BA's case for orthodoxy

[bombsaway]

So Dr. Megargee's estimate of the number of camps in the year 2000 was off by a factor of 6, and that is only the camps which have been discovered so far. You say it should be easy to track population movements of people, but why were tens of thousands of camps overlooked? Camps require logistics, budgeting, planning, and documentation but they escaped the historical record until very recently.

How do you think it was determined that they existed?

Any reasonable person should expect a large amount of physical evidence for that claim.

What's your threshold here? We know that Treblinka has been studied eg in 1945 by a Polish Judge

In the northwestern section of the area, the surface is covered for about 2 hectares by a mixture of ashes and sand. In this mixture, one finds countless human bones, often still covered with tissue remains, which are in a condition of decomposition. During the inspection, which I made with the assistance of an expert in forensic medicine, it was determined that the ashes are without any doubt of human origin (remains of cremated human bones). The examination of human skulls could discover no trace of« wounding. At a distance of some 100 m, there is now an unpleasant odor of burning and decay.

2 hectares is 20,000 square meters, that's a big space. So the problem seems to be one of trust, which I definitely understand. Post-war photos were taken, but it's hard to see what's goin on, so all we're left with is the word of the magistrate. Skepticism is warranted in this case, but it seems some on this forum go much further, to outright disbelief. From my perspective, based solely on the physical evidence that has been presented, we can't be sure if there are remains of mass killing at the camp, but I disagree that the revisionist perspective (they're lying) is more probable.

[Hektor]

3. The viable counter hypothesis is that it was NS policy to remove all Jews from the German sphere of influence.

It's not viable (not proven false, but simply there's no reason to believe in it) because of lack of evidence. eg there are no policy documents concerning related to the actual maintenance of Jews wherever they went and there probably should be. In the Transnistria thread I quoted multiple detailed censuses that were taken of resettled Jews in that area, but apparently this is just the tip of the iceberg. http://hauster.de/data/Ancel/17020501Ancel.pdf This folder contains ~80 documents related the fate of Romanian Jews deported into Transnistria, including their arrival and eventual transport back into Romania. In between we see detailed policy documents related to complications with the deportations and resettlement, security and logistics, health concerns, etc . Revisionists on this forum seem to be split on whether Korherr's 1.45 million Jews "transported into the Russian East" actually made into Occupied USSR at all, and I think this speaks to the lack of knowledge about what happened to them.
.....

It is perfectly viable and in line with the overall evidence.
The Jews were to look after themselves, plain and simple. There is tons of documents dealing with the economics as well (in camps, ghettoes etc). Such documents would however not feature well with main-stream Holocaustography, so it really doesn't get that much attention, if it is ever shown. Btw.: What happened to the 'outbound train records' for several camps?

The shear fact that Jews were deported to the East over 1000s of km demonstrates that the intention was resettlement. If extermination was the goal, there would be far easier ways to bring this about.

The problem is that Historiography approached the whole affair with a closed loop system of thought: "The Holocaust Happened" and "that's why we only look at evidence and interpret it in ways that confirm that hypothesis". A scientific approach looks different. Problems with their evidence are simply 'reasoned away'. That ultimately means that they don't have any evidence for their claim that would comply with the requirements of rationality. And the Holocaust Remembrance Industry clearly shows this. One appeal to emotion after the other.

[Lamprecht]

It's not viable (not proven false, but simply there's no reason to believe in it) because of lack of evidence. eg there are no policy documents concerning related to the actual maintenance of Jews wherever they went and there probably should be.

Except:
- The massive pits full of human remains that MUST exist if the exterminationist position is true can not be shown to exist
- The documents describing the "Final Solution" consistently state it's a resettlement program
- You have failed to make a case that any specific type of evidence MUST (or even should) exist, but does not, if 1.5m+ Jews weren't dumped into pits at Treblinka 2, Sobibor, and Belzec

In the Transnistria thread I quoted multiple detailed censuses that were taken of resettled Jews in that area, but apparently this is just the tip of the iceberg. http://hauster.de/data/Ancel/17020501Ancel.pdf This folder contains ~80 documents related the fate of Romanian Jews deported into Transnistria, including their arrival and eventual transport back into Romania. In between we see detailed policy documents related to complications with the deportations and resettlement, security and logistics, health concerns, etc . Revisionists on this forum seem to be split on whether Korherr's 1.45 million Jews "transported into the Russian East" actually made into Occupied USSR at all, and I think this speaks to the lack of knowledge about what happened to them.

Documents can be easily lost/destroyed, or even faked.
There is no evidence that they were dumped into the pits. You have been challenged to make the case for any of the 70+ pits at 3 so-called "extermination camps"
You can't even make the case for 1 of the alleged pits.
You have failed to show that any specific form of evidence must exist, but does not, for the revisionist position (not dumped into pits) to be correct.

Thanks for going 1 by 1. Just as you argued that there would have been a need for internal secrecy concerning a mass resettlement program, historians also argue there was a need for internal secrecy for a mass killing program. So I think the expectation would be that people who had no role to play in such a program were not going to be alerted to it, especially in writing. Bielfeld, who worked outside of the continent, is a perfect example of a person it would have been completely unnecessary to inform about any plan of mass killing.

It doesn't matter. You said there is no documentary evidence supporting the revisionist position. Except there are documents galore describing the "Final Solution" and they appear to all agree that it was a resettlement policy.

Obviously you can invent endless excuses of "that person was kept out of the loop so the documents were created to deceive" or "they destroyed the real evidence" or "they used code words" but you're still stuck with the FACT that your position is not supported by any massive pits at so-called "extermination camps" (you can't show that they exist). Its based on party testimony, the weakest form of evidence that exists and most easy to fabricate. Simply put, the orthodox position is not supported by physical evidence, but the revisionist position is. The documents also consistent show "Final Solution" was not what the orthodox historians are saying it was.

This letter also illustrates something very important, namely that even assuming the revisionist version of events is true, the various departments and people involved were not at all in lockstep.
Rademacher is definitive in calling the movement of Jews east 'The Final Solution' whereas in the Goebbels diary entry 1 month later (just posted by PrudentRegret), Goebbels calls it a beginning : "They will have to be concentrated later, to begin with, in the East; possibly an island, such as Madagascar, can be assigned to them after the war."

Such inconsistencies are to be expected.

There is actually no inconsistency at all. Goebbels mentioned Madagascar for after the war. Again, all of these policies were temporary. The "Final Solution" was always to be a policy completed after the war. Sending them to the east was a temporary measure.

Browning certainly doesn't believe this and I don't think any historian worth their salt does. The narrative is that employable Jews were seen as valuable, so no thought was given to killing them.

Incorrect.

Christopher Browning:
"In a brief two years between the autumn of 1939 and the autumn of 1941, Nazi Jewish policy escalated rapidly from the pre-war policy of forced emigration to the Final Solution as it is now understood—the systematic attempt to murder every last Jew within the German grasp."

