Why question the holocaust?

Originally posted by kenochi
A photograph of malnourished, typhoid-racked people is not evidence for gas chambers, an extermination plan or the 6 million, I'm afraid.

Its not a photograph. Its lots of them.

But as you insist on trying to promote the idea that it wasn't what it seemed, heres a documented list drawn up by a researcher showing relevant publication dates and times where he drew his source material from.

Evidence

Included within are such things as

Report entitled "Resettlement of Jews" written by SS-Sturmbannfuehrer
Gricksch for SS-Col. von Herff and Reichsfuehrer-SS Himmler, after
inspection of Auschwitz camp on 14-16 May 1943.
[Hitler and the Final Solution - G. Fleming, University of California
Press, 1984, p. 142-143]
------------------------------------------------------------------
The Auschwitz camp plays a special role in the resolution of the Jewish
question. The most advance methods permit the execution of the
Fuehrer-order in the shortest possible time and without arousing much
attention. The so-called "resettlement action" runs the following
course: The Jews arrive in special trains (freight cars) toward
evening and are driven on special tracks to areas of the camp
specifically set aside for this purpose. There the Jews are unloaded
and examined for their fitness to work by a team of doctors, in the
presence of the camp commandant and several SS officers. At this point
anyone who can somehow be incorporated into the work program is put in
a special camp. The curably ill are sent straight to a medical camp
and are restored to health through a special diet. The basic principle
behind everything is: conserve all manpower for work. The previous
type of "resettlement action" has been thoroughly rejected, since it
is too costly to destroy precious work energy on a continual basis.

The unfit go to cellars in a large house which are entered from
outside. They go down five or six steps into a fairly long,
well-constructed and well-ventilated cellar area, which is lined with
benches to the left and right. It is brightly lit, and the benches are
numbered. The prisoners are told that they are to be cleansed and
disinfected for their new assignments. They must therefore completely
undress to be bathed. To avoid panic and to prevent disturbances of
any kind, they are instructed to arrange their clothing neatly under
their respective numbers, so that they will be able to find their
things again after their bath. Everything proceeds in a perfectly
orderly fashion. Then they pass through a small corridor and enter a
large cellar room which resembles a shower bath. In this room are
three large pillars, into which certain materials can be lowered from
outside the cellar room. When three- to four-hundred people have been
herded into this room, the doors are shut, and containers filled with
the substances are dropped down into the pillars. As soon as the
containers touch the base of the pillars, they release particular
substances that put the people to sleep in one minute. A few minutes
later, the door opens on the other side, where the elevator is
located. The hair of the corpses is cut off, and their teeth are
extracted (gold-filled teeth) by specialists (Jews). It has been
discovered that Jews were hiding pieces of Jewelry, gold, platinum
etc., in hollow teeth. Then the corpses are loaded into elevators and
brought up to the first floor, where ten large crematoria are located.
(Because fresh corpses burn particularly well, only 50-100 lbs. of
coke are needed for the whole process.) The job itself is performed
by Jewish prisoners, who never step outside this camp again.

The results of this "resettlement action" to date: 500,000 Jews.
Current capacity of the "resettlement action" ovens: 10,000 in 24
hours.

Delousing huh?

Originally posted by kenochi
because the camps had 'gaskammern' for delousing clothing. Gas tight doors were for these facilities.

Nobody denies that the occupied territories and camps were rife with starvation, spotted fever and typhus. A photograph of malnourished, typhoid-racked people is not evidence for gas chambers, an extermination plan or the 6 million, I'm afraid.

Oh dear, at the risk of going round in circles, and aware as I am that whatever evidence we present you're going to say is nonsense, here is an extract from a website that offers all the evidence you suggest isn't there, and more.

An inventory, again captured after the war, revealed fourteen showerheads and one gas-tight door listed for the gas chamber in Krema III. Holocaust-deniers claim that room was a morgue; they do not offer to explain what use a morgue has for showerheads and a gas-tight door. (See a photograph of the document, or Pressac, Auschwitz: Technique and Operation, 1989, pp. 231, 438.)

