"Revisionists cannot work out how the Holocaust happened"...

[HansHill]

Nessie, you don't have a big enough mop to clean all that mess you made up.

We all saw that.

He's tripling down

I suspect Dr sanitycheck's google notifications are hopping right now to come do an emergency clean up operation

[Nessie]

....

There are three categories of people as I see it

....
3) Rabid affirmers - This category is the redheaded stepchild, who recognise and regurgitate names, dates, maps, and other surface level prompts much like an AI output generator, however they completely misunderstand the Holocaust by you know, affirming it.

Our friend Nessie here is category 3, obviously.

...

What you, call regurgitation, is the presentation of evidence to prove what happened. You cannot do that.

[Archie]

You used square meter, to discuss a volume. I switched to the more appropriate m3 and showed how much you were exaggerating, by using your strange square meter calculation.

600,000 bodies/5,490 sq meters = 109.3 bodies per square meter
600,000 bodies/21,310 cu meters = 28.2 bodies per cubic meter

That you think the 109 is an "exaggeration" just because it is a larger number is hilarious to me.

There's no contradiction in these numbers. The ratio between the two metrics is simply the average depth. Area captures most of the variation in grave size and it is much easier to estimate than volume, so that's why I tend to use it. But use whichever you want. It makes no difference. It will actually be harder for you to use volume since you will not be able to find very many excavations that report volume.

No. That is because the mass graves are either individually buried corpses, such as the vast WWI cemeteries, or they are pits, such as plague graves found during archaeological excavations or building work, where the corpses have decomposed leaving skeletons and maybe some personal effects, or they have not been disturbed.

No mass grave has been treated the way the Nazis treated theirs, by exhuming and cremating the corpses.

Ok, so you are admitting the implied density is totally unprecedented. You are unable to supply any data whatsoever to support your assumptions. Your excuse for this failure does not follow at all. Subsequent cremation is neither here nor there. We are talking about the initial burial here. I want you to show me a non-Holocaust grave with a comparable density. Even if the bodies are totally decomposed, you can still estimate the number of bodies from the bones (skulls and so forth) and estimate the rough size of the grave. Remember, we are trying to get an order of magnitude here. If those plague victims were buried at 100 bodies for every square meter of area, you should have around 100 skulls for every square meter.

[Archie]

As for how so many corpses fitted into the mass graves, is explained by Kola not finding all the grave space, plus potential over-estimation of the number dead, plus the effects of burying naked corpses that are subject to pressure, to the exhumations and cremations beginning before the end of the transports, so not all the dead were buried.

Ok, this is a beauty. Kola didn't find all the graves? They surveyed the whole camp and 90% of it was natural strata. They did not randomly take a couple hundred thousand bodies off-site for burial for no reason. And since when is this even the story?

Just because you cannot work out how it happened, does not therefore mean it did not happen.

If our reasoning is sound, then, yeah, it does. Or if you want to be technical you can say that it is extremely unlikely to have happened. I will be generous and acknowledge there is some minute probability that I am wrong and that they ground up and compacted all the bodies in order to make them fit. But I will play the odds on this one.

[Nessie]

You used square meter, to discuss a volume. I switched to the more appropriate m3 and showed how much you were exaggerating, by using your strange square meter calculation.

600,000 bodies/5,490 sq meters = 109.3 bodies per square meter
600,000 bodies/21,310 cu meters = 28.2 bodies per cubic meter

That you think the 109 is an "exaggeration" just because it is a larger number is hilarious to me.

You are using it, because it is the highest number you can come up with, to help support your argument from incredulity.

There's no contradiction in these numbers. The ratio between the two metrics is simply the average depth. Area captures most of the variation in grave size and it is much easier to estimate than volume, so that's why I tend to use it. But use whichever you want. It makes no difference. It will actually be harder for you to use volume since you will not be able to find very many excavations that report volume.

Indeed, there as I say, the AR camps & Chelmno are unlike any other mass grave site.

No. That is because the mass graves are either individually buried corpses, such as the vast WWI cemeteries, or they are pits, such as plague graves found during archaeological excavations or building work, where the corpses have decomposed leaving skeletons and maybe some personal effects, or they have not been disturbed.

No mass grave has been treated the way the Nazis treated theirs, by exhuming and cremating the corpses.

Ok, so you are admitting the implied density is totally unprecedented.

Yes. There is no other report, in history, of a mass grave that is full of naked corpses, dumped on top of each other, that then gets exhumed and the corpses cremated. I could then add in, and the site is the left guarded.

You are unable to supply any data whatsoever to support your assumptions. Your excuse for this failure does not follow at all.

