Part I
A review of
BELZEC
The Nazi Camp
For Jews In The Light
Of Archaeological
Sources
Excavations 1997-1998
By Andrezej Kola
=================
This book appears to be the ultimate culmination to the gradual appearance of accounts that reported on alleged archaeological studies done at the alleged mass extermination camp Belzec between 1997 and 1999.
The book is written by Andrezej Kola, professor of Archaeology in Poland at the University of Torun.
On the cover some antiquated images of the Star of David on some kind of material.
The book measures about 7 x 10 inches and is 85 pages long.
From 600,000 to 1,000,000 victims are said to have been mass exterminated at Belzec.
The first report on the alleged investigation to appear was some three years ago as a Associated Press news article written by Alan Elsner. Elsner who is associated with Holocaust institutions claims to have lost relatives at Belzec. Elsner employed a number of literary tricks, like writing between the lines which blended one statement to another to make it look like events and people would be associated. He even blended his initial reporting on the study into his comments about a upcoming visit by the Polish Premier who was going to meet with then President Clinton to make it all look like there was a connection.
The next thing to hit the circuit was less widely released. In fact it seems to have first hit the Holocaust trail as a file in NIZKOR . That would be a letter or such from a Robin O'Neill who is attached to some Judaic studies department at a school in England. In that letter O'Neill claimed to have had a number of 90 minute video tapes of the study adding on that he was hoping someone would show up to edit them. That was over three years ago and nothing forthcoming yet. In another couple of years and nothing forthcoming there can be no credible excuses for it. The only photograph the book of topic has on the actual probing operation is a photo of two guys in civies one with his pants rolled up handling a thin rod as a core sampler. One other place that has something is a website that shows two photos, each one of a stake in the ground captioned that they mark places were a probe was made -
http://holocaust-info.dk/belzec/belzec_today/image5.htm
http://holocaust-info.dk/belzec/belzec_today/image6.htm
Then we got a treatment from a Michael Tragenza supposed to be a historian from England. That one was almost totally dedicated to listing the dimensions and scope of some 33 mass graves they say they found at the location via taking core samples which Kola's book focuses on. Kola only refers to Tregenza twice in his book each time in a footnote to say Tregenza used a metal detector.
Anyone who has recognized the revisionist conclusions would have to marvel at the energy and commitment persons will go through in order to perpetuate the lie.
The publication is sponsored and published by 'The Council for the Protection of Memory of Combat and Martyrdom' and the 'United States Holocaust Memorial Museum' which therefore would connect the corruption directly to those two organizations.
It begins with a Forward by Miles Lerman, Chairman Emeritus, United States Holocaust Memorial Council.
He starts off, "For us, who have survived the horrors of the Holocaust, Belzec represents one of the most painful locations to this tragedy" and ends the paragraph, "This place is one of the most tragic burial grounds of out civilization."
In the second paragraph he seems to have to admit, "And yet, of the six extermination camps, Belzec seems to be the most forgotten. It is the camp with the least available information and the smallest number of survivors, who still wait to be satisfactorily commemorated. There is no comprehensive scientific study about what happened here."
We could get the idea from what Lerman says that there have been 'comprehensive scientific' studies at other camps but that's not the case.
It appears that Lerman's overall driving point would be to give an excuse for why the alleged study was initiated in the first place, to set the stage for a comprehensive memorial and not to establish verification that the Holocaust is true. He says, in order to find a suitable place for the memorial they were out "to exclude areas with human remains" so they wouldn't "violate the memory" of those they were to commemorate. According to Lerner, the whole thing was done in order to find out where there weren't any mass graves. Holocaust narrative can be down right funny at times.
Right away we get into Kola's commentary under 'The range of the studies'. He starts off, "The death camp for Jews in Belzec, regarded as one of the biggest death camps made by Germans during World War II has not been fully described in historical literature until now." He then gets around to saying, "Until recently the general knowledge on the way the camp in Belzec had functioned, was based on report of few witnesses, mainly inhabitants of nearby Tomaszow-Lubelski and Belzec itself, whose evidences were enclosed in an investigation record taken after World War II."
That would be where Kola first refers to some report of a study said to have been carried out just after the war in October of 1945. He goes on to say, "During the prosecutors investigation executed in 1945, the area of the camp, closed down by Germans in December 1942 was inspected, the place of supposed mass graves was dug out and judicial-medical examinations of the body remains, excavated during the works were made." Here Kola refers to footnote 3 found at the bottom of the page where we are given a little more details on the supposed study and report. That it was carried out between Oct. 10 and Oct.13 of 1945, which would be a four day period. He includes as to what took place, "protocol of excavating the cemetery ... together with the protocol of the inspection and court medical opinion."
Since Lerman had said there were "no comprehensive scientific studies" done to the place we have to wonder what this 1945 investigation was all about.
This 1945 report is not to be found in any of the vast quantities of Holocaust literature and Kola only refers to it fleetingly. He ends up his paragraph referring to the maps that are associated with the 1945 report, "Basing on those facts [1945 study] the attempt of reconstruction of the camp was undertaken, suspecting two phases of its existence from half of March 1942 till December of the same year (fig.2, 3,)." The figures are two maps "according to E.Sztrojt" one showing the "first phase" and the other showing the "second stage". Kola goes on to say, "The reconstruction is quite different from the camp plan made on the base of R.Reder report (probably the only survivor for the camp) fig.4." The maps by the two different people are like night and day, bearing absolutely no resemblance to each other and even contradicting Kola's own map of the findings which he shows later on. (Sztrojt's maps show for the 'first stage' the gas chamber down near the bottom of the hill and the one for the 'second stage' shows the gas chamber further up the hill. In each one we can see a line drawn from the gas chambers going up the hill to one large block identified as the mass graves.)
- Check out this website for the maps by Reder and Kola and a few others. Sztrojt's map would be the one listed as from Arad's book - http://www.deathcamps.org/belzec/maps.html
Belzec/Kola - Going to extremes to sell the lie
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Part II
This 1945 investigation would no doubt be in the same ilk as those for other camps where the original reports were so blatant just about everything in them had to be swept far under the carpet and whole new tales made up. You will never see any Holocaust 'historians' referring to any of the initial reports.
Surprisingly Kola inserts a footnote number when mentioning the rail spur, "6. The side track existed there before 1940, because it is visible in air pictures taken on 26th May (the picture copy in the Archives of the ROPWIM): Air Photo Evidence...pg. 93,94:" which would be revisionist John Ball's book.
Presenting the two maps that are totally contrary to each other and to his own map we should wonder why Kola would do that. Reder's map shows, of all things, the rail track going into the middle of the camp emerging from a dense tree forest. Since there is no direction indicator on the map we have to study it for awhile to determine what would be north or south, east or west. Reder has mass graves shown totally in orderly lines and evenly spaced with 26 shown across the upper side of the camp and six more down the slope towards the bottom below the gas chambers. Kola's map will show mass graves having been concentrated almost everywhere else but where Reder and the other map has them. In fact Reder's map shows the area completely surrounded by trees which should make one think he never even saw the place since all the space at the bottom of the slope was totally wide open including where the rail spur was. Check out the 1940 - 1944 aerial recon shots on the above website.
That we get up to page 7. From there on to page 13 Kola more or less continues on with his introduction among a number of photos. Along the way he has a footnote that tells us about a full array of archaeologists that assisted in the study along with students, "volunteer historian" Tregenza and some unemployed town folk to do the manual work.
Kola also inserts in a tormented fashion that the study was intended for the reason of establishing monuments and alludes to that theme a couple of times more later on. Evidently they wouldn't want anyone to think it was to prove the Holocaust because that would establish a precedent and beg for some real professional documentation. It would also indicate they might be admitting that whatever there is on the Holocaust isn't enough. Then too it would beg the question of why, if it was to prove the Holocaust, didn't they invite in impartial parties to witness it all?
In spite of the several times the reader is told the study was to establish a memorial, like disclaimers, the book is obviously intended to present something that would verify the Holocaust story.
The first photo accompanying Kola's introduction is one of a rail "engine house" which is still in existence. That is where the victims belongings were supposed to have been stored. The next three are of the present memorial monuments. The next one is a photo of what was supposed to have been a information board to the arriving Jews. The next photo would be the one of the two guys in civilian clothes, one with his pants rolled up handling a thin pipe driven into the ground. In spite of the impressive listing of others being involved with the alleged study the two guys are the only ones shown. That would be the only photo in the book that would document that there was some 2220 corings performed that Kola says. The next photo is one of the present entrance gate to the grounds.
To see what these memorials and gates look like check it out on -
http://holocaust-info.dk/belzec/belzec_today/
Kola advances the idea that the place was totally hidden and obscure to outside observation, "The pine forest from the north and east parts included in the camp area, which has been standing there up to the present days, made a natural protection of the execution place." The reality is that the two aerial recon shots rooted out from U.S. National Archives by John Ball, and referred to and shown in the book by Kola himself show that the place was totally treed over in 1940 and almost totally bared by 1944. Further facts are that the whole area is on a slope that rises some 40 feet from the bottom and there is an opposing slope going up the other way that rises up over 100 feet and thus some 60 feet higher than the alleged camp site, this opposing slope totally cleared for agriculture and would have permitted a panoramic view of whatever would have been going on directly across the shallow valley. Then we would have to assume that trees were cut down to make room for whatever buildings and in order to dig mass graves. It would be a matter of the more the extermination process went on the more trees that would have to have been cut down. Or the more exterminations the more exposed it would all have been.
Either Kola's map or Reder's would show us to what extent the place would have been cleared of trees. All the initial clearing would have been done by the late fall of 1942, according to Holocaust facts that tell us that's when all the mass extermination stopped. Then there would be the problem of when the Germans dug all the bodies back up and cremated them. The more cremated the more wood and the less there would be to hide the extermination process.