Christian Gerlach:
"First, it was a precondition not just for the execution of the ‘eastern Jews’ but also for the extermination of German and western European Jews. Second, it was closely connected with Hitler’s fundamental decision to proceed with the liquidation of all Jews living in Europe. In my opinion, Hitler made this decision in early December 1941... the decision to ‘exterminate the Jews in Europe’ must have been made after December 7 and before December 14, 1941."

You are confused it seems. A policy can be implemented that had multiple steps. Like I said:

"The exterminationist theory is that the "Final Solution" was a policy to kill all of the Jews, only leaving some alive temporarily for labor purposes."

Your position makes no sense. No document describes "Kill only the elderly and unable to work Jews" as the "Final Solution."
The "Final Solution" was always removal of Jews from Europe. Even taking the term "final" and understanding what it means shows how silly your "only kill the unfit" interpretation is. That's not final at all. That's just culling the herd, so to speak.

If the orthodox position is that it meant "murder every last Jew" then "using able-bodied Jews for labor temporarily and killing the rest" is simply "murder every last Jew" but with extra steps. My description was correct.

The Wannsee protocols seem to indicate that after the war the surviving Jews were going to be prevented from reproducing (this probably meant killing or sterilization, genocidal either way)

Under appropriate direction the Jews are to be utilized for work in the East in an expedient manner in the course of the final solution. In large (labor) columns, with the sexes separated, Jews capable of work will be moved into these areas as they build roads, during which a large proportion will no doubt drop out through natural reduction. The remnant that eventually remains will require suitable treatment; because it will without doubt represent the most [physically] resistant part, it consists of a natural selection that could, on its release, become the germ-cell of a new Jewish revival. (Witness the experience of history.)

No it doesn't say that at all, you're just using your imagination to define "suitable treatment" and it flies in the face of what the document says. It could very well just mean to put the Jews in a situation where they would not be able to create trouble for anyone else. Like, for example, Madagascar (and island) that is a sort of vassal state. It really was not decided upon, since the idea was to deal with that after the war.
Further, even if they had a goal to sterilize them all post-war (this doesn't appear to be the case) that doesn't say anything about what they did during the war, which is what we're discussing.

Actually, the Wannsee Protocols are another example of a document that completely supports the revisionist position and contradicts the orthodox position, which you appear to be rejecting because you are faced with the fact that the documents do not support your interpretation of "Final Solution" - they quite clearly contradict it.
Even the expression "bei Freilassung" (upon release) shows there was no plan to kill them all.
From Wannsee Protocols:

"The Chief of the Security Police and the SD then gave a short report of the struggle which has been carried on thus far against this enemy, the essential points being the following

a) the expulsion of the Jews from every sphere of life of the German people,
b) the expulsion of the Jews from the living space of the German people.

In carrying out these efforts, an increased and planned acceleration of the emigration of the Jews from Reich territory was started, as the only possible present solution.

By order of the Reich Marshal, a Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration was set up in January 1939 and the Chief of the Security Police and SD was entrusted with the management. Its most important tasks were

a) to make all necessary arrangements for the preparation for an increased emigration of the Jews,
b) to direct the flow of emigration,
c) to speed the procedure of emigration in each individual case.
The aim of all this was to cleanse German living space of Jews in a legal manner.
...
In the meantime the Reichsfuehrer-SS and Chief of the German Police had prohibited emigration of Jews due to the dangers of an emigration in wartime and due to the possibilities of the East.

III. Another possible solution of the problem has now taken the place of emigration, i.e. the evacuation of the Jews to the East, provided that the Fuehrer gives the appropriate approval in advance.

These actions are, however, only to be considered provisional, but practical experience is already being collected which is of the greatest importance in relation to the future final solution of the Jewish question.
...
In the course of the practical execution of the final solution, Europe will be combed through from west to east. Germany proper, including the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, will have to be handled first due to the housing problem and additional social and political necessities.

The evacuated Jews will first be sent, group by group, to so-called transit ghettos, from which they will be transported to the East.

SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Heydrich went on to say that an important prerequisite for the evacuation as such is the exact definition of the persons involved.

It is not intended to evacuate Jews over 65 years old, but to send them to an old-age ghetto - Theresienstadt is being considered for this purpose..."

The document is clear. As part of the "Final Solution" Jews shall be resettled to the east. This is a temporary measure. Elderly Jews - which, according to you should have been shoved into gas chambers and dumped into pits - were instead to be sent to a specific Jew ghetto. This document, along with many others that I cited, confirm the revisionist position regarding "Final Solution."
That is why I said that revisionists define "Final Solution" exactly as the documents describe it. In contrast, exterminationists do not have any documentary support for "Final Solution" being an extermination of all of the Jews.

That clearly is not even what happened in practice, which is proven by all the Jews that survived WWII.
They wanted a Europe not only free of Jews, physically, but Jewish influence. Goebbels mentions Hitler did not want all Jews in Siberia, but suggested even perhaps Africa. Clearly the idea was for Jews to be unable to do what the NSDAP believed they had previously done. Have them splintered into smaller populations, a powerless group forced to do honest labor or something of the sort. Again, it's all hypothetical, they clearly wanted to deal with that after the war. In the meantime, the goal was to get all of the Jews in Europe - coming from west to east - and move them over to the eastern territories into camps/ghettos (so they knew exactly where they were) except those able to be used for forced labor which would be dispensed to labor camps on an as-needed basis. Imagine a situation in which the USSR and other Allies surrendered, they wanted to be able to grab all of the Jews whenever needed and move them somewhere else - likely envisioned to be some territory they would have been granted in a peace treaty. Madagascar, owned by France, was considered for obvious reasons. It was dropped as a plan during the war because of the naval blockade; after the war that wouldn't have been an issue.

[hermod]

This letter also illustrates something very important, namely that even assuming the revisionist version of events is true, the various departments and people involved were not at all in lockstep.
Rademacher is definitive in calling the movement of Jews east 'The Final Solution' whereas in the Goebbels diary entry 1 month later (just posted by PrudentRegret), Goebbels calls it a beginning : "They will have to be concentrated later, to begin with, in the East; possibly an island, such as Madagascar, can be assigned to them after the war."

Such inconsistencies are to be expected.

There is actually no inconsistency at all. Goebbels mentioned Madagascar for after the war. Again, all of these policies were temporary. The "Final Solution" was always to be a policy completed after the war. Sending them to the east was a temporary measure.

That's true. What's inconsistent is the exterminationist/antirevisionist theory that the German National Socialists picked up a Zionist term about a population transfer of Europe's Jews to name a mass slaughter of Europe's Jews.

Zionist pioneer Theodore Herzl in 1899:

https://postimg.cc/BtLRFXyr

[Archie]

It is very surprising that you find the documentary body of evidence to support the orthodox narrative. Surely the murder of millions of people in gas chambers would leave an enormous amount of documentary evidence, but the orthodox camp is left layering on the assumption that "resettlement" was a codeword for "gassed" in hundreds and hundreds of documents.

