False witnesses are not neutral

[Nessie]

....
Around 2.5 million people saw inside of either TII, Sobibor, Belzec, Chelmno or an A-B Krema. Not one single person is a witness to any of those places not have gas chambers and what happened instead. That is lying on a massive scale, which you want to deny, because it shows how improbable Holocaust denial's main claim of no gassings is.

So you say there are 2.5 million witnesses that say they saw gas chambers (homicidal?) in those places?

That is clearly not what I said. Revisionists argue there were no homicidal gassings in those places. Since c2.5 million people saw those places, that means revisionists are arguing they have all lied, either stating there were gassings, or by omission, by keeping quiet about what really took place.

There are a handful of people that allege that they saw homicidal gassings taking place at those places. It isn't exactly unknown that a small amount like this can be pathological liars. Many Holocaust Witnesses were demonstrably exactly that.

There are about 130 people who gave evidence at the various trials, interviews or wrote memories about working at the gas chambers. There are significantly more who saw the process around the gas chambers, the selection process, property sorting and disappearance of those sent to the relevant buildings.

Revisionists cannot provide evidence to prove any of the eyewitnesses to gassings lied. Instead, they argue they are "pathological liars" using faulty logic and without any cognisance of the numerous studies of witnesses, recollection and memory.

[TlsMS93]

....
Around 2.5 million people saw inside of either TII, Sobibor, Belzec, Chelmno or an A-B Krema. Not one single person is a witness to any of those places not have gas chambers and what happened instead. That is lying on a massive scale, which you want to deny, because it shows how improbable Holocaust denial's main claim of no gassings is.

So you say there are 2.5 million witnesses that say they saw gas chambers (homicidal?) in those places?

There are a handful of people that allege that they saw homicidal gassings taking place at those places. It isn't exactly unknown that a small amount like this can be pathological liars. Many Holocaust Witnesses were demonstrably exactly that.

They saw it and by a miracle they didn't die, water came out of the shower instead of gas, or maybe Nessie has knowledge of spiritualism psychography and they told him about it.

[Hektor]

....
Around 2.5 million people saw inside of either TII, Sobibor, Belzec, Chelmno or an A-B Krema. Not one single person is a witness to any of those places not have gas chambers and what happened instead. That is lying on a massive scale, which you want to deny, because it shows how improbable Holocaust denial's main claim of no gassings is.

So you say there are 2.5 million witnesses that say they saw gas chambers (homicidal?) in those places?

There are a handful of people that allege that they saw homicidal gassings taking place at those places. It isn't exactly unknown that a small amount like this can be pathological liars. Many Holocaust Witnesses were demonstrably exactly that.

They saw it and by a miracle they didn't die, water came out of the shower instead of gas, or maybe Nessie has knowledge of spiritualism psychography and they told him about it.

Nessie recalls some testimony it found useful. Then extrapolated it to 2.5 million witnesses... Sounds like leaps of logic to me....

[Nessie]

So you say there are 2.5 million witnesses that say they saw gas chambers (homicidal?) in those places?

There are a handful of people that allege that they saw homicidal gassings taking place at those places. It isn't exactly unknown that a small amount like this can be pathological liars. Many Holocaust Witnesses were demonstrably exactly that.

They saw it and by a miracle they didn't die, water came out of the shower instead of gas, or maybe Nessie has knowledge of spiritualism psychography and they told him about it.

Nessie recalls some testimony it found useful. Then extrapolated it to 2.5 million witnesses... Sounds like leaps of logic to me....

Historians say c2.5 million were gassed in certain camps. Revisionists say those people were not killed, but they cannot produce a single witness from the c2.5 million, who therefore have stayed silent and lied by omission about the real purpose of the certain camps.

The logical fail is the revisionist one of not thinking through their claims to a logical conclusion.

[Hektor]

They saw it and by a miracle they didn't die, water came out of the shower instead of gas, or maybe Nessie has knowledge of spiritualism psychography and they told him about it.

Nessie recalls some testimony it found useful. Then extrapolated it to 2.5 million witnesses... Sounds like leaps of logic to me....

Historians say c2.5 million were gassed in certain camps. Revisionists say those people were not killed, but they cannot produce a single witness from the c2.5 million, who therefore have stayed silent and lied by omission about the real purpose of the certain camps.

The logical fail is the revisionist one of not thinking through their claims to a logical conclusion.

