BA's case for orthodoxy

[bombsaway]

I made a typo here (in bold) . I meant to say summations of events.

Can you point out the most questionable/idiotic thing in Hilberg's first edition? Unlike Nuremberg or USSR summations of evidence, Hilberg drew on witness testimony and documentary evidence. His work is solid and I would expect errors to be minor and of the nitpicky variety, like diesel being used instead of gasoline at the Reinhard camps.

A lot was got right in Nuremberg and even in Soviet trials, but at times things were stated without substantiation, eg at Nuremberg a claim was made that the Germans tested an atomic weapon on a Polish village. Not much details were given here and no one was tried for it, but this is the sort of dubious methodology Hilberg would never use.

[Archie]

If you go back and read the first edition of Hilberg or look at Nuremberg testimonies or read the reports of the Extraordinary State Commission and so forth, what you will find is that the whole thing is based on very questionable and frankly downright idiotic material. .

Can you point out the most questionable/idiotic thing in Hilberg's first edition? Unlike Nuremberg or USSR summations of evidence, Hilberg drew on witness testimony and documentary evidence. His work is solid and I would expect errors to be minor and of the nitpicky variety, like diesel being used instead of gasoline at the Reinhard camps.

I should also say that it is expected that in history narratives will be revised and updated as historical evidence is processed (this takes time). Eg with the first few months of Operation Barbarossa, most analysis up until the 80s or 90s had it as a stunning German victory, the war going was going swimmingly. More recent studies, like David Stahel's https://www.amazon.com/Operation-Barbar ... 052117015X , find archival evidence of massive losses to the Panzer corps and great distress about the campaign from top ranking Generals as early as July/August 1941. Stahel's position is that the war was effectively lost by Sept 41 and even the enormous victory at Kiev couldn't turn things around.

The obvious one is that he claimed to be aware of Hitler's final solution orders, referring to "two of Hitler's decisions," with one "order" being given in spring of 1941. He was grilled on this claim in court at the Zundel trial and ended up removing that language from the second edition. (177)

On a related point, he says of Goering's order to Heydrich of July 31, 1941: "The order of July 31 marks a turning point in anti-Jewish history. With the dispatch of that order, the centuries-old policy of expulsion was terminated and a new policy of annihilation was inaugurated." (262) This contradicts what you will hear nowadays about this. While I would be willing to accept some reasonable revision due to new information, what we have here is the holocaust historians contradicting each other on extremely basic points because of lack of hard documentation and making major changes to try to save a story that isn't working.

Hilberg is generally okay on less controversial things that have a sounder documentary basis (general persecution of Jews). The problem is that on contested points like the gas chambers the quality of his sources noticeably deteriorates because he has few/no relevant documents. Post-war affidavits. Memoirs like those of Olga Lengyel and Gisella Perl. His treatment of testimonial evidence is generally abysmal. He is often satisfied with citing a single statement as proof of something.

On page 570, in his discussion of Zyklon B (a product with a well-established legitimate use), he remarks "Almost the whole Auschwitz supply was needed for the gassing of people; very little was used for fumigation." He says this about a camp that was placed under quarantine multiple times due to typhus epidemics. Pressac argued the reverse, that around 95% was used for hygienic purposes. To establish the gassings, he relies on Hoess extensively without acknowledging the difficulties or contradictions. Many of the sources he uses (e.g. Wiernik, Gerstein) contain idiocies which are concealed by Hilberg (as is customary).

Hilberg's leaps and poor/non-existent argumentation are what firmly convinced Arthur Butz that holocaust had to be a hoax. (He had previously read some of the embryonic revisionist work of the time and found it to be lacking).

Still possessing my lingering doubts I sat down, early in 1972, and started to read some of the “Holocaust” literature itself rather more systematically than I had previously, in order to see just what claims were made in this connection and on what evidence. Fortunately, one of my first choices was Raul Hilberg’s The Destruction of the European Jews. The experience was a shock and a rude awakening, for Hilberg’s book did what the opposition literature could never have done. I not only became convinced that the legend of the several million gassed Jews must be a hoax, but I derived what turned out to be a fairly reliable “feel” for the remarkable cabalistic mentality that had given the lie its specific form.

In Hilberg's favor, we could say that he disbelieved the soap factory stories. Being very Jewish-focused and having some grasp of arithmetic, he did not fall for the Soviet hoax figure of 4 million killed at Auschwitz. He also was willing to go slightly below the standard six million figure for overall victims. Later in life, he seemed relatively tolerant of revisionism and controversial figures like Norman Finkelstein. And he was not nearly as over-the-top as most holocaust promoters.

[Hektor]

I made a typo here (in bold) . I meant to say summations of events.

Can you point out the most questionable/idiotic thing in Hilberg's first edition? Unlike Nuremberg or USSR summations of evidence, Hilberg drew on witness testimony and documentary evidence. His work is solid and I would expect errors to be minor and of the nitpicky variety, like diesel being used instead of gasoline at the Reinhard camps.

A lot was got right in Nuremberg and even in Soviet trials, but at times things were stated without substantiation, eg at Nuremberg a claim was made that the Germans tested an atomic weapon on a Polish village. Not much details were given here and no one was tried for it, but this is the sort of dubious methodology Hilberg would never use.

Yeah, I'd guess that the e.g. got the names right of most people. And they probably had piles of 'facts' gathered via their intelligence services, which they could drop during the trial. The trick is to spin, add, omit, suppress parts of the picture to create an impression desired by those running such a trial.

Well, there is neither evidence for the existence of gasoline engines nor diesel engines used for the purpose of homicidal gassings... But picking the wrong type of engine for the purpose isn't just a nitty detail... It's a give away that they haven't seen (and also not heard) what they claim to have. That something like this went through at trials and also went through for historiographers shows that pushing through a paradigm was all they were interested in.

[bombsaway]

There are no records of any mass shipments of gasoline or other fuel to Belzec, bombsaway.

There's no evidence of material shipments of any kind into the Reinhard camps (except for excavators for Treblinka I think) , all related vouchers were destroyed if we're to trust Globocnik's letter to Himmler which I quoted earlier.

But the bottom-line is that your "strange visitor" is not credible and he is not even confirmed to be whoever he seems to have said he is. It's a moot point, and seems to be your only reference at all to suggest that Jews and SS at Belzec had firehoses from which they were blasting tons of gasoline into a giant pit, over and over again.

Pfannenstiel (presumably Rassinier's visitor) had this to say during his interrogation by West German authorities

“From the inspection site the corpses were taken directly to deep mass graves that had been dug in the vicinity of the extermination installation. When the pits were rather full, the corpses were doused with gasoline – it may have been some other flammable liquid – and were then lit. I could only determine that the corpses burned just partly. Then another layer of earth was thrown over the corpses and then fresh corpses were placed into the same pit.”

