Exterminationist tactics - a brief analysis

[Numar Patru]

Do we at least agree that J0 (J1 + J2) were routed either to the Reinhardt Network or Gulag Network?

Yes, absolutely.

[HansHill]

Since I don’t think Jews who accepted Soviet citizenship were deported to the Soviet interior, it doesn’t really pose a problem. My position is that these Jews remained in the Kresy and were therefore still there when the German invasion happened.

I understand you are being geniune, so because of that, i went to the source document. My original interpretation was the correct one.



https://dn720002.ca.archive.org/0/items ... e_e8p7.pdf

p.241

[Numar Patru]

I don’t question that the original Jewish Yearbook said “many.” Both 500,000 and 64,000 could be considered “many.” It’s an imprecise word.

We’re obviously reading the same texts differently and I’d suggest we are both reading them with underlying motivations.

All I’m left with is the assertion by Hryciuk that the number deported in June 1940 was 64,000 and that we have no other large-scale deportation targeting Jews during the Soviet occupation from 1939 to 1941. The scholarship indicates that most people, Jewish or not, who accepted the Soviet passport remained where they were, and the vast majority of these people were Ukrainians and Belarusians.

[SanityCheck]

The author of chapter 10 of MGK's Sobibor was Juergen Graf, not Carlo Mattogno.

The section rather conspicuously ignores the then-available literature and many other sources on these issues (Jews in eastern Poland, refugees and deportees in the wartime Soviet Union).

In the past 15 years a lot more has been researched and published on Polish Jews in the wartime Soviet Union, several of the studies are even open access.

Markus Nesselrodt, Dem Holocaust entkommen: polnische Juden in der Sowjetunion, 1939-1946 (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2019)
https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/ ... 94393/html

Atina Grossmann, Mark Edele and‎ Sheila Fitzpatrick (eds), Shelter from the Holocaust: Rethinking Jewish Survival in the Soviet Union (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2017)
https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/30014

In a chapter by Mark Edele in the latter collection, he notes (p.120):

On 6 July 1945, the Soviet Union and the provisional government of Poland signed an agreement on repatriation, which stipulated that ethnic Poles and Jews who had been Polish citizens as of 17 September 1939 were allowed to exit both Soviet citizenship and the Soviet Union itself and settle with their families in Poland.

So the presumption Graf made that "In the same way, the returnees are unlikely to have been Jews who had acquired Soviet citizenship, because Soviet citizens normally were not allowed to emigrate" (p.355) is flatly wrong. As is this assumption: "We believe it to be highly improbable that these Jews had the possibility to return to Poland from Central Asia or Siberia in 1945 or 1946." This is contradicted by the experiences described in at least eighty published memoirs, which include some of the very earliest post-1945 'GULag' memoirs, written by Polish Jewish exiles, and countless other sources discussed in the literature.

Edele models what is conventionally regarded as good academic practice with conflicting data and sources, of offering high and low figures throughout (and indicating his sources, as well as his preference for archival documents over long-range estimates made in North America rather than from sources 'on the ground', whether in Central Asia or elsewhere).

Other historians who've worked recently on Jewish refugees, deportees and exiles include Albert Kaganovitch, Eliyana Adler, and other authors in this collection (not open access): Katharina Friedla and Markus Nesselrodt (eds.), Polish Jews in the Soviet Union (1939-1959): history and memory of deportation, exile and survival (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2021). Kaganovitch and Adler both have journal articles in Yad Vashem Studies (which is now open access), others like Lidia Zessin-Jurek, Laura Jockusch and Tamar Lewinsky have published on this theme in Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Lidia Zessin-Jurek also had a great piece in the Journal of Genocide Research:‘On a Melting Ice Floe – Polish Jewish Wartime Refugees in Central Asia’, Journal of Genocide Research, 26(3) (2023), pp. 286–306

The research refutes the mystery-mongering from revisionists over the decades back to Sanning and Rassinier and through to Graf and others more recently. Dovetailed with other research on the GULag at war, special settlements and forced migrations, as well as the Soviet home front and regions (including GULag-dominated areas or destinations for forced migrations), there really isn't a lot of room left to claim that the Soviets could have monkeyed around with a cover-up, while there is just a lot more detail, clarity and confirmation of the actual patterns and itineraries.

The same is true for the Axis occupied regions of the Soviet territories; there's a truly enormous literature in Russian, Belarusian, Ukrainian as well as in English, German and French with much being focused on a regional level, of oblast/province or German/Romanian occupation district, and from multiple angles: economic policies, POWs, civilians in general, partisans, collaboration and the German occupation authorities and structures.

Both sets of historians (on the wartime Soviet Union behind the frontline, and the occupied Soviet territories) have zero reason to pay attention to revisionism, when on these issues there's zero evidence any revisionist author has the slightest clue about the wartime Soviet Union.

