BA's case for orthodoxy

[fireofice]

I think if there's a non-"phantastic" assertion about a mass group of people that has very limited backing evidence this is a problem. If true, any non-phantastic assertion should typically be backed by substantial evidence. EG one would expect more evidence to be generated for mass resettlement than a mass killing program (resettlement would have millions of witnesses for one)

There's zero incentive for "witnesses" to come forward and say they saw anything contradicting the extermination narrative. Why would you expect that all? But like I said, if you don't accept the documents I already showed you showing they were deported to the east alive, then you shouldn't be using them to say they were killed either.

[Hektor]

I think if there's a non-"phantastic" assertion about a mass group of people that has very limited backing evidence this is a problem. If true, any non-phantastic assertion should typically be backed by substantial evidence. EG one would expect more evidence to be generated for mass resettlement than a mass killing program (resettlement would have millions of witnesses for one)

There's zero incentive for "witnesses" to come forward and say they saw anything contradicting the extermination narrative. Why would you expect that all? But like I said, if you don't accept the documents I already showed you showing they were deported to the east alive, then you shouldn't be using them to say they were killed either.

Correct. All they could honestly say would be that they "haven't noticed it then" or "haven't seen it" or "Didn't know about this". So they can't say they knew it didn't happen. Because for that they'd have to be omniscient, which nobody is. And guess what: That's what millions of people said. Even the IMT accused said this overwhelmingly. They could of course not know EVERYTHING, since they weren't omniscient, neither.

Yet Holocaustians still use the "No NAZI denied the Holocaust" pseudo-argument. And it's untrue as well. Heinrich Himmler denied the Holocaust / Extermination program. And we have that on the word of Norbert Masur who did converse with Himmler on 20.4.1945 as representative of the World Jewish Congress. Funny how this doesn't get much attention by "Holocaust Historians". As it actually should. If they were indeed interested in historical truth.

[bombsaway]

There's zero incentive for "witnesses" to come forward and say they saw anything contradicting the extermination narrative. Why would you expect that all? But like I said, if you don't accept the documents I already showed you showing they were deported to the east alive, then you shouldn't be using them to say they were killed either.

There are as much incentives as there would be to tell any account of what happened to them. Jews merely displaced by the Nazis (this would include Soviet Jews who fled in the wake of Barbarossa as well as Jews who emigrated after 1933) are eligible for Holocaust reparations. Telling your story to friends, family, and journalists can be emotionally and even financially beneficial.

Plus there many accounts that contradict the "pop version" of the extermination narrative, which is that all Jews were killed. Jews survived until liberation in Romanian occupied USSR and talked about it, they were housed and maintained (at least for a time) in Theresienstadt and talked about it. In the labor camps the Germans took at least some measures to preserve Jewish workers, including medical care. Some Jews mention being treated kindly in these camps (this forms the brunt of 'pop' revisionist critique and videos).

Furthermore, the existence of resettlement camps wouldn't contradict the genocide narrative. Hundreds of thousands of Jews could have been housed in USSR while being killed elsewhere. When I started researching this topic I assumed that there were at least a few examples of internment type camps set up for Jews there, where some survived. It so happens that the Nazis were meticulous in killing non-employable Jews, at least until the end of the war, when killing operations were suspended due to the proximity of allied armies, another apparent contradiction.

Basically you're saying that these survivors had to be experts on Holocaust history, particularly resettlement theory (or the lack of evidence for it), they also had to be aware of a conspiracy in general (who told them?) in order to be able to safeguard it. This seems phantastical.

[fireofice]

There's zero incentive for "witnesses" to come forward and say they saw anything contradicting the extermination narrative. Why would you expect that all? But like I said, if you don't accept the documents I already showed you showing they were deported to the east alive, then you shouldn't be using them to say they were killed either.

There are as much incentives as there would be to tell any account of what happened to them. Jews merely displaced by the Nazis (this would include Soviet Jews who fled in the wake of Barbarossa as well as Jews who emigrated after 1933) are eligible for Holocaust reparations. Telling your story to friends, family, and journalists can be emotionally and even financially beneficial.