There are other testimonies for Belzec about use of gasoline (as well as the other Reinhard camps). HC blog provides this reference:

Report about investigation results in the Belzec extermination camp case, signed by state attorney Witkowski, German translation from Polish in BAL B162/208 AR-Z 252/59, Bd. VI, f.1185-88. The report refers to several witnesses including Eustachy Ukraiński, Tadeusz Misiewicz, Stanislaw Kozak and Kazimierz Czerniak. The machine(s) extracting the corpses were mentioned by witnesses Goch, Kirsz, Ukraiński and Kozak (depositions as note 5); Kirsz and Kozak mentioned the pyres being doused with a liquid, while Ukraiński stated that the fires had constantly been "fueled with a certain powder" ("mit einem bestimmten Pulver verstärkt", in the deposition’s German translation, as note 5, f.1119).

bombsaway, it is very ironic that you claim it is Revisionists who are creating 'strawmen' to battle against, given you have literally just invented the idea that a majority of fuel used at Belzec was gasoline, despite no corroborating evidence whatsoever to support your claim (and I mean nothing).

4 statements saying other flammables were used at Belzec vs zero statements saying only wood was used.

https://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot ... tml#_doc62

(this is actually for me documentary evidence incineration was occurring in August/September 1942)

bombsaway, the document you have cited is a travel permit to inspect "field ovens" with no indication that these were even crematory ovens (as opposed to culinary or other heating elements), nor that they were even at Belzec.

Remember that this whole question of whether mass burning at Belzec occurred in summer of 1942 began with your earlier statement, here:

I was limiting discussion as much as I could to Kola's study, but yes, there has been debate about whether the graves could fit 450k to 600k bodies. I believe this was argued exhaustively to be possible by HC blog. They should have saved their breath though, because bodies were being burned in the summer of 42.

https://www.ns-archiv.de/verfolgung/pol ... edlung.php

So this: "The story is that they buried 600,000 whole bodies there at the camp and dug them up and burned them later on. " is not actually the story.

Here above, you suggest that there is no need to worry about a lack of disturbed earth at Belzec accounting for 450k+ corpses buried there, since we have evidence cremations at this scale were already occurring.

Do we really, bombsaway?

Historians take an evidenced based approach, which yes includes witness testimony given after the war. If witness testimony and documentary evidence reinforce each other they have increased probative value.

In terms of inspecting the experimental field ovens we know that it was Hoess and his adjutant that came all the way up from Auschwitz "to Litzmannstadt and back to inspect the experimental site of field ovens Aktion Reinhard". Travel report here, which also reveals they met with Blobel and requisitioned a "ball mill for grinding substances" and construction materials he was using for Auschwitz https://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot ... tml#_doc63

Mattogno's theory is that the Reinhard furnaces were waste incinerators, and the only witness testimony he brings to bear here is one where the witness points out "paper" was being destroyed. TEOCAR pg 1347

Here's how Hoess relates the trip in his memoirs plus more about the overall mission of body destruction, which according to him began in mid 42

During his visit to the camp in the summer of 1942, the Reichsführer SS watched every detail of the whole process of destruction from the
time when the prisoners were unloaded to the emptying of bunker II. At
that time the bodies were not being burned.
He had no criticisms to make, nor did he discuss the matter. Gauleiter
Bracht and the Obergruppenführer Schmauser were present with him.
Shortly after the visit of the Reichsführer SS, Standartenführer Blobel
arrived from Eichmann’s office with an order from the Reichsführer SS
stating that all the mass graves were to be opened and the corpses
burned. In addition the ashes were to be disposed of in such a way that
it would be impossible at some future time to calculate the number of
corpses burned. Blobel had already experimented with different methods of cremation in
Culenhof[91]and Eichmann had authorized him to show me the apparatus he used.

Hössler and I went to Culenhof on a tour of inspection. Blobel had had
various makeshift ovens constructed, which were fired with wood and
oil refuse. He had also attempted to dispose of the bodies with explosives,
but their destruction had been very incomplete. The ashes were
distributed over the neighboring countryside after first being ground to
a powder in a bone mill.

And here is further info on the visit from his interrogation, with additional info on gasoline used when he visited Treblinka

Defendant: I only know Chelmno, Treblinka and Auschwitz. I saw the crema¬
tion. By order of the Reichsfiihrer, Globe! [Blobel] had been assigned the task
of locating mass graves and totally eliminating their traces. In this context, he
ordered me to visit Chelmno in order to observe the experiments that were
carried out right there to eliminate these mass graves. There they worked with
flamethrowers, chemicals and explosives, even with various types of furnaces
used for cremation. For example, there were furnaces utilized as field furnac¬
es, or they cremated with the aid of wood soaked with gasoline. At Tremblinka
[sic], the corpses I saw and which came from the gas chamber, as well as
those which had been left for months in large pits [and that] were pulled out by
excavators, [were put] on pyres [made] of railroad tracks; the burning fire was
mixed with wood, and oil was again poured over it, and it was soaked with
gasoline. Initialy, only a few pyres and crematories were used in Auschwitz,
and cremations were carried out in this way in pits.

Note that Blobel's activities around Chelmno are well documented including this British intercept which has him requisitioning a flamethrower, just as Hoess described above. https://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot ... tml#_doc55
Other witness statements have Blobel destroying corpses with flamethrowers as well.

So basically if I'm an orthodox historian looking at this it would be foolish for me not to make a connection between the "field ovens Aktion Reinhard" and body destruction (which is indicated at all the Reinhard camps around this time period , late summer 1942). These statements also describe the use of liquid fuel in the destruction of corpses on metal pyres, the exact method used at these camps according to witnesses.

Based on the documents alone, I think the waste disposal or your "cooking" thesis is pretty weak. A high ranking SS man and commandant of the soon to be largest labor camp in Europe going all over Poland inspecting trash incinerators or field kitchens? Blobel destroying trash with flamethrowers? (or heating up soup?) This strikes me as ridiculous. I apologize for the argument from incredulity here, but we can explore this more if you want.

Browning never says Eichmann lying about seeing gas chambers or mass killings. That's your thesis isn't it?

No, bombsaway. My 'thesis' is that Eichmann did not see any gassing at Majdanek, despite saying that he did. My 'thesis' also includes the fact that Browning agrees this draws Eichmann's pretrial credibility into question.

If you misrepresent what I am saying here again, bombsaway, you're just going to look even more like a liar.

