Um, except it doesn’t make any sense: extermination by attrition? May be bottom-line less expensive, speaking in gross as it were, but speaking net? The methods chosen were more efficient. Even if they were more expensive. And there were many cost-cutting measures employed along the way.
I call this the “if it doesn’t fit, you must acquit” fallacy. As if simple ignorance as to why OJ’s gloves no longer fit him–hello? bloodsoaked and dried leather might tend to shrink, might it not?–invalidated all of the indisputable DNA evidence against him.
But the evil bastards did some of each. Often, at least, if you looked like you could work you were sent off to do labor; otherwise you were marked for the chambers.
1). The Holocaust never happened.
2). The Jews deserved it anyway.
There’s an excellent chapter in Peter Sagal’s Book of Vice about lying. He goes through showing how someone could deny that Massachusetts doesn’t exist.
Just yesterday I happened to be speaking to an Auschwitz survivor. When he arrived, his sister was along with three small children (along with his parents, other siblings etc.) Old time inmates approached the transport and called out “all small children should stay with their grandparents”, knowing that this was the only way that any of such families would survive. His sister didn’t realize the import though, and kept her kids with her - they were all smoke a few hours later (along with the parents and several younger siblings - others died later).
Once you were processed and assigned a number etc. you didn’t have a choice of where to stay, or much else either FTM. The crucial time when choices made a difference was at the initial “selektztia”. If you came before the Mengele (or whoever was doing it) as a young unattached healthy looking person you were likely to be assigned to the labor camp division. If you came as a mother of small children you would be assigned to the gas chambers with the children.
I’ve heard other people say similar things (in print, not in person as in this case).
[One guy had his teenage daughter assigned to the labor section, while his wife and younger children were assigned to the gas. But he told his daughter to sneak in with his wife’s group, so as to be able to help with the younger children, and she was gassed along with them. Of course, this guy had no idea at the time that one column was labor and the other gas - but he had to live for the rest of his life with the knowledge that he had caused his daughter’s death.]