Majdanek this and that

[Fred Ziffel]

As you all know in the Cell 14 control room there are two tanks engraved with CO2,

See attached
This is a current sign inside Cell 14 I finally was able to get a clear shot of. Yes, I know it is a bit foggy. But is readable.
This is the museum giving a little information on the tanks. And they admit in writing the tanks there now were not the actual tanks used to gas people with CO in the 1940s.

"one of the camp warehouses" is B52. The same building where the Zyklon B unused cans were also found
They state the (5) murder weapons were shipped off to the Soviet Union never to be seen again. The last gassing was early Sept 1943 and yet the Germans keep the murder weapons in a warehouse nearby for the Soviets to discover 10.5 months later.

[Wetzelrad]

QUESTION: Name the persons GUILTY of the atrocities in the Lublin camp?

ANSWER: I know of some of the camp's organizers: [...] Standarten[führer] KOCH, the former camp commander in Buchenwald; [...] It's interesting to note that in 1943, it became known that a number of the camp's organizers had built up their houses. It was said that the reason was the discovery of a massive theft by these individuals—valuables and things concentrated in the camp. In 1942, (...) there was a secret trial of those responsible for the theft. The defendants, according to rumors, were given the opportunity to shoot themselves.

This must be referring to Karl-Otto Koch, who was indeed commandant at Buchenwald. And there was indeed a trial against him.

However, that trial was in 1943-1944, not 1942. And it was not a secret trial but a matter of some public controversy; the prosecution of a high-ranking SS officer was criticized by many. And it was not for crimes committed in Majdanek but in Buchenwald. And it did not involve these other named perpetrators, as far as I can tell.

This witness (Hans Wolters) must have either muddled his own memory of events, or else he was merely regurgitating news reports he was given, but he also muddled that. Or perhaps the person who typed this paper misrepresented his testimony by mixing and matching parts of it. False in any case.

The arrested KUPSTAS J.I., speaking about his service in the German SS troops at the Lublin Death Camp, confessed during interrogation:

I served only one year as a private in the SS battalion at the Lublin Death Camp. Our battalion was tasked with guarding the camp and bringing its inmates to work.
The "Death Camp" was located one and a half kilometers from Lublin. The camp grounds contained over 20 large barracks. It should be noted that the camp was constantly expanding.
The Death Camp held people of various nationalities, brought by the Germans from the countries they occupied during various wars.

Can anyone believe that this was a real confession? This witness repeatedly uses the term "death camp". This language obviously comes from the Soviets themselves.

Both of the witnesses in this report (Kupstas Jaronim Iosifovich and Merkevichas Vladimir Kazimirovich) are said to be ex-Red Army. They were working for the Soviets just three years prior. Can they be taken seriously?

While serving in the SS battalion at the Lublin Death Camp, I took direct part in the brutal extermination of the population held in that camp. Together with other soldiers from our battalion, I repeatedly conscripted groups of Jews held in the camp we guarded into work. I personally beat the Jews who were physically weak and unable to work with the butt of the rifle I had.
In August 1942, under the leadership of lieutenant RACHKUS, I, along with eleven soldiers from our battalion, took direct part in the execution of 90 Jews.
In the month of May 1942, a large group of Jews from the camp were forced to work digging a pit. While working, four Jews, attempting to escape from the death camp, hid under a barracks. However, they were discovered by the Germans and subjected to a brutal beating. Three other soldiers from our battalion and I then executed them. Two weeks later, on the orders of a German officer, I, along with other soldiers from the SS battalion, executed eight Jews for refusing to work.

Here Kupstas got in to some semi-specific incidents, but he missed the obvious. What about the tens to hundreds of thousands gassed, shot, hanged, given lethal injections, roasted alive, and so on? He didn't see any of it? The biggest incident mentioned is a shooting execution of 90 Jews, which if true could well be a legal execution. If that's the worst atrocity he could testify to, it tends to disprove extermination.

However he claimed to be there "only one year", which Holocaust Narrative adherents might argue predated the larger extermination events. In which case his testimony is worth very little to them, but perhaps worth more for us. He described what he saw as "extermination", but if the most he witnessed was ~101 shooting executions, plus beatings in one case, plus "an unbearable regime", then it paints a very different picture of that word than what is commonly understood. Most people would not say 101 executions and compulsory labor is an extermination.

These are in any case self-serving statements. Made for the benefit of himself and the Soviets, not for the Germans.

The rest of the quotations, if they are even real quotes, are overly convenient. They're always worded unnaturally, as if written by the accusers. And they're always vague ("various methods and techniques") so as to prevent their being probed and disproven. Broad admissions to "torture" and "extermination" with only minimal personal blame. Even for theft, no specific stolen object or number thereof was mentioned.

It would be interesting to know the fates of these three witnesses. Nothing about them comes up in a cursory websearch.

[pilgrimofdark]

I should have thought to put the Cyrillic versions of these Lithuanian names. Google/DeepL seem to translate them inconsistently sometimes.

• КУПСТАС Яроним Иосифович
• МЕРКЕВИЧАС Владимир Казимирович

The rest of the quotations, if they are even real quotes, are overly convenient. They're always worded unnaturally, as if written by the accusers.

Marian Sanders, in the dissertation Extraordinary crimes in Ukraine, makes the same point.

The Extraordinary State Commission interrogations are almost sterilized. Everything other than biographical details, class details, and relevant testimony has been excised (or never recorded or entirely nonexistent). Witnesses never stray off topic, never say anything extraneous to the subject at hand.

