# A letter from Auschwitz **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 9, 2015, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-letter-from-auschwitz/712221 "2015-02-09T14:52:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2015, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-letter-from-auschwitz/712221/61 "2015-02-24T23:38:34Z")
I don’t understand how anti-Semitism is a motivation for denying the Holocaust. You’d think that someone who hates Jews would think it was good the Holocaust happened, there was nothing wrong with it (other than it’s not lasting long enough), and that the Nazis are admirable specifically for deliberately killing a bunch of Jews (as opposed to accidentally killing them with typhus). ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2015, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-letter-from-auschwitz/712221/62 "2015-02-25T00:38:29Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > I don’t understand how anti-Semitism is a motivation for denying the Holocaust. You’d think that someone who hates Jews would think it was good the Holocaust happened, there was nothing wrong with it (other than it’s not lasting long enough), and that the Nazis are admirable specifically for deliberately killing a bunch of Jews (as opposed to accidentally killing them with typhus). I think it goes the other way – they believe that Jews are evil liars, so they must have duped the rest of the world into believing in the Holocaust to serve their nefarious Jewish ends. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2015, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-letter-from-auschwitz/712221/63 "2015-02-25T01:44:19Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Saying that gas chambers were used for killing lice on inmates is like saying that lethal injection is done to kill bacteria inside a condemned person’s veins. Clearly, there was no way to flush midichlorians out of a dark Jedi’s veins. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2015, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-letter-from-auschwitz/712221/64 "2015-02-25T04:08:03Z")
> [@Nelson\_Pike](#): > > Why would the Nazis _not_ want a letter to go out saying everything was wonderful? Why would they _not_ want a letter to go out soliciting gifts which they could confiscate on arrival. Why would a prisoner cooperate with the Nazis? To stay alive, of course. . this. Considering they were lying to the people right up the moment the doors of the gas chambers closed behind them it’s logical they saw to it that such letters are created. To the op, you don’t argue with these people. Walk away with your hand up and your head shaking. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2015, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-letter-from-auschwitz/712221/65 "2015-02-25T04:17:43Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > I think it goes the other way – they believe that Jews are evil liars, so they must have duped the rest of the world into believing in the Holocaust to serve their nefarious Jewish ends. What nefarious thing possibly requires us to get everyone to think we are pathetic shnooks who lost six million of our population in degrading ways? If we’re going to lie about ourselves, we’re going to come up with something better than that. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2015, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-letter-from-auschwitz/712221/66 "2015-02-25T04:21:34Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > What nefarious thing possibly requires us to get everyone to think we are pathetic shnooks who lost six million of our population in degrading ways? If we’re going to lie about ourselves, we’re going to come up with something better than that. Israel. Also making Hitler look bad. But the claim the holocaust deniers make is that Jews made up the Holocaust to guilt the world into creating Israel ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2015, 10:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-letter-from-auschwitz/712221/67 "2015-02-25T10:21:29Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > Israel. Also making Hitler look bad. But the claim the holocaust deniers make is that Jews made up the Holocaust to guilt the world into creating Israel There is a great deal of cognitive dissonance that goes into Holocaust denial; those who espouse it often also use it to ‘prove’ why the Jews should all be killed since they are so evil. Also, anyone who is a serious Holocaust denier _knows_ they are lying; its flatly impossible to dig through the mountain of historical records and evidence of mass murder to cherry-pick some bit of nonsense to quibble about and take it as proof that the Holocaust didn’t happen without knowing you’ve deliberately turned a blind eye to that mountain of incontrovertible proof that it did happen. Authors like David Irving know damn well they are lying. ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2015, 11:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-letter-from-auschwitz/712221/68 "2015-02-25T11:02:43Z")