I can supply witness estimations of the grave sizes, number and locations and the results of archaeological surveys of those areas. It is typical of your dishonest approach, that you suggest I have nothing whatsoever to support me. You do that to distract from your zero evidence.

Subsequent cremation is neither here nor there. We are talking about the initial burial here.

The subsequent cremation, required exhumation, which will likely affect the area, as the graves were dug into. That act likely caused the more irregular outlines found by GPR.

I want you to show me a non-Holocaust grave with a comparable density.

I have explained to you, that throughout history, no mass grave consisted of dumping naked corpses into pits, which were then exhumed and the corpses cremated. I should add the evidence that some mass graves had evidence of a corrosive material added to them.

The Nazi mass graves at the AR camps and Chelmno, are unique. No other mass grave in history, is like them.

Even if the bodies are totally decomposed, you can still estimate the number of bodies from the bones (skulls and so forth) and estimate the rough size of the grave. Remember, we are trying to get an order of magnitude here. If those plague victims were buried at 100 bodies for every square meter of area, you should have around 100 skulls for every square meter.

Yes, plague mass graves, with skeletons, can be more accurately body counted. The Nazis prevented that from happening, by exhuming, cremating and according to some evidence, rendering the cremains.

Nazis destruction of evidence, has played into the hands of so-called revisionists, by making establishing the precise size of the graves, and how many corpses they contained, impossible. That helps with their argument from incredulity, disbelieving that so many corpses were buried at the camps.

[Stubble]

Archie, before you make that concession, I'm going to have to ask you to evidence a mechanical separator at the camp and a bucket large enough to fit >600,000 people.

Then you can concede they might have poured the dead into the grave space as a liquid.

Maybe the 600,000 person bucket is excessive, they might have been able to get by with a 2,000 person bucket, since that's how many arrived per load to the camp. Regardless, that's a big bucket.

[Archie]

Archie, what do you mean by bluffing or pretending? I'm a true believer. I would bet my life on the Holocaust having happened, within some reasonable range -- millions dead, mass gassings

I have no doubt whatsoever that Nessie is a true believer. And I think you most likely are as well. But the origin of and basis for your belief is NOT archaeology. The claims of archaeological evidence you all make are post hoc. My point was that online anti-revisionists emphasize this supposed archaeological evidence nowadays but this is purely a rhetorical reaction to revisionists. It does not accurately reflect Holocaust historiography.

Modern anti-revisionists know that the traditional overreliance on dubious testimonial evidence is a major weakness, so they attempt to inb4 revisionists by emphasizing "hard" evidence for the Holocaust over the traditional material. I do consider this to be a misrepresentation of the historiography of the Holocaust which by and large ignores these issues.

Bluffing is also an apt term. If you say you have the archeological proof, that is a claim. A claim is not proof. When you are pressed on this, there is always a huge difference between your overconfident rhetoric about "overwhelmingly" physical evidence and what you actually end up presenting. In the end, you guys essentially settle for arguing that the story is not impossible. Under ridiculous assumptions. This is a very watered-down argument compared to the opening rhetoric you all employ (especially Nessie). I call that a bluff, 100%. Note also that bluffing and being a true believer are in no way mutually exclusive. In fact, it is very common for true believers to be "overeager" in promoting their beliefs even to the point of deception, whether conscious or subconscious. Overconfidence/overselling is a standard debate tactic.

[Archie]

Archie, before you make that concession, I'm going to have to ask you to evidence a mechanical separator at the camp and a bucket large enough to fit >600,000 people.

Then you can concede they might have poured the dead into the grave space as a liquid.

Maybe the 600,000 person bucket is excessive, they might have been able to get by with a 2,000 person bucket, since that's how many arrived per load to the camp. Regardless, that's a big bucket.

Like I said, I'm being generous. If someone can show me any grave anywhere that has achieved anywhere close to 28 bodies per cubic meter I will reconsider my position. Based on the data I have, I rate the Holocaust story wildly implausible, and I feel good enough about that to conclude that it almost certainly did not happen, at least as described.

Anyway, I was thinking that they might have had something like a huge meat grinder on the edge of the pit with an elongated shaft so the remains would fall directly into the pit without a bucket. And then maybe they had some way of packing it down as well. They probably could have come up with something if they had had their best minds working on it. Just because there's no evidence of such a thing doesn't mean it's impossible.

[Stubble]

When we were working with GEA screen style manure separators, we used agitation.

That was for sifting bullshit though. Had to agitate the lagoon to get it to flow onto the conveyor.

Wait, I think I got it, you are saying they used this;



Maybe

If they did though, why the superfluous gas chambers?

