that reference to the critique was censored on the CODOH forum. Other Revisionists have simply engaged in base invective, without offering any substantial criticisms of our work. One fellow-traveller even decided to distract attention by faking an email purportedly from us. We trust that you will join us in unreservedly condemning such puerile antics.

Happy Holidays,

HC Team

P.S. This letter has been sent to other Revisionists as well as professional scholars who we feel would be interested in its content.

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Afterword: A Special Note by Jason Myers.

Afterword: A Special Note by Jason Myers

 “I am not a Jew and I was at one time a ‘revisionist.” So said Jean-Claude Pressac in the postface to his monumental and technical study of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.[1] This writer can sympathize with Pressac, as I too identify with such a statement. A detailed history of my earlier Holocaust denial and subsequent ‘road to Damascus’ moment will not be offered here, as a brief account will be more than sufficient.

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Conclusion.

Conclusion

This critique has presented new sources, and cast new light on old sources, which demonstrate the many different forms of proof that exist for the Aktion Reinhard extermination program. We have clearly established in Chapters 2-4 the timeline through which policy evolved from decimation to extermination, and how the planned locations shifted from the Strongpoints to the death camps in Poland. We have synthesized documents from the Nuremberg and Eichmann trials with those in American, German and former Soviet archives to build a detailed picture of how the policy of extermination was understood and implemented at the centre and at the sites of death themselves. We have taken the twisted road to Belzec via this documentation and shown how the twists in the road can be better understood in the light of the convergence of evidence.

A Holiday Gift for Mattogno, Graf and Kues

The members of Holocaust Controversies have prepared a large critique entitled 'Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard: A Critique of the Falsehoods of Mattogno, Graf and Kues.' It is the First Edition of a White Paper, and the background events that led to its creation are discussed in the introduction. We will be publishing the whole work as a PDF file on the Internet within the next 14 days; but first we are rolling out our current working version as a blog series, starting here. We have not employed a professional proofreader and we are working on this project for free in our spare time, so we would like to appeal to all readers to post feedback on any typos or other errors in the Comments below each blog article. We will incorporate any necessary corrections into the PDF and any subsequent versions of the White Paper.

Happy Holidays and Enjoy!

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 8: Burning of the Corpses (6). Why Cremation?

Why Cremation?

In his Belzec book Mattogno provided the following explanation for the human cremation remains discovered at Belzec extermination camp:

The cremation of the bodies of the dead constitutes in and of itself neither proof nor evidence in favor of the official theses, because this was the practice in all concentration camps and had a well-established hygienic function. In the area of the Belzec camp, Kola’s findings show that, along a line linking grave 3 and grave 10, about two-thirds of the length of the camp,284 the groundwater level was at a depth of 4.80 meters.285 In the area below, toward the railroad, this level was obviously at a smaller depth; in the area of grave 1, it was 4.10 meters.286 It is probable that the cremation had to do with the danger of contamination of the ground water, as I have discussed elsewhere.287 Fundamentally, however, one cannot exclude the explanation adopted by the official historiography, while giving it a different interpretation. If the Soviets had discovered mass graves full of corpses dead of disease or malnutrition, then they would certainly have exploited them for propaganda against the Germans, as the latter did in Katyn and Vinnytsya against the Soviets.[264]

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 8: Burning of the Corpses (5). Cremation Remains.

Cremation Remains

The remains left behind by cremation would correspond to about 5 % of the corpses’ non-decomposed weight and 6 to 8 % of the wood weight, according to Mattogno, Graf & Kues.[232] With the exaggerated corpse weights and enormous amounts of wood they claim (see section 8.3), this allows them to argue that the volume of ash (assuming specific weights of 0.5 g/cm³ for human ash and 0.34 g/cm³ for wood ash) would, in some camps at least, have exceeded the established or estimated volume of the mass graves.[233] With the more realistic corpse and wood weights explained in section 8.3, on the other hand, the problems that Mattogno and his colleagues make so much of become rather insignificant, as shown in Tables 8.37 and 8.38 below.[234] The average portion of the grave volume occupied by human and wood ashes is about 10 % in Table 8.37 and 12 % in Table 8.38, Belzec being the camp with the highest density of buried ashes (16 % respectively 19 %).

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 8: Burning of the Corpses (4). Duration of Cremations.

Duration of Cremations

As mentioned in section 1 of this chapter, the author estimated the area of each of the grids used for burning the bodies at Treblinka extermination camp at 66 m², assuming a length of 25 meters and a width of 2.625 meters. Mattogno & Graf’s estimate, also based on the grates’ description in the judgment at the 1st Düsseldorf Treblinka trial (Kurt Franz et al)[188], is somewhat higher: 30 meters long by 3 meters wide = 90 m².[189] The first layer of bodies on this large area, according to the same authors, could have been no more than 4 bodies per 3 square meters, as each body would have occupied "a theoretical average surface area of the size of a rectangle of 1.75 m × 0.50 m, which also includes the necessary intervening space for the passage of the products of combustion." At 120 bodies per layer, and assuming a layer height of 0.30 m, a pyre of 3,500 bodies (the number that had to be burned on each of two pyres every day to dispose of about 860,000 bodies within 122 days[190]) would thus consist of 29 layers with an impracticable total height of 8.7 m.[191] 

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 8: Burning of the Corpses (3). Fuel Requirements.

Fuel Requirements

Mattogno and Kues claim that burning the victims’ corpses at Nazi extermination camps would have required enormous quantities of fuel that are at odds with the evidence, if such were logistically obtainable at all. The main parameters on which this claim rests are the average weight of the corpses to be burned and the average amount of wood or wood equivalent required for cremation per kg of corpse weight.

As concerns the first parameter, the Revisionist authors present various deportation data in their Sobibor book according to which children up to the age of 16 made up just 17.05 % of deportees to that camp from the Netherlands, 5.5 % of deportees from France, 27 % of deportees from Polish and Soviet territories, 25 % of deportees from Slovakia, 6.91 % of deportees from Germany and Austria, and 11.5 % of deportees from Prague. Considering the numbers of deportees from each place of provenance, this means that 36,400 out of 169,000, or about 21.5 % of the total, were children below the age of 16.[84]

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 8: Burning of the Corpses (2). Cremation Devices, Methods and Times.

