Where Specifically Do [Revisionists] Think the Reinhardt Jews Went?

[Hektor]

Obviously, if a word (be it "special treatment" "evacuation" or "resettlement") is sometimes used euphemistically and other times literally, we have to look into the particular context of a usage.

Well, to see if there is a nefarious meaning attached to it.

In terms of Korherr's claim that the Jews were 'transported to the Russian East,' the problem is that we have zero evidence (train records, infrastructure, economic activity, food imports, etc) of Reinhardt camp Jews being resettled. And as I noted, the demographic information we have from RKU and RKO rule out those two main administrative regions as resetlement destinations for the 1.4 million.
....

Well, that's simply not true.
This isn't a sound argument neither. The fact that there is no evidence that ALL those resettled Jews were exterminated in Poland is proof positive that they have been going elsewhere. If somebody isn't at place X, than that means that he went elsewhere, not that he has been killed at place X. One doesn't have to demonstrate that he is at place Y to have sufficient proof that he wasn't murdered at place X.

[fireofice]

But from the Einsatzgruppen Reports to the First Posen speech, there are numerous instances where 'resettlement in the east' or 'evacuation to the east' are blatant euphemisms for murder.
...
Don't forget that Korherr only referred to resettlement as a euphemism for Sonderbehandlung (the main Nazi code word for killing) in his report. The first draft of the Korherr Report did not mention the Reinhardt Jews having left europe via resettlement, but mentioned them having left europe by being subject to special treatment.

On the Einsatzgruppen Reports, Arad's book is a convenient resource:

https://ia803101.us.archive.org/0/items ... Squads.pdf

I did a search for "evacuat" (so I can get the terms "evacuate" and "evacuation") and "resettle" and didn't find much that indicated that these terms were for sure most often euphemisms for murder. "Special treatment" on the other hand more often meant killing for the Einsatzgruppen at least. But they used these terms interchangeably with explicit terms for killing like "shoot". So it's a bit silly to say that they were using this to cover stuff up. "Special treatment" can mean killing and as well as other stuff (as you admit), so it's not even really a "code word" and thus has no bearing on this.

Now I'm not saying that the terms "resettlement" and "evacuation" never were used interchangeably with killing operations, but in cases like that, that was probably more often to save their breath or typing than to cover anything up, and I think you would have a hard time showing that was the "usual" way of talking. The usual way would most likely be explicit references to killings, like in the Einsatzgruppen reports. If they are willing to talk about killing in the reports, even exaggerate, which I believe they did, then why wouldn't they be willing to talk explicitly about the extermination and gassing program?

Hitler even said in his Table Talk that it is good if there are other people believe that there is an extermination program as it instills fear:

"Nobody should tell me: We cannot send them into the marshes! Who is then concerned about our people? It is good if the fear that we exterminate the Jews precedes us."

So where is this desire to "cover up" and use euphemisms coming from?

Mattogno in his book on the Einsatzgruppen, lists instances of Jews fleeing from areas the Germans are coming in. He thus says:

"In this context, one may well wonder whether the more-fanatical commanders of the Einsatzgruppen and Police units may have invented executions of Jews who had already fled, or exaggerated the numbers of victims, in order to accelerate the Jews’ fright and thus their flight."

Here is Arthur Butz's response to the "euphemism" claim:

"The defenders of the legend of course claim that the Germans merely exercised commonplace circumspection and evasion regarding what they committed to writing. This excuse fails on the grounds that such attempts at concealment would make sense only in regard to something it was possible to conceal. It would have been obvious that the physical extermination of Europe’s Jews, whatever the outcome of the war, would not have remained secret. Indeed, for reasons discussed above, it would have become widely known while it was happening. Even if we hypothesize incredible stupidity of the Germans on this point, we surely must grant that they were aware of the atrocity claims being made in the Allied countries and would have seen that documentary masquerade was of no avail."

