False witnesses are not neutral

[Archie]

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.

1) A single blunder can be fatal to the credibility of the witness, if it is major enough.

2) I might be willing to overlook an error over measurements and units (particularly if the witness is not very bright), but Reder's mistake with graves is more serious than that because it is also a qualitatively incorrect description.

Mattogno quotes two separate statements from Reder (HH#28, pg 203). The 1945 statement echoes the 1944 one but with some additional detail. They are consistent.

From Sep 22, 1944 (your link has a different date and does not have this sentence, so it would seem there are multiple 1944 statements or textual variations)

The corpses were dragged into [already] dug pits measuring 100 x 25 x 15 meters.

And from 1945,

One pit was 100 meters long and 25 meters wide. One pit held about 100,000 people. In November 1942 there were 30 pits, hence 3 million corpses.

This is also hardly the only blunder in Reder's statements. As even Tregenza has acknowledged (HH#9, pg. 51),

At the end of 1945, only seven surviving Jews were known to have survived Bełżec, one of whom was murdered a year later at Lublin by Polish anti-Semites. Of these seven survivors, two – Rudolf Reder and Chaim Hirszman – testified to the mass murder in court after the war. Only Rudolf Reder, the most famous survivor, published a brief account of his experience in Krakow in 1946.

Judged in the light of what we know today, the two reports are contradictory and contain inconsistencies. Reder, for example, spoke of 3 million victims and gave false dimensions regarding the mass graves and the camp. He stated that Rumanians and Norwegians had been involved in the exterminations, which is incorrect, and he mentions an undocumented visit to Bełżec by Himmler. Hirszman, too, exaggerated the number of victims, speaking of 800,000 victims between October and December of 1942; he spoke of roll calls, which Reder, for his part, discounted; he spoke of children being thrown into the gas chambers over the heads of the women, which is improbable considering the height of the ceiling in the chambers. [ed: And I would add that this bit is recycled from other stories like the Nov 1942 Steam Chamber report]

Further information regarding Bełżec is limited to the frequently mentioned report of the SS officer Kurt Gerstein, the ‘Gerstein Report.’ […]

A fictional Himmler visit (see also Vrba) I would regard as a really major blunder.

The above also underscores the folly of bombsaway's claim that the Belzec story "isn't based on Reder" because there are so many other witnesses. That isn't really the case, especially if we limit ourselves to early witnesses.

3) Regarding the "other key elements" you speak of like camp staff, etc. If the witness gets a lot of other things right but makes fatal errors on the the gas chambers, graves, etc., this only makes the problem worse. Think about it. If the witness wasn't there at all (i.e., a totally fraudulent statement), then it doesn't much matter what they say (it matters only to the extent the witness has been relied upon as a source). But if someone was there and can competently describe the real aspects of the camp but not the contested "Holocaust" aspects, that particular combination moves deep into the territory of DISPROOF. This is my point.

To summarize,

• If a witness has been relied upon as a major source to prove the Holocaust, the subsequent discrediting of that witness is evidence that the Holocaust is FALSE.
• If a witness "was there" and was in a position to know what was going on and provided "pro-Holocaust" testimony, the subsequent discrediting of that witness is evidence that the Holocaust is FALSE.

[bombsaway]

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.

Archie, I'm saying there's uncertainty about Reder's testimony (this exists for every witness testimony) due to the "irregularities". You say these irregularities mean the entire thing MUST be fake (you're calling him a false witness), this is what I don't get. It's binary thinking. Reality isn't so simple in most cases. In order to make your case that Reder is a false witness, you have to show that the hypotheses are impossible or deeply improbable.

To answer your specific claims

If a witness has been relied upon as a major source to prove the Holocaust, the subsequent discrediting of that witness is evidence that the Holocaust is FALSE.

If a witness "was there" and was in a position to know what was going on and provided "pro-Holocaust" testimony, the subsequent discrediting of that witness is evidence that the Holocaust is FALSE.

It depends on how discredited the witness is. Remember the hypotheses I presented for Reder's "mistakes". If any those hypotheses are true, Reder's testimony is clearly not compelling evidence the Holocaust is false. Since I don't think you can convincingly argue that the only possibility is all testimony is pure fabrication, at best you have introduced uncertainty. It's weak circumstantial evidence of a conspiracy to fabricate evidence.

[Nessie]

...

A single blunder can be fatal to the credibility of the witness, if it is major enough.

