Wannsee Conference minutes debunked

[Werd]

And those rigid scientific facts from PhD chemist Germar Rudolf PROVE that the language that exterminationists claim in Wannsee is talking about a homicidal final solution does not say what they say it does. We already know this. We have shut that door. I'm just looking to see if we can shut another one. I.E. Ney's linguistic criticisms.

I'm actually kind of glad that the Peter Ney book was never fully translated into English for the holocausthandbooks series even though it was planned at one time. There are apparently a few issues that Mentel at least took the time to update the world on and clue me in on. But there are also some poor arguments of his that I already destroyed. At least Roberto Muehleknkamp attempted to show how some of Ney's objections based on language were probably unnecessary or unwarranted. I would love it if Roberto Muehlenkamp, Germar Rudolf and any German speaker on this board (Reviso is apparently one) would have a debate of some kind and discuss these linguistic issues. However, Rudolf has more important things to do such as the holocaust handbook series. I say us Rudolf fans should take this Wannsee matter into our own hands now. Especially considering that people are still pushing Christian Mentel's work in 2016 as if it's completely flawless. Which it isn't.

[Hektor]

In "Zwischen „Jahrhundertfälschung“ und nationalsozialistischer Vision eines „Jewish revival“ –
Das Protokoll der Wannsee-Konferenz in der revisionistischen Publizistik"
(http://www.ghwk.de/fileadmin/user_uploa ... nismus.pdf),

Christian Mintel says :

"Auch könne laut Bohlinger und Ney im Deutschen das Wort „schwer“ nicht im Sinne von „schwierig“ gebraucht werden. Eine solche Verwendung deute auf eine Übersetzung von „difficult“ hin, das im Amerikanischen in beiden Bedeutungen verwendet werden könne.60 Dass Bohlinger und Ney nur drei Seiten darauf „schwer“ selbst in jenem angeblich falschen Sinne benutzen, spricht dann für sich."

My translation (sorry for my bad English) :
"Nor could, according to Bohlinger and Ney, the word "schwer" be used in German with the meaning "difficult". Such a use should hint to a translation of "difficult", that could be used in both meanings in American. The fact that Bohlinger and Ney only three pages further themselves use "schwer" in this allegedly false meaning speaks volumes."

Well, I have the two following German-French dictionaries : H. A. Birmann, Vollständiges deutsch-französisches Wörterbuch (19th century) and Langenscheidts Grosswörterbuch 1979 (German-French). Both give "difficile" ("difficult") as a meaning of "schwer". Thus, I think that this argument of Ney is bad.

As you know, Kempner lived in Germany from his birth (1899) to 1935. He was a lawyer. He was also an archive thief. Thus, we can expect that the Wannsee Protocol is written in the German of a German lawyer.
R.

The argument around "schwer" / "schwierig" is weak, when taken on its own. The issue is however the frequency of orthographic mistakes in that document, which is taken as an indication that the writer wasn't a native German speaker or someone that lived for a long time among a population that doesn't speak German.

What is telling is that this Mentel character, picks that kind of weak argument from a series that contains far stronger arguments against the authenticity of the "Wannsee protocol". Take for instance the fact that Heydrich isn't even listed as one of the participants. You can be damn sure that no German bureaucrat or secretary of that time would have made that kind of shameful mistake.

[Reviso]

By the way, I don't know if it was noted on this forum that the version Kempner gave of the "discovery" of the Wannsee Protocol is different from the version given by members of his team. The details are here :
Sven Felix Kellerhoff, " "Durchführung der Endlösung" – der Protokollfund ", Die Welt, 11 January 2012,
https://www.welt.de/kultur/history/arti ... lfund.html
I don't know if the members of the team carefully read the Protocol before they gave it to Kempner.
R.

Would you also mind looking at what Roberto says about Ney's language arguments and giving your opinion?

I'm not specially competent in these matters. It is very possible that I was wrong when I conjectured that Kempner was the author of the Protocol. I will try to have a look at Ney and Muehlenkamp, but don't expect too much.
R.