As for the Posen speech, evacuation is not a euphemism for extermination. Extermination meant evacuation. More here:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=14727&p=106279#p106271

This can be seen from the fact that Himmler's handwritten note only said 'Judenevakuierung' and was therefore meant to be the main topic. So extermination meant evacuation, not the other way around. This has precedence from Himmler's Bad Tölz speech, where he equates Jewish annihilation/extermination with Jews living in the east.

On the Korherr report and the original version, that just indicates that they wanted the word change to avoid confusion. Since special treatment can sometimes but not always refer to killing, they figured they didn't want anyone to get any wrong ideas. Himmler may have just saw the term "special treatment" and went "WTF are you talking about? Don't you know that term means killing sometimes? We don't want to give that impression at all." This is a perfectly valid reading of the evidence.

Now going back to the documents I shared earlier, it is pretty explicit that the Jews are to leave Europe after the war at that point in time. This means there was no "Final Solution" during that time in the war at least. Why would a "euphemism" be that the Final Solution is to take place after the war? That would not even communicate anything meaningful if the real meaning was "kill all Jews during the war". Your euphemism claim is complete nonsense and makes no sense here. Goebbels also wrote in his diary on March 7 1942 that "perhaps later after the war, an island can be assigned to them, such as Madagascar." This is also incompatible with the extermination story, and corroborates the other evidence that the Final Solution was still to remove them alive out of Europe. And there was no reason to think Goebbels would use euphemisms, as he is well known for his harsh language.

[borjastick]

Obviously, if a word (be it "special treatment" "evacuation" or "resettlement") is sometimes used euphemistically and other times literally, we have to look into the particular context of a usage.

In terms of Korherr's claim that the Jews were 'transported to the Russian East,' the problem is that we have zero evidence (train records, infrastructure, economic activity, food imports, etc) of Reinhardt camp Jews being resettled. And as I noted, the demographic information we have from RKU and RKO rule out those two main administrative regions as resetlement destinations for the 1.4 million.

At a more basic level, Korherr's claim makes no sense; his report is about the reduction in the JEwish population of Europe, and the Germans never controlled any Asian territory of the USSR. (the North Caucasus is in Eastern Europe, and the Germans considered the Urals as the border between Asia and Europe.) Unless we want to believe that the Germans snuck across (or got permission to cross) the front to drop off 1.4 million Jews in Siberia?

Siberia, Siberia??? Where did Siberia come into play?

The problem for many believers like you is that you act like a survivor from the Titanic. Coughing and spluttering in the freezing waters around the ship as it sinks. You cling on to pieces of wreckage and wood that you can find without understanding why you are there.

The bottom line is the Holocaust truth is very very simple to see and understand, even for you.

If there was a plan, we would have evidence for it. If there was a process of extermination, we would have evidence for it. If it had happened, we would have evidence for it. If millions had died in very few locations, we would have evidence for it.

You can hide all you like behind silly fake interpretations of words that you think were code for mass murder or gassing and exterminations but there is no evidence. If it happened it would be as obvious as the nose on a jew's nose. So where are the remains, the infrastructure, the fuel, the papers, the evidence of a photographic nature that would of course have been taken by a Nazi regime convinced of their own immortality. They always show the one or two films of a shooting in a sand quarry but just as the climate change/climate emergency lot seem to think a ten second film of a glacier calving off is proof of global warming when it is in fact a natural process of a healthy glacier, you are lost in your own echo chamber of victim hood and stressed out about nothing.

If you have proof of the holocaust happening show it! Stop meddling in the margins of irrelevance and trying to get us to prove where all these jews went inside Russia, which we know is exactly what happened, and start coming to the table with your proof.

I shall wait with baited breath...

[HistorySpeaks]

On the Korherr report and the original version, that just indicates that they wanted the word change to avoid confusion. Since special treatment can sometimes but not always refer to killing, they figured they didn't want anyone to get any wrong ideas. Himmler may have just saw the term "special treatment" and went "WTF are you talking about? Don't you know that term means killing sometimes? We don't want to give that impression at all." This is a perfectly valid reading of the evidence.

