# I don't understand holocaust denial **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 11, 2017, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-holocaust-denial/781963 "2017-03-11T23:15:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2017, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-holocaust-denial/781963/141 "2017-03-14T20:05:24Z")
> [@Latro](#): > > I am willing to accept a level of propaganda at the end of the war. That not all camps were extermination camps, there were no gas-showers in places they were supposed to be, the famous photographs of piles of corpses are typhoid victims etc. etc. > > But we do have footage of mass executions and, as **iiandyiiii** posted, testomony from Himmler himself that extermination was indeed the goal. > > So whether they ‘only’ managed to murder 600.000 (which would be a ridiculously low number) or 6.000.000 does not take away from the fact that they actually tried it in the first place. Scale matters, its not the only thing that matters but one of the things that makes the Holocaust so significant is that it was so fucking big. 600,000 would be \<10% of all Jews living in Nazi controlled territory. 6 million would be 80%. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2017, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-holocaust-denial/781963/142 "2017-03-14T23:59:01Z")
> [@Mr.Miskatonic](#): > > We have done so on several occasions. And a grand time was had by all! > [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > Incidentally, the very tight range of estimates of “Number of Jewish victims of the holocaust”, between 5.45 - 5.95 million, is interesting because it seems to be much more precise than our estimates of other mass deaths. Estimates for the number of deaths attributed to Stalin, for example, are _much_ more variable (people used to estimate anywhere between \<1 million and 60 million, after the opening of the Soviet archives the estimates coalesced somewhere between 3 million and 20 million, I’d guess the true answer is somewhere around 10 million or a bit less). And this is in a society which, like Hitler’s Germany, was an industrialized world power. Well, the Germans have a well-deserved reputation for keeping meticulous, even OCD, records. :o ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2017, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-holocaust-denial/781963/143 "2017-03-15T01:26:23Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > Well, the Germans have a well-deserved reputation for keeping meticulous, even OCD, records. :o Probably true, but the stereotype tends to somehow morph into the common belief that Nazi Germany had an ultra-efficient military-industrial economy. Latter-day analysis of the degree of factional infighting (among other elements) tends to show otherwise. ---
**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:** [March 15, 2017, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-holocaust-denial/781963/144 "2017-03-15T02:04:08Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Where the fuck are you getting the notion that I think the Jews brought it upon themselves? That’s how [your post](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=20062789&postcount=108) comes off, especially the last line. Them Jews just have a habit of getting into trouble, tsk tsk. :dubious: It’d be nice if, instead of trying to minimize former Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s repulsive views, you acknowledged that he’s a flaming bigot and flat-out Holocaust denier.\* \*Ahmadinejad’s credibility among rational folk may also have been damaged by statements blaming the West for creating AIDS to weaken poorer countries, suggesting the U.S. was responsible for 9/11 etc. etc. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2017, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-holocaust-denial/781963/145 "2017-03-15T04:04:25Z")
**Damuri Ajashi** and **Jackmannii** , back off on the personal stuff or take it to **The BBQ Pit**. It is not relevant to the thread. [/Moderating] ---
**Author:** ![Chen019](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f19dbf/32.png) [@Chen019](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chen019)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2017, 10:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-holocaust-denial/781963/146 "2017-03-15T10:17:37Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > This is a remarkable assertion. > > There actually was a gas chamber at Dachau, although it was not used for mass execution. > Dachau was not an extermination camp, but a work camp, (although executions, particularly of Soviet prisoners, were carried out there). > Thousands of bodies and thousands of emaciated prisoners were discovered at Dachau by Allied troops liberating the camp. > > Given the above facts, it is not surprising that some reports of work camps and death camps were conflated. Using the confusion regarding those reports to try to discredit the history of the Holocaust is a classic example of Holocaust denial. However, to join in that denial despite overwhelming evidence that it occurred is nothing more than anti-semitism or pro-Nazi propaganda. > > As to your lettered “facts”: > [ul] > [li]a) reports of typhus do not mean that executions did not occur, only that the conditions were so poor that some died of disease before they could be murdered, It is not an either/or situation. [/li][li]b) The nazis wanted to reduce deaths by typhus because they did not want it spreading to their own troops before the people could be murdered [/li][li]c) This is an unlikely claim for which I have seen no evidence.