[Reviso]

Werd, I looked at the arguments of R. Muehlenkamp that you quoted. (Was it what you wished ?)
Here are my remarks :

Ney wrote that the phrase; "der allfällig endlich verbliebene Restbestand [...]" ("the possible final remnant") may perhaps appear in a prose text, but certainly not in the minutes of a conference.

R.M. answers : "Why, because Mr. Ney says so, or for some reason worth considering? "Allfällig", as Leo tells us, is an expression meaning "possible" used in Austria and Switzerland. Eichmann spent much of life in Austria, so it’s rather probable that he picked up the local vocabulary."

Werd : "See Roberto, that's getting closer. But again. Only probable."

Me : Google finds 100 or so examples of "the allfällige Rest", but it seems that these examples mainly or uniquely come from Austrian or Swiss texts. As Werd says it, the answer of R.M. is probable but only probable. It could be interesting to know if Eichmann's German had Austrian features. (And if Kempner used "allfällig", which is improbable...)
---------------------

Ney wrote: "The text is interspersed with empty phrases such as; "Im Hinblick auf die Parallelisierung der Linienführung" ("in order to bring general activities into line") "

R.M. answers : "Bureaucrats like to use empty phrases to sound erudite, big deal."

Me : the phrase doesn't seem really empty to me. Bad bureaucratic style, perhaps.
-----------------------

Ney wrote: "and nonsensical claims such as; "Die evakuierten Juden werden Zug um Zug in [...] Durchgangsghettos gebracht [...]" ("The evacuated Jews will first be sent, group by group, into [...] transit-ghettos [...]"). Since the evacuation of the Jews was not then ongoing, but rather was planned for the future, this would have to have read: "Die zu evakuierenden Juden [...]" ("The Jews to be evacuated [...]").

R.M. answers : "Unless, of course, the author meant to say "the Jews [that will have been] evacuated", the term "evacuated" referring to the process of rounding up and departure alone and not including the arrival. Mr. Ney is feebly grabbing for straws here."

Me : R.M.'s answer seems convincing to me.
-------------------------

Ney wrote: Further: "Bezüglich der Behandlung der Endlösung" ("Regarding the handling of the final solution")
How does one handle a solution? (Walendy(8))

R.M. answers : Like one handles a problem or the execution of a program or task, the term "Endlösung" being obviously used here as referring to a problem, program or task (the problem, program or task of implementing/bringing about the "final solution"). Mr. Walendy seems to be so senile that he should be taken off the circuit before he further makes a fool of himself (assuming he hasn't beaten the boots yet).

Me : R.M.'s answer seems convincing to me.
------------------------

Ney wrote:
Wurden die jüdischen Finanzinstitutionen des Auslands [...] verhalten [...]" Does the author mean "angehalten"?*

R.M. answers : "Could be another Austrian particularity or a misreading of stenographic notes, but certainly not an indication of a foreign forger, unless the wisecracker can explain what foreign-language expression the "verhalten" is supposed to come from."

Me : The whole sentence is "Um den deutschen Devisenschatz zu schonen, wurden die jüdischen Finanzinstitutionen des Auslands verhalten, für die Beitreibung entsprechender Devisenaufkommen Sorge zu tragen."
I understand : "(...) the Jewish financial institutions were ordered to make sure that..."
Google finds an analogous use of "verhalten" in a book from the 19th century :
"Die Kaufleute und Schiffscaspitäne wurden verhalten, innerhalb 24 Stunden, das Verzeichniß ihrer Waaren vorzulegen." ("The merchants and the captain were ordered to present a list of their wares within 24 hours.") (Der Freihafen von Triest, Oesterreichs Hauptstapelplatz für den überseeischen Welthandel, 1838, p. 59.)
Google finds "wurden verhalten" 3 280 times, I don't have the heart to search for other examples...
My impression : this use of "verhalten" is an archaism. Perhaps the German bureaucrats used archaisms, perhaps the Kempner boy who wrote the Protocol had an old dictionary.
----------------------------

Ney wrote: "Italien einschließlich Sardinien" ("Italy incl. Sardinia") Why the need to specify? In Europe people knew very well what all was part of Italy.