> [@Moriarty](#): > > Chen019, the biggest questions regarding the Holocaust beg your response: > > 1. Approximately how many prisoners died at the hands of the Nazis (whether by gassing, neglect, outright execution, or otherwise)? > > 2. If you don’t believe that approximately 6 million Jews were exterminated, then where did they all go? 1. I haven’t read through the various analyses closely enough to say with confidence, so I’ll go with the 6 million figure. [The Jewish Virtual Library](http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/killedtable.html) has an estimate of 5,933,900 regarding jews killed overall. The history of the use of the figure is intriguing. Apparently, Martin Broszat, the late director of the German Government’s Institute for Contempory History has acknowledged though that the 6 million figure is symbolic. Benjamin Blech writes of an ancient prophecy in the Torah that promises the Jews their return to the Promised Land after a loss of six million of their number (B. Blech, The Secret of Hebrew Words, Jason Aronson, Northvale, NJ, 1991, p. 214). It seems that soviet writer Ilya Ehrenburg publicized the 6 million figure in January 1945, before Auschwitz was liberated and months before the war finished. Going back further in 1900, the Rabbi Stephen Wise stated _“There are 6,000,000 living, bleeding, suffering arguments in favor of Zionism”_. Thereafter there are various references to that [figure being at risk in Eastern Europe.](https://archive.org/stream/TwoHundredSixMillionJewsAllegationsFrom19001945/TwoHundredSixMillionJewsAllegationsFrom1900-1945_djvu.txt), for example: > [@](#): > > 1912 - Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, New York Tribune, September 11th, 1912, page 9: “Russia is now asphyxiating the Jews. It does not dare to offend the nations by blood spilling, so it is slowly, but surely grinding out the lives of 6,000,000 Jews.” > > 1913 - Fort Wayne Journal Gazette (IN), October 18th, 1913, page 4: “There are six million Jews in Russia and the government is anxious to annihilate them by methods that provoke protests from the civilized world.” > [@Moriarty](#): > > … > > 1. If you don’t believe that approximately 6 million Jews were exterminated, then where did they all go? 1. I didn’t question the number that perished. The doubt I was expressing in my posts above were about the use of gassing given the various inconsistencies. As Princeton academic Adorno Mayer wrote in “Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?: The Final Solution in History”, “[s]ources for the study of the gas chambers are at once rare and unreliable” and “There is no denying the many contradictions, ambiguities, and errors in the existing sources.” Mayer, nonetheless does consider they were used for that purpose though. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2015, 12:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-letter-from-auschwitz/712221/69 "2015-02-25T12:08:15Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > 1. I haven’t read through the various analyses closely enough to say with confidence, so I’ll go with the 6 million figure. [The Jewish Virtual Library](http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/killedtable.html) has an estimate of 5,933,900 regarding jews killed overall. > > The history of the use of the figure is intriguing. Apparently, Martin Broszat, the late director of the German Government’s Institute for Contempory History has acknowledged though that the 6 million figure is symbolic. Benjamin Blech writes of an ancient prophecy in the Torah that promises the Jews their return to the Promised Land after a loss of six million of their number (B. Blech, The Secret of Hebrew Words, Jason Aronson, Northvale, NJ, 1991, p. 214). > > It seems that soviet writer Ilya Ehrenburg publicized the 6 million figure in January 1945, before Auschwitz was liberated and months before the war finished. > > Going back further in 1900, the Rabbi Stephen Wise stated _“There are 6,000,000 living, bleeding, suffering arguments in favor of Zionism”_. Thereafter there are various references to that [figure being at risk in Eastern Europe.](https://archive.org/stream/TwoHundredSixMillionJewsAllegationsFrom19001945/TwoHundredSixMillionJewsAllegationsFrom1900-1945_djvu.txt), for example: > > 1. I didn’t question the number that perished. The doubt I was expressing in my posts above were about the use of gassing given the various inconsistencies. As Princeton academic Adorno Mayer wrote in “Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?: The Final Solution in History”, “[s]ources for the study of the gas chambers are at once rare and unreliable” and “There is no denying the many contradictions, ambiguities, and errors in the existing sources.” Mayer, nonetheless does consider they were used for that purpose though. Do you believe that it was the goal and policy of Hitler and the Nazis to kill all the Jews in Europe? ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2015, 12:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-letter-from-auschwitz/712221/70 "2015-02-25T12:32:44Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > 1. I didn’t question the number that perished. The doubt I was expressing in my posts above were about the use of gassing given the various inconsistencies. This is silly. There are inconsistencies in every historical record because different events are perceived differently, human memory is flawed, and records are incomplete. As [Nizkor notes](http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/orgs/american/skeptic-magazine/skeptic-12.html), however, it is the convergence of all the evidence that points to the reality that gas chambers were used at multiple (not necessarily all) camps. ---