Near the bottom of the same page we have Kola writing, "At that place [at the lower part near the rail spur] a building of forestry authorities was erected after the war, which has existed until now whereas in the place of former warehouses a sawmill has been erected." The fact is, going by the aerial recon shots the rail spur was already in place in 1940, the slope was totally forested and then the 1944 photo shows almost all the trees gone which would paint the picture that the spur was there as a shunt or was put there to facilitate a logging operation that began before the war was over. That information causes a problem also. If they did get around to logging the slope what would have been left to cremate the bodies. Then too, where were all the logs stored if they weren't used for cremations? Or, was the logging operation going on while the mass exterminations were taking place?
Kola tells the reader that the Germans used wood soaked with flammable material to cremate the hundreds of thousands of bodies. It would only be logical to assume the wood would have been obtained from the slope. Thus we would have fresh cut wood as the fuel which would have been a problem to burn even if soaked with flammable material. Another major hurdle would have been the stump removal. Tree stumps are no easy thing to remove being anchored down by root systems radiating out and downwards. They would have to have been cut out near the surface by digging down around the stump, cutting off the roots at the base just to get it out and then the rest of the roots would have still been in the ground to cause agonizing resistance to digging any kind of excavation. One would think that just dealing with the trees, the cutting down, the cutting into sections to burn, removing the stumps and cutting down through the remaining root systems as they dug out foundations and mass graves would have been a epic procedure deserving of an explanation in stead of none whatsoever.
Continuing on Kola leads into telling the reader about the drillings and claims there "were chemical analysis and microscopic studies of samples" to determine what was found referring to a footnote No. 10 which tells us the archives are in ROPWiM. Kola explains the reason for that as, "They were made to verify the conclusions emerging from the archaeological analysis".
He describes how they used narrow and wide scope drills. The narrow gauge probes would be to find structures and those would be what we see the two guys in the photo using. Kola describes the wider scope drills as being 2.5 inches which would be what he says were used to take core samples. No photograph of these drills are presented in the book.
Seemingly in order to defend and justify the use of such drills in the quest for mass graves he lies outright or by omission by saying. "Using that type of drills in mass graves location had turned out to be useful in archaeological exhumation works in cemeteries of Polish officers murdered by NKWD [Russians] in spring of 1940 within the works of the so called 'Katyn crime'". Kola doesn't mention who did the drilling and he doesn't mention that the Germans were the ones that did a full blown professional study in 1943 at the place. Aside from the extensive dig the Germans did, they invited in forensic experts and journalists from other nations to witness the whole thing and photographed the whole procedure whereas it appears Kola working with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum went about doing whatever they did unannounced with the results only suddenly showing up.
Already Kola has been referring to what they found in the core samples which would be ashes, bone fragments and quite often masses of "wax fat". The latter would be the result of unburned bodies as Kola says due to compression and being buried near the water table. In one of the initial reports where it says they found evidence of remains of tens of thousands of bodies we were told that the core samplers hit layers of bone so dense that the drills couldn't penetrate. With all this we would have to recognize that if such evidence did and does exist it would be the mother of all Holocaust verification. So awesome that it would settle the controversy so utterly that all skeptics would have to retreat and never to be heard of again.
This 1945 investigation would no doubt be in the same ilk as those for other camps where the original reports were so blatant just about everything in them had to be swept far under the carpet and whole new tales made up. You will never see any Holocaust 'historians' referring to any of the initial reports.
Surprisingly Kola inserts a footnote number when mentioning the rail spur, "6. The side track existed there before 1940, because it is visible in air pictures taken on 26th May (the picture copy in the Archives of the ROPWIM): Air Photo Evidence...pg. 93,94:" which would be revisionist John Ball's book.
Presenting the two maps that are totally contrary to each other and to his own map we should wonder why Kola would do that. Reder's map shows, of all things, the rail track going into the middle of the camp emerging from a dense tree forest. Since there is no direction indicator on the map we have to study it for awhile to determine what would be north or south, east or west. Reder has mass graves shown totally in orderly lines and evenly spaced with 26 shown across the upper side of the camp and six more down the slope towards the bottom below the gas chambers. Kola's map will show mass graves having been concentrated almost everywhere else but where Reder and the other map has them. In fact Reder's map shows the area completely surrounded by trees which should make one think he never even saw the place since all the space at the bottom of the slope was totally wide open including where the rail spur was. Check out the 1940 - 1944 aerial recon shots on the above website.
That we get up to page 7. From there on to page 13 Kola more or less continues on with his introduction among a number of photos. Along the way he has a footnote that tells us about a full array of archaeologists that assisted in the study along with students, "volunteer historian" Tregenza and some unemployed town folk to do the manual work.
Kola also inserts in a tormented fashion that the study was intended for the reason of establishing monuments and alludes to that theme a couple of times more later on. Evidently they wouldn't want anyone to think it was to prove the Holocaust because that would establish a precedent and beg for some real professional documentation. It would also indicate they might be admitting that whatever there is on the Holocaust isn't enough. Then too it would beg the question of why, if it was to prove the Holocaust, didn't they invite in impartial parties to witness it all?
In spite of the several times the reader is told the study was to establish a memorial, like disclaimers, the book is obviously intended to present something that would verify the Holocaust story.
The first photo accompanying Kola's introduction is one of a rail "engine house" which is still in existence. That is where the victims belongings were supposed to have been stored. The next three are of the present memorial monuments. The next one is a photo of what was supposed to have been a information board to the arriving Jews. The next photo would be the one of the two guys in civilian clothes, one with his pants rolled up handling a thin pipe driven into the ground. In spite of the impressive listing of others being involved with the alleged study the two guys are the only ones shown. That would be the only photo in the book that would document that there was some 2220 corings performed that Kola says. The next photo is one of the present entrance gate to the grounds.
To see what these memorials and gates look like check it out on -
http://holocaust-info.dk/belzec/belzec_today/
Kola advances the idea that the place was totally hidden and obscure to outside observation, "The pine forest from the north and east parts included in the camp area, which has been standing there up to the present days, made a natural protection of the execution place." The reality is that the two aerial recon shots rooted out from U.S. National Archives by John Ball, and referred to and shown in the book by Kola himself show that the place was totally treed over in 1940 and almost totally bared by 1944. Further facts are that the whole area is on a slope that rises some 40 feet from the bottom and there is an opposing slope going up the other way that rises up over 100 feet and thus some 60 feet higher than the alleged camp site, this opposing slope totally cleared for agriculture and would have permitted a panoramic view of whatever would have been going on directly across the shallow valley. Then we would have to assume that trees were cut down to make room for whatever buildings and in order to dig mass graves. It would be a matter of the more the extermination process went on the more trees that would have to have been cut down. Or the more exterminations the more exposed it would all have been.
Either Kola's map or Reder's would show us to what extent the place would have been cleared of trees. All the initial clearing would have been done by the late fall of 1942, according to Holocaust facts that tell us that's when all the mass extermination stopped. Then there would be the problem of when the Germans dug all the bodies back up and cremated them. The more cremated the more wood and the less there would be to hide the extermination process.
Near the bottom of the same page we have Kola writing, "At that place [at the lower part near the rail spur] a building of forestry authorities was erected after the war, which has existed until now whereas in the place of former warehouses a sawmill has been erected." The fact is, going by the aerial recon shots the rail spur was already in place in 1940, the slope was totally forested and then the 1944 photo shows almost all the trees gone which would paint the picture that the spur was there as a shunt or was put there to facilitate a logging operation that began before the war was over. That information causes a problem also. If they did get around to logging the slope what would have been left to cremate the bodies. Then too, where were all the logs stored if they weren't used for cremations? Or, was the logging operation going on while the mass exterminations were taking place?
Kola tells the reader that the Germans used wood soaked with flammable material to cremate the hundreds of thousands of bodies. It would only be logical to assume the wood would have been obtained from the slope. Thus we would have fresh cut wood as the fuel which would have been a problem to burn even if soaked with flammable material. Another major hurdle would have been the stump removal. Tree stumps are no easy thing to remove being anchored down by root systems radiating out and downwards. They would have to have been cut out near the surface by digging down around the stump, cutting off the roots at the base just to get it out and then the rest of the roots would have still been in the ground to cause agonizing resistance to digging any kind of excavation. One would think that just dealing with the trees, the cutting down, the cutting into sections to burn, removing the stumps and cutting down through the remaining root systems as they dug out foundations and mass graves would have been a epic procedure deserving of an explanation in stead of none whatsoever.
Continuing on Kola leads into telling the reader about the drillings and claims there "were chemical analysis and microscopic studies of samples" to determine what was found referring to a footnote No. 10 which tells us the archives are in ROPWiM. Kola explains the reason for that as, "They were made to verify the conclusions emerging from the archaeological analysis".
He describes how they used narrow and wide scope drills. The narrow gauge probes would be to find structures and those would be what we see the two guys in the photo using. Kola describes the wider scope drills as being 2.5 inches which would be what he says were used to take core samples. No photograph of these drills are presented in the book.
Seemingly in order to defend and justify the use of such drills in the quest for mass graves he lies outright or by omission by saying. "Using that type of drills in mass graves location had turned out to be useful in archaeological exhumation works in cemeteries of Polish officers murdered by NKWD [Russians] in spring of 1940 within the works of the so called 'Katyn crime'". Kola doesn't mention who did the drilling and he doesn't mention that the Germans were the ones that did a full blown professional study in 1943 at the place. Aside from the extensive dig the Germans did, they invited in forensic experts and journalists from other nations to witness the whole thing and photographed the whole procedure whereas it appears Kola working with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum went about doing whatever they did unannounced with the results only suddenly showing up.
