# Questions about Hitler and Nazi Germany's attempted extermination of Europe's Jews **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 18, 2013, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-hitler-and-nazi-germanys-attempted-extermination-of-europes-jews/669168 "2013-09-18T19:02:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 11
**Author:** ![Farin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e79b87/32.png) [@Farin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farin)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2013, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-hitler-and-nazi-germanys-attempted-extermination-of-europes-jews/669168/201 "2013-09-20T02:43:05Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > I won’t speak for Gack but most I’ve heard claim that the Holocaust was a hoax to justify the creation of Israel and to justify the carving up of Germany. Why would we need to carve up Germany? What use was it’s reunification? And the Jew/Palestinian conflict started in what 1918 after WW1?. The Brits pulled out in 1948 and the Israelis used their WW2 training to setup Israel. On their own. Sure, the (brand new) UN said they could have it, but it’s not like it wouldn’t have happened anyway. The violence between Israel and Palestinians only stopped because of WW2… Ow. You hurt my head. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2013, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-hitler-and-nazi-germanys-attempted-extermination-of-europes-jews/669168/202 "2013-09-20T03:00:22Z")
Okay, let me see if I have this right. The gas chamber at Auschwitz wasn’t really a gas chamber, but a Russian re-creation. Therefore, there was no “real” gas chamber at Auschwitz. Therefore there were no gas chambers at any of the other camps, either. Therefore, no gas chambers means no mass extermination, so the true number of those who died in the camps was only about 1/10 the number we’ve been told. And even those people weren’t systematically executed, they just died from overwork, typhus and other non-Holocaust causes. I guess that pretty much wraps things up, except for a couple of questions. Why did the Russians decide to create a fake gas chamber in the first place? Did the Jews tell them to? Did or did not 11 million civilians die while being under Nazi supervision? If they did, how did they all die? If they didn’t, where did they go? ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2013, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-hitler-and-nazi-germanys-attempted-extermination-of-europes-jews/669168/203 "2013-09-20T03:00:46Z")
> [@Gack](#): > > The reasons for starting with the photos have been stated and are valid for my purposes. However, we’ve been there, done that. Time to move on. “Moving on” is only necessary to avoid dealing with the nonsense of your argument. There is no legitimate reason to begin with photos to address the horror of the Nazi plague on Europe. Your hand-waving made no sense and you have not provided any coherent reason to begin with that sort of thing. > [@Gack](#): > > Just as an aside, let’s deal with the 12 million figure, which is 6 million Jews and 5 million non-Jews. Where did the 5 million figure come from? Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstant tells us here … Utter nonsense. The “six million” figure came from Adolf Eichmann. The post-war analyses of Jewish deaths ran from as “low” as 4.8 million to as high as 6.7 million, with most of the initial analyses immediately following the war in the 5.5 to 5.8 million range. Whatever Wiesel may have said, the six million figure did not originate with him. I also doubt that the figure of six million for non-Jews originated with Wiesel. (You quote him as claiming five million, but, again, no one uses that figure.) I do not know why 12 million has become the “standard” figure, but it probably has more to do with the confusion surrounding the agents of other deaths. (How many of the various non-Russian Slavs were killed by Hitler vs being the victims of Stalinist reprisals is hotly debated in some circles.) [This page from the Telegraph](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1481975/The-Holocaust-death-toll.html) gives the non-Jewish total at a bit over seven million. Other counts go as high as 17 million rather than 12 million. > [@Gack](#): > > Let’s proceed. The murder weapon, the gas chambers. So, you are going to start off with a misleading claim that no one but Holocaust Deniers ever makes? Gas chambers were one of multiple methods of execution. The _Einsatzgruppen_, starvation, either direct in ghettos or by forcing malnourished people into labor camps, and other methods were all employed. As for the rest of your claims, they echo the nonsense that David Irving tried to peddle. When challenged by Deborah Lipstadt, he sued for libel in British courts where the only defense against that charge is accuracy, and he lost soundly as his claims were disproved. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2013, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-hitler-and-nazi-germanys-attempted-extermination-of-europes-jews/669168/204 "2013-09-20T03:09:40Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > I won’t speak for Gack but most I’ve heard claim that the Holocaust was a hoax to justify the creation of Israel and to justify the carving up of Germany. Of course the same people who’ll make this claim will also claim that the Jews have been secretly running every major power since the 19th century. Which kind of raises the question of why they would need a secret conspiracy to start their own country. Couldn’t they have just told their minions in London, Paris, Washington, Moscow, and Berlin to just declare Israel was a country back around 1900? Why did they need to go through two world wars to do this if they’ve always been so powerful? The bigger question is why the Jews would want their own country if they were already running several other countries. It seems like they got the short end of the stick if they gave up all of Europe and America for one tiny country in the Middle East. ---
**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:** [September 20, 2013, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-hitler-and-nazi-germanys-attempted-extermination-of-europes-jews/669168/205 "2013-09-20T03:38:16Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Of course the same people who’ll make this claim will also claim that the Jews have been secretly running every major power since the 19th century. Which kind of raises the question of why they would need a secret conspiracy to start their own country. Couldn’t they have just told their minions in London, Paris, Washington, Moscow, and Berlin to just declare Israel was a country back around 1900? Why did they need to go through two world wars to do this if they’ve always been so powerful? > > The bigger question is why the Jews would want their own country if they were already running several other countries. It seems like they got the short end of the stick if they gave up all of Europe and America for one tiny country in the Middle East. Apparently Jews, in addition to being infinitely devious, are also pretty dumb. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2013, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-hitler-and-nazi-germanys-attempted-extermination-of-europes-jews/669168/206 "2013-09-20T03:44:57Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Apparently Jews, in addition to being infinitely devious, are also pretty dumb. Which proves their deviousness. They do dumb things on purpose so they can point to it as proof there’s no conspiracy. It’s the long con. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2013, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-hitler-and-nazi-germanys-attempted-extermination-of-europes-jews/669168/207 "2013-09-20T03:59:57Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > And or course I’m being generous to Cole, but what other cases full of conspiracy theorists have told me, is that **the CTs never go back to correct the bad information they pushed before**. Some do. It’s the basic reason there are so many _Loose Change_ videos. ---
**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:** [September 20, 2013, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-hitler-and-nazi-germanys-attempted-extermination-of-europes-jews/669168/208 "2013-09-20T04:59:09Z")
> [@Lute Skywatcher](#): > > Some do. It’s the basic reason there are so many _Loose Change_ videos. Partially correct, what they do is make cuts and never tell others the reason why an edit or cut was there in the new edition. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2013, 10:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-hitler-and-nazi-germanys-attempted-extermination-of-europes-jews/669168/209 "2013-09-20T10:03:37Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > This thread is incredibly depressing. ☹ > [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > I find it positive myself - Gack’s claims are nonsense and being picked apart. If the response was _supportive_ for Gack, I’d have to reconsider my participation on this message board. I’ll grant you that. What’s depressing is the spew coming from **Gack** coupled with reading the references, both pro and con, and viewing the pictures. I thought we (the human species) had left all this behind us, but it keeps coming back more virulent than ever. ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2013, 10:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-hitler-and-nazi-germanys-attempted-extermination-of-europes-jews/669168/210 "2013-09-20T10:44:10Z")
> [@Musicat](#): > > I’ll grant you that. What’s depressing is the spew coming from **Gack** coupled with reading the references, both pro and con, and viewing the pictures. I thought we (the human species) had left all this behind us, but it keeps coming back more virulent than ever. But it never happened at all! Isn’t that a cheery thought? /sarcasm ---