R.M. answers : Simple answer to a stupid question: why not, especially considering that Sardinia has a tradition of claiming autonomy from Italy? (Google "Sardinia autonomy").

Me : It's not a linguistic question, everyone can form his opinion.
--------------------------------

Ney wrote: "Die berufsständische Aufgliederung der [...] Juden: [...] städtische Arbeiter 14,8%" ("The breakdown of Jews [...] according to trades [...]: [...] communal workers 14.8%" [i.e. "municipal" workers; -trans.] Were all of these people common laborers? (Ney(10)) "Salaried employees" is probably what the author meant here. "[...] als Staatsarbeiter angestellt" (the Nuremberg Translation renders this as "employed by the state", which glosses over the difference between "Arbeiter", i.e. blue-collar workers, and "angestellt", i.e. the condition of employment enjoyed by salaried and public employees; -trans.): so what were they, laborers or government employees? Did the author mean civil servants? (Ney, ibid.)

R.M. answers : He probably meant civil servants and state employees without civil servant status. Rather than ask pointless questions, Ney should tell his readers why he expects the foreign forger of his fantasies to have used a Teutonic bureaucratic expression such as "berufsständisch".

Me : I must confess that I don't understand Ney's point, so I have no opinion.
-----------------------

Ney wrote: "In den privaten Berufen - Heilkunde, Presse, Theater, usw." ("in private occupations such as medical profession, newspapers, theater, etc."). In German these are called "freie Berufe", not "private Berufe". Such persons are known as doctors, journalists, and artists.

R.M. answers : I wouldn’t put it beyond an Austrian to use the term "private" instead of "freie" here. But considering Leo’s translation choices for "freie Berufe", it is rather unlikely that an Anglo-Saxon forger would use this term. He might say "unabhängige Berufe" (independent professions), "liberale Berufe" (liberal professions) or just "Berufe" (professions).

Me : Google finds "privaten Berufen" 729 times... and I presume the meaning is always the same as in the Protocol...
---------------------------

Ney wrote: "usw." is never preceded by a comma in German, whereas the English "etc." almost always is.

R.M. answers : "Was du da nicht sagst, alter Eumel. How come my spelling and grammatical checker (whether I use German or Austrian German) doesn’t point out a grammatical error there?
And how about this (emphasis added)?
"Dabei handelte es sich allerdings um den üblichen Lärm Jugendlicher, wie Streifzüge mit dem Moped, Lärm in den Haushöfen, usw. One minute of googling was all it took."

Me : it is true that a comma before "usw." is a mistake in German (see the German Wiktionary). In French also, we are said that a comma before "etc." is a mistake, but this "mistake" is very frequent. Same thing in German, perhaps ?
----------------------

Ney wrote: "Die sich im Altreich befindlichen [...]" Well, German is a difficult language. (Ney, ibid.)

R. M. answers : My spelling and grammar check shows no errors in either German or Austrian German. I guess what Ney is trying to tell us is that the "sich" before "befindlichen" is redundant and no true German (or Austrian?) would indulge in such redundancy. So let’s see what Google gets us for "sich befindlichen". First page:
Getreue Abbildungen der zu Paris und Versailles sich befindlichen vornehmsten Prospecte, Statuen und kostbaren Wasserkünste nebst einer kurzen Beschreibung.
... dem Ephrates sich befindlichen Völker
'Ein Prospect des Rathauses in Batavia wie dasselbe von fornen anzusehen, sambt dessen Platzund liegenden Gebäuden, ohne die sich befindlichen Bäume'
Maybe Eichmann was fond of antiquated expressions or used this one to make his writing look more erudite, assuming the expression didn’t survive in Austrian usage longer than it did in Germany.
And maybe (though that’s far less likely) Mr. Ney can tell us from what English expression the Anglo-Saxon forger of his fantasies is supposed to have derived the "sich befindlichen".