**Author:** ![bonzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2015, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-letter-from-auschwitz/712221/71 "2015-02-25T21:51:24Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > Similarly, FH Hinsley’s summary of the British Intelligence decrypts from Auschwitz: > > > [@](#): > > > > "The return from Auschwitz, the largest of the camps with 20,000 prisoners, mentioned illness as the main cause of death, but included references to shootings and hangings. There were no references in the decrypts to gassings. > > > > British Intelligence in World War Two, HMSO, 1981 F.Hinsey Ed., Vol. II, p.673. Harry Hinsley is, as usual, correct here. However, he’d have no doubt also acknowledged, were he aware that he was going to be quoted in this way, that we also know that Auschwitz was told to stop sending such information by radio in August 1942 (see Richard Breitman, _Official Secrets_, 1998; Penguin, 2000, p115). For, despite popular perceptions, the Germans never regarded Enigma as necessarily absolutely secure. Some stuff was always sufficiently secret that it never sent over the air. It went in writing. The function of Auschwitz as a slave labour camp was a far lesser secret than its role as a death camp. If they developed qualms about sending death tolls amongst the registered prison population of the camp by radio, there’s no reason to believe that they **ever** sent anything about the much, much larger numbers of unregistered prisoners killed in the gas chambers in that way. Berlin got those numbers on paper. > [@](#): > > Winston Churchill published a six volume account of WWII and made no reference to gas chambers. Volume Six, is on Triumph and Tragedy, and published in 1953 so you expect to have referred to it. Actually, _Triumph and Tragedy_ does refer to them obliquely, since it quotes the July 1944 memo he sent Eden: > [@](#): > > There is no doubt that this is probably the greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world, and it has been done by scientific machinery by nominally civilised men[.] It’s difficult to see what “by scientific machinery” could otherwise refer to. David Reynolds suggests in his _In Command of History_ (Allen Lane, 2004), his brilliant examination of Churchill’s history and its biases, that this memo is also why he didn’t say anything more in it. He had wanted Auschwitz stopped, but the memo disappeared into the Whitehall bureaucracy and the idea was killed by officials, without any subsequent follow through from him. He thus wanted to skirt around the issue, not because he doubted the gas chambers, but precisely because he was all too aware of them, yet knew that he had effectively failed to do anything about them. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2015, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-letter-from-auschwitz/712221/72 "2015-02-25T22:11:35Z")
> **[Nazi Captain Admits Sending Children to Gas Chamber at Auschwitz - Jewish...](https://www.jta.org/archive/nazi-captain-admits-sending-children-to-gas-chamber-at-auschwitz)** > > A standard refrain of Nazi war crimes defendants was heard again at the Auschwitz camp trial here yesterday when Franz Hofmann, a former SS captain, insisted in testimony that all 22 defendants were innocent. “We are only the little fish,” the... "He admitted being on the arrival ramp at Birkenau several times and helping to Select inmates to be sent to the gas chambers but for the most part, he insisted, “my job consisted of keeping peace and quiet in the camp.” He said that each day, “the SS doctors would be told by the camp commandant how many of the new arrivals were to be spared for work gangs and how many were to be killed.” … Under questioning by presiding Judge Hans Hofmeyer, Hofmann at first denied, then admitted he had personally sent 40 to 50 children, ages six to 12, to the gas chambers.’ [http://www.auschwitz.dk/gerstein.htm](http://www.auschwitz.dk/gerstein.htm) \*One of the most horrifying testimonies from the horrors of the Holocaust was left by a conscience-stricken SS officer, Kurt Gerstein, who visited the deathcamps Belzec and Treblinka in August 1942 and witnessed the mass gassing of Jewish men, women and children. Gerstein was shocked by what he had seen. Yet, he realized that as a witness, his position was unique, and he was determined to expose what he knew to the world to stop the atrocities: “I was one of the handful of people who had seen every corner of the establishment, and certainly the only one to have visited it as an enemy of this gang of murderers …” As he noted in his post-war testimony: “I prayed with them and cried out to my God and theirs. How glad I should have been to go into the gas chambers with them! How gladly I should have died the same death as theirs! Then an SS officer in uniform would have been found in the gas chambers. People would have believed it was an accident and the story would have been buried and forgotten. But I could not do this yet. I felt I must not succumb to the temptation to die with these people. I now knew a great deal about these murders.” His report was one of the first and most important documents relating to the extermination of Jews in the death camps, including facts and events that Gerstein personally witnessed. After the war the basic facts of Gerstein’s report were verified by SS Obersturmbannführer Dr. W. Pfannenstiel before the Land-Court of Darmstadt in the Federal Republic of Germany, on June 6, 1950.\* > **[Wilhelm Pfannenstiel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Pfannenstiel)** > > Wilhelm Hermann Pfannenstiel (12 February 1890 – 1 November 1982) was a German physician, member of the Nazi Party from 1933, (NSDAP 2828629), and SS officer from 1934, (SS-Standartenführer, SS-No. 273083). In August 1942 he witnessed, together with Kurt Gerstein, the gassing of Jews in Bełżec extermination camp. > He may also share responsibility with other SS officials in criminal medical experimentations on unwilling and uninformed human beings, mainly Jews prisoners in Dachau concentration camp... \*In the years 1942 and 1943, he attended the extermination camps of Belzec, where he personally witnessed, in August 1942, the gassing of Jews. …Pfannenstiel was with Kurt Gerstein in Belzec concentration camp in August 1942 during which he witnessed the botched gassing of Jews from Lwów, an episode which Gerstein included in the subsequently named Gerstein Report and which is partly corroborated in the report of Wehrmacht NCO Wilhelm Cornides.[3] Pfannenstiel’s independent testimony of what he witnessed differed in some respects to Gerstein’s but still added a degree of veracity in that they were both there that day and did witness the gassing. After 1941, Pfannenstiel held the rank of SS - Obersturmbannführer. He was promoted to SS Standartenführer in 1944. From the deposition of Wilhelm Pfannenstiel before the Darmstadt Court, June 6, 1950: While the Jews were being taken in, the rooms were lit up with electric light and everything passed off peacefully. But when the lights were turned off, loud cries burst out inside, which then gradually died away. As soon as everything was quiet again, the doors in the outside walls were opened, the corpses were brought out, and, after being searched for gold teeth, they were stacked in a trench.\* There, that’s three Nazis who personally confessed to seeing the Jews gassed to death at a Death camp. ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2015, 9:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-letter-from-auschwitz/712221/73 "2015-02-26T09:49:14Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > This is silly. There are inconsistencies in every historical record because different events are perceived differently, human memory is flawed, and records are incomplete. > > As [Nizkor notes](http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/orgs/american/skeptic-magazine/skeptic-12.html), however, it is the convergence of all the evidence that points to the reality that gas chambers were used at multiple (not necessarily all) camps. The trouble I have is that there is also a convergence of evidence that points to them being used for delousing to combat typhus. That is consistent with the US, British & German medical records & the Red Cross. It’s also the issue of why there is blue Zyklon-B residue in the delousing chambers at Auschwitz, but apparently not in the claimed homicidal gas chambers. When I refer to inconsistencies, I don’t mean minor details. I mean that various major claims that were originally made based on eyewitness testimony **and** confessions of those in charge in certain camps that were subsequently found to be false. It seems quite significant to have originally claimed gas chambers were used to kill people in German camps such as Dachau, Buchenwald & Ravensbrück. Again - that’s based on eyewitness testimony. In the case of Ravensbrück, in Northern Germany, the camp officials (Suhren, Schwarzhuber and Treite) repeatedly confessed to the Tribunal to the existence of a “gas chamber” in their camp. When US pathologist Larson performed autopsies at in Germany he apparently didn’t find cases of gassing. Paul Rassinier also pointed out that it wasn’t correct. Then in 1960 Dr Broszat writes that actually gas chambers weren’t used to kill people on German soil. Why were those eyewitness testimonies & confessions deemed unreliable? The camps in Poland such as Auschwitz were off limits to western investigators as they were occupied by the Soviets. > [@DrDeth](#): > > [http://www.jta.org/1964/01/20/archive/nazi-captain-admits-sending-children-to-gas-chamber-at-auschwitz](http://www.jta.org/1964/01/20/archive/nazi-captain-admits-sending-children-to-gas-chamber-at-auschwitz) > 950.