[SanityCheck]

Like I said, I'm being generous. If someone can show me any grave anywhere that has achieved anywhere close to 28 bodies per cubic meter I will reconsider my position. Based on the data I have, I rate the Holocaust story wildly implausible, and I feel good enough about that to conclude that it almost certainly did not happen, at least as described.

Anyway, I was thinking that they might have had something like a huge meat grinder on the edge of the pit with an elongated shaft so the remains would fall directly into the pit without a bucket. And then maybe they had some way of packing it down as well. They probably could have come up with something if they had had their best minds working on it. Just because there's no evidence of such a thing doesn't mean it's impossible.

I think you're confusing/misremembering 28 bodies/cubic metre in a Belzec gas chamber - based on Gerstein's eyewitness account - with how many bodies per cubic metre one extrapolates from the Belzec mass graves surveyed by Kola. The latter figure is below 20 bodies/cubic metre, and yes, here we have an example where an archaeological survey is 'harder' evidence than a witness testimony.

[Archie]

Like I said, I'm being generous. If someone can show me any grave anywhere that has achieved anywhere close to 28 bodies per cubic meter I will reconsider my position. Based on the data I have, I rate the Holocaust story wildly implausible, and I feel good enough about that to conclude that it almost certainly did not happen, at least as described.

Anyway, I was thinking that they might have had something like a huge meat grinder on the edge of the pit with an elongated shaft so the remains would fall directly into the pit without a bucket. And then maybe they had some way of packing it down as well. They probably could have come up with something if they had had their best minds working on it. Just because there's no evidence of such a thing doesn't mean it's impossible.

I think you're confusing/misremembering 28 bodies/cubic metre in a Belzec gas chamber - based on Gerstein's eyewitness account - with how many bodies per cubic metre one extrapolates from the Belzec mass graves surveyed by Kola. The latter figure is below 20 bodies/cubic metre, and yes, here we have an example where an archaeological survey is 'harder' evidence than a witness testimony.

Nothing to do with Gerstein. The 20 vs 28 depends on what you assume for the total death tally. Both densities are very high.

600,000/21,310 = 28.2
434,508/21,310 = 20.4

Gerstein claimed the graves were absolutely enormous. If such graves as Gerstein describes existed, the bodies would fit easily.

[SanityCheck]

Archie, what do you mean by bluffing or pretending? I'm a true believer. I would bet my life on the Holocaust having happened, within some reasonable range -- millions dead, mass gassings

I have no doubt whatsoever that Nessie is a true believer. And I think you most likely are as well. But the origin of and basis for your belief is NOT archaeology. The claims of archaeological evidence you all make are post hoc. My point was that online anti-revisionists emphasize this supposed archaeological evidence nowadays but this is purely a rhetorical reaction to revisionists. It does not accurately reflect Holocaust historiography.

Modern anti-revisionists know that the traditional overreliance on dubious testimonial evidence is a major weakness, so they attempt to inb4 revisionists by emphasizing "hard" evidence for the Holocaust over the traditional material. I do consider this to be a misrepresentation of the historiography of the Holocaust which by and large ignores these issues.

Bluffing is also an apt term. If you say you have the archeological proof, that is a claim. A claim is not proof. When you are pressed on this, there is always a huge difference between your overconfident rhetoric about "overwhelmingly" physical evidence and what you actually end up presenting. In the end, you guys essentially settle for arguing that the story is not impossible. Under ridiculous assumptions. This is a very watered-down argument compared to the opening rhetoric you all employ (especially Nessie). I call that a bluff, 100%. Note also that bluffing and being a true believer are in no way mutually exclusive. In fact, it is very common for true believers to be "overeager" in promoting their beliefs even to the point of deception, whether conscious or subconscious. Overconfidence/overselling is a standard debate tactic.

Up to 20 years ago, there was basically no great attention to archaeological evidence of the kind you're referring to from anyone. Revisionism only started emphasising physical evidence in a systematic way in 1988, with Leuchter but also the slow exploration of air photos and the first stabs at looking at Treblinka because of the Demjanjuk trial.

The main focus until the early 2000s was quite clearly Auschwitz, while the mass shootings to the east remained largely ignored by revisionists, and were practically the last thing to be 'challenged' at length, in Mattogno's not very successful book on the Einsatzgruppen (2016-2017 in Italian, 2018 in English).

From the conventional POV, there was a mental map of the Holocaust involving Auschwitz on one side, the shootings on the other, the Reinhard camps in the middle, and other elements orbiting these in close proximity. This also fit with a narrative, the same one related since the 1940s, of progressive radicalisation. I'm ignoring the popular misconception about "the camps", and talking of the typical books which all check off the narrative stages, seeing Auschwitz as the culmination since it was the last active camp and had the biggest death toll (just).