[Nessie]

The Polish Jewish population was 3.3 million in 1939. Admitting that had dropped to around half a million by 1945, does not help your cause!


There were 9.5 million Jews in Europe in 1939. Admitting that had dropped to c1.4 million, plus the c500,000 in Poland, so c1.9 million, by 1945, does not help your cause!


That puts the total to just under 2 million, which is still a lot less than the 1939, 9.5 million!



The internet tells me there were c37,000 Jews living in post war Germnay.



That is contradicted by;

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/ ... ed-persons

"From 1945 to 1952, more than 250,000 Jewish displaced persons (DPs) lived in camps and urban centers in Germany, Austria, and Italy."


A mere drop in the ocean.


Many Jews were hidden, or hid, or were successfully protected by their national governments during the war, or were able to flee and then return home after 1945. Countries such as France and Denmark had high survival rates, the Netherlands and Latvia had low;

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/ ... by-country

There was a lot of resistance to the Final Solution.

Your fake Genocide requires these people to be dead. Not:

- Unaccounted for
- Missing
- In hiding
- Double counted
- Overlapping

Dead.

I do not use population figures, to prove they died. I use evidence from the camps where they died. That the majority vanish from Nazi records after they arrive at those camps, is part of the circumstantial evidence.

The fact we can see them all sauntering all over central Europe, former Soviet states and Israel, amongst others, in the post war years like Where's Waldostein is absolutely hilarious and disastrous for your fake genocide

But your figures, that you produced, does not have then "all sauntering" around anywhere in 1945 and afterwards. Those figures, above, show huge drops in the Jewish population. The evidence you provided, to claim there were no drops in the population, show poluation drops!

[Nessie]

It is circumstantial evidence as to the sheer numbers who died. Your argument that cremation was to preserve the water table, backfires as it is an admission as to the numbers who died.

No, the 1.5 million Jewish deaths that many revisionists assume as plausible is not admitting that in AB that total died, on the contrary, less than 200 thousand ended their days there and that for physical and chemical reasons.

Please show your evidence for a 200k A-B death toll.

Can you quote the part in the memo where Luther states Jews should be evacuated to territory occupied by the Soviets and placed under their control?

“Deportation to the General Government is a provisional measure. The Jews will be transferred further away, to the occupied eastern territories, as soon as the technical conditions for this are given”.

That is Nazi occupied, not Soviet occupied territory.

Can you evidence what Luther was suggesting in 1942, had happened by 1944?

A great question to ask the Soviet authorities and this giving the benefit of the fact that they were honest people.

So your answer is, no, you do not have any evidence.

There should have been a lot more than that, if the Nazis were resettling them.

The answer below to this question already answered that, which clashes with a policy of extermination given the time and control they exercised; the planners at Wannsee did not foresee difficulties in these deportations.

In short, it is not we who support something, but you, accustomed to inventing mystical and epic stories. To this day the world awaits archaeological proof of the Exodus, capable of having the audacity to say that the Amalekites, ancestors of the Germans, carried out the first Aktion 1005 of the evidence.

Again, you are admitting that you have no evidence of millions of Jews alive, living anywhere in eastern Europe, in 1944.

[HansHill]

...

And seemingly you've somehow forgotten Orthodoxy's challenge to thread these Jews through the eye of a needle placing them first squarely in German occupied territory, being transported to the East without encountering a transit camp, which by definition would mean certain death (!) Then upon arrival in their second least favourite place in the world (but really it's their least, as judging from their decision-making), and one World War later, having them re-emerge alive and well post-war seemingly never having encountered a Gulag for the same reasons, and popping up back in Central Europe / Palestine alive and well to be headcounted by all and sundry.

[HansHill]

I don’t question that the original Jewish Yearbook said “many.” Both 500,000 and 64,000 could be considered “many.” It’s an imprecise word.

The wording is indeed unfortunate*, but thankfully there is also a reason given which speaks to their evident motivation as to why they would wish to avoid defecting to the SU. This reasoning is also more than fair, in that it makes perfect sense and doesn't require any suppositions. Speaking of which, I could add other reasons why a diaspora displaced people would much prefer to not be transported to the SU, but you'll tell me that's just speculation.

*This also speaks to my challenge to you earlier, at how hard it is to place these Jews, and even harder for you. You said you were genuinely engaged with this, so continue.

[Numar Patru]

I dunno, in the absence of solid numbers to go on, I think we're going to have to agree to disagree here. I think there are plenty of reasons why Jews in that region of Poland would choose to stay and accept Soviet citizenship.