Plus there many accounts that contradict the "pop version" of the extermination narrative, which is that all Jews were killed. Jews survived until liberation in Romanian occupied USSR and talked about it, they were housed and maintained (at least for a time) in Theresienstadt and talked about it. In the labor camps the Germans took at least some measures to preserve Jewish workers, including medical care. Some Jews mention being treated kindly in these camps (this forms the brunt of 'pop' revisionist critique and videos).

Furthermore, the existence of resettlement camps wouldn't contradict the genocide narrative. Hundreds of thousands of Jews could have been housed in USSR while being killed elsewhere. When I started researching this topic I assumed that there were at least a few examples of internment type camps set up for Jews there, where some survived. It so happens that the Nazis were meticulous in killing non-employable Jews, at least until the end of the war, when killing operations were suspended due to the proximity of allied armies, another apparent contradiction.

Basically you're saying that these survivors had to be experts on Holocaust history, particularly resettlement theory (or the lack of evidence for it), they also had to be aware of a conspiracy in general (who told them?) in order to be able to safeguard it. This seems phantastical.

First of all, Theresienstadt was not in the "Russian east".

Theresienstadt Ghetto was established by the SS during World War II in the fortress town of Terezín, in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (German-occupied Czechoslovakia).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theresienstadt_Ghetto

I phrased what I said in a way that wasn't entirely what I was trying to get at, which is my fault. The point I was trying to make was more along the lines of who these people transferred to the east could tell their story to. What media outlet would air their story, what publisher would take them up on it? Maybe they could self publish, but that takes a lot of effort and time. So you would need someone who wants to tell their story to the public AND dedicates their time to it to get it out there all on their own. It's certainly possible someone like that could exist among the deportees, but I don't see it as guaranteed, not by a long shot.

According to German documents that I laid out to you, there were some Jews who were deported alive to the east. Now for the thesis that no Jews were deported to the east alive, these documents would have to be wrong. This seems like something historians would want to investigate. To go out of their way to find Jews who were deported to the east. But there doesn't seem to have been any curiosity among any of the major historians to find these people. These people, if they existed, may now be lost to history because no one cared to look. History is a fragile thing and evidence can easily be lost if it isn't vigilantly preserved. Historians know this very well.

Regardless, we don't know how many Jews for sure were deported to the east. Butterfangers and others have already gone over how the interpretation that the documents used to "prove" massive deportations may not even be saying that.

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=14859&p=107865#p107865
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=14847&p=107780#p107780
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=14794

The documents showing that they were deported to the east alive are either right or wrong, but they can't be evidence of an extermination policy. Even if the Korherr Report and Höfle Telegram did claim massive amounts of people were deported to these camps (which I'm not convinced of), that wouldn't be good evidence they were killed. It is a clue at most. And clues need to be investigated and followed up on to come to a conclusion. You don't just say "here's a clue, now we've proved our case!" That's not how it works. And revisionists have followed up on these supposed clues and investigated the camps, and have concluded that exterminations didn't happen there. These conclusions, if correct, mean that any evidence of mass murder from clues like deportation documents are not valid for proving exterminations. You need to look at the camps themselves and see if you can find evidence (witnesses, physical evidence, camp documents). Then come to your own conclusion which can challenge the revisionist investigations. Until you do that and stop pretending your supposed clues prove you right, you won't get anywhere.

[Hektor]

Comparing the incentive frame is indeed revealing. Who would publish a, otherwise uninteresting story, about some Jew that was deported from a Western European country to occupied terrirtories east of Poland during world war two. There is stories from Jews that were moved to Ghettoes, still there is not a lot on them neither. The Eastern territories were occupied by the USSR after WW2, so that was far-going closed of after 1945. And there was no real publishing possible side-stepping the Communist party.

Joseph Buehler testified that they were to be resettled to the East. There is also documents that have Ghettoes (in Eastern Occupied Territories) as destination. But as indicated. People swallowed the extermination narrative, so virtually nobody (with the necessary resources) really cared looking. Jews were simply declared "exterminated", while they actually should be declared missing. Which is already an oddity.

Deportation records are clues at best. But they can't show that those deported died or were killed at the destination. Yet, they are used in exactly that way. The assumption is so engrained, they didn't even care to look afterwards for hard evidence. And what is done to supercede concerns about veracity? Ah, show them pictures of bodies of malnurished people at the end of the war. That will settle it for most. But it is a deception, a lie if you want, but emotion wins reason most of the time.