Me : it seems that Google finds this expression above all in books from before the 20th century, but in this recent text :
https://www.emyto.sk/de/specified-road-sections/network
we read "In das Netz der begrenzten Straßenabschnitte mit den Nulltarif der Maut sind auch die begrenzten, in den Stadtgebieten der ausgewählten Städte und Gemeinden sich befindlichen Straßenabschnitte eingeordnet."

If you still wish that I look at Mintel's arguments, please say it and I will do my best, but I fear that Ney's linguistic arguments are not very good...
R.

[Werd]

Mentel had no arguments. He only had claims. He never produced one example on his English article. This is all he said.

Moreover, revisionists pick out single elements and comment on them in a more than a crude fashion. Among these comments, one can find: "No German man expresses himself like that, much less a high-ranking officer"; "Here we observe the 'New German' butchered by the American English; 49 years forestalled". Or, when commenting on the Protocol's list of Jews to be deported from Italy ("Italy, including Sardinia: 58,000"), one revisionist wrote: "In Europe, it was known what belonged to Italy. The list originated from Northern America, which is uneducated in regard of geography". Furthermore, a figure of speech that is uncommon in German as it is spoken in Germany, is claimed to be a bad translation from American English - disregarding the fact, that this particular figure is a common, and even formal, expression in Austria's variation of German. The absurdity of the revisionist claim is revealed when noting the fact that the author of the Protocol - Adolf Eichmann - lived in Austria during his childhood and worked there for many years thereafter. Thus, from a linguistic point of view, phrasings and expressions here and there typical of Austrian German are evidence for Eichmann's authorship of the Protocol, not against it.

http://www.phdn.org/archives/holocaust-history.org/wannseeprotocol/index.html

Mentel gave no examples in English. I was disappointed.

If you still wish that I look at Mintel's arguments, please say it and I will do my best, but I fear that Ney's linguistic arguments are not very good...
R.

Yes please. If you can find anything in German, I would like it. However, Inthis post, I put this 2010 German article through two internet translators sentence by sentence at the same time to find the best possible English version. I again found no arguments about Austrian German. Mentel only made the point that "heavy" was used by Ney in the same way he tried to claim the Wannsee author should not have used it. And you Reviso agreed here that argument from Ney was bad. So Roberto made a better effort. Maybe there is another article from Mentel on http://www.ghwk.de that would have something. I do not know.

I do however wonder how one handles a solution. You don't have to handle a solution. You handle a problem by finding or creating a solution. Roberto's argument that you handle a solution like you handle a problem to me sounds stupid. Roberto says: " the term "Endlösung" being obviously used here as referring to a problem." This means in English FINAL SOLUTION. Solutions handle problems. The problem goes away. You don't handle a solution. That indeed seems silly. You implement a solution or activate it. I have to disagree with Roberto and you on this one, Reviso. Just this one. And all the examples of German that google DID find, I have to wonder how old those examples are. If they at least date from perhaps no more than ten years after Wannsee, and the rest are prior to Wannsee, I could see Roberto as having made some great advancements in understanding the text and pointing out how Ney may have overdoing it with his own conspiracy theory.

[Reviso]

Google finds four times "handles the solution" in the same construction as in the Protocol...
IP

[Pia Kahn]

Let me chime in here, because German is my native language:

"der allfällig endlich verbliebene Restbestand [...]" ("the possible final remnant")

This translation into English is not correct. "allfällig" is a weird term that hardly anybody uses, so be it. It is used as an adverb and means "possibly".

The term "endlich" is also strange in this context. It can mean "at last", "finite" or "finally". "endlich" is used as and adverb.

