BA's case for orthodoxy

[bombsaway]

How far? How does a train carriage behave differently when full or empty? I can see trains all day long full, half empty and empty and they don't look any different.

Cornides says there were windows so you could see inside. I suppose the distance would depend on how good your vision was, though when passing through a station clearly everyone there would be able to see.

Here's his description of what he saw

In each of the wagons were at least 60 Jews (when transporting soldiers or prisoners, 40 people are put there, but here the benches had been removed and you could see that the prisoners were standing, huddled together others). The doors were ajar, the windows were screened with barbed wire. Of the few men who were there, most were old; the other people were women, young girls and children. Many children crowded around the windows and in the half-open door. The youngest were probably no more than two years old.

The Cornides report predates the widespread news of killing at the Reinhard camps which only began to widely circulate towards the end of 42.

Interesting. When was the "Cornides report" (I thought they were diary entries?) published and by who?

1959. But the claim is it was written on the spot, so August/Sept 1942

[fireofice]

BA is now going off on a tangent completely different from his original point. He at first wanted to use it to prove a point about mass grave burial. I pointed out that using this account instead of the actual "eyewitness testimony" that exists that he wants to disregard is quite silly. Now he completely switched gears and is trying to use this as evidence of the holocaust??? As if we've never considered the fact that other people wrote false stuff down during the war. Wow, you got us, revisionism officially destroyed by this one diary!

[curioussoul]

1959. But the claim is it was written on the spot, so August/Sept 1942

Precisely. So what the "Cornides report" (or was it a diary?) boils down to is a book written by a third party more than 15 years after the fact, claiming (without evidence?) that a person by the name of Wilhelm Cornides wrote a diary in August/September of 1942 where he recounted hearsay about extermination in Belzec. As pointed out, the evidentiary value of such a report is almost zero. In fact, it mirrors similar propaganda themes as circulated for virtually every single German concentration camp in the GG and even in the Reich proper.

Are you staking your case on this "report"?

BA is now going off on a tangent completely different from his original point. He at first wanted to use it to prove a point about mass grave burial. I pointed out that using this account instead of the actual "eyewitness testimony" that exists that he wants to disregard is quite silly. Now he completely switched gears and is trying to use this as evidence of the holocaust??? As if we've never considered the fact that other people wrote false stuff down during the war. Wow, you got us, revisionism officially destroyed by this one diary!

Funny, isn't it?

[bombsaway]

1959. But the claim is it was written on the spot, so August/Sept 1942

Precisely. So what the "Cornides report" (or was it a diary?) boils down to is a book written by a third party more than 15 years after the fact, claiming (without evidence?) that a person by the name of Wilhelm Cornides wrote a diary in August/September of 1942 where he recounted hearsay about extermination in Belzec. As pointed out, the evidentiary value of such a report is almost zero. In fact, it mirrors similar propaganda themes as circulated for virtually every single German concentration camp in the GG and even in the Reich proper.

Are you staking your case on this "report"?

No -- this is from the introduction

https://phdn.org/histgen/cornides/cornidesobs.html

The documents reproduced below were provided by Wilhelm Cornides, editor of the journal Europa-Archiv . He is the author of these observations of "  a German non-commissioned officer  " as well as the three other testimonies. The opportunity was given to him at the end of August-beginning of September 1942 during a mission which enabled him to circulate "  on his own initiative  " within the General Government and to find out more about the rumors which circulating in Germany on the "  transfer  " of the Jews.

As far as the content is concerned—the reality of this “  transfer  ”, its extent, the modalities of its unfolding—these notes bring nothing new. It may be noted that the sightings on Belzec date from the same month as Kurt Gerstein's testimony about the mass gassings that took place there ( VfZ 1 1953, p. 177 et seq. ). Substantive comparisons can also be made. But whereas with Gerstein ( op. cit. , p. 181 ), it would be "  one of the most secret affairs  " ("  Who speaks of it is shot on the spot "), it is expressly demonstrated here that the facts were known in the General Government - as one could suspect - and that one could in any case have knowledge of them without too much trouble. However, it goes without saying that few people wanted or even wished to give an account in writing of what they had seen or heard. By what they reveal, and by the fact that they were written on the spot, these notes therefore have a certain documentary value.