Cremation Devices, Methods and Times

Burning of corpses at Belzec took place as early as August 1942, according to the testimony of Dr. Pfannenstiel.[2] At that time cremation was not yet used as a means of body disposal per se but probably in order to help stretch the available burial space (judging by Dr. Pfannenstiel’s description whereby the corpses burned just partly and fresh corpses were placed on top of them thereafter), perhaps also for reasons of hygiene.[3]

Wholesale cremation of corpses extracted from the Belzec mass graves only started in November 1942, according to the deposition of former SS-man Heinrich Gley:[4]:

The gassings, as far as I remember, were stopped at the end of 1942, when there was already snow on the ground. Then began the general exhumation and burning of the corpses; it should have lasted from November 1942 until March 1943. The burnings were carried out day and night without interruption, first at one and then at two fireplaces. One fireplace allowed for burning about 2,000 corpses within 24 hours. About two weeks after the beginning of the burning action the second fireplace was erected. Thus on average there were burned about 300,000 bodies at the one fireplace over a period of 5 months and 240,000 bodies at the other fireplace over a period of 4 months. Of course these are only approximate estimates. It should be correct to put the total number of corpses at 500,000. […] Again a short time later I was assigned to the burning detachment; the incineration of the dug-out corpses was a process so abominable humanly, esthetically and in what concerns the smell, that the fantasy of people who today are used to live under civil conditions probably is not sufficient to imagine this horror.

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 8: Burning of the Corpses (1).

Burning of the Corpses

The corpses of most people murdered at Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka and Chełmno extermination camps were burned, which means that what is left of most victims are cremation remains like ashes and bone fragments. Carlo Mattogno, Jürgen Graf and Thomas Kues do not deny that bodies were burned at these places, but dispute the historically accepted scale of corpse cremation on grounds that it would have been logistically impracticable in what concerns fuel requirements and the duration of cremations and is incompatible with the available evidence, especially the amount of cremation remains found. Where (as in the case of Chełmno) particulars about the cremation devices and methods are known from archaeological research, the accuracy of research finds is also questioned.

This chapter starts with a presentation of what is known about the cremation devices and methods applied as well as the duration of cremations at each of these four camps, including a discussion of Mattogno’s arguments regarding archaeological research finds at Chełmno extermination camp. There follows a discussion of the deniers’ other arguments mentioned in the preceding paragraph. Finally the deniers’ alternative explanations for the undisputed cremation of corpses at these camps are examined. As concerns Belzec extermination camp the related arguments have been amply debated between Mattogno and the author[1], with Mattogno’s reply to the author’s last submission still outstanding. Although without referring to the author, the recent Sobibor book by Mattogno, Graf and Kues tries to address some of the author’s arguments in said debate. Being their latest publication on the subject, this book is deemed to contain their most up to date arguments and will thus be the main focus of the author of this present chapter

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[1] See the blog articles collected under the link http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2006/04/quick-links.html#mattbel .

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 7: Mass Graves (9). Density of Corpses in the Graves.

Density of Corpses in the Graves

Karl Alfred Schluch, a former member of the SS staff of Belzec extermination camp, described one of the graves in that camp as follows:

The size of a pit I can only indicate approximately. It should have been about 30 meters long and 20 meters wide. The depth is difficult to estimate because the side walls were at an angle and on the other hand the earth taken out had been piled up at the edge. I think, however, that the pit may have been 5 to 6 meters deep. All in all one could have comfortably placed a house inside this pit. [175]

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 7: Mass Graves (8). The "Actual" Surface of the Graves.

The "Actual" Surface of the Graves

Independently of the unrealistic calculations and considerations by which he tried to demonstrate the incompatibility of Kola’s findings with the mass murder he denies, Mattogno obviously didn’t feel comfortable with graves of such area and volume having been found at all at Belzec. So he tried to put in question the reliability of Kola’s findings about the area of the graves, invoking the robbery digs also mentioned by Kola as his key argument for this purpose. There was robbery digging in the area over a period of 20 years after Judge Godzieszewski’s investigation in October 12, 1945, and these diggings "took place in total disorder, without any regard for orientation, order, or symmetry, which explains the total lack of orientation, the confusion, and the irregularity of the graves identified by Kola", whose drawings show that "the individual graves nearly always show a highly irregular bottom, with bumps and holes", which is "evidence of the activity of wildcat diggers, certainly not of excavations of mass graves aligned in military fashion", while the core samples show that "there is often a difference between samples in a single grave, with very thin and very thick layers", which "can only be explained by the inclusion in the grave of soil from an area that did not initially belong to it". Kola supposedly failed to take these "facts" into account, and because of this "the layout he gives for the graves is completely random, as is their surface area, their volume, and even their number".[154]

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 7: Mass Graves (7). Groundwater Pollution.

Groundwater Pollution

In a German-language online pamphlet preceding their Sobibor book, Mattogno, Graf and Kues tried to take their readers for a ride, arguing that the depth of the mass graves identified at Sobibor by Kola (grave # 4 is about 5 meters deep, grave # 3 up to 5.80 meters) is not compatible with the high groundwater level in the camp’s area. They deliberately misrepresented an excerpt from Kola’s report about his Sobibor investigation to claim that excavations in a well "not far from the graves" supposedly had to be stopped at a depth of 3.60 meters because of a ground water stream.[145] What Kola actually had written was that excavation in the well had to be stopped at a depth of 5.00 to 5.10 meters because of underground waters that had started appearing at a depth of 3.60 meters.[146]

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 7: Mass Graves (6). Soil Removed from the Graves.

Soil Removed from the Graves

The grave volumes that Mattogno claimed for Treblinka would have led to amounts of excavated soil that, according to these authors, would have caused major problems to the camp organization. The volume of soil excavated from a pit or grave is usually 10-25% larger than the volume of the pit itself, according to M&G’s source, so with mass graves having a total volume of 118,800 cubic meters of soil (i.e. what M&G considered necessary to bury 860,000 bodies), the excavated soil would have had a volume of at least (118,800×1.1=) ca. 130,700 cubic meters. M&G claimed that "If this mass were arranged in the form of a pile 6 m high, with sides each having an angle of 30 degrees and a width of 10 m, then its length would have amounted to (130,700÷30≅) 4.4 kilometers, covering some 44,000 m2!"[139]

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 7: Mass Graves (5). Capacity of the Graves.