The credibility, but not necessarily the truthfulness. Reder gave specialist knowledge that proves he was at Belzec, as shown by Sanity Check. There is archaeological evidence to prove a lot of digging, disturbed ground and cremated remains in the area witnesses located the mass graves. That means Reder is corroborated, so courts, historians and journalists accept his truthfulness and claims are proven. Only revisionists disagree and they base that disagreement on credibility, one of his descriptions of the mass graves is nothing like what Kola found. That makes Reder truthful, but at times, lacking in credibility, which is a description that applies to many of the witnesses to mass gassings.

You said that you find the acceptance of "believers", as in the courts, historians and journalists, of witnesses such as Reder "baffling". There are two reasons for that. The first is your total lack of experience of witnesses. Those with experience know that witnesses will often come out with claims that are "baffling" and do not match what other evidence proves or suggests. The more "baffling" the witness is, the less credible they are. What you find "baffling", is to those with experience, quite common. The second is your bias and desire to disbelieve. There is nothing that a witness could say, about seeing a mass gassing, that you would believe. You have decided they did not happen, the end. Your bias affects your judgement and you cannot face that you are mistaken.

To summarize,

• If a witness has been relied upon as a major source to prove the Holocaust, the subsequent discrediting of that witness is evidence that the Holocaust is FALSE.
• If a witness "was there" and was in a position to know what was going on and provided "pro-Holocaust" testimony, the subsequent discrediting of that witness is evidence that the Holocaust is FALSE.

No, a discredited witness is only a discredited witness. You have made a leap to say discrediting means what the witness is claiming to have seen, did not happen. What you are arguing is the equivalent of, someone who claims to have been on the Titanic and saw it sink, who is subsequently discredited and was not on the ship, is evidence the Titanic did not sink. Or someone who was proven to have been on the Titanic, but their description of the ship and how it sank is nothing like other evidence, so their credibility is very poor, is evidence the Titanic did not sink.

[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.

Archie, I'm saying there's uncertainty about Reder's testimony (this exists for every witness testimony) due to the "irregularities". You say these irregularities mean the entire thing MUST be fake (you're calling him a false witness), this is what I don't get. It's binary thinking. Reality isn't so simple in most cases. In order to make your case that Reder is a false witness, you have to show that the hypotheses are impossible or deeply improbable.

To answer your specific claims

If a witness has been relied upon as a major source to prove the Holocaust, the subsequent discrediting of that witness is evidence that the Holocaust is FALSE.

If a witness "was there" and was in a position to know what was going on and provided "pro-Holocaust" testimony, the subsequent discrediting of that witness is evidence that the Holocaust is FALSE.

It depends on how discredited the witness is. Remember the hypotheses I presented for Reder's "mistakes". If any those hypotheses are true, Reder's testimony is clearly not compelling evidence the Holocaust is false. Since I don't think you can convincingly argue that the only possibility is all testimony is pure fabrication, at best you have introduced uncertainty. It's weak circumstantial evidence of a conspiracy to fabricate evidence.

No, that is what I disagree with you about. With certain witnesses, it goes way beyond "uncertainty."

Here is the crux of the issue. If someone was really there and saw something or some event that actually existed in tangible, physical reality, they should be able to describe that thing or event with reasonable accuracy, allowing for well-known limitations of our sensory organs and memory. If they can't, then the most natural implication is that the thing event they "described" did not actually exist or happen (at least as described).

If Hoess (he is the most dramatic example imo) really got orders from Himmler to turn Auschwitz into an extermination center, visited Treblinka for ideas, designed his own extermination process, etc., then he should be able to describe this fairly accurately. He should have some idea of how many people were killed. And so on. Given that he was without question in a position to know what was going on, fatal errors in his statements do not merely introduce "uncertainty" which can then be buttressed in post hoc fashion by cherry-picking bits from more obscure witnesses. If his statements are substantially false, the most likely reason for that would be because he is not describing real events.

[fireofice]

Archie, I'm saying there's uncertainty about Reder's testimony (this exists for every witness testimony) due to the "irregularities". You say these irregularities mean the entire thing MUST be fake (you're calling him a false witness), this is what I don't get.

I don't believe that's what he said. He said that it's evidence of it being false, not that it therefore MUST be false. It's a subtle but crucial difference. If someone says that something is evidence of a proposition, that doesn't mean the case has therefore been proven. In order to come to a conclusion, you need to look at the evidence as a whole. Once looking at all the evidence for a proposition, pro and con, you can then come to a conclusion, but this conclusion is provisional as new evidence may pop up. So in this case, the witnesses would be evidence against the holocaust, but theoretically there could be other evidence that is stronger that could offset that.

[SanityCheck]

No, that is what I disagree with you about. With certain witnesses, it goes way beyond "uncertainty."