There's zero incentive for "witnesses" to come forward and say they saw anything contradicting the extermination narrative. Why would you expect that all? But like I said, if you don't accept the documents I already showed you showing they were deported to the east alive, then you shouldn't be using them to say they were killed either.

There are as much incentives as there would be to tell any account of what happened to them. Jews merely displaced by the Nazis (this would include Soviet Jews who fled in the wake of Barbarossa as well as Jews who emigrated after 1933) are eligible for Holocaust reparations. Telling your story to friends, family, and journalists can be emotionally and even financially beneficial.....

The incentives are set by organizations, media, etc. And what do you think a news outlet will place a story about? Some lucid horror story or an ordinary war story? They doesn't even have to be an official agenda for what to select. Sensationalism cells and it's sensationalist stories that will be remembered. Not the ordinary. And that's how public opinion continues to be dominate until today. Of course there are some people that are a little brighter than that. But they are a minority, they tend to become Revisionists, if they are interested in history.

[bombsaway]

According to German documents that I laid out to you, there were some Jews who were deported alive to the east. Now for the thesis that no Jews were deported to the east alive, these documents would have to be wrong.

As I've said previously I think, the orthodox thesis is certainly not that no Jews were deported east "alive". Up until 1942 resettlement of some sort was an actual policy, with some non-employable Jews being housed there. After a certain point there is only evidence of deported unfit Jews being killed. So yes, they were deported "alive", but immediately killed upon reaching the destination. I've quoted documents evincing such a policy. Deported Jews capable of labor, such as the 1000 mentioned in the Kube document, were maintained.

Even if there were no deportations to the east and all those documents are fabricated (as well as the census documents showing massive population drop in Poland) these unfit Jews would still have had to be put somewhere. Theresienstadt held at its peak 50k and many of these were working. Probably you would need 100 Theresienstadt sized camps to accommodate the unfit Jews that were deported when the ghettos across Poland and the USSR were dissolved. Putting them in the west makes a mass cover up even less plausible, because then you're looking at a coordinated effort between the USSR and the western Allies.

Why wouldn't anyone publish stories of Jews being kept in internment type camps? Walk me through the mindset of a researcher or publisher who hears one of these stories.

[fireofice]

According to German documents that I laid out to you, there were some Jews who were deported alive to the east. Now for the thesis that no Jews were deported to the east alive, these documents would have to be wrong.

As I've said previously I think, the orthodox thesis is certainly not that no Jews were deported east "alive". Up until 1942 resettlement of some sort was an actual policy, with some non-employable Jews being housed there. After a certain point there is only evidence of deported unfit Jews being killed. So yes, they were deported "alive", but immediately killed upon reaching the destination. I've quoted documents evincing such a policy. Deported Jews capable of labor, such as the 1000 mentioned in the Kube document, were maintained.

Even if there were no deportations to the east and all those documents are fabricated (as well as the census documents showing massive population drop in Poland) these unfit Jews would still have had to be put somewhere. Theresienstadt held at its peak 50k and many of these were working. Probably you would need 100 Theresienstadt sized camps to accommodate the unfit Jews that were deported when the ghettos across Poland and the USSR were dissolved. Putting them in the west makes a mass cover up even less plausible, because then you're looking at a coordinated effort between the USSR and the western Allies.

Why wouldn't anyone publish stories of Jews being kept in internment type camps? Walk me through the mindset of a researcher or publisher who hears one of these stories.

I quoted documents to you from the summer of 1942 of Jews being deported to the east in the summer of 1942, when the exterminations were supposedly going on. And the documents do not allow an interpretation that they were killed. I've already gone over this. So far your only response it to keep repeating things I already refuted and misrepresenting what was said. There were multiple deportations in the summer of 1942 (not just one transport of 1,000 Jews from Warsaw). And no, they weren't killed, the documents do not allow this interpretation. Address what I actually posted and stop dodging:

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=14859&p=109030#p109023

The mindset is simple to understand. Mainstream researchers and media dogmatically assume that everyone deported east was killed, so they are not going to entertain anyone who says otherwise. They would be considered liars or crackpots at best. Are you really going to claim no one made any claim that they were deported alive to the east that has just not been recorded by anyone? Even if they were just making up a false story? It almost certainly happened at some point, even if the extermination legend were true.