Archaeological evidence in terms of mass grave capacity was always entirely irrelevant to Auschwitz, and to the other KZs, because they used crematoria to a very substantial extent, and the ashes were dispersed into fields and the nearby river for Auschwitz. The destroyed crematoria in Birkenau provided concrete evidence fitting the surviving photos; the revisionist attack on Auschwitz did then try raising two quasi-archaeological points, one about HCN and Prussian Blue staining, one about whether one could find holes in the ruins of Kremas II and III - which made no difference to Kremas IV and V or the Bunkers since the other gas chambers had all been levelled.

By the heyday of revisionist efforts, a lot more documents about the Birkenau crematoria and gas chambers were coming to light, while there were other documents emphasised in the same 1970s-1990s indirect rebuttals about gas vans. The Just memo in particular made Chelmno the other camp with an explicit gassing document, even more explicit in some respects than the ZBL documents. The other gas van documents related to areas further east where shootings were used.

The documentation for mass shootings was always conspicuously larger, and this too grew even more by the 1990s with further research. The notion that the shootings were the work only of 'the Einsatzgruppen' died in stages over the 1980s and 1990s because of documents about the SS Cavalry Brigade, the police battalions and German Army units mass-murdering Jews. Earlier authors had mentioned these - Reitlinger certainly acknowledged the police battalions - but there was simply more attention, partly because of the debate about the origins of the Final Solution (which focused so heavily on 1941) and partly because of the end of the Cold War and greater all-round interest.

So this mental map already causes serious problems for over-focusing on the Reinhard camps, as they're clearly surrounded and bracketed by well-documented killing sites. The general pattern makes seeing them as some kind of exception utterly implausible. From a conventional POV, if one accepts Auschwitz, shootings, gas vans, Chelmno, which all have documents of explicit nature (such that some are necessarily forgeries in the eyes of revisionists), then any deficits for the Reinhard camps are much less significant or telling.

This is also true for the surrounding context of ghettos, deportation actions and follow-on killings in the Government-General. The Warsaw ghetto and uprising had been front and centre in Jewish commemoration since the 1940s, Jewish attention was on the ghettos in general, with things like the Arendt controversy about the Jewish councils reinforcing the focus on the donut surrounding the Reinhard camps. 'Warsaw ghetto' racked up more hits in the New York Times than Treblinka, Belzec or Sobibor. The same for books and coverage in any of the standard accounts. The surviving German documents reinforced this - the Stroop report obviously being iconic - but so did Jewish diaries.

There were two overlapping things about the Reinhard camps which also were absorbed from a conventional POV by the turn of the millennium. One was something emphasised in every standard account since Poliakov, namely the connection with the T4 euthanasia program. This was intensively researched in the 1980s and 1990s especially. The other was Gitta Sereny's interviews with Franz Stangl published in the early 1970s. This *also* covered his T4 experiences. Stangl became a standard witness so was quoted in the new overviews (Gilbert, Friedlander etc) from the 1980s onwards, including about Belzec ('oh god, the stench' is repeatedly quoted). Stangl's tone in the interviews attracted a wealth of attention in other studies, too, and continues to do so. He rapidly advanced to the top three perpetrator witnesses, alongside Hoess and Eichmann.

Eichmann shouldn't be forgotten here; from the 1960s onwards his accounts helped connect the various killing sites and camps since he described visits to Auschwitz, Chelmno, mass shooting sites at Minsk and Lviv in the east, and a much more confused description of somewhere in Poland remembering Christian Wirth. Criticising Eichmann's self-portrayal drove a lot of conventional writing to the 2000s and beyond. But he had largely disappeared from revisionist works by then.

Twenty years ago, Mattogno published his book on Belzec which tackled Kola's bore-probe archaeological survey published in 2000. The English edition of Mattogno and Graf's book on Treblinka appeared the previous year, and denierbud's 'One Third of the Holocaust' video series appeared in 2006. So it was really in 2004-2006 that the obsession with mass graves among revisionists took off.

Ever since then, arguments have been frequently very imbalanced - revisionists want to emphasise the biggest Reinhard camps, Treblinka and Belzec, while glossing over Sobibor and Chelmno, and continuing to not display much of a firm grasp of the killing sites further east. Auschwitz can be revived as a classic in online bickering, but there's a consistent avoidance in the revisionist introductions of discussing everything together, while the Holocaust Handbooks pile up and reinforce the siloing of the camps plus the severing of surrounding context. The revisionist mental map is of a few extermination camps and not of the east as a whole. The conventional mental map and conventional narrative is of the east as a whole.