Capacity of the Graves

The mass graves identified by Kola at Belzec were way too small to take in the bodies of all the camp’s victims, Mattogno claimed in his Belzec book. He wrote:

On the basis of experimental data, the maximum capacity of a mass grave can be set at 8 corpses per cubic meter, assuming that one third of them are children.260 Hence, the alleged 600,000 corpses at Belzec would have required a total volume of (600,000÷8=) 75,000 cubic meters. The average depth of the graves identified by Professor Kola is 3.90 meters. Assuming a layer of earth 0.3 m thick to cover the graves, the available depth would be 3.60 meters.261 It follows that the burial of 600,000 corpses would have required an effective area of (75,000÷3.6 =) approx. 20,800 square meters. On the other hand, the surface area of the graves identified by Kola is 5,919 square meters and their volume 21,310 cubic meters, theoretically sufficient to inter (21,310×8=) 170,480 corpses – but then where would the other (600,000 – 170,480 =) 429,520 corpses have been put? [97]

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 7: Mass Graves (4). Human Remains Found.

Human Remains Found

The term "human remains" is used in this subsection as referring only to whole corpses or larger human body parts not or only partially burned, to the exclusion of the human cremation remains like ashes and bone fragments that most of the Nazi extermination camps’ victims were turned into.

In his Belzec book Mattogno claimed that out of 137 core drilling samples from mass graves visually represented in Kola’s book, "obviously the most significant ones of the 236 samples taken altogether" in mass graves, only 5 out of 17 visualized samples from graves nos. 3, 10 and 20 contained human remains - "Thus, from all 236 drilling samples, we have only 5 ‘positive’ cases, that is, 2%!". These 5 samples resulted from the drill penetrating a layer of 3 or 4 corpses on each occasion, 15 to 20 corpses in total. Allowing for "the presence of other layers of corpses near those identified by Kola," one may conclude that "the most probable interpretation is that the graves contained at most several hundred corpses," rather than many thousands as considered by Robin O’Neil or at least 15,000 as estimated by Michael Tregenza. These meager core drilling results, in the conspiracy theory discussed in the previous subsection, were the reason why Kola or his employers refrained from excavating the graves and exhuming the corpses, because they feared discoveries contrary to what Mattogno calls the "official historical version."[73]

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 7: Mass Graves (3). Mattogno et al’s Claims.

Mattogno et al’s Claims: Nature and Purpose of Archaeological Investigations

In his book about Belzec, Mattogno tried to present the archaeological investigations carried out in the area of that camp by Kola in 1997-1999 as a (failed) attempt to "furnish the ‘material proof’ of the alleged extermination at Bełżec." Kola is supposed to have been hired in order to obtain corroboration of eyewitness testimonies through physical evidence, and the reason why he restricted his work on the mass graves to core drilling instead of excavating the graves and exhuming the corpses, according to Mattogno, was a concern – motivated by the core drilling results - that excavation would lead to conclusions incompatible with the historical record of Belzec extermination camp.[49]

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 7: Mass Graves (2). Number, Dimensions and Contents of the Mass Graves.

Number, Dimensions and Contents of the Mass Graves

Some of the mass graves of Belzec extermination camp were excavated in 1945 by Polish criminal justice authorities. In his book about Belzec, Carlo Mattogno provided partial translations from the related investigation reports, which speak for themselves:

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 7: Mass Graves (1).

Mass Graves

What is arguably the most frightful episode of Nazi mass murder took place in four camps on Polish soil that were exclusively built for and dedicated to the systematic killing of human beings – a phenomenon without precedent in human history. According to the most recent data available, these four camps accounted for at least 1,551,000 deaths.[1] All known evidence indicates that much of the remains of these camps' victims still lie under the ground once occupied by these camps, especially in what is left of the huge pits that were used to bury the corpses of those murdered before it was decided to cremate them.

This chapter starts with a presentation of what is known about the mass graves at these four camps, mainly from forensic and archaeological investigations, followed by a discussion of the main claims and arguments adduced by Holocaust deniers (so-called Revisionists) Carlo Mattogno, Jürgen Graf, and Thomas Kues, whereby the physical evidence of said mass graves is not compatible with or need not correspond to mass murder on the scale that historiography has established. The focus will be the camps of the killing operation known as Aktion Reinhard, Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka, which are the subject of a trilogy authored by the mentioned Revisionist trio or one or more of its members.[2] The mass graves at Chelmno extermination camp, and Mattogno’s related claims in his book about Chelmno[3], have been discussed in a blog article[4] which will be briefly summarized in this chapter.

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[1] Bełżec: 434,508 deportees (rounded to 435,000) mentioned in the Höfle telegram, cf. Witte and Tyas, ‘A New Diocument’. Sobibór: 170,165 (rounded to 170,000), thereof 101,370 until 31 December 1942 mentioned in the Höfle Report plus 68,795 in 1943, see Schelvis 2007, p. 198. Treblinka: 713,555 until 31 December 1942 mentioned in the Höfle telegram, plus 8,000 deportees from Theresienstadt in October 1942, mentioned in Arad, ‘Reinhard’, pp. 141-142, which the author assumes not to be included in Höfle’s figure. In 1943 there arrived a recorded 53,149 deportees from the General Government and the Bialystok District (including 2,000 Sinti and Roma) and 14,159 deportees from Saloniki, Macedonia and Thessaloniki (Młynarczyk, Treblinka, pp. 280-1.) The total number of recorded deportees to Treblinka was thus 788,863 (rounded to 789,000). Chełmno: About 145,000 Jews and 5,000 Gypsies in the camp’s 1^st phase (December 1941 to March 1943), more than 7,000 Jews in the second phase (23 June to 14 July 1944), see the Bonn Court of Assizes’ (LG Bonn) judgment of  30.3.1963 against former members of the Chełmno staff, published in JuNSV Band XXI, quoted in Rückerl, ‘Vernichtungslager’, pp. 252 – 295. Where these figures differ from those in chapter 3, they should be seen as minimum figures.

[2] Mattogno, Bełżec, MGK, Sobibór and M&G, Treblinka. Where there is also a version in another language, references are made to the respective English version, unless otherwise stated.

[3] Carlo Mattogno, Chelmno, 2009.

[4] Roberto Muehlenkamp, ‘Mattogno on Chełmno Mass Graves’, Holocaust Controversies, http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2010/12/mattogno-on-chemno-mass-graves.html

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 6: Death Camp Witnesses (7). Witness Convergences.