You haven't said anything about the Hryciuk article and the numbers that it identifies. Another article from the same year from another scholar on the Soviet deporations process is one by N.B. Lebedeva. She identifies a total of 250,000 people deported from all ethnic/national grouops. She also notes the Soviet agreement made with the Poles to release survivors after the German invasion. Abstract here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10. ... 0008415428

This is both more recent and more specific research that should be addressed.

[TlsMS93]

And you, what evidence do you have of millions of deaths? Transport list is not acceptable.

[Numar Patru]

And you, what evidence do you have of millions of deaths? Transport list is not acceptable.

Who are you addressing?

[HansHill]

I dunno, in the absence of solid numbers to go on, I think we're going to have to agree to disagree here. I think there are plenty of reasons why Jews in that region of Poland would choose to stay and accept Soviet citizenship.

You haven't said anything about the Hryciuk article and the numbers that it identifies. Another article from the same year from another scholar on the Soviet deporations process is one by N.B. Lebedeva. She identifies a total of 250,000 people deported from all ethnic/national grouops. She also notes the Soviet agreement made with the Poles to release survivors after the German invasion. Abstract here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10. ... 0008415428

This is both more recent and more specific research that should be addressed.

We are possibly at an impasse. Here's how I see it:

I cannot beyond reasonable doubt assert that the Jews popping up in Central Europe definitely were the same Jews who entered the Reinhardt Network, and thus exited again safely. I can say it's reasonable, more than reasonable, probable, but not certain.

You alternatively, cannot say the opposite, that these Jews certainly all avoided the Reinhardt network.

Sound fair? On the balancing of these positions, mine is far more reasonable to me, and I cannot fathom the deus ex machina that is needed to be invoked here to arrive at these Jews all being CO'd to death and disposed of, just to tidy the accounting (different topic)

Re: your article i am posting from my phone, and don't have time to read it due to family visiting for Christmas, i will need time to read it.

[SanityCheck]

I dunno, in the absence of solid numbers to go on, I think we're going to have to agree to disagree here. I think there are plenty of reasons why Jews in that region of Poland would choose to stay and accept Soviet citizenship.

You haven't said anything about the Hryciuk article and the numbers that it identifies. Another article from the same year from another scholar on the Soviet deporations process is one by N.B. Lebedeva. She identifies a total of 250,000 people deported from all ethnic/national grouops. She also notes the Soviet agreement made with the Poles to release survivors after the German invasion. Abstract here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10. ... 0008415428

This is both more recent and more specific research that should be addressed.

To be clear, non-refugees apparently had no choice about accepting Soviet citizenship in 1939-41; they did have a choice if they survived to 1945 and decided to leave for postwar Poland.

Markus Nesselrodt in his chapter of Friedla/Nesselrodt, p. 14:

After the Soviet annexation of Polish territory in November 1939, the majority of Polish Jews residing in Western Ukraine and Western Belarus automatically received Soviet citizenship.47 Only a small minority of Polish Jews rejected this forced measure, and most of them were refugees from Germanoccupied Poland.48 In the spring of 1940, they were forced to either accept Soviet citizenship or to return to their prewar homes. Between 64,500 and 67,700 Jewish refugees who chose the latter option were subsequently deported to special state security (NKVD) camps in the Soviet interior in June 1940.49 This meant that nearly one quarter of the Jewish refugees were victims of Soviet deportations.50