You said here viewtopic.php?f=2&t=14859&start=390#p110072

Moreover, we know that Eichmann isn't only revising his lies downward, he's also invented 'gassings' that did not happen (revising upward), shown earlier:

In his precapture statements, Eichmann claimed that he saw the alleged homicidal gas chambers of Majdanek, a concentration camp in Poland. Browning informed his readers in 2003 that these “observations” are not credible: “In both precapture accounts, Eichmann’s dating is vague. Furthermore, the claims that gassing was already taking place in this first camp, or that it was Majdanek, are contrary to what we know from other sources. The precapture testimonies, in short, are helpful to neither the historian nor Eichmann’s credibility [p. 23].” In plain language, Eichmann never saw the “gas chambers” he claimed to have seen at Majdanek

Browning's thesis was that Eichmann was mistaken about Majdanek, not lying or "inventing", so I don't think this has been demonstrated and I don't know why you would bring it up if you didn't think it was relevant. I apologize if I'm misrepresenting you, but using a quote like this to back up your claim that he was "inventing" gassings is misleading.

[Butterfangers]

There's no evidence of material shipments of any kind into the Reinhard camps (except for excavators for Treblinka I think) , all related vouchers were destroyed if we're to trust Globocnik's letter to Himmler which I quoted earlier.

This is a great point, bombsaway. There is no documentary evidence of even material shipments in or out of the AR camps. Let's remember that next time we circle into a debate regarding any expectation of documents as to "where did they [Jews] go?".

How did I predict you would not have a single document or even a contemporary wartime statement which supports your 'gasoline' theory? You're dealing with 'gasoline' which is only told of in postwar testimony, apparently (which is easy to invent with enough motive). What is not-so-easy to invent is human remains, official documents and the like.

Pfannenstiel (presumably Rassinier's visitor) had this to say during his interrogation by West German authorities

“From the inspection site the corpses were taken directly to deep mass graves that had been dug in the vicinity of the extermination installation. When the pits were rather full, the corpses were doused with gasoline – it may have been some other flammable liquid – and were then lit. I could only determine that the corpses burned just partly. Then another layer of earth was thrown over the corpses and then fresh corpses were placed into the same pit.”

Yes, bombsaway, perhaps this is the same fellow---the same exact fellow who swore up and down that "15 minutes" is all it took for a diesel engine to suffocate a building full of hundreds of Jews to death. Just 15 minutes, bombsaway, he's absolutely sure of it. I notice you ignored that part. Why did you ignore it? Surely, you have some more testimony that will exonerate Pfannenstiel's claim of such an utterly impossible timeline.

There are other testimonies for Belzec about use of gasoline (as well as the other Reinhard camps).

Oh, more [postwar] testimony which aligns with the victors' propaganda narrative? For top-notch evidence, we know we can count on you.

HC blog provides this reference:

Report about investigation results in the Belzec extermination camp case, signed by state attorney Witkowski, German translation from Polish in BAL B162/208 AR-Z 252/59, Bd. VI, f.1185-88. The report refers to several witnesses including Eustachy Ukraiński, Tadeusz Misiewicz, Stanislaw Kozak and Kazimierz Czerniak. The machine(s) extracting the corpses were mentioned by witnesses Goch, Kirsz, Ukraiński and Kozak (depositions as note 5); Kirsz and Kozak mentioned the pyres being doused with a liquid, while Ukraiński stated that the fires had constantly been "fueled with a certain powder" ("mit einem bestimmten Pulver verstärkt", in the deposition’s German translation, as note 5, f.1119).

Got it, so either dousing or powdering... or perhaps it was lime pits? Or steam chambers... or vacuum? I forget, please remind me.

4 statements saying other flammables were used at Belzec vs zero statements saying only wood was used.

I'm starting to think you rely pretty heavily on [postwar] statements.

Historians take an evidenced based approach, which yes includes witness testimony given after the war. If witness testimony and documentary evidence reinforce each other they have increased probative value.

You make a really great point, here... which is why it is curious that you have found exactly zero documentary evidence supporting your 'gasoline' (or some mystery fuel) theory, yet still believe it anyway. Very weird, indeed.

In terms of inspecting the experimental field ovens we know that it was Hoess and his adjutant that came all the way up from Auschwitz "to Litzmannstadt and back to inspect the experimental site of field ovens Aktion Reinhard". Travel report here, which also reveals they met with Blobel and requisitioned a "ball mill for grinding substances" and construction materials he was using for Auschwitz https://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot ... tml#_doc63

Mattogno's theory is that the Reinhard furnaces were waste incinerators, and the only witness testimony he brings to bear here is one where the witness points out "paper" was being destroyed. TEOCAR pg 1347

First, we need to make clear what you (and others) are alleging: that Hoess was sent from Auschwitz to Chelmno to inspect crematory ovens meant for "Aktion Reinhard" (extermination at Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka), for their potential adoption in corpse disposal techniques used at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

This makes no sense whatsoever.

Mattogno has already pointed out that the only two documents connecting Auschwitz to 'Aktion Reinhardt' in any way are both related to disinfestation (and totally unrelated to claims of homicide or genocide). Moreover, nothing insofar as cremation techniques nor "bone grinding"--research of which is the purported purpose of the visit to Chelmno, which itself isn't mentioned on the document, either; the document mentions Litzmannstadt--were ever claimed to have been adopted at Birkenau, rendering the entire "field trip" pointless as alleged. Here is Mattogno's summary on the topic:

No orthodox holocaust historian has been able to establish a relation-
ship between the “Aktion Reinhardt,” as an alleged extermination oper-
ation, and the Auschwitz and Chełmno camps. Only an economic aspect
(the appropriation and exploitation of Jewish belongings) link it to
Auschwitz, while there is no link to Chełmno at all. Thus while Ausch-
witz was involved in the economic aspect of “Aktion Reinhardt,”
Chełmno was not involved at all. Accordingly the “field furnaces Ak-
tion Reinhard” were not cremation ovens and they were not located at
Chełmno. If in fact they had been cremation ovens and if they had been
linked to the extermination aspect of “Aktion Reinhardt,” why then
were these brick-and-mortar ovens not introduced at Bełżec, Sobibór
and Treblinka? I posit instead that they were actually field waste incin-
eration furnaces meant to destroy all flammable and unusable materials
originating from the appropriation of Jewish goods (the economic as-
pect of “Aktion Reinhardt”), while the “ball mill” was used to grind
down non-flammable materials. This is why the difference between a
“ball mill” and a “bone mill” is of significance here.
[...]
My hypothesis about the waste incineration furnaces resonates with
at least one testimony. The Sobibór witness Thomas Blatt declared in
1963 that he had been “in charge of the supervision of a paper and
clothing incineration furnace.” Two years later this witness confir-
med:
“There was also a masoned furnace where the documents were burned.
[...] Then a furnace was built with bricks, so that the papers would not fly
away in the wind.”

TECOAR, p. 1212

Altogether, the notion that whatever equipment referred to in this document about "field ovens" refers to the handling and disposal of Jewish property or other materials makes far more sense than any unsupported references to "extermination".

Here's how Hoess relates the trip in his memoirs plus more about the overall mission of body destruction, which according to him began in mid 42

We don't need to go into this. Anything Hoess wrote after he was being tortured and his family was under explicit Soviet threat is moot and bunk. If you have real evidence, bombsaway, there's no need for you to cite Hoess' fraudulent "memoirs".