Yes, there was collaboration between the Western and Soviet Allies to pin bogus crimes on the Germans. Sure, they didn't always agree and sometimes the Soviets went a little farther with things than the Western Allies were comfortable with. But yes, they absolutely did collaborate with each other. The Nuremberg trials were literally run by both Western and Soviet allies. They had to collaborate with each other if that trial was to be pulled off at all. Operation Keelhaul was another example of western and Soviet collaboration:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Keelhaul

So far, you have not been able to rule out the possibility that many people have been lost to history. This happens all the time. So you have one ghetto where people weren't lost to history, OK and? That's like saying because we have some ancient works, no other ancient works could be lost. This makes no sense. Maybe this particular ghetto was an outlier of especially talkative people (assuming what you are saying is true) whereas the norm was not to say anything. You have no way of discounting this. Your whole argument is completely bonkers because you are making an unfounded assumption that if we don't know what happened to whole groups of people, they must have been killed. That is crazy.

[bombsaway]

I quoted documents to you from the summer of 1942 of Jews being deported to the east in the summer of 1942, when the exterminations were supposedly going on

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=14859&start=120#p108987

These documents are from May and June 1942, and show transports being liquidated upon arrival.

Mainstream researchers and media dogmatically assume that everyone deported east was killed, so they are not going to entertain anyone who says otherwise.

You are assuming that historians are behaving dogmatically, but really you dogmatically assume that they survived when there is no evidence of this. There is evidence of them being killed, but nothing else, in German occupied USSR. The Kube document explicitly announces the intentions of the SS as killing all non-employable Jews. You have not addressed this, but quote another poster whose argument you maybe don't understand enough to put in your own words. If you have a specific argument, please do this so I can respond.

You are also wrong that researchers and media assume all non-employable Jews deported east were killed. Jews were deported east to Transnistria (Romanian occupied USSR) and survived. Not just one ghetto but dozens of them are known and have been studied by researchers. It was also a much smaller number of Jews than were apparently resettled in German occupied USSR. I'll give you credit for taking this issue seriously, but your argumentation is insufficient, and disproven by counter examples.

You are correct that the fates of groups of people are often 'lost to history' but I don't think this is true in modern times when you're talking about large groups of people (hundreds of thousands or millions). Can you provide an example of a large group people being deported or moving, with their fate completely unknown?

You just posted a good counter example, Operation Keelhaul. This was a conspiracy involving not more than a few thousand deportees and their fates and whereabouts are now known, despite the best efforts of the USSR to cover it up. The USSR similarly was unable to cover up Katyn, another relatively small scale crime.

[Hektor]

....
You are assuming that historians are behaving dogmatically, but really you dogmatically assume that they survived when there is no evidence of this. There is evidence of them being killed, but nothing else, in German occupied USSR. The Kube document explicitly announces the intentions of the SS as killing all non-employable Jews. You have not addressed this, but quote another poster whose argument you maybe don't understand enough to put in your own words. If you have a specific argument, please do this so I can respond.

You need to put up a copy/scan of the document here, if you want to argue with it.

Again, if there is zero proof for them being killed, it is perfectly valid to assume that a person was/is still alive. There is nothing dogmatically about it, also nothing fallacious. What's fallacious is to claim that when you can't account for every single Jew in Europe in the 1940s that this somehow evidence for there being a major killing program of Jews. It's a kind of begging the question, assuming that once own prejudices are right without for there being prove for it. Can't use that, when the thesis is 'six million Jews have been gassed/killed'.

If there is no proof for them being killed, one has to assume that they survived.
Jews were never assumed to be missing in the first place. In 1945 all Jews relatives didn't know the whereabouts of where declared gassed/killed.

.
You are also wrong that researchers and media assume all non-employable Jews deported east were killed. Jews were deported east to Transnistria (Romanian occupied USSR) and survived. Not just one ghetto but dozens of them are known and have been studied by researchers. It was also a much smaller number of Jews than were apparently resettled in German occupied USSR. I'll give you credit for taking this issue seriously, but your argumentation is insufficient, and disproven by counter examples......