Cornides' claim is that it was written "on the spot" so that would be August/September 42.

I've discussed it at length because posters were saying that the account if taken at face value (so Cornides was accurately describing his experiences around Belzec and it was written during that time) does not indicate a mass killing operation. This strikes me as absurd and indicative of the high level of bias I see on this forum.

[Hektor]

....A more detailed description of trains going to Belzec can be found here https://www.ns-archiv.de/verfolgung/pol ... edlung.php

The treatment of this report has illuminated for me the high level of biased thinking present on this forum. The simplest explanation from a revisionist perspective is that the report is a post war fabrication, likely by Cornides himself to get some money or fame. But people here tried to argue it supported the revisionist narrative or had zero evidentiary value on the basis of its content, and once they committed here, they were unwilling move off their position, despite all the absurdities I pointed out.

Did you notice that Jürgen Langowski did not post a scan of any document there?
Don't you wonder why?

BA is now going off on a tangent completely different from his original point. He at first wanted to use it to prove a point about mass grave burial. I pointed out that using this account instead of the actual "eyewitness testimony" that exists that he wants to disregard is quite silly. Now he completely switched gears and is trying to use this as evidence of the holocaust??? As if we've never considered the fact that other people wrote false stuff down during the war. Wow, you got us, revisionism officially destroyed by this one diary!

But the title of the posting is "BA's Case for orthodoxy"... .This presumes to have a case to begin with... Not trying to find a case during the debate.

[Butterfangers]

The grave descriptions I quoted here viewtopic.php?f=2&t=14859&start=375#p110005 are taken verbatim from Kola's study. As you can see, according to his descriptions, 31/33 graves contained cremains, and the other two graves bodies. Every grave had human remains of some kind. I couldn't find a good scan of the core sample illustrations so can't comment on that. Are you saying that Kola "drummed up" his descriptions, but not the core sample illustrations, which could have just as easily been fabricated?

I think what happened is either you or Mattogno are conflating "human remains" with cremains, while Kola was just talking about uncremated bodies.

On the same page, I explained why the descriptions indicated substantial amounts of cremains.

However many "cremains" you claim to find, bombsaway, there should be far more wood ash than human ash.

At Belzec, for the presumed number of 434,508 corpses, we should expect at minimum the following produced as a result (from Mattogno/Graf/Kues, TECOAR, p. 1313-1316):

22,537 m³ wood ash & non-combustible volume
3,215 m³ human ash & non-combustible volume

In other words, mass open-air cremation at Belzec results with the following:

85.7% of ash & non-combustible volume is wood-based
14.3% of ash & non-combustible volume is human-based

For every time we observe x amount of "human ashes" at Belzec, therefore, we need to find 6x (six times as much) wood ashes by volume corresponding to the same location.

The problem is, only 18 of 33 pits are noted in the Kola study as apparently containing "charcoal" or "wood ash". This suggests, by necessity, that much of what was deemed "crematory ash" ("cremains") is actually wood ash (or mixed heavily with it).

By weight, the ratio of ash to non-combustibles that results when burning either corpses or wood is approximately 1 to 1.67. I.e. you can calculate the total amount of anticipated fine ash times 167% to get an approximation of the total burn output/product (TECOAR, op cit).

Hence, about 60% (1/1.67) of what results from open-air cremations by mass is pure, fine ash. The rest is non-combustibles (bone fragments, wood charcoal).

...and 6/7ths of that fine ash (85.7%) by volume which results from open-air cremation is, in fact, wood ash.

Hence, for every pit which has a layer or mixture of human ash, there should be a layer or mixture six times as large by volume of wood ash.

And for every pit which has a layer or mixture of human non-combustibles (bone fragments), there should be a layer or mixture six times as large by volume of wood charcoal.

But as mentioned, wood ash and charcoal are only even mentioned for 18 of 33 pits in the Kola study, and never in particularly remarkable quantities by comparison to alleged human ash/remains.