**Author:** ![shantih](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f6c823/32.png) [@shantih](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shantih)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2013, 11:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-hitler-and-nazi-germanys-attempted-extermination-of-europes-jews/669168/211 "2013-09-20T11:07:23Z")
> [@LavenderBlue](#): > > You’re right. > > But it is just so not an abstraction to me. My mom’s friend had the tattoos on her arm. Does the poster think she and millions of others all decided to get such tattoos deliberately? Laura had such a haunted look on her face sometimes. She was ten years older than my mom and in her teens when the camp was liberated but she might have been a century older than any of us. Her sadness was so palpable. > > I’ve only seen the sort of heavy, thick, quiet veil of grief once before: when a friend recounted that she was childless after losing twins at six months and then finding out during the experience she needed a hysterectomy for ovarian cancer. > > To doubt her story and then make the people who did that her family out to be heroes is an almost unbelievable desecration. I remember reading once that Germans would never forgive the Jews for the holocaust. Oh so true apparently. God, this thread. I’ve read it all through in several stages and looked at most of the links and oh, my dear Lord. I thought I was fairly well-educated on the subject of World War II and the Holocaust and I’m just so filled with horror and sorrow and chilled to my marrow. **LavenderBlue** , I just wanted to address your last two sentences here before I turn off the computer for a while and make myself a hot tea and cuddle my dog and focus on thinking of all the people who, in the face of the worst that human nature has to offer, responded by doing everything they could to help other people survive. I’ve lived in Germany for 17 years now and never, ever, not once, have I heard a German express any emotion about the Holocaust except for shame and horror. What Germany did before and during World War II is taught in every school here, it is a frequent subject of televised documentaries and talk shows, and the scale of it and the human cost are never minimized. I’ve never witnessed the victims blamed for their victimization. **Gack** is not German (I presume) and he certainly doesn’t speak for the Germans. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2013, 11:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-hitler-and-nazi-germanys-attempted-extermination-of-europes-jews/669168/212 "2013-09-20T11:19:50Z")
> [@Gack](#): > > When I started looking into the subject one of the first books I bought was Hilberg’s "The Destruction of the European Jews’. Of course I read both sides. Perhaps you should give it a try. You’ve been proven wrong at every turn and you’re so busy avoiding direct questions by “moving on” that it’s impossible to see you as anything but just another pathetic nazi fanboy appologist (at best). So when are you going to start answering basic questions like: - What do you think happened to the millions (roughly 12) of victims of the Nazi extermination programs? - What was the purpose of concentration camps throughout Europe during WWII? - Why would the world and non-revisionist historians “lie” (according to you) about Nazi crimes against humanity? …and finally, - Are you ever going to get to the point? Because thus far the only good evidence you’ve presented is that you’re not fit to shovel shit from one place to another. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2013, 11:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-hitler-and-nazi-germanys-attempted-extermination-of-europes-jews/669168/213 "2013-09-20T11:58:29Z")
What I always find amusing about these threads is that all the same methods used to challenge the Holocaust can be used to challenge anything, with the same amount of stubbornness. **I can just as easily spend 500 pages of thread claiming the American Civil War never happened.** ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2013, 12:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-hitler-and-nazi-germanys-attempted-extermination-of-europes-jews/669168/214 "2013-09-20T12:04:01Z")
> [@Gack](#): > > And, I actually tried this, put a chicken in the bottom of my Weber with no charcoal, sprayed it with charcoal lighter fluid, lit it, kept spraying, etc. The chicken was hardly singed. I know **Gack** has repudiated this test but for some reason right now I’m hearing Johnny Cochrane saying “If the chicken ain’t fried, nobody died”. We need a thread somewhere for things like the above and the “paper towel roll test” to cover those “definitive scientific experimental proofs” that people post here from time to time. These too must be preserved for posterity, lest we forget. ---
**Author:** ![Farin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e79b87/32.png) [@Farin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farin)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2013, 12:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-hitler-and-nazi-germanys-attempted-extermination-of-europes-jews/669168/215 "2013-09-20T12:06:37Z")
> [@Gyrate](#): > > We need a thread somewhere for things like the above and the “paper towel roll test” to cover those “definitive scientific experimental proofs” that people post here from time to time. These too must be preserved for posterity, lest we forget. If we record all of the scientifically-lacking research, wouldn’t we not have space for the actual science? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2013, 12:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-hitler-and-nazi-germanys-attempted-extermination-of-europes-jews/669168/216 "2013-09-20T12:07:24Z")