Ask anyone that gets his information from exterminationist books or main stream media. They will barely know about resettlement policies being implemented and assume that 'deportation means death (commonly by gassing).

How do you know that group resettled in occupied USSR (I realize those were territories conquered recently by the Soviets themselves) was smaller? There is enough indication to assume that it was bigger. And since it isn't a major accusation, burden of proof is law here.

.
You are correct that the fates of groups of people are often 'lost to history' but I don't think this is true in modern times when you're talking about large groups of people (hundreds of thousands or millions). Can you provide an example of a large group people being deported or moving, with their fate completely unknown?
.....

If he could provide you with such an example that would be violating your defining criteria.

Take it a point further: Can you give me an example of something nothing is known about? Can you show me something that is not showable?

You actually realize that you are trapped in your own debating tactics?!

[fireofice]

These documents are from May and June 1942, and show transports being liquidated upon arrival.

Wrong. Read what I posted again:

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=14859&p=109030#p109023

The relevant parts:

Under no circumstances can Wehrmacht services of the Army or the Air Force, without permission from Herr Reichskommissar, introduce into an area of civil administration Jews from the General Government or elsewhere, who will endanger the entire political work and security of the General District.

This proves that Jews were not to be killed, as dead Jews cannot threaten anything.

I am in complete agreement with the commander of the SD in Byelorussia that we should liquidate every Jewish transport which has not been ordered or announced by the authorities superior to us in order to prevent further cases of unrest in Byelorussia.

Here Kube was threatening to kill a certain subset of Jewish transports, which means that the rest of the transports could not have been subject to liquidation. This absolutely shows that the official policy was deportation with no killing. This was already laid out to you in the post I linked, but you continue to ignore the obvious meaning of the documents.

Also, the distinction between "employable" and "unemployable" Jews is irrelevant, as your contention is that we don't have anyone saying they were deported to the east, therefore they were killed. If any Jews were deported to the east alive, this destroys your position. And the official position is that the extermination was of all Jews, not just the unemployable ones, as already explained to you:

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=14859&start=15#p107856

Jews were deported east to Transnistria (Romanian occupied USSR) and survived. Not just one ghetto but dozens of them are known and have been studied by researchers. It was also a much smaller number of Jews than were apparently resettled in German occupied USSR.

OK so what's your point? Here we have Jews deported to the east, case closed. Unless you are making some argument here I am not understanding.

The Kube document explicitly announces the intentions of the SS as killing all non-employable Jews. You have not addressed this, but quote another poster whose argument you maybe don't understand enough to put in your own words. If you have a specific argument, please do this so I can respond.

Kube's document does not say all people unable to work were killed, just that some were. As for what I think about the references to the Jews killed in the document, I think it's unreliable just like many other Einsatzgruppen documents. I don't understand why you are so focused on the Kube document. There are other documents that refer to killing of Jews by the Einsatzgruppen as well. Just cut to the chase and ask me what I think of those documents mentioning killing of Jews as a whole. The answer is, not much, and I've given my reasoning for that elsewhere.

You just posted a good counter example, Operation Keelhaul. This was a conspiracy involving not more than a few thousand deportees and their fates and whereabouts are now known, despite the best efforts of the USSR to cover it up. The USSR similarly was unable to cover up Katyn, another relatively small scale crime.

"Here are things that were attempted to be covered up and failed, therefore every deportation must leave records."

Come on, this is silly.

Documents claiming deportations happened do not prove murder, period. Like I said, they are clues that something may have happened, although I say may because it's possible nothing happened at all, not even deportations. You need to investigate the camps themselves and see if you can make your case based on the available evidence on camps themselves, not deportation documents.

[Hektor]

Can they show us, with full chain of evidence (and not assuming their tale into something) at least one Jew that was moved from the West to the East and then liquidated (killed) on arrival, because he was a Jew?

There is tons of allegations being made, when 'Nazis' were put on trial for 'war crimes', but did they actually ever look at one of the (allegedely murdered) corpses at least?

[bombsaway]

Also, the distinction between "employable" and "unemployable" Jews is irrelevant, as your contention is that we don't have anyone saying they were deported to the east, therefore they were killed. If any Jews were deported to the east alive, this destroys your position. And the official position is that the extermination was of all Jews, not just the unemployable ones, as already explained to you:

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=14859&start=15#p107856

Ok, let's start here, then we can move to the Kube document, then we can move to Kube/Lohse correspondence.