Witness Convergences

As has already been or will soon be covered in other areas of this work, witnesses agree with documents on the transport of Jews to the camps,[182] of the property plunder of those deported (and gassed) Jews,[183] and on the burial and subsequent cremation of Jews in Treblinka.[184] In their fallacious attempts to discredit and discard witness testimony (except when it suits them), MGK are quick to point out that no blueprint or unequivocal document exists that mention the gas chambers at the Reinhard camps; thus, the witnesses are viewed as liars, and their testimony as un-credible. What MGK fail to clearly acknowledge, however, is that the witnesses who report on the gas chambers also mention things that are corroborated by documents, or other independent testimonies. This demonstrates and verifies the reliability of the witness statements, a reliability that then extends to their statements regarding the existence of the gas chambers and exterminations in the camps.

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 6: Death Camp Witnesses (6). Hypocritical Use of Witness Evidence.

Hypocritical Use of Witness Evidence

An area which manifests itself due to the lack of a proper methodology (as well perhaps intellectual honesty) from MGK is their almost comedic reliance upon witness statements that they simultaneously seek to discredit through their work. This dependence exposes just how weak the Revisionist evidence of delousing/transit camps really is, with deniers having to utilize sources which they deride and pour scorn on throughout their writings. Their desperation is aptly established by Mattogno in Treblinka: “If one assumes that Treblinka was a transit camp, then one can also interpret the description of the alleged extermination facilities by the witnesses.”[125] MGK are only able to conduct this bizarre interpretation of statements by inverting the meaning of the witness, such as their understanding of the camouflage measures that witnesses detail for the gas chambers as being literal, but misconstrued or misreported by the witnesses.[126] They even do this for persons whom they label as “discredited.”[127] They also highlight testimonies as being given under oath when it suits their hypothesis of resettlement (even when it is discredited through documentary evidence), but mock other statements given under oath describing exterminations as having no validity.[128]

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 6: Death Camp Witnesses (5). Dishonest Treatment of SS Witnesses.

Dishonest Treatment of SS Witnesses

While the overwhelming majority of witness criticisms produced by MGK are aimed at survivors, they have also attempted to deal with some of the accounts by former SS men who served at the camps. Several of their interpretations on those witnesses will be examined below, all of which fail to provide an honest treatment of the statements.

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 6: Death Camp Witnesses (4). Direct and Indirect Witnesses.

Direct and Indirect Witnesses

One of the typical distortions in the works of MGK is a conflation of direct and indirect (or hearsay) witness statements regarding the death camps. These criticisms of witnesses for hearsay statements seem to be highly regarded as effective by MGK due to the sheer number of them in their work.[49] This deceptive technique serves to provide false targets for their criticisms of witness statements from which to cast doubt on direct witnesses; attacking the rumour of an indirect witness only reflects upon the actual rumour, and not the credibility of the witness. These distortions are usually found in the disparagement of points that are not accepted by proper Holocaust historians (e.g. electrocution chambers, vacuum chambers, etc.[50]), and then artificially extended to cover the mechanisms attested to from direct witnesses (engine exhaust gas chambers). Readers should thus be offended by MGK’s slight of their intelligence, expecting the audience to be unable to distinguish between a hearsay testimony and a genuine eyewitness.

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 6: Death Camp Witnesses (3). Treatment of Witness Testimony.

Treatment of Witness Testimony

In a section on the “Value of Eye Witness Testimonies,” Kues quotes Christopher Browning’s considerations on witnesses of the Reinhardt camps:

Once again, human memory is imperfect. The testimonies of both survivors and other witnesses to the events in Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka are no more immune to forgetfulness, error, exaggeration, distortion, and repression than eyewitness accounts of other events in the past. They differ, for instance, on how long each gassing operation took, on the dimensions and capacity of the gas chambers, on the number of undressing barracks, and on the roles of particular individuals. Gerstein, citing Globocnik, claimed the camps used diesel motors, but witnesses who actually serviced the engines in Belzec and Sobibor (Reder and Fuchs) spoke of gasoline engines.[27] Once again, however, without exception all concur on the vital issue at dispute, namely that Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka were death camps whose primary purpose was to kill in gas chambers through the carbon monoxide from engine exhaust,   and that the hundreds of thousands of corpses of Jews killed there were first buried and then later cremated.[28]

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 6: Death Camp Witnesses (2). MGK’s Methodology (or lack thereof).

MGK’s Methodology (or lack thereof)

In their approach to the history of the Reinhard camps, MGK fail to use any proper methodology with regard to the utilization of witness testimony. The method they and other deniers proffer on dozens of witness testimonies largely amounts to a game of ‘anomaly-hunting’, which also radically applies the principle of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus (false in one thing, false in all things), using it to the effect that a single falsehood or mistake invalidates not only the testimony of the specific witness in question but also casts suspicion on the reliability of all witnesses. Such an amateurish and erroneous approach to testimony is not to be unexpected, as despite the crucial role that witness testimony plays in their writings, not a single member of MGK have been formally educated in any field relevant to a proper analysis of witness testimony (e.g. law, history, psychology). A lack of formal education obviously would not preclude MGK from reasonably studying witness testimony, but MGK have never cited any text detailing a proper analysis of witness testimony which has guided or supported their odd form of criticisms.

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 6: Death Camp Witnesses (1).

Death Camp Witnesses

Whilst they are never categorized as such by Mattogno, Graf, and Kues in their collective works, the witnesses for the Aktion Reinhard camps can be grouped in one of three ways: bystanders, victims, and perpetrators. All three of these categories had varying levels of proximity to the actual extermination area. Bystanders can range from local villagers living next to the death camps themselves, or neighbours of the Jews who were deported to said camps. Victims and prisoners of the camps were given varying jobs, which meant that some were closer to the gas chambers and mass graves than others, such as those who helped unload and prepare Jewish luggage. Perpetrators can also include an assortment of persons, such as the police officials who deported the Jews, Nazi bureaucratic officials who organized and conducted the deportations, gassings, and plunder of the victims, and also the guards and officials who ran the actual death camps.

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 5: Gas Chambers at the Aktion Reinhard Camps (8). Gas Chamber Ventilation.