You got that the wrong way around it seems. Just because I don't have a witness that something didn't happen, doesn't mean it happened. I don't give a damn what some historians. They let their findings rest on some government reports and make as if they were somehow neutral and objective. They were not and that means that those historians have discredited themself.

[Nessie]

...

Historians say c2.5 million were gassed in certain camps. Revisionists say those people were not killed, but they cannot produce a single witness from the c2.5 million, who therefore have stayed silent and lied by omission about the real purpose of the certain camps.

The logical fail is the revisionist one of not thinking through their claims to a logical conclusion.

You got that the wrong way around it seems. Just because I don't have a witness that something didn't happen, doesn't mean it happened.

If you have a potential of c2.5 million witnesses and not one single one of them has come forward to say what you think happened, then it is reasonable to say it did not happen. Lying on that scale is impossible. Someone would deliberately or accidentally break ranks and reveal the truth.

I don't give a damn what some historians. They let their findings rest on some government reports and make as if they were somehow neutral and objective. They were not and that means that those historians have discredited themself.

Revisionists are the least neutral of historical investigators. They hold their opinionated argument in a higher regard than actual evidence.

Fact is, which Archie has tried to dispute, revisionists argue that 100% of the witnesses to gassings are lying. German, Ukrainian, Polish, Hungarian, Jewish, SS, Nazi, civilian, all of them are liars. That one single witness, out of the c2.5 million who went to those places, which includes people of every nationality under Nazi occupation, can be traced, who gives an alternative narrative that does not include gassings, is extraordinary. Only die hard conspiracists will believe that is possible.

[Nazgul]

therefore have stayed silent and lied by omission about the real purpose of the certain camps.

Facebook was not around in that era, different era and mindset actually. People for some strange reason do not speak about non events, like bored teens today. Even papers then did not print non events, unless it was propaganda. If the papers were printing propaganda, of gassings and so on, all those who were treated well would not tell their story. This is what happened to Olszuk. Those who had something interesting happen might write a memoir or book, but most people, even today say nothing, which is why the past is erased to a great extent.

[bombsaway]

Facebook was not around in that era, different era and mindset actually. People for some strange reason do not speak about non events, like bored teens today.

The apparently undisputed findings of mass graves with large amounts of ash at the Reinhardt camps and Chelmno speak to enormous casualties (tens of thousands of people at least) in transit or at the camps themselves. Riding in a train where a large fraction of the passengers die over a day or two is certainly not going to be a non-event for the survivors.

[Hektor]

Facebook was not around in that era, different era and mindset actually. People for some strange reason do not speak about non events, like bored teens today.

The apparently undisputed findings of mass graves with large amounts of ash at the Reinhardt camps and Chelmno speak to enormous casualties (tens of thousands of people at least) in transit or at the camps themselves. Riding in a train where a large fraction of the passengers die over a day or two is certainly not going to be a non-event for the survivors.

Actually, if that's the case. why so flimsy, why not come up with a more clear statement?

I tell you why, because one tries to camouflage that they didn't find anything worse showing.

[bombsaway]

Facebook was not around in that era, different era and mindset actually. People for some strange reason do not speak about non events, like bored teens today.

The apparently undisputed findings of mass graves with large amounts of ash at the Reinhardt camps and Chelmno speak to enormous casualties (tens of thousands of people at least) in transit or at the camps themselves. Riding in a train where a large fraction of the passengers die over a day or two is certainly not going to be a non-event for the survivors.

Actually, if that's the case. why so flimsy, why not come up with a more clear statement?

I tell you why, because one tries to camouflage that they didn't find anything worse showing.

You can respond to this in the other thread but what they found was perfectly clear. Precise grave descriptions showing thousands of cubic meters of ash layers

https://www.holocausthistoricalsociety. ... tions.html

no one has explained the ash layers from a revisionist perspective viewtopic.php?p=1599#p1599

[Hektor]

The apparently undisputed findings of mass graves with large amounts of ash at the Reinhardt camps and Chelmno speak to enormous casualties (tens of thousands of people at least) in transit or at the camps themselves. Riding in a train where a large fraction of the passengers die over a day or two is certainly not going to be a non-event for the survivors.

Actually, if that's the case. why so flimsy, why not come up with a more clear statement?

I tell you why, because one tries to camouflage that they didn't find anything worse showing.

