Chronology of the Holocaust

[Stubble]

Look, the Einsatzgruppen were counter insurgency specialists and there were 3,000 of them total in theater. If you think they killed 1.7 million jews, and also did their job

That was their job

Damn, that's A LOT of partisans

[Archie]

... Neither of these make sense ...

Just because it does not make sense to you, does not mean it did not happen. To prove it did not happen, you need evidence, not your opinion. Evidence from witnesses, photos, documents, physical and circumstantial evidence, what happened to the Jews herded to Babi Yar and produce a chronology to show where they were in 1942. Failure to do that means you have failed at the basic task of any historical investigation.

It doesn't make sense to me. It doesn't make sense to Reitlinger. And you can't explain it either. There comes a point when we are justified in looking askance at such a tall tale. You of course believe that we should defer to the authorities for our conclusions and that no sort of independent critique should be allowed. I would counter that this leaves you blind to instances where the official story is BS but continues to be upheld for political and/or emotional reasons.

[Nessie]

...

Let's not actually talk about the chronology...

No lets. It is the subject of the thread. Produce an evidenced chronology of the history of the Jews of Kiev after they were gathered at Babi Yar in 1941, through to the end of the war in 1945.

[Nessie]

... Neither of these make sense ...

Just because it does not make sense to you, does not mean it did not happen. To prove it did not happen, you need evidence, not your opinion. Evidence from witnesses, photos, documents, physical and circumstantial evidence, what happened to the Jews herded to Babi Yar and produce a chronology to show where they were in 1942. Failure to do that means you have failed at the basic task of any historical investigation.

It doesn't make sense to me. It doesn't make sense to Reitlinger. And you can't explain it either.

I can explain, with evidence. Your claim was;

"It is perfectly true that in some situations people don't resist their captors but usually this is because 1) they believe their captors intend to let them live and don't wish to antagonize, or 2) any attempt at resistance would be so feeble and futile that it seems pointless. Neither of these make sense given that the victims were unrestrained and would have outnumbered the gunmen by a large multiple."

There is evidence from all over Europe, throughout the war, of Nazi use of propaganda, laws, deception and brutality, used to subjugate the Jewish people. The Nazis often had assistance from local people, leaving the Jewish citizens isolated and very much powerless. They also often gained the trust and assistance of local Jewish leaders. What was done to the Kiev Jews, was repeated across the entire of Nazi occupied Europe (except Denmark and Finland) whereby Jews would be identified, rounded up and sent to, or told to report to specific locations. In the Netherlands the Nazis had a lot of local assistance, hence the high death rates. Other countries were less cooperative, but still, large numbers of their Jewish citizens ended up in Nazi custody. Once the Jews were surrounded by SS, EG, or even Wehrmacht guards, their fate was pretty much sealed. They could be shot or herded into gas chambers.

In September 1941, there were no rumours circulating of mass murder, so the Kiev Jews had no reason to disbelieve claims they were to be resettled. They may have outnumbered the EG, but they were unarmed with many women, children and elderly people. Did the men capable of putting up a fight outnumber the EG? That is unlikely, since they were males from the general population against soldiers.

There comes a point when we are justified in looking askance at such a tall tale. You of course believe that we should defer to the authorities for our conclusions and that no sort of independent critique should be allowed. I would counter that this leaves you blind to instances where the official story is BS but continues to be upheld for political and/or emotional reasons.

I believe that we should defer to the evidence and not rely on obviously logically flawed arguments. I think you should be able to chronologically evidence what happened, rather than voice your opinionated incredulity.

[Archie]

It's not a normal or expected thing for people to willingly lay themselves on stacks of bodies and await their own execution.

Archie's comparison to mass shooters, in public spaces, where the shooter is heavily outnumbered just carries no weight, I don't imagine anything comparable happened with the SS shootings. What if you were in a situation where you became convinced you were about to die and there wasn't anything you could do about it? How would you react? This experience is so removed from our day to day experience, I think it's an act of hubris to say definitively you would react this way or that.