Gas Chamber Ventilation

In his Belzec book, with a reference to medical literature (published in 1931) on harmful gases, Mattogno writes:

Taking into account the density of carbon monoxide of 0.967 (relative to air), which is practically equal to that of hydrogen cyanide (0.969), and mindful that killing the victims within 15–30 minutes would have required reaching a lethal concentration of some 5,000 parts per million (5.7 milligrams/liter) within the gas chambers, it would certainly have been necessary to ventilate the chambers or to wear an independent breathing apparatus on entering, but none of the main witnesses ever mentioned this.[305]

The point by Mattogno is bogus, as many Aktion Reinhard witnesses (whom Mattogno also quotes in his work) mention the ventilation of the gas chambers. Few, if any, witnesses mention gas masks, but what would be the purpose if, as those same witnesses maintain, the exhaust gas in the chambers was ventilated out naturally before workers entered?

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 5: Gas Chambers at the Aktion Reinhard Camps (7). Archaeology of the Gas Chambers.

Archaeology of the Gas Chambers

A relatively recent development among Revisionist writers has been a heavy focus on physical evidence in their denial; likely a sign of intellectual bankruptcy, brought about by their failure to refute countless witnesses and documents, as well as provide a coherent and supported alternative explanation of resettlement. In nearly all of MGK’s writings since 2002 with the original German edition of Treblinka there has been a similar focal point on ‘forensic’ evidence, including in their criticisms of all three Reinhard camps.[273]

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 5: Gas Chambers at the Aktion Reinhard Camps (6). Corpse Color.

Corpse Color

Another of MGK’s criticisms of Aktion Reinhard witnesses involves the color of the gassed corpses.[246] For them, it can be taken as a “matter of fact”[247] that the gassing victims should have exhibited clear cherry-red features, and as no witness refers to such a color on the victims, MGK are “certain that something is not right with the gas chamber testimonies.”[248] This type of argumentation is dubious on its face, for it presupposes an exact knowledge of several things: the murderous circumstances inside the gas chambers, the factors which bring about a “bright cherry red” appearance of carbon monoxide victims, that the gassing victims would necessarily have displayed the cherry-red color, and that this discoloration is easily apparent to the untrained human eye.

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 5: Gas Chambers at the Aktion Reinhard Camps (5). The Gassing Engine: Diesel or Gasoline?

The Gassing Engine: Diesel or Gasoline?

Revisionist arguments in regards to homicidal gas vans and the Aktion Reinhard camps have often focused on the type of engines employed for the gassings. In particular, American denier Friedrich Paul Berg has written numerous technical articles since the 1980s attempting to refute the notion that diesel engines could have been used effectively for mass murder, due to a low output of carbon monoxide.[1] At the time of Berg’s writings, diesel engines were popularly ascribed to the Reinhard camps and gas vans, sometimes with the exception of Sobibor. Some anti-Revisionists have argued in response that diesels could indeed have been used for such gassings, if properly adjusted. Instead of debating such particulars, we believe that it is more effective to first revisit the sources of engine identification within the Reinhard camps and gas vans in order to determine the strength of this claim popularly assumed by some academics and courts.[2]  

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 5: Gas Chambers at the Aktion Reinhard Camps (4). Property Plunder.

Property Plunder

As a secondary effect of the extermination process, the Aktion Reinhard staff were able to reap the rewards of their actions by confiscating the property and valuables of the Jewish deportees brought to the camps, and never heard from again. While the documentation and evidence for the theft and removal of the deportees’ belongings does not itself constitute direct proof of homicidal gassings, it does provide strong circumstantial weight to the reality of their occurrence. The property plunder also serves as a means to test the reliability of the witness testimonies, as the available documentation bears out their statements regarding the removal of the deportees’ belongings. The total theft of the deportees’ property also stands in stark contrast to any alleged “transit camp” thesis that Revisionists often espouse. It is likely due to these factors that MGK have largely ignored this subject in their works.[141] Highlighting just how pitiful MGK’s brief handling of this subject is, a comparison is in order: in Yitzhak Arad’s seminal work, the property plunder subject is analyzed through the open use of eight documents and fifteen witnesses[142], while MGK only manage to discuss four documents (one only related to Sachsenhausen) and one witness. Even more unfortunate for MGK is that Arad did not use all the existing documentation available.

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 5: Gas Chambers at the Aktion Reinhard Camps (3). The Treblinka Camp.

The Treblinka Camp

Following the construction and start of operations in Belzec and Sobibor, and just prior to Wirth’s recommendations to rebuild Belzec’s gas chambers, another camp was established in the summer of 1942 in the north-eastern area of the Warsaw district in the General Government. The Treblinka camp was located in a remote and forested area four kilometres from the Treblinka station on the main Warsaw-Bialystok railway line. Spread out on some 50 acres in a rectangular fashion, the camp was surrounded by a 3-4 meter high wire fence, later fitted with tree branches and brushwood to block any outside view into the camp, while the inside of the camp was further secured by an additional barbed wire fence, staffed by constant security surveillance in eight meter high watch towers in all corners of the camp.[86]

The camp consisted of three similarly sized sections: a living area for the camp workers, a reception area for arrivals, and the extermination area. The reception area, which lacked any proper train platform for the arrivals but simply consisted of a 300 meter long railway spur and undressing barracks, was the site where men were separated from women and children, and where the victims dispensed with their clothing and valuables. From the reception area, arrivals were fed through a 60 meter long “tube” (known as the Himmelstrasse/”road to heaven” at Treblinka), which was surrounded by a barbed wire fence on both sides, interwoven with tree branches and foliage to block any outside observation, and which directed arrivals to the extermination area.[87]

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 5: Gas Chambers at the Aktion Reinhard Camps (2). The Original & Second Gas Chambers at Belzec and Sobibor.

The Original & Second Gas Chambers at Belzec and Sobibor

On March 17, 1942, the first deportation trains carrying Jews from Lublin arrived at the Belzec camp. As the capacity of the ramp was limited inside the Belzec camp, the trains were often separated into two or three sections, all driven into the camps individually. Only a select few locomotive drivers were allowed to bring the trains into the Belzec camp, while the others had to stop just outside the entrance. Polish railway worker Stefan Kirsz testified to these events after the war:

As a co-driver of a locomotive, I led the Jewish transports from the station of Rava-Russkaya to Belzec many times…These transports were divided in Belzec into three parts. Each part, which consisted of twenty freight trains, was taken to the railway spur inside the camp pushed by the locomotive, and stopped near the former border wall of 1939/1940. Immediately after the freight cars stopped inside the camp, they were emptied of Jews and their luggage. I saw that in addition to the living, corpses were taken out…The Germans did not allow us to watch the camp, but I was able to see it when I approached the camp and deceptively pretended that I must put the coal closer to the entrance gate.[41]

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 5: Gas Chambers at the Aktion Reinhard Camps (1). A “Humane” Solution: Poison Gas and the Development of the Gas Chambers.

