False witnesses are not neutral

[Hektor]

The well known author of this article, Christopher Hitchens, then draws the appropriate conclusion, ...

There were rumors that Hitchens was privately a Holo-skeptic. Wouldn't surprise me.

For example, during the impeachment battles of the late 1990s, Clinton partisans believed that prominent liberal pundit Christopher Hitchens had betrayed the personal confidences of presidential aide Sidney Blumenthal, and journalist Edward Jay Epstein decided to retaliate in kind, widely circulating a memo to the media accusing Hitchens of secretly being a Holocaust Denier. He alleged that at a 1995 dinner gathering following a New Yorker anniversary celebration, Hitchens had drunk a little too much wine and began expounding to his table-mates that the Holocaust was simply a hoax. Epstein backed his claim by saying he had been so shocked at such statements that he had entered them into his personal diary. That telling detail and the fact that most of the other witnesses seemed suspiciously vague in their recollections persuaded me that Epstein was probably being truthful. A bitter feud between Hitchens and Epstein soon erupted.

https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravd ... st-denial/

I guess there is plenty of Holo-skeptics who are otherwise famous authors with some public profile. While they will be saying mildly controversial stuff, they will be very careful to say something indicating disbelief in the Holocaust Narrative.

Hitchens would say stuff against Christianity and the Churches and get away with it. While he knew perfectly well that saying something against Holocaustianity would be a career stopper.

[fireofice]

Told of Hermann Göring’s remark at Nürnberg that Hoess could not possibly have taken 2,000,000 lives, the exterminator sputtered: “That shows how little he knows about how we worked. Why, I could have done twice as much.”

https://time.com/archive/6600256/war-cr ... y-2000000/

That's a contradiction from an earlier statement he made:

I can no longer remember the figures for the smaller actions, but they were insignificant in comparison with the numbers given above. I regard a total of two and a half millions as far too high. Even Auschwitz had limits to its destructive possibilities. Figures given by former prisoners are figments of the imagination and lack any foundation.

So here he was saying that 2.5 million was perhaps a bit too high, because even Auschwitz had its limits. But right before his execution, he not only affirms 2 million were killed, he says he could have done even double that if he wanted! 4 million would be a piece of cake according to Hoss. That is a crazy switch.

[Archie]

Told of Hermann Göring’s remark at Nürnberg that Hoess could not possibly have taken 2,000,000 lives, the exterminator sputtered: “That shows how little he knows about how we worked. Why, I could have done twice as much.”

https://time.com/archive/6600256/war-cr ... y-2000000/

That's a contradiction from an earlier statement he made:

I can no longer remember the figures for the smaller actions, but they were insignificant in comparison with the numbers given above. I regard a total of two and a half millions as far too high. Even Auschwitz had limits to its destructive possibilities. Figures given by former prisoners are figments of the imagination and lack any foundation.

So here he was saying that 2.5 million was perhaps a bit too high, because even Auschwitz had its limits. But right before his execution, he not only affirms 2 million were killed, he says he could have done even double that if he wanted! 4 million would be a piece of cake according to Hoss. That is a crazy switch.

Hoess contradicts himself a lot.

Thanks for finding a link for that Time article. That "boastful" Hoess quote sounds like it's taken from Gustave Gilbert's Nuremberg Diary, first published in 1947. Gilbert was the Jewish psychologist who regularly interviewed the Nuremberg defendants. Curiously though, the published version of Gilbert's book has a bit different wording that the Time article. Presumably Gilbert's original notes would be in German, but it seems too different to be a translation issue.

He [Hoess] readily confirmed that approximately 2 1/2 million Jews had been exterminated under his direction. The exterminations began in the summer of 1941. In compliance with Goering's skepticism, I asked Hoess how it was technically possible to exterminate 2 1/2 million people. "Technically?" he asked. "That wasn't so hard--it would not have been hard to exterminate even greater numbers." (Entry for Apr 9, 1946)

The Time article seems to imply that Hoess repeated something very similar at Krakow a year later. That seems a little unlikely since someone would have to have known about Gilbert's conversation with Goering and asked him about it. Alternatively the Time journalists grafted in this bit from Gilbert and somehow got a different version of the quote.