It would be if there was any evidence for resettlement of Reinhardt Jews. But given the total lack of credible evidence for resettlements (there are no eyewitnesses, there are no pictures, there is no infrasturcture for resettlements, there are no train records, etc), and in view of all the evidence for extermination, common sense requires us to assume it was a euphemism for killing.

The euphemism interpretation is supported by Himmler's comment that the Korherr Report would be "excellent for camouflage purposes." in the future. Clearly Himmler is alluding to some kind of camouflaged or disguised language in the report. (

On a "traditionalist" account, this remark is easy to explain; the idea of Reinhardt Jews being 'transported to the East' is camouflage for killing. (Obvious support for this interpretation comes from the fact that Korherr was ordered to replace the term "special treatment," i.e. the recognized code word for killing, with 'transported to the Russian East.')

What on earth is Himmler's comment that the Korherr report will be excellent for camouflage purposes in the future supposed to mean on a revisionist account?

[Butterfangers]

We know that only 72,000 Jews were in RKO as of July 1943 (this figure was confirmed by Gauleiter Meyer in a Conference on a conference of the East Ministry from 13 July 1943).

In the introduction to this conference, some of the important context is discussed. It was not about Jews in particular, it was about problems with labor, with consideration of the partisan activity and the threat posed by these circumstances:

Due to the duration of the war, and favored by the size and the geographical features of the territory, this situation has become a serious danger. The combating of [partisan] bands, which has recently been consolidated under the command of the Reichsfuehrer SS and produced results by several large scale operations, is discussed. Reports from regional and district commissioners of partisan territories, showing clearly extent and effect of partisan activity, are read out in excerpt by the Minister. Then the demands of the Armed Forces, the OT, the national economy, and, in particular, the demands for manpower, are enumerated and the difficulties arising from the duplication and overlapping of work are clearly pointed out. Reich Minister Rosenberg points to the urgency and the usefulness of coordinating all demands and tasks connected with the East. Then the manpower problem, being of primary importance, is discussed...

p. 1017, NMT XIII: https://archive.org/details/trialsofwarcrimi13inte


Your assertion that Gauleiter Meyer's statement confirms that "only 72,000 Jews were in RKO as of July 1943" is false. Here is what Kube (Generalkommissar of White Ruthenia) and Gauleiter Meyer both say regarding their areas of concern:

Commissioner General Kube then deals in detail with the Jewish problem in White Ruthenia, where 16,000 Jews are still at work for the Wehrmacht in the enterprises for the construction of farmers' carts, mainly at Minsk and Lida. The planned evacuation of the Jews is advocated by the Commissioner General, but their replacement by other labor is requested at the same time so that the production program will be maintained.
Gauleiter Dr. Meyer mentioned the resettlement of 22,000 Jews and the concentration of 50,000 Jews in concentration camps in the Eastern Territories and emphasizes that the same must be replaced by the Plenipotentiary General for Labor Allocation.

p. 1021


Note that all Kube mentions is that within the industry of construction of farmers' carts alone, there are still 16,000 Jews working mainly in Minsk and Lida.

Meyer "mentions" the "resettlement of 22,000 Jews" and the "concentration of 50,000 Jews in concentration camps in the Eastern territories". It is unclear whether he is proposing such actions to take place or whether they have already happened (or if he is referring to particular concentration camps, particular resettlement actions, etc.). Most importantly, there is nothing here which suggests he is offering a total count of even a significant fraction of Jews in the Eastern territories.

Here is just a small sampling of sites where Jews are known to have been collected by Germany in the Eastern territories (orange dots are ghettos, red is single labor site, green is multiple; note that many are "stacked" atop one another in this image and, again, that this selection is far from complete and likely amounts to much less than 5% of the actual total):

This also does not include any/all "temporary ghettos" used specifically for transit/resettlement, agricultural work sites, or permanent areas of resettlement. All it does is provide some insight on the scale of transportation and operational networks in which Jewish movement necessarily occurred and was recorded.

Moreover, permanent resettlement was most likely aimed as far east as possible, perhaps all the way up to the eastern front. Not only does this put even more of the responsibility on Stalin but it also explains why so few records would have survived (given a lack of administrative infrastructure on the German side).