And here is further info on the visit from his interrogation, with additional info on gasoline used when he visited Treblinka

You are wholly reliant on bunk testimony, bombsaway. I will point out one thing, regarding the next excerpt you provided, shown here:

Defendant: I only know Chelmno, Treblinka and Auschwitz. I saw the crema¬
tion. By order of the Reichsfiihrer, Globe! [Blobel] had been assigned the task
of locating mass graves and totally eliminating their traces. In this context, he
ordered me to visit Chelmno in order to observe the experiments that were
carried out right there to eliminate these mass graves. There they worked with
flamethrowers, chemicals and explosives, even with various types of furnaces
used for cremation. For example, there were furnaces utilized as field furnac¬
es, or they cremated with the aid of wood soaked with gasoline. At Tremblinka
[sic], the corpses I saw and which came from the gas chamber, as well as
those which had been left for months in large pits [and that] were pulled out by
excavators, [were put] on pyres [made] of railroad tracks; the burning fire was
mixed with wood, and oil was again poured over it, and it was soaked with
gasoline. Initialy, only a few pyres and crematories were used in Auschwitz,
and cremations were carried out in this way in pits.

It would appear your excerpt comes directly from "Commandant of Auschwitz" by Mattogno, p. 254, but you seem to have missed the point Mattogno made right afterward which discredits this entire statement. Hoess refers here back to his July 1941 visit to Treblinka, claiming he saw burning pyres on a framework made of railway tracks (see ftn. 189, op cit.) a full year before this method had even been conceived (let alone invented/practiced)! Amazing!

This is in addition to the entire book "Commandant of Auschwitz" (https://holocausthandbooks.com/dl/35-coa.pdf) which demonstrates beyond any reasonable doubt that Hoess' testimony is a complete and utter work of manipulation from his captors. But this standard for evidence is par for the course from bombsaway.

Note that Blobel's activities around Chelmno are well documented including this British intercept which has him requisitioning a flamethrower, just as Hoess described above. https://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot ... tml#_doc55
Other witness statements have Blobel destroying corpses with flamethrowers as well.

Elon Musk has a flamethrower, too. He even sells them and not for killing but simply because they are "cool". Perhaps Blobel (or any one of his staff) did use a flamethrower for burning objects en masse, or for clearing out unwanted plants/vegatation/insects/etc in work areas. Or, to your credit, perhaps they even attempted using such a device on corpses (and the lice they contained). None of this proves a Holocaust-scale "extermination" operation. At most, it proves a creative and sanitary way to dispose of bodies which Hoess may or may not have actually observed at any point (but more likely, Hoess' captors simply wanted to make use of a document they found which mentioned Blobel and a flamethrower).

So basically if I'm an orthodox historian looking at this it would be foolish for me not to make a connection between the "field ovens Aktion Reinhard" and body destruction (which is indicated at all the Reinhard camps around this time period , late summer 1942). These statements also describe the use of liquid fuel in the destruction of corpses on metal pyres, the exact method used at these camps according to witnesses.

If you're an orthodox historian, you put in zero effort whatsoever toward source criticism and you think physical evidence is a relatively trivial matter compared to tHe SuRviVoRs.

You do realize you just used "statements" to 'corroborate' "witnesses", right?

Browning's thesis was that Eichmann was mistaken about Majdanek, not lying or "inventing", so I don't think this has been demonstrated and I don't know why you would bring it up if you didn't think it was relevant. I apologize if I'm misrepresenting you, but using a quote like this to back up your claim that he was "inventing" gassings is misleading.

You're playing dumb in a deceptive way here, bombsaway. You know full-well that what I am saying is that (1) Eichmann observed no 'gassing' at Majdanek, (2) he said he did in his precapture testimony, and (3) Browning suggests that this exact statement draws Eichmann's credibility into question.

Your emphasis that Browning has 'explained away' why he believes Eichmann stated this falsehood is 100% irrelevant to the factual accuracy of points 1-3 I just repeated above.

[Hektor]

....
Note that Blobel's activities around Chelmno are well documented including this British intercept which has him requisitioning a flamethrower, just as Hoess described above. https://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot ... tml#_doc55
Other witness statements have Blobel destroying corpses with flamethrowers as well.

So basically if I'm an orthodox historian looking at this it would be foolish for me not to make a connection between the "field ovens Aktion Reinhard" and body destruction (which is indicated at all the Reinhard camps around this time period , late summer 1942). These statements also describe the use of liquid fuel in the destruction of corpses on metal pyres, the exact method used at these camps according to witnesses.

Based on the documents alone, I think the waste disposal or your "cooking" thesis is pretty weak. A high ranking SS man and commandant of the soon to be largest labor camp in Europe going all over Poland inspecting trash incinerators or field kitchens? Blobel destroying trash with flamethrowers? (or heating up soup?) This strikes me as ridiculous. I apologize for the argument from incredulity here, but we can explore this more if you want.
.....

Something flamboyant like a flamethrower does not cancel basic physics neither. One can incinerate with a flamethrower, but it is rather inefficient to get rid of massive amounts of corpses with it. Where are the corpse remains around Chelmno... And why did no Holocaustian ever bother to present those for the last 8 decades.

Btw. where is the German communication on the flame-thrower. Typing up some message one claims to have intercepted and use this for innuendo is too easy, of course.

[Wilbur]

That would be Hans Rothfels' description in the paragraph dedicated entirely to his commentary. "On the spot" is how Gerstein described shootings to protect secrecy would happen - as Rothfels quotes just above - and if Rothfels wanted to opine same, he'd not be for lack of words to express it. Instead he merely says "contemporaneous."

Rothfels says "By what they reveal, and by the fact that they were written on the spot, these notes therefore have a certain documentary value."

Again: If Rothfels wanted to say "on the spot" he'd have written something like "auf der Stelle" - as he did when quoting a Gerstein text. Moreover, it's Rothfels' commentary and not in the paragraph dedicated to Cornides disclosures.

- If you typed it yourself as personal notes or a diary entry, why would you need to remind yourself that you're one German NCO?
- If you unwittingly told the story to someone else who typed it, why are you still in possession of a copy of the document?
- Judging by the document's content and form, isn't it apparent that whoever typed it intended for it to be distributed to other parties?
- How would you respond to the suspicion that you knowingly participated in the creation of intelligence product or propaganda material for the enemy?

We can only speculate about Cornides' motives, but I would say he didn't like what his country was doing, and created the report to be distributed "to other parties" in order to put an end to what he thought was a deeply criminal act. Probably you can't answer this, but how do you think you would react if you were a German back then and came to believe your country was engaged in an operation like this?

I'm interested in everyone's answers to this last question.