[/li][li]d) Again, the presence of Typhus hardly precludes the execution of others…[/li][li]e) Auschwitz was actually a series of camps, not a single entity. The football fields were for the Prisoners of War being held in an adjacent camp and the surviving PoWs note the presence of the gas chambers and crematoria.[/li][li]f) Since the Germans could not instantly annihilate everyone who got off a train, they did allow a number of “morale” events to occur in the hope of avoiding riots and misdirecting inmates of the actual purpose of the camps.[/li][li]g) The Nazis made most arriving prisoners write letters home describing the “wonderful” place they had been brought so as to reduce the rumors of what was actually occurring. [/li][li]h) This nonsense has been refuted on numerous occasions…[/li][/ul] It seems remarkable because there is a taboo against pointing out the obvious. 1. At the Nuremberg Tribunal of 1945-1946, Allied government officials presented apparently conclusive evidence to prove that camps “on German soil” – such as Dachau and Buchenwald – were “extermination” centers. Sir Hartley Shawcross, chief British prosecutor at the main Nuremberg trial, accordingly declared in his closing address on July 26, 1946, that “murder [was] conducted like some mass production industry in the gas chambers and the ovens” of Buchenwald, Dachau, Oranienburg – all “on German soil” – as well as at other German-run camps. 2. This wasn’t just based on a “conflation” of death camps and labor camps. It was based on eyewitness testimony. For example, former inmate Dr. Franz Blaha, for example, provided eyewitness testimony at Nuremberg about gas chamber killings of “many prisoners” at Dachau. An official French government report accepted by the Tribunal as exhibit RF-301 (document 274-F) charged: > [@](#): > > Everything had been provided for down to the smallest detail. In 1944, at Buchenwald, they had even lengthened a railway line so that the deportees might be led directly to the gas chamber. Certain [of the gas chambers] had a floor that tipped and immediately directed the bodies into the room with the crematory oven. 1. As I’ve noted above, all this was contradicted by the pathology evidence and physicians like Russell Barton, & John Gordon who noted that typhus epidemics were ravaging the camps. It was also contradicted by Professor Paul Rassinier, who in the process, became the first prominent revisionist. 2. Then in 1960 Dr. Martin Broszat of Germany’s semi-official Institute for Contemporary History acknowledged in a letter published in the Hamburg weekly Die Zeit that the extermination claims in relation to camps in Germany were not true. Simon Wiesenthal later accepted this was the case. **In doing so, Broszat implicitly also conceded that the “evidence” presented at Nuremberg and elsewhere for extermination and gassings in those camps was discredited.** 3. So it is then claimed that of course the extermination camps were only in Poland. Where conveniently the US pathologist Larson was unable to inspect. 🙂 4. Nonetheless, the British Intelligence Service was able to eavesdrop on almost all German military radio communications. They intercepted communications at Auschwitz from January 1942 to January 1943. > [@](#): > > The messages from Auschwitz, the largest camp, with 20,000 inmates,4 mention disease as the chief cause of death, but also include references to executions by hanging and shooting. The decoded messages contain no references to gassings. > > Francis H. Hinsley _British Intelligence in the Second World War. Volume II: Its Influence on Strategy and Operations_ (London: Stationary Books, 1981) p. 673 7.The decoded messages enabled the compilation of statistics. The radio messages from 28 October 1942 – taking a single day at random – reveal, for example, that Auschwitz Concentration Camp contained a total, all told, of 25,298 inmates: 18,754 men and 6,544 women; including 10,755 Jews, 8,822 Poles, 1,369 Russians and 1,578 Germans. It was also learned that there were exactly 787 Zugänge and 168 Abgänge on 28 July 1942; Zugänge referred to the arrival of new inmates; Abgänge referred to deaths, executions, releases and inmates transferred to other camps. 1. So, as with the camps in Germany - typhus outbreaks were again a major threat. Hence the need for new arrivals to shave their hair, while clothing and bedding was deloused in small facilities, specifically designed for such activities, with more than adequate ventilation to vent fumes. 