> [@Gack](#): > > _The great majority of the millions allegedly exterminated were East European – not German or West European – Jews. For that reason study of the problem via population statistics has been difficult to impossible, but it is a fact that there are no longer large communities of Jews in Poland. However, the Germans were only one of several parties involved in moving Jews around. The Soviets deported virtually all of the Jews of eastern Poland to their interior in 1940. After the war, with Polish and other Jews pouring out of the East into occupied West Germany, the Zionists moved large numbers to Palestine, and the United States and other countries absorbed many Jews, in most cases under conditions making impossible a numerical accounting. Moreover, the Polish borders were changed drastically at the end of the war; the country was literally moved west._ Plus they probably lost a bunch down the back of the couch. I don’t know about you but I’m always finding Jews whenever I check under the couch cushions. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2013, 12:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-hitler-and-nazi-germanys-attempted-extermination-of-europes-jews/669168/217 "2013-09-20T12:09:11Z")
> [@Farin](#): > > If we record all of the scientifically-lacking research, wouldn’t we not have space for the actual science? 🙂 Just the ones actually proposed on this messageboard. I’m seeing a “Great Dopers of Science” thread in the making. ---
**Author:** ![Gack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ecccb3/32.png) [@Gack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gack)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2013, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-hitler-and-nazi-germanys-attempted-extermination-of-europes-jews/669168/218 "2013-09-20T12:49:22Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > Utter nonsense. The “six million” figure came from Adolf Eichmann. The post-war analyses of Jewish deaths ran from as “low” as 4.8 million to as high as 6.7 million, with most of the initial analyses immediately following the war in the 5.5 to 5.8 million range. Whatever Wiesel may have said, the six million figure did not originate with him. I also doubt that the figure of six million for non-Jews originated with Wiesel. (You quote him as claiming five million, but, again, no one uses that figure.) I do not know why 12 million has become the “standard” figure, but it probably has more to do with the confusion surrounding the agents of other deaths. (How many of the various non-Russian Slavs were killed by Hitler vs being the victims of Stalinist reprisals is hotly debated in some circles.) [This page from the Telegraph](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1481975/The-Holocaust-death-toll.html) gives the non-Jewish total at a bit over seven million. Other counts go as high as 17 million rather than 12 million. I was not referring to the six million Jews killed, I was referring to the figure of five million non-Jews killed. The link is to an article by holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt who reveals that this number, the five million, was made up out of thin air by S. Wiesenthal. ---
**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:** [September 20, 2013, 12:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-hitler-and-nazi-germanys-attempted-extermination-of-europes-jews/669168/219 "2013-09-20T12:56:27Z")
> [@Gack](#): > > I was not referring to the six million Jews killed, I was referring to the figure of five million non-Jews killed. The link is to an article by holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt who reveals that this number, the five million, was made up out of thin air by S. Wiesenthal. Read the post again; **tomndebb** addressed this in his post. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2013, 12:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-hitler-and-nazi-germanys-attempted-extermination-of-europes-jews/669168/220 "2013-09-20T12:56:27Z")
> [@Gack](#): > > I was not referring to the six million Jews killed, I was referring to the figure of five million non-Jews killed. The link is to an article by holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt who reveals that this number, the five million, was made up out of thin air by S. Wiesenthal. [This Deborah Lipstadt?](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deborah_Lipstadt) Right. :rolleyes: [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-hitler-and-nazi-germanys-attempted-extermination-of-europes-jews/669168.md?page=10) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-hitler-and-nazi-germanys-attempted-extermination-of-europes-jews/669168.md?page=12)