I think the idea of there being no gas chambers is used as revisionist “logic” to claim that they could never have the time or munitions to kill 6 million Jews and millions more Roma, Homosexuals, Polish, Lituanian, Disabled and all the other groups that were victims of the Nazis.
Another example of that logic is to say that there “wasn’t that many Jews in Europe anyway.”
(My apologies if I have left any group out).
Not to hijack this thread too much, but if you read tomndebb’s cite (nizkor.org), there is some evidence of systematic denial of resources which led to the starvation death of some of the people imprisoned in the camps.
This doesn’t really have a lot to do with the matter at hand, but the explanation of lack of resources doesn’t really fly…these case provide further reinforcement of your point about the deliberation involved in the Holocaust.
And another point on top of that is the much larger number of people who would have to be involved once we concede that many of the deaths were a result of bullets fired by common soldiers to the back of the head. The book I mentioned above, Ordinary Men, makes it quite clear that the soldiers and police involved in these killings were not under death threats for failure to comply, in fact they were given every opportunity to back out of participation, both before the killings at a location would begin and retaining the option to quit participating at any time during the killings. In short, once we take the Holocaust out of the hands of a few psychopathic madmen at the internment camps and into the hands of the common soldier and policeman, we come to realize that men of all sorts from all walks of life can and will, under the right circumstances, commit brutal murders by the dozen, and in situations where each murder requires the affirmative act of firing a bullet into the back of the head of a man lying in front of you.
Nasty conclusions about people in general flow like wine from such a conclusion. If we’re going to deny Hitler’s brand of racism that would claim different races have different abilities and moral constitutions, then we’d have to conclude that such behaviour is not limited to the Germans. Any group of people on the Earth could do such a thing, even the Jews and Gypsies themselves. If we make it all about the German technology, make it unique to the German political situation, and narrow the number of participants, perhaps we can convince ourselves it was just crazymen. Maybe that’s part of the reaction people have.
Your friend’s brother is an ignoramus. There is overwhelming evidence to the fact that the Nazis used gas chambers in the concentration camps and this material is relatively easy to research (the Nazis were pathologically anal about record keeping). Since he is either unwilling to do so or incapible of comperhending the material, I can draw no other conclusion.
Exactly. The “solution” had many wide-ranging components, many of them carefully thought out and documented with bureaucratic precision.
The problem with the gas chambers (for revisionists) is that there is absolutely no other way to explain them (not even with feeble apologias like they still muster up for starvation/disease, despite the evidence). Just like you couldn’t later claim that some hypothetical death camp’s guillotines were really intended for slicing food, or that its electric chairs were used for anything but execution.
The controversy, to the extent there is one, is based on the fact that Zyklon B was a commercial pesticide. In other words, this particular weapon of mass destruction had a dual use. Sound familiar?
When it comes right down to it, a great many pesticides are basically nerve agents. They are easily lethal to humans in sufficient doses.
Well, as a stand-alone factory of death, Auschwitz was pretty efficient. The larger problem was the transporting of hundreds of thousands of individuals to the camp, requiring huge amounts of rolling stock, motive power, etc. It works for removing Jewish populations from large cities with existing rail lines, but in more rural areas, it was always easier to just shoot the Jews on the spot. In many cases, encouraging the local gentile populations to go on rampages was easier still.
There can be no doubt that before the war there were X Jews in Europe and afterward there were Y Jews, and that the difference is some 5 to 6 million. The exact method of their deaths is irrelevant.
I didn’t know that, I find it shocking. Freedom of Speech and all that.
What I don’t get is why people think it wouldn’t be true.
Let’s face it, the idea of twelve million people being executed by being driven into the woods and shot is horrific enough all by itself. It doesn’t need Gas Chambers to make it into an act of unspeakable depravity.
The Death Camps have to be true, because we simply couldn’t make them up.
Pretty interesting flick. What really bothered me though is that the filmmakers never confonted Leuchter with the facts you described, although they were featured prominantly in the movie.