2. The claimed areas where people were gassed have negligible to non-existent cyanide levels (presumably they fumigated for bugs & lice now and then, while the delousing areas have high levels on the walls. 3. There are various technical factors that make the claimed areas where gassing of people took place laughably implausible. For a detailed account I would recommend ex-Max Planck scientist Germar Rudolf’s [detailed report](http://www.vho.org/GB/Books/trr/5.html#5.3.). Rudolf comments: > [@](#): > > When one considers the technical circumstances prevailing in and around Auschwitz, in the broadest sense, one becomes aware of the absurdity of the entire claim of homicidal mass gassings. The camp management was fully aware of the methods and technical preconditions for Zyklon B disinfestation, and was even informed as to the latest developments in the related technology.[143] But instead of using these methods, it allegedly had recourse, for mass gassing purposes, to extremely crude methods, particularly where bunkers I and II, and, later, crematoria IV and V, were concerned: > > Allegedly, hundreds or thousands of people were killed with highly poisonous gas in rooms, > > which had walls and ceilings made of a material absorbing huge amounts of the poison gas and letting it penetrate; > which did not have escape-proof doors and windows; > which did not have panic-proof equipment; > which did not have technically gas tight doors and shutters; > which had no provision to quickly release and distribute the poison gas; > which had no effective device to ventilate or otherwise render ineffective the poison gas after the end of the execution. > At the same time, the most modern disinfestation installations were being built all over German-occupied Europe, > > which had walls and ceilings covered with gastight coatings; > which were equipped with escape-proof doors and had no windows; > which had technically gas tight doors; > which had devices to quickly release and distribute the poison gas; > which had effective devices to ventilate or otherwise render ineffective the poison gas after the end of the gassing procedure… > > Considering these facts, it can not really come as a surprise that finally even the mainstream historians and media are taking notice of them: In May 2002, Fritjof Meyer, a senior editor at Germany’s largest, left-wing weekly magazine Der Spiegel, stated in an article that documents and witness statements regarding the alleged gas chambers in the crematoria II and III of Birkenau > > “rather indicate that attempts were made in March and April of 1943 to use the mortuary cellars for mass murder in the early summer of 1943. Apparently, the tests were not successful […] The actually committed genocide probably took place mainly in the two converted farmhouses outside of the camp.”[312] > > In other words: there is a tendency to abandon those locations which Prof. Dr. R. van Pelt called “the absolute center” in the “geography of atrocities” (see page 91), or even the Birkenau crematoria altogether, since, according to Meyer the genocide is now supposed to have taken place mainly in those ominous farmhouses or bunkers of which we possess hardly any documentary evidence. > > Following Meyer, the final destruction of the corpses of the alleged victims of mass murder is now supposed to have happened almost exclusively by means of open-air incinerations in deep pits. However, all claims made regarding the alleged open-air incineration of corpses in deep pits are obviously untrue because no traces of such incinerations can be found on contemporary air-photos, and because the high water table in Birkenau would have prevented the maintenance of fires in deep pits. The tale is woven around all of the factors that don’t agree with it: - Dr. Larson found no gas deaths - well the gas deaths must have been in the camps he didn’t visit. - The British Intelligence didn’t intercept any references to gas - well it was too secret - The claimed areas where the gassing happened are technically implausible and there is negligible cyanide residue - well it must have been somewhere else… Do you see how it goes? ---
**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:** [March 15, 2017, 11:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-holocaust-denial/781963/147 "2017-03-15T11:59:28Z")
Once again **Chen019** spews a load of nonsense and entirely and very conspicuously ignores the words of Heinrich Himmler, which were on tape for all to hear: > [@iiandyiiii](#): > > **Cheno019** , how do you explain the recordings of Himmler [in which he says the following](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posen_speeches): > > _I am now referring to the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish people. It’s one of those things that is easily said: ‘The Jewish people are being exterminated’, says every party member, ‘this is very obvious, it’s in our program, elimination of the Jews, extermination, we’re doing it, hah, a small matter.’ […] But of all those who talk this way, none had observed it, none had endured it. Most of you here know what it means when 100 corpses lie next to each other, when 500 lie there or when 1,000 are lined up. To have endured this and at the same time to have remained a decent person - with exceptions due to human weaknesses - had made us tough. This is a page of glory never mentioned and never to be mentioned. […] We have the moral right, we had the duty to our people to do it, to kill this people who wanted to kill us._ > > and also: > > _I ask of you that that which I say to you in this circle be really only heard and not ever discussed. We were faced with the question: what about the women and children? – I decided to find a clear solution to this problem too. I did not consider myself justified to exterminate the men - in other words, to kill them or have them killed and allow the avengers of our sons and grandsons in the form of their children to grow up. The difficult decision had to be made to have this people disappear from the earth. For the organisation which had to execute this task, it was the most difficult which we had ever had. […] I felt obliged to you, as the most superior dignitary, as the most superior dignitary of the party, this political order, this political instrument of the Führer, to also speak about this question quite openly and to say how it has been. The Jewish question in the countries that we occupy will be solved by the end of this year. Only remainders of odd Jews that managed to find hiding places will be left over._ ---
**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:** [March 15, 2017, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-holocaust-denial/781963/148 "2017-03-15T13:30:06Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > For the second time, I’m going to have to call “bullshit” on this, since even modern maternity centers that aren’t in warzones and/or concentration camps would have trouble matching a record like this. Where did you get this stat? Yes, modern maternity wards do not have perfect records on lack of infant mortality, and that is a more relevant fact than that a maternity “in Auschwitz” was in a warzone. However, if someone did find some isolated stat about a birthing center “in Auschwitz” with a low infant mortality rate, or a even a zero death rate for a particular period of time (it might have had no deaths for a period of months, say, and it was relevant because some other area that was supposedly better had several in the same period of time), it probably was in Auschwitz, the city, not Auschwitz, the death camp. Auschwitz was in a Polish city called Oswiecim. It’s pronounced “osh-VEE-eh-chim” in Polish, “OSH-pitz-in” in Yiddish, and Auschwitz in German. The concentration camp was named for the city, and the convention since about 1980 has been to refer, in English, to the camp as Auschwitz, and the city as Oswiecim, even when discussing WWII events. However, you will find many things written earlier than that, which refer to the _city_ as Auschwitz-- in English writings. So it’s possible that a standing birthing center in the city, which had nothing to do with the camp, had a low infant mortality, and a zero death rate for a stretch of time long enough to be notable. So there may be a stat floating around about this birthing center that is being misunderstood as a stat about the camp. I very seriously doubt that Auschwitz the death camp had a birthing center. I don’t even think Theresienstadt had one, and that was the “model” camp that had a school and other facilities for children. It was the camp that the Red Cross was shown, and anyone else curious about camp rumors. Theresienstadt was one of the reasons the Allies didn’t know what was really going on until the war was almost over. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2017, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-holocaust-denial/781963/149 "2017-03-15T15:35:58Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > It seems remarkable because there is a taboo against pointing out the obvious. > > 1. At the Nuremberg Tribunal of 1945-1946, Allied government officials presented apparently conclusive evidence to prove that camps “on German soil” – such as Dachau and Buchenwald – were “extermination” centers. Sir Hartley Shawcross, chief British prosecutor at the main Nuremberg trial, accordingly declared in his closing address on July 26, 1946, that “murder [was] conducted like some mass production industry in the gas chambers and the ovens” of Buchenwald, Dachau, Oranienburg – all “on German soil” – as well as at other German-run camps. Then, if one were merely pursuing truth, one could point out that error without trying to claim that the Holocaust did not happen. In fact, Dachau was used as an extermination center for Soviet prisoners and the fact that they were shot instead of being gassed does not change the effect of their murder. The crematorium was used, so references to “ovens” is legitimate. Over 31,000 people were murdered at Dachau in fewer than four years and raising