So, what is going on here?

Again, it looks like wood ash is being conflated with human ash quite extensively. Perhaps anytime anything resembling human bone or fragments thereof has been observed in a layer/mixture of wood ash, it has been deemed "crematory ash".

Moreover, in all of this analysis above, we have not even factored in that not just wood and not just Jews were burned at Belzec; Jewish property and other items were burned there as well. So this also needs to be factored into the equation of human versus non-human ash, for which Kola's discernment is seriously drawn into question.

For the 434,508 Jews reportedly killed at Belzec, Mattogno notes that the amount of wood ash that would be produced in open-air cremation there would far exceed the total volume of Kola's pits (op cit). But even if we say just 100,000 Jews were killed there (which would invalidate many important "Holocaust" documents, such as the Hoefle telegram), we still need gigantic pits packed-full of wood ash. Where are they, bombsaway?

Of course, as Archie already notes, these 434,508 Jews were reportedly buried before they were ever turned into cremains. So, we need to find disturbed soil accounting for a grave sufficient to hold this many corpses as well. Where is it?

Are you accepting the Cornides diary as legitimate? It clearly evidences a mass killing operation through numerous second hand statements.

I do not accept this diary (which I've never heard of) as legitimate. You cited it, I showed that even if accepting your cited passage as valid, it's still pure nonsense. Burning corpses don't smell like sweet deliciousness. Burning corpses would seldom even be reported as a mere "burning smell". The smell is horrendous, putrid, absolutely foul, especially when considering the scale of cremation being alleged there. It would overpower any other smell of "sweet" that might be floating nearby.

I note that you said perhaps the lime smelled sweet. Please purchase some lime, bombsaway, from your nearest Home Depot, and take a big whiff, then let us know how sweet it smells.

But perhaps it smells sweeter when poured over a large pile of rotting corpses?

Absolutely nowhere does Browning say Eichmann made up gas chamber stories, that's a revisionist invention. Rather he thinks Eichmann was talking about an experimental gassing site near Majdanek (which would explain confusion about the name)

Browning says Eichmann's pretrial credibility is brought into question, here. That's the point. The claim that "he was probably referring to a different gas chamber!" is nonsense. The fact is: Eichmann said he was at Majdanek and saw Jews getting gassed, and this never actually happened. He lied. It's one of many lies he would be caught in, on-the-record, in many years to come.

[borjastick]

n each of the wagons were at least 60 Jews (when transporting soldiers or prisoners, 40 people are put there, but here the benches had been removed and you could see that the prisoners were standing, huddled together others). The doors were ajar, the windows were screened with barbed wire. Of the few men who were there, most were old; the other people were women, young girls and children. Many children crowded around the windows and in the half-open door. The youngest were probably no more than two years old.

How convenient that all the train carriages he claims he saw were normal passenger trains with their seats removed, for added doom laden atmosphere when we all know, and as claimed by the vast majority of jews, that the standard freight or cattle car was used and that the chances of you getting into a passenger compartment were 50-1 at the very least.

So here are some images of the real trains used to take jews to the camps, all camps.

[Wilbur]

Cornides' claim is that it was written "on the spot" so that would be August/September 42.

That would be Hans Rothfels' description in the paragraph dedicated entirely to his commentary. "On the spot" is how Gerstein described shootings to protect secrecy would happen - as Rothfels quotes just above - and if Rothfels wanted to opine same, he'd not be for lack of words to express it. Instead he merely says "contemporaneous."

Rothfels, founding director of the IfZ, published the text of a three-page document in the house journal VfZ in 1959. The document submitted to the IfZ archive in 1958-1959 and available there is just those three pages plus a photocopy of same. In other words, what is available in facsimile on the French site you linked: https://phdn.org/histgen/cornides/facsimcornides.html

Let's say you're Cornides and I'm a Geheime Feldpolizei worker bee. You're caught with your document. You, as Cornides, decide to tell the truth (or at least something really plausible). So far you pretty much only disclosed you "made the observations in the report and contributed the three witness accounts." Part of the document is titled as follows: "Aufzeichnungen eines deutschen Unteroffiziers vom 31.8.1942." I have some simple questions:
- If you typed it yourself as personal notes or a diary entry, why would you need to remind yourself that you're one German NCO?
- If you unwittingly told the story to someone else who typed it, why are you still in possession of a copy of the document?
- Judging by the document's content and form, isn't it apparent that whoever typed it intended for it to be distributed to other parties?
- How would you respond to the suspicion that you knowingly participated in the creation of intelligence product or propaganda material for the enemy?