47 Albert Kaganovitch, “Jewish Refugees and Soviet Authorities during World War II,” Yad
Vashem Studies 38, no. 2 (2010): 86. All Polish Jews who had been residing in the eastern
half of the Second Polish Republic before November 1, 1939, automatically became Soviet
citizens by a decree of the Supreme Soviet on November 29, 1939. Whereas all Polish Jewish
refugees who arrived in the new Soviet territories after November 1, 1939, kept their Polish
passports.
48 Yosef Litvak, “Jewish Refugees from Poland in the USSR, 1939–1946,” in Bitter Legacy.
Confronting the Holocaust in the USSR, ed. Zvi Gitelman (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1997), 129.
49 The low number of Jewish deportees is from Grzegorz Hryciuk, “Victims 1939–1941:
The Soviet Repression in Eastern Poland,” in Shared History—Divided Memory. Jews and
Others in Soviet-Occupied Poland, 1939–1941, ed. Elazar Barkan et al. (Leipzig: Leipziger
Universitätsverlag, 2007), 191. The figure of 65,500 can be found in Aleksandr Gurjanow,
“Żydzi jako specpieriesieleńcy-bieżeńcy w Obwodzie Archangielskim 1940–1941,” in
Świat NIEpożegnany. Żydzi na dawnych ziemiach wschodniej Rzeczypospolitej w XVIII-XX
wieku, ed. Krzysztof Jasiewicz (Warsaw: Rytm, 2004), 109. The higher estimate is from
Kaganovitch, “Jewish Refugees,” 99. A total of about 315,000 Polish citizens were forcibly
resettled from the annexed territories to Kazakhstan, Siberia, and the northern regions of
the Soviet Union. Grzegorz Hryciuk’s analysis of the available NKVD reports leads to the
following ethnic distribution of the deportees: about 181,200 Polish Catholics (57.5 percent),
about 69,000 Polish Jews (21.9 percent), about 32,900 Ukrainians (10.44 percent)
and about 24,000 Belarusians (7.62 percent). If one considers the entire spectrum of Soviet
repression against the civilian population in the annexed former Polish eastern territories,
ethnic Poles were the group most affected among the native population. By contrast, Jews
made up the vast majority (80 percent) of the oppressed refugees from western and central
Poland while the proportion of persecuted Jews among the native population was only a few
percent. Hryciuk, “Victims,” 195, 200.
50 Mieczysław Wieliczko, “Migracje przez ‘linie demarkacyjną’ w latach 1939–1940,” in
Położenie ludności polskiej na terytorium ZSRRi wschodnich ziemiach II Rzeczypospolitej w
czasie II wojny światowej, ed. Adam Marszałek (Toruń: Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika,
1990), 137. Wieliczko estimates that around 1,600 Jewish refugees managed to return as
part of the German-Soviet agreement. Rachel Erlich, Interviews with Polish and Russian
Jewish DP’s in DP Camps on Their Observations of Jewish Life in Soviet Russia (New York:
American Jewish Committee, 1948), Interview no. 3, 1. Interviewee L. Witkowska stated
that she saw a train from Brest-Litowski to Warsaw containing around 500 Jews who had
been registered for return to the Generalgouvernement.

[TlsMS93]

And you, what evidence do you have of millions of deaths? Transport list is not acceptable.

Who are you addressing?

Nessie of course was dueling with him.

[SanityCheck]

...

And seemingly you've somehow forgotten Orthodoxy's challenge to thread these Jews through the eye of a needle placing them first squarely in German occupied territory, being transported to the East without encountering a transit camp, which by definition would mean certain death (!) Then upon arrival in their second least favourite place in the world (but really it's their least, as judging from their decision-making), and one World War later, having them re-emerge alive and well post-war seemingly never having encountered a Gulag for the same reasons, and popping up back in Central Europe / Palestine alive and well to be headcounted by all and sundry.

I think you've lost track of which Jews you're discussing.

Graf seized on big numbers estimated from North America in the 1940s which deflate when sources from the Soviet archives together with other contemporary sources (such as the relief efforts for Polish and Polish Jewish exiles midwar) are considered.

Numar Patru is bending over backwards to avoid repeating a point he already made, which is that none of the numbers Graf was bandying around can possibly apply to the Jews who were caught under German occupation, whether in 1939-41 or in eastern Poland after the start of Barbarossa in 1941. They refer to 1939-41 and not a later date, but they're wrong anyway. The IJA cautious estimate *still* fits with a death toll of 2.8 million ffs.

In any case, vague estimates from North America don't trump a mesh of German documents confirming the deportations to the Reinhard camps, much less the contemporary Polish, Polish Jewish and unofficial German sources or the many postwar witnesses, or the physical evidence left at the sites.

Whereas your hypothesis, or Graf's, lacks such confirmation and is really disconfirmed by the paper trail of the German occupation authorities further east, from all agencies, which totally fail to record a large-scale forced migration of the size indicated by the German documents on deportations further west in Poland.

Plucking out newspaper articles is the hallmark of a crank - and here I'm criticising name revisionists including Graf and Rudolf for touting various such preciouses like the Gollums they are. This is because newspapers get things wrong which is why multiple sources are preferred, and also ones that break down the total. Otherwise we could just get into a newspaper headline fight about six million dead versus x million supposedly showing up tomorrow somewhere - except they didn't. Otherwise there'd be more granular breakdowns and ranges of sources confirming things. Which we have for death tolls in the millions but not for mysterious hordes of hitherto unknown survivors.

Ignoring existing research is also the hallmark of a crank - and again I already criticised Graf for doing just that with the literature (and sources) available up to 2010. The fact that there's now even more research revisiting these themes and meshing together to confirm the new sources not guesstimated from the other side of the fucking ocean (Atlantic or Pacific take your pick) only underscores the ludicrousness of relying on a nearly fifteen year old book chapter written by a former school teacher with a conspicuous axe to grind.

We actually have excellent accounts of the exile of Polish Jews in the wartime Soviet Union - I linked to two of them! They build on exactly the research Numar Patru has been referencing, which preceded Graf's droolings by several years and which Graf should have known or factored in.

Those are the rules of informed evidence based discussion. Otherwise you're a crank or falling for crank tactics.