Like, this doesn't make sense either, idk people are complicated

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Titanic

Some, perhaps overwhelmed by it all, made no attempt to escape and stayed in their cabins or congregated in prayer in the third-class dining room.[134] Leading Fireman Charles Hendrickson saw crowds of third-class passengers below decks with their trunks and possessions, as if waiting for someone to direct them.[135] Psychologist Wyn Craig Wade attributes this to "stoic passivity" produced by generations of being told what to do by social superiors.[111] August Wennerström, one of the male steerage passengers to survive, commented later that many of his companions had made no effort to save themselves. He wrote:

Hundreds were in a circle [in the third-class dining saloon] with a preacher in the middle, praying, crying, asking God and Mary to help them. They lay there and yelled, never lifting a hand to help themselves. They had lost their own will power and expected God to do all the work for them.[136]

I reject your suggestion that this Titanic story is a suitable precedent for how people behave during a mass shooting/mass execution. Have you ever been on a big cruiseliner? There's not much you can do if that thing is going down in icy waters and there aren't enough lifeboats. Sitting around and praying doesn't strike me as an unreasonable reaction to that situation. I guarantee you that if they had taken out guns and started shooting those passengers they would have started to freak out. I already mentioned the conditions under which you might expect passivity. Go back and read it. But in this case there are two big reasons why that doesn't work.

1) 33,771 victims - this is a huge number
2) They were unrestrained (prisoners who are to be executed are usually restrained for a reason)

This only makes sense if nobody has any idea what's going to happen but that idea falls apart because of the noise of gunfire (which would give the game away to anyone within a few miles), the bodies in the pit (which would give the game away to the current execution batch), the difficulty of transporting so many people any significant distance, and the fact that a given batch would need to be quite large.

The event as described would require the cooperation of the victims. The only precedent I can think of for something like this would be a mass suicide event like Jonestown or something similarly extraordinary.

[Stubble]

It's not a normal or expected thing for people to willingly lay themselves on stacks of bodies and await their own execution.

Archie's comparison to mass shooters, in public spaces, where the shooter is heavily outnumbered just carries no weight, I don't imagine anything comparable happened with the SS shootings. What if you were in a situation where you became convinced you were about to die and there wasn't anything you could do about it? How would you react? This experience is so removed from our day to day experience, I think it's an act of hubris to say definitively you would react this way or that.

Like, this doesn't make sense either, idk people are complicated

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Titanic

Some, perhaps overwhelmed by it all, made no attempt to escape and stayed in their cabins or congregated in prayer in the third-class dining room.[134] Leading Fireman Charles Hendrickson saw crowds of third-class passengers below decks with their trunks and possessions, as if waiting for someone to direct them.[135] Psychologist Wyn Craig Wade attributes this to "stoic passivity" produced by generations of being told what to do by social superiors.[111] August Wennerström, one of the male steerage passengers to survive, commented later that many of his companions had made no effort to save themselves. He wrote:

Hundreds were in a circle [in the third-class dining saloon] with a preacher in the middle, praying, crying, asking God and Mary to help them. They lay there and yelled, never lifting a hand to help themselves. They had lost their own will power and expected God to do all the work for them.[136]

I reject your suggestion that this Titanic story is a suitable precedent for how people behave during a mass shooting/mass execution. Have you ever been on a big cruiseliner? There's not much you can do if that thing is going down in icy waters and there aren't enough lifeboats. Sitting around and praying doesn't strike me as an unreasonable reaction to that situation. I guarantee you that if they had taken out guns and started shooting those passengers they would have started to freak out. I already mentioned the conditions under which you might expect passivity. Go back and read it. But in this case there are two big reasons why that doesn't work.

1) 33,771 victims - this is a huge number
2) They were unrestrained (prisoners who are to be executed are usually restrained for a reason)

This only makes sense if nobody has any idea what's going to happen but that idea falls apart because of the noise of gunfire (which would give the game away to anyone within a few miles), the bodies in the pit (which would give the game away to the current execution batch), the difficulty of transporting so many people any significant distance, and the fact that a given batch would need to be quite large.