[Hektor]

n each of the wagons were at least 60 Jews (when transporting soldiers or prisoners, 40 people are put there, but here the benches had been removed and you could see that the prisoners were standing, huddled together others). The doors were ajar, the windows were screened with barbed wire. Of the few men who were there, most were old; the other people were women, young girls and children. Many children crowded around the windows and in the half-open door. The youngest were probably no more than two years old.

How convenient that all the train carriages he claims he saw were normal passenger trains with their seats removed, for added doom laden atmosphere when we all know, and as claimed by the vast majority of jews, that the standard freight or cattle car was used and that the chances of you getting into a passenger compartment were 50-1 at the very least.

So here are some images of the real trains used to take jews to the camps, all camps.cattlecars1.jpgcattlecars2.jpgcattlecars1.jpgcattlecars3.jpg

While it doesn't look like a 5-star cruise to me. It looks fairly decent and not different from many other people travelling at the time. Including soldiers, workers, civilian. Train travel was available, but fairly expensive. And well. I don't see the Jews on the pictures being abused by SS-guards, neither. Perhaps consider the best explanation for this, that they were being resettled and some of them where kept in the camp for quarantine reasons.

[bombsaway]

For the 434,508 Jews reportedly killed at Belzec, Mattogno notes that the amount of wood ash that would be produced in open-air cremation there would far exceed the total volume of Kola's pits (op cit). But even if we say just 100,000 Jews were killed there (which would invalidate many important "Holocaust" documents, such as the Hoefle telegram), we still need gigantic pits packed-full of wood ash. Where are they, bombsaway?

One thing I have noticed about revisionist authors and those on this forum is they make a lot of assumptions about the orthodox story. I don't think it's intentional or dishonest, but in effect you're creating a strawman that is easier to attack. Better to attempt to criticize what you deem to be the strongest narrative of the other side (make a strongman).

The assumption here is that the only combustible used was wood. I have no idea why you or Mattogno believes that to be the case. We can argue about the amount of wood necessary to destroy bodies -- I remember a big debate between Matogno and I think Roberto from HC blog about this. I'm not an expert in forensic matters but the estimates here differed a lot. But it's also possible that 95% of the combustible used was gasoline, which would leave no ash or remnants to speak of. We simply don't know so you can't use this line of argumentation to disprove the claim.

Here's something I quoted a few pages earlier in the thread viewtopic.php?f=2&t=14859&start=390#p110040

"And, he explained the dangers of that kind of burial. Wirth had told him that into that huge grave lots of gasoline had been poured over the heap of corpses. "

Of course, as Archie already notes, these 434,508 Jews were reportedly buried before they were ever turned into cremains. So, we need to find disturbed soil accounting for a grave sufficient to hold this many corpses as well. Where is it?

You are making an assumption again which lets you attack the Holocaust story more easily. It is definitely not the position of most historians that no cremations were conducted while killing operations were underway at these places. Kola also says in his study that he didn't excavate the full area of the camp, so grave space in addition to 20,000 cubic meters found could exist.

--

Burning corpses would seldom even be reported as a mere "burning smell". The smell is horrendous, putrid, absolutely foul, especially when considering the scale of cremation being alleged there. It would overpower any other smell of "sweet" that might be floating nearby.

Regarding the smell of corpses, this comes up first in the search "what do burning corpses smell like"

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/200 ... 0a%20taste.