[fireofice]

The Time article seems to imply that Hoess repeated something very similar at Krakow a year later. That seems a little unlikely since someone would have to have known about Gilbert's conversation with Goering and asked him about it. Alternatively the Time journalists grafted in this bit from Gilbert and somehow got a different version of the quote.

I don't see how that would be unlikely. It doesn't seem unlikely that a journalist would talk to Gilbert and get this information from him. After all, isn't interviewing people and getting information from them a journalist's job? And Hoss giving a similar but not identical answer doesn't seem all that unlikely either.

[SanityCheck]

Lastly, I would note that there's no support at all for this 2.5M "Eichmann" figure. It's quite unlikely this impossible number would have come from Eichmann. In which case there is a strong flavor of unreality in all of Hoess's references to it.

On the contrary, there is a great deal of plausibility in Eichmann referencing a 2.5 million figure for all deportations in 1944, since he certainly knew the Korherr report with its documentation of 1.8 million deportations to the end of 1942, so adding in 1943 and especially the Hungarian action in 1944 gets to 2.5 million very easily, but for all deportations, not solely those for Auschwitz. When exactly this was related, whether Eichmann or Hoess rounded up or down, doesn't make a lot of difference since this is the ballpark for all deportations by the Germans by 1944.

Hoess also knew the official cremation capacity of the new crematoria plus the old one, at nearly 5000/day, so simple extrapolation would place 1943-44 alone at nearly 3 million theoretical capacity, not counting the 1942 bunkers phase, thus 'more' could have been in principle achieved. But the 5000/day official capacity also led Eduard Wirths to argue against 4 million - indeed that would have been not plausible, with a year's full blast operation coming to 1.825 million using the rounded up 5000/day figure, and thus falling short of 4 million. The Soviet investigation had to assume even higher capacities to make the inmate-originated higher exaggerations of 4-5 million seem plausible.

Grabner's successor as head of the Political Department, Hans Schuerz, estimated something over 600,000 killed at Auschwitz in a 1946 statement to the British which was also copied to the Poles for the Hoess trial, so there are also estimates which are shall we say Reitlingeresque and falling below the current consensus, which doesn't rely on such global estimates at all.

Indeed, a little bit of boasting on some occasions coupled with rethinking the capacities on others, as in his Final Solution essay, explains the variations in estimates. None of which is therefore much of a 'tell' for a hoax. You guys often forget this has been discussed for decades and shrugged off, so the Groundhog Day strategy of endlessly repeating older long discussed points doesn't seem very helpful. It might convince noobs here and there, but one has to presume it also fails to convince many noobs when set alongside the other evidence, arguments and gaps (in your side's claims). Not quite a total 'so what?' but really, it's a 'so what?'.

[fireofice]

You guys often forget this has been discussed for decades and shrugged off, so the Groundhog Day strategy of endlessly repeating older long discussed points doesn't seem very helpful.

Wow, people who have a preconceived dogmatic belief that the holocaust happened look at the evidence, dismiss anything that isn't good for their side as insignificant or deny its validity, and conclude that the holocaust happened. Truly a revelation.

[Nessie]

You guys often forget this has been discussed for decades and shrugged off, so the Groundhog Day strategy of endlessly repeating older long discussed points doesn't seem very helpful.

Wow, people who have a preconceived dogmatic belief that the holocaust happened look at the evidence, dismiss anything that isn't good for their side as insignificant or deny its validity, and conclude that the holocaust happened. Truly a revelation.

What evidence is dismissed?

Revisionists dismiss the majority of evidence relating to mass gassings, leaving them with no witnesses, very few documents, little physical or archaeological evidence. They then believe in mass transports to the east and resettlement, for which they can produce no witnesses, documents, physical or circumstantial evidence. They cannot name the department or any senior Nazis responsible for resettlement. It is revisionism that dismisses evidence, on an industrial scale, to conclude something that is not evidenced happened.

[curioussoul]

You don't provide explanations for how Hoess knew about Blobels flame throwers, just like you present no explanation for the ash layers.

Hoss was in the chain of command, so things he gets right need no explanation, it's the substantial things he gets wrong that does. The ash layers don't need an explanation either, hence why none was given.

