Revisionism's flawed methodology

[Nazgul]

Others were registered at the camp and any transports to other camps were also recorded.

This is only for SS run camps, the labour camps if they had a similar system is not known due to lost records.

As the Nazis knew the war was lost, there was mass destruction of documents, but whilst the Einsatzgruppen destroyed their records

This is understable due to the involvement of the RSHA. What is also important is the loss of a vast amount of records not related to security such as the Todt and Schmelt organisations who ran labour camps as well as the Fplo records of transports apart from normal train schedules. Many records were also destroyed or held somewhere by Soviet interdiction post war.

It was the group not selected to work who disappeared from the records.

This group is regarded as Sonderbehandlung (special treatment) 14f13, or concentration camp euthanasia of invalid inmates, the decrepit, not just restricted to Jews. This aktion was performed at camps like Sobibor before häftling were sent onwards. This certainly happened at Sobibor and by law needed T4 personnel. Anyone else performing euthansia could be investigated by SS RSHA Kriminalpolizei and possible charged with murder and face SS Judge Konrad Morgan. The outcome could be a death sentence.

[TlsMS93]

Claiming that if you can't find a document it's because it was destroyed is the same as claiming dark energy in cosmology, an ad hoc explanation to explain gaps in the theory. And what's even more bizarre is that the perpetrators left evidence behind, which even surprised the judges. Both cases could be evidence of disinformation and planted information. These reports of events found in Berlin were in the Soviet sphere and we know almost nothing about the still-sealed Russian documents, just like in the Vatican. If you open them there, everything collapses.

[Nazgul]

These reports of events found in Berlin were in the Soviet sphere and we know almost nothing about the still-sealed Russian documents, just like in the Vatican. If you open them there, everything collapses.

Their are rumours, significant ones, that many collected Soviet documents from Poland and Eastern Germany, perhaps elsewhere are held in the archives at Kapustin Yar. This is like the Holy Grail, or the arc of the covenant. Slightly more real perhaps?

[Nessie]

Claiming that if you can't find a document it's because it was destroyed is the same as claiming dark energy in cosmology, an ad hoc explanation to explain gaps in the theory.

Revisionists claim lots of documents were destroyed, look at what Nazgul is claiming in this thread!

"...the Russian Commission a staff of over 11 million were involved with the collection or destruction of such..."

I take it you agree that is an ad hoc explanation! Historians, who cannot find any existence of documents that originated inside the AR camps, are reasonably claiming that is because they were destroyed.

And what's even more bizarre is that the perpetrators left evidence behind...

You find it bizarre criminals were unable to cover up all the evidence of their crimes?

, which even surprised the judges.

Can you example that?

Both cases could be evidence of disinformation and planted information. These reports of events found in Berlin were in the Soviet sphere and we know almost nothing about the still-sealed Russian documents, just like in the Vatican. If you open them there, everything collapses.

Can you evidence "still-sealed Russian documents"? From Holocaust handbooks and the introduction to one of Mattogno's works;

https://holocausthandbooks.com/book/cen ... auschwitz/

"Ever since the Russian authorities granted western historians access to their state archives in the early 1990s, the files of the Central Construction Office of the Waffen-SS and Police Auschwitz, stored in a Moscow archive, have attracted the attention of scholars who are researching the history of this most infamous of all German war-time camps."

[TlsMS93]

Can you exemplify this?

At the Nuremberg trials where they were used as evidence, "even this court was surprised at how conspicuously vague the existing 'USSR Event Reports' were with respect to location, point in time, units, and other details such as troop strength, armaments, auxiliary forces, logistics etc. Merely the number on a piece of paper, which was written or is supposed to have been written in Berlin, is too little a proof for a historian, even if the report itself is possibly authentic and only the number legible today on this piece of paper may have been manipulated, which at a closer examination of the documents seems to be the case."