Considering documents alone, I've found there are a few that concretely indicate a top-secret program of mass killing + body destruction at camps, but none that concretely indicate a top-secret resettlement program past 1942. This is based on descriptive content -- so neither Goebbels diary 'liquidated' or Himmler's 'transit camp sobibor' would count as evidence here.

An example would be the Just Memo, which indicates the use of homicidal gas vans at Chelmno. The meaning of this document, if authentic, is unmistakable

http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot. ... tml#_doc10

How about this Goebbel's diary entry (March 7, 1942)?

In my view this would be an example of a document that mildly contradicts the orthodox narrative. But Goebbels is clearly speculating -- he uses the word 'perhaps'. He was clearly aware of killings happening in occupied USSR but may not have been kept abreast of all developments concerning 'the final solution', which according to orthodoxy, was planned mainly within the SS.

I don't think it is a "mild" contradiction. We have a high-level Nazi using the term "final solution" and using it in such a way that unambiguously precludes the conventional interpretation. Moreover by the date and the content, it's clear that he's commenting on the Wannsee Conference discussion.

Goebbels was one of the "hardliners" on the Jewish question and, as is clear from his diaries, he discussed Jewish policy with Hitler with some regularity, and usually was lobbying for more radical policies. If you argue that Goebbels(!) wasn't in the loop, do realize that you can't then use statements by Goebbels as proof of the holocaust. Also, and more importantly, do realize that you've then committed to arguing that the extermination policy was so secret that not even Goebbels was aware of it. I think you will find that extreme secrecy position difficult to maintain.

[Lamprecht]

What's your threshold here? We know that Treblinka has been studied eg in 1945 by a Polish Judge

And more recently indeed. You have been asked to make a case for alleged huge mass graves at Treblinka. Claiming that Soviet puppets declared the area full of human remains is rather weak evidence, especially after a modern investigation of Treblinka by actual archaeologists with cameras and other tools failed to produce verifiable evidence for a single huge mass grave with 1/100th of 1% of the alleged 870,000 or whatever.

In the northwestern section of the area, the surface is covered for about 2 hectares by a mixture of ashes and sand. In this mixture, one finds countless human bones, often still covered with tissue remains, which are in a condition of decomposition. During the inspection, which I made with the assistance of an expert in forensic medicine, it was determined that the ashes are without any doubt of human origin (remains of cremated human bones). The examination of human skulls could discover no trace of« wounding. At a distance of some 100 m, there is now an unpleasant odor of burning and decay.

2 hectares is 20,000 square meters, that's a big space. So the problem seems to be one of trust, which I definitely understand. Post-war photos were taken, but it's hard to see what's goin on, so all we're left with is the word of the magistrate. Skepticism is warranted in this case, but it seems some on this forum go much further, to outright disbelief. From my perspective, based solely on the physical evidence that has been presented, we can't be sure if there are remains of mass killing at the camp, but I disagree that the revisionist perspective (they're lying) is more probable.

See above. You have been challenged to make a case for the alleged mass graves at Treblinka 2 and you refused to do so. The lack of evidence for huge mass graves is a massive hole in the orthodox storyline. This evidence must exist but can't be shown to. You have not been able to make the case for any specific form of evidence that must exist for the revisionists to be correct. At best you claim that some specific type of testimony should exist, theoretically, but you haven't actually explained why. It's not actually apparent why anyone should agree with you here. At least we all agree that the alleged massive pits must exist at Treblinka 2 for the "extermination camp" story to be true, but you are still clinging to the faith that they do exist despite no verifiable evidence making the case for their existence.

[Butterfangers]

This will be a long post but if you bear with me, I think you'll find it worthwhile. This is a map of the approximate location of many Zwangarbeitslager (labor camps) for Jews:

General Government Labor Camps

This map vastly understates the true number of these labor camps, first of all because many are "stacked" in the same place (sometimes dozens) with the points plotted, but also because (1) many of the labor camps which are known lack sufficient information to be mapped and (2) there are likely hundreds more (maybe thousands) which remain totally unknown. These do not include those in the East nor further south (e.g. Austria). It also does not include ghettos nor concentration camps/sites.

What it does do is provide an illustration of, generally, where these known labor camps were clustered, how they were patterned throughout German territory and relative to AR camps (also shown), etc.

I have been working with the data used to populate the map (see: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=14794&p=107398#p107398) which, as already mentioned, includes many more camps than those plotted. In total, there are 1,030 known camps within the territories shown above. The breakdown is as follows:

Silesia = 213
Reichsgau Wartheland = 205
District Galicia = 164
District Lublin = 126
District Radom = 93
District Krakow = 84
District Warsaw = 72
Reichsgebiet = 40
District Bialystok = 7
Reichsgau Sudetenland = 17
Reichsgau Danzig-Westpreußen = 8
Reichsgau Oberdonau = 1

What is not known, for the most part, is the size of these camps. There are at least some confirmed to have had inmates numbering in the thousands but others were as low as in the dozens or hundreds.

Of the 1,030 total, here is some of the data which I found most important:

• 459 of these entries indicate the camp closing date is only assumed based on the time of its "last mention" ("letzte Erwähnung")
• 204 were reported (or assumed) closed no earlier than sometime in 1944 (with even mid-to-late 1944 not being uncommon)
• 20 were reported closed in 1945
• About 10-15% have no known closing date at all
• 346 of the 1,030 entries have no map location due to missing/insufficient information (many others have only an approximate location)

These areas and figures do not include those camps for Hungarian Jews in Austria, which are even more shocking:

Did you know...

...that the Zwangsarbeitslagers in Austria for Hungarian Jews included a whopping eighty-six (86) camps for Jewish children? From what I can tell, nearly all of these camps opened up during or after the main period in which half of Hungarian Jews are said to have been 'exterminated' in Auschwitz (15 May – 9 July 1944).

Use the Ctrl+F search function, here, for the search term "Kinder" ("children" in German): https://archive.is/Gd3fe

Map of the Zwangsarbeitslagers in Austria:

Most of the camps with children opened in June '44, or within the months that followed. A couple of them opened 'circa June'; the sole children-only camp opened as early as April (Wien-Leopoldstadt). They typically stayed open approximately until the end of the war in Austria (late-April '45), sometimes even later.

At the precise time when Hungarian Jewish children were allegedly being "selected" for extermination at Auschwitz (based on the sole criteria of being a child), it is strange that Germany would also be setting up 86 camps for children nearby. Men and women were also housed at most of these camps. I wonder how old and/or infirm they might have been. Much of the labor seems like lighter work (electrical, glass-work, agricultural, textiles, cannery, etc.) than what is at some of the labor camps in other areas (quarry work, logging, etc.) or even at Auschwitz (construction, industrial, mining, etc.).

If Hungarian Jews said to have been 'gassed' at Auschwitz were actually sent elsewhere, especially those elderly/infirm/children, to places including but not limited to these labor camps, it casts further doubt upon the whole notion of Nazi extermination policy anywhere, of course, in addition to demonstrating how understanding these labor camps can influence perspective about Jewish dispersion throughout the various territories.