Here is the crux of the issue. If someone was really there and saw something or some event that actually existed in tangible, physical reality, they should be able to describe that thing or event with reasonable accuracy, allowing for well-known limitations of our sensory organs and memory. If they can't, then the most natural implication is that the thing event they "described" did not actually exist or happen (at least as described).

If Hoess (he is the most dramatic example imo) really got orders from Himmler to turn Auschwitz into an extermination center, visited Treblinka for ideas, designed his own extermination process, etc., then he should be able to describe this fairly accurately. He should have some idea of how many people were killed. And so on. Given that he was without question in a position to know what was going on, fatal errors in his statements do not merely introduce "uncertainty" which can then be buttressed in post hoc fashion by cherry-picking bits from more obscure witnesses. If his statements are substantially false, the most likely reason for that would be because he is not describing real events.

Hoess is probably the worst example you could pick, since the basic event in question, serial mass gassing followed by cremation at Auschwitz, is so massively attested to by so many other sources, including German documents, contemporary non-German sources, photographs, and many testimonies predating Hoess's capture from SS witnesses, non-Jewish inmates and Jewish inmates.

One also cannot apply the yes/no logic you're using to the testimonies of suspects or accused, since they have additional incentives to portray themselves in the best possible light, which might involve selective memory/forgetting, limited hangouts, or a degree of dissembling that might also betray the truth. Indeed Hoess on repeated occasions described visiting Treblinka in early 1943, thereby contradicting himself. If Hoess had only ever mentioned visiting Treblinka in 1941 this would be more problematic, but getting a year wrong is far from unknown and is not a 'fatal error'.

Closer examination also shows Hoess backdating many non-contentious, well-documented events in 1941-3 unless he is prompted by documents or the knowledge of interrogators, so his dating and narrative are not reliable for the dating and narrative sequence elements. This is another illustration of how memory and errors in memory work: confusing dates, conflating narrative elements, mixing up what happened before what, are common phenomena. So what seems oh-so-damning to you is really nothing of the sort.

Hoess famously walked back his initial overestimate of the death toll (which is relatively accurate for all extermination camps as might be estimated by SS insiders in 1944) to a very accurate estimate from memory of just over 1 million Jews deported to Auschwitz, broken down by country. Indeed he was already giving this breakdown in his very first interrogation, again showing a contradiction. He described being pressured about this in his early interrogations while on trial in Krakow, so accounted for the change as well. Mystery solved, the lower breakdown is the one that fits other sources better and was being recounted rather consistently from memory.

[bombsaway]

. If his statements are substantially false, the most likely reason for that would be because he is not describing real events.

I've looked at his statements and taking everything all together at least 90% of what he says is accurate to what is currently accepted. We can go through his testimony in depth if you question this percentage. I guess I think it's reasonable that someone would.make this amount of errors. For you to demonstrate that this means Hoess MUST be lying you have to show a 90% error rate corresponds w lying.

You also as usual aren't taking into account details which strengthen the veracity of his account. For example he speaks of a visit to chelmno to see blobel with his adjutant, details of which are corroborated by documents. He speaks of blobel using flamethrowers to destroy bodies, and British intercepts show blobel requisitioning flame throwers.

The name of the game here seems to be selection bias, you neglect every argument and detail except for those favorable to your cause. You don't provide explanations for how Hoess knew about Blobels flame throwers, just like you present no explanation for the ash layers. When you view the debate in this way, it's natural you will come to one sided conclusions.

[fireofice]

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.

[Archie]

Hoess famously walked back his initial overestimate of the death toll (which is relatively accurate for all extermination camps as might be estimated by SS insiders in 1944) to a very accurate estimate from memory of just over 1 million Jews deported to Auschwitz, broken down by country. Indeed he was already giving this breakdown in his very first interrogation, again showing a contradiction. He described being pressured about this in his early interrogations while on trial in Krakow, so accounted for the change as well. Mystery solved, the lower breakdown is the one that fits other sources better and was being recounted rather consistently from memory.

I know what you are referring to, but he didn't really walk it back.

Mar/Apr 1946: He claimed 2.5M gassed plus 0.5M dead by other means.

Mar/Apr 1947: He reiterated the 2.5M on the stand in Krakow. This is mere weeks before his execution. The judgment "found" that 4M were killed.

He did give deportation figures that were not consistent with the death toll and maybe twice he said something to the effect that he felt that the 2.5M was perhaps too high. But then he went right on repeating it until shortly before his death. So it is misleading to say he walked it back. Or you are implying that his testimony at Krakow was coerced?

[bombsaway]

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.