the misstatement of one prosecutor on one technical point in such a charged time seems rather pointless. When raised as some historical truth that casts doubt on the murders of 11 to 12 million people, it looks suspiciously like an attempt to deny that those murders happened. > [@Chen019](#): > > 1. This wasn’t just based on a “conflation” of death camps and labor camps. It was based on eyewitness testimony. For example, former inmate Dr. Franz Blaha, for example, provided eyewitness testimony at Nuremberg about gas chamber killings of “many prisoners” at Dachau. > > An official French government report accepted by the Tribunal as exhibit RF-301 (document 274-F) charged: > > 1. As I’ve noted above, all this was contradicted by the pathology evidence and physicians like Russell Barton, & John Gordon who noted that typhus epidemics were ravaging the camps. It was also contradicted by Professor Paul Rassinier, who in the process, became the first prominent revisionist. > > 2. Then in 1960 Dr. Martin Broszat of Germany’s semi-official Institute for Contemporary History acknowledged in a letter published in the Hamburg weekly Die Zeit that the extermination claims in relation to camps in Germany were not true. Simon Wiesenthal later accepted this was the case. **In doing so, Broszat implicitly also conceded that the “evidence” presented at Nuremberg and elsewhere for extermination and gassings in those camps was discredited.** > > 3. So it is then claimed that of course the extermination camps were only in Poland. Where conveniently the US pathologist Larson was unable to inspect. 🙂 > > 4. Nonetheless, the British Intelligence Service was able to eavesdrop on almost all German military radio communications. They intercepted communications at Auschwitz from January 1942 to January 1943. > > 7.The decoded messages enabled the compilation of statistics. The radio messages from 28 October 1942 – taking a single day at random – reveal, for example, that Auschwitz Concentration Camp contained a total, all told, of 25,298 inmates: 18,754 men and 6,544 women; including 10,755 Jews, 8,822 Poles, 1,369 Russians and 1,578 Germans. It was also learned that there were exactly 787 Zugänge and 168 Abgänge on 28 July 1942; Zugänge referred to the arrival of new inmates; Abgänge referred to deaths, executions, releases and inmates transferred to other camps. > > 1. So, as with the camps in Germany - typhus outbreaks were again a major threat. Hence the need for new arrivals to shave their hair, while clothing and bedding was deloused in small facilities, specifically designed for such activities, with more than adequate ventilation to vent fumes. > > 2. The claimed areas where people were gassed have negligible to non-existent cyanide levels (presumably they fumigated for bugs & lice now and then, while the delousing areas have high levels on the walls. > > 3. There are various technical factors that make the claimed areas where gassing of people took place laughably implausible. For a detailed account I would recommend ex-Max Planck scientist Germar Rudolf’s [detailed report](http://www.vho.org/GB/Books/trr/5.html#5.3.). Rudolf comments: > > The tale is woven around all of the factors that don’t agree with it: > > - Dr. Larson found no gas deaths - well the gas deaths must have been in the camps he didn’t visit. > > - The British Intelligence didn’t intercept any references to gas - well it was too secret > > - The claimed areas where the gassing happened are technically implausible and there is negligible cyanide residue - well it must have been somewhere else… Gee. David Irving should have hired you to be on his legal team. This is standard stuff: cherry pick one fact or error, and then try to extrapolate a totally erroneous conclusion based on ignoring other information or by drawing unwarranted conclusions. [The Nizkor Project](http://www.nizkor.org/) addresses this sort of thing rather well. For those who would like to see the refutations of most of the above nonsense, a good start is the section on the [Techniques of Holocaust Denial](http://www.nizkor.org/features/techniques-of-denial/), particularly the section on [the gas chambers](http://www.nizkor.org/features/techniques-of-denial/forensic.html). > [@Chen019](#): > > Do you see how it goes? Absolutely: [ul] [li]Cherry picked data points with conclusions drawn that even those cherry picked claims do not logically support;[/li][li]References to long-debunked claims;[/li][li]Assumptions that errors in reports are deliberate rather than the obvious results of the standard confusion resulting from the fog of war.