Already Kola has been referring to what they found in the core samples which would be ashes, bone fragments and quite often masses of "wax fat". The latter would be the result of unburned bodies as Kola says due to compression and being buried near the water table. In one of the initial reports where it says they found evidence of remains of tens of thousands of bodies we were told that the core samplers hit layers of bone so dense that the drills couldn't penetrate. With all this we would have to recognize that if such evidence did and does exist it would be the mother of all Holocaust verification. So awesome that it would settle the controversy so utterly that all skeptics would have to retreat and never to be heard of again.
Part III
The next 5 pages from page 14 to page 18 are dedicated to sketches of what the core samples wrought. This would be by way of sketched columns with various levels and contents indicated with dashes, slashes, exes and shading shown that we can match up with the legend.
Humus - Brown-Grey, Sandy Soil
Red Sand with Humus
Mixed Grey-White Sandy Soil
Burned Charcoal
Burned Human Bones
Human Bones And Wax Fat Mass
Brick Fragments
Ground Bed - Non-Mixed Soil
At the tops of the columns we have headings like "UC Object" which would mean 'Unidentified camp object' or "Graves".
Not one single photo of any core samples is shown. Just sketches.
Immediately following the pages with the sketches of the core samples we get Kola's map which by way of shading with parallel lines tells us the location and extent of the mass graves he says they found. As mentioned, the locations are more or less concentrated else where than where they are indicated on the other two maps presented by Kola. Not only that they don't correspond with any of the other number of maps drawn by whoever which Kola doesn't mention. Fact is, the locations of the concentrations seem to be all over the place ala 'chicken with head cut off' and Kola doesn't offer any explanation for it.
On page 20 immediately after his map we have Kola saying as to the original investigation in 1945. "The fact of burning the victims' bodies in Belzec during the second phase of the camp functioning was confirmed during the prosecutor's investigation in 1945."
Kola says as to the nature of the pits, what's in them and how they were established, "The excavations proved many layers of body ashes mixed with sand, which indicated the pits were used in many stages, each time covered with a new sand layer. One can suppose that the ashes filled the pits completely, and only a very thin layer of surface soil was used as a cover."
When considering the claims of the Holocaust story in general about what is supposed to have taken place at Belzec we should be taking into account how all the digging would have proceeded and what evidence for it should have been obvious to observation from outside and after it was all done.
We are told the pits could be dug out to a depth of some 4 to 5 meters (13 to 16 feet) and the total surface area of all the graves would have been thousands of square meters/yards. This would involve considerable digging and piles of the removed earth. No matter what conditions, when something is dug out and then put back in the surface never just flattens out to match the levels that existed before. If the soil is replaced and leveled off at the time it would settle down resulting in a depression. In order to have it all settle down to pre-existing levels to any reasonable degree the replaced soil would have to have been put back into the hole and piled on top which we would still have some signs since it wouldn't settle down evenly. Then too there is the big problem of digging out a hole and putting something else into it before refilling it, like bodies. That would result in substantial mounds of the earth remaining after the replacement and settlement.
Whenever considering what the conditions would have been ala Kola we should keep in mind the logistics of digging out a pit. Not bothering to lean on Kola's numbers of 4 to 5 meters (13 to 16 feet) deep we could just fancy a ten foot hole. A fairly deep hole and everything that these Holocaust 'facts" are telling us would pose some significant complications.
This would include wondering how does one go about digging a hole in sand and keeps the sides from caving in? In order to dig a hole to some depth in sand would require shoring up the sides or digging the hole out much further than the desired area of the bottom.
The picture of all this would have to include the added complication that it's said the holes were first dug, whole bodies put in, hundreds of thousands, and then dug up and cremated later and the holes filled in for the second time.
Not only that but we have Kola telling the reader, "One can suppose that the ashes filled the pits completely, and only a very thin layer of surface soil was used as cover. Therefore during the camp closing in 1943 year and leveling works taken up at that time, as well as robbery digs around the camp area directly after the war, most part of body ashes was placed over the surface, and even now the presence of burnt bodies' traces is quite clear in the surface structures, particularly in the western and northern part of the camp."
Going by that we would have for the "most part" the ground being breached galore for a third time.
[At this time it seems necessary to say that the quotations here are exact and if there seems to be considerable grammatical peculiarities and it's not a mistype on the part of this reviewer.]
The next section of Kola's book, under "The grave pits in Belzec", presents a short description of each of the alleged 33 mass graves he says were discovered. From page 21 to page 39 Kola shows a schematic of each one with a longitudinal and lateral cross section intersected by depth indicators.
Kola mentions at the onset, "Although 5 m distance module of drills used in the structures does not enable to state precisely the range of the grave pits, ..."
As a prime example of how each one is described we can just pose what we find under "The grave pit No 1 (Fig. 18 )"
"The grave pit No 1 was situated in the north-western part of ha XXII basing on 13 deep drills (No 2,3,11,18,19,23,24,37,38,44,56,65,66). The most probably. in bottom view, it had a shape of an irregular rectangle with the size of 40,00 x 12,00 m and the depth of 4,80 m. The pit was filled with bodies in wax-fat transformations; from the depth of about 2,00 m burnt human bones and charcoal were mixed together. Such contents was already reported at the depth of about 20-30 cm from the surface. Burnt human bones and charcoal are also found in samples drilled out in the area around that pit. In the drill No 66, except human remains at the depth of 1,40 the wastes (glass,tin) were stated and at the depth of 1,70 m the drilling was stopped: Underground waters appeared at the depth of 4,10 m. The estimated volume of the pit was about 1500 m³."
The most extraordinary thing about the claims, as is in the above example and found in other descriptions of the alleged individual mass graves is that Kola says they could start to hit remains just 20-30 cm (8 to 12 inches) below the surface.
This reviewer has constantly proposed the ideal way for those who perpetuate the story and those that deny it to prove the truth or falsity of the story is to send out two guys with shovels and do a simple probe. That would be with the proper notice and open invitation to impartial observers of course. Going by this it seems that one little kid with a little plastic toy shovel could perform the excavation in the sandy soil in about ten minutes as everyone looked on.
The next 5 pages from page 14 to page 18 are dedicated to sketches of what the core samples wrought. This would be by way of sketched columns with various levels and contents indicated with dashes, slashes, exes and shading shown that we can match up with the legend.
Humus - Brown-Grey, Sandy Soil
Red Sand with Humus
Mixed Grey-White Sandy Soil
Burned Charcoal
Burned Human Bones
Human Bones And Wax Fat Mass
Brick Fragments
Ground Bed - Non-Mixed Soil
At the tops of the columns we have headings like "UC Object" which would mean 'Unidentified camp object' or "Graves".
Not one single photo of any core samples is shown. Just sketches.
Immediately following the pages with the sketches of the core samples we get Kola's map which by way of shading with parallel lines tells us the location and extent of the mass graves he says they found. As mentioned, the locations are more or less concentrated else where than where they are indicated on the other two maps presented by Kola. Not only that they don't correspond with any of the other number of maps drawn by whoever which Kola doesn't mention. Fact is, the locations of the concentrations seem to be all over the place ala 'chicken with head cut off' and Kola doesn't offer any explanation for it.
On page 20 immediately after his map we have Kola saying as to the original investigation in 1945. "The fact of burning the victims' bodies in Belzec during the second phase of the camp functioning was confirmed during the prosecutor's investigation in 1945."
Kola says as to the nature of the pits, what's in them and how they were established, "The excavations proved many layers of body ashes mixed with sand, which indicated the pits were used in many stages, each time covered with a new sand layer. One can suppose that the ashes filled the pits completely, and only a very thin layer of surface soil was used as a cover."
When considering the claims of the Holocaust story in general about what is supposed to have taken place at Belzec we should be taking into account how all the digging would have proceeded and what evidence for it should have been obvious to observation from outside and after it was all done.
We are told the pits could be dug out to a depth of some 4 to 5 meters (13 to 16 feet) and the total surface area of all the graves would have been thousands of square meters/yards. This would involve considerable digging and piles of the removed earth. No matter what conditions, when something is dug out and then put back in the surface never just flattens out to match the levels that existed before. If the soil is replaced and leveled off at the time it would settle down resulting in a depression. In order to have it all settle down to pre-existing levels to any reasonable degree the replaced soil would have to have been put back into the hole and piled on top which we would still have some signs since it wouldn't settle down evenly. Then too there is the big problem of digging out a hole and putting something else into it before refilling it, like bodies. That would result in substantial mounds of the earth remaining after the replacement and settlement.
Whenever considering what the conditions would have been ala Kola we should keep in mind the logistics of digging out a pit. Not bothering to lean on Kola's numbers of 4 to 5 meters (13 to 16 feet) deep we could just fancy a ten foot hole. A fairly deep hole and everything that these Holocaust 'facts" are telling us would pose some significant complications.
This would include wondering how does one go about digging a hole in sand and keeps the sides from caving in? In order to dig a hole to some depth in sand would require shoring up the sides or digging the hole out much further than the desired area of the bottom.
The picture of all this would have to include the added complication that it's said the holes were first dug, whole bodies put in, hundreds of thousands, and then dug up and cremated later and the holes filled in for the second time.
Not only that but we have Kola telling the reader, "One can suppose that the ashes filled the pits completely, and only a very thin layer of surface soil was used as cover. Therefore during the camp closing in 1943 year and leveling works taken up at that time, as well as robbery digs around the camp area directly after the war, most part of body ashes was placed over the surface, and even now the presence of burnt bodies' traces is quite clear in the surface structures, particularly in the western and northern part of the camp."
Going by that we would have for the "most part" the ground being breached galore for a third time.
[At this time it seems necessary to say that the quotations here are exact and if there seems to be considerable grammatical peculiarities and it's not a mistype on the part of this reviewer.]
The next section of Kola's book, under "The grave pits in Belzec", presents a short description of each of the alleged 33 mass graves he says were discovered. From page 21 to page 39 Kola shows a schematic of each one with a longitudinal and lateral cross section intersected by depth indicators.