Anti-revisionist arguments frequently skew in the same imbalanced direction - two of the first big series of blog posts at HC were the collective debunking of 'One Third of the Holocaust' (by Sergey Romanov, Roberto Muehlenkamp and Andrew Mathis), and Roberto Muehlenkamp's series against Mattogno on Belzec. Then the 2011 HC white paper. But since then in the past decade especially, Hans Metzner's work on Chelmno and gas vans (as well as Auschwitz) has been met largely with crickets. Roberto and Sergey have essentially retired from debunking denial (Sergey has been more focused on Katyn denial in Russia for quite a few years now).

Since it will soon be 20 years of watching and participating in Reinhard camp debates for me, I can say that 'overwhelming archaeological evidence' has never been the HC claim, since the discussion is about largely exhumed mass graves and mass cremation. The revisionist claims argue for impossibility, singling out the biggest camps (Belzec and Treblinka) while saying much less about the others. I remain unconvinced that impossibility has been proven even for Belzec and Treblinka, but would reiterate 1) that the arguments don't help establish what happened to the deportees, 2) Belzec and Treblinka remain flanked by Sobibor and Chelmno and bracketed by Auschwitz and the shootings further east, so there is the essential implausibility that B&T would be that different.

The past 20 years have certainly brought forward more archaeological evidence since several teams have investigated Sobibor, and work been done on Treblinka. Chelmno had been tackled before Belzec. Further archaeological work on camps, euthanasia centres and mass grave sites in Poland plus further visual sources also need to be considered. Then there are the other sources on the Reinhard camps as well as the comparator case of Chelmno which have come to light from research in the same period: more contemporary non-German sources, the Trawniki cases and so on.

These also reinforce the connections between the camps as well as the killing sites further east; firstly Andrej Angrick's 1400 page study of Aktion 1005 also covered the camps, and showed Blobel's connections with many of the camps; secondly there are subtle connections like the transfer of Reinhard camp Trawnikis to Auschwitz in spring 1943; the guard company saw a partial mutiny by mid-year. That mutiny is noted in Pery Broad's report as well as contemporary WVHA documents, which is a good illustration of how sources help connect different camps (see also: Hoess, Konrad Morgen and his team, Muhsfeldt at Majdanek/Auschwitz, and much else).

I appreciate that tackling each 'puzzle' or incredulity one by one is the revisionist way, but eventually things have to be considered together (and not decontextualised so drastically). I'd also note that in the past 20 years, the number of published researchers in revisionism has been scythed down to a small handful by deaths and drop-outs. I do therefore wonder about diminishing returns and the need to change the record a bit more.

[SanityCheck]

Nothing to do with Gerstein. The 20 vs 28 depends on what you assume for the total death tally. Both densities are very high.

600,000/21,310 = 28.2
434,508/21,310 = 20.4

Gerstein claimed the graves were absolutely enormous. If such graves as Gerstein describes existed, the bodies would fit easily.

Apologies, I saw your earlier post afterwards.

600,000 is simply not a relevant number after the Hoefle telegram's discovery. 600,000 was always a rounded estimate in the 1945 Sehn report, not based on assembling a transport list. When such lists were assembled, and tended over 500,000, these included rounded estimates from witnesses which can sometimes be corrected by subsequently discovered documents, while studying the regions and focusing on departure end ghettos underlined the extent of shootings during the 1942 actions in western and eastern Galicia. The deflator down to 85% thus fits very well.

Then there are the 1943 killings in eastern Galicia, which amounted to over 100,000 shot on the spot with no deportations, basically a quarter of the Hoefle telegram's total for Belzec of 434,000, leaving many, many intact mass graves (Lwow-Janowska was the main site for 1005 cremation in the region, they did not have time to visit the provincial towns except Stanislawow now Ivano-Frankivsk).

A number of towns in western and eastern Galicia saw no deportations whatsoever, instead the Germans shot the Jews into local mass graves in 1942. So the 600,000 figure really applies to the regions, with the balance after subtracting 434,000 shot on the spot.

Transports to Belzec, especially from eastern Galicia, saw more breakouts with bodies littering the tracks and even being counted in fragmentary police reports, and more survivors who lived through the jumps and avoided being shot by the escorts or other police patrols.

A reminder that over half the Belzec total of 434,000 were sent from east to west. Does your incredulity about the capacity of mass graves surveyed by Kola help explain this? Am I ever going to hear an explanation for this east-west movement?