The Blobel thing isn't just some stray detail









At the same time there is a decode the British picked up which says “WVHA gives Concentration Camp Auschwitz authority for a vehicle to travel to Lódz and inspect 'Aktion Reinhard' research station for field furnaces."

Hoess was talking about mass body destruction operation. The British decodes evince any conspiracy to fabricate these documents would have to include them, in coordination with the Soviet allied Poles that were holding Hoess. Even if you say the documents and decodes are innocuous, they line up completely with Hoess's testimony. Maybe you think he worked lies around real events knowing that they would be documented. I think the revisionist explanation for the furnaces is they were for trash, ditto Blobel's flamethrower requisition. Unlikely I say, but we can talk about it.

The "field furnaces Aktion Reinhardt" were related to the incineration of property seized from Jews deported to the Reinhardt camps. As is admitted even by orthodox scholars, Auschwitz-Birkenau served a role within the context of this mass-confiscation operation, a purpose which wasn't necessarily directly related to mass extermination the way it alleged was at Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor. A-B had its own storage facilities for seized Jewish property, and the purpose of Hoess' trip to Litzmannstadt, based on the documents and the historical context, was to assess these "field furnaces" to incinerate useless goods and property seized at A-B. Mattogno discusses a document (I believe in HH#24) where a fire had started inside Birkenau during the burning of property, which coincides with the Litzmannstadt trip, further evidencing the actual purpose of this trip - namely, to learn how property could be safely and effectively destroyed/incinerated on a larger scale.

So the 'evidence' is not as clear as you would have it be. You've also repeatedly asserted, in this thread and elsewhere, that revisionists have "no explanation" for the presence of cremains, human remains and the alleged grave volumes in Belzec. But as we've explained on countless occasions, mass graves are to be expected at all of these camps, including mass graves containing cremains and human remains, because thousands of people undoubtedly died and had to be buried, regardless of whether a mass extermination operation was secretely being carried out. Someone also claimed (can't remember if it was you or someone else) that we have "exact grave volumes" for Belzec, which is simply laughable. We have nothing of the sort, and Kula's guesstimations have been shown to sometimes be wildly off the mark. What the "cremains" and the grave volumes at the AR camps show is that the death toll was nowhere near that claimed by the orthodoxy. And that means the 'millions' of Jews who allegedly reached the AR camps must have gone elsewhere without being killed there. You can't admit to the death told at Treblinka being a few hundred thousand Jews lower and simultaneously deny that it served as a transit camp.

And by that we're really getting to the crux of the issue. Whereas revisionist have perfectly plausible, evidenced and logical explanations for all of the 'evidence' brought forth in favor of the extermination hypothesis, exterminationists have no alternative explanations for why witnesses (every single witness?) told verifiable falsehoods that don't involve mere minor mistakes with dates and numbers, but lies about major events, anachronisms, etc. They all told categorically false lies, always in favor of the accusers. Hoess is a good example, and it's actually hilarious for Terry to be seriously trying to defend Hoess' testimony by claiming he regularly misdated events between 1941 and 1943, completely ignoring the fact that Hoess' reconstruction of the extermination process at Auschwitz hinges on a lot of fake events and false stories he told while in custody. The fake Treblinka visit is such a story. But that's merely one of hundreds of other lies that undermine his entire testimony. Simply nothing can be taken for granted with Hoess. It's all just jumbled attempts at making plausible his accusers' accusations. Exterminationists also have no alternate explanations for the physical and documentary facts surrounding the camps: the morgues being used as morgues during the height of extermination, the lack of ashes, lack of physical evidence of astronomical-scale cremations, lack of evidence for the claimed capacity of the Birkenau crematoria, lack of Prussian blue/HCN, etc.

[curioussoul]

You guys often forget this has been discussed for decades and shrugged off, so the Groundhog Day strategy of endlessly repeating older long discussed points doesn't seem very helpful.

Wow, people who have a preconceived dogmatic belief that the holocaust happened look at the evidence, dismiss anything that isn't good for their side as insignificant or deny its validity, and conclude that the holocaust happened. Truly a revelation.

What evidence is dismissed?