Kola mentions at the onset, "Although 5 m distance module of drills used in the structures does not enable to state precisely the range of the grave pits, ..."
As a prime example of how each one is described we can just pose what we find under "The grave pit No 1 (Fig. 18 )"
"The grave pit No 1 was situated in the north-western part of ha XXII basing on 13 deep drills (No 2,3,11,18,19,23,24,37,38,44,56,65,66). The most probably. in bottom view, it had a shape of an irregular rectangle with the size of 40,00 x 12,00 m and the depth of 4,80 m. The pit was filled with bodies in wax-fat transformations; from the depth of about 2,00 m burnt human bones and charcoal were mixed together. Such contents was already reported at the depth of about 20-30 cm from the surface. Burnt human bones and charcoal are also found in samples drilled out in the area around that pit. In the drill No 66, except human remains at the depth of 1,40 the wastes (glass,tin) were stated and at the depth of 1,70 m the drilling was stopped: Underground waters appeared at the depth of 4,10 m. The estimated volume of the pit was about 1500 m³."
The most extraordinary thing about the claims, as is in the above example and found in other descriptions of the alleged individual mass graves is that Kola says they could start to hit remains just 20-30 cm (8 to 12 inches) below the surface.
This reviewer has constantly proposed the ideal way for those who perpetuate the story and those that deny it to prove the truth or falsity of the story is to send out two guys with shovels and do a simple probe. That would be with the proper notice and open invitation to impartial observers of course. Going by this it seems that one little kid with a little plastic toy shovel could perform the excavation in the sandy soil in about ten minutes as everyone looked on.
Part IV
Following his section with all the schematic diagrams of his mass graves Kola gets to - "The traces of the camp buildings"
He starts off saying, "The result of archaeological works carried out in the death camp in Belzec in 1997-98, by the means of probing drills was locating not only the graves but also the anthropogenic earth structures of the other character." Incredibly Kola goes on to say, "There have been no reliable sources concerning the camp buildings. The information was only obtained during the prosecutor's investigation in 1945." By saying that Kola would deny and cast suspicion on the array of maps and diagrams that were drawn by various witnesses.
In reference to the phantom 1945 investigation Kola refers the reader over to two footnotes. The one refers the reader to "Compare footnote 3" which would be the first footnote to tell us about the 1945 investigation and the second one tells us about a photo that Kola presents on this page, it being "Fig. 51. The camp staff in front of the guard house at the entrance gate" which shows seven or eight German soldiers posing for the photo in front of a building seen in the rear. The footnote tells us it was found "deposited" in the archives in the Regional Museum in Tomaszow Lubelski. Now if that is the best he could come up with from the records of the 1945 investigation then we can see another reason for why the report has never made it out onto the main Holocaust circuit.
All that would be found up to page 40 of Kola's book and then for the next 29 pages he focuses on what they did in way of uncovering various structures. Here he presents a number of schematic drawings of the various "wide scope" probes along with some photos of unearthed foundations. He starts off describing what was found for "Building A (Fig.58-61), the first of eight ending up with "Building H".
For Building A Kola says, "It is very difficult to interpret the function of the building" and theorizes that it could have been some kind of cellar.
For Building B he concludes it could have been some kind of cellar comparing it to Building A and saying it could have had an over head structure associated with it or it could have been just a "dug in construction". He ends up saying, "In both cases, the functions of the buildings, basing only on hypothesis ... are impossible to state."
For Building C he says it is small and that local people had referred to it as a "well". He lists a number of things that he says were found on the interior, such as a shovel, glass, plastic combs and a plastic plate with a Star of David on it. As to the nature of what the actual structure was Kola says "The destination of the object is also unknown."
Getting to Building D Kola leads the reader on a wild ride. He starts off, "In the light of studies of all the area of the camp in Belzec, the relicts of that object indicate that it belonged to the biggest and massive buildings." Because of the grammatical problems with Kola's work as it appears in English translation makes it difficult to figure out what he's saying. In one place he mentions 3 rooms and in another 6 rooms. He includes a diagram of what the layout would be and where and when it was excavated. He has some 15 rectangular sections shown with some of them radiating away from the main section in a step like fashion.
Evidently referring to the various rooms he calls them "sites" and goes into a tedious barrage of their dimensions. For example, "The other sites ... stating their location and size: site 11d/98 with the surface of 33.75 m² in ares 76, 77, 78; 11e/98 with the surface of 31.5 m² ..." with Kola going through all that all the way up in alphabetical order to "11k/99". Seemingly Kola aims to instill the idea of professionalism with the sometimes unnecessary inclusion of his nomenclature.
In spite of it all Kola concludes that maybe the place was some kind of motor pool with a garage and work shops.
For Building E we are told after the standard descriptions for size and location that they found a number of artifacts of "medical destination" such as syringes, vials empty and still full, an "interesting" vial of strychnine and, walla, arm bands with Stars of David along with a Star of David medal. At the end he says as for what the building was, "We can not exclude that the building served as a medical point for the camp staff."
Getting around to Building F Kola begins, "The relicts of that small building (room) were found in ha 21 are 3. ["Relicts" would mean remnants.] It was originally located in the central part of the camp, at present it is situated just behind the main gate." At the end he says, "Obviously they are the relicts of a guard house in a zone separating the area of the grave pits and the camp buildings which served for receiving the transports and initial activities before directing the victims to the gas chambers."
For Building G Kola after saying what was found in way of artifacts, like tar paper and nails. female dentures and a comb he gets around to saying, "The wooden building served probably as a gas chamber in the second stage of the camp ..."
In a footnote, referring to Reder's account he says, "The witness informs that in the second stage of the camp functioning the gas chamber was located directly close to the graves. According to him however, the chambers were made of concrete. The excavations carried out in that area did not prove any traces of brick or concrete buildings, which makes that report unreliable."
Now that certainly is interesting, Kola announcing the Reder report unreliable and yet Reder would be one of the very few, if not the only witness Kola cited at the beginning. Kola singles out Reder's claim of a concrete building as for what would make the report unreliable when he could have said the same about Reder's plan. One should wonder about Kola denouncing Reder's description of the gas chambers when Reder's account goes into considerable detail about it. Above Kola says the "witness" said the gas chambers were right near the graves. One minute Kola is denouncing Reder's account as unreliable and the next he is using something else from Reder as fact.
Sztrojt's map for the first stage shows the gas chamber at the bottom of the slope and the mass graves at the top along the crest and a line showing the path between which would mean the Germans gassed the Jews in one place and then the bodies would have to have been carried some 100 to 150 yards/meters up the slope to be buried.
Building H is the last one that Kola describes in the series. He ends that one saying. "The frame-house may have been used for depositing and selecting the victims' belongings."
Following his section with all the schematic diagrams of his mass graves Kola gets to - "The traces of the camp buildings"
He starts off saying, "The result of archaeological works carried out in the death camp in Belzec in 1997-98, by the means of probing drills was locating not only the graves but also the anthropogenic earth structures of the other character." Incredibly Kola goes on to say, "There have been no reliable sources concerning the camp buildings. The information was only obtained during the prosecutor's investigation in 1945." By saying that Kola would deny and cast suspicion on the array of maps and diagrams that were drawn by various witnesses.
In reference to the phantom 1945 investigation Kola refers the reader over to two footnotes. The one refers the reader to "Compare footnote 3" which would be the first footnote to tell us about the 1945 investigation and the second one tells us about a photo that Kola presents on this page, it being "Fig. 51. The camp staff in front of the guard house at the entrance gate" which shows seven or eight German soldiers posing for the photo in front of a building seen in the rear. The footnote tells us it was found "deposited" in the archives in the Regional Museum in Tomaszow Lubelski. Now if that is the best he could come up with from the records of the 1945 investigation then we can see another reason for why the report has never made it out onto the main Holocaust circuit.
All that would be found up to page 40 of Kola's book and then for the next 29 pages he focuses on what they did in way of uncovering various structures. Here he presents a number of schematic drawings of the various "wide scope" probes along with some photos of unearthed foundations. He starts off describing what was found for "Building A (Fig.58-61), the first of eight ending up with "Building H".
For Building A Kola says, "It is very difficult to interpret the function of the building" and theorizes that it could have been some kind of cellar.
For Building B he concludes it could have been some kind of cellar comparing it to Building A and saying it could have had an over head structure associated with it or it could have been just a "dug in construction". He ends up saying, "In both cases, the functions of the buildings, basing only on hypothesis ... are impossible to state."
For Building C he says it is small and that local people had referred to it as a "well". He lists a number of things that he says were found on the interior, such as a shovel, glass, plastic combs and a plastic plate with a Star of David on it. As to the nature of what the actual structure was Kola says "The destination of the object is also unknown."
Getting to Building D Kola leads the reader on a wild ride. He starts off, "In the light of studies of all the area of the camp in Belzec, the relicts of that object indicate that it belonged to the biggest and massive buildings." Because of the grammatical problems with Kola's work as it appears in English translation makes it difficult to figure out what he's saying. In one place he mentions 3 rooms and in another 6 rooms. He includes a diagram of what the layout would be and where and when it was excavated. He has some 15 rectangular sections shown with some of them radiating away from the main section in a step like fashion.
Evidently referring to the various rooms he calls them "sites" and goes into a tedious barrage of their dimensions. For example, "The other sites ... stating their location and size: site 11d/98 with the surface of 33.75 m² in ares 76, 77, 78; 11e/98 with the surface of 31.5 m² ..." with Kola going through all that all the way up in alphabetical order to "11k/99". Seemingly Kola aims to instill the idea of professionalism with the sometimes unnecessary inclusion of his nomenclature.
In spite of it all Kola concludes that maybe the place was some kind of motor pool with a garage and work shops.
For Building E we are told after the standard descriptions for size and location that they found a number of artifacts of "medical destination" such as syringes, vials empty and still full, an "interesting" vial of strychnine and, walla, arm bands with Stars of David along with a Star of David medal. At the end he says as for what the building was, "We can not exclude that the building served as a medical point for the camp staff."