Gas Chambers at the Aktion Reinhard Camps

 [Investigation Commission]

So the day of deliverance for the patient arrives. Before an investigative committee under the direction of the asylum doctor, the personal and medical details of the patient are examined and assessed.

[Photograph]

For archival purposes, photographs are taken of the patient.

[Gas Chamber (Cuts to turning on of the valve, gasometer, and observation by the doctor)]

In a hermetically sealed room the patient is exposed to the effects of Carbon Monoxide gas.

The incoming gas is completely odourless and initially robs the patient of their powers of judgement, and then their consciousness.

Completely unknown by the patient, without pain and without struggle, the deliverance of death takes effect.

1942 draft for a Nazi documentary on mercy killings on mentally sick persons by German director Herman Schweninger[1]

A “Humane” Solution: Poison Gas and the Development of the Gas Chambers

Poison gas had been a method chosen by Nazi leaders since 1939 for purposes of ‘racial hygiene’, to exterminate those deemed to be ‘unfit’. On December 12-13, 1939, for instance, SS chief Heinrich Himmler visited Posen, probably in the company of RKPA deputy chief Werner, and was shown a model gassing at the experimental euthanasia facility in Fort VII, Posen. His adjutant Joachim Peiper recalled this in two accounts given in 1967 and 1970.[2] In the genocidal climate that reigned during the late summer/autumn of 1941, the idea to extend the use of poison gas on a widespread scale against social and political enemies grew in popularity among Nazi officials.[3] On July 16, 1941, SS-Sturmbannführer Rolf-Heinz Höppner, head of the Security Service (SD) in Poznan, wrote a memo to Adolf Eichmann regarding possible solutions to problems inside the Warthegau. Höppner suggested to Eichmann the following:[4]

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 4: So Where Did They Go? “Resettlement” to the East (6). The Alleged Fate of the ‘Resettled’ Jews.

The Alleged Fate of the ‘Resettled’ Jews

If the Nazis really had resettled some two million Jews into the occupied Soviet territories, the question then remains over the ultimate fate of the deportees. Instead of evacuating the surviving Jews back into German occupied Europe, as the Germans did in many other cases (including more than 20,000 from Kaunas and Riga[180], two sites claimed to be primary resettlement destinations by Revisionists), according to MGK the Nazis left the Jews to be liberated by the advancing Red Army. Such a liberation would necessarily leave traces in the form of numerous mentions in the Soviet news stories, internal Soviet documents (such as Red Army reports and NKGB reports), and memoirs and interviews by the former Soviet servicemen and locals. Given the numbers of people involved and the scale of the events, even if one wanted to suppress such information for some incomprehensible reason, it wouldn't have been possible even during Stalin's reign (rumor always finds a way to spread), much less in subsequent years, and especially not after the fall of the USSR and opening of the archives in Russia and other former Soviet republics (most of which use these archives effectively to expose Soviet crimes, including deportations). The Soviet censorship system was powerful, but to hide the liberation of hundreds of thousand of Jews it would have to have been omnipotent. Lacking any corroboration for their story of Soviet liberation of the resettled Jews, one could easily reject MGK’s thesis as without foundation on that basis alone. As will be seen, however, their hypothesis fails on every evidentiary aspect.

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 4: So Where Did They Go? “Resettlement” to the East (5). Ukraine.

Ukraine

MGK also see the Ukraine as a destination for ‘resettled’ European Jews during the war. As discussed earlier, local Jews in this area were subject to heavy exterminations during 1942, the same year when Jews would have supposedly been deported into this area.[151] The Wehrmacht’s arms inspector Ukraine estimated at the end of 1941 that 150,000-200,000 Ukrainian Jews under the German civil administration had already been killed.[152] Massacres of such scale continued into the next year. For instance, although MGK cite a September 1942 wartime news report (the general unreliability of such a source has been discussed) in Judisk Krönika regarding German Jews being shipped to Ukraine to work on the fall harvest, they ignore the recorded execution of hundreds of thousands of Jews in Ukraine during the same period.[153] Indeed, Mattogno’s claims to the contrary aside, in the wake of the Nazi withdrawal from their occupied territories Soviet officials found mass graves containing thousands of corpses in Ukraine.[154]  

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 4: So Where Did They Go? “Resettlement” to the East (4). The Ostland.

The Ostland

A recent article by Kues argues that RK Ostland contained four “transit points for at least part of the large numbers of Jews deported east via the "extermination camps" in Poland.”[105] These transit points were the camps Vievis, Vaivara, Salaspils and Maly Trostenets. However, this contradicts the assertion in Sobibór that the Jews deported to the Ostland arrived “w/o a stop-over in any camp.”[106] In Treblinka, M&G had stated that: “It is valid to suggest that the direct transports to Minsk arrived first in Warsaw and ran over the Siedlce-Czeremcha-Wolkowusk line, so that they were travelling past Treblinka at a distance of approximately 80 km (Siedlce railway station) and about 140 km from Sobibor.”[107] Kues and his colleagues are therefore fundamentally split on how the deportees arrived in the Ostland.

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 4: So Where Did They Go? “Resettlement” to the East (3). Realities in the Occupied Soviet Territories.

Realities in the Occupied Soviet Territories

MGK exhibit a stunning lack of knowledge regarding the circumstances of the occupied eastern territories, where nearly two million Jews were supposedly deported in 1942 and 1943.[91] Food conditions in these areas have been highlighted in Holocaust scholarship over the past decade as a crucial factor in the extermination of Jews, another area which MGK have ignored across their work.[92] As mentioned earlier, German officials had already devised a ‘Hungerplan’ to starve the Soviet population for the practical and ideological benefit of the Reich, a plan modified once realities of the occupation set in.[93] Starvation and malnourishment existed across the areas in the winter of 1941-1942, with urban dwellers being provided with meagre rations (even less for Jews) and those in rural areas left to fend for themselves. Millions of Soviet prisoners of war were also purposefully left to starve, in addition to liquidations.[94] These types of policies were conducted to, as Himmler’s associate Peter-Heinz Seraphim noted, bring about the “extermination of useless mouths.”[95] Such circumstances would continue on throughout 1942, when MGK expect that hundreds of thousands of ‘useless mouths’ (unnütze Esser) were resettled into the same territories.[96]

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 4: So Where Did They Go? “Resettlement” to the East (2). “Resettlement” for MGK.