I have yet to dive into the types of labor throughout all of these camps in-depth. I think mapping these out, understanding the timelines and locations where types of labor were conducted can add a lot in terms of understanding the story of how Jews were treated, where they were transported at various times throughout the war, possibly even where they ended up.

Have a look at this map of the major train lines as of 1939. I wanted to highlight the routes from the major ghettoes (Warsaw, Radom, Lublin, Lvov, Krakow, Czestochowa) to the AR camp to the east of each, showing the route which came into contact with the most labor camps (or gravitating toward the densest clusters thereof) along the way, in pink. I also color-coded the districts which neighbored the General Government to the East (from top-to-bottom: District Litauen [yellow], District Bialystok [rose], District Weissruthenien [blue], District Volhynia [green], District Galicia [orange]). I came up with this:

Eastbound Labor Map

To determine how to draw the above, I used the first map provided for tracing those camps in the General Government, and the map of the eastern (Ostland, RK Ukraine) labor camps for those in the East (current version is here: https://www.mapcustomizer.com/map/Zwang ... ndUkraine7).

Now, let's say hypothetically that each AR camp is officially a "gateway" further east, each corresponding to districts on either side of it (west-east). It might look something like this:

Gateway Map

Three sets of districts to the west, three gateway camps, three to the east. It makes administrative sense to associate each gateway with a particular set of districts on either side, to keep things organized insofar as tracking and managing Jewish eastbound movement.

Since we know that the Hoefle telegram and Korherr report together refer only to Jews who had accessed route designations "B, S, T (and L)" insofar as being "sifted through camps in the General Government" (see here: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=14847&p=107780#p107780), and with insights gained from the "Eastbound Labor Map" above, which shows the [approximate] paths of greatest labor camp density, we should identify to what extent these paths align with the alleged "extermination routes" to AR camps. Some Holocaust establishment resources, here:

One very interesting find I came across in the last couple days is a map drawn in November 1941 from Organization Todt, which details the main, official German transportation routes of resources and materials being sent to the east:

Source and more detailed view: https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servle ... das-deutsc

Some excerpts from the description:

This fascinating, seemingly unrecorded ‘classified’ map depicts the main transportation routes of the Nazi German forces throughout the European war theatre, plus the vast network of gas stations, fuel depots and garages that sustained their thousands of armoured vehicles and tanks, as they existed at the beginning of November 1941, during the height of Operation Barbarossa.

[...]

The map was made for the Organisation Todt (OT), the massive joint governmental-corporate enterprise that was responsible for all aspects of the Third Reich’s military-industrial complex.

[...]

By the beginning of November 1941, at the point depicted upon the present map, the Germans were only 87 km from Moscow and had taken the western half of Ukraine.

[...]

The ‘Zeichenenerklärung’ [Explanation of Symbols], below the title, upper right, provides the symbols employed to identify the key features of the transport-fuel distribution system:

‘T = ‘Tankstelle’ [Gas Stations];
‘L = ‘Tanklager’ [Petroleum Storage Depots];
‘W = ‘Werkstatt-Reparaturstützpunkt’ [Workshops-Garages];

...the vast web of red lines connecting the cities and fuel/repair facilities represents ‘Hauptdurchgangsstraẞnen u. Autobahnen’ [Main Thoroughfares and Expressways].

[...]

The map was considered to be highly sensitive and bears the note ‘Nur für den Dienstgebrauch!’ [For official use only!] and would have been issued in only a very small print run for the exclusive use of select, authorized personnel.

[...]

Initially, the OT could rely upon 1.75 million conscripted German labourers (who served in lieu of military service), but during wartime the OT enslaved over a million people in occupied territories and in concentration camps, often in barbarously cruel conditions.

Surely, Jews were among those materials being sent east along these routes and, sure enough, these routes almost perfectly follow those routes with greater "labor camp density", both in the GG and further east. This could be for obvious logistical reasons (i.e. the need for getting prisoners and camp resources to the routed locations efficiently), and/or because these camps are simply the ones we are most likely to know about, given that information likely traveled the same path as these "thoroughfares and expressways" did.

The description quoted above indicates that "over a million people" were enslaved for Organisation Todt projects, alone, in the occupied territories and in concentration camps. I wonder how far "over a million" this could entail, in fact. I also wonder how many were Jews, and how many other organizations employed forced labor in these areas and to what scale.

As PR has already pointed out above, researchers have already identified the existence of some 42,500 and counting (!) different camps and ghettos. If only one-third of those are in the occupied eastern territories, that's over 14,000 different locations in these territories where Jews may have been held. Did each location have just fifty Jews on average (accounting for 700,000 Jews total)? Did each have two-hundred Jews on average (2.8 million total)? Throughout this time, how many Jews were in the other 28,000 camps (the remaining two-thirds) back west?

The bottom-line is that Jews were sifted through camps in the GG according to geography and labor needs, along an "access route" which led many to cross-over into Ostland and RK Ukraine via the "gateways" of Belzec (B), Sobibor (S), and Treblinka (T). Once crossing into eastern-occupied territories, they were sifted through the camps on this side even further, all the way up to the eastern front.

What does "sifting" mean? It means Jews were brought east from their ghettos, labor needs were identified at each stop and the requested number of capable or appropriate Jews would disembark at that point in time (a time-consuming process which is documented, as shown by Nazgul, via the Fahrlplananordnung documents). Those Jews who find no place at any of the labor camps en route toward the east in the GG would end up at the AR camp corresponding to their route. Any and all confiscated property would be on the same train with them. Those who were truly hopeless would possibly be euthanized via Aktion 14f13 but this was a very small number, in any case. Those anticipated to be able to handle the difficult journey further east would use these "gateway" sites to be deloused, shower, etc. as their property (and that of those who disembarked at earlier stops) is unloaded from the train and sorted by the camp staff (who would often burn large amounts of "junk" property, leading to the odors and smoke reported by some witnesses). Those transiting Jews then board a different train nearby (this one on Soviet wide-gauge rails) for the journey further east. They then continue a similar journey to the one they had just endured. They are "sifted through" the many labor camps in the eastern-occupied territories in much the same fashion as before. These routes went as far as the eastern front.

Given there are some 42,500+ sites where Jews could be held, it is impossible to ever account for every location where the "less fit" or "unfit" Jews were held, either temporarily or until war's end. But between the risks of starvation, typhus and other diseases, the threat of 'antisemitic' locals, or post-war Soviet captivity, the odds of their surviving the war were slim. The odds of these frail persons living long enough post-war to ever be asked to document their paths of travel (in the east or otherwise) were even slimmer. Given that most of Holocaust interest and literature did not appear until decades after the alleged events, the odds that any significant number of these "unfit" persons would ever be accounted for in the historical record reach slim to none, especially given most of the world had already presumed them as dead based on "official" narratives.

