bombsaway wrote:Archie wrote:You are saying that the "better" testimonies say gasoline. Have you personally reviewed all of the potentially relevant testimony and confirmed that HC's testimony selection is honest?
No, I'm not a capital R researcher on the level of HC blog people or Mattogno for that matter. I can only go by the arguments evidence others have presented
It would be pretty easy for revisionists to show
this wasn't true. Do what HC blog did, find the witness testimonies. Revisionists have prided themselves on doing deep dives into the literature. The diesel hypothesis was "refuted" more than a decade ago, which is a lot of time for a response, but none has come, despite capital R revisionist researchers continuously publishing on codoh and sites like inconvenient history. I'd like to think that I'm open minded enough to base my views on evidence presented, regardless of which side is presenting it, but revisionists have presented nothing to back their argument here.
Please be specific when you say "this." Mattogno's response is on page 815 of the MGK response book. You should probably read that before making a pronouncement on whether it is satisfactory.
Berg originally raised the diesel issue in the early 80s, decades before HC pivoted to gasoline engines. Berg was responding to the mainstream story. It is not Berg's job to tell the holocaust historians what THEIR story is. Berg's arguments on the technical points were so thorough and conclusive that HC was forced to simply CONCEDE that he was correct and that diesel gassings are an absurdity. This is a win for revisionists.
The HC article is pretty much self-refuting if you strip away their spin and slippery rhetoric. For simplicity, let's focus on Belzec for now. Here are the witnesses they mention.
Diesel
1) Gerstein: Technical background, closely monitored a gassing, describes the engine breaking down for a long time, mentions diesel repeatedly. Says Globocnik described a diesel engine for gassing."
2) Pfannensteil: "The engine itself was not in a separate room but stood in the open, raised on a platform. It was a diesel engine."
3) Schluch: "For the gassings an engine was started up. I cannot give a more detailed description of the engine because I never saw it. I am certainly not a specialist, but I would say that based on the sound, it was a medium-sized diesel engine."
4) Oberhauser: “at first the Jews were killed with a gas, but after the camp was enlarged, they were killed by diesel exhaust”.
"Uncertain" (although one of these actually leans toward diesel)
5) Gley: "After the doors of the gas chambers had been closed, a large engine-I don’t know whether it was a diesel or an Otto (gasoline) engine-was started up by a mechanic from the Hiwi section. The exhaust fumes of this engine were fed into the chambers and caused the death of the Jews."
6) Semigodov: "The people doomed to death were driven into these gas chambers or “dushegubki”, as they were also known, where they were killed with exhaust gas from a diesel motor (found in the same building) or some other motor."
Gasoline (only two)
7) Reder: "I myself saw that in that small room there was an engine with petrol fuel that looked very complicated. I remember that the engine had a flywheel, but I could not make out any other specific construction or technical features. This engine was always operated by two technicians, Russians from the armed camp staff. I know only that the engine used 4 cans of petrol each day, because that is how much petrol was brought to the camp every day. It was when the petrol was delivered to the engine room that I briefly had the opportunity to look inside the room."
9) Czerniak: “The 200 H.V. motor was powered by gasoline, as were the three other mentioned cars."
Their conclusion:
From the testimonies of Shalayev (Treblinka), Hödl (Sobibor), Fuchs (Sobibor), Bauer (Sobibor), Reder (Belzec) and Czerniak (Belzec) it is clear that the engines in the Reinhard camps were petrol.
What?! At best, you might say something like, "well, maybe it could have been gasoline." But to say the testimonies heavily favor gasoline is ridiculous.
BA, I would like to ask you a pointed question here and I would like a direct response. Please do not dodge this. For Belzec, do you think it reasonable for them to conclude on the basis of 2/8 testimonies that the engine was "clearly" gasoline? If you were to give a percentage of certainty, would you say 100%? 95%? 90%? 51%?
To me, this is classic motivated reasoning. For Sobibor, I think you could fairly argue that the testimonies lean toward gasoline,
but this is just not true for Belzec and Treblinka. They are introducing arbitrary criteria to favor the gasoline testimonies. They introduce technical knowledge as a consideration (okay) but they apply this selectively, not consistently. Gerstein had superior technical knowledge to Reder, yet they favor Reder. But otherwise, they assume you need advanced technical knowledge to distinguish diesel and gasoline engine which is not actually true. They assume that Gerstein did not see the engine with this eyes because he doesn't explicitly say this, but that is an assumption on their part. His testimony suggests intimate familiarity with the gassing procedure. He very well could have seen it and he certainly would have heard it (diesels are noticeably loud). They disregard Oberhauser and Globocnik (via Gerstein) because they were too high-level to know, but they don't have a good explanation for this "diesel" rumor they are imagining. Higher ups should have some idea of what fuels are being delivered to the camp and how they are used. Why should we expect all these people to have been given false information about the type of engine?
HC on Gerstein: "Well, it's possible he didn't actually see the engine, so let's assume he did not see it and that he was told false information." They can't attack him technically, so they say he wasn't direct enough of a witness.
HC on Pfannensteil: "Well, he saw it, but he wasn't a mechanic, so must have got it wrong." They can't say he didn't see it, so they attack him technically.