Regarding Kube's situation (Jews in a Minsk farm cart factory), a letter is sent to the Reich Leader SS for a decision to be made:

3. By order of the Reich Leader SS, the Jews in Minsk must either be resettled or turned over to a concentration camp. Now, Kube has in his district a large farm cart factory with 4,000 Jews, and says that he would have to close down this factory immediately if the Jews were taken away. I suggested to him to contact the Reich Leader SS via the Higher SS and Police Leader [of Ostland] and perhaps to convert this factory into a concentration camp.

p. 1025


The Reich Leader SS responds, presumably because the "evacuation" is about moving these Jews out of major areas at risk of partisan activity, and elsewhere to be of use:

Re No. 3 The decision is that by order of the Reich Leader SS, the Jews are to be taken out of Minsk and to Lublin or to another place. The present production can be transferred to a concentration camp.

p. 1026


Hence, any number of Jews may have already been in "another place" and of little concern in the figures mentioned at the July conference.

[Hektor]

I say it again if testimony or document can't be linked to physical evidence the only reasonable conclusion left is that it did not happen (given the strong motivation of maximizing accusations against Axis/NS-Germany). Especially, when nobody looked it up after 100+ people were supposedly killed there. As a matter of decency, people were missing after WW2 and there one could go and try to match it up. But it wasn't done, nobody cared about the facts. Those (Jews) missing family or friends were simply told that they "have been gassed" and "have been exterminated" or something. This was the the modus operandi at the time. No Jew was 'missing', they were all 'casualties of extermination' according the the organizations working with Jews at the time.

[fireofice]

The euphemism interpretation is supported by Himmler's comment that the Korherr Report would be "excellent for camouflage purposes." in the future.

According to Samuel Cromwell:

"First, the motive for the report: Himmler wished to present a short report to the Führer showing how the Government General of Poland was now free of Jews; that is the clear import from a comparison of the short report and the longer one. In the same manner, the number of Polish Jews remaining, about 300,000, corresponds precisely to the benchmark that Himmler indicated in July 1942 that he wanted to achieve by the end of the year. In other words, there was a powerful incentive for the numbers in this report to be cooked."

https://en.metapedia.org/wiki/Korherr_Report

That would more than explain the camouflage comment. You are just presupposing killing again, when it is nowhere in sight.

[HistorySpeaks]

The euphemism interpretation is supported by Himmler's comment that the Korherr Report would be "excellent for camouflage purposes." in the future.

According to Samuel Cromwell:

"First, the motive for the report: Himmler wished to present a short report to the Führer showing how the Government General of Poland was now free of Jews; that is the clear import from a comparison of the short report and the longer one. In the same manner, the number of Polish Jews remaining, about 300,000, corresponds precisely to the benchmark that Himmler indicated in July 1942 that he wanted to achieve by the end of the year. In other words, there was a powerful incentive for the numbers in this report to be cooked."

https://en.metapedia.org/wiki/Korherr_Report

That would more than explain the camouflage comment. You are just presupposing killing again, when it is nowhere in sight.

Lol you say it is "nowhere in sight" but Korherr literally used a word that Mattogno and other leading deniers accept was a common SS code word for murder in the first draft of the report (Sonderbehandlung), before being ordered to replace it with 'transported to the Russian east.'

Since the term special treatment (even if we interpret it in a non-homicidal sense, which I accept was sometimes used by the Germans) obviously does not signify 'transported to the Russian east,' it can be inferred that the latter was a euphemism and not to be taken literally.

We also have to remember what the purpose of the Korherr Report was. Korherr was talking about the reduction in the Jewish population of Europe since the Nazis came to power. So the only relevant "resettlement" would be resettlement out of Europe. But this would be impossible in the case of the 'Russian East,' since the Germans never occupied the Asian portions of the USSR. They got no further than Nalchik in the North Caucasus, which is still technically Eastern Europe.

The impossibility of transfer to Asian Russia is yet another reason to consider this a euphemism.

