Kula vs Tauber on "Kula columns"

[HansHill]

If an eyewitness claims to have seen the device firsthand or worked on it, like Kula, they are eyewitness.

How about Tauber?

[bombsaway]

If an eyewitness claims to have seen the device firsthand or worked on it, like Kula, they are eyewitness.

How about Tauber?

Yeah Tauber is an eyewitness.

[HansHill]

Perfect. And Chazan?

[bombsaway]

Yup.

Post all the testimonies in full if you think they contradict in a significant way.

[HansHill]

Great. Here Chazan is saying the murder weapon could be swept from the room after a gassing. Remember, he is an eyewitness so he said he saw and done this:

[Greif] Did the grid column through which the gas was dropped reach all the way down to the floor?

[Chazan] Nearly to the floor. One had left a space which made it possible to clean there. One poured water out and brushed up the remaining pebbles.”

G. Greif, Wir weinten tränenlos… Augenzeugenberichte der jüdischen “Sonderkommandos” in Auschwitz, Böhlau Verlag, Cologne/Weimar/Vienna 1985, p. 237.

I challenge Bombsaway's claim that there are no material contradictions between the eyewitnesses and the experts (or the eyewitnesses and other eyewitnesses). Removal of the murder weapon from a crime scene is material by definition.

In Nessie's bank robbery analogy, a bank teller claims to have swept the gunman's gun away after robbing the bank. Bombsaway should retract his statement about non-contradiction of testimony in ways that are material. Here is his claim:

have not seen any testimony from any of these people that contradict orthodoxy in a significant way.

[bombsaway]

I feel like you're misunderstanding something very basic

Picture a car accident at an intersection:

Witness 1: “I saw a car run a red light.”
Witness 2: “I saw a driver on their phone.”
Witness 3: “I heard a loud crash but didn’t see anything.”

These accounts are:

Partial (incomplete)
Focused on different details

They don’t contradict unless someone says:

“The light was green."
or “No crash happened".

[Archie]

Can you quote Kula's other testimony? One has been quoted in full. I suspect revisionists have manipulated the data, taken things out of context, to try to make this disrpecency harder to explain, if it even exists.

It is quoted in part in HH2, pg. 148 (two pages in Polish are reproduced in the appendix, pg. 410-411). As far as I know, the full transcripts of the Hoess trial are not available online.

On Höss’s order, the gassing columns that were used for the gassing were
made by the metalworking shop. The columns were 2 meters and a half high,
the inner space 150 square mm in diameter, the following [layer170] at a dis
tance of 30 mm, the third 15 mm away. The wire mesh used was like those
used for windows, green in color; between the mire mesh and the sheet metal
there was a distance of 15 mm. All this was about 1 meter and a half tall. At
the mouth of this network was a so-called distribution cone. 7 pieces of these
columns were made. The columns were installed in the gas chamber right next
to the opening through which the can of gas was thrown in. This column was
installed beneath this opening, the gas was poured directly onto the distribu
tion cone. The cone was to uniformly distribute the gas into these four slots of
15 mm between the sheet metal and the netting, since that increased the gas
evaporation surface. That way the victims could be killed more rapidly. [Ques
tion:] What did such a gas chamber look like? [Answer:] In one crematorium,
it was calculated for 2,500 men, in the other, smaller one [gas chamber] in the
same crematorium for 1,500. The workers of the metalworking shop, inmates,
had built this chamber. The chamber was higher than 2 meters, at the top were
closed rectangular channels; these were the air-extraction openings through
which fans expelled the gas. Zyklon is lighter than air; hence it dissipates
quickly after the gassing. Makeshift [fake] showers were made so that the
whole thing looked like a bath. Lamps were lit, the concrete floor was always
wet. After a homicidal gassing, inmates of the Sonderkommando cleaned the
concrete [floor]. These were Jewish inmates who were assigned to doing that
work. Every three months, the Sonderkommando was exterminated, gassed, yet
not at Auschwitz, but somewhere in the vicinity of Gleiwitz instead. The leader
of this unit was Hauptscharführer Moll, […]

GR's comments:

According to his first, pre-trial deposition, the column was 3 meters high, which he changed to 2.50 meters during
the trial. While the inner core measures 150 mm wide in both testimonies, the
column described in his testimony during the trial was only
(15+30+150+30+15=) 240 mm wide in total, compared to the 700 mm of his
pre-trial statement. These are obviously two entirely different objects he is
describing. While one can confuse 3 m with 2.5 m, confusing 70 cm with 24
cm is not likely. Hence Kula has adjusted his statement. I’ll get to the proba
ble reason for this later.