\*… > > There, that’s three Nazis who personally confessed to seeing the Jews gassed to death at a Death camp. Thanks for the references. As noted above there were also confessions from Nazi camp officials at Ravensbrück about inmates being gassed. That is no longer accepted as correct. You could also point to confession of the commandant at Auschwitz, Hoess, it’s well documented now that he was tortured, something that US Judge van Roden noted happened to numerous German witnesses. So I take the confessions with a grain of salt! > [@](#): > > AMERICAN investigators at the U. S. Court in Dachau, Germany, used the following methods to obtain confessions: Beatings and brutal kickings. Knocking out teeth and breaking jaws. Mock trials. Solitary confinement. Posturing as priests. Very limited rations. Spiritual deprivation. Promises of acquittal. Complaints concerning these third degree methods were received by Secretary of the Army Kenneth Royall last Spring [1948]. Royall appointed Justice Gordon Simpson of the Texas Supreme Court and me to go to Germany and check up on the reports… > > Our investigators would put a black hood over the accused’s head and then punch him in the face with brass knuckles, kick him, and beat him with rubber hose. Many of the German defendants had teeth knocked out. Some had their jaws broken. > > **All but two of the Germans, in the 139 cases we investigated, had been kicked in the testicles beyond repair. This was Standard Operating Procedure with American investigators.** > > Perl admitted use of mock trials and persuasive methods including violence and said the court was free to decide the weight to be attached to evidence thus received. But it all went in. > > One 18 year old defendant, after a series of beatings, was writing a statement being dictated to him. When they reached the 16th page, the boy was locked up for the night. In the early morning, Germans in nearby cells heard him muttering. “I will not utter another lie.” When the jailer came in later to get him to finish his false statement, he found the German hanging from a cell bar, dead. However the statement that the German had hanged himself to escape signing was offered and received in evidence in the trial of the others. > > We were shocked by the crucifix being used so mockingly. > > In another case, a bogus Catholic priest (actually an investigator) entered the cell of one of the defendants, heard his confession, gave him absolution, and then gave him a little friendly tip: “Sign whatever the investigators ask you to sign. It will get you your freedom. Even though it’s false, I can give you absolution now in advance for the lie you’d tell.” > > The sham court passed a sham sentence of death. Then the accused was told, “You will hang in a few days, as soon as the general approves this sentence: but in the meantime sign this confession and we can get you acquitted.” Some still wouldn’t sign. JUDGE EDWARD L VAN RODEN [The Progressive, February 1949, p. 21f](http://www.fpp.co.uk/Auschwitz/Dachau/VanRoden1948.html) ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2015, 10:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-letter-from-auschwitz/712221/74 "2015-02-26T10:22:26Z")
Chen, do you believe that it was the goal and policy of Hitler and the Nazis to kill all the Jews in Europe? ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Kobayashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4af34b/32.png) [@Mr.Kobayashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Kobayashi)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2015, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-letter-from-auschwitz/712221/75 "2015-02-26T15:17:17Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > When US pathologist Larson performed autopsies at in Germany he apparently didn’t find cases of gassing. Paul Rassinier also pointed out that it wasn’t correct. How do you perform an autopsy on ashes? The Jews that were gassed went “up the chimney”, in Auschwitz parlance. ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2015, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-letter-from-auschwitz/712221/76 "2015-02-26T15:26:27Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > It’s also the issue of why there is blue Zyklon-B residue in the delousing chambers at Auschwitz, but apparently not in the claimed homicidal gas chambers. The homocidal gas chambers were all destroyed before the allies got there. Replicas were built after the war. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2015, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-letter-from-auschwitz/712221/77 "2015-02-26T17:20:13Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > Thanks for the references. As noted above there were also confessions from Nazi camp officials at Ravensbrück about inmates being gassed. That is no longer accepted as correct. > > You could also point to confession of the commandant at Auschwitz, Hoess, it’s well documented now that he was tortured, something that US Judge van Roden noted happened to numerous German witnesses. So I take the confessions with a grain of salt! > > JUDGE EDWARD L VAN RODEN [The Progressive, February 1949, p. 21f](http://www.fpp.co.uk/Auschwitz/Dachau/VanRoden1948.html) Ravensberg? > **[Holocaust Encyclopedia](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/en)** > > The Holocaust was the state-sponsored systematic persecution and annihilation of European Jews by Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945. Start learning today. \*Periodically, the SS authorities subjected prisoners in the camp to “selections” in which the Germans isolated those prisoners considered too weak or injured to work and killed them. At first, “selected” prisoners were shot. Beginning in 1942, in accordance with “Operation 14f 13,” the SS transferred them to the sanitarium at Bernberg, which, equipped with gas chambers, had served as a killing center for people with physical and intellectual disabilities within the framework of the so-called “euthanasia” program of the Nazi regime. The SS sent around 1,600 female prisoners and 300 male prisoners to their deaths at Bernberg in the spring of 1942; around half of these prisoners were Jewish, at least 25 were Sinti and Roma (Gypsies), and at least 13 were Jehovah’s Witnesses. Camp authorities initiated a second round of killings at such “euthanasia” killing centers later in 1942, continuing until 1944. During this phase, around sixty transports left Ravensbrück for the “euthanasia” killing center at Hartheim, near Linz, Austria with between 60 and 1,000 prisoners each. The SS staff also murdered prisoners in the camp infirmary by lethal injection or by transferring them to the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center. In early 1945, the SS constructed a gas chamber in Ravensbrück near the camp crematorium. The Germans gassed between 5,000 and 6,000 prisoners at Ravensbrück before Soviet troops liberated the camp in April 1945\*. As for JUDGE EDWARD L VAN RODEN -That site is by a notorious and discredited Holocaust denier. wiki: \*Irving’s reputation as a historian was discredited after he brought an unsuccessful libel case against the American historian Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books.[3] The English court found that Irving was an active Holocaust denier, antisemite, and racist,[4] who “for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence”.[4][5] Additionally, the court found that Irving’s books had distorted the history of Hitler’s role in the Holocaust in order to depict Hitler in a favourable light. \* And that testimony is about the trial of the Malmedy Massacre , nothing to do with the Holocaust except that they used Dachau. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2015, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-letter-from-auschwitz/712221/78 "2015-02-27T00:10:26Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > Thanks for the references. As noted above there were also confessions from Nazi camp officials at Ravensbrück about inmates being gassed. That is no longer accepted as correct. I knew already that other famous concentration camps also did not gass the inmates, but you are making a distinction without a difference about Ravensbrück, as it happened with many camps back them, they usually were a complex of buildings in an area and the camp did send a number of inmates to the gas chambers “serving” that area. > **[Ravensbrück | Map, Concentration Camp, Women, & Facts | Britannica](https://www.britannica.com/place/Ravensbruck-concentration-camp-Germany)** > > Ravensbrück, Nazi German concentration camp for women (Frauenlager) located in a swamp near the village of Ravensbrück, 50 miles (80 km) north of Berlin. Ravensbrück served as a training base for some 3,500 female SS (Nazi paramilitary corps)... > [@](#): > > Killing techniques at Ravensbrück evolved over time. At first, prisoners were shot in the back. Later, women were transported to a T4 Program killing centre or to Auschwitz for gassing. Prisoners at Ravensbrück were also killed by lethal injection and cremated in the nearby resort town of Fürstenberg. In late January or early February 1945, some 2,200 women were killed in gas chambers constructed next to Fürstenberg’s crematorium. I will have to make another point here, I researched the locations and Ravensbrück was just on the other side of a small lake separating it from Fürstenberg. Claiming that there were no gas chambers in Ravensbrück is like a Latin American dictator claiming that no one died in a protest in an infamous plaza in the capital city. Sure, the people actually were massacred in the road next to it or taken to unknown locations for “disposal” so I guess the dictator who ordered the removal of the