[/li][/ul] It goes the way that it has gone since the first Nazi propaganda broadcast in the early 1930s. For example, from the statement that the extermination camps were not set up on German soil with Wiesenthal’s acknowledgement that that was true you have drawn the utterly unsupported conclusion that that statement casts doubt on the entire process. It does not. You even went so far as to put your bad logic in boldface. Discovering that there were U.S. states in the North that still permitted slavery in 1861 does not mean that slavery was not the prime motive for the South to secede. You need something besides the presence of a common misconception to draw your conclusion and you have nothing but a leap in logic to support it. Are there errors in the history of the Holocaust, particularly the popular, as opposed to scholarly, accounts where even some scholarly accounts have errors? Of course. No event occurring over multiple years that involved the lives and deaths of tens of millions of people, (whether victims or perpetrators or bystanders), is going to be free of error. I do not know of anyone who has been censored or censured for pointing out that Dachau was not an extermination camp and if it is one’s most cherished desire to make that fact known to the world, I have no interest in silencing such a person, I wish them well in their efforts, and cannot imagine anyone else trying to prevent them from doing so. On the other hand, making a big deal about those errors in an attempt to deny the Holocaust, generally, looks like nothing so much as a way to play games resulting in an overall denial of an event about which there is no legitimate reason to doubt. To draw an analogy: Far too many Americans erroneously believe that the U.S. gained its independence when a bunch of backwoods guys went out with longrifles, hid behind trees, and shot at British and Hessian troops lined up in formations, ignoring the facts that von Steuben, Lafayette, and others trained Washington’s troops in European style combat and that France and Spain both contributed materially to the eventual American victory. Those errors regarding the facts of the war do not mean that the U.S. failed to gain independence. Finding inconsistent reports, (and, particularly, repeating bad information, much of it deliberately false), does not indicate that the Nazis were innocent of murdering 11 to 12 million people, roughly half of them Jewish. ---
**Author:** ![chaika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chaika/32/405_2.png) [@chaika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chaika)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2017, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-holocaust-denial/781963/150 "2017-03-15T15:35:59Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > Do you see how it goes? Oh, yes. I think almost everyone sees exactly how it goes. The tactics of Holocaust deniers tend to be as follows: rely on infuriatingly counterfactual statements that are easily refuted by even a cursory glance at the historical record, while smugly proclaiming that only their skewed version of history is accurate. I do occasionally wonder why Holocaust deniers seem to think it to their benefit to claim that the many deaths from starvation and illness in the concentration camps somehow absolve the Nazis of guilt. No one would dispute that such deaths occurred. But they occurred because the Nazis arrested entire populations and sent them to camps in which conditions were as appalling and deplorable as it would be possible to imagine. And deaths from other causes do not, of course, erase the reality of the gas chambers. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2017, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-holocaust-denial/781963/151 "2017-03-15T15:44:31Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > **Damuri Ajashi** and **Jackmannii** , back off on the personal stuff or take it to **The BBQ Pit**. It is not relevant to the thread. > > [/Moderating] Why not just take the whole thread to the pit. It’s halfway there anyway and responding to the notion I think that jews bring genocide on themselves with “wtf is wrong with you” is not “both sides do it” One statement is FAR more offensive than the other. I think I was incredibly restrained in stopping at something as neutral as “wtf is wrong with you” ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2017, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-holocaust-denial/781963/152 "2017-03-15T15:47:32Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > That’s how [your post](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=20062789&postcount=108) comes off, especially the last line. Them Jews just have a habit of getting into trouble, tsk tsk. :dubious: > > It’d be nice if, instead of trying to minimize former Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s repulsive views, you acknowledged that he’s a flaming bigot and flat-out Holocaust denier.