We can only speculate why one can only find committed partisans discovering what Allied propaganda wanted them to find, yes. Or why one would have the same information-gathering objectives as e.g. Polish resistance operatives. Or why the gentleman was coy about it and refused to elaborate much. Cornides' postwar career trajectory as occupation regime toy is telling - he led a foreign policy shop that was almost certainly an instrumentality of US foreign policy. Do you suppose one will ever find concerned citizen Cornides' "on the spot" report of deaths as a result of the resource distribution policies of the Western Allied occupation? Or was he too busy brownnosing his way to the top?

I'd think it sucks that my government was pressured by effective Allied war policies into making the move, as it would indicate a worrying loss of control over affairs.

[Hektor]

....
We can only speculate why one can only find committed partisans discovering what Allied propaganda wanted them to find, yes. Or why one would have the same information-gathering objectives as e.g. Polish resistance operatives. Or why the gentleman was coy about it and refused to elaborate much. Cornides' postwar career trajectory as occupation regime toy is telling - he led a foreign policy shop that was almost certainly an instrumentality of US foreign policy. Do you suppose one will ever find concerned citizen Cornides' "on the spot" report of deaths as a result of the resource distribution policies of the Western Allied occupation? Or was he too busy brownnosing his way to the top?

I'd think it sucks that my government was pressured by effective Allied war policies into making the move, as it would indicate a worrying loss of control over affairs.

It's indeed telling that 'cooperative witnesses' had rather bright post-war careers and also apparently good relationships with Allied or Allied imposed institutions. It also seems he understood pretty quickly what was expected of him and what could be expected to be rewarded.

To me this is however a side show. What's more interesting if anything he said or implied can actually be empirically verify.

And yes, the standard answer of Germans from the era was that they 'knew nothing about extermination'. They knew about deportations, camps etc. but saw no purpose of this having some sinister purpose. Now the counterargument there is that they 'didn't want to know' or 'repressed memory', etc. or are simply lying.... Now that gets rather intricate given that this actually suggest a conspiracy of millions of Germans (and Poles and other people) to deny knowledge of the Holocaust. Were they all into a conspiracy of silence?

[curioussoul]

Mattogno has already pointed out that the only two documents connecting Auschwitz to 'Aktion Reinhardt' in any way are both related to disinfestation (and totally unrelated to claims of homicide or genocide). Moreover, nothing insofar as cremation techniques nor "bone grinding"--research of which is the purported purpose of the visit to Chelmno, which itself isn't mentioned on the document, either; the document mentions Litzmannstadt--were ever claimed to have been adopted at Birkenau, rendering the entire "field trip" pointless as alleged. Here is Mattogno's summary on the topic:

No orthodox holocaust historian has been able to establish a relation-
ship between the “Aktion Reinhardt,” as an alleged extermination oper-
ation, and the Auschwitz and Chełmno camps. Only an economic aspect
(the appropriation and exploitation of Jewish belongings) link it to
Auschwitz, while there is no link to Chełmno at all. Thus while Ausch-
witz was involved in the economic aspect of “Aktion Reinhardt,”
Chełmno was not involved at all. Accordingly the “field furnaces Ak-
tion Reinhard” were not cremation ovens and they were not located at
Chełmno. If in fact they had been cremation ovens and if they had been
linked to the extermination aspect of “Aktion Reinhardt,” why then
were these brick-and-mortar ovens not introduced at Bełżec, Sobibór
and Treblinka? I posit instead that they were actually field waste incin-
eration furnaces meant to destroy all flammable and unusable materials
originating from the appropriation of Jewish goods (the economic as-
pect of “Aktion Reinhardt”), while the “ball mill” was used to grind
down non-flammable materials. This is why the difference between a
“ball mill” and a “bone mill” is of significance here.
[...]
My hypothesis about the waste incineration furnaces resonates with
at least one testimony. The Sobibór witness Thomas Blatt declared in
1963 that he had been “in charge of the supervision of a paper and
clothing incineration furnace.” Two years later this witness confir-
med:
“There was also a masoned furnace where the documents were burned.
[...] Then a furnace was built with bricks, so that the papers would not fly
away in the wind.”

TECOAR, p. 1212

Altogether, the notion that whatever equipment referred to in this document about "field ovens" refers to the handling and disposal of Jewish property or other materials makes far more sense than any unsupported references to "extermination".

Mattogno's theory is all but proven by a document written by Karl Bischoff, relating to a fire in Birkenau on the 26th of September 1942:

"As determined on Saturday, 26 September 1942, the start of a fire could be prevented at the last minute, which was caused by carelessly burning old suitcases and the like at the effect barracks south of the DAW."

Given the date for this incident, it is quite obvious that this practice had been in place for a while and Hoess' visit to "field furnaces" used at the Reinhard camps was to solve the problem of burning rubbish, junk and scraps left by Jews deported to the camp. Hoess' visit had taken place a mere week earlier (on September 17th).

[Wilbur]

To me this is however a side show. What's more interesting if anything he said or implied can actually be empirically verify.

Well, Holocausters have not ponied up anything that would confirm some service trip in the Generalgouvernement during that period. Just that he worked as a translator in POW camps and took a leave for studies in Vienna in winter 1942 to 1943.

[Archie]

Basically Reder claimed to have worked as a machinist in the engine room of the gas chambers for months. Is there anyone else who would have had a better vantage point about what kind of engine was used?

That depends, of course, on which Reder testimony you quote. In his original declaration from November 1944 he didn't mention the extermination method, only that "gas was fed through appropriate pipes". When he was interrogated in September 1944 he spoke of gas bottles and compressors. According to Reder, the gas generated by the engine was not even fed into the gas chamber. Instead, he hypothesized that the engine was used to "pressurize" or pump the air out of the room. He explained that the air in the gas chamber was pure, odorless and harmless.

In summary: Reder could not make up his mind about the actual extermination method used, despite supposedly working there for 3 months.

I won't even touch upon Reder's other lies and mistakes, which irrevocably shatter his credibility.

Gerstein, on the other hand, personally witnessed a diesel engine for hours, as the SS men purportedly tried to get it working. Gerstein must have been familiar with the workings of a typical engine since he was educated as an engineer.

All of the standard secondary sources say diesel, and Gerstein, traditionally the key witness for the AR camps, says diesel. Even right now on the USHMM website we are told:

In 1942, systematic mass killing in stationary gas chambers began at Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka, all in German-occupied Poland. These gas chambers used carbon monoxide gas generated by diesel engines. As victims were "unloaded" from cattle cars, they were told that they had to be disinfected in "showers." The Nazi and Ukrainian guards sometimes shouted at and beat the victims, who were ordered to enter the "showers" with raised arms to allow as many people as possible to fit into the gas chambers. The tighter the gas chambers were packed, the faster the victims suffocated.