A memo from the Auschwitz construction office, dated March 31, 1943, says (Hilberg, Documents of Destruction, 1971, pp. 207-208):

We take this occasion to refer to another order of March 6, 1943, for the delivery of a gas door 100/192 for Leichenkeller 1 of Krema III, Bw 30a, which is to be built in the manner and according to the same measure as the cellar door of the opposite Krema II, with peep hole of double 8 millimeter glass encased in rubber. This order is to be viewed as especially urgent....

Why would morgues have urgently needed peepholes made out of a double layer of third-of-an-inch-thick glass?

The question of whether it can be proved that the cyanide gas was used in the Auschwitz gas chambers has intruiged the deniers. Their much-heralded Leuchter Report, for example, expends a great deal of effort on the question of whether traces of cyanide residue remain there today. But we do not need to look for chemical traces to confirm cyanide use (Gutman, op. cit., p. 229):

Letters and telegrams exchanged on February 11 and 12 [1943] between the Zentralbauleitung and Topf mention a wooden blower for Leichenkeller 1. This reference confirms the use of the morgue as a gas chamber: Bischoff and Prüfer thought that the extraction of air mixed with concentrated prussic acid [cyanide] (20 g per cu m) required a noncorroding ventilator.

Bischoff and Prüfer turned out to be wrong, and a metal fan ended up working acceptably well. But the fact that they thought it necessary demonstrates that cyanide was to be routinely used in the rooms which deniers call morgues. (Cyanide is useless for disinfecting morgues, as it does not kill bacteria.)

Other captured documents, even if they don't refer directly to some part of the extermination process, refer to it by implication. A captured memo to SS-Brigadeführer Kammler reveals that the expected incineration capacity of the Auschwitz ovens was a combined total of 4,756 corpses per day (see a photograph of the document or Kogon, op. cit., p. 157).

Deniers often claim that this total could not be achieved in practice (see question 45). That's not the point. These crematoria were carefully designed, in 1942, to have sufficient capacity to dispose of 140,000 corpses per month -- in a camp that housed only 125,000. We can conclude that massive deaths were predicted, indeed planned-for, as early as mid-1942. A camp designed to incinerate its full capacity of inmates every four weeks is not merely a detention center.

If that's not enough evidence for you, that's entirely a matter for you.

LW

Well question everything but don't attack everything.
You can question something without attacking it you know.
History says alot of people died then.
History says Nazi Germany blamed Jews for a number of things and killed them.
Of course I am going to wonder if history is not lying to me as it has lied before.
But if true ALOT of innocent people lost their lives.
Out of respect for the possible fallen I would NOT say their possible suffering and DEATHS was fantasy without some damn good proof.
Have yet to see that.
So as far as I am concerned they are guilty til proven innocent.
Oh and it fits with human nature that such a thing would happen.
And the aims of the Nazi party FROM THE START.

Originally posted by Maverickhunter
Yes, the holocaust was horrible and was tragic, but, people seem to question that it existed. Why do they?

There are myriad reasons for the delusion, but mostly it's due to some sort of resentment and anger.

The Nazi's were bigoted, fear mongering, murderous bastards.
So are the "Neo" I've had run-ins with but that is another story.

I question the "use" of the Holocaust but not its "existence".

It happened. It was just as horrible as most things our world history. World War II cut across many diverse lives, and there are plenty of injustices to spread around. Some of the very soldiers sent to fight against the Nazis were themselves viewed as "animals".

"We had to sit behind a curtain for black people only, yet Nazi prisoners of war got escorted into the dining cart as if they were free," Finley recalled. "You could imagine how that made us feel as soldiers. Who was really the enemy?" Mariniji.com

There is nothing really fair about our place in the world but the one thing I know for sure is that no one has a monopoly on suffering.

- Lee

[edit on 3-2-2008 by lee anoma]

I shouldn't have posted on this thread - I had a few minutes of boredom at work the other day, but I'm really too busy to get involved with another long debate about this. I thrashed all this out a year or so ago here on a thread about the 'One Third of the Holocaust' video. I'm going to respond to the other posts so far and then leave it there.