The term "verbliebene" was not translated. "Verbleiben" means "to remain" and "verblieben" is the past participle, which is "remained" in English. The "remained remainder" sounds wrong to me. The word "verbleibend" actually means "remaining". "Rest" means rest or remnant and "Restbestand" means "remaining number of..." or "remainder".

So the grammatically correct translation of this expression into English is:

"The possibly finally remained remainder"

This sounds just as awkward in English as it does in German. This is extremely clumsy. On the one hand the author is using outdated terms like "allfällig" in order to appear smart but then he gets the grammar all wrong - remained in stead of remaining!

Now you can make up your own mind.

[Reviso]

Let me chime in here, because German is my native language:

"der allfällig endlich verbliebene Restbestand [...]" ("the possible final remnant")

This translation into English is not correct. "allfällig" is a weird term that hardly anybody uses, so be it. It is used as an adverb and means "possibly".

The term "endlich" is also strange in this context. It can mean "at last", "finite" or "finally". "endlich" is used as and adverb.

The term "verbliebene" was not translated. "Verbleiben" means "to remain" and "verblieben" is the past participle, which is "remained" in English. The "remained remainder" sounds wrong to me. The word "verbleibend" actually means "remaining". "Rest" means rest or remnant and "Restbestand" means "remaining number of..." or "remainder".

So the grammatically correct translation of this expression into English is:

"The possibly finally remained remainder"

This sounds just as awkward in English as it does in German. This is extremely clumsy. On the one hand the author is using outdated terms like "allfällig" in order to appear smart but then he gets the grammar all wrong - remained in stead of remaining!

Now you can make up your own mind.

Google finds " verbliebene Restbestand" 384 times...
R.

[Pia Kahn]

Google finds all kinds of crap.

[Pia Kahn]

By the way. In the translation of Laurence Rees book on Auschwitz into German, we read:

"Der allfällig endlich verbleibende Restbestand"

https://books.google.de/books?id=NgobAw ... nd&f=false

So the translator actually agrees with me.

[Reviso]

Google finds : "Obwohl die Themen der Programme sich irgendwie mit dem Holocaust beschäftigen, haben keine Programme direkt die Endlösung behandelt." (... no program did directly handle the final solution" )
IP

[Reviso]

Google finds all kinds of crap.

It seems that Google finds "verbliebene Restbestand" in many academic books.
R.

[Pia Kahn]

Now let me turn to the expression "freie Berufe".

"Freie Berufe" is a special legal term in German like "civil servant" in English. The term "civil servant" in general does not mean a "polite (civil) slave (servant)" The term civil servant means a person employed in the civil service; a government employee.

The term "Freie Berufe" in general does not mean and "free (frei) profession (Beruf)". Instead it stands for a number of professions, which are performed by freelancers typically in the fields of science, the arts and education. But also lawyers and medical doctors perform a "freie Beruf", if they are freelancers. People who perform a "freie Beruf" are exempt from paying certain taxes, which other businesses have to pay.

These are the professions that the document is talking about. Thus, the term "private Berufe", private professions - whatever that means - is not a synonym in German for the term "freie Berufe".

So it's a mistake. The wrong term is used.

[Pia Kahn]

"It seems that Google finds "verbliebene Restbestand" in many academic books."

The term is correct if they are talking about events of the past. "Es verblieb ein Restbestand an Bechern. Der verbliebene Restbestand wurde daraufhin entsorgt."

That's correct German. But this document is talking about a future event. In this context, the term is grammatically wrong.

[Reviso]

"It seems that Google finds "verbliebene Restbestand" in many academic books."

The term is correct if they are talking about events of the past. "Es verblieb ein Restbestand an Bechern. Der verbliebene Restbestand wurde daraufhin entsorgt."

That's correct German. But this document is talking about a future event. In this context, the term is grammatically wrong.

Google finds "schließlich wird an das nächste Rechnungsjahr der aus den vorstehenden, summarisch angeführten Posten verbliebene Restbestand von 70 Gewichtseinheiten übergeben.", apparently in a serious book.
R.