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/ ... operations

What has clearly happened here is that Holocaust Controversies could not bring themselves to argue the idiocy of diesel gassings and so they just made up their own new version. (BA says that we are "strawmanning" the orthodox side because we are not keeping up with all of these latest novelty arguments). Anyway, the HC guys looked around for gasoline testimonies and then came up with arbitrary reasons why those should be preferred. If Gerstein had said gasoline and Fuchs had said diesel they would be explaining why Gerstein is more trustworthy. All they have succeeded in showing is that there are contradictions in the testimonies.

One thing I like to do after listening to these absurd explanations from BA and others is to reread the original statements. If I haven't read something in a while, the prevarications offered by Holocaust Controversies can sound superficially plausible for a moment or two. But upon review of the relevant statements we see how desperate and misleading their arguments are.

From the Gerstein statement:

In January 1942, I was appointed Chief of the Technical Branch of Disinfestation, which also included the branch for strong poison gases for disinfestation. On 8 June 1942, the SS Sturmbannfuehrer Guenther of the Reichs-Sicher­heits-Hauptamt entered my office. He was in plain clothes and I did not know him. He ordered me to get a hundred kilograms of prussic acid and to accompany him to a place which was only known to the driver of the truck. We left for the potassium factory near Colling (Prague). Once the truck was loaded, we left for Lublin (Poland). We took with us Professor Pfannenstiel MD, Ordinary Professor for Hygiene at the University of Marburg on the Lahn. At Lublin, we were received by SS Gruppenfuehrer Globocnek. He told us: this is one of the most secret matters there are, even the most secret. Whoever talks of this shall be shot immediately. Yesterday, two talkative ones died. Then he explained to us: at the present moment – 17 August 1942 – there are three installations:

1. Belcec, on the Lublin-Lemberg road, in the sector of the Russian demarcation line. Maximum 15,000 persons a day. (Seen!)

2. Sobibor, I do not know exactly where it is located. Not seen. 20,000 persons per day.

3. Treblinka, 120 km NNE of Warsaw. 25,000 persons per day. Seen!

4. Maidanek, near Lublin. Seen in the state of preparation.

Globocnek then said: You will have to handle the sterilization of very huge quantities of clothes, 10 or 20 times the result of the clothes and textile collection (Spinnstoffsammlung) which is only arranged in order to conceal the source of these Jewish, Polish, Czech, and other clothes. Your other duties will be to change the method of our gas chambers (which are run at the present time with the exhaust gases of an old ‘Diesel’ engine), employing more poisonous material, having a quicker effect, prussic acid. But the Fuehrer and Himmler who were here on 15 August – the day before yesterday – ordered that I accompany personally all those who are to see the installations.

Heckenholt was the man in charge of the ‘Diesel’ engine, the exhaust gases of which were to kill these poor devils. SS Unterscharfuehrer Heckenholt tries to set the Diesel engine moving. But it does not start! Captain Wirth comes along. It is plain that he is afraid because I am a witness to this breakdown. Yes, indeed, I see everything and wait. Everything is registered by my stopwatch. 50 minutes, 70 minutes – the Diesel engine does not start! The people wait in their gas chambers. In vain. One can hear them cry. ‘Same as in a synagogue’, says SS Sturmbannführer Professor Dr. Pfannenstiel, Professor for Public Health at the University of Marburg/Lahn, holding his ear close to the wooden door. Captain Wirth, furious, deals the Ukrainian who is helping Heckenholt 11 or 12 lashes in the face with his whip. After 2 hours and 49 minutes, as registered by my stopwatch, the Diesel engine starts. Up to that moment the people in the four already filled chambers were alive, 4 times 750 persons in 4 times 45 cubic meters. Another 25 minutes go by. Many of the people, it is true, are dead at that point. One can see this through the little window through which the electric lamp reveals, for a moment, the inside of the chamber. After 28 minutes only a few are living. After 32 minutes, finally, all are dead! From the other side, Jewish workers open the wooden doors. In return for their terrible job, they have been promised their freedom and a small percentage of the valuables and the money found. Like stone statues, the dead are still standing, there having been no room to fall or bend over. Though dead, the families can still be recognized, their hands still clasped. It is difficult to separate them in order to clear the chamber for the next load. The bodies are thrown out, blue, wet with sweat and urine, the legs covered with excrement and menstrual blood. Everywhere among the others, the bodies of babies and children. But there is not time! Two dozen workers are engaged in checking the mouths, opening them by means of iron hooks: ‘Gold to the left, without gold to the right!’ Others check anus and genitals to look for money, diamonds, gold, etc. Dentists with chisels tear out the gold teeth, bridges or caps. In the center of everything, Captain Wirth. He is on familiar ground here. He hands me a large tin full of teeth and says: ‘Estimate for yourself the weight of gold. This is only from yesterday and the day before yesterday! And you would not believe what we find here every day! Dollars, diamonds, gold! But look for yourself!’ Then he led me to a jeweler who was in charge of all these valuables.

He refers to diesel repeatedly. Gerstein had a technical background and (if we take his statement seriously) he was sent on a secret mission to the AR camps precisely to evaluate and modify the gassing procedure. And he ultimately recommended that they stick with diesel gassings. You'd think such a technical expert would, you know, have some idea of what the gassing procedure actually was. He says he watched a gassing and that he timed everything with a stopwatch. The diesel engine is even a major aspect of his tale because he says it broke down for a extended period of time. HC tries to say that because Gerstein does not explicitly say he looked at the engine, we must assume he did not (not even during the lengthy breakdown). But how then did Gerstein come away with the "mistaken" idea that the engine was a diesel? We would have to believe that Globocnik and everyone else had this same misunderstanding. This is so far-fetched. It's especially odd that so many people would falsely identify it as a diesel if it was not. We would have to believe that there was a false "rumor" that it was a diesel. While it's true that some people do not know anything about engines, in that case they just wouldn't specify. As far as I know, it is not common for people to use "diesel" as a generic term for engine.

[Hektor]

To me this is however a side show. What's more interesting if anything he said or implied can actually be empirically verify.

Well, Holocausters have not ponied up anything that would confirm some service trip in the Generalgouvernement during that period. Just that he worked as a translator in POW camps and took a leave for studies in Vienna in winter 1942 to 1943.

I'd have to kook deeper into that characters biography.
I'm more interested to see, when a statement is made , whether this adds up with empirical evidence. How 'credible a witness' is secondary to me. Witnesses that appear credible and reliable can also deceive, be deceived or be in error. So testimony should be taken with a grain of salt.

[bombsaway]

Again: If Rothfels wanted to say "on the spot" he'd have written something like "auf der Stelle" - as he did when quoting a Gerstein text. Moreover, it's Rothfels' commentary and not in the paragraph dedicated to Cornides disclosures.

This is exactly what Rothfels wrote. You speak German apparently so you can tell me what it means. I don't see the point though, as you being mistaken on this point won't change your mind about anything.

"Freilich werden nur wenige den Willen dazu gehabt haben oder gar den Wunsch, das Gesehene und Gehörte schriftlich festzulegen. So haben die Notizen in dem, was sie als bekannt belegen, wie in der Tatsache gleichzeitiger Niederschrift, einen bestimmten dokumentarischen Wert."