You’ll know it when you smell it. Burning muscle tissue gives off an aroma similar to beef in a frying pan, and body fat smells like a side of fatty pork on the grill. But you probably won’t mistake the scent of human remains for a cookout. That’s because a whole body includes all sorts of parts that we’d rarely use for a regular barbecue. For example, cattle are bled after slaughter, and the beef and pork we eat contain few blood vessels. When a whole human body burns, all the iron-rich blood still inside can give the smell a coppery, metallic component. Full bodies also include internal organs, which rarely burn completely because of their high fluid content; they smell like burnt liver. Firefighters say that cerebrospinal fluid burns up in a musky, sweet perfume.

It’s easier to recognize the smell than to describe it. Emergency workers and survivors of war atrocities say charred flesh simply smells like nothing else. The scent is nauseating and sweet, putrid and steaky, or something like leather being tanned over a flame. The smell can be so thick and rich that it’s almost a taste.

What do you think was being destroyed in the "field ovens Aktion Reinhard" that would create such a smell?

https://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot ... tml#_doc62

(this is actually for me documentary evidence incineration was occurring in August/September 1942)
--

Browning says Eichmann's pretrial credibility is brought into question, here. That's the point.

Browning never says Eichmann lying about seeing gas chambers or mass killings. That's your thesis isn't it? That Eichmann was a "serial liar", even about extermination, and even Browning had to admit it. This is another strawman.

---------------------------------------

That would be Hans Rothfels' description in the paragraph dedicated entirely to his commentary. "On the spot" is how Gerstein described shootings to protect secrecy would happen - as Rothfels quotes just above - and if Rothfels wanted to opine same, he'd not be for lack of words to express it. Instead he merely says "contemporaneous."

Rothfels says "By what they reveal, and by the fact that they were written on the spot, these notes therefore have a certain documentary value."

- If you typed it yourself as personal notes or a diary entry, why would you need to remind yourself that you're one German NCO?
- If you unwittingly told the story to someone else who typed it, why are you still in possession of a copy of the document?
- Judging by the document's content and form, isn't it apparent that whoever typed it intended for it to be distributed to other parties?
- How would you respond to the suspicion that you knowingly participated in the creation of intelligence product or propaganda material for the enemy?

We can only speculate about Cornides' motives, but I would say he didn't like what his country was doing, and created the report to be distributed "to other parties" in order to put an end to what he thought was a deeply criminal act. Probably you can't answer this, but how do you think you would react if you were a German back then and came to believe your country was engaged in an operation like this?

I'm interested in everyone's answers to this last question.

[curioussoul]

One thing I have noticed about revisionist authors and those on this forum is they make a lot of assumptions about the orthodox story. I don't think it's intentional or dishonest, but in effect you're creating a strawman that is easier to attack. Better to attempt to criticize what you deem to be the strongest narrative of the other side (make a strongman).

The assumption here is that the only combustible used was wood. I have no idea why you or Mattogno believes that to be the case.

Didn't Mattogno graciously include outrageous witness testimony to the effect that kerosene or some flammable liquid was used in conjunction with wood for the open-air incinerations? Where are you getting the idea that Mattogno has made the "assumption" that only wood was used? Although wood is the only plausible fuel source for these cremations, we have to base our calculations on witness testimony, and to my knowledge, kerosene (or similar) was claimed for at least one of the Reinhard camps, and Mattogno included this in his calculations. Other than that, would other potential fuels are you implying could have been used?

What do you think was being destroyed in the "field ovens Aktion Reinhard" that would create such a smell?

Those field ovens were used to incinerate trash and junk confiscated from Jewish deportees. Similar incineration devices were used in Auschwitz, and Topf even built waste incinerators for the crematoria.

[Archie]

One thing I have noticed about revisionist authors and those on this forum is they make a lot of assumptions about the orthodox story. I don't think it's intentional or dishonest, but in effect you're creating a strawman that is easier to attack. Better to attempt to criticize what you deem to be the strongest narrative of the other side (make a strongman).

The assumption here is that the only combustible used was wood. I have no idea why you or Mattogno believes that to be the case. We can argue about the amount of wood necessary to destroy bodies -- I remember a big debate between Matogno and I think Roberto from HC blog about this. I'm not an expert in forensic matters but the estimates here differed a lot. But it's also possible that 95% of the combustible used was gasoline, which would leave no ash or remnants to speak of. We simply don't know so you can't use this line of argumentation to disprove the claim.