The greatest misconception among exterminationists is lack of recognition of just how scattered Jews became throughout the war and thereafter. It is clear that this is the case, from the excerpt already shared by PR but here again as it is extremely relevant:

The researchers have cataloged some 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe, spanning German-controlled areas from France to Russia and Germany itself, during Hitler’s reign of brutality from 1933 to 1945.

The figure is so staggering that even fellow Holocaust scholars had to make sure they had heard it correctly when the lead researchers previewed their findings...

The degree of dispersion, diffusion, etc. was extraordinarily vast, unlike anything that has ever happened before to any group of people. You add this to the fact that most Jews genuinely believe in the horror stories and had already grown accustomed to having not seen their home and family in years by the end of the war... It becomes obvious why so many Jews appeared "missing", even and especially to Jews themselves.

Of course, this is not to rule out one other extremely-important consideration: Josef Stalin and the Soviet Union. It wasn't hard for Stalin to figure out what the 'Nazis' were doing with Jews in the eastern territories. They were scattered all over, in various condition, when the Soviet army arrived. What, exactly, did the this notorious army do when they found these Jews; dozens, hundreds or thousands at a time? Were they all "liberated", as some report to have been further west? How many were sent to Siberia, like hundreds of thousands of other Jews which had already been sent there by that time? How many were simply killed, reasons be damned, by soldiers with a reputation for needless destruction on a literal warpath? All of this is brought into greater focus when thinking about just how much the Soviet Union got away with by this time and thereafter. Starving to death tens of millions of their own population, NKVD death squads, campaigns of show trials, etc. After insisting that Nuremberg be a show trial as well (allegedly then being overruled by other Allied governments), Stalin supposedly acquiesced and decided a fair trial was okay, only to submit a phony "Katyn report" into evidence (with 100 official Soviet signatories!). This is the government whom Jews were captured by at the end of the war. I say "captured" and not "liberated", for obvious reasons.

The answer to "where did they go?" needs to fall at least as much on the Soviet Union as it does on Germany.

Some of what I described at the beginning of this post will likely never be 100% confirmed, as property confiscation and transport of important resources for the war (including Jewish forced labor) were "secret Reich matters" which were topics likely subject to destruction of important documents near the end of the war. Nonetheless, a case can still be made such as the above.

[PrudentRegret]

2 hectares is 20,000 square meters, that's a big space.

You are claiming that the population equivalent of San Francisco was murdered in this small camp and buried in a 20,000 square meter space. Wouldn't you admit that this is a remarkable claim? Shouldn't you require a lot of evidence to believe in such a remarkable claim?

But you only cite a 1945 report in communist-occupied Poland from a Judge who concluded that he did not find any mass graves and there were likely none on the former site of the camp.

Caroline Sturdy-Coll's results are not consistent with the orthodox narrative on this front either. Her results work against this claim.

Also, thanks for the good post, Butterfangers. It's important work.

[bombsaway]

Lamprecht, I'm not understanding your point re physical evidence. Do you think it's possible the mass graves exist, this just hasn't been forenically proven?

"No document describes "Kill only the elderly and unable to work Jews" as the "Final Solution."

Yet documents like Goebbels diary discuss the liquidation of the non-working Jewish population of the GG.

On a more local level, Kube's document shows the non-working population of Belarus to have been killed while the workers were kept alive, at least at present.

I could find you more if you're interested but here's another one:

Letter from Hugo H�ppenerner, higher SS and Police leader in the Warthegau, to SS-Obersturmbannfuehrer Eichmann, July 16 1941:
Documents of Destruction - R. Hilberg, Quadrangle Books, Chicago, 1971, p. 87.
Enclosed is a memorandum on the results of various discussions held locally in the office of the Reich Governor.

Subject: Solution of the Jewish question

4) This winter there is a danger that not all of the Jews can be fed anymore. One might weigh honestly, if the most humane solution might not be to finish off those of the Jews who are not employable by means of some quick-working device. At any rate, that would be more pleasant than to let them starve to death.

5) For the rest, the proposal was made that in this camp all the Jewish women, from whom one could still expect children, should be sterilized so that the Jewish problem may actually be solved completely with this generation.

Höppner an Eichmann, 2.9.41, AIPN CA 362/102, pp.45-62;

The camp you mention earmarked in the Korherr report for elderly Jews is Theresienstadt. In Nazi documents it is referred to as a propagandalager, whose purpose is to "save face with the outside world", and also a "temporary collection camp (where the Jews are already heavily decimated)"

https://www.skepticforum.com/viewtopic. ... 57#p802713

the max population was 50,000 (during this period people were dying like flies) and the camp served not only the elderly, but entire families, many of whom were working. The non-working population was eventually deported to Auschwitz, where some of them were held for a time, but during 1944 the family camp there was dissolved, after which no documentary or witness record sheds any light on their continued existence.

I'm not sure if you consider this significant or not, but I don't think there's a single example of sizeable community of non-working Jews being maintained until liberation anywhere in German controlled territory. For the Jews deported to Transnistria, there are many such examples of communities like this. I know you probably don't believe me, so let's table this for another time, but I'm open to doing the research with you.

And no, I'm not surprised that there is no "Kill all Jews" document. If we're taking the Wannsee protocols quote I posted on the previous page seriously, there's good reason to believe they would have done this (or at least sterilized the survivors) after the war was over and they didn't need them anymore. But the Nazi regime didn't make it that far.

How about this Goebbel's diary entry (March 7, 1942)?

In my view this would be an example of a document that mildly contradicts the orthodox narrative. But Goebbels is clearly speculating -- he uses the word 'perhaps'. He was clearly aware of killings happening in occupied USSR but may not have been kept abreast of all developments concerning 'the final solution', which according to orthodoxy, was planned mainly within the SS.

I don't think it is a "mild" contradiction. We have a high-level Nazi using the term "final solution" and using it in such a way that unambiguously precludes the conventional interpretation. Moreover by the date and the content, it's clear that he's commenting on the Wannsee Conference discussion.

Goebbels was one of the "hardliners" on the Jewish question and, as is clear from his diaries, he discussed Jewish policy with Hitler with some regularity, and usually was lobbying for more radical policies. If you argue that Goebbels(!) wasn't in the loop, do realize that you can't then use statements by Goebbels as proof of the holocaust. Also, and more importantly, do realize that you've then committed to arguing that the extermination policy was so secret that not even Goebbels was aware of it. I think you will find that extreme secrecy position difficult to maintain.

Goebbels diary entry at the end of March shows he was definitely in the loop (he correctly identifies Globocnik ("the former Gauleiter of Vienna") as being the guy in charge of Action Reinhard.

So the theory is he was informed in late March, probably right before he penned the famous entry. After this date there is no mention of the 'final solution' nor any complications therein. I suppose from your perspective, the removal of millions from ghettos and their placement 'somewhere else' went so smoothly it never deserved mention.

[Lamprecht]

Lamprecht, I'm not understanding your point re physical evidence. Do you think it's possible the mass graves exist, this just hasn't been forenically proven?