[bombsaway]

This is the 700mm statement you refer to? "they were 70 centimetres square in plan". This is the only mistake though right? 3 meters to 2.5 meters doesn't seem substantial enough to even call an error.

[Archie]

I feel like you're misunderstanding something very basic

Picture a car accident at an intersection:

Witness 1: “I saw a car run a red light.”
Witness 2: “I saw a driver on their phone.”
Witness 3: “I heard a loud crash but didn’t see anything.”

These accounts are:

Partial (incomplete)
Focused on different details

They don’t contradict unless someone says:

“The light was green."
or “No crash happened".

I would agree that the 3 example statements are not strictly contradictory.

However, suppose witness 4 says "I saw the driver eating." Does this contradict witness 2? If we assume they are both right that would mean the driver was eating and on the phone. And that each witness mentioned only one of the two things. That's theoretically possible but more likely it's just a contradiction.

In some cases, the inconsistency between statements is that one statement fails to mention something. You can say that they just didn't mention it or focused on a different aspect. But some omissions are so major that it is not reasonable to think the person failed to notice it or didn't think it worth mentioning. So practically speaking I would consider major omissions to be contradictory, though it depends on the context.

If you want to get really creative, you can try to harmonize just about anything. Religious fundamentalists are notable example of this since they claim that the Bible (or whatever text) is inerrant and so they can't admit to any contradictions. So passages that seem contradictory aren't really because [insert mental gymnastics]. Like if one passage says X and another says Y, just assume both X and Y (sort of like you were just doing with the distributor cap and the can on the wire).

Another point here: an accident is something that happens in a flash and that people don't anticipate. In that situation you expect the accounts to be fragmentary and often inaccurate. Describing very familiar things from your day-to-day job is a very different thing. We should expect much greater accuracy in the latter case. You might not be able to describe a building you visited one time very well, but you should be able to describe your house, your office, etc.

[Archie]

This is the 700mm statement you refer to? "they were 70 centimetres square in plan". This is the only mistake though right? 3 meters to 2.5 meters doesn't seem substantial enough to even call an error.

Huh?

The Jun 11 deposition he said 70 cm (for the total column width)

In court at the Hoess trial, the numbers he gave add up to only 24 cm. This is what I just quoted.

[Wetzelrad]

7 pieces of these columns were made.

I'm confused. This could refer to separate parts of the columns, but there were not actually seven parts in his description. The location of this statement in the text suggests it is the number of these columns the shop produced. Did Kula think there were seven insertion columns because there were seven support columns in LK1?

What did such a gas chamber look like? [Answer:] In one crematorium, it was calculated for 2,500 men, in the other, smaller one [gas chamber] in the same crematorium for 1,500.

Kula thought there were two gas chambers in Crematorium II?

How is this guy taken seriously by anyone?

[HansHill]

I would agree that the 3 example statements are not strictly contradictory.

He has constructed it in such a way to avoid the aspect that matters most; that is the matter of mutual exclusivity. Running a red light and being on the phone are not mutually exclusive. However lets tweak his example to be more relevant to the mutually exclusive nature of our eyewitnesses.

Eyewitness A: I saw him on his phone while he was driving
Eyewitness B: I saw him put his phone in the dumpster before driving because his phone was having malfunctions

These claims are mutually exclusive, and in the event of a crash, using your phone can be material to the cause of the crash. He cannot possibly have thrown his phone away and used it. Therefore it is material as to which one of these claim is bogus or not.

This is much more relevant to our discussions, as the pellets categorically cannot remain inside the column and leave it simultaneously.