The event as described would require the cooperation of the victims. The only precedent I can think of for something like this would be a mass suicide event like Jonestown or something similarly extraordinary.

Archie, it isn't 1 Jonestown, it is multiple Jonestowns simultaneously...

Put another way, an ass load of heavens gates.

[HansHill]

I believe that we should defer to the evidence and not rely on obviously logically flawed arguments. I think you should be able to chronologically evidence what happened, rather than voice your opinionated incredulity.

I agree

“A special labor-deployment office for Jews has been created at the regional
commissar in Riga City, Department of Employment, to handle Jewish labor more
systematically, i.e., to deploy the Jews in such a way that their labor is exploited
exhaustively for German purposes, yet at the same time without constituting com-
petition for Germans or Latvians.”

- Monthly Report on the Establishing of Ghettos in Jewish Work Camps, Labor Deployment and Treatment of Jews, November 20th 1941

Now please evidence clearly why they changed their mind and killed them 10 days later. What happened in those 10 days? Be specific.

[TlsMS93]

No lets. It is the subject of the thread. Produce an evidenced chronology of the history of the Jews of Kiev after they were gathered at Babi Yar in 1941, through to the end of the war in 1945.

According to Peter Longerich - Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews, the leader of Einsatzkommando VI said that 70 to 90 percent of Ukrainian Jews fled and that this saved them the trouble of deporting them to the Urals. I assume that this proportion in Kiev was the same.

According to Wannsee, there were 3 million Jews in Ukraine, which means that 2.1 to 2.7 million Jews survived. In the Baltic countries there were relatively few. How many were there in German-occupied western Russia? Were they reached even if they had time to evacuate to the interior as those in Ukraine allegedly did?

[Numar Patru]

I believe that we should defer to the evidence and not rely on obviously logically flawed arguments. I think you should be able to chronologically evidence what happened, rather than voice your opinionated incredulity.

I agree

“A special labor-deployment office for Jews has been created at the regional
commissar in Riga City, Department of Employment, to handle Jewish labor more
systematically, i.e., to deploy the Jews in such a way that their labor is exploited
exhaustively for German purposes, yet at the same time without constituting com-
petition for Germans or Latvians.”

- Monthly Report on the Establishing of Ghettos in Jewish Work Camps, Labor Deployment and Treatment of Jews, November 20th 1941

Now please evidence clearly why they changed their mind and killed them 10 days later. What happened in those 10 days? Be specific.

You cribbed that from Mattogno, who like you doesn’t understand that there were different chains of command involved. The Generalkommissar in Riga was Otto-Heinrich Drechsler, who reported to the Reichskommissar for the Ostland, Hinrich Lohse, who advocated for exempting “work Jews” from extermination. Lohse reported to Rosenberg as minister for the occupied eastern territories.

In contrast, SS figures included Jeckeln as HSSPF, reporting directly to Himmler; Stahlecker, heading Einsatzgruppe A and reporting to Heydrich; and Rudolf Lange of the SD, who also reported to Heydrich.

Those are separate chains of commands. If you’ve ever wondered why the Wannsee conference was held, confusion over roles in the final solution was part of the reason.

[HansHill]

You cribbed that from Mattogno, who like you doesn’t understand that there were different chains of command involved. The Generalkommissar in Riga was Otto-Heinrich Drechsler, who reported to the Reichskommissar for the Ostland, Hinrich Lohse, who advocated for exempting “work Jews” from extermination. Lohse reported to Rosenberg as minister for the occupied eastern territories.

In contrast, SS figures included Jeckeln as HSSPF, reporting directly to Himmler; Stahlecker, heading Einsatzgruppe A and reporting to Heydrich; and Rudolf Lange of the SD, who also reported to Heydrich.

Those are separate chains of commands. If you’ve ever wondered why the Wannsee conference was held, confusion over roles in the final solution was part of the reason.