You can respond to this in the other thread but what they found was perfectly clear. Precise grave descriptions showing thousands of cubic meters of ash layers

https://www.holocausthistoricalsociety. ... tions.html

no one has explained the ash layers from a revisionist perspective viewtopic.php?p=1599#p1599

No, he didn't. Ash layer is something else than having earth materials that contain some ash and something that could be human remains. In theory you can find that at quite many places, especially when tat was in a war zone at some stage. So the probative value is low at best. And finding 'something' at said places was to be expected if the Revisionist Thesis was true anyway. So what did they find that is distinctive in case the Exterminationist Thesis is true?

[Archie]

From another thread, an example of the sort of reasoning I was criticizing in the OP.

I think it's very possible Reder was lying, creating uniform graves in order to justify a death toll (uniform graves make it easier to calculate) he legitimately believed in. Or maybe he hated the Nazis for killing his family and wanted to disparage them. Or maybe it was self-deception on his part, he wanted to believe in his death toll so he justified it to himiself. Your hypothesis, which is that this is part of some much larger confabulation is merely one possibility among many. That's why it's not rigorous proof revisionism is correct. The "mistake" Reder made no less disproves the extermination story than the mistakes witnesses on the Titanic made disprove that it sank. Witnesses are unreliable.

This line of thinking I find baffling, particularly given Reder's importance, and this demonstrates a major distinction between the skeptic vs believer viewpoints.

Revisionists look at the witnesses/testimonies as being purported accounts of things that actually happened in real time and space. Reder claims to have been at Belzec through Nov 1942. If that's true, he should have a decent idea what the mass graves were like, yet he doesn't. The testimony fails as a believable account of reality if Reder was really there.

[Nessie]

From another thread, an example of the sort of reasoning I was criticizing in the OP.

I think it's very possible Reder was lying, creating uniform graves in order to justify a death toll (uniform graves make it easier to calculate) he legitimately believed in. Or maybe he hated the Nazis for killing his family and wanted to disparage them. Or maybe it was self-deception on his part, he wanted to believe in his death toll so he justified it to himiself. Your hypothesis, which is that this is part of some much larger confabulation is merely one possibility among many. That's why it's not rigorous proof revisionism is correct. The "mistake" Reder made no less disproves the extermination story than the mistakes witnesses on the Titanic made disprove that it sank. Witnesses are unreliable.

This line of thinking I find baffling, particularly given Reder's importance, and this demonstrates a major distinction between the skeptic vs believer viewpoints.

The distinction is that revisionists rely on their gut feeling about witness credibility, whereas trained investigators are less biased and look for corroborating evidence.

Revisionists look at the witnesses/testimonies as being purported accounts of things that actually happened in real time and space.

Which they think should be far more accurate about time and space than in reality. Revisionists repeatedly show their ignorance of how poor memory and recall is and how regularly witnesses will make mistakes.

Reder claims to have been at Belzec through Nov 1942. If that's true, he should have a decent idea what the mass graves were like, yet he doesn't. The testimony fails as a believable account of reality if Reder was really there.

That is your opinion, which you cannot back up with any study of memory and recall, that proves Reder's claims about the mass graves not matching what Kola found, are lies. No matter how much evidence about memory and recollection you are shown, you refuse to accept that a witness can be as inaccurate as Reder is and still be telling the truth.

[TlsMS93]

What is the logic behind building the capacity to gas tens of thousands of bodies per day without having a single crematorium? The further east the genocide advances, the more absurd it becomes and represents the bulk of the victims.

[SanityCheck]

From another thread, an example of the sort of reasoning I was criticizing in the OP.

I think it's very possible Reder was lying, creating uniform graves in order to justify a death toll (uniform graves make it easier to calculate) he legitimately believed in. Or maybe he hated the Nazis for killing his family and wanted to disparage them. Or maybe it was self-deception on his part, he wanted to believe in his death toll so he justified it to himiself. Your hypothesis, which is that this is part of some much larger confabulation is merely one possibility among many. That's why it's not rigorous proof revisionism is correct. The "mistake" Reder made no less disproves the extermination story than the mistakes witnesses on the Titanic made disprove that it sank. Witnesses are unreliable.

This line of thinking I find baffling, particularly given Reder's importance, and this demonstrates a major distinction between the skeptic vs believer viewpoints.

Revisionists look at the witnesses/testimonies as being purported accounts of things that actually happened in real time and space. Reder claims to have been at Belzec through Nov 1942. If that's true, he should have a decent idea what the mass graves were like, yet he doesn't. The testimony fails as a believable account of reality if Reder was really there.