people by force could claim innocence… Yeah right, that only works in the mind of the dictator and the mass murderers. Of course now that we know that the main point stands: death gas chambers did exist in camps like Auschwitz and several others. > **[BBC - History - World Wars: Denying the Holocaust](https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/genocide/deniers_01.shtml)** > > Deborah Lipstadt eattempts to cover up the truth of the Holocaust. > [@](#): > > Evidence > > In February 1943 Auschwitz camp building authorities complained to Topf, the company that built the crematoria equipment, that they needed ventilation blowers ‘most urgently’. Why the urgency, if this was an air-raid shelter, morgue, or delousing chamber? > > Deniers hypothesise that the urgency was a result of official fears that the camp would be hit with a typhus epidemic, which would cause a tremendous spike in the death toll. Without the proper ventilation system, the crematoria would not be able to operate. > > Deniers try to bolster their argument about the typhus by pointing to documents which show that at this point in time the planned monthly incineration rate of Auschwitz had been boosted to 120,000 bodies. Deniers claim this was because of the typhus epidemic. However, the camp’s projected population was 150,000. For the deniers’ explanation to make sense, in one month an epidemic would have to kill four-fifths of Auschwitz’s population and the Germans would have to repopulate the camp with 120,000 people. This claim exceeded the absolute worst case epidemiological scenario. > > On 6 March 1943, one of the civilian employees working on the construction of Crematorium 2 referred to the air extraction system of ‘Auskleidekeller [undressing cellar] 2’. No normal morgue could require an undressing room, particularly one that was 50 yards long. In that same month, there were at least four additional references to Auskleidekeller. It is telling that civilians who, according to the deniers, were in Birkenau to work on underground morgues, repeatedly referred not to morgues but to the ventilation of the ‘undressing cellars’. > > In the same letter the employee asked about preheating the areas that would be used as the gas chamber. If these were morgues they should be cooled, not preheated. Heating a gas chamber, on the other hand, would speed the gassing process by more quickly vaporising the gas from the Zyklon B. > > A letter dated 31 March 1943, regarding Crematorium 3, spoke of it as having a Gastür, a gas door. Deniers argue that this could mean many things. But the inventory attached to the handover documents for the crematorium states that it had a Gasdichtetür, a ‘gas-tight door’. One might argue about the meaning of Gastür, but it is hard to squabble over a gas-tight door. > > Deniers have said for years that physical evidence is lacking because they have seen no holes in the roof of the Birkenau gas chamber where the Zyklon was poured in. (In some of the gas chambers the Zyklon B was poured in through the roof, while in others it was thrown in through the windows.) The roof was dynamited at war’s end, and today lies broken in pieces, but three of the four original holes were positively identified in a recent paper. Their location in the concrete matches with eyewitness testimony, aerial photos from 1944, and a ground photo from 1943. The physical evidence shows unmistakably that the Zyklon holes were cast into the concrete when the building was constructed. > > There is much additional evidence affirming Auschwitz/Birkenau’s role as a killing centre. There is no reputable evidence that affirms the deniers’ claims. ---
**Author:** ![Fubaya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c2a13f/32.png) [@Fubaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fubaya)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2015, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-letter-from-auschwitz/712221/79 "2015-02-27T01:05:07Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > You could also point to confession of the commandant at Auschwitz, Hoess, it’s well documented now that he was tortured, something that US Judge van Roden noted happened to numerous German witnesses. So I take the confessions with a grain of salt! While Höss’ affidavit after his arrest probably followed a beating, he was alive for another year in which he was fairly apathetic about his actions and openly spoke of his role in gassing Jews. He even wrote an autobiography about it. Were you unaware of these simple facts or did you choose to ignore them in the hopes that casting doubt on the affidavit would be enough to negate everything relating to Höss? Here’s what I don’t get about all this. If I sat down and made a list of every evil thing you could do to a person, the Germans are undeniably guilty of every single one of them on a massive scale. In fact, I probably wouldn’t put “gassing people” on that list because it’s such a specific thing to the Nazis and requires such a specific infrastructure and circumstances to support it. But the Nazis targeted