No, I am saying they do not exist. Sure, some bodies are buried at these camps. Nothing close to the hundreds of thousands allegedly buried in massive pits. There are just scattered, random pits that were made in response to deaths in specific transits, or various executions. These were not "extermination camps" with homicidal gas chambers where 1.5m+ died and were buried. All of the archaeological investigations confirm this fact. Not a single one found a single massive pit with 0.1% of the alleged 1.5m+ remains. If a camp had hundreds of thousands of corpses to dump into pits - and remember, the claim is that they were dug up, burned, and dumped into pits - it would be in more geometric patterns, not random, scattered, haphazard pits. Actually look at the models made by the "survivors" that show massive, swimming-pool sized pits.

They do not exist. They looked. They didn't find them. If they did find them, they would have shown us. This after-the-fact "oh we actually weren't even looking" hoax is saving face.

The massive pits that must be there for your conspiracy theory to be true are not there. It's that simple. That's why your position is wrong. That's why you can't make a case for even 1 of them when challenged. That's why effort is made to prohibit "Holocaust denial" legally, with prison time, rather than actually showing that the alleged pits exist.

Yet documents like Goebbels diary discuss the liquidation of the non-working Jewish population of the GG.

That has already been explained to you. That was Goebbels giving his personal opinion on what should be done. Goebbels himself explains in many instances that the policy being implemented was to resettle the Jews to the east. Review my first post, which includes some (but not all) of these entries. The Goebbels diary supports the revisionist position and discredits the orthodox opinion, unless they push the "Goebbels was kept in the dark" angle.

On a more local level, Kube's document shows the non-working population of Belarus to have been killed while the workers were kept alive, at least at present.

This document has already been explained on how it supports the revisionist position and not the orthodox one.

viewtopic.php?p=107580#p107580
viewtopic.php?p=107610#p107610
viewtopic.php?p=107635#p107635

Killing a large number of Jews and providing justification (in this case, their heavy involvement in partisan terrorist actions) does not jive with the orthodoxy's "kill every last Jew" conspiracy theory. Kube further describes them as resettled Jews and says not to resettle and more Jews to the area. You are now arguing that Jews were "Holocausted" by being resettled into ghettos until they caused so much damage via collaboration with partisans that the SS in the area decided to shoot them all? And here, I thought they were sent to "extermination camps" to be shoved into gas chambers.

I could find you more if you're interested but here's another one:

Full document:

Memorandum

Subject- Solution of the Jewish question

During discussions in the office of the Reich Governor various groups broached the solution of the Jewish question in Warthe province. The following solution is being proposed.

1. All the Jews of the Warthe province will be taken to a camp for 300,000 Jews which will be erected in barrack form as close as possible to the coal precincts and which will contain barracks-like installations for economic enterprises, tailor shops, shoe manufacturing plants, etc.

2. All Jews of Warthe province will be brought into this camp. Jews capable of labor may be constituted into labor columns as needed and drawn from the camp.

3. In my view, a camp of this type may be guarded by SS-Brig. Gen. Albert with substantially fewer police forces than are required now. Furthermore, the danger of epidemics, which always exists in the Lodz and other ghettos for the surrounding population, will be minimized.

4. This winter there is a danger that not all of the Jews can be fed anymore. One should weigh honestly, if the most humane solution might not be to finish off those of the Jews who are not employable by means of some quick-working device. At any rate, that would be more pleasant than to let them starve to death.

5. For the rest, the proposal was made that in this camp all the Jewish women, from whom one could still expect children, should be sterilized so that the Jewish problem may actually be solved completely with this generation.

6. The Reich Governor has not yet expressed an opinion in this matter. There is an impression that Government President Ubelhor does not wish to see the ghetto in Lodz disappear since he [his office] seems to profit quite well with it. As an example of how one can profit from the Jews, I was told that the Reich Labor Ministry pays 6 Reichsmark from a special fund for each employed Jew, but that the Jew costs only 80 Pfennige.

This document, if genuine, does not support your position. It says that ALL Jews are to be moved to a camp. Further, it suggests (does not describe as policy) only to euthanize as a response to imminent starvation. That's not describing a plan to kill all the Jews, but to minimize suffering. As for the alleged sterilization proposal, that is nothing more than an alleged proposal. Clearly it didn't happen.

The camp you mention earmarked in the Korherr report for elderly Jews is Theresienstadt. In Nazi documents it is referred to as a propagandalager, whose purpose is to "save face with the outside world", and also a "temporary collection camp (where the Jews are already heavily decimated)"

https://www.skepticforum.com/viewtopic. ... 13#p802713

That doesn't mean that it was fake and only set up to fool people.

Marc Oprach:
"The term ‘Propagandaghetto’ for Theresienstadt can be found only once in the documents of the SS. On 5 October 1942 Eichmann decided to let Dutch Jews travel to the ‘Propagandaghetto Theresienstadt.’"

Moreover, consider the dates of these statements. In 1941, first quote, it says that it's a temporary collection camp:
"In Bohemia the old Hussite castle of Alt-Ratibor could be considered, but the best would be the acquisition of Theresienstadt by the Central Office for Jewish Emigration. After evacuating this temporary collection camp (whereby the Jews would already be heavily decimated) into the eastern territories, the whole terrain could be upgraded to an exemplary German settlement."

The decimation is clearly anticipated as a side effect from the evacuation itself, it's not that they are sent to be killed.

Calling it a "Propagandaghetto" may have just been a temporary description. The real issue you're having is that the Jews were supposedly all being Holocausted, but there is no such description in the Wannsee protocols, and in fact they say only that Jews are to be resettled or used for labor.

"In the course of the final solution the Jews are slated to be deployed for labor in the East under appropriate supervision and in an adequate manner. In large working platoons, with the genders separated, the Jews fit to work will be brought to these areas while constructing roads, whereby a large part will doubtlessly drop out due to natural decrease...
In the course of the practical implementation of the final solution, Europe will be scoured through from the West to the East... The evacuated Jews will initially be brought step by step to so-called transit ghettos, and from there they will be transported further to the East."

The most reasonable interpretation is that Jews fit for work are used for labor deployment, and those unable to work are sent to transit ghettos and then "further to the east"

Two weeks after the Wannsee conference, on 2 February 1942, Heydrich explicitly referred to the fate of all the European Jews during a speech:
"Those who cannot yet be Germanized [the Czechs] will perhaps be [deployed] in the development of the Arctic sea region – where we take over the concentration camps of the Russians, which to our current knowledge have some 15-20 million deportees and which therefore will be the ideal future homeland of the 11 million Jews from Europe – maybe there we can deploy, as a positive example, the Czechs who cannot be Germanized in the pro-German task of acting as supervisors, foremen, etc."

