The Dec 1942 Declaration

[Archie]

I don't know what your argument is with the WJC, they petitioned governments, so what? Would prefer to finish with Wasserstein before moving onto this though.

Ok, let's recap how this all arose.

They did not have Nuremberg-style trials after WWI. If they did, the stories about corpse factories and bayoneted babies would have been confirmed as "fact"

I think this is completely speculative, all the more so because governments formally did not endorse these stories during the war, unlike something like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Dec ... ed_Nations. Another clear differentiation is the presence of actual intelligence reports. Apparently the corpse factory was in France, yet no contemporaneous reports emerged, unlike what you see for the Holocaust. Your comparison doesn't work.

You cited the Dec 1942 declaration as an example of a "formal endorsement of these stories during the war" by the Allied governments.

My main point in response to this is that this supposed "formal endorsement" is a big nothing when you consider

-The whole thing was proposed by Zionist groups who lobbied the Allied governments to make a statement.
-Many officials remarked that the claims were unconfirmed. Some were openly skeptical.
-They watered it down, declining to endorse anything specific like the Zionist death figures (2M), the gas chambers, electric floors, or soap factories.

Not only is this not as impressive as you intimated, it's the opposite since we see how Jewish groups were able to apply pressure to governments for this even with little actual support for the claims. Statements by governments are political, not evidence-based.

[bombsaway]

I don't know what your argument is with the WJC, they petitioned governments, so what? Would prefer to finish with Wasserstein before moving onto this though.

Ok, let's recap how this all arose.

They did not have Nuremberg-style trials after WWI. If they did, the stories about corpse factories and bayoneted babies would have been confirmed as "fact"

I think this is completely speculative, all the more so because governments formally did not endorse these stories during the war, unlike something like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Dec ... ed_Nations. Another clear differentiation is the presence of actual intelligence reports. Apparently the corpse factory was in France, yet no contemporaneous reports emerged, unlike what you see for the Holocaust. Your comparison doesn't work.

You cited the Dec 1942 declaration as an example of a "formal endorsement of these stories during the war" by the Allied governments.

My main point in response to this is that this supposed "formal endorsement" is a big nothing when you consider

-The whole thing was proposed by Zionist groups who lobbied the Allied governments to make a statement.
-Many officials remarked that the claims were unconfirmed. Some were openly skeptical.
-They watered it down, declining to endorse anything specific like the Zionist death figures (2M), the gas chambers, electric floors, or soap factories.

Not only is this not as impressive as you intimated, it's the opposite since we see how Jewish groups were able to apply pressure to governments for this even with little actual support for the claims. Statements by governments are political, not evidence-based.

My impression is the pressure that they were able to apply was "asking" for a statement from the government. They didn't try to blackmail them or exert undue pressure, they were simply like 'we are citizens of this country and care about our countrymen dying, please do something'. At the same time the Polish government was making similar asks.

This was presented to the UN with the expectation that there would be some response to it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mass_ ... ied_Poland

This document, which was based on intelligence reports from the Polish Underground, was the catalyst that led to the statement 7 days later. The intelligence community was absolutely receptive to the general claim of mass killing contained within, though demurred on the point of exact methods used (totally fair btw). Jewish pressure, which existed before this, was not enough to get them to make the declaration. There were also factors outside of the questionable veracity of the claims which made making a statement less appealing, eg they didn't want to have to change their war strategy based on saving Jews or put effort into saving Jews that were threatened but not yet seized by the Germans (like in Romania) or worry about getting them to Mandatory Palestine.

If you agree with all of this, that's fine. I just didn't take that from your comment, Jews got the US and UK to "acquiesce to this nonsense" and put out the declaration.

[Archie]

This thread has been split off from this discussion
https://codohforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=20584#p20584

For background, see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Dec ... ed_Nations

This is the text:

The attention of the Belgian, Czechoslovak, Greek, Jugoslav, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norwegian, Polish, Soviet, United Kingdom and United States Governments and also of the French National Committee has been drawn to numerous reports from Europe that the German authorities, not content with denying to persons of Jewish race in all the territories over which their barbarous rule has been extended, the most elementary human rights, are now carrying into effect Hitler's oft-repeated intention to exterminate the Jewish people in Europe.

From all the occupied countries Jews are being transported in conditions of appalling horror and brutality to Eastern Europe. In Poland, which has been made the principal Nazi slaughterhouse, the ghettos established by the German invader are being systematically emptied of all Jews except a few highly skilled workers required for war industries. None of those taken away are ever heard of again. The able-bodied are slowly worked to death in labor camps. The infirm are left to die of exposure and starvation or are deliberately massacred in mass executions. The number of victims of these bloody cruelties is reckoned in many hundreds of thousands of entirely innocent men, women and children.