Revisionists dismiss the majority of evidence relating to mass gassings, leaving them with no witnesses, very few documents, little physical or archaeological evidence. They then believe in mass transports to the east and resettlement, for which they can produce no witnesses, documents, physical or circumstantial evidence. They cannot name the department or any senior Nazis responsible for resettlement. It is revisionism that dismisses evidence, on an industrial scale, to conclude something that is not evidenced happened.

Revisionists are the only ones to actively engage all types of evidence. Exterminationists systematically ignore or dismiss evidence favorable to revisionists. They also don't engage in serious historical inquiry.

There's also a massive difference between evidence of something not happening as opposed to evidence of something happening. What's clear is that the 'evidence' for something happening, from the point of view of historiography and the historical method, is insufficient. We've often pointed out that the Holocaust isn't evidenced the way normal historical events are and that historians don't treat the Holocaust the way other historical events are treated, sometimes for legal reasons, but often for convenience. Why bother evidencing something that's been accepted as a fact of common knowledge before any evidence was ever assessed?

[Nessie]

Wow, people who have a preconceived dogmatic belief that the holocaust happened look at the evidence, dismiss anything that isn't good for their side as insignificant or deny its validity, and conclude that the holocaust happened. Truly a revelation.

What evidence is dismissed?

Revisionists dismiss the majority of evidence relating to mass gassings, leaving them with no witnesses, very few documents, little physical or archaeological evidence. They then believe in mass transports to the east and resettlement, for which they can produce no witnesses, documents, physical or circumstantial evidence. They cannot name the department or any senior Nazis responsible for resettlement. It is revisionism that dismisses evidence, on an industrial scale, to conclude something that is not evidenced happened.

Revisionists are the only ones to actively engage all types of evidence.

What types of evidence do historians, journalists and other investigators, who have gathered evidence as to what took place, not "engaged" with?

Exterminationists systematically ignore or dismiss evidence favorable to revisionists.

Second request to say what evidence is dismissed. Please be specific.

They also don't engage in serious historical inquiry.

Please expand on that accusation. What is not "serious" about the way the Holocaust has been investigated as a historical event? How does it differ from other historical investiagtions.

There's also a massive difference between evidence of something not happening as opposed to evidence of something happening.

By claiming that, you reveal your lack of investigative experience and training. A trained investigator will ask a witness "what happened?" an open question that allows the response of "nothing". Or, if they receive a report of something happening from one witness, they can ask another witness if that is what they saw, allowing the response of "no, it was not". An archaeologist, in response to a claim about something being buried, will conduct a site survey, that can result in nothing being found, so nothing was buried. A journalist can search through archives and if they find no documents about a reported event, that is evidence indicative the reported event did not happen. The way investigations were conducted, meant that a negative result was as possible as a positive one and the Polish reports of mass killing turned out to be false.

What's clear is that the 'evidence' for something happening, from the point of view of historiography and the historical method, is insufficient.

The evidence for mass murder, is significantly more than the evidence for mass resettlement. For example, every single witness who worked at the AR camps, Chelmno or an A-B Krema report it was used for gassings. No witness has been traced who was there and reports it was used for another purpose. Archaeological surveys of the AR camps and Chelmno all report large areas of disturbed ground where witnesses reported mass graves. There is no such evidence that the ground is in fact undisturbed, having never been dug into.

It is a revisionist delusion that there is insufficient evidence for mass killings, graves and cremations, created by their belief that they can dismiss the evidence for those events.

We've often pointed out that the Holocaust isn't evidenced the way normal historical events are and that historians don't treat the Holocaust the way other historical events are treated, sometimes for legal reasons, but often for convenience.

Making the denying a historical event took place illegal, is not unique to the Holocaust. Many countries, in particular dictatorships, will suppress those who produce histories that they do not approve of.

Please give an example of how historians treat the evidencing of the Holocaust differently to other events.

Why bother evidencing something that's been accepted as a fact of common knowledge before any evidence was ever assessed?

