Homicidal Gas Vans

[bombsaway]

None of that has to do with gas vans.

The most important fake gas chambers to call fake are the one the allies build in paris and later in dachau.

I don't care if you accept that the gas chambers that have been proven to be fake at majdanek are indeed fake. All the red commie scum actually did was bust holes in concrete (sounds familiar) in existing fumigation chambers. The western forces built elaborate non functional set pieces for film. That's nasty.

With the documents, yes, there are many fakes, probably more fabrications.

Stuff that us beyond reproach is corroborated from radio intercepts and things of that nature. It comes from multiple sources, not simply a book someone put under their pillow.

Why not believe that the UK was forging these as well? A vast trove of Einsatzgruppen OSR's were found by the Americans.

Well, for one thing, there is the highly secretive nature of the decoding room. That's all a topic for another thread though and has nothing to do with gas vans.

More critical is the importance of more than 1 source. Multiple sources is best for authentication.

Oh So Social was certainly not above document doctoring and manipulation. They also weren't above seeding fakes in with authentic documents. To think only the Soviets were capable of document or photograph manipulation is naive.

Can we talk about gas vans?

Sure. Within how historiography documents are considered strong indicator of events, especially when they are corroborated with other documents, especially when the people who wrote the documents confirm their authenticity. So there has to be a reason to think the documents are fabricated, you can't rest your case on the possibility of that. If gas van appeared that would be trivial for the Soviets to fake as well, probably easier than a convincing document later confirmed by its author. I don't think there's any reasonable evidence that could prove gas vans to you, I think you're being selective w your standards

[Stubble]

Correct.

For the record, I'm not done vetting the evidence you presented in your first post in this thread.

Perhaps instead of saying 'I just don't believe in 'em', better phrasing would be 'for me the jury is still out'.

Make sense?

[HansHill]

I mean I don't see any mention of Jews so he's not even lying about that, it just isn't mentioned. It would be against my methodology to believe that was about Jews

What on earth are you talking about. BA, if you were sitting in that courtroom you would believe what you were told to believe. You don't exactly come across as the Mr Independent that you seem to think you are, no offense. Your belief in the Holocaust is dictated to you narratively and wholesale. Which is what Archie has been bending over backwards to explain to you.

[Archie]

To get more specific, if the secondary sources (i.e., expert historians) on Chelmno were wrong for 60 years or so then there needs to be some accounting for this. If it were true, as you imply, that the testimonies strongly support bottled CO gas vans at Chelmno, how is it that all the courts and historians didn't pick up on this? I suspect it is because you are not correct about the primary sources.

I don't know if they strongly support. By my standards the evidence isn't very strong https://holocaustresearchproject.net/ot ... aries.html

The gas van description might be second hand, the testimony seems a bit confused on the matter

Our comrades from among the ‘eight’ told us there was an apparatus with buttons in the driver’s cab. From this apparatus two tubes led into the van. The driver (there were two execution gas vans, and two drivers – always the same) pressed a button and got out of the van.

I said in this very thread that you shouldn't assert mass events based on second hand accounts, rumors, etc.

So really we're dealing with something that might possibly be true. Based on the supplied time frames, this was very early on in the camp's operation, like the first few weeks. So again, it's plausible, and fits with my speculation that there was a transition period, or they were experimenting before settling on a method.

But so what? You think that the existence of such a testimony is strong evidence of a conspiracy to "write" the Holocaust? I understand what you're getting at, but it's just speculation. You should instead try to find direct evidence of that conspiracy. I would imagine with thousands of fabricated witnesses and documents, millions of "disappeared" Jews you should be able to do this. Just like how Stubble scoffs at stories of the Germans poisoning people with gas in enclosed spaces, I find it laughable that such a conspiracy could be perpetuated without a shred of direct evidence for it surfacing. I think believing in such a conspiracy, absent direct evidence, is irrational.

I don't distinguish first-hand and second-hand as sharply as you do. An n-th degree rumor, sure. But I don't expect immediate deterioration in accuracy just because something is second-hand. Nor do I get smitten with accounts just because they are purportedly first-hand. Many of these camps stories do not make sense as first-hand accounts. Much of the rich detail would would only be consistent with an omniscient narrator, a technique commonly used in fiction (novels). If you think about most of these stories in terms of the first-person, they tend to fall apart immediately. This is why Vrba did so badly on the stand. If you ask things like "Where were you standing when you heard Himmler say that?" it's immediately obvious that we are dealing with fiction. Of course, the writer was not standing right by by Himmler. Nor were these memoirists overhearing dialogues in the gas chamber, etc. Your side's way out of this is to assume these details are "hearsay" and that these are mixed in without comment with authentic personal experience. In some cases, that might be so, but I prefer to view these through the lens of fiction (more of a literary analysis).