[SanityCheck]

Hoess famously walked back his initial overestimate of the death toll (which is relatively accurate for all extermination camps as might be estimated by SS insiders in 1944) to a very accurate estimate from memory of just over 1 million Jews deported to Auschwitz, broken down by country. Indeed he was already giving this breakdown in his very first interrogation, again showing a contradiction. He described being pressured about this in his early interrogations while on trial in Krakow, so accounted for the change as well. Mystery solved, the lower breakdown is the one that fits other sources better and was being recounted rather consistently from memory.

I know what you are referring to, but he didn't really walk it back.

Mar/Apr 1946: He claimed 2.5M gassed plus 0.5M dead by other means.

Mar/Apr 1947: He reiterated the 2.5M on the stand in Krakow. This is mere weeks before his execution. The judgment "found" that 4M were killed.

He did give deportation figures that were not consistent with the death toll and maybe twice he said something to the effect that he felt that the 2.5M was perhaps too high. But then he went right on repeating it until shortly before his death. So it is misleading to say he walked it back. Or you are implying that his testimony at Krakow was coerced?

See his essay on the FS where he absolutely walked back 2.5M to insist on his 1+M breakdown, attributing the higher figure to Eichmann from an early stage as well, but explicitly in his essay. There is an excerpt from his 1947 trial which was submitted to the Eichmann trial, where he discussed this openly in terms of being badgered in his initial interrogations.

Mattogno doesn't claim he reverted to 2.5M on the stand in Krakow, what is your precise source for this? As in day of the trial and ideally page number since I will check later.

The memoir and its essay as an appendix is by far the dominant source on Hoess, to turn your criteria back on you, and indisputably stuck to the 1+M breakdown, which was present in his accounts all along (IIRC it's also in his IMT affidavit).

[Nessie]

....
No, that is what I disagree with you about. With certain witnesses, it goes way beyond "uncertainty."

Which in your case, despite your denials, means 100% of the witnesses lied. That is an unlikely conclusion, persuasive only to conspiracists.

Here is the crux of the issue. If someone was really there and saw something or some event that actually existed in tangible, physical reality, they should be able to describe that thing or event with reasonable accuracy, allowing for well-known limitations of our sensory organs and memory. If they can't, then the most natural implication is that the thing event they "described" did not actually exist or happen (at least as described).

That is correct, if the witness is the only evidence that the event happened. With the Holocaust, there is evidence from multiple sources.

It is wrong, if there is other evidence. The "most natural" implication is that the witness was not there, and there have been a number of cases of people being exposed as lying about their Holocaust experiences.

If Hoess (he is the most dramatic example imo) really got orders from Himmler to turn Auschwitz into an extermination center, visited Treblinka for ideas, designed his own extermination process, etc., then he should be able to describe this fairly accurately. He should have some idea of how many people were killed. And so on. Given that he was without question in a position to know what was going on, fatal errors in his statements do not merely introduce "uncertainty" which can then be buttressed in post hoc fashion by cherry-picking bits from more obscure witnesses. If his statements are substantially false, the most likely reason for that would be because he is not describing real events.

Hoess is an example of a poor witness, but his main claims are all corroborated, so he can be accurately assessed as being truthful that mass gassings did take place. Your reasoning fails, as I explained before, because it would be like claiming a witness to the sinking of the Titanic, who gives a wholly inaccurate description of the boat and events, does so because the Titanic did not sink.

[fireofice]

Is Terry really defending the Hoss testimonies? Hilarious.

Little reminder:

-Invented a non existent camp called Wolzek (no this was not a mistake as I've seen argued elsewhere, he knew what the camps were)
-Said the guards were eating and smoking while dragging the poison laced bodies and that no masks were needed
-Human fat collection
ect.

more here:

https://holocaustencyclopedia.com/witne ... udolf/360/

The examples I provided are a big problem and can't be written off as "mistakes".

Some historians are a little smarter than Terry:

In the same Vanity Fair article, prominent Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt and “Final Solution” expert Christopher Browning have admitted that Hoess’s confessions are unreliable, as he had been tortured by the British into confessing to a fantastic and unbelievable number of murders. “Hoess was always a very weak and confused witness,” Professor Browning admitted. “The revisionists use him all the time for this reason, in order to discredit the memory of Auschwitz as a whole,” he added.

Lipstadt then chimed in about the value of Hoess’s testimony: “It’s the same with the soap story.” (Previously, she admitted the propaganda stories that the Nazis made soap from the bodies of Jewish corpses are simply untrue.) The Emory University Professor then added: “I get protests from [Holocaust] survivors, saying that I shouldn’t admit it’s not true, because it gives ammunition to the enemy. But I’m only interested in getting at the truth.”