[curioussoul]

I am no expert on the conditions in which HCN exposure causes the formation of Prussian Blue. But clearly the fact that repeated exposure to HCN does NOT necessarily result in this (as is shown by Dachau and apparently also—according to Rudolf—Buchenwald delousing chambers) undermines the revisionist arguments in this regard.

The argument has never been based on the idea that HCN exposure categorically and by necessity causes Prussian Blue staining. On the contrary, Rudolf has always articulated the fact that Prussian Blue only arises as a result of very specific chemical conditions. These conditions were uniformly met in the claimed homicidal gas chambers, even more so than in the delousing chambers. This is the crux of the problem. There is no chemical reason for why the delousing chambers should have experienced massive blue staining, whereas the gas chambers saw no staining whatsoever. Numerous attempts at explaining this anomaly have been proposed, none of which hold up to scrutiny.

It becomes a conditional argument rather than a straightforward one; and we don't exactly know what the relevant conditions for the formation f Prussian Blue are.

It has always been a conditional. No one is claiming that HCN makes everything blue. You are simply misunderstanding or maliciously misrepresenting the argument to create a strawman.

One important difference between the homicidal gas chambers and the delousing chambers is the fact that the former were hosed down by the Sonderkommando after gassings. (We have good Sonderkommando testimony for this practice regarding kremas II and III at least; Filip Müller testifies to this practice regarding Krema V, but Mattogno, argued that his book is partially plagiarized, so you guys likely will not accept even a peripheral citation to it.)

This argument is so ludicrously flimsy that I honestly question the sanity of the Holocaust affirmers who seriously attempt to use it to debunk the Prussian Blue problem. Even if we pretend that the gas chambers were routinely hosed down and that this would indeed wipe away any trace of HCN residuals that could potentially cause Prussian Blue stainings, there is no reason for why also the ceiling and upper parts of the walls would not be stained. As you know, the delousing chambers showed Prussian Blue stains under the ceiling and on the upper walls. Surely, feces and blood would not have gotten up onto the ceiling, nor onto the upper parts of the walls.

And, as Rudolf has pointed out, the very fact that the walls were hosed down with water would arguably create a chemical environment in which any remaining traces of HCN could more easily be formed, since humidity/water is one of the key components which make Prussian Blue stainings possible.

Even so, are we seriously to believe that the hosings of the gas chamber were so thorough that every single part of both homicidal gas chambers were spot clean after every single gassing? That argument does not hold up to critical scrutiny. Furthermore, the numerically insignificant number of witnesses who mention hoses in the gas chamber are not credible, if you look at their testimonies in the aggragate (which Holocaust affirmers mostly neglect to do).

The practice of hosing down the cremas after gassing matters tremendously because HCN is water soluble.

I don't think you know what that means. It is the solubility in water which makes it possible for HCN to interact with the irons in the cement plaster/brick mortar to ultimately create the Prussian Blue stains.

[HistorySpeaks]

I don't think you know what that means. It is the solubility in water which makes it possible for HCN to interact with the irons in the cement plaster/brick mortar to ultimately create the Prussian Blue stains.

Of course I know what it means.

The formation of Prussian Blue requires very high concentrations of HCN; HCN is water soluble; so hosing down the room would reduce the concentration of HCN in the wall.

It is obvious that they would have to hose down the room after gassing, when you think about it. Mass death from gassing would be a gory process and there would have loads of fecal matter, etc of numerous victims to clean up after the gassings. The reality of hosing down is also supported by the testimonial evidence.

[hermod]

The euphemism interpretation is supported by Himmler's comment that the Korherr Report would be "excellent for camouflage purposes." in the future.

According to Samuel Cromwell:

"First, the motive for the report: Himmler wished to present a short report to the Führer showing how the Government General of Poland was now free of Jews; that is the clear import from a comparison of the short report and the longer one. In the same manner, the number of Polish Jews remaining, about 300,000, corresponds precisely to the benchmark that Himmler indicated in July 1942 that he wanted to achieve by the end of the year. In other words, there was a powerful incentive for the numbers in this report to be cooked."

https://en.metapedia.org/wiki/Korherr_Report

That would more than explain the camouflage comment. You are just presupposing killing again, when it is nowhere in sight.