Conversely, something I emphasize far more is the dating of the account. A general principle in historiography is that, all else equal, it is better for an account to be recorded as soon after the events in question as possible. This is because over time memories fade, stories get contaminated, people have more time to work out a false story, etc. So I give a huge amount of attention to the earliest versions of the stories. I don't filter for whether I think it's "direct" enough since that will discard lots of valuable information. The other side tends to discard the early versions because they are anonymous or are not sufficiently "direct." This has the effect of putting all the weight on post-war testimonies, including many that weren't recorded until the 1960s when the stories had been more worked out.

Anyway, back to Szlamek. To me, it is not just that he describes a different gassing mechanism. It is also that he mentions multiple vans. He says they are the same. Yet he knows nothing about any exhaust-based vans. This is a "dog that didn't bark" situation (Sherlock Holmes reference). Is there a reason the dog didn't bark? Perhaps you could say Szlamek only got the details second-hand. The info was a little old so it referred to the older gas van model. And he mistakenly thought the vans were the same when they weren't.

Basically what I'm saying is that if there were a "transition" period where both were used, then I would expect some cross-over between early and later testimonies but there isn't (from what I can tell so far). It looks very much like two distinct stories with the version depending on the date of the story.

In 1945, the Communist investigations go with the exhaust version. I see a connection here with the exhaust-based vans they had alleged at the Krasnodar and Kharkov trials in 1943.

https://www.jta.org/archive/warsaw-gove ... death-camp

You say that I am speculating, but I would encourage you to go read some scholarship on different subjects on anything where there is disagreement and you will see that scholars make these sorts of inferences all the time. And they don't obsess about "direct" evidence. They just talk about evidence. They do talk about when a conclusion is too far removed from the evidence. Indirect evidence can be quite convincing, especially if you have multiple things pointing toward the same conclusion. (For a specific example, I'm thinking about something like Who Wrote the Bible? by Richard Elliott Friedman. This is a summary of the scholarship on the dating and authorship of (primarily) the Torah. There's no "direct" evidence on this question, in the sense that there are no manuscripts showing the original sources used, etc. Does this mean we throw up our hands because it's impossible? No, because there are a lot of hints in the text itself. You can look at the language. You can note places where stories are repeated or where it seems two versions have been stitched together. It is actually possible to deduce a good deal, although there are many disputes over the final conclusions.)

[bombsaway]

I mean I don't see any mention of Jews so he's not even lying about that, it just isn't mentioned. It would be against my methodology to believe that was about Jews

What on earth are you talking about. BA, if you were sitting in that courtroom you would believe what you were told to believe. You don't exactly come across as the Mr Independent that you seem to think you are, no offense. Your belief in the Holocaust is dictated to you narratively and wholesale. Which is what Archie has been bending over backwards to explain to you.

No, I would base my beliefs on interpretation of the evidence. Based on what you presented w soap, no reason to believe mass production or Jew soap from that. Those things are possible but speculative, like Archie's theories about the Holocaust being written. Possible to speculate, but when you have direct evidence that takes precedent in historiography

[HansHill]

No, I would base my beliefs on interpretation of the evidence. Based on what you presented w soap, no reason to believe mass production or Jew soap from that. Those things are possible but speculative, like Archie's theories about the Holocaust being written. Possible to speculate, but when you have direct evidence that takes precedent in historiography

Ultimately this is unfalsifiable - I can't prove what you are thinking or believing. However that said, in the context of everything you have asserted, I am making the positive accusation against you and all your friends, that you are dishonestly interpreting evidence you do and don't like differently, to different degrees and standards - all of which is determined by the prevailing authorities on the Holocaust narrative that you pretend either A) don't exist, B) don't matter, or C) you are somehow above in a bizarre appeal to neutrality

[bombsaway]

Correct.

For the record, I'm not done vetting the evidence you presented in your first post in this thread.

Perhaps instead of saying 'I just don't believe in 'em', better phrasing would be 'for me the jury is still out'.

Make sense?

That's fair, I definitely got the impression gassing was a red line for you based on your total disbelief about t4 gassings, which are strongly evidenced

[bombsaway]

No, I would base my beliefs on interpretation of the evidence. Based on what you presented w soap, no reason to believe mass production or Jew soap from that. Those things are possible but speculative, like Archie's theories about the Holocaust being written. Possible to speculate, but when you have direct evidence that takes precedent in historiography

Ultimately this is unfalsifiable - I can't prove what you are thinking or believing. However that said, in the context of everything you have asserted, I am making the positive accusation against you and all your friends, that you are dishonestly interpreting evidence you do and don't like differently, to different degrees and standards - all of which is determined by the prevailing authorities on the Holocaust narrative that you pretend either A) don't exist, B) don't matter, or C) you are somehow above in a bizarre appeal to neutrality

Ok we were talking about the soap, so how am I dishonestly interpreting the testimony you provided or why do you think that?

[Stubble]

Correct.

For the record, I'm not done vetting the evidence you presented in your first post in this thread.

Perhaps instead of saying 'I just don't believe in 'em', better phrasing would be 'for me the jury is still out'.

Make sense?

That's fair, I definitely got the impression gassing was a red line for you based on your total disbelief about t4 gassings, which are strongly evidenced

A firm red line.