Firstly neformore, you say that lots of photos of starving, typhoid racked people is evidence for the Holocaust (tm). It clearly isn't however, its evidence for the Nazi holocaust (see my first post). They don't prove gassing, the plan or the 6 million.
In fact, they are part of a wider issue. 20 million people died of non-attritional causes in WW2. This essentially means starvation and disease. 20 million. War is a big mess. Big wars more so. Railways, roads and other infrastructure get bombed out.
We find ourselves with the situation where people in both the theatres of war are dying by the truckload of malnutrition and disease. Yet it is only the ones in Nazi and Japanese occupied areas who did so because of brutality or a desire to exterminate. Central Russian peasants, for example, just died. But Western Russian peasants died because of the invasion of the evil Nazis.
Even someone as blinkered as yourself must be able to see the double standard.

Of all the dubious evidence you could have provided for your religious faith
in the Holocaust (tm), the Franke-Gritsch document is one of the best known and least regarded, even by regular historians. There are so many issues with it that I would be here all day if I picked it apart properly. Like most such documents it turned up as a result of evidence gathering for War Crimes trials and was 'found' in Franke's office by Eric Lipman of the American War Crimes branch.
You must be very careful when reading and quoting from translations of documents on the internet. The document is available to read in the original 'German' on the Library of Congress website, or at least it used to be a couple of years ago. I put 'German' there in inverted commas because anyone who reads the thing who has any knowledge of the German language will quickly realise that there is no way that it is an original document. Whoever wrote it was not very good at German and even interspersed English words in the letter, like 'had' instead of 'hat', in one place 'the' instead of 'der', 'here' instead of 'hier' and so on. Now you, in your cosy world of believing-what-you-are-told may not find that suspicious. Perhaps Franke just liked to throw English words into his writing as some sort of game. I, on the other hand, take it as meaning that it is probably a forgery (and not a very good one either).
Allied to that is the fact that the version of gassing which Franke relates was one of several stories circulating in Allied propaganda during the war, but is not the version finally settled on by the prosecutors at Nuremberg, which people like you, who dwell in the Schindler's List world of history, now slavishly believe. What are these 'pillars' through which the gas was intoduced. How were they able to open the doors after only a few minutes? Even regular Holocaust historians write off this document. Jean-Claude Pressac, in his influential work, 'The technique and operation of the gas chambers at Auschwitz' made a list of 10 faults with it. Some are given below.

The "large house" is actually Krema II at Birkenau.
There are not 5 or 6 steps into the Leichenkeller, but 10.
There are not 3 pillars inside the "gas chamber" but 4.
The "doors" cannot be closed when there is only one door involved.
There is no door to open "on the other side" because again there is only one door.
The lift does not take the corpses to the first floor, but to the ground floor.
There are not 10 crematory furnaces but 5.

Pressac dismissed the document as a work of fantasy and exaggeration by Franke. I think the fantasy and exaggeration part is right, but not the author.

[edit on 3-2-2008 by kenochi]

Lone Weasel sees himself at the vanguard of Holocaust defence by sending me to Nizkor! I have spent more time on Nizkor over the last few years than could be counted. Unfortunately Nizkor is not a reliable resource. It was set up not as an objective History site, but as an anti-revisionist site. Its purpose is to refute the arguments of 'deniers' not to provide a balanced view.
The documents you quote that actually pertain to the Holocaust (tm) are all contradicted by innumerable other documents. What history is then supposed to do is weigh up both sides and see which narrative best fits the available evidence. But Nizkor wouldn't ever do that because of its raison d'etre.
Providing a link to Nizkor is the equivalent of providing a link to Ernst Zuendel's website. Its a declaration of utter subjectivity on your part.

For example, the document you are referring to which ordered 14 showerheads for the basement room of krema 3 is followed by another order, which you won't read on Nizkor, although its quoted in the same book as the one they used (Pressac) which states that,

"Urgent. Bring Monday [May 17] rough plan for production of hot water for about 100 showers. Fitting of heating coils or boiler in the waste incinerator at present under construction crem. III or system using the high temperatures of the flue gases. It would be possible to raise the brickwork of the furnace to take a large tank. Herr Prüfer is requested to bring the relevant drawings on Monday 15/5." Sig. Bischoff

So apparently it was also urgent to set up heated water systems to supply those showers. For whatever reason it appears that the SS actually intended to build actual showers in this room. Pressac, the historian who supplied both documents commented thus on the shower idea, "This plan was never implemented, although such installations were built in other camps, for example in the crematorium of K L Natzweiler (Struthof) where the incinerator was the main source of heat for the showers."