Getting around to Building F Kola begins, "The relicts of that small building (room) were found in ha 21 are 3. ["Relicts" would mean remnants.] It was originally located in the central part of the camp, at present it is situated just behind the main gate." At the end he says, "Obviously they are the relicts of a guard house in a zone separating the area of the grave pits and the camp buildings which served for receiving the transports and initial activities before directing the victims to the gas chambers."
For Building G Kola after saying what was found in way of artifacts, like tar paper and nails. female dentures and a comb he gets around to saying, "The wooden building served probably as a gas chamber in the second stage of the camp ..."
In a footnote, referring to Reder's account he says, "The witness informs that in the second stage of the camp functioning the gas chamber was located directly close to the graves. According to him however, the chambers were made of concrete. The excavations carried out in that area did not prove any traces of brick or concrete buildings, which makes that report unreliable."
Now that certainly is interesting, Kola announcing the Reder report unreliable and yet Reder would be one of the very few, if not the only witness Kola cited at the beginning. Kola singles out Reder's claim of a concrete building as for what would make the report unreliable when he could have said the same about Reder's plan. One should wonder about Kola denouncing Reder's description of the gas chambers when Reder's account goes into considerable detail about it. Above Kola says the "witness" said the gas chambers were right near the graves. One minute Kola is denouncing Reder's account as unreliable and the next he is using something else from Reder as fact.
Sztrojt's map for the first stage shows the gas chamber at the bottom of the slope and the mass graves at the top along the crest and a line showing the path between which would mean the Germans gassed the Jews in one place and then the bodies would have to have been carried some 100 to 150 yards/meters up the slope to be buried.
Building H is the last one that Kola describes in the series. He ends that one saying. "The frame-house may have been used for depositing and selecting the victims' belongings."
Part V
Nearing his 'Summary' Kola has "The lime storage (Fig.80)" which would be a layer of lime he says was discovered and that it could have been used to accelerate decomposition. Kola indicates the layer on one of his core sample sketches. At the end he says, "It is confirmed by witness reports informing about using lime for that purpose in other extermination camps". Actually there is an account about Belzec itself that tells about taking Jews for rides on trains with lime spread out on the floors and they all died agonizing death over a period of days. The account was given by Jan Karski, supposedly the first one to bring out word of mass exterminations at Belzec for the "Delegatura" of the Polish Government-in-Exile who Kola doesn't mention.
There are a number of other witness tales or SS confessions about Belzec, like that of Chaim Herszman or SS Officer Pfannenstiel that Kola doesn't mention, even seeming to deny them at the beginning where it's said there were only two or so witnesses. About the only two he features are those two, Reder and Sztrojt. Evidently Kola would be aware of these other testimonies and confessions and seeing how he doesn't avail of them it would indicate his recognition they contain such nonsense that he wouldn't want to draw attention to them.
Reder says he was able to escape because a German guard had fallen asleep.
Herszman is said to have been murdered at the time he was giving his testimony.
Whatever happened to Sztrojt? Who knows. Kola doesn't present anything except his map. Typing Sztrojt's name into GOOGlE gets "Zero results".
It's interesting that Kola wouldn't have availed of the testimonial confessions of Germans who are in the Holocaust poi pourri of nonsense.
The only place he does allude to any is in a footnote No. 11 on page 11 where Kola refers to SS officer Kurt Gerstein just in passing to support a sentence where Kola says the prisoners had to turn in all their belongings. At one time Gerstein was just as important a source for Belzec 'facts' as that of Auschwitz commandant Hoess for that camp. Because Gerstein's statements were so overly zealous he became a good target for revisionist exposure. That would be why Gerstein became a subject during the trial of Ernst Zundel where Holocaust 'historian' Raul Hilberg had to admit under cross examination that Gerstein's confessions were utter nonsense.
Hilberg, quoted in an Israeli newspaper said of Karski's testimony that he wouldn't even mention Karski in a footnote.
Getting to Kola's "Summary" he starts off saying, "Carrying out the 1997-1999 archaeological studies at the territory of the death camp for Jews in Belzec the researchers concentrated mainly on recognizing the camp arrangement." That would be another passage to tell us the alleged study wasn't to prove the Holocaust happened but it was to set the stage for a comprehensive memorial.
In Kola's next paragraph he makes it totally clear that he is saying they found the remains of un cremated bodies. "The result of the works was locating at least 33 graves containing both bodies in wax-fat transformation and crematory ashes. There are much more of the last mentioned graves, what is confirmed by the fact that most bodies of the murdered victims were burnt." In the preceding initial reports by Elsner and O'Neill they say tens of thousands of un cremated bodies were detected. Kola himself indicates "wax-fat" all the way through and identifies it as having been present in many places. Referring to the bodies having been cremated Kola directs the reader to footnote '3' which refers to the 1945 investigation.
As for what this 1945 report held we had Elsner having said, "On October 10, 1945, a Polish court visited the site and found bones, women's hair, false teeth, hands and children's body parts still lying on the surface. Apparently, local people had been
desecrating the dead by digging for gold in the area."
Kola goes on to say that in the beginning the bodies were first dug up and burned in piles and then later burned over grates. Both procedures would involve immense amounts of fuel to accomplish yet as mentioned before Kola doesn't say one single thing about any details that would describe it. The closest he gets is to say the bodies were put in turn with "wood drenched with a flammable mass" with a footnote that takes the reader to - "30 T.Chrosciewicz, Sparawozdanie z wynikow dochodzen w sprawie obozu zadlady w Belzcu, p. 129." Page 129? Would that be the whole page, one paragraph or one sentence?
In another account for Belzec it's said they could cremate 3,000 bodies in 2 to 3 hours.
In order to explain the indefinite findings about the shape and extent of the graves Kola refers again to the graves having been dug up by Polish citizens in the quest for "jewelry". Kola indicates that this looting of graves was to such an extent that it would have totally rearranged the nature of the initial graves and was the cause of his not being able to arrive at accurate dimensions. Kola had already said "Therefore during the camp closing in 1943 year and leveling works taken up at that time, as well as robbery digs around the camp area directly after the war, most part of body ashes was placed over the surface, ...".
Just in passing it would be proper to wonder how all the mass graves would have been dug up and then refilled with the "most part" of the ashes being left behind on the surface. That would have required the separation of the ashes from the sand which seems like it would be an impossible task.
One would think the Polish citizens would have dug down the meters of depths he cites and in order for them to have kept on going they would have to have found lots of valuables along the way in order to propel them to go on to such great lengths. How would that have been if all the prisoners were forced to turn in all their belongings and led to their deaths naked?
When did the citizens do all this excavation? Kola doesn't say but Elsner says it had already taken place by the time the Oct. 1945 investigation took place.
How many Poles would have been involved with the grave robbing? Two, ten, fifty, hundreds? Digging down to 4 to 5 meters (13 to 16 feet) and then sifting through the sand and ashes. When digging a hole as big as Kola says that would have needed some special arrangement. At 5 feet they would have to toss the dirt to shoulder height. At 7 feet over head. At 8 feet they would have to have hurled as best they could to get the sand out. All this time sand is piling up to its own elevation all around. By the time the diggers got to 10 feet tossing the sand out would have exceeded their capability to do it. What then? Buckets? What about the arms and legs and stuff Elsner says was in the 1945 report? We could guess that the report would have indicated the citizens responsibility for the remains to be found laying around. That would pose a problem seeing how all of the un cremated bodies would have been at the bottom. Getting bodies out of a hole after it gets to 5 feet and deeper would be a problem. Having to get them over head to hand to someone else. By the time they got down to 7 feet they would have needed a ladder. And what about taking hundreds or even thousands of bodies out of one hole with all the sand piled up making the whole thing deeper. Someone(s) would have to have handed out the bodies, after climbing some rungs of a ladder of course, and others dragging them away from the hole to keep them from sliding back in down the slopes of the piles of sand. Thus we have this project that would have involved considerable undertaking and man power.
Again, how would there have been so much treasure when the story tells us the Germans took everything away from the Jews and they were led to their deaths totally naked? It certainly wouldn't have been with gold and diamond necklaces, bracelets and rings on. The only way the Jews could have taken all that to the graves with them would be by swallowing the valuables, ala tales of Auschwitz. Should we fancy the notion that the Poles would have torn the bodies apart to get to swallowed diamonds and gold? The Holocaust story certainly can raise some gruesome if not farcical concepts.
When exactly did all this digging up by the Polish civilians take place? According to Yitzak Arad, supposed foremost authority in his book, 'Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. The Operation Reinhard Death Camps'
"Once the cremation was completed, the next and final step was the dismantling of the camp. "After the camps buildings were dismantled ...people from the neighboring villages and townships started digging in the area of the camp, searching for gold and valuables" (371). Therefore, "Germans and Ukrainians were sent back to Belzec to prevent more people from digging and to restore the 'peaceful-looking' character of the place" (371 ). Therefore, Operation Reinhard authorities decided to carry out forestation work and build a farm where a Ukrainian guard and his family were to live. Those orders marked the official end of the death camp in Belzec."
By golly, going by that all the extensive digging took place while the Germans were still in control. The Germans mass exterminated some 600,000 Jews just outside of a town, buried them, then dug the bodies up and cremated them and then reburied the remains and then they went off to someplace else neglecting the area to such and extent that the Poles could go in and totally undo it all even though the Germans were still in control?
But then we have it said that on October 10, 1945 a judge of Zamosc made a determination founded on an official inspection and this account was entered into one of the phantom Belzec trials in Germany in 1965.