What has clearly happened here is that Holocaust Controversies could not bring themselves to argue the idiocy of diesel gassings and so they just made up their own new version. (BA says that we are "strawmanning" the orthodox side because we are not keeping up with all of these latest novelty arguments). Anyway, the HC guys looked around for gasoline testimonies and then came up with arbitrary reasons why those should be preferred.

Do you think it's a coincidence that of those who claimed to have worked in the engine room at the Reinhard camps / operated or drove the vans , none said they were diesel based, and if they made the distinction, said they ran on gasoline? You speak of the 'secondary literature' being consistent that the engines used were diesel. This would be further reason for the witnesses who specified gas engines to go along with the narrative, but they contradicted it. The whole conspiracy angle falls apart under this line of scrutiny.

Gerstein didn't even claim to have seen the engine in question. How then might he have come away with the idea that the engine was diesel? You're asking me to speculate here, but it seems quite possible there was a diesel engine used to power some non-homicidal aspect of the gas chambers and he heard it. Diesel engines have a distinctive knocking sound.

[curioussoul]

Gerstein didn't even claim to have seen the engine in question.

Sure, buddy.

Heckenholt is the operator of the Diesel engine, a small technician who is also the builder of the system. With the Diesel-exhaust gases, the people are supposed to be put to death. But the Diesel doesn’t work! Captain Wirth comes. You can see that he is embarrassed that this has to happen today when I am here. Yes, I see everything! and I wait. My stopwatch registered everything well. 50 minutes 70 minutes – the Diesel won’t start! The people wait in their gas chambers. In vain. You can hear them crying, sobbing. ‘Like in the synagogue,’ says Professor Pfannenstiel, his ear to the wooden door. Captain Wirth hits the Ukrainian who is supposed to help Unterscharführer Heckenholt with the diesel 12, 13 times in the face with his riding whip. After 2 hours 49 minutes – the stopwatch registered everything well! – the Diesel starts.

[Archie]

Again: If Rothfels wanted to say "on the spot" he'd have written something like "auf der Stelle" - as he did when quoting a Gerstein text. Moreover, it's Rothfels' commentary and not in the paragraph dedicated to Cornides disclosures.

This is exactly what Rothfels wrote. You speak German apparently so you can tell me what it means. I don't see the point though, as you being mistaken on this point won't change your mind about anything.

"Freilich werden nur wenige den Willen dazu gehabt haben oder gar den Wunsch, das Gesehene und Gehörte schriftlich festzulegen. So haben die Notizen in dem, was sie als bekannt belegen, wie in der Tatsache gleichzeitiger Niederschrift, einen bestimmten dokumentarischen Wert."

What has clearly happened here is that Holocaust Controversies could not bring themselves to argue the idiocy of diesel gassings and so they just made up their own new version. (BA says that we are "strawmanning" the orthodox side because we are not keeping up with all of these latest novelty arguments). Anyway, the HC guys looked around for gasoline testimonies and then came up with arbitrary reasons why those should be preferred.

Do you think it's a coincidence that of those who claimed to have worked in the engine room at the Reinhard camps / operated or drove the vans , none said they were diesel based, and if they made the distinction, said they ran on gasoline? You speak of the 'secondary literature' being consistent that the engines used were diesel. This would be further reason for the witnesses who specified gas engines to go along with the narrative, but they contradicted it. The whole conspiracy angle falls apart under this line of scrutiny.

Gerstein didn't even claim to have seen the engine in question. How then might he have come away with the idea that the engine was diesel? You're asking me to speculate here, but it seems quite possible there was a diesel engine used to power some non-homicidal aspect of the gas chambers and he heard it. Diesel engines have a distinctive knocking sound.

I'm not persuaded by this argument that gross contradictions in the accounts are proof of their reliability. You say this disproves that there was a hoax, but that's never how the Holocaust has been managed. It's not like Jews got in a room in 1942 and said, hey, let's do the holohoax and then planned the whole thing out down to Schindler's List. Obviously the quality control (with the testimonies, memoirs, histories, etc) has been abysmal which is why revisionists have so many easy targets. Guess what? It doesn't matter. All that matters is power. If you have power, you get to dictate what's true and what isn't. They are gatekeepers of the academic and media institutions. They wield these to their benefit and that just so happens to include grossly exaggerating their own persecutions and victimhood. They don't need to do quality control at the level of individual testimony (which is totally impractical). Most people don't read the primary source testimonies. They will just get the harmonized mass propaganda version and will have no idea about all the problems. The troublemakers who do read the primary sources and point out that it's BS can be dealt with via censorship and prison.

I doubt that most of those who played a part in "the hoax" (mostly Jews but also goys like Eisenhower) think of it (or did think of it) in terms of perpetrating a hoax. Even someone who consciously lies, or forges a document, or tortures a witness could in their own minds be doing these things for a good cause (winning the war, fighting fascism, protecting Jews, etc). For example, the false Jewish witnesses who appeared in court against Frank Walus or John Demjanjuk may or may not have been consciously lying (imo, some of them absolutely were). But even if they were outright lying, in their own minds they probably did not consciously think of themselves as "lying" and promoting a "hoax;" rather, they probably view themselves as "righteous" servants of Israel and the Jewish people in the context of their own ethnocentric morality. Rassinier remarked that when he would grill people who claimed to have seen gas chambers they would always end up admitting they had not really seen it but they felt that it had probably happened somewhere and so it was only of minor consequence whether they personally saw it. "It doesn't matter if I really saw John Demjanjuk whipping people into the gas chamber (or if I was even at Treblinka) since surely some dead Jew who can't give testimony suffered something like this. I am not lying but providing a voice to the six million who cannot speak." Hence when you have a "Nazi" in the dock, many Jews will feel totally justified in giving objectively false testimony. Or if the World Jewish Congress thinks Jews are suffering persecution at the hands of the Germans, they are not going to concern themselves excessively (or at all) with the accuracy of atrocity claims and will find these necessary and useful for provoking some sort of action. From an objective perspective, we could look at these people as liars and hoaxers, but they feel justified in their own minds and are probably even "believers" in some sense. People have a high capacity for self-deception. Whenever someone gets caught producing a bogus memoir (like A Million Little Pieces) or journalist gets busted for a false story (like that UVA gang rape story), what do they usually say? Do they say, "I'm a big liar"? Rarely. Usually, they say something like "Well, even though my story is not, you know, true in the conventional sense, it was still 'true' in a way because it spoke to a 'larger truth' about ..." drug addiction, rape culture, Jewish suffering, whatever.