\* > > \*Ahmadinejad’s credibility among rational folk may also have been damaged by statements blaming the West for creating AIDS to weaken poorer countries, suggesting the U.S. was responsible for 9/11 etc. etc. > **[Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Israel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Ahmadinejad_and_Israel#Holocaust_denial)** > > Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was President of Iran from 3 August 2005 to 3 August 2013, and during that time had repeatedly made contentious speeches and statements against Israel. Ahmadinejad refused to call Israel by name, instead calling it the “Zionist regime”. He has called for the "elimination of the Zionist regime". Ahmadinejad took part in a protest called "The World Without Zionism" and has derided Israel on numerous occasions. He has urged regional powers to cut diplomatic and econom Ahmadinej... The focus of Ahmedenijad’s holocaust denial seems primarily concerned with how the holocaust was used to bolster the argument for a jewish state. If Israel had been formed in Argentina, do you think Ahmedenijad would have much of an opinion about the holocaust one way or the other? ---
**Author:** ![Max\_Torque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2017, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-holocaust-denial/781963/153 "2017-03-15T16:20:33Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > For the second time, I’m going to have to call “bullshit” on this, since even modern maternity centers that aren’t in warzones and/or concentration camps would have trouble matching a record like this. Where did you get this stat? I’d never seen it before, either. It seems to come from accounts by and relating to [Stanisława Leszczyńska](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82awa_Leszczy%C5%84ska), who was imprisoned at Auschwitz in April 1943. She was put to work in the maternity ward and ordered to euthanize the newborns. To her credit, she didn’t, and she endeavored to conceal as many as possible. However, before her arrival at Auschwitz, newborns were generally drowned in a barrel, and about 1,500 of the 3,000 live deliveries met the same fate at the hands of another nurse in the maternity ward shortly after their birth. Another 1,000 died of “cold and hunger”. The blue-eyed, Germanic-looking ones were sent away to be placed with German families. As I said earlier, about 30 survived. [Cite](http://www.seattlecatholic.com/article_20050104.html). So, it’s more than a little disingenuous to crow about “3,000 live births!” when, after half of those births, “‘…the mothers were able to hear the characteristic gurgle and splashing water’ as their babies were disposed of.” ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2017, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-holocaust-denial/781963/154 "2017-03-15T20:09:27Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Why not just take the whole thread to the pit. It’s halfway there anyway and responding to the notion I think that jews bring genocide on themselves with “wtf is wrong with you” is not “both sides do it” One statement is FAR more offensive than the other. I think I was incredibly restrained in stopping at something as neutral as “wtf is wrong with you” The thread is not halfway to the Pit and, while some tempers may get bit short, I see no reason to place it where the discussion will be overshadowed by flaring tempers and personal squabbles. Rather than sending it to The BBQ Pit, I would prefer to simply request that posters not make personal comments and not treat emotional statements as personal attacks. Further than that, any discussion of moderating may be taken up in ATMB. [/Moderating] ---
**Author:** ![up\_the\_junction](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/f1d935/32.png) [@up\_the\_junction](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/up_the_junction)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2017, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-holocaust-denial/781963/155 "2017-03-15T20:15:24Z")
I may have missed something; why do we care what one former PM said? ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2017, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-holocaust-denial/781963/156 "2017-03-15T20:18:30Z")
> [@Max\_Torque](#): > > I’d never seen it before, either. It seems to come from accounts by and relating to [Stanisława Leszczyńska](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82awa_Leszczy%C5%84ska), who was imprisoned at Auschwitz in April 1943. She was put to work in the maternity ward and ordered to euthanize the newborns. To her credit, she didn’t, and she endeavored to conceal as many as possible. However, before her arrival at Auschwitz, newborns were generally drowned in a barrel, and about 1,500 of the 3,000 live deliveries met the same fate at the hands of another nurse in the maternity ward shortly after their birth. Another 1,000 died of “cold and hunger”. The blue-eyed, Germanic-looking ones were sent away to be placed with German families. As I said earlier, about 30 survived. [Cite](http://www.seattlecatholic.com/article_20050104.html). > > So, it’s more than a little disingenuous to crow about “3,000 live births!” when, after half of those births, “‘…the mothers were able to hear the characteristic gurgle and splashing water’ as their babies were disposed of.” Interesting, and I can see it being yet another application of the denier’s “lying by specificity”, i.e. there always a qualifier added or implied that might make the statement technically true