"Along the northern border of the camp, roughly from its middle to its junction with the eastern border, the camp area is stirred up and ploughed in a strip of around 100 meters width. In the same way a strip along the whole eastern border is dug up and stirred up in a width reaching to the middle of the whole camp area. According to the assisting officers of the Civilians Militia of the Militia post in Belzec this described stirring up of the camp area has been caused by the neighboring population searching for gold and diamonds left behind by the murdered Jews. ..."
Considering the previous tale and this one all the graves would have been dug up a third time. First to dig up the bodies for cremation, then the Polish looters went in while the Germans were still in control, the Germans filled them all back in again and then the graves were totally dug out and exposed at the time of the investigation in Oct. 1945. Gee, no wonder Kola didn't mention anything about when all the civilians went in and dug up everything.
The "northern" border mentioned above would have been going up and down the hill on the left side of the camp location and "eastern" side would have been along the entire crest of the hill. No wonder Kola wouldn't mention too much about this elusive 1945 investigation. There we have it the Poles dug up almost half the camp which would have been about 200,000 square feet. The account also designates mass graves as extending over a greater and different area of the camp than what Kola's 'findings' showed.
Most likely the initial reports of Polish looting were devised to give a reason for how they would come to know about the graves.
Nearing his 'Summary' Kola has "The lime storage (Fig.80)" which would be a layer of lime he says was discovered and that it could have been used to accelerate decomposition. Kola indicates the layer on one of his core sample sketches. At the end he says, "It is confirmed by witness reports informing about using lime for that purpose in other extermination camps". Actually there is an account about Belzec itself that tells about taking Jews for rides on trains with lime spread out on the floors and they all died agonizing death over a period of days. The account was given by Jan Karski, supposedly the first one to bring out word of mass exterminations at Belzec for the "Delegatura" of the Polish Government-in-Exile who Kola doesn't mention.
There are a number of other witness tales or SS confessions about Belzec, like that of Chaim Herszman or SS Officer Pfannenstiel that Kola doesn't mention, even seeming to deny them at the beginning where it's said there were only two or so witnesses. About the only two he features are those two, Reder and Sztrojt. Evidently Kola would be aware of these other testimonies and confessions and seeing how he doesn't avail of them it would indicate his recognition they contain such nonsense that he wouldn't want to draw attention to them.
Reder says he was able to escape because a German guard had fallen asleep.
Herszman is said to have been murdered at the time he was giving his testimony.
Whatever happened to Sztrojt? Who knows. Kola doesn't present anything except his map. Typing Sztrojt's name into GOOGlE gets "Zero results".
It's interesting that Kola wouldn't have availed of the testimonial confessions of Germans who are in the Holocaust poi pourri of nonsense.
The only place he does allude to any is in a footnote No. 11 on page 11 where Kola refers to SS officer Kurt Gerstein just in passing to support a sentence where Kola says the prisoners had to turn in all their belongings. At one time Gerstein was just as important a source for Belzec 'facts' as that of Auschwitz commandant Hoess for that camp. Because Gerstein's statements were so overly zealous he became a good target for revisionist exposure. That would be why Gerstein became a subject during the trial of Ernst Zundel where Holocaust 'historian' Raul Hilberg had to admit under cross examination that Gerstein's confessions were utter nonsense.
Hilberg, quoted in an Israeli newspaper said of Karski's testimony that he wouldn't even mention Karski in a footnote.
Getting to Kola's "Summary" he starts off saying, "Carrying out the 1997-1999 archaeological studies at the territory of the death camp for Jews in Belzec the researchers concentrated mainly on recognizing the camp arrangement." That would be another passage to tell us the alleged study wasn't to prove the Holocaust happened but it was to set the stage for a comprehensive memorial.
In Kola's next paragraph he makes it totally clear that he is saying they found the remains of un cremated bodies. "The result of the works was locating at least 33 graves containing both bodies in wax-fat transformation and crematory ashes. There are much more of the last mentioned graves, what is confirmed by the fact that most bodies of the murdered victims were burnt." In the preceding initial reports by Elsner and O'Neill they say tens of thousands of un cremated bodies were detected. Kola himself indicates "wax-fat" all the way through and identifies it as having been present in many places. Referring to the bodies having been cremated Kola directs the reader to footnote '3' which refers to the 1945 investigation.
As for what this 1945 report held we had Elsner having said, "On October 10, 1945, a Polish court visited the site and found bones, women's hair, false teeth, hands and children's body parts still lying on the surface. Apparently, local people had been
desecrating the dead by digging for gold in the area."
Kola goes on to say that in the beginning the bodies were first dug up and burned in piles and then later burned over grates. Both procedures would involve immense amounts of fuel to accomplish yet as mentioned before Kola doesn't say one single thing about any details that would describe it. The closest he gets is to say the bodies were put in turn with "wood drenched with a flammable mass" with a footnote that takes the reader to - "30 T.Chrosciewicz, Sparawozdanie z wynikow dochodzen w sprawie obozu zadlady w Belzcu, p. 129." Page 129? Would that be the whole page, one paragraph or one sentence?
In another account for Belzec it's said they could cremate 3,000 bodies in 2 to 3 hours.
In order to explain the indefinite findings about the shape and extent of the graves Kola refers again to the graves having been dug up by Polish citizens in the quest for "jewelry". Kola indicates that this looting of graves was to such an extent that it would have totally rearranged the nature of the initial graves and was the cause of his not being able to arrive at accurate dimensions. Kola had already said "Therefore during the camp closing in 1943 year and leveling works taken up at that time, as well as robbery digs around the camp area directly after the war, most part of body ashes was placed over the surface, ...".
Just in passing it would be proper to wonder how all the mass graves would have been dug up and then refilled with the "most part" of the ashes being left behind on the surface. That would have required the separation of the ashes from the sand which seems like it would be an impossible task.
One would think the Polish citizens would have dug down the meters of depths he cites and in order for them to have kept on going they would have to have found lots of valuables along the way in order to propel them to go on to such great lengths. How would that have been if all the prisoners were forced to turn in all their belongings and led to their deaths naked?
When did the citizens do all this excavation? Kola doesn't say but Elsner says it had already taken place by the time the Oct. 1945 investigation took place.
How many Poles would have been involved with the grave robbing? Two, ten, fifty, hundreds? Digging down to 4 to 5 meters (13 to 16 feet) and then sifting through the sand and ashes. When digging a hole as big as Kola says that would have needed some special arrangement. At 5 feet they would have to toss the dirt to shoulder height. At 7 feet over head. At 8 feet they would have to have hurled as best they could to get the sand out. All this time sand is piling up to its own elevation all around. By the time the diggers got to 10 feet tossing the sand out would have exceeded their capability to do it. What then? Buckets? What about the arms and legs and stuff Elsner says was in the 1945 report? We could guess that the report would have indicated the citizens responsibility for the remains to be found laying around. That would pose a problem seeing how all of the un cremated bodies would have been at the bottom. Getting bodies out of a hole after it gets to 5 feet and deeper would be a problem. Having to get them over head to hand to someone else. By the time they got down to 7 feet they would have needed a ladder. And what about taking hundreds or even thousands of bodies out of one hole with all the sand piled up making the whole thing deeper. Someone(s) would have to have handed out the bodies, after climbing some rungs of a ladder of course, and others dragging them away from the hole to keep them from sliding back in down the slopes of the piles of sand. Thus we have this project that would have involved considerable undertaking and man power.
Again, how would there have been so much treasure when the story tells us the Germans took everything away from the Jews and they were led to their deaths totally naked? It certainly wouldn't have been with gold and diamond necklaces, bracelets and rings on. The only way the Jews could have taken all that to the graves with them would be by swallowing the valuables, ala tales of Auschwitz. Should we fancy the notion that the Poles would have torn the bodies apart to get to swallowed diamonds and gold? The Holocaust story certainly can raise some gruesome if not farcical concepts.
When exactly did all this digging up by the Polish civilians take place? According to Yitzak Arad, supposed foremost authority in his book, 'Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. The Operation Reinhard Death Camps'
"Once the cremation was completed, the next and final step was the dismantling of the camp. "After the camps buildings were dismantled ...people from the neighboring villages and townships started digging in the area of the camp, searching for gold and valuables" (371). Therefore, "Germans and Ukrainians were sent back to Belzec to prevent more people from digging and to restore the 'peaceful-looking' character of the place" (371 ). Therefore, Operation Reinhard authorities decided to carry out forestation work and build a farm where a Ukrainian guard and his family were to live. Those orders marked the official end of the death camp in Belzec."
By golly, going by that all the extensive digging took place while the Germans were still in control. The Germans mass exterminated some 600,000 Jews just outside of a town, buried them, then dug the bodies up and cremated them and then reburied the remains and then they went off to someplace else neglecting the area to such and extent that the Poles could go in and totally undo it all even though the Germans were still in control?
But then we have it said that on October 10, 1945 a judge of Zamosc made a determination founded on an official inspection and this account was entered into one of the phantom Belzec trials in Germany in 1965.
"Along the northern border of the camp, roughly from its middle to its junction with the eastern border, the camp area is stirred up and ploughed in a strip of around 100 meters width. In the same way a strip along the whole eastern border is dug up and stirred up in a width reaching to the middle of the whole camp area. According to the assisting officers of the Civilians Militia of the Militia post in Belzec this described stirring up of the camp area has been caused by the neighboring population searching for gold and diamonds left behind by the murdered Jews. ..."
Considering the previous tale and this one all the graves would have been dug up a third time. First to dig up the bodies for cremation, then the Polish looters went in while the Germans were still in control, the Germans filled them all back in again and then the graves were totally dug out and exposed at the time of the investigation in Oct. 1945. Gee, no wonder Kola didn't mention anything about when all the civilians went in and dug up everything.
The "northern" border mentioned above would have been going up and down the hill on the left side of the camp location and "eastern" side would have been along the entire crest of the hill. No wonder Kola wouldn't mention too much about this elusive 1945 investigation. There we have it the Poles dug up almost half the camp which would have been about 200,000 square feet. The account also designates mass graves as extending over a greater and different area of the camp than what Kola's 'findings' showed.
