Rothstein and Others "Transited to the East"
Posted: Fri Sep 04, 2026 11:30 pm
For the resettlement thesis, it has been challenged to find one person transited through the Reinhardt camps to the east. A while back, it was claimed that one was indeed found, Siegmund Rothstein. Some mainstream sources described him has dying in both Treblinka and Minsk. This led to the idea that perhaps he didn't actually die in Treblinka but was transited through to Minsk and died there. Here are the original articles on it:
https://codoh.com/library/document/from ... sit-cases/
https://codoh.com/library/document/one- ... -survivor/
However, this was not accepted by the Orthodox side. Here are some HC articles arguing against the validity of using it:
https://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot ... anard.html
https://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot ... onist.html
The argument against it is that you can't just take what the mainstream sources say without looking at the underlying sources. It's argued that what really happened was that the underlying sources contradicted each other, and that one was wrong.
Some of the sources Sergey cited said that he was transferred to Maly Trostenets, but he said this was an error. Trostenets was of course considered an extermination camp, so perhaps not the best case for revisionists.
I also found this post on the International Skeptics forum that found what the poster said were the underlying sources:
https://internationalskeptics.com/forum ... 0/page-113
According to that post, there are four sources in total, 2 saying he went to Treblinka and 2 saying he went to Minsk. Unless he left it out, they apparently don't say anything about Maly Trostenets. Sergey indicated the Yizkor book said he winded up in Maly Trostenets, but this forum poster doesn't give that impression. I'll leave that open, since I haven't checked it. The other Minsk source apparently doesn't say he died, but got lost in Minsk, which leaves open death but it's not necessary.
The main issue here is that these are mainly memorial books, not primary sources. However, I don't think this makes them completely unusable. Primary sources would of course be better though. Sanning for example has used a lot of secondary sources in his works and Butz himself says this makes the nature of his work "tentative". However, I would say the use of such an approach is not to say with certainty what happened, but to just show that there may have been something there at one time that bubbled up in the sources we have today. It's mainly a defense against the other side saying we have nothing. No, we don't have nothing. Maybe it's not enough to prove our case by itself, but it just shows that what you're saying as an argument against us doesn't hold up, whether we're talking about resettlement or demographics, there is enough uncertainty there that you can't stake your whole position on it.
So what are these sources based on? The truth is, we don't know. They could be based on reliable sources or perhaps not.
More recently, another article was posted that built off the Rothstein information and looked for others within the same place and time:
https://codoh.com/library/document/from ... sit-cases/
This article claims we have 38 examples similar to Rothstein. If you go through some of the names, the Yad Vashem pages do give the impression that they passed through Treblinka and went to Minsk. Take this one for example:
https://collections.yadvashem.org/en/names/14755651
It literally says that she went to Theresienstadt, Treblinka, and Minsk! It feels kind of surreal that it's just laid out there like that on a Yad Vashem page.
One of them, Elise Lippmann, has signed testimony from her brother that she died in Minsk, which is much better than a memorial book. The document is available on her page.
https://collections.yadvashem.org/en/names/13326223
She was also on the deportation list that supposedly went to Treblinka as well.
In the codoh article, it says it's making a distinction between Maly Trostenets and Minsk City. If Rothstein was sent to Trostenets, then supposedly the others on the same train were too. Maybe they hopped off the train from the camp and were moved to the city which is a few miles away? That is of course me trying to synthesize all these secondary sources, some of which may not be accurate.
On these pages, there is a "source collection" that is apparently what the sources are for the page. If you want to disprove the implications of what these Yad Vashem pages are saying, that's probably where you should go. Maybe some defenders of the orthodoxy can go through these sources and explain how we're misinterpreting these! I'm completely open to that. Worst case scenario, I'll just have to stick with Jack Spiegel.
https://codoh.com/library/document/from ... sit-cases/
https://codoh.com/library/document/one- ... -survivor/
However, this was not accepted by the Orthodox side. Here are some HC articles arguing against the validity of using it:
https://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot ... anard.html
https://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot ... onist.html
The argument against it is that you can't just take what the mainstream sources say without looking at the underlying sources. It's argued that what really happened was that the underlying sources contradicted each other, and that one was wrong.
Some of the sources Sergey cited said that he was transferred to Maly Trostenets, but he said this was an error. Trostenets was of course considered an extermination camp, so perhaps not the best case for revisionists.
I also found this post on the International Skeptics forum that found what the poster said were the underlying sources:
https://internationalskeptics.com/forum ... 0/page-113
According to that post, there are four sources in total, 2 saying he went to Treblinka and 2 saying he went to Minsk. Unless he left it out, they apparently don't say anything about Maly Trostenets. Sergey indicated the Yizkor book said he winded up in Maly Trostenets, but this forum poster doesn't give that impression. I'll leave that open, since I haven't checked it. The other Minsk source apparently doesn't say he died, but got lost in Minsk, which leaves open death but it's not necessary.
The main issue here is that these are mainly memorial books, not primary sources. However, I don't think this makes them completely unusable. Primary sources would of course be better though. Sanning for example has used a lot of secondary sources in his works and Butz himself says this makes the nature of his work "tentative". However, I would say the use of such an approach is not to say with certainty what happened, but to just show that there may have been something there at one time that bubbled up in the sources we have today. It's mainly a defense against the other side saying we have nothing. No, we don't have nothing. Maybe it's not enough to prove our case by itself, but it just shows that what you're saying as an argument against us doesn't hold up, whether we're talking about resettlement or demographics, there is enough uncertainty there that you can't stake your whole position on it.
So what are these sources based on? The truth is, we don't know. They could be based on reliable sources or perhaps not.
More recently, another article was posted that built off the Rothstein information and looked for others within the same place and time:
https://codoh.com/library/document/from ... sit-cases/
This article claims we have 38 examples similar to Rothstein. If you go through some of the names, the Yad Vashem pages do give the impression that they passed through Treblinka and went to Minsk. Take this one for example:
https://collections.yadvashem.org/en/names/14755651
It literally says that she went to Theresienstadt, Treblinka, and Minsk! It feels kind of surreal that it's just laid out there like that on a Yad Vashem page.
One of them, Elise Lippmann, has signed testimony from her brother that she died in Minsk, which is much better than a memorial book. The document is available on her page.
https://collections.yadvashem.org/en/names/13326223
She was also on the deportation list that supposedly went to Treblinka as well.
In the codoh article, it says it's making a distinction between Maly Trostenets and Minsk City. If Rothstein was sent to Trostenets, then supposedly the others on the same train were too. Maybe they hopped off the train from the camp and were moved to the city which is a few miles away? That is of course me trying to synthesize all these secondary sources, some of which may not be accurate.
On these pages, there is a "source collection" that is apparently what the sources are for the page. If you want to disprove the implications of what these Yad Vashem pages are saying, that's probably where you should go. Maybe some defenders of the orthodoxy can go through these sources and explain how we're misinterpreting these! I'm completely open to that. Worst case scenario, I'll just have to stick with Jack Spiegel.