Carlo Mattogno, Jürgen Graf. Treblinka Extermination Camp or Transit Camp?: Chapter VII: The Role of the Einsatzgruppen in the Occupied Eastern Territories

There is no surprise regarding the existence of the reports, but their lack of accuracy would invalidate the surprise at having found copies even in the hands of a minister like Baldur von Sirac?

[Nessie]

Can you exemplify this?

At the Nuremberg trials where they were used as evidence, "even this court was surprised at how conspicuously vague the existing 'USSR Event Reports' were with respect to location, point in time, units, and other details such as troop strength, armaments, auxiliary forces, logistics etc. Merely the number on a piece of paper, which was written or is supposed to have been written in Berlin, is too little a proof for a historian, even if the report itself is possibly authentic and only the number legible today on this piece of paper may have been manipulated, which at a closer examination of the documents seems to be the case."

Carlo Mattogno, Jürgen Graf. Treblinka Extermination Camp or Transit Camp?: Chapter VII: The Role of the Einsatzgruppen in the Occupied Eastern Territories

There is no surprise regarding the existence of the reports, but their lack of accuracy would invalidate the surprise at having found copies even in the hands of a minister like Baldur von Sirac?

The Soviet reports were of poor quality, with limited information, which is why revisionist suggestions that they ran the hoax make no sense. Nazgul claiming over 11 million Soviets were active in the Holocaust hoax, does not square with complaints they were producing vague reports.

[TlsMS93]

So you're admitting that the Einsatzgruppen event reports were "worked" by the Soviets? That alone takes away 1/3 of the Holocaust.

[Archie]

Can you exemplify this?

At the Nuremberg trials where they were used as evidence, "even this court was surprised at how conspicuously vague the existing 'USSR Event Reports' were with respect to location, point in time, units, and other details such as troop strength, armaments, auxiliary forces, logistics etc. Merely the number on a piece of paper, which was written or is supposed to have been written in Berlin, is too little a proof for a historian, even if the report itself is possibly authentic and only the number legible today on this piece of paper may have been manipulated, which at a closer examination of the documents seems to be the case."

Carlo Mattogno, Jürgen Graf. Treblinka Extermination Camp or Transit Camp?: Chapter VII: The Role of the Einsatzgruppen in the Occupied Eastern Territories

There is no surprise regarding the existence of the reports, but their lack of accuracy would invalidate the surprise at having found copies even in the hands of a minister like Baldur von Sirac?

The Soviet reports were of poor quality, with limited information, which is why revisionist suggestions that they ran the hoax make no sense. Nazgul claiming over 11 million Soviets were active in the Holocaust hoax, does not square with complaints they were producing vague reports.

Admitting that the Soviet reports were of "poor quality" seems to me like a more significant concession than you are letting on. First off, "limited information"? Lmao. That's not why the reports were bad. In some ways the Soviets had the absolute best information because they were the first to see those sites. If nearly all of the killing sites were in territory behind the Iron Curtain and if all those sites were "liberated" by the Soviets whom you admit were incompetent (seems you are still pretending like they were honest for some reason), then how is that not excellent grounds for at the very least having some caution in accepting the claims?

Based on prior conversations with you, I assume you are going to say the Poles saved the day. The Soviets got it wrong but it's okay because the Poles. Is that your explanation?

[Nessie]

.....
The Soviet reports were of poor quality, with limited information, which is why revisionist suggestions that they ran the hoax make no sense. Nazgul claiming over 11 million Soviets were active in the Holocaust hoax, does not square with complaints they were producing vague reports.

Admitting that the Soviet reports were of "poor quality" seems to me like a more significant concession than you are letting on. First off, "limited information"? Lmao. That's not why the reports were bad.

I have read many comments by historians about the poor quality of Soviet reports and evidencing, that they produced for the war crimes trials. That is a widely accepted fact.