The above-mentioned governments and the French National Committee condemn in the strongest possible terms this bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination. They declare that such events can only strengthen the resolve of all freedom-loving peoples to overthrow the barbarous Hitlerite tyranny. They reaffirm their solemn resolution to insure that those responsible for these crimes shall not escape retribution, and to press on with the necessary practical measures to this end.[3]

[Archie]

Another clear differentiation is the presence of actual intelligence reports.

Ah, yes. Let's take a look at some of these "intelligence reports."



The WJC in Switzerland had sent material to the State Department who only reluctantly passed it on the Wise without endorsement. Wise tried to spin this as the State Department "confirming" the reports which was absolutely untrue.

Additional accounts:

Rabbi Wise said the State Department documents included affidavits from "reliable persons who knew" of such atrocities as turning Jewish bodies into fats and soap and lubricants, and of the latest Nazi method of killing Jews by having doctors inject air bubbles into their veins. He said the earlier prussic acid had been found too expensive. (NYT, 26 Nov 1942, pg. 16)

The Nazis have established a price of 50 reichsmarks for each corpse--mostly Jewish, Dr. Wise indicated--and are reclaiming bodies of slain civilians to be "processed into such war-vital commodities as soap fats and fertilizer"

"He (Hitler) is even exhuming the dead for the value of the corpses," he added. (Evening Star, 25 Nov 1942, pg. 1)

All "confirmed" by the State Department

[bombsaway]

Are you saying internally, at this time, US and British intelligence did not think Jewish civilians were being mass killed (in the USSR almost as a rule)?

I'll dig up the evidence, if you're making a strong denial of this

[Archie]

Are you saying internally, at this time, US and British intelligence did not think Jewish civilians were being mass killed (in the USSR almost as a rule)?

I'll dig up the evidence, if you're making a strong denial of this

Too vague. Let's be specific. Extermination order. Gas chambers. Millions killed.

Didn't we already have this discussion?
https://codohforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=416

Please post your evidence that Allied intelligence was convinced the Holocaust was happening.

[curioussoul]

Wasn't this basically the case for all Allied knowledge of the camps? I wanna say as late as mid-1944, when Churchill made his comments about the Hungarian Jews, their only 'intelligence' amounted to Jewish organizations making outlandish claims, similar to the ones they'd been making since 1933. Allied intelligence officers and officials did not take these rumours seriously because they reflected obvious propaganda tropes. It was only later that they needed to be formalized and historicized into concrete accusations of industrial genocide, for geopolitical and ideological reasons.

In many ways, it's similar to the Russian pogrom accusations during the late 19th century. In official reports and investigations, the British and Americans basically dismissed the rumours about pogroms as there was virtually no evidence of massive and widespread massacres of Jews. But Jewish organizations in Britain and elsewhere were putting huge pressure in the media and on politicians to let more Jews in from Eastern Europe because of these supposed "antisemitic pogroms".

https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2 ... -question/

https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2 ... trocities/

[Eye of Zyclone]

Apparently the corpse factory was in France, yet no contemporaneous reports emerged, unlike what you see for the Holocaust. Your comparison doesn't work.

Not true. The corpse-factory story was confirmed by many sources, including high-ranking officials like diplomats and ministers in several countries, documents, eyewitness testimonies, etc.

[bombsaway]

Are you saying internally, at this time, US and British intelligence did not think Jewish civilians were being mass killed (in the USSR almost as a rule)?

I'll dig up the evidence, if you're making a strong denial of this

Too vague. Let's be specific.

The information that they were getting primarily from radio intercepts and scattered testimony from insiders, resistance groups was not reliable enough for specifics, but did allow in a probabilistic sense, some degree certainty about Nazi policy regarding non-working Jews in Poland. In the Soviet Union they were getting clear reports through radio intercepts that this population cohort was being summarily killed. Then from this they extrapolated an assessment about Jews in Poland, taking into account what other sources were echoing about what was happening there.

Do you deny this? This is my assertion. Intelligence groups thought Polish Jews were being mass killed using probabilistic inference. Nothing like this happened with corpse factories.

[TlsMS93]

The idea that "intelligence" groups didn't know the details of the massacre is hilarious. I mean, there was a massacre, but we don't know where or how, only that there's a corpse factory in Poland.

That's the same as saying UFO cases happen on Earth, but we don't know who they are or where they came from; in other words, they only exist in my eyeball.

[Eye of Zyclone]

This is my assertion. Intelligence groups thought Polish Jews were being mass killed using probabilistic inference. Nothing like this happened with corpse factories.

Yes, it did happen with corpse factories. When questioned about the corpse-factory story in British parliament, Lord Robert Cecil (the British Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs & Minister of Blockade during WW1) replied that the other atrocities perpetrated by the Germans (i.e. previous atrocity stories like bayoneted babies, crucified Canadian soldiers, violated nuns and Belgian kids with their hands cut off by German soldiers) made the truthfulness of the corpse-factory allegation very likely and that he therefore had no reason to disbelieve what the British press had claimed about it. And Lord Curzon (Leader of the House of Lords from December 1916) concurred by stating: "No horror repels the Germans!". Clearly a case of probabilistic inference.