Reading them, you can almost feel the gun at the back of their heads as they told the NKVD/SMERSH interrogators whatever they thought they wanted to hear.

So it's unclear how much of these "interrogation protocols" are the actual words of those interviewed, how much has been cut out, and how much the interrogators have simply made up.

The SMERSH documents from Majdanek, Treblinka, and Auschwitz all follow the same pattern as each other, and as ESC/ChGK documents.

What about the tens to hundreds of thousands gassed, shot, hanged, given lethal injections, roasted alive, and so on? He didn't see any of it? The biggest incident mentioned is a shooting execution of 90 Jews, which if true could well be a legal execution. If that's the worst atrocity he could testify to, it tends to disprove extermination.

SMERSH seemed to have no clear idea what it was supposed to be having the guards confess to at Majdanek or Treblinka.

[Wetzelrad]

"one of the camp warehouses" is B52. The same building where the Zyklon B unused cans were also found
They state the (5) murder weapons were shipped off to the Soviet Union never to be seen again. The last gassing was early Sept 1943 and yet the Germans keep the murder weapons in a warehouse nearby for the Soviets to discover 10.5 months later.

I feel revisionist literature is somewhat behind on this, now. What is the charitable explanation for why carbon monoxide bottles would be found in Majdanek? Granted, B52 was as big as any other barrack, so it may have stored a great many things, and it was situated in the middle of a number of workshops and other things, so it is actually quite plausible that CO would have had a mundane purpose. But I don't know what purpose that would be.

One manufacturing use for CO is (and was) dyemaking. Some sources (in spoiler) say Bliżyn had a dyemaking factory, and this eventually became a subcamp of Majdanek. It seems possible then that these empty CO tanks were transferred from Bliżyn.

Spoiler

This Jewish heritage website describes Bliżyn as "a Nazi slave labor camp run in a dye factory".
https://sztetl.org.pl/en/towns/b/1430-b ... amp-blizyn

Abraham Weltman gave a description of his time in Bliżyn where his work was "painting uniforms". This is different from producing the dye, but understandably related.
https://californiarevealed.org/do/1a031 ... 4e8159af14

An SS memo from 1944 briefly discussed the turnover of Blizyn to KL Lublin. "Textile factories" are mentioned. Dye is not.
https://nuremberg.law.harvard.edu/documents/717323
https://nuremberg.law.harvard.edu/documents/717333

Probably it would be helpful to learn about the manufacturer, to whom the name on the bottle must belong: Schönerwein and Brenen. I can't find anything about it.

[pilgrimofdark]

Probably it would be helpful to learn about the manufacturer, to whom the name on the bottle must belong: Schönerwein and Brenen. I can't find anything about it.

That could be a German > Russian > German corruption.

I don't think we have access to that exact GARF document that Graf & Mattogno reference to get the Cyrillic characters.

But there's something similar in the Majdanek Polish-Soviet Extraordinary Commission documents linked earlier.

На них имеются специальные штемпеля: «“Коллен Охсит”, наполнены при 150 атмосферах 8/VIII-1942 г.,Ценнервайн Бремен Берлин.

These cylinders bore specific stamps: "'Kollen Ohsit,' filled at 150 atmospheres, 8/VIII/1942; Zennerwein, Bremen–Berlin."

- Protocol No. 3. Lublin, August 22, 1944 (Link)

DeepL translates it as "Zenerwein Bremen Berlin." I also got "Zennenwein Bremen Berlin" from an LLM. Firefox's terrible translator got "Centralwein" or "Centralnwein."

Are there any photos of that stamp on the bottles?

The "Kollen Ohsit" must be the "Kohlenoxyd" seen on the photos of the bottles here that Fred posted a while ago:

Spoiler

[Fred Ziffel]

Just words from the Russians about the bottles.
I figure if they were indeed the murder weapon, they would at least document each bottle engraving with photos
There is one photo, but it cannot be verified it really came from the Majdanek camp nor is the engraving on the bottles legible

[Wetzelrad]

I see. I had missed that Mattogno did write something about this:

On the alleged gassings with carbon monoxide, Kranz has this to say (p. 233):

“[...] They bore the inscription ‘Kohlenmonoxid. Bei 150 Atmosphären abgefüllt. 8. 7. 42, Żeberwajn und Brenen. Berlin B. 9. Getestet bei 225 Atmosphären. Leergewicht 75,8 kg. Volumen 40,6 Liter’ [...]”

In a footnote, Kranz adds that the address was to be read as “Jennerwein und Brenner”; the names used here were allegedly pseudonyms for Victor Brack and Werner Blankenburg (footnote 15 on p. 223).

https://archive.org/details/holocaust-h ... 5/mode/1up

Which he then casts some doubt on. It seems everyone who has written about this problem worked from the original Soviet report which, if Kranz is correct, misspelled the names. So there is no extant bottle, label/inscription, nor photo of it, just a misspelling of it? Hard to believe.

Oddly, very little has been written about this. One of the very few historians who's mentioned these supposed labels, Eugen Kogon, wrote as if bottles of this kind were common across German territory, and that "those that still existed at the end of the war were bought back by IG Farben." No citation. If this is true, it's remarkable that none of the Allies had the sense to preserve or photograph the label on any of these bottles. Or evidence of the buyback or anything else.

But it's equally odd that the names on the bottles were roughly coincident to these T4 codenames. I have to hedge and say that I wouldn't be surprised if exterminationists turn out to be right on this aspect.

Currently I can't find any obvious corroboration for a company existing with a name like that -- but if the name was misspelled it could have any number of variants, which makes it difficult searching.