In some ways the Soviets had the absolute best information because they were the first to see those sites. If nearly all of the killing sites were in territory behind the Iron Curtain and if all those sites were "liberated" by the Soviets whom you admit were incompetent (seems you are still pretending like they were honest for some reason), then how is that not excellent grounds for at the very least having some caution in accepting the claims?

They did have the best "information" in terms of the sites themselves. Their scenes of crime investigations were cursory at best, with no effort to ensure proper gathering, recording and preservation of evidence.

They did not have the best "information" in terms of witnesses, because no one wanted to speak to them. Certainly no Nazi and also the Jews who worked at the camps, who, despite being under pain of death, had been collaborators and who had assisted the Nazis in the killings.

Based on prior conversations with you, I assume you are going to say the Poles saved the day. The Soviets got it wrong but it's okay because the Poles. Is that your explanation?

The Poles, entirely independent of the Soviets, had been reporting on the death camps from 1941 and throughout their existence. They had been gathering witness evidence and had run the first trial, for staff at Majdanek, in 1944. Within months of the end of the war, they organised more thorough site examinations at the death camps. After Poland formally entered the Soviet bloc, the Soviets left them to continue to run many camp and war crimes trials and to preserve and memorialise the death camp sites.

In terms of evidence gathering, the Poles did "save the day", which make revisionist suggestions it was a Soviet hoax all the more unproven. The other major source of evidence was the Germans, in particular the West Germans. The majority of camp specific trials took place in West Germany, resulting in dozens of admissions and important testimony describing what took place.

The Soviet run war crimes trials were, not coincidentally, often for Ukrainians who had worked at the death camps. The Soviet leadership was, and even now with Putin and Russia, fearful of Ukrainian fascist, Nazi sympathise. It makes no sense, that when Ukraine did gain independence in 1991, that it continued to admit to its citizen's involvement with the Nazis, rather than expose the Soviet hoax.

This all falls under the OP, point 6, that revisionists fail to consider the scale of conspiracy they are alleging. The Soviets, because of its size and control, appear to be a good source to blame for running a mass murder hoax. But, it was the Poles, independent of the Soviets, who started the mass gassing claims, who did the bulk of evidence gathering and were the source of the majority of publicity about mass killings. The Soviets showed little interest in the fate and suffering of the Jews. They produced no official histories of the Holocaust and erected no memorials. The majority of Soviet citizens, who were Jewish and murdered by the Nazis, were killed by the Einsatzgruppen, yet it was the Americans who ran the EG trials.

A revisionist claim that Poland fooled the world, with some help from West Germany and the USA, into believing that the Nazis were mass murdering Jews by gassings and shootings, is obviously not going to get any traction. So, revisionists try to suggest it was a Soviet plot, like Katyn, even though Katyn fell apart and that hoax was revealed and admitted to. That poor quality of Soviet work, that you think is a significant concession, is why the Katyn hoax failed. The Soviets were both not able to, and not interested in, managing a hoax of the mass killing of millions of people.

[TlsMS93]

Richard Böck’s testimony about the gassings is very reliable. He mentions blue mist and people stacked in a pyramid shape, all of which is supported by concurrent evidence.

Eyewitness testimony at the 1985 trial of Ernst Zündel in Toronto has also proven unreliable. Arnold Friedman, a 56-year-old Hungarian Jew, was named as an eyewitness to the homicidal gassings at Auschwitz. Friedman testified that while at Auschwitz he saw “four-meter flames” shooting out of the chimneys of the crematorium. Douglas Christie, Zündel’s defense attorney, showed Friedman scientific evidence that the crematoria at Auschwitz were designed to emit no smoke, flames, ash, or odor. Friedman eventually agreed with Christie that he could not have witnessed Jews being burned in the Auschwitz crematoria.