Not our fault. The official story is itself a strawman. They are generally unwilling to discuss the historical and scientific difficulties raised by revisionists, with most regarding merely raising such questions to be sacrilegious (for lack of a better word). "Officially" there is simply no response or position on numerous critical points, yet they continue to claim 100% certainty on the headline claims.

If you go back and read the first edition of Hilberg or look at Nuremberg testimonies or read the reports of the Extraordinary State Commission and so forth, what you will find is that the whole thing is based on very questionable and frankly downright idiotic material. What has happened is that as this stuff has been debunked they've simply tweaked the details as needed and violently doubled down on points they can't afford to concede without causing the whole thing to collapse. (Although if you're paying attention, they long ago conceded way too much). If anything, revisionists have been overly generous in their willingness to indulge hoaxsters in their latest contorted and novel reinterpretations.

[Butterfangers]

For the 434,508 Jews reportedly killed at Belzec, Mattogno notes that the amount of wood ash that would be produced in open-air cremation there would far exceed the total volume of Kola's pits (op cit). But even if we say just 100,000 Jews were killed there (which would invalidate many important "Holocaust" documents, such as the Hoefle telegram), we still need gigantic pits packed-full of wood ash. Where are they, bombsaway?

One thing I have noticed about revisionist authors and those on this forum is they make a lot of assumptions about the orthodox story. I don't think it's intentional or dishonest, but in effect you're creating a strawman that is easier to attack. Better to attempt to criticize what you deem to be the strongest narrative of the other side (make a strongman).

The assumption here is that the only combustible used was wood. I have no idea why you or Mattogno believes that to be the case. We can argue about the amount of wood necessary to destroy bodies -- I remember a big debate between Matogno and I think Roberto from HC blog about this. I'm not an expert in forensic matters but the estimates here differed a lot. But it's also possible that 95% of the combustible used was gasoline, which would leave no ash or remnants to speak of. We simply don't know so you can't use this line of argumentation to disprove the claim.

Here's something I quoted a few pages earlier in the thread viewtopic.php?f=2&t=14859&start=390#p110040

"And, he explained the dangers of that kind of burial. Wirth had told him that into that huge grave lots of gasoline had been poured over the heap of corpses. "

There are no records of any mass shipments of gasoline or other fuel to Belzec, bombsaway. That's a stupid suggestion, and your reference for it, a "strange visitor", is someone who has insisted repeatedly that gassing with a diesel engine at Belzec took "just 15 minutes" and not a moment more, which no one takes seriously, anywhere (he's short by a factor of at least 5x or more). This same individual approached Rassinier specifically because he heard Rassinier was going to formally conclude upon a denial of 'gas chambers' and he just had to intervene. There are many motives one might suspect for such an act. But the bottom-line is that your "strange visitor" is not credible and he is not even confirmed to be whoever he seems to have said he is. It's a moot point, and seems to be your only reference at all to suggest that Jews and SS at Belzec had firehoses from which they were blasting tons of gasoline into a giant pit, over and over again.

bombsaway, it is very ironic that you claim it is Revisionists who are creating 'strawmen' to battle against, given you have literally just invented the idea that a majority of fuel used at Belzec was gasoline, despite no corroborating evidence whatsoever to support your claim (and I mean nothing). You circumvented the whole problem of a total lack of fuel at Belzec for the alleged cremations, just like that.

How long will you continue to make an ass of yourself here on your very own thread before finally admitting your "case for orthodoxy" has long-since failed?

Regarding the smell of corpses, this comes up first in the search "what do burning corpses smell like"

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/200 ... 0a%20taste.