"Die noch nicht Eindeutschbaren [Tschechen] wird man vielleicht bei der weiteren Erschließung des Eismeer-Raumes – wo wir ja die Konzentrationslager der Russen übernehmen, die nach unserer augenblicklichen Kenntnis etwa 15-20 Millionen Deportierte haben und dadurch zukünftig ideales Heimatland der 11 Millionen Juden aus Europa sein werden – vielleicht können wir dort nun die Tschechen, die nicht eindeutschbar sind, unter einem positiven Vorzeichen einer prodeutschen Aufgabe als Aufseher, Vorarbeiter usw. einsetzen." (Saul Friedländer, Die Jahre der Vernichtung. Das Dritte Reich und die Juden 1939-1945. C.H. Beck, München, 2006, pp. 370f.)

no documentary or witness record sheds any light on their continued existence.

And if no massive pits shed any light onto their presence in huge mass graves, it should logically be assumed they simply went somewhere else without any sort of documentation surviving about it.

I'm not sure if you consider this significant or not, but I don't think there's a single example of sizeable community of non-working Jews being maintained until liberation anywhere in German controlled territory. For the Jews deported to Transnistria, there are many such examples of communities like this. I know you probably don't believe me, so let's table this for another time, but I'm open to doing the research with you.

I also don't know about any such example, but I don't see any reason to think that evidence of this would necessarily exist. The pits absolutely would exist, but such documents necessarily do not need to still exist. However here's a recent example posted:

The French Communist newspaper Notre Voix reported in April 1944 (on information provided by Radio-Moscow, the newspaper said) that 8,000 Jews deported from Paris had just been liberated by the Red Army in Ukraine.

And no, I'm not surprised that there is no "Kill all Jews" document.

That is because, in contrast to the orthodox position, that is not what the "Final Solution" was. The Final Solution was exactly what the documents say it was. That's the revisionist position.
That is why you're incorrect to say the documents do not support revisionism. They objetively do. Revisionists simply claim that the "Final Solution" was exactly what the documents consistently say it was, and that 1.5m+ Jews weren't dumped into pits at Treblinka 2, Sobibor, and Belzec. Pits you won't even make a case for besides "they might be there, we just don't have any evidence for it."
No, they're not there.

If we're taking the Wannsee protocols quote I posted on the previous page seriously, there's good reason to believe they would have done this (or at least sterilized the survivors) after the war was over and they didn't need them anymore. But the Nazi regime didn't make it that far.

It's pointless to reach into the realm of what they hypothetically would have done post-war. The orthodox position is that the "Final solution" as a "kill every last Jew" order, with only those able to work being kept alive temporarily.
The documents describing "Final Solution" contradict this conspiracy theory interpretation.

Goebbels diary entry at the end of March shows he was definitely in the loop (he correctly identifies Globocnik ("the former Gauleiter of Vienna") as being the guy in charge of Action Reinhard.

This further destroys your position. Somehow Goebbels knew of a "Holocaust" but he kept saying that the Jews were being resettled in a private diary. Laughable. From the Goebbels diary:

18 December 1941:
"I speak with the Führer regarding the Jewish Question. He is determined to take consistent action and not be deterred by bourgeois sentimentality. Above all, the Jews must leave the Reich (aus…heraus)... The Jews should all be pushed off (abgeschoben) to the East. We are not very interested in what becomes of them after that."

7 March 1942 (probably referencing the 20 January 1942 Wannsee conference/protocols):
"I read a detailed report from the SD and police regarding a final solution of the Jewish Question. Any final solution involves a tremendous number of new viewpoints. The Jewish Question must be solved within a pan-European frame. There are 11 million Jews still in Europe. They will have to be concentrated later, to begin with, in the East; possibly an island, such as Madagascar, can be assigned to them after the war. In any case there can be no peace in Europe until the last Jews are shut off from (ausgeschaltet) the continent."

So the theory is he was informed in late March, probably right before he penned the famous entry. After this date there is no mention of the 'final solution' nor any complications therein.

He doesn't use the term itself but he describes the policy as one of mass resettlement, until that was stopped due to the war in the USSR being lost.

27 April 1942:
"I talked to the Führer once more in detail about the Jewish Question. His attitude is unrelenting. He wants, under all circumstances, to push the Jews out (herausdrängen) of Europe. That is right. The Jews have brought so much misery to our continent that the severest punishment meted out to them is still too mild. Himmler is presently implementing a large resettlement (Umseidlung) of Jews from German cities to the eastern ghettos."

30 May 1942:
"Therefore the Führer does not at all wish that the Jews should be evacuated (evakuiert) to Siberia. There, under the harshest living conditions, they would undoubtedly develop again a strong life-element. He would much prefer to resettle (aussiedeln) them in central Africa. There they would live in a climate that would certainly not make them strong and resistant. In any case, it is the Führer's goal to make Western Europe completely Jew-free. Here they may no longer have their homeland."

21 August 1942:
"The Jews are now in large part evacuated (evakuiert) and established in the East. This is quite generous to them. Here the Jewish Question is tackled in the right place, without sentimentality and without much consideration. Only in this way can the Jewish problem be solved."

1 October 1942:
"I drive back to the Chancellery with the Führer. Once again we talk through the Jewish Question. Here the Führer takes the same radical standpoint I do. He is also of the opinion that we must completely deport the Jews out of the Reich (restlos herausschaffen), and above all from Berlin."

3 January 1943 (on the Führer Reichstag prophecy):
"It's amazing how shortsightedly the Jews all over the world operate. They seem to have learned nothing from the example in Germany. Apparently the hemorrhaging of them by us yielded very little fruit. They should expect this frivolous playing with fire to continue until they are completely wiped out (gänzlich vernichtet). This also corresponds to the Führer's prophecy, when he explained at the beginning of the war that it would not end with the destruction (Vernichtung) of the Aryan race, but with the expulsion (Austreibung) of Jewry from Europe."

23 January 1943:
"The Führer is of the opinion that the Jewish Question in Berlin must be solved as soon as possible. As long as one still finds Jews in Berlin, we cannot speak of internal security. Also the Jews must be removed from Vienna (aus…heraus) as fast as possible."

2 March 1943:
"We are now definitely pushing the Jews out (aus…hinaus) of Berlin. They were suddenly rounded up last Saturday, and are to be carted off (abgeschoben) to the East as quickly as possible."

15 March 1943:
"You just can’t trust the Jews across the street. I therefore told the Führer emphatically once more that I deemed it essential to force the Jews out (herauszubringen) of the entire Reich as fast as possible. He approved, and ordered me not to cease or pause until no Jew is left anywhere in Germany."

18 April 1943:
"I believe I shall have completed one of the greatest political achievements of my career once Berlin is free of Jews. When I consider how Berlin looked in 1926 when I came here, and how it looks now in 1943 when the Jews are being evacuated (evakuiert) completely, I get a feeling of what has been achieved in this sector."

8 May 1943:
"The East will forever regard Europe as an attractive jewel. The East will again and again try to break into this continent in order to dominate it. Our constant, untiring effort must therefore center upon taking the necessary measures for our security. If it be true today that the Bolshevism of the East is mainly under Jewish leadership and that the Jews are also the dominant influence in the Western plutocracies, then our anti-Semitic propaganda must begin at this point. The Jews must therefore be thrown out (aus…heraus) of Europe."