Why wouldn’t they do this? I can only guess that they did, and Leuchter’s responses made him look really bad. Obviously, the image of him they tried to portray was one of a person making an innocent mistake, and not antisemitic.
My reaction to arguements like this tend to be anger, at first, because I’ve got four relatives on my dad’s side who survived the holocaust, including my great-uncle, who survived Auschwitz. I get doubly pissed off when people say that “Six million Jews didn’t die/weren’t gassed/[insert some other half-assed arguement here]”. Partly because I’m raised Jewish and above-mentioned Uncle was in the camps because he was Jewish, but it ignores the fact that a hell of a lot of other people were killed, including athiests/agnostics (which I am), catholics (which the other side of my family is), and non-heterosexuals (which I am).
Put it in perspective: does it really matter how they were killed? Twelve million people were murdred. Killed, intentionally. Entire villages were wiped out. The Holocuast Museum in DC has a room - maybe 2 stories tall? - with pictures of people, all from one village, which was literally destoryed by the Nazis. As in, they were all dead. If what matters is that they were killed - why and how are irrelevant.
oy… what is up with the board in this thread…
the OP said something like “my brother said the jews didn’t die in gas chambers… they starved to death and were shot”
and the board has basicly declared the guy a ignorant bigot nazi lover… because of course… shooting and starveing people is okay… as long as you don’t gas them! its practically an appology!
it seems very random to spew so much hate at the guy… the guy is wrong… but its not like hes saying anything that changes anything moral wise… or shows the nazis as good guys… why DOES it matter how they were killed? why is asking how they died such a sin? they were killed… intentionally… why is this such an inflamitory topic… which allows you to declare someone ignorant over?
Without justifying every emotional reaction, it should be noted that a claim that the gas chambers never existed is one of the primary claims of Holocaust deniers. Therefore, someone who buys into the claim that there were no gas chambers is promoting ignorance regarding the understanding of what happened and how it happened. And if he is allowed to proclaim that there were no gas chambers, even while accepting the deaths of 5+ million Jews and 5+ million other people, then someone who hears his claim of “no gas chambers” will be more willing to accept the deniers when they claim “only” 600,000 Jews (or whatever incredibly reduced number they invent) died and that those deaths were “accidents” of the war.
While I am not sure that heaping scorn on an individual who is not even here to present his own case makes a lot of sense, I do tend to understand the emotions that such a claim evokes.
Denying the existence of gas chambers and crematoria is just plain stupid, as anybody willing to visit the concentration camps at Oswiecim (Auschwitz) or Dachau can see quite plainly that they do exist. What is usually argued by Holocaust Revisionists is not the denial of the existence of such facilities, but rather their use. Most revisionists claim these gas chambers were used not for the gassing of prisoners, but rather for the disinfection of clothing, or other hygenic purposes.
Revisionists site the lack of one concrete “smoking gun” piece of evidence - a written order for the gassing of Jews - as a sign that perhaps the gas chambers and crematoria were used for benign purposes.
What we do have is a convergence of evidence. We have official Nazi documents ordering huge amounts of Zyklon B, the testimony of guards and prisoners, photographs (in Auschwitz, you can find aerial recon photos of prisoners being marched into gas chambers), and forensic evidence which, when taken together, all leads pretty conclusively to the conclusion that the gas chambers were used for mass extermination, and that the crematoria were used not simply for prisoners who died of natural causes or malnutrition, but from a systematic policy of genocide.
Yup, they argue that. Nevermind the fact that you don’t need fake showerhouses built to drop poison in and 3 inch metal airtight doors with reinforced peepholes to clean clothing…
Yup. Which is on its face a horrible argument. I mean, there is probably no one written order for the Cold War either. It is the product of long-term policy planning and hundreds of bureaucrats.
The absurdest notion must surely be how you would make the relatives of 6 million people lie. Fabricate fake histories for them to tell. Add to that the allied soldiers. Mindboggling…
In addition to Tom’s point: when deniers argue that gas chambers were never used, it serves to remove one special dimension of horror from the Holocaust. Shooting and starvation may seem more prosaic, if just as lethal.
The deniers are out to minimize the event in any way possible.