None of this explains why "The Jews" were intended to be put to work and "the Jews" were inexplicably murdered the following week. That is unless of course you are asking me to read "the Jews" as "the able-bodied working aged Jews".

Is that what you are asking us infer from this document?

[Numar Patru]

You cribbed that from Mattogno, who like you doesn’t understand that there were different chains of command involved. The Generalkommissar in Riga was Otto-Heinrich Drechsler, who reported to the Reichskommissar for the Ostland, Hinrich Lohse, who advocated for exempting “work Jews” from extermination. Lohse reported to Rosenberg as minister for the occupied eastern territories.

In contrast, SS figures included Jeckeln as HSSPF, reporting directly to Himmler; Stahlecker, heading Einsatzgruppe A and reporting to Heydrich; and Rudolf Lange of the SD, who also reported to Heydrich.

Those are separate chains of commands. If you’ve ever wondered why the Wannsee conference was held, confusion over roles in the final solution was part of the reason.

None of this explains why "The Jews" were intended to be put to work and "the Jews" were inexplicably murdered the following week. That is unless of course you are asking me to read "the Jews" as "the able-bodied working aged Jews".

Is that what you are asking us infer from this document?

Do you understand that there was a conflict of interest between the civil authority in Latvia and the SS there?

[HansHill]

Do you understand that there was a conflict of interest between the civil authority in Latvia and the SS there?

Obfuscation. I'll await Nellie's answer.

[bombsaway]

Is that what you are asking us infer from this document?

Do you understand that there was a conflict of interest between the civil authority in Latvia and the SS there?
[/quote]
Ding ding

And the military authority. This conflict is quite blatant in the documentary and witness record.

[Nessie]

I believe that we should defer to the evidence and not rely on obviously logically flawed arguments. I think you should be able to chronologically evidence what happened, rather than voice your opinionated incredulity.

I agree

“A special labor-deployment office for Jews has been created at the regional
commissar in Riga City, Department of Employment, to handle Jewish labor more
systematically, i.e., to deploy the Jews in such a way that their labor is exploited
exhaustively for German purposes, yet at the same time without constituting com-
petition for Germans or Latvians.”

- Monthly Report on the Establishing of Ghettos in Jewish Work Camps, Labor Deployment and Treatment of Jews, November 20th 1941

Now please evidence clearly why they changed their mind and killed them 10 days later. What happened in those 10 days? Be specific.

OK, it was clearly an early example of the conflict between the two policies of the use of Jews as slave labour and to make places Jew free. Some quick research and....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumbula_massacre

"The SD's goal was to make Latvia judenrein, a Nazi neologism which can be translated as "Jew free."...Hinrich Lohse, who reported to Alfred Rosenberg rather than the SD's boss, Heinrich Himmler, wanted not so much to exterminate the Jews but rather to steal all their property, confine them to ghettos, and use them as slave laborers for Germany's war effort...The Nazis wanted to eliminate the Latvian Jews in Riga to make room for Jews from Germany and Austria to be deported to the Riga ghetto.... Himmler told Jeckeln to kill the entire Riga ghetto and to instruct Lohse, should he object, that this was an order of Himmler's and also of Adolf Hitler's: "Tell Lohse it is my order, which is also the Führer's wish""

[Nessie]

No lets. It is the subject of the thread. Produce an evidenced chronology of the history of the Jews of Kiev after they were gathered at Babi Yar in 1941, through to the end of the war in 1945.

According to Peter Longerich - Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews, the leader of Einsatzkommando VI said that 70 to 90 percent of Ukrainian Jews fled and that this saved them the trouble of deporting them to the Urals. I assume that this proportion in Kiev was the same.

According to Wannsee, there were 3 million Jews in Ukraine, which means that 2.1 to 2.7 million Jews survived. In the Baltic countries there were relatively few. How many were there in German-occupied western Russia? Were they reached even if they had time to evacuate to the interior as those in Ukraine allegedly did?

What about the Jews of Kiev, who had gathered at Babi Yar?