Fair enough, I'll have to partially concede that, although it's surprising considering I have smelled burning corpses on numerous occasions (there is a crematory not too far away) and "sweet" is never an adjective that comes to mind. There are instances where it is described as sweet in the article you mention and in a couple of the others I have come across since revisiting this point however all of these reports indicated it as a "sickening" or "nauseating" type of sweetness, such that the revulsion of it is more prominent than any pleasantness typically associated with things that are sweet. Hence, it remains bizarre that any witness would only use the terms "sweet" and "sweetish" to describe the odor, or as a "burning smell", when coming across what you suggest could have been thousands of burning corpses. This is perhaps a moot point in terms of the question of a "Holocaust", in any case, since no one here denies cremations occurred (we all agree some cremains were found at Belzec). It's the scale that is of importance, and even just one corpse being burned would be enough for a passerby to potentially notice.

https://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot ... tml#_doc62

(this is actually for me documentary evidence incineration was occurring in August/September 1942)

bombsaway, the document you have cited is a travel permit to inspect "field ovens" with no indication that these were even crematory ovens (as opposed to culinary or other heating elements), nor that they were even at Belzec.

Remember that this whole question of whether mass burning at Belzec occurred in summer of 1942 began with your earlier statement, here:

I was limiting discussion as much as I could to Kola's study, but yes, there has been debate about whether the graves could fit 450k to 600k bodies. I believe this was argued exhaustively to be possible by HC blog. They should have saved their breath though, because bodies were being burned in the summer of 42.

https://www.ns-archiv.de/verfolgung/pol ... edlung.php

So this: "The story is that they buried 600,000 whole bodies there at the camp and dug them up and burned them later on. " is not actually the story.

Here above, you suggest that there is no need to worry about a lack of disturbed earth at Belzec accounting for 450k+ corpses buried there, since we have evidence cremations at this scale were already occurring.

Do we really, bombsaway?

Browning never says Eichmann lying about seeing gas chambers or mass killings. That's your thesis isn't it?

No, bombsaway. My 'thesis' is that Eichmann did not see any gassing at Majdanek, despite saying that he did. My 'thesis' also includes the fact that Browning agrees this draws Eichmann's pretrial credibility into question.

If you misrepresent what I am saying here again, bombsaway, you're just going to look even more like a liar.

[Hektor]

....
Those field ovens were used to incinerate trash and junk confiscated from Jewish deportees. Similar incineration devices were used in Auschwitz, and Topf even built waste incinerators for the crematoria.

That would have to be documented, though.

That facilities housing 10.000s of people do need infrastructure and equipment to manage things, should not be surprising.

One thing I have noticed about revisionist authors and those on this forum is they make a lot of assumptions about the orthodox story. I don't think it's intentional or dishonest, but in effect you're creating a strawman that is easier to attack. Better to attempt to criticize what you deem to be the strongest narrative of the other side (make a strongman).

The 'orthodox story' is a straw man in any of its varieties... Now presenting a idealized version of it is necessary to make it debatable. This is not what a straw-man fallacy is, which is an image skewed to make it 'attackable'. To the contrary the sliding and shifting within the exterminationist narrative is a way to avoid scrutiny and critique... It's always the "we didn't say that" type of scenario, which is useful to clog the flow of debate. And that is indeed a deception technique to avoid being refuted clearly.

[bombsaway]

If you go back and read the first edition of Hilberg or look at Nuremberg testimonies or read the reports of the Extraordinary State Commission and so forth, what you will find is that the whole thing is based on very questionable and frankly downright idiotic material. .

Can you point out the most questionable/idiotic thing in Hilberg's first edition? Unlike Nuremberg or USSR summations of evidence, Hilberg drew on witness testimony and documentary evidence. His work is solid and I would expect errors to be minor and of the nitpicky variety, like diesel being used instead of gasoline at the Reinhard camps.

I should also say that it is expected that in history narratives will be revised and updated as historical evidence is processed (this takes time). Eg with the first few months of Operation Barbarossa, most analysis up until the 80s or 90s had it as a stunning German victory, the war going was going swimmingly. More recent studies, like David Stahel's https://www.amazon.com/Operation-Barbar ... 052117015X , find archival evidence of massive losses to the Panzer corps and great distress about the campaign from top ranking Generals as early as July/August 1941. Stahel's position is that the war was effectively lost by Sept 41 and even the enormous victory at Kiev couldn't turn things around.