[bombsaway]

Correct.

For the record, I'm not done vetting the evidence you presented in your first post in this thread.

Perhaps instead of saying 'I just don't believe in 'em', better phrasing would be 'for me the jury is still out'.

Make sense?

That's fair, I definitely got the impression gassing was a red line for you based on your total disbelief about t4 gassings, which are strongly evidenced

A firm red line.

Then you aren't really open. You're pretty decided. I think the term, jury still out is unwarranted

[Stubble]

That's fair, I definitely got the impression gassing was a red line for you based on your total disbelief about t4 gassings, which are strongly evidenced

A firm red line.

Then you aren't really open. You're pretty decided. I think the term, jury still out is unwarranted

Bombsaway, I'm not not looking at evidence.

So far as the evidence for t4 gassing, I don't find it convincing. Surely you can concede that material evidence is circumstantial at best.

That's not gas vans though, that's t4. It merits it's own thread.

[bombsaway]

A firm red line.

Then you aren't really open. You're pretty decided. I think the term, jury still out is unwarranted

Bombsaway, I'm not not looking at evidence.

So far as the evidence for t4 gassing, I don't find it convincing. Surely you can concede that material evidence is circumstantial at best.

That's not gas vans though, that's t4. It merits it's own thread.

If you're not going to count documents, there's only circumstantial material evidence for gas vans, reinhardt and auschwitz gas chambers as well. What I'm saying is that this is a selective standard you're applying.

[Stubble]

Then you aren't really open. You're pretty decided. I think the term, jury still out is unwarranted

Bombsaway, I'm not not looking at evidence.

So far as the evidence for t4 gassing, I don't find it convincing. Surely you can concede that material evidence is circumstantial at best.

That's not gas vans though, that's t4. It merits it's own thread.

If you're not going to count documents, there's only circumstantial material evidence for gas vans, reinhardt and auschwitz gas chambers as well. What I'm saying is that this is a selective standard you're applying.

We need a t4 carbon monoxide gas chambers thread.

Apparently an evidentiary evaluation thread of some sort is in order as well, however that could and likely will get very messy very fast.

This thread however should be about gas vans.

It touches on Chelmno. That said, Chelmno merits it's own thread. That doesn't mean Chelmno should be out of scope here, just that when discussing it it should be in the context of Homicidal Gas Vans.

It also touches on The Kaiser's Koffee Kafe. That too, in my opinion is thread worthy. Much the same as Chelmno, we should keep the focus on Homicidal Gas Vans.

At least Chelmno and the Koffee Kafe contain in their narratives Homicidal Gas Vans. The euthanasia program kind of does, but, that isn't what you are trying to get me to evaluate here in this thread.

I appreciate that you aren't trying to muddle the thread intentionally, and I assure you, I can appreciate your perspective. At the same time, I'd like to ask if we could keep the focus of the thread on Homicidal Gas Vans.

If you would like to personally critique my evaluation and criteria for evidence, there is also always the direct message system.

[bombsaway]

This thread however should be about gas vans.

Ok. Why is material evidence so important for you when it comes to gas vans? Why aren't documents and witness statements enough?

BTW I can't even say no material evidence exists for the T4 gassings. We have alleged gas chambers like here, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernburg_ ... sia_Centre but I don't have any information about their current state, whether the rooms are clearly gas chambers from a technical perspective etc. Wasn't able to find any revisionist writing here. For the purposes of this discussion then we can put a question mark here or go with, no material evidence (from the orthodox perspective the several chambers that were used were modified by Nazis to reduce culpability, hide their crimes)

[Stubble]

This thread however should be about gas vans.

Ok. Why is material evidence so important for you when it comes to gas vans? Why aren't documents and witness statements enough?

BTW I can't even say no material evidence exists for the T4 gassings. We have alleged gas chambers like here, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernburg_ ... sia_Centre but I don't have any information about their current state, whether the rooms are clearly gas chambers from a technical perspective etc. Wasn't able to find any revisionist writing here. For the purposes of this discussion then we can put a question mark here or go with, no material evidence (from the orthodox perspective the several chambers that were used were modified by Nazis to reduce culpability, hide their crimes)

Well Bombsaway, you have a slight misconception here. There are t4 documents that I have evaluated and I have weighed and don't find them to be convincing. This is because they are receipts for cylinders run through a 3rd party or testimony after the war.

Primary witnesses state injection with morphine or ingestion of barbatol tablets, not gas.

This is all t4 stuff however, and if we are going to expound on this, I'd like to do it in the appropriate thread.

There is more I could say here, but honestly, in an effort to keep the thread clutter free, I'd like to ask again that we try not to drift the topic, please Sir.

With the gas vans, what is presented by Holocaust Controversies in your various linked blogs appears quite damning. If I trusted the source further than I could throw it, I wouldn't be spending so much time vetting it. It has been my experience that that particular source misrepresents what they display. If they haven't in this particular instance, I'll tell you, I'll be shocked.

In the mean time, I am going through it with a fine comb and I am looking at every square micron with a microscope.