The "official position" (this is a misnomer, but we can generalize) among educated historians is not that all Jews were killed immediately, but rather those capable of working were kept around temporarily. As I explained to Lamprecht, documents suggest that it was expected that many would die in labor camps, and that survivors would be killed or sterilized after the war.

Are you saying historians like Browning don't believe the Nazis kept hundreds of thousands of Jewish laborers in Polish camps like Auschwitz?

My contention is not that "we don't have anyone saying they were deported to the east, therefore they were killed". Rather the revisionist narrative that non-employable Jews were maintained anywhere in German custody is without evidence, and it's a problem for a historical narrative to not have any evidence, in fact I would say if there is no evidence for something it doesn't even qualify as history.

[bombsaway]

I should point out that non-employable Jews were maintained in Theresienstadt and Russia, but not past a certain point, and not in terms of total numbers. EG at Theresienstadt the vast majority were deported to Auschwitz and disappeared in terms of evidence trail. This is again, not evidence they were killed in and of itself, but rather I'm just pointing out that even at Theresienstadt, a camp noted in German documents as a 'propagandalager' and a place whose purpose was "to save face with the outside world" there's no evidence of an unfit Jewish population being maintained.

[fireofice]

Rather the revisionist narrative that non-employable Jews were maintained anywhere in German custody is without evidence, and it's a problem for a historical narrative to not have any evidence, in fact I would say if there is no evidence for something it doesn't even qualify as history.

This is absolutely incorrect. The Real Auschwitz Chronicle by Carlo Mattogno shows plenty of instances of Jews unable to work being kept as inmates Auschwitz.

https://holocausthandbooks.com/dl/48-trac.pdf

And none of them were killed en masse there since scientific investigations show that there were no mass killings.

https://holocausthandbooks.com/dl/02-tcoa.pdf

And if no one saying they were deported to the east isn't a problem, then we don't have to discuss it anymore.

The holocaust is about the attempt to kill all Jews. If you are going to bring up how other historians have crazy and nonsensical views (all Jews were being targeted for death but there were Jews being kept alive at the same time) that's not news to me. The holocaust believer position is indeed crazy, but that's not an argument in your favor. I understand why you keep bringing up this distinction, because you want to find a way to reconcile this nonsense into something that sounds believable, but you can't. You don't get to invent your own version of events where things make sense. You are stuck with the nonsensical story.

[bombsaway]

Rather the revisionist narrative that non-employable Jews were maintained anywhere in German custody is without evidence, and it's a problem for a historical narrative to not have any evidence, in fact I would say if there is no evidence for something it doesn't even qualify as history.

This is absolutely incorrect. The Real Auschwitz Chronicle by Carlo Mattogno shows plenty of instances of Jews unable to work being kept as inmates Auschwitz.

https://holocausthandbooks.com/dl/48-trac.pdf

And none of them were killed en masse there since scientific investigations show that there were no mass killings.

https://holocausthandbooks.com/dl/02-tcoa.pdf

And if no one saying they were deported to the east isn't a problem, then we don't have to discuss it anymore.

The holocaust is about the attempt to kill all Jews. If you are going to bring up how other historians have crazy and nonsensical views (all Jews were being targeted for death but there were Jews being kept alive at the same time) that's not news to me. The holocaust believer position is indeed crazy, but that's not an argument in your favor. I understand why you keep bringing up this distinction, because you want to find a way to reconcile this nonsense into something that sounds believable, but you can't. You don't get to invent your own version of events where things make sense. You are stuck with the nonsensical story.

What is the best example you can find in that book? I haven't seen anything persuasive, but am open to any evidence you can find.

When the ghettos were closed down across Poland and USSR, unfit Jews were among the population deported from these ghettos. A few Jews remained here, but I think everyone agrees the ghettos were massively depopulated. German documents spell out the majority of Jews being unfit for work. Goebbels: "On the whole it can be said that about 60 percent of them will have to be liquidated (liquidiert) whereas only about 40 percent can be used for forced labor." We know a lot about Jews in German labor camps, but other than Theresienstadt there are no known instances of internment camps where non-working Jews were kept. Why is this?