Rudolf Vrba, who escaped from Auschwitz in April 1944, was a world-famous eyewitness to the murderous gas chambers at Auschwitz. Vrba confessed during his testimony at the Zündel trial that his book I Cannot Forgive was “an artistic image […] not a document for the court.” Vrba testified that he never witnessed anyone being gassed at Auschwitz, but had only heard rumors. Furthermore, Vrba admitted that his written and pictorial descriptions of the Auschwitz crematorium were mere guesses, based “on what I heard it was like.” Vrba proved to be an unreliable witness who could only cite hearsay evidence of the so-called Holocaust.

Another witness for the prosecution at this trial was Dennis Urstein, who claimed to have seen bodies removed from the gas chamber at Auschwitz. Urstein described the bodies as “grayish and greenish” in color. However, people who died from Zyklon-B poisoning turn a bright cherry red color. Urstein also claimed that he was not wearing protective clothing when he helped dispose of bodies in the gas chamber. If that had been the case, he too would have died very soon. Urstein was exposed by Douglas Christie as a completely unreliable witness. Henry Leader was another witness in this trial who got the color of the bodies of the alleged Zyklon-B gas victims wrong. Leader said that the color of the gassing victims was blue. The failure of Jewish eyewitnesses to give credible testimony at the 1985 trial of Ernst Zündel led Alan Dershowitz to write that the trial was “a total victory for Holocaust deniers and a total disaster for Holocaust survivors and the Jewish people.”

But the revisionist methodology is flawed.

[Nessie]

Richard Böck’s testimony about the gassings is very reliable. He mentions blue mist and people stacked in a pyramid shape, all of which is supported by concurrent evidence.

Eyewitness testimony at the 1985 trial of Ernst Zündel in Toronto has also proven unreliable. Arnold Friedman, a 56-year-old Hungarian Jew, was named as an eyewitness to the homicidal gassings at Auschwitz. Friedman testified that while at Auschwitz he saw “four-meter flames” shooting out of the chimneys of the crematorium. Douglas Christie, Zündel’s defense attorney, showed Friedman scientific evidence that the crematoria at Auschwitz were designed to emit no smoke, flames, ash, or odor. Friedman eventually agreed with Christie that he could not have witnessed Jews being burned in the Auschwitz crematoria.

Rudolf Vrba, who escaped from Auschwitz in April 1944, was a world-famous eyewitness to the murderous gas chambers at Auschwitz. Vrba confessed during his testimony at the Zündel trial that his book I Cannot Forgive was “an artistic image […] not a document for the court.” Vrba testified that he never witnessed anyone being gassed at Auschwitz, but had only heard rumors. Furthermore, Vrba admitted that his written and pictorial descriptions of the Auschwitz crematorium were mere guesses, based “on what I heard it was like.” Vrba proved to be an unreliable witness who could only cite hearsay evidence of the so-called Holocaust.

Another witness for the prosecution at this trial was Dennis Urstein, who claimed to have seen bodies removed from the gas chamber at Auschwitz. Urstein described the bodies as “grayish and greenish” in color. However, people who died from Zyklon-B poisoning turn a bright cherry red color. Urstein also claimed that he was not wearing protective clothing when he helped dispose of bodies in the gas chamber. If that had been the case, he too would have died very soon. Urstein was exposed by Douglas Christie as a completely unreliable witness. Henry Leader was another witness in this trial who got the color of the bodies of the alleged Zyklon-B gas victims wrong. Leader said that the color of the gassing victims was blue. The failure of Jewish eyewitnesses to give credible testimony at the 1985 trial of Ernst Zündel led Alan Dershowitz to write that the trial was “a total victory for Holocaust deniers and a total disaster for Holocaust survivors and the Jewish people.”

But the revisionist methodology is flawed.

People giving evidence in 1985, of what they saw and heard about in 1943-4, are not going to be particularly reliable. Their memories will have faded and been contaminated by what they have subsequently heard about events at the camp at that time. Vrba, like many witnesses, did present hearsay as if he saw the events he described. All Christie did, was show to the court that witness recollections were not reliable, which will have come as no surprised at all to the Judge, or anyone with any court experience, or knowledge of the numerous studies about memory and recollection.