"Resettlement" for MGK

In attacking the work of Holocaust historians regarding the death camps, MGK deride them for “creating a historiographical picture out of selected pieces of eyewitness testimony and a handful of arbitrarily interpreted documents.”[34] Unfortunately, the trio’s resettlement thesis is guilty of exactly that, as will be shown throughout the remainder of this chapter. Contrary to their finger pointing at historians’ selective use of witness testimony, for example, MGK are brazen enough to spin witness accounts of the death camps and gas chambers as evidence of transit camps.[35] Indeed, despite their recognition of “the necessity of comparing the witness accounts with available material evidence,” MGK fail to properly use either type of evidence in their own propositions.[36] They also exhibit not only ignorance of the realities behind the Eastern front, where they think some two million Jews could easily be resettled into, but they also ignore several documents which clearly dispel such notions.

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 4: So Where Did They Go? “Resettlement” to the East (1). The Excruciatingly Slow Evolution of the Revisionist “Resettlement” Thesis.

So Where Did They Go? “Resettlement” to the East

The Excruciatingly Slow Evolution of the Revisionist “Resettlement” Thesis  

As with their fixation on physical evidence (graves and gas chambers), the denier “hypothesis” of Nazi resettlement of Jews through transit camps is a relatively recently phenomenon as it underwent an excruciatingly slow evolution through Revisionist writings. Arthur Butz was the first Revisionist to detail such an argument, writing in 1976 that instead of an extermination program, “the German policy was to evacuate the Jews to the East.”[1] Butz primarily drew this conclusion from the minutes of the Wannsee Conference[2], a few wartime newspaper articles[3], and the 1943 document referencing Sobibor as a transit camp.[4] In sketching out this supposed resettlement policy, Butz speculates that the destinations of the deportees (whom he counts one million non-Polish Jews) were stretched along a connected line in the occupied Soviet territories, including areas such as Riga, Minsk, Ukraine, and the Sea of Azov.[5] The ultimate fate of these deportees varied, according to Butz, but his work suggests that the majority were either assimilated into the Soviet Union, or emigrated to the United States and Israel.[6] 

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 3: Aktion Reinhard and the Holocaust in Poland (4). Mattogno’s ‘Resettlement’ Shell Game

Mattogno’s ‘Resettlement’ Shell Game

Having ignored virtually every source discussed in the preceding section, and after deliberately misunderstanding the interplay of labour and extermination, it is unsurprising that Mattogno feels he can devote most of his energies to misrepresenting Nazi Jewish policy in Poland by presenting a series of documents which he misinterprets as ‘proving’ a resettlement program. That Mattogno deliberately omitted all indicators to the contrary is bad enough, but on closer examination, his attempt to construct a chain of documents for ‘resettlement’ also falls flat on its face. Firstly, it is immediately striking how little Mattogno actually has to say about the fate of Polish Jews. Most of the rumours, false news reports and other uncorroborated evidence that Mattogno and his younger associate Kues try to parlay into proof of ‘resettlement’ in fact concerns West European Jews; evidence which will be examined in the next chapter. Secondly, as Mattogno’s hypothesis meanders over the course of 1942-43, it is striking how he is less and less able to find any vague indicators of transfer out of the Generalgouvernement. By mid to late 1943, he is in effect reduced to playing a shell game whereby the surviving Polish Jews are simply transferred from one part of the province to another, simply so that Mattogno can avoid admitting that the 400,000 Jews left alive in the GG and Bialystok districts at the start of 1943 were further decimated.

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 3: Aktion Reinhard and the Holocaust in Poland (3). Extermination and Labour.

Extermination and Labour

Not content with misunderstanding the origins of Aktion Reinhard, Mattogno also fails to grasp the intentions and motivations of the civil administration and SS in the Generalgouvernement. Literally almost every statement that indicates the emergence of a genocidal mentality in occupied Poland, and every statement that confirms that genocide was in fact resolved upon and carried out, is omitted from the ‘trilogy’. Instead of confronting and properly dealing with this evidence, Mattogno opts to substitute a strawman version of Nazi policy, an all-or-nothing caricature whereby either the Nazis implemented virtually instantaneous 100% extermination, or they did not do this at all. Yet this strawman is flatly contradicted by the extant paper trail, which makes it perfectly clear, as we have seen above, that the Nazis carried out their extermination policy in tandem with a policy of selecting and sparing an ever decreasing minority of Jews for use as forced labourers.[197] Ignorant as he is of recent historiography, Mattogno does not seem to realise that there were three distinct phases to Aktion Reinhard: a first phase from March to June 1942 in which the system was tested in the Lublin and Galicia districts while preparations were undertaken in other districts; a second phase of accelerated deportation and mass murder from late June to December 1942 in which every district was targeted, and a third phase from January 1943 onwards, where the surviving Jews, now reduced down to around 20% of their number at the start of 1942, were decimated piecemeal, as ghettos were reduced in districts which had fallen behind others were eliminated (e.g. in the Galicia and Bialystok districts), and other ghettos were converted to labour and concentration camps. The evolution from phase to phase, moreover, was influenced by two key variables – food and labour. Priorities demonstrably shifted over the course of 1942, decisively shaping the course of Aktion Reinhard.

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 3: Aktion Reinhard and the Holocaust in Poland (2). The Origins of Aktion Reinhard.