Lol you say it is "nowhere in sight" but Korherr literally used a word that Mattogno and other leading deniers accept was a common SS code word for murder in the first draft of the report (Sonderbehandlung), before being ordered to replace it with 'transported to the Russian east.'

False. Mattogno unambiguously ruled out that Sonderbehandlung was a code word for murder in the first draft of the Korherr Report.

Special Treatment in Auschwitz - Origin and Meaning of a Term (2004), by Carlo Mattogno, p. 7 :

We have available to us other documents, in which ‘special treatment’ was by no means equivalent to killing, [3] as well as those, in which the word described privileged treatment.

Carlo Mattogno
Rome, September 5, 2003

3. Cf. for example my article "Sonderbehandlung . Georges Wellers und der Korherr-Bericht" in: Vierteljahreshefte fur freie Geschichtsforschung 1(2) (1997), pp. 71-75.

[HistorySpeaks]

False. Mattogno unambiguously ruled out that Sonderbehandlung was a code word for murder in the first draft of the Korherr Report.

You misunderstood what I wrote. Of course Mattogno doesn't say that the Korherr report referred to the killing of Jews in the Reinhardt camps.

My point was that Mattogno acknowledges in a general sense that the the word Sonderbehandlung meant to murder. To be sure, he also argues that it meant something else in the context of the Korherr Report, and other contexts.

In citing Mattogno, I was merely trying to establish the general predicate the SB was a code word for killing. I wasn't saying he argues the Korherr Report is a reference to exterminating the Reinhardt Jews.

[hermod]

The formation of Prussian Blue requires very high concentrations of HCN; HCN is water soluble; so hosing down the room would reduce the concentration of HCN in the wall.

It is obvious that they would have to hose down the room after gassing, when you think about it. Mass death from gassing would be a gory process and there would have loads of fecal matter, etc of numerous victims to clean up after the gassings. The reality of hosing down is also supported by the testimonial evidence.

They couldn't hose down that room when it was full of dead bodies and they had no other place to store the dead bodies awaiting cremation. In other words, they couldn't possibly hose down an alleged gas chamber before they had cremated around 2,000 corpses. A lapse of time more than long enough to let a vast amount of hydrogen cyanide be absorbed in the concrete walls of those rooms. Moreover, one fails to see why they would have hose down the ceiling of such a room (Can anybody believe in fecal matter splashing the ceiling?).

[hermod]

My point was that Mattogno acknowledges in a general sense that the the word Sonderbehandlung meant to murder.

No, Mattogno said that Sonderbehandlung had numerous meanings, including murder in rare occurrences, not in a general sense.

[curioussoul]

Of course I know what it means.

The formation of Prussian Blue requires very high concentrations of HCN; HCN is water soluble; so hosing down the room would reduce the concentration of HCN in the wall.

As I pointed out before, is it really plausible that every single part of every surface area of both homicidal gas chambers were hosed down to perfection after every single gassing? As I said, there is no reason to hose down the upper walls, let alone the ceiling.

Also, define "very high concentrations of HCN". Rudolf highlighted a couple of cases in which old buildings and churches had experienced Prussian Blue discolorations following disinfestations against woodworm. It is not clear how high the concentrations of HCN were at those particular disinfestation operations, but considering a mere single disinfestation was enough to result in discoloration, it is highly improbable that the Birkenau morgues went through hundreds of Zyklon B gassings without any Prussian Blue.

It is obvious that they would have to hose down the room after gassing, when you think about it. Mass death from gassing would be a gory process and there would have loads of fecal matter, etc of numerous victims to clean up after the gassings. The reality of hosing down is also supported by the testimonial evidence.

I'm not really denying that hosing down the gas chamber would hypothetically have been necessary, I'm just pointing out the fact that the one or two witnesses who mention hosings down are not credible. The glaring issue with this explanation, however, is the fact that the upper walls and the ceiling would not have been necessary to hose down.