Most likely the initial reports of Polish looting were devised to give a reason for how they would come to know about the graves.
Part VI
About now would be a good time to return to think about Kola's core samples and what he says they found. He says they took core samples every 5 meters ( 16 feet) . He shows his sketches with the various designations of layers and such. Going by all the info available, including Kola himself going on about how all the ashes were on top and such it seems like any core samples wouldn't have been able to show any kind of stratigraphic order.
The last 7 pages of the book are dedicated to photos of various artifacts said to have been found. Kola along the way says that Tregenza had found one by way of a metal detector.
Below each photo and attached to the description we are told where the stuff was found. "Probing excavations" account for most of them, one "metal detector' and a couple of "lose finds" evidently to mean just laying on the surface.
The first photo shows a bunch of rusted up horse shoes. Then a photo of many rusted keys and four locks. Then a cluster of rusted spoons. Then more tableware laid out in two rows. The next photo some corroded scissors. Then the next more locks and keys. Then photo of broken bottles. Next more glass pieces. Broken up pottery shards follows. Then a display of iron objects. Next, walla, photo of plastic plates with Stars of David. That's followed by three photos of cigarette cases. Then two photos of "lose find", which would be two silver broaches. Then a small pin, a pendant with, walla, a Star of David on it. The next number of photos are of Bayer aspirin boxes, combs, piece of mirror, soap boxes and buttons, hair brush, phials and a number of other things.
Nothing much to say about all that except all the artifacts have been washed off and none shown 'in situ'. When the first 'Folsom point' spear head was found in the United States the finders couldn't get anyone to accept it and they had to return to the site from where it was found and find another one. The original point had been discovered in and among the bones of a ancient bison kill by Paleolithic man. When they found another spear head in among the bones of the same site they cut out a large section of the matrix with the spear point still embedded 'in situ' and presented it for the documentation. Showing a archaeological discovery 'in situ' is a recognized procedure for maintaining credibility of a find. For any of the stuff we see in Kola's book we don't see one single example of anything in place as it was being discovered.
The whole idea of mass extermination taking place at Belzec is totally nonsensical.
From the fact that the site was just outside of a town. That it was located on a slope with an opposing slope as a bleacher stand.
That the Germans first buried hundreds of thousands and then dug them up a few months later after they suddenly realized they could lose the war and be exposed.
That they cremated all the bodies to hide the crime which had taken place out in the open on the slope and then reburied the remains to hide the crime when significant remains would have been there regardless.
That Polish citizens, evidently knowing about the crime went in by the horde to dig it all up again to find treasure even though the Germans were still in control of the area.
Maybe the most nonsensical thing about the Belzec story, or any other camp would be that the Germans could have covered up the crime according to what we get from the likes of Kola. Going by Holocaust 'facts' the whole thing took place more or less out in the open, just outside of a town and everyone knew about it.
It's not a matter of it couldn't have happened but did it happen according to Holocaust dogma. A close look at all that would have been involved would make it all appear at the least totally improbable and boarding on impossible. Like what the hell would the Germans be thinking after they went in and straightened everything out after the Polish citizens went in for the first time?
Here we have this book with all the high falootin names and institutions attached and yet one little kid with a toy plastic shovel could show the whole thing to be the total nonsense it is.
It must have been a very painful endeavor for Mr.Kola to have to agonize through it all, making up archaeological accounts, keeping all the nomenclature straight, drawing schematics of core samples and grave sites and compiling the array of artifacts shown at the end.
It's just amazing to what ends people will go to in order to sling the Holocaust story.
About now would be a good time to return to think about Kola's core samples and what he says they found. He says they took core samples every 5 meters ( 16 feet) . He shows his sketches with the various designations of layers and such. Going by all the info available, including Kola himself going on about how all the ashes were on top and such it seems like any core samples wouldn't have been able to show any kind of stratigraphic order.
The last 7 pages of the book are dedicated to photos of various artifacts said to have been found. Kola along the way says that Tregenza had found one by way of a metal detector.
Below each photo and attached to the description we are told where the stuff was found. "Probing excavations" account for most of them, one "metal detector' and a couple of "lose finds" evidently to mean just laying on the surface.
The first photo shows a bunch of rusted up horse shoes. Then a photo of many rusted keys and four locks. Then a cluster of rusted spoons. Then more tableware laid out in two rows. The next photo some corroded scissors. Then the next more locks and keys. Then photo of broken bottles. Next more glass pieces. Broken up pottery shards follows. Then a display of iron objects. Next, walla, photo of plastic plates with Stars of David. That's followed by three photos of cigarette cases. Then two photos of "lose find", which would be two silver broaches. Then a small pin, a pendant with, walla, a Star of David on it. The next number of photos are of Bayer aspirin boxes, combs, piece of mirror, soap boxes and buttons, hair brush, phials and a number of other things.
Nothing much to say about all that except all the artifacts have been washed off and none shown 'in situ'. When the first 'Folsom point' spear head was found in the United States the finders couldn't get anyone to accept it and they had to return to the site from where it was found and find another one. The original point had been discovered in and among the bones of a ancient bison kill by Paleolithic man. When they found another spear head in among the bones of the same site they cut out a large section of the matrix with the spear point still embedded 'in situ' and presented it for the documentation. Showing a archaeological discovery 'in situ' is a recognized procedure for maintaining credibility of a find. For any of the stuff we see in Kola's book we don't see one single example of anything in place as it was being discovered.
The whole idea of mass extermination taking place at Belzec is totally nonsensical.
From the fact that the site was just outside of a town. That it was located on a slope with an opposing slope as a bleacher stand.
That the Germans first buried hundreds of thousands and then dug them up a few months later after they suddenly realized they could lose the war and be exposed.
That they cremated all the bodies to hide the crime which had taken place out in the open on the slope and then reburied the remains to hide the crime when significant remains would have been there regardless.
That Polish citizens, evidently knowing about the crime went in by the horde to dig it all up again to find treasure even though the Germans were still in control of the area.
Maybe the most nonsensical thing about the Belzec story, or any other camp would be that the Germans could have covered up the crime according to what we get from the likes of Kola. Going by Holocaust 'facts' the whole thing took place more or less out in the open, just outside of a town and everyone knew about it.
It's not a matter of it couldn't have happened but did it happen according to Holocaust dogma. A close look at all that would have been involved would make it all appear at the least totally improbable and boarding on impossible. Like what the hell would the Germans be thinking after they went in and straightened everything out after the Polish citizens went in for the first time?
Here we have this book with all the high falootin names and institutions attached and yet one little kid with a toy plastic shovel could show the whole thing to be the total nonsense it is.
It must have been a very painful endeavor for Mr.Kola to have to agonize through it all, making up archaeological accounts, keeping all the nomenclature straight, drawing schematics of core samples and grave sites and compiling the array of artifacts shown at the end.
It's just amazing to what ends people will go to in order to sling the Holocaust story.
Tom, excellent review! You took the word out of my mouth. I have scanned three pages in the book and asked Webmaster to upload them. It serves as an illustration to your review. They are large, but it's worthwhile to wait.
The first scan is a map of the drillings and excavations. Please note that they don't do any digging where they found the graves!
Gee, they had horses! I wonder if the Germans gassed and buried horses also? And the padlocks, what should they prove?
Somebody had a headache. And they comb their hair too.
The first scan is a map of the drillings and excavations. Please note that they don't do any digging where they found the graves!
Gee, they had horses! I wonder if the Germans gassed and buried horses also? And the padlocks, what should they prove?
Somebody had a headache. And they comb their hair too.
I must be a mushroom - because everyone keeps me in the dark and feeds me with lots of bullshit.
The idea that evidence of mass graves can be completely obliterated in a hurry-up fashion by disinterring decaying cadavers and burning boggles the imagination. These magician Germans can make all the evidence disappear and anyone that doubts the disappearing act is a bigot. Of course nobody is actually probing the sites but if they actually believed there was a mass grave there it would be openned forthwith. An example of evidence available and the longterm survival of evidence is illustrated in the following article.
TheNapoleon Graves
A mass grave in Vilnius sheds light on a catastrophic military campaign that changed the course of Europe.
By Michael Tarm
Anthropologist Arunas Barkus pokes at a leg bone in a pile of brittle skeletal remains tagged No. 151 and spread across an autopsy table at Vilnius University. At the touch of his fingers, dried marrow crumbles to the floor like snow.
What’s now clear, he explains, is that the remains of 2,000 men unearthed in a pool-sized grave in Vilnius last year were soldiers in Napoleon Bonaparte’s Grand Army that attacked Russia 190 years ago.
Less certain was just how they died and what that might reveal about one of history’s most horrific and consequential military adventures, one that became the stuff of epic legend in the intervening years.
When bulldozers accidentally uncovered the bones on the Northern Village housing development last year, many first believed they were victims of Soviet secret police. The area was once a Red Army base, a fact that spurred on this initial theory.
But as crowds gathered to behold the tangle of rib cages and skulls poking through the sand, coins and buttons stamped with Napoleon’s image appeared amid the debris; crucifixes, wedding rings, belt buckles, boots and shards of French uniforms were also found. It became clear that these were remnants of the ill-fated French force.
It was the first mass grave of soldiers from Napoleon’s Grand Army ever found, according to a recent edition of Archaeology Magazine. The U.S.-based scientific journal called it the most important discovery of its kind.
“It confirms how important a role Vilnius played in this big war.... It puts us on the map,” said Vilnius Mayor Arturas Zuokas, adding the find would draw France and Lithuania closer and could even prompt more French tourism.
His enthusiasm was, to say the least, shared at the nearby French Embassy.
“We’ve been very moved by this discovery...we were shocked, even,” said Deputy Ambassador Olivier Poupard, a blue, white and red French tricolor fluttering in bright sunshine outside his office window. “Suddenly, history was more vivid. You could see it with your own eyes.”