millions of people for genocide for racist reasons, rounded up millions of them, imprisoned them, treated them like animals, forced them into slave labor and sex slavery, starved them, tortured them, performed medical experiments on them, forced abortions or killed babies after birth, euthanized and murdered them on a massive massive scale. And we’re not talking mistreatment of military prisoners here, but of innocent men, women and children. And yes, many did die of disease in the inhumane conditions in which they were imprisoned, but many were also murdered. There are many photos of Nazis executing men, women and children in front of mass graves. While you agree that an estimated 6 million Jews died, there were just as many, if not more, people from other groups who died as well. There are millions of pieces of evidence that the above is all true. Wouldn’t you agree that these things happened? Wouldn’t you agree that the Nazis targeted groups of people they considered “subhuman” and not part of the “master race,” treated all of them in the most inhumane ways possible and murdered many of them? So, if Obama went on TV and said that he’d demanded access to Area 51 and found, not aliens, but proof that the Nazis never gassed anyone, what difference would it make? Gassing aside, do you agree that the Nazis were racists guilty of some of the most horrific, disgusting and evil crimes that you can imagine on a massive scale against millions of people? ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2015, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-letter-from-auschwitz/712221/80 "2015-02-27T01:53:08Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > Well start with the original revisionist - [Paul Rassinier,](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Rassinier) who was an anti-nazi leftist & involved with the French Resistance. He was sent to concentration camps such as Buchenwald & Dora. He doesn’t seem a likely raving loon or anti-semite. Rassinier is not a good authority on which to rest your “case”. He shifted his claims repeatedly over the years, first acknowledging that extermination by gassing took place (but that there were fewer such installations than had been reported), then proceeded to deny that any such killings had taken place at all. At one time he blamed Communist inmates instead of the SS for bad conditions at Buchenwald (Communists had a limited role in policing themselves), and also argued that Jews were responsible for how they were treated. [Deborah Lipstadt](http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi?people/l/lipstadt.deborah/rassinier-distortions.01) seems to have Rassinier’s number. \*"Paul Rassinier…was arrested and interned in concentration camps, among them Buchenwald. In 1948 he published a book Crossing the Line, in which he argued that people might have been killed in concentration camps, but that the perpetrators had acted on their own, not on orders from headquarters. "Rassinier initially admitted that people had been killed by being gassed, which he claimed was a local initiative and not the responsibility of the central Nazi system. Later he denied the existence of the gas chambers altogether. This argument was repeated by Louis Darquier de Pellepoix, who had been Commissioner for Jewish Affairs of the notorious French Vichy government for several years. In an infamous interview in 1978, which drew widespread criticism, he told the French weekly L’Express that the Holocaust was a hoax and that only lice were gassed in Auschwitz. Rassinier also claimed that the concentration camps were not a German invention, and that many other countries had used them, including France. This is an early example of the balancing acts Irving and later deniers applied. “The first generation of post-war deniers, to which both Bardeche and Rassinier belonged, justified Nazi anti-Semitism by asserting that the Jews were responsible for their own suffering, since they had caused Germany’s financial and political problems. Later deniers abandoned this line of argument, because they felt it undermined whatever credibility they had.”\* I hope it is OK to link to [this excerpt](https://books.google.com/books?id=M9Uj6u6b-ZIC&pg=PA87&lpg=PA87&dq=rassinier+atkins+holocaust+denial&source=bl&ots=COQo8lA7sh&sig=U7QwPrMyyJY9APfz-9b8sXkCxIc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ssrvVNT7GoOyggTI8oKoBQ&ved=0CCIQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=rassinier%20atkins%20holocaust%20denial&f=false) from Stephen Atkins’ book regarding Rassinier (the book title incorporates the Forbidden Phrase).\* I have yet to see a single example of a prominent Holocaust “revisionist” engaged in attempts to overturn the essential story of what happened, who was not also an anti-Semite. These two things are irretrievably entwined. \*Can we look forward to a ban on the use of the term “antivaxer” in GD and other forums, since antivaccine advocates argue that it unfairly stigmatizes them? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-letter-from-auschwitz/712221.md?page=3)