Anyway, back to the gasoline/diesel issue. The common story has been diesel. Revisionists rightly pointed out why this doesn't work. But even if you could show that the diesel was a total misunderstanding, all this would do would get you back to square one. It would not prove your case. It would just make the gassing procedure not completely implausible at the outset. You still have Reder claiming there were 30 enormous graves, each 100x25 meters, which simply did not exist. You still have all of Gerstein's inanities. These false testimonies by Gerstein and Reder are not neutral. If these testimonies are false, they disprove your case. If the testimonies that served as the foundation for the story are dubious, then we have no reason to believe any of this at all.

You are saying that the "better" testimonies say gasoline. Have you personally reviewed all of the potentially relevant testimony and confirmed that HC's testimony selection is honest? I don't think you have. Let's use some common sense here. How likely is it that historians would have ended up with the diesel story if it were true that the primary sources strongly leaned toward diesel? This is either some rotten luck or HC is not giving us the full picture. Even from their potentially incomplete selection, their criteria are not being applied consistently. They say Reder is more reliable than Gerstein (and supposedly Globocnik) on the engine type. But there's no obvious reason for this since Reder was hardly some expert in engines which is silly criteria anyway since you don't need to be a whiz engineer to know what kind of fuel is being used. This smacks of motivated reasoning.

I think there are more relevant testimonies than the ones they cite. The diesel problem also extends to the gas vans and I know for a fact that their claim does not hold there. Here is one relevant testimony from "Report on the crimes committed by German-Fascist invaders in the Stavropol Territory, Northern Caucasus" (USSR-1), which quotes the testimony of Fenchel.

Working as a motor mechanic, I had the chance of learning details of the construction of the vans specially adapted for suffocating and exterminating people with exhaust gases. In the town of Stavropol the Gestapo had several such vans. The van was constructed as follows: The body was approximately five metres long and two and a half metres wide. The height of the body was also approximately two and a half metres. The body was the shape of a railway car on the floor without windows. It was lined inside with galvanised sheet iron and, on the floor, also covered with sheet iron, lay a wooden grating. The door of the body was lined with rubber and tightly closed with an automatic lock.

On the floor of the van under the grating were two metal pipes about one and a half inches in diameter and two and a half metres long. These pipes were connected with a transverse pipe of equal diameter (in the shape of a capital H), with numerous half-centimetre wide holes. From the transverse pipe down through a hole in the galvanised iron floor went a rubber hose with a hexagonal nut at the end threaded so as to fit a thread on the end of the end of the engine exhaust pipe. This hose is screwed on to the exhaust pipe, and when the engine is running all exhaust gas goes into the body of this hermetically closed van. As a result of the concentration of gas any persons inside the van died within a short space of time. Seventy to 80 persons could be put inside.

This van had a ‘Sauer’ engine installed on it. The body had been built in Berlin and had on its left-hand side, near the engine, a metal plate with the inscription: ‘The Motor Body Building Works of the Joint Stock Company in Berlin,’

A Soviet squad of 25 men existed under the Gestapo for murdering Soviet citizens. This squad was headed by a German, Senior Lieut. Katzendorf, and his assistant, Senior Lieut. Wentzel, and subsequently by the Chief of ‘SD-12’, Senior Lieut. Kleiber, and his assistant, Gestapo Officer Knor. The chief of the Gestapo prison was the German officer Oberscharfuehrer Wilhelm Schmidt, and his assistant and interpreter, the Hungarian Engel Nikolai.

This does not say explicitly whether the engine was diesel or gasoline. It does say it was a "Sauer" (which is a typo for Saurer, an error which is interestingly also found in PS-501). Some revisionists have said that a Saurer of this era likely implies diesel. Your side probably will try to latch onto any possibility that this description could refer to a gasoline engine. Whatever the case, this is a testimony from a witness who was a mechanic and who claimed to be intimately familiar with the engine. There is probably other relevant stuff out there and I very much doubt it fits the neat split claimed by HC. I don't trust them one bit.

If we look the Soviet gas van material more generally, they described them as diesel. From an old post, where I quoted from the Soviet Krasnodar and Kharkov trials of 1943,
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=14852&p=107732&#p107732

The accused was questioned about the “murder vans,” i.e., the motor vehicles specially equipped for the purpose of brutally putting Soviet citizens to death. Tishchenko answered in great detail showing that he was quite familiar with the whole business. These vans were five-ton or seven-ton motor trucks, he said, with bodies built over them. These had double walls and false windows which gave them the appearance of motor buses. At the rear of each vehicle there was a door which closed hermetically. The floor consisted of a grating under which ran the exhaust pipe from the Diesel engine by which the vehicle was driven. The exhaust gas penetrated the interior of the vehicle. When the vehicle was standing with the engine running, death ensued within seven minutes ; when it was in motion death ensued in ten minutes. The prisoners learned that a horrible death awaited them in these vans and, therefore, strongly resisted when they were being forced into them and shouted for help. When that happened the Gestapo officials grabbed their victims and bundled them into the vans by main force. The loading of these “murder vans” was usually supervised by Colonel Christmann, Chief of the Gestapo, Rabbe, and other German officers. Tishchenko stated that one day he was present when 67 adults and 18 children were bundled into a “murder van.” (pg 17--18)

These vans, as testified by the German defendants in the present case and also by witnesses who witnessed the crimes committed by the Germans, are large closed trucks of dark grey colour, driven by Diesel engines.

The vans are lined inside with galvanized iron and have air-tight folding doors at the back. The floor is equipped with a wooden grating under which passes a pipe with apertures. This pipe is connected to the exhaust pipe of the engine. The exhaust gases of the Diesel engine, containing highly concentrated carbon monoxide, enter the body of the van, causing rapid poisoning and asphyxiation of the people locked up in the van. (pg 50)

Given the elaborate detail, it's ridiculous to claim these witnesses did not get a good enough look or didn't know what kind of fuel was used.

The earliest supposed eyewitness from Chelmno describes the gas van there as follows (this is sometimes referred to as "Szlamek report," among other names).

The truck was constructed in a special way and looked roughly like a regular grey van, hermetically sealed with two doors at the back. On the inside, the van was covered with sheet metal. There was no places to sit in the van. The floor was lined with wooden slats, like in a bathroom, and covered with a doormat. Between the interior of the van and the place where the driver was sitting were two little windows through which, using an electric lamp, he checked whether the victims were dead. Underneath the wooden slats were two 15-centimeters pipes coming from the driver's cabin. At the end, they had openings through which the gas could enter. The gas apparatus was located inside the driver's cabin, where only the driver sat.

According to this version of the story, the vans at Chelmno used some sort of bottled gas, NOT engine exhaust! But by the end of the war, the description of the Chelmno gas vans conformed to the Soviet version with the exhaust. In Montague's Chelmno book (the latest orthodox treatment) he tries to reconcile this by saying that at Chelmno they had one van early on that used bottled CO or something ALONG WITH two other vans that used engine exhaust, a completely different design.

Do you really not see how desperate these attempts are to reconcile this hopelessly contradictory material?