The Origins of Aktion Reinhard

It is typical of Mattogno – and negationism as a whole - that until Sobibór (2010), he made absolutely no effort to address the origins of Aktion Reinhard. Not a word is expended in Treblinka (2002) or Bełżec (2004) about the direct decision-making processes leading up to the establishment of the Aktion Reinhard camps. Instead, Mattogno simply assumes that his version of Aktion Reinhard must have been ordered from the centre by Hitler, neatly absolving himself of the necessity of dealing with a variety of inconvenient evidence. A reader asking ‘why did the Nazis build Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka?’ comes away empty-handed after reading Treblinka or Bełżec. Despite the addition of 25,000 words ostensibly on the ‘Führerbefehl and the Origins of the “Extermination Camps in the East”, Sobibór doesn’t actually answer the question, either. Instead, Chapter 8 turns out to be a mishmash of previous Mattogno texts together with newer scrapings, with very little of direct relevance to the evolution of Nazi Jewish policy in the Generalgouvernement or the origins of Aktion Reinhard. Section 8.1 is a ham-fisted gloss on the debate on the origins of the Final Solution as a whole, which has already been dealt with in Chapter 2 of this critique. Several later sections deal with the minutiae of the construction of gas chambers, and as such will be examined in Chapter 5 of this critique. Meanwhile, Section 8.5 is ostensibly dedicated to ‘Euthanasia and Aktion Reinhardt’, belatedly trying to paper over one of the greatest dishonesties of the preceding volumes of the ‘trilogy’ – the utter silence on the connection between the T4 euthanasia program and its six gas chambers, and the three death camps of Aktion Reinhard.

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 3: Aktion Reinhard and the Holocaust in Poland (1).

Aktion Reinhard and the Holocaust in Poland

 As the preceding chapter has demonstrated, Mattogno, Graf and Kues have an exceedingly poor grasp of the evolution of Nazi Jewish policy and of the Final Solution as a whole. The following chapter will show that such a verdict does not change in the slightest when we consider the arguments proffered by the trio regarding the evolution of Aktion Reinhard and the Holocaust in the regions of Poland most affected by Aktion Reinhard. Strictly speaking, the trio do not actually offer a coherent account of either of these things in the ‘trilogy’ of booklets about Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka. They might well say that their studies were of the camps themselves, and that they were not obligated to examine the history of Jewish policy in the Generalgouvernement. But in the guise of trying to prove ‘resettlement’, these books reimport just such an account a through the back door – an account, moreover, which is so horribly distorted, inaccurate and ignorant as to be all but unrecognisable to anyone who is moderately familiar with the conventional historical literature on the subject.

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 2: Nazi Policy (7). Conclusion.

Conclusion

The flaws in MGK’s writing on Nazi policy, which we have documented above, can be divided into four categories: self-contradiction, irrelevancy, highly selective sourcing, and distortion.

It is self-contradictory that Mattogno fixes a resettlement decision in September 1941 but then Kues has to admit that requests from a very high level (Ribbentrop) to resettle Serb Jews were being declined by Himmler in October. It is self-refuting for Mattogno to admit that Wetzel was referring to gassing on 25.10.41 but for Kues to claim that Rademacher was referring to mere resettlement of Serb Jews in a document written on the very same day.

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 2: Nazi Policy (6). Killing of Soviet Jews, August–December 1942.

Killing of Soviet Jews, August-December 1942

Policy developments in the second half of 1942 took place against the backdrop of a massive killing action in GK Wolhynien-Podolien, which contained most of the Polesie province and the entire Wolyn (Volhynia) province that had formerly belonged to Poland.[243] The killings are particularly significant because they prove that Nazi policy was now to kill working Jews as well as non-working ones. The number of Jews in this region was recorded as 330,000 in March 1942[244] and 326,000 in May 1942.[245] Most of those Jews were dead by the end of November. Their deaths were included in Himmler’s Meldung 51, whose total of 363,211 deaths also included approximately 70,000 Jews from Bezirk Bialystok.[246]

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 2: Nazi Policy (5). The Europe-Wide Final Solution, January 1942–March 1943.

The Europe-Wide Final Solution, January 1942 – March 1943

The Wannsee Protocol[194] is silent on the fate of non-working Jews. Given that the document claims to be concerned with resettlement, this is a case where silence implies intent to kill. The fate of the working Jews also makes this inference the only plausible one:

Under proper guidance, in the course of the final solution the Jews are to be allocated for appropriate labour in the East. Able-bodied Jews, separated according to sex, will be taken in large work columns to these areas for work on roads, in the course of which action doubtless a large portion will be eliminated by natural causes.The possible final remnant will, since it will undoubtedly consist of the most resistant portion, have to be treated accordingly, because it is the product of natural selection and would, if released, act as a the seed of a new Jewish revival (see the experience of history.)

There is policy continuity between these paragraphs and Wetzel’s discussion of “Vergassungsapparate” (the Protocol can only be read as stating that unfit Jews will receive the same treatment as the “final remnant”) but at Wannsee the discussion had clearly shifted to include all of Europe’s Jews.

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 2: Nazi Policy (4). Local Exterminations: Chelmno, Serbia and Reich Jews in RK Ostland.

Local Exterminations: Chelmno, Serbia and Reich Jews in RK Ostland

The central decision-making process described above took place against a backdrop in which local officials were pressing for permission to kill Jews who had been deported into their regions. When consent to kill these Jews was granted, it made the subsequent Europe-wide ‘decision’ all the more certain, because a precedent had already been set for killing Jews who had been deported into spaces that were unable or unwilling to permanently accommodate them.

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 2: Nazi Policy (3). Evolution of Europe-Wide Final Solution, September - December 1941.

Evolution of Europe-Wide Final Solution, September - December 1941

The decision-making process to kill Europe’s Jews was a mixture of decisions made at the top by the Führer and Himmler, and decisions made in consultation with more junior personnel concerning local killing actions. The centre allowed local authorities to kill Jews in increasing numbers, and these local killings then fed the centre’s growing desire for killing Jews on a Europe-wide scale. Local killing decisions normalised extermination thinking that had been developing at the centre.

Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard. Chapter 2: Nazi Policy (2). Extermination of Soviet Jews, June 1941-March 1942.

Extermination of Soviet Jews, June 1941-March 1942

During the planning stages for Operation Barbarossa, Nazi food policy was linked to plans for large-scale political killing. On May 2, 1941, a conference of state secretaries, chaired by Thomas, had concluded that "umpteen million people will doubtless starve to death, if we extract everything necessary for us from the country."[10] The selection of these starvation victims would follow a political economy of racial value, but would also be shaped by a political-ideological-racial belief that the enemy was the ‘Jewish-Marxist.’ Rosenberg recognised this linkage when he wrote, on May 8, 1941, that the war would be:

[a] fight for the food supply and raw materials for the German Reich as well as for Europe as a whole, a fight ideological in nature in which the last Jewish-Marxist enemy has to be defeated.[11]