[Jäger]

This will be a long post but if you bear with me, I think you'll find it worthwhile. This is a map of the approximate location of many Zwangarbeitslager (labor camps) for Jews:

It doesn't really make sense for the Nazis to send the Polish Jews en masse to the Russian front. The primary motivation (as explained by Himmler in the Sonthofen speeches, for example) for the liquidation of the Polish ghettoes was that they posed an immediate threat to the security of the rear (e.g, Himmler says he doesn't believe they could have held the Lemberg front if the Warsaw ghetto had remained). The nazis Nazis would not have solved this problem by sending the Jews to the front.

The idea that the bulk of these Jews actually remained in labor camps in the GG makes even less sense for the same reason. The whole point was to treat them as an immediate security threat and thus get rid of them.

The only thing that would really make sense would be to send them west away from the front where they couldn't 'cause trouble,' but this didn't happen.

In any case, all these Jews would have been swept up in the Red Army advance from 1944 - 45. In 1946, the USSR had an agreement with Poland to repatriate Polish citizens in the USSR to the 'new' territory of the post-war Polish Republic. You would have expected these several million Polish Jews to have taken advantage of this opportunity, at least as a way-station to get to the US or Palestine. To my knowledge, this did not happen.

[Jäger]

2 hectares is 20,000 square meters, that's a big space.

You are claiming that the population equivalent of San Francisco was murdered in this small camp and buried in a 20,000 square meter space. Wouldn't you admit that this is a remarkable claim? Shouldn't you require a lot of evidence to believe in such a remarkable claim?

It doesn't really strike me as that remarkable. It is a lot of people, but nothing to me seems all that incredible about killing a lot of people in a small area in a short amount of time if the people doing the killing are committed to their work.

How much space does it take to bury the ashes of 700,000 people? Serious question, I'm not sure.

According to this source (https://doh.gov.ph/sites/default/files/publications/Chapter_21_Disposal_of_Dead_Persons.pdf) I just found, a cremains container must have a minimum capacity of only 0.0049 cubic meters. If you scale that up, it would only take 3,430 cubic meters to contain the ashes of 700,000 people. Even accounting for a crude and less-than-perfect cremation procedure, and many bodies not cremated at all, and various proportions of these mixtures, out of 20,000-some meters (if that is indeed all there is), and not accounting for cremation ashes scattered in fields, roads, etc. it seems to me like there would be enough space.

But you only cite a 1945 report in communist-occupied Poland from a Judge who concluded that he did not find any mass graves and there were likely none on the former site of the camp.

He found very large pits filled with human ashes and bones. This describes mass graves of cremated human remains.

Caroline Sturdy-Coll's results are not consistent with the orthodox narrative on this front either. Her results work against this claim.

Also, thanks for the good post, Butterfangers. It's important work.

As I recall, a lot of the underground disturbances she found run right up against the big concrete memorial slab, which suggests there are more buried underneath it.

[bombsaway]

Thanks for the long post, I think it's important and will be coming back to it plus some of the other points raised in the thread. But for now let's stick to a few points at a time.

They do not exist. They looked. They didn't find them. If they did find them, they would have shown us. This after-the-fact "oh we actually weren't even looking" hoax is saving face.

I think this (I bolded it) is the crux of our disagreement on this point. I don't see why this must be the case, which is what you seem to be saying? BTW I never claimed they weren't looking (and I don't think anyone does), just that it wasn't their objective to forensically demonstrate their existence.

Re: "liquidated":

That was Goebbels giving his personal opinion on what should be done.

Am I reading you correctly that you think Goebbels meant 'killing' here?

[Hektor]

Lamprecht, I'm not understanding your point re physical evidence. Do you think it's possible the mass graves exist, this just hasn't been forenically proven?

No, I am saying they do not exist. Sure, some bodies are buried at these camps. Nothing close to the hundreds of thousands allegedly buried in massive pits. There are just scattered, random pits that were made in response to deaths in specific transits, or various executions. These were not "extermination camps" with homicidal gas chambers where 1.5m+ died and were buried. ...

They haven't been shown to exist. This while there was overwhelming means, motive and opportunity to find and investigate for decades. It doesn't seem they really bothered looking for them. But they still made their claims... Without having physical proof to back it up. And well. This shows that they were lying all the time. Once the lies took their rounds and became 'common knowledge', people that sincerely believed the narrative did then further spread the lies.

[bombsaway]

2 hectares is 20,000 square meters, that's a big space.

You are claiming that the population equivalent of San Francisco was murdered in this small camp and buried in a 20,000 square meter space. Wouldn't you admit that this is a remarkable claim? Shouldn't you require a lot of evidence to believe in such a remarkable claim?

It doesn't really strike me as that remarkable. It is a lot of people, but nothing to me seems all that incredible about killing a lot of people in a small area in a short amount of time if the people doing the killing are committed to their work.

How much space does it take to bury the ashes of 700,000 people? Serious question, I'm not sure.

According to this source (https://doh.gov.ph/sites/default/files/publications/Chapter_21_Disposal_of_Dead_Persons.pdf) I just found, a cremains container must have a minimum capacity of only 0.0049 cubic meters. If you scale that up, it would only take 3,430 cubic meters to contain the ashes of 700,000 people. Even accounting for a crude and less-than-perfect cremation procedure, and many bodies not cremated at all, and various proportions of these mixtures, out of 20,000-some meters (if that is indeed all there is), and not accounting for cremation ashes scattered in fields, roads, etc. it seems to me like there would be enough space.

To me this issue reveals both the bias of revisionists and proponents of the mainstream. The inclination for the both sides is a knee jerk reaction, of course that's possible/ not possible! But who says 100% of the ashes were even spread in that field? It very well might have been half of that. If the account is true, and this is the reason I brought it up, it is merely evidence consistent with what you might expect at a mass killing center, and not really any other kind of camp.

Lamprecht, I'm not understanding your point re physical evidence. Do you think it's possible the mass graves exist, this just hasn't been forenically proven?

No, I am saying they do not exist. Sure, some bodies are buried at these camps. Nothing close to the hundreds of thousands allegedly buried in massive pits. There are just scattered, random pits that were made in response to deaths in specific transits, or various executions. These were not "extermination camps" with homicidal gas chambers where 1.5m+ died and were buried. ...

They haven't been shown to exist. This while there was overwhelming means, motive and opportunity to find and investigate for decades. It doesn't seem they really bothered looking for them. But they still made their claims... Without having physical proof to back it up. And well. This shows that they were lying all the time. Once the lies took their rounds and became 'common knowledge', people that sincerely believed the narrative did then further spread the lies.

As I've said before, and I'll try to be more clear, this (in bold--mine) is speculation. Which is fine, but you seem to be assigning very high certainty to it. Even within a revisionist framing, perhaps the historians who validated the Holocaust narrative were merely extremely gullible or biased and accepted the witness and documentary evidence. I think most revisionists would agree with this, rather than the idea of a massive conspiracy many were party to.