On the other thread, you cherrypicked a statement from Reder's testimony in 1945 to the Belzec investigation, one highlighted first by Mattogno in his original Belzec book, without acknowledging whether he said similar things in his 1944 first account or the 1946 memoir. Neither of these in fact give any dimensions whatsoever for the size of the mass graves, while discussing the digging of pits extensively in both accounts.

1944 account
https://dawidgluck.com/wp-content/uploa ... lation.pdf

1946 memoir at the end of this file (from p.12 of the PDF)
https://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/schind ... dendum.pdf

The question of whether a witness was really there should be tested by multiple variables, not a falsus in uno test of one variable. Note that one method of falsus in uno would mean we could throw out Reder's 1945 statement and still keep the 1944 and 1946 accounts because neither of them mentioned this supposedly crucial variable.

But common sense alone tells us that someone can get something wrong for even dubious reasons, such as supporting a deluded, exaggerated sense of the overall death toll (Reder was crudely trying to support a claim of 3 million killed), and for this to be quite separate to other elements of the testimony. The Polish Main Commission investigation ignored Reder on 3M and instead estimated a number a fifth of this figure.

Reder identified multiple Belzec SS men including senior Trawnikis, accurately. This alone would be powerful evidence he was really there, since such details were not exactly available in liberated Lviv in August 1944 when he first started identifying them.

With camp witnesses, key elements would include
1. the camp staff, identifying them by name, rank, function
2. the general behaviour of the camp staff
3. other inmates if a prisoner, but also whether a camp staff member might identify inmates by name
4. procedures for the main task of the camp (in these cases: processing incoming transports, whether they're selected, how they are taken to gas chambers; how open air cremation worked)
5. the buildings (in this case especially but not exclusively the gas chambers)
6. the general camp environment (dimensions, but in this case especially but not exclusively the mass graves)
7. memorable/unusual events
8. frequencies/totals (which are especially prone to misremembering - something as continuous when it was regular but intermittent, etc)

To advance a proper case, 'revisionism' needs to stop trying to throw out entire testimonies but needs to highlight where witnesses who were demonstrably in the camps, especially Auschwitz, added on the allegedly false elements. That applies both to the camp staff (and key visitors) as well as the inmates. The incessant grunting suspicion of 'something must be wrong' does not endear you guys to others, including some who might be otherwise persuadable.

A reminder of the kind of advice and rules of thumb used in conventional fact-finding regarding testimony

Foibles of witness recollections are commonly regarded as typical among judicial authorities as well. In their legal handbook, German experts Nack and Bender list several subjects by reliability as they are often recalled in witness statements. They write:
The reliability of recollection also depends on the kind of object that the informing person is to remember.
The sequence (with increasingly weaker recollection) is the following:
(1) Persons and their actions, especially towards and with the informing person
(2) The (mere) presence of objects, especially such that play a central part in the course of the action
(3) The number of persons participating, if it is smaller than 7
(4) The spatial conditions, especially insofar as they are important for the fitting-together of the actions
(5) The state of objects, especially insofar as important for the fitting-together of the actions
(6) The sequence of events
(7) Colors
(8) Magnitudes and quantities
(9) Sounds
(10) Duration
[From item 6 onward the reliability of recollection is especially diminished.] (Emphases in original)30
Bender and Nack, Tatsachenfeststellung vor Gericht), Randnummer 137.

It is remarkable that the areas of testimony whose reliability is deemed “especially diminished” by legal authorities Nack and Bender are precisely the areas that MGK and otherRevisionists most criticize; this simply highlights their flawed and disingenuous approach to witnesses.

(HC white paper, pp.351-2)

The breakdown also fits with our common sense understanding that people recall and remember variables with differing levels of accuracy: people can be bad at names, but good with faces, or vice versa, they will not necessarily remember dimensions in the same way as they might durations, and both can easily be misremembered.

As was given the Parodie treatment by The Onion in Our Dumb Century, regarding a massively witnessed assassination which was still recalled with all kinds of nonsensical details or inaccurately by many witnesses within days and weeks of the highly memorable and consequential event.
https://theonion.com/november-22-1963-1819587981/

So there really is a shrug factor in response to 'Reder claimed an incorrect length of mass grave in one statement' when he wasn't really too fussed over such matters in his other accounts.

And bombsaway's point about the size of graves and frequency of cremains and human remains at Belzec still remains unanswered.