“It’s a history that’s so much a part of the collective French memory.”
Napoleon was in control of nearly all continental Europe when he invaded Russia in June, 1812. Marching into Lithuania bound for Moscow, his 500,000-man army—a sea of infantry, grenadiers and artillery cannons—seemed invincible. It was the largest single invasion force ever assembled.
One secret to Napoleon’s earlier triumphs was that his army could move much more quickly than opposing militaries—by carrying fewer provisions and by living off conquered territories as they went.
But the Russians had burned fields and villages in advance to deny the invaders food and shelter; they dumped horse carcasses down wells to poison the water. So the French began dying from the outset, though they technically never lost a single battle.
Like Germany’s Wehrmacht that attacked Russia around the same time of year in 1941, Napoleon’s troops were being sucked into a trap they didn’t see coming and from which most would never escape.
“The French army pushed on to Moscow, its goal, its impetus ever increasing as it neared its aim, as the velocity of a falling body increases as it approaches the ground,” wrote Leo Tolstoy in War and Peace, a novel revolving around the French attack and in which Vilnius, or Vilna, features prominently.
The Czar’s scorched-earth strategy took on unprecedented proportions when, just as the conquering French Emperor settled down smugly to dine within the Kremlin, Russian agents set Moscow itself alight—destroying two-thirds of it.
“Mountains of red, rolling flames, like immense waves,” as Napoleon himself described the scene later. “It was the most grand, the most sublime and the most terrifying sight the world has ever beheld.”
He remained in Moscow for five weeks waiting in vain for Czar Alexander I to agree to peace. The French only began their 900-kilometer retreat along the same route whence they’d come in November.
The delay proved fatal.
Thousands of troops, already sick and hungry, died each day in early winter weather. Czarist Cossacks, too, lashed at the flank of the increasingly unwieldy, panic-stricken French caravan as it dragged toward Lithuania.
“Our lips stuck together. Our nostrils froze,” remembered one soldier, probably not unlike the man whose bones Barkus cradled. “We seemed to be marching in a world of ice.” Some lost their ears or tongues to frostbite.
Survivors of what had turned into a death march were hopeful that Vilnius, the main French base during the invasion, would provide relief.
But when the Grand Army—now reduced to a mere 40,000 men—finally staggered into Vilnius, there was little food or shelter to be had.
Desperate soldiers are said to have raided medical schools to eat alcohol-preserved human organs. Others gnawed on leather in a bid for nourishment. There were reports that some cannibalized their fellow soldiers.
Lithuanians, subjugated by Russia just two decades before, had welcomed the French as liberators when they marched in six months earlier. But they now shrank from the crazed scavengers, bolting their doors; frightened residents also knew Czarist troops would enter the city within days.
Napoleon was said to be smitten by Lithuania’s ancient capital, saying, as legend has it, that he wanted to carry the city’s quaint Gothic Church of St. Anne’s back to Paris in the palm of his hand.
But when French soldiers came back to Vilnius in retreat, their commander was no longer with them. He had galloped to Paris days before to quash rumors that he’d been killed—talk that could have prompted a coup.
Napoleon vowed he wouldn’t be taken alive if intercepted. Around his neck, flanked by just two aides for the journey, he carried a leather pouch filled with poison.
With temperatures in Vilnius sinking to -30 C—colder than inside a contemporary kitchen freezer—half the troops died in days, their bodies littering the cobblestone streets. Corpses soon equaled or even surpassed the city’s 30,000 native population.
Makeshift hospitals were visions of hell.
“Some 7,500 bodies were piled up like (stacks) of lead over one another in the corridors,” recalled Robert Wilson, a British officer attached to Russia’s army. “The broken windows and walls were stuffed with feet, legs, arms, hands, trunks and heads to fit the apertures and keep out the air from the yet living.”
Another witness, a local countess, described similarly gruesome scenes in city-center squares: “Corpses... seated on the ground, leaning against walls, preserved by the cold, their limbs shrunken and stiff in the position in which Death had overtaken them.”
The reoccupying Russians spent three months removing bodies from the halls, from the streets and alleys of Vilnius. They couldn’t dig new graves because the frozen earth was as impenetrable as stone. They cremated some of the dead, but the smoke and stench of burning flesh hung in the air like fog and became intolerable.
It took the modern-day Lithuanian construction crews to solve the mystery of how the Russians had disposed of so many corpses: they’d stacked them, three-deep, in a V-shaped defensive trench made in the summer by the French themselves. In the grisly humor of fate, the French had unwittingly dug their own graves.
Barkus and a dozen other researchers spent months excavating the site, 2 kilometers from the Vilnius old town. They charted and tagged the skeletons—then carefully examined each to determine age, sex and possible cause of death.
The size and structure of skeleton No. 151 indicate it belonged to a male, said Barkus (photo); the unworn teeth and incoming third molar suggest he was about 20. He was tall—the petite Emperor apparently favoring height in elite units.
Several bones were of boys as young as 15, probably drummers used to signal commands. Dozens belonged to women, possibly laundresses, officers’ servants or even prostitutes.
From the unique wear of some teeth, specialists could even tell that some of the soldiers were avid pipe smokers.
Tellingly, virtually none of the bones showed signs of blunt trauma that could have come from cannon shrapnel, bullets or bayonet stabs, suggesting those buried in the trenches didn’t die of war wounds.
Many of the skeletons were found in a tight, curled-up posture, a poignant sign—even across two centuries—of the human suffering. People who die of exposure tend to assume a fetal position in their final minutes, according to Barkus.
“What killed these men was cold, starvation and disease,” he concluded.
And why did none have signs of battle wounds from recent engagements?
“The explanation’s quite simple really,” said Barkus. “Anyone who was wounded even slightly fighting the Russians died quickly en route from Moscow. Only the relatively healthy made it this far, then died here.”
An absence of obvious wounds also appears to discount some French accounts that blood-thirsty Cossacks swept upon the ailing soldiers, hacking them to death with their sabers.
DNA tests are being done to try to determine whether an unusually large proportion of the soldiers, as some historians contend, died of typhus—a lice-born disease that typically plagued armies of the age.
Upon his arrival in Paris, Napoleon told his Senate that “my army had some losses” but that this “was primarily due to the rigors of the season.”
While some historians have argued he exaggerated the winter’s severity as an excuse for sloppy planning, Archaeology Magazine concluded the evidence gleaned from the Vilnius graves “thus far seems to support Napoleon.”
Russians have also been wont to grant too much credit to General Winter, saying their historic victory was mainly due to ingenious strategy.
The debacle is widely viewed as the beginning of the end of Napoleon, whose veil of invincibility was now gone. The downfall of the most influential figure of the age was sealed at Waterloo, Belgium, in 1815.
During Napoleon’s 15-year reign, a million French soldiers had died under his command—nearly half of them during the disastrous Russian campaign alone.
While troops who marched on Russia were French soldiers, they weren’t necessarily French; at least half were conscripts from across Napoleon’s vast empire. So Deputy Ambassador Poupard said there was never a question of returning the remains to France.
“We have no idea which remains belong to a Pole, an Italian, a Dutchman, a German or over a dozen other nationalities who fought,” the French diplomat said. Thousands of Lithuanians also served in the Grand Army.
“In any case, this is part of Lithuanian history now. They belong here.”
A planned road was finally built over the initial grave site—the last remains having been removed. But archeologists recently found another bone-filled pit 100 meters away in the shadow a brand new apartment block. The over 2,000 sets of bones were in the same V-trench complex and in a similar condition as those found before. There may be over 20,000 other skeletons nearby.
Lithuania and France agreed the soldiers will be buried soon in Vilnius—in a ceremony that will include a gun salute by a Lithuanian honor guard. A monument paid for by France and designed by Lithuanians will be unveiled later.
“This is an occasion, especially with Lithuania on the verge of entering the European Union and the NATO alliance, to show reconciliation between former enemies that are now partners,” said the French official.
Mayor Zuokas added that the international attention the discovery is sure to generate will drive home just how connected Lithuania is to historical events that made Europe what it is today. Local tourism officials are already drawing up plans for what they call “Napoleon tours.”
Some 1,700 skeletons were already moved to a hilltop chapel in the city’s exclusive Antakalnis Cemetery, normally reserved for artists and independence heroes; the others, including unknown soldier No. 151, will arrive here soon.
Sets of bones in individual white mortuary bags crowd one wall of the garage-sized sanctuary, next to a groundkeeper’s rakes, a wheelbarrow and a small statue of an angel undergoing repairs.
The chapel’s oak door creaks open to a grove, shaded by pines, that will be the soldiers’ final resting-place.
So what gives Kola the idea that there are "mass graves" at the red dots? Did they found bones there. Did they give an indication whether what they found does represent a number of corpses?Malle wrote:Tom, excellent review! You took the word out of my mouth. I have scanned three pages in the book and asked Webmaster to upload them. It serves as an illustration to your review. They are large, but it's worthwhile to wait.
The first scan is a map of the drillings and excavations. Please note that they don't do any digging where they found the graves!
...
Hektor wrote:So what gives Kola the idea that there are "mass graves" at the red dots? Did they found bones there. Did they give an indication whether what they found does represent a number of corpses?Malle wrote:Tom, excellent review! You took the word out of my mouth. I have scanned three pages in the book and asked Webmaster to upload them. It serves as an illustration to your review. They are large, but it's worthwhile to wait.
The first scan is a map of the drillings and excavations. Please note that they don't do any digging where they found the graves!
...
If i give that map drawing to my 3 year old niece, she can put red dots all over so that there will be evidence of huge mass graves.
When you realize that the Holocaust is a LIE, then all of a sudden, ALL your questions, ALL bizarre and strange things, disappear, and ALL things make sense, at last.
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