But of course if you want to use online crap like Nizkor to confirm your tawdry, Hollywood-tainted prejudices, and contnue to believe that this document proves homicidal gassing, then I can't really help you.

There are none so blind as those who will not see.

Originally posted by kenochi
But of course if you want to use online crap like Nizkor to confirm your tawdry, Hollywood-tainted prejudices, and contnue to believe that this document proves homicidal gassing, then I can't really help you.

There are none so blind as those who will not see.

What a moving conclusion, kenochi. Very deep.

Contrary to your suggestion, I do not profess to be at the vanguard of any movement whatsoever. However, your dismissal of Nizkor on the basis that it promotes a certain argument over another is absurd. I could just as well dismiss David Irving's "history" of the holocaust based on the fact that he set his stall out to justify holocaust denial - rather than to set about a balanced study of the evidence. But I don't criticise him for that - I criticise him because he has been proven wrong! I cited Nizkor simply because it provided basic rebuttals of points raised by deniers and revisionists. That's what I was asked for earlier in the thread.

Since we're analysing the merits of our sources, let's examine your own. Jean Claude Pressac is indeed an authority on holocaust history. For those without the benefits of your encyclopaedic and, of course, thoroughly objective knowledge of the holocaust, it might be of interest to know that Pressac started out as a holocaust denier. During his studies he took it upon himself to visit Auschwitz and study documents relating to the construction of the site. As a result of these studies, this balanced historian took the view that his initial skepticism was not justified. In his own words, he "nearly did away with myself one evening in October 1979 in the main camp, the Stammlager, overwhelmed by the evidence and by despair". Those wishing to read his full conclusion can do so here - please note, kenochi, I don't vouch for the objectiveness of the host site, but this is direct quotation of the source, so it's hard to see how it can be misrepresentative.

And Pressac effectively proves my point, because he is an objective historian who set out, quite reasonably, with the aim of questioning mainstream versions of holocaust history. He approached the task in the balanced manner you advocate, kenochi, and he discovered that the mainstream history was correct. He made that discovery despite making the points about individual bits of evidence that you observe he found to be flawed. And yet he still disagreed with you. Your conclusion is simply that he is wrong - but actually you haven't demonstrated that at all, have you?

Your rather patronising assertion that my point of view is based on Hollywood films is not only insulting but misleading. Is it your suggestion that Pressac only changed his mind because he watched Schindler's List? Of course not - his mind was made up because he studied the evidence and came to a conclusion based on that evidence. That certain parts of the story don't add up, that certain documents are phony, may or may not be true. But what he concluded was that, on the balance of all the evidence, your analysis, kenochi, was wrong. And I agree with him.

LW

very quick final word - the second link you provided, LW, to Holocaust History, is actually quite a good site. It presents a lot of original documents and presents them faithfully. Obviously it only presents the documents it believes support its pov, but it is not dishonest like Nizkor.

Saying that my view of nizkor is absurd only demonstrates that you don't understand my point. Anybody is entitled to an opinion, but nizkor deliberately distort evidence to fit their anti-revisionist agenda. With the example I gave you above, if the Nizkor author had read Pressac and got the original quote about the showerheads, they must have been aware that the Pressac book contained other documents relating to the situation which clearly show these showerheads had nothing to do with homicidal gassing. Yet they chose to withold those in the knowledge that the majority of their readers will not read Pressac or know where the documents come from and therefore leave with the impression that they are proof of the Holocaust, as you did. That is academic and intellectual dishonesty, pure and simple. And Nizkor is full of it. Again, if you don't understand that, then I really can't help you.

As to your assertion that you agree with Pressac's conclusions, rather than mine, if you had actually read his book, which can be downloaded for free on the site you linked to here

www.holocaust-history.org...

then i would have no problem. Anyone who educates themselves before shooting their mouth off is OK by me. Saying you concur with Pressac having not actually read it, is a declaration of faith, not logic on your part and that is so typical of the way that the Holocaust (tm) is followed and promoted.

[edit on 4-2-2008 by kenochi]