The well known author of this article, Christopher Hitchens, then draws the appropriate conclusion, which delivers another blow to Lee Bollinger’s claim the Holocaust is the most documented event in human history: “Since Hoess was the commandant of [Auschwitz] for only part of its existence, this means that—according to the counter-revisionists—an important piece of evidence in the Holocaust Memorial is not reliable.”

https://codoh.com/library/document/is-t ... ocumented/

[Archie]

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/

[Archie]

Hoess famously walked back his initial overestimate of the death toll (which is relatively accurate for all extermination camps as might be estimated by SS insiders in 1944) to a very accurate estimate from memory of just over 1 million Jews deported to Auschwitz, broken down by country. Indeed he was already giving this breakdown in his very first interrogation, again showing a contradiction. He described being pressured about this in his early interrogations while on trial in Krakow, so accounted for the change as well. Mystery solved, the lower breakdown is the one that fits other sources better and was being recounted rather consistently from memory.

I know what you are referring to, but he didn't really walk it back.

Mar/Apr 1946: He claimed 2.5M gassed plus 0.5M dead by other means.

Mar/Apr 1947: He reiterated the 2.5M on the stand in Krakow. This is mere weeks before his execution. The judgment "found" that 4M were killed.

He did give deportation figures that were not consistent with the death toll and maybe twice he said something to the effect that he felt that the 2.5M was perhaps too high. But then he went right on repeating it until shortly before his death. So it is misleading to say he walked it back. Or you are implying that his testimony at Krakow was coerced?

See his essay on the FS where he absolutely walked back 2.5M to insist on his 1+M breakdown, attributing the higher figure to Eichmann from an early stage as well, but explicitly in his essay. There is an excerpt from his 1947 trial which was submitted to the Eichmann trial, where he discussed this openly in terms of being badgered in his initial interrogations.

Mattogno doesn't claim he reverted to 2.5M on the stand in Krakow, what is your precise source for this? As in day of the trial and ideally page number since I will check later.

The memoir and its essay as an appendix is by far the dominant source on Hoess, to turn your criteria back on you, and indisputably stuck to the 1+M breakdown, which was present in his accounts all along (IIRC it's also in his IMT affidavit).

I knew what you were referring to. His deportations figures plus the (I believe) two times he said 2.5M was "too high" (once in the "memoirs" and once to Goldensohn). He seems to have repeated the "Eichmann number" alongside his lower deportation numbers without any reconciliation (i.e., without explaining how people who never arrived at the camp were killed there.)

My point is that if he repeated the higher numbers later, that's hardly "walking it back" and the later statements would supersede the memoir.

I do not have access to the Supreme National Tribunal transcripts. But it seems clear he continued repeating the "Eichmann" figure in 1947.

Mattogno (pg. 167) quotes this bit where Hoess says he had given the 2.5M figure the day before. I believe this would correspond to Mar 11-12, 1947.

Prosecutor: The defendant stated at some point that two and a half million people were gassed.

Defendant: Just yesterday I said that, in the case of two and a half million, I had this figure from Eichmann, who had given it to the inspector of the concentration camps.

I also have this press report saved. This is at his sentencing which would be days before his execution.

“It Was Only 2,000,000,” Time, 4/14/1947

Rudolf Francis Ferdinand Hoess, a stocky, 47-year-old Nazi, stood stolidly in Warsaw's Supreme Court one day last week to hear his sentence. One of the court's officials asked him: "How did it feel to run a murder plant which produced 4,000,000 corpses?" Blandly, Hoess replied: "It was only 2,000,000."

Even by his own dilution of the blood on his hands, Hoess was history's top killer, the master of mass atrocity. The
number of lives he had taken in Germany's horror camp at Auschwitz (Oswiecim) far exceeded the largest total in
any historically accepted account of the world's bloodiest massacres. The tolls of all the recorded pogroms did not
add up to the 2,800,000 Jewish lives which ended at Auschwitz.

In his month-long trial Hoess denied none of Auschwitz's horrors. He offered one sentence of defense: "All my
actions resulted from orders which I received." He was proud of having designed the gas chambers in which 2,000
persons could be put to death at one time. He was proud of his efficiency. Told of Hermann Göring's remark at
Nnberg 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." Hoess's beady eyes did not flicker as
the sentence was read. It was death, by hanging. He got a few days of reprieve. Polish law forbids execution, even
of such as Hoess, during Holy Week.

Why he said 2M here I don't know. Perhaps he is rounding the Eichmann figure down here. It's well above the deportations figures at any rate. I would submit this 2M figure as his latest known commentary on the subject.

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.