That the witnesses were unreliable, does not therefore mean that people were not mass gassed at A-B. It just means their memory of detail, is unreliable and that they have mixed what they were told and what they saw into their subconsciousness. That comes as quite a revelation to revisionists, as if they have uncovered a gotcha. In fact, it is perfectly normal for witnesses.

The Zundel trial did not produce any witnesses who were at A-B, who spoke to working inside the Kremas, who said that instead of gassings, some other process took place. Christie's cross examination of the witness who were at the camp, did not result in any admissions, accidental or otherwise, of an organised collusion of witness to lie about mass gassings. The mass gassing narrative was not disproved, and the key event of the Kremas being used to mass gas people remained unchallenged at the trial.

This is yet another example of revisionists cherry-picking scraps, to reinforced their desired belief.

[Nazgul]

The Zundel trial did not produce any witnesses who were at A-B, who spoke to working inside the Kremas, who said that instead of gassings, some other process took place. Christie's cross examination of the witness who were at the camp, did not result in any admissions, accidental or otherwise, of an organised collusion of witness to lie about mass gassings. The mass gassing narrative was not disproved, and the key event of the Kremas being used to mass gas people remained unchallenged at the trial.

This is yet another example of revisionists cherry-picking scraps, to reinforced their desired belief.

People do not need to be in the Kremas; if there was mass murder going on they would not know anything except how to burn the corpses, their job. The people pulling out the corpses would have little idea how they died, just conjecture based upon rumour.

I side on the side of the author, a ramp Kapo who sent no one to the Kremas. Of course there are stories of trucks taking Jews down underground to be gassed. Neither of the fabrications of reality have any bearing on the truth.

[Nessie]

The Zundel trial did not produce any witnesses who were at A-B, who spoke to working inside the Kremas, who said that instead of gassings, some other process took place. Christie's cross examination of the witness who were at the camp, did not result in any admissions, accidental or otherwise, of an organised collusion of witness to lie about mass gassings. The mass gassing narrative was not disproved, and the key event of the Kremas being used to mass gas people remained unchallenged at the trial.

This is yet another example of revisionists cherry-picking scraps, to reinforced their desired belief.

People do not need to be in the Kremas;

To be an eyewitness to what happened there, they do. Revisionism has zero such eyewitnesses and the ones they try to use, all speak to gassings!

...if there was mass murder going on they would not know anything except how to burn the corpses, their job. The people pulling out the corpses would have little idea how they died, just conjecture based upon rumour.

A strange assertion, with no examples from a named witness.

I side on the side of the author, a ramp Kapo who sent no one to the Kremas.

Quote and page number please. You ignore that I found a quote where he states people were sent to be gassed.

Of course there are stories of trucks taking Jews down underground to be gassed. Neither of the fabrications of reality have any bearing on the truth.

Your assertions, without specific quotes, are an example of the poor level of evidencing from revisionists.

[Hektor]

I can't respond to the entirety of this very muddled post at this moment.

But a big flaw here is assuming there is a single "revisionist methodology." The reality is that revisionists have a number of different approaches (historical, scientific, demographic, etc) and you are not engaging with any of them.

And are you really going to play dumb and pretend there aren't flaws in the traditional Holocaust historiography? Go see what Pressac says about it. Spoiler: he gives a very negative assessment.

Eta: Here are a couple of quotes from Pressac from his 1995 interview with Igounet.
...

It's butchering the meaning of the term methodology as well. Methodology is the field that deals with methods of enquiry. But there are always dimwits that use methodology as a more fancy sounding substitute for method or 'methodological' approach.

And you are of course right. Revisionists use various methods for their research or critique of claims. It also depends on the subject at hand. What is really drivel, though. Is the way the Holocaust Lobbyists established their Holocaust Thesis. It's as methodologically wrong and deceptive as it can get.