[bombsaway]

No they knew where, they didn't know the methods

Here's a report from polish home army

The camp was fully completed a few days before March 17, 1942. From that day transports with Jews began to arrive from the direction of Lvov and Warsaw… On the first day five transports arrived, afterward, one transport arrived daily from each direction. The transport enters the railway spur of Belzec camp after disembarkation, lasting half an hour, the train returns empty…. The observation of the local population (the camp is within sight and hearing distance of the inhabitants near the railway station) led all of them to one conclusion: that there is a mass murder of the Jews inside the camp. The following facts testify to this:
1. Between March 17 and April 13, about fifty-two transports (each of eighteen to thirty-five freight-cars with an average of 1,500 people) arrived in the camp.
2. No Jews left the camp, neither during the day nor the night. 3. No food was supplied to the camp (whereas bread and other food articles had been dispatched to the Jews who had worked earlier on the construction of the camp).
4. Lime was brought to the camp.
5. The transports arrived at a fixed time. Before the arrival of a transport, no Jews were seen in the camp.
6. After each transport, about two freight cars with clothing are removed from the camp to the railway stores. (The guards steal clothes.) 7. Jews in underwear were seen in the area of the camp.
8. In the area of the camp there are three barracks; they cannot accommodate even one-tenth of the Jews.
9. In the area of the camp, a strong odor can be smelled on warmer days.
10. The guards pay for vodka, which they drink in large quantities, with any requested sum, and frequently with watches and valuables.
11. Jews arrived in Belzec looking for a witness who would testify that Jews are being killed there. They were ready to pay 12,000 zloty… They did not find a volunteer. … It is unknown by which means the Jews are liquidated in the camp.
There are three assumptions: (1) electricity; (2) gas; (3) by pumping out the air.
With regard to (1): there is no visible source of electricity; with regard to (2): no supply of gas and no residue of the remaining gas after the ventilation of the gas chamber were observed; with regard to (3): there are no factors that deny this. It was even verified that during the building of one of the barracks, the walls and the floor were covered with metal sheets (for some purpose).
In the area of the camp huge pits were dug in the autumn [of 1941]. At that time it was assumed that there would be underground stores. Now the purpose of this work is clear. From the particular barrack where the Jews are taken for so-called disinfection, a narrow railway leads to these pits. It was observed that the “disinfected” Jews were transported to a common grave by this trolley.
In Belzec the term Totenlager was heard in connection with the Jewish camp. The leadership of the camp is in the hands of twelve SS men (the commander is Hauptmann Wirth) who have forty guards for help.

[bombsaway]

This is my assertion. Intelligence groups thought Polish Jews were being mass killed using probabilistic inference. Nothing like this happened with corpse factories.

Yes, it did happen with corpse factories. When questioned about the corpse-factory story in British parliament, Lord Robert Cecil (the British Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs & Minister of Blockade during WW1) replied that the other atrocities perpetrated by the Germans (i.e. previous atrocity stories like bayoneted babies, crucified Canadian soldiers, violated nuns and Belgian kids with their hands cut off by German soldiers) made the truthfulness of the corpse-factory allegation very likely and that he therefore had no reason to disbelieve what the British press had claimed about it. Clearly a case of probabilistic inference.

Quote for me an intelligence report, like the one above, or internal communications of intelligence groups saying it was probable

[Eye of Zyclone]

This is my assertion. Intelligence groups thought Polish Jews were being mass killed using probabilistic inference. Nothing like this happened with corpse factories.

Yes, it did happen with corpse factories. When questioned about the corpse-factory story in British parliament, Lord Robert Cecil (the British Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs & Minister of Blockade during WW1) replied that the other atrocities perpetrated by the Germans (i.e. previous atrocity stories like bayoneted babies, crucified Canadian soldiers, violated nuns and Belgian kids with their hands cut off by German soldiers) made the truthfulness of the corpse-factory allegation very likely and that he therefore had no reason to disbelieve what the British press had claimed about it. Clearly a case of probabilistic inference.

Quote for me an intelligence report, like the one above, or internal communications of intelligence groups saying it was probable

Intelligence groups did not only say that the corpse-factory allegation was probable. The Chief of Intelligence at the British Expeditionary Force General Headquarters from 1915 to 1918 (Brigadier General John Charteris) boasted after the war of planting the corpse-factory story in a Chinese newspaper for anti-German propaganda purposes.

[bombsaway]

Intelligence groups did not only say that the corpse-factory allegation was probable.

Where? Just quote this for me, nothing else.