That is not what happened. The first reports of mass murder by the Nazis were treated with scepticism and they did not alter Allied wartime planning and policy, politically or tactically. By 1945, the Poles had gathered sufficient evidence to prove the existence of specific death camps, the use of the Kremas for mass gassings and there had been mass shootings. The western Allies, meanwhile, concluded that the majority of reports of camps they liberated, did not operate gas chambers and there had been no mass killings. The Nazis either admitted to the mass murders, or denied knowledge of them. None denied that mass murders had taken place and that mass resettlement had. All of that happened against the backdrop of in 1944, the Soviets were finding largely abandoned camps and empty ghettos and in 1945, the western Allies only liberated a few hundred thousand Jews and every occupied country reported the majority of deported Jews had failed to return home. No evidence at all, from any source, was found to support the revisionist claim that millions of Jews had been resettled in the east.

It is another revisionist delusion that in 1945, there was insufficient evidence to prove the Holocaust and that it was considered proven, on little to no evidence.

[bombsaway]

The "field furnaces Aktion Reinhardt" were related to the incineration of property seized from Jews deported to the Reinhardt camps. As is admitted even by orthodox scholars, Auschwitz-Birkenau served a role within the context of this mass-confiscation operation, a purpose which wasn't necessarily directly related to mass extermination the way it alleged was at Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor. A-B had its own storage facilities for seized Jewish property, and the purpose of Hoess' trip to Litzmannstadt, based on the documents and the historical context, was to assess these "field furnaces" to incinerate useless goods and property seized at A-B. Mattogno discusses a document (I believe in HH#24) where a fire had started inside Birkenau during the burning of property, which coincides with the Litzmannstadt trip, further evidencing the actual purpose of this trip - namely, to learn how property could be safely and effectively destroyed/incinerated on a larger scale.

And how does Blobel's flamethrower (which numerous witnesses like Hoess say he was using to destroy bodies) play into this?

And by that we're really getting to the crux of the issue. Whereas revisionist have perfectly plausible, evidenced and logical explanations for all of the 'evidence' brought forth in favor of the extermination hypothesis

You're welcome to jump into the Kola thread and provide an explanation for the large grave space and ash layers. So far the explanations we've gotten is the ash layers are electrocuted Jews, the "graves" made by Soviet artillery, or human ash was "thrown" in with debris (this is not an explanation for discrete layers of ash, sometimes of 300 cubic meter volume).

You have to tell a story of how graves like the ones Kola describes came into existence. I did that here: viewtopic.php?p=1679#p1679

please respond in that thread if you want to try

"What the "cremains" and the grave volumes at the AR camps show is that the death toll was nowhere near that claimed by the orthodoxy. "

Grave volume is discussed in that thread but as for "cremains" there's clearly, clearly enough there. Grave number 5 alone could hold 400,000 based on the described ash layer volume.

[curioussoul]

Hoss was in the chain of command, so things he gets right need no explanation, it's the substantial things he gets wrong that does. The ash layers don't need an explanation either, hence why none was given.

The Blobel thing isn't just some stray detail









At the same time there is a decode the British picked up which says “WVHA gives Concentration Camp Auschwitz authority for a vehicle to travel to Lódz and inspect 'Aktion Reinhard' research station for field furnaces."

Hoess was talking about mass body destruction operation. The British decodes evince any conspiracy to fabricate these documents would have to include them, in coordination with the Soviet allied Poles that were holding Hoess. Even if you say the documents and decodes are innocuous, they line up completely with Hoess's testimony. Maybe you think he worked lies around real events knowing that they would be documented. I think the revisionist explanation for the furnaces is they were for trash, ditto Blobel's flamethrower requisition. Unlikely I say, but we can talk about it.

The "field furnaces Aktion Reinhardt" were related to the incineration of property seized from Jews deported to the Reinhardt camps. As is admitted even by orthodox scholars, Auschwitz-Birkenau served a role within the context of this mass-confiscation operation, a purpose which wasn't necessarily directly related to mass extermination the way it allegedly was at Treblinka, Belzec and Sobibor. A-B had its own storage facilities for seized Jewish property, and the purpose of Hoess' trip to Litzmannstadt, based on the documents and the historical context, was to assess these "field furnaces" to incinerate useless goods and property seized at A-B. Mattogno discusses a document (I believe in HH#22) where a fire had started inside Birkenau during the burning of property, which coincides with the Litzmannstadt trip, further evidencing the actual purpose of this trip - namely, to learn how property could be safely and effectively destroyed/incinerated on a larger scale.