but also effectively meaningless. Repeatedly saying “there were no death camps in Germany”, for example, when the death camps were actually in Poland and elsewhere. Technically true, but so what? Saying there were 3000 live births at Auschwitz might be technically true, if one deliberately fails to mention the immediate infanticides and the infants who avoid being murdered but soon died of exposure or illness brought on by being in a concentration camp run by guards indifferent to the infants’ well-being. They were alive when they born and that is all that counts. I’ll wager we could kept asking a denier about these points and if he responds, it’ll always be with the same carefully-chosen phrasing: “There were no death camps _in Germany_” and “There were 3000 live births _period_.” Disingenuity is how a poor thought process protects itself. ---
**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:** [March 15, 2017, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-holocaust-denial/781963/157 "2017-03-15T21:08:43Z")
If one is in mind to be technical, both Auschwitz and Chelmno were established in territory annexed by Germany after the conquest of Poland, so they were both in territory recognized as part of Germany by Germans at the time. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2017, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-holocaust-denial/781963/158 "2017-03-15T21:25:57Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > If one is in mind to be technical, both Auschwitz and Chelmno were established in territory annexed by Germany after the conquest of Poland, so they were both in territory recognized as part of Germany by Germans at the time. Ah, but if we operate on the established concept that there were no death camps in Germany, it follows, _ipso facto_, that Auschwitz and Chelmno were not extermination camps, _quod erat demonstrandum e pluribus unum._ ---
**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:** [March 15, 2017, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-holocaust-denial/781963/159 "2017-03-15T21:26:21Z")
I’d also point out that we have confirmation of the gassings from people who were at Auschwitz, including guards. From the diary of Dr. Kramer, a doctor and member of the SS, written while he was there: > [@](#): > > Jews at the Drancy camp > > 2 September 1942 > > Was present for first time at a “special action” at 3 am. By comparison Dante’s Inferno seems almost a comedy. Auschwitz is justly called an extermination camp. > > 5 September 1942 > > This noon was present at a special action in the women’s camp, “Moslems” – the most horrible of all horrors. Hschf Thilo, military surgeon, is right when he said to me today that we are located here in “anus mundi” (anus of the world). > > In the evening at about 8 pm another “special action” with a draft from Holland. Men compete to take part in such actions as they get additional rations – one fifth litre of Vodka, 5 cigarettes, 100 gram’s of sausage and bread. Today and tomorrow (Sunday) on duty. My note: “Musselman” (Muslim) was camp slang for prisoners who were weak or had given up hope/their will to live.) > [@](#): > > 12 October 1942 > > The second inoculation against typhus, strong reaction in the evening (fever). In spite of this was present at night at another special action with a draft from Holland (1,600 persons). Horrible scenes in front of the last bunker. This was the 10th special action (since he had gotten there-CA) > > 18 October 1942 > > In wet and cold weather was on this Sunday morning present at the 11th special action (from Holland). Terrible scenes when 3 women begged to have their bare lives spared > [@](#): > > 8 November 1942 > > Took part this night in 2 special actions in rainy and murky weather (12th and 13th). In the morning I welcomed Hauptscharfuhrer Kitt, a pupil of mine from Essen to the hospital. > Jews from the Zichenau district read a Nazi decree in 1941 > > Another special action in the afternoon, the 14th in which I had participated so far. In the evening a cosy gathering to which I was invited by Hstuf Wirths, now present in camp. We had Bulgarian red wine, plum brandy from Croatia. ---
**Author:** ![Shmendrik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ee7513/32.png) [@Shmendrik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shmendrik)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2017, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-holocaust-denial/781963/160 "2017-03-15T21:26:45Z")
> [@Chen019](#): > > Over 3000 children were safely born in the camp. No deaths. Would that it were true. But unfortunately it is only wishful thinking. Unfortunately. Your philosemitism is a shining example to us all. I can see that you are trying to convince yourself that none of these atrocities happened because the world is a brighter, happier place if that evil never was. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-holocaust-denial/781963.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-dont-understand-holocaust-denial/781963.md?page=9)