So the 'evidence' is not as clear as you would have it be. You've also repeatedly asserted, in this thread and elsewhere, that revisionists have "no explanation" for the presence of cremains, human remains and the alleged grave volumes in Belzec. But as we've explained on countless occasions, mass graves are to be expected at all of these camps, including mass graves containing cremains and human remains, because thousands of people undoubtedly died and had to be buried, regardless of whether a mass extermination operation was secretely being carried out. Someone also claimed (can't remember if it was you or someone else) that we have "exact grave volumes" for Belzec, which is simply laughable. We have nothing of the sort, and Kula's guesstimations have been shown to sometimes be wildly off the mark. What the "cremains" and the grave volumes at the AR camps show is that the death toll was nowhere near that claimed by the orthodoxy. And that means the 'millions' of Jews who allegedly reached the AR camps must have gone elsewhere without being killed there. You can't admit to the death told at Treblinka being a few hundred thousand Jews lower and simultaneously deny that it served as a transit camp.

And by that we're really getting to the crux of the issue. Whereas revisionist have perfectly plausible, evidenced and logical explanations for all of the 'evidence' brought forth in favor of the extermination hypothesis, exterminationists have no alternative explanations for why witnesses (every single witness?) told verifiable falsehoods that don't involve mere minor mistakes with dates and numbers, but lies about major events, anachronisms, etc. They all told categorically false lies, always in favor of the accusers. Hoess is a good example, and it's actually hilarious for Terry to be seriously trying to defend Hoess' testimony by claiming he regularly misdated events between 1941 and 1943, completely ignoring the fact that Hoess' reconstruction of the extermination process at Auschwitz hinges on a lot of fake events and false stories he told while in custody. The fake Treblinka visit is such a story. But that's merely one of hundreds of other lies that undermine his entire testimony. Simply nothing can be taken for granted with Hoess. It's all just jumbled attempts at making plausible his accusers' accusations. Exterminationists also have no alternate explanations for the physical and documentary facts surrounding the camps: the morgues being used as morgues during the height of extermination, the lack of ashes, lack of physical evidence of astronomical-scale cremations, lack of evidence for the claimed capacity of the Birkenau crematoria, lack of Prussian blue/HCN, etc.

[Nessie]

....

And by that we're really getting to the crux of the issue. Whereas revisionist have perfectly plausible, evidenced and logical explanations for all of the 'evidence' brought forth in favor of the extermination hypothesis...

You admit to there being "explanations", meaning revisionists cannot agree on what did happen. That inability to agree, added to the inability to evidence what happened, undermines your claim revisionism is plausible, evidenced and logical.

.... exterminationists have no alternative explanations for why witnesses (every single witness?)

Yes, every single witness. Revisionists cannot produce a single witness who worked at an AR camp, Chelmno or A-B Krema who they say is telling the truth.

.... told verifiable falsehoods that don't involve mere minor mistakes with dates and numbers, but lies about major events, anachronisms, etc. They all told categorically false lies, always in favor of the accusers.

Revisionists cannot prove lying. Their methodology for supposedly proving lying is flawed, as it is based on a logical fallacy and it fails to take into account the numerous studies about witness failings.

Hoess is a good example, and it's actually hilarious for Terry to be seriously trying to defend Hoess' testimony by claiming he regularly misdated events between 1941 and 1943, completely ignoring the fact that Hoess' reconstruction of the extermination process at Auschwitz hinges on a lot of fake events and false stories he told while in custody. The fake Treblinka visit is such a story. But that's merely one of hundreds of other lies that undermine his entire testimony. Simply nothing can be taken for granted with Hoess. It's all just jumbled attempts at making plausible his accusers' accusations. Exterminationists also have no alternate explanations for the physical and documentary facts surrounding the camps: the morgues being used as morgues during the height of extermination, the lack of ashes, lack of physical evidence of astronomical-scale cremations, lack of evidence for the claimed capacity of the Birkenau crematoria, lack of Prussian blue/HCN, etc.

Hoess evidence is jumbled. He was under immense pressure and in fear for his life. He is not very credible. That does not mean therefore he lied about everything. Plus, and this is the bit revisionists do not like and want to ignore, his main claims are corroborated and the most accurate, reliable, widely used test of witness truthfulness is corroboration.