The holocaust is a hoax ....

[mlees]

@Allan_Gurfinkle

There is clearly a mind boggling hoax involved. At Auschwitz the guides lead people through the room with the unsealed office doors, one with a plate glass window, and tell them that it was used to gas Jews. The only sane response to such an absurdity is to laugh out loud. No one does. This is a simple, irrefutable, FACT.

I dont’ understand. What is THE FACT?

There is an unsealed door there? There’s windows in the doors/walls? So what? People asphyxiate themselves in their garages all the time. The building doesn’t have to be labratory grade air tight. Just air tight enough to impede proper air circulation is sufficient, I think.

I’m also curious why the lack of laughter deserves mention. I personally went through the Hiroshima Museum and Peace Park. I didn’t laugh. What does that indicate? Not much, logically speaking…

[Cervaise]

@ivylass

I guess a bake sale was not feasible.

Of course not. Authentic bagels are steamed.

[XT]

BTW, it’s not the Master, but here is the Straightdope’s version of Holocaust denial:

People who try to use history as a political tool rather than a search for the truth often don’t care whether something is correct or not. The message is the important thing, not the facts.

Holocaust deniers use a wide variety of claims to try to back up their version of history. Their thinking seems to be that if they can poke a hole in one small area, historical support for the Holocaust will collapse (an attitude they have in common with creationists). But that’s just not the way it works.

Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman describe the way proper historical study works in their recent book, Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It? Confirmation of the Holocaust, as with most things in history, comes not from a single fact or document, but through a convergence of many different lines of evidence, just as it does in science. They write, “The Holocaust was a myriad of events in a myriad of places and relies on myriad pieces of data that converge on one conclusion.” So even if a denier can find fault with one small piece of information, or two historians differ in the way they interpret some data, that doesn’t bring all of history crashing down.

Deniers sometimes claim the paperwork was fabricated, or misunderstood, or altered–anything but real. They claim confessions of Nazis were extracted through torture, or that the Nazis falsely confessed because they knew the true story wouldn’t be accepted, so they just went along. This makes no sense. If you knew you were going to be executed, would you just go along with the executioner? Why not at least try to say what really happened? The answer, of course, is that the confessions were accurate, but the deniers don’t want to accept it.

How do the deniers justify their positions? Mostly they don’t. They generally try to attack standard history rather than defend their own ground. For example, they will ask where they can find a signed order from Hitler commanding the extermination of the Jews. There isn’t one, so far as we know. As Shermer and Grobman note, “Now there is a consensus among Holocaust historians that such a document probably never existed.”

“Aha!” the deniers say. “This proves that Hitler didn’t give any order.”

It does no such thing. On the contrary, Hitler may have learned his lesson when he earlier signed documents ordering euthanasia for the handicapped in Germany. When the public found out what was going on, the program was stopped. “Given this precedent, it seems doubtful that Hitler would have committed his signature to any similar document, such as one ordering the Final Solution. From then on any orders to kill people would probably have been verbal.” But, the authors note, there is a great deal of other evidence implicating Hitler, even without the evidence of a signed order.

Here is one on the delousing bit:

Another popular claim from deniers is that the gas chambers were only used for delousing. They try to back this with all sorts of nonsense, such as chemical tests for cyanide that fail to differentiate between the outside and inside of a gas chamber brick that had been exposed to the elements for decades. Or saying that a chamber couldn’t have been used to execute people because the door doesn’t lock, forgetting to mention that the door in question is a replacement, and that the original, lock and all, is now in a museum.

The deniers say the crematoria were just used to dispose of people who died of natural causes, but ignore evidence linking the gas chambers to the crematoria. For example, Shermer and Grobman analyzed some aerial photos of Auschwitz and found that they showed people being marched towards the crematoria buildings. Other evidence shows that these people were likely marching to their doom.

One particularly odd claim is that the term “exterminate” used by the Nazis in dealing with the Jews was improperly translated from the German, and that the Nazis really just wanted to root out the Jews and deport or imprison them. When presented with contrary evidence, the deniers find new ways to twist and turn to avoid admitting that “exterminate” means “exterminate.” It’s amazing, frankly.

-XT

[Jillyvn]

To the OP, I cannot recommend the book Denying History by Shermer and Grobman to you strongly enough. It seems to me that you have a smattering of information and not enough training in history research methodology to understand the contradictions you have found. Amazon.com

It is popular for deniers to grasp onto a few core statements and repeat them again and again in support of their argument, as you have done with the “gas chambers as hoaxes”. The common mistep in your understanding is a failure to realize that while denial is abhorrent to historians, serious academics constantly undertake an examination of the past and often revise historical understanding as a result. This is completely different than revisionism in Holocaust denial. Nonetheless, deniers will often leap onto new understanding in the history of Holocaust as a way to hold up their proof of the hoax: “See? The numbers of the dead were revised! This means it never happened!”.

If you are serious about engaging with the history of the Holocaust, you have some research to do.

To the second generation survivors who have posted in this thread: Thank you for your insight. I cannot imagine how horrible it is to confront this, and yet your voice is becoming more and more important the farther we move away from this tragic event. We are losing our survivor voices, and your voice is critically important in the preservation of memory, as is the Shoah project and others.

[Fish]

Next: there was no atomic bombing in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was instead a very bad fart. Rumors of the subsequent atomic fireball and radiation deaths of thousands were exaggerated.

Oddly, however, you never hear anybody mention the fact that the city that was bombed in 1945 was Los Angeles.

This is downtown Los Angeles in 1929. This is the same city in 1961. Can anybody explain this sudden change except through a nuclear explosion?

Mock.

[Captain_Amazing]

@Allan_Gurfinkle

This is one of the most astounding facts about the holocaust. Zyklon was a commercial insecticide used to delouse clothing not only in the camps but throughout much of Europe. The purpose was to prevent the spread of thypus. No serious person questions this.

However, you can search the USHMM web site and never find any mention of this fact.

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10007387

In Auschwitz II, planners of the “Final Solution,” aiming at greater efficiency, used the pesticide Zyklon B (prussic acid) to kill prisoners by means of gas.

http://www.ushmm.org/outreach/exterm.htm

In others, camp guards threw “Zyklon B” pellets down an air shaft. Zyklon B was a highly poisonous insecticide also used to kill rats and insects.

[Jackmannii]

@Jackmannii

what got you onto this Holocaust denial thing, why is it important to you and what do you hope to gain?

@Allan

…I got interested reading the internet and seeing a post that the stone plaque at Auschwitz was changed from four million died to one and a half million…The Cole video played an important part.

I read Weirnik’s “A Year in Treblinka”

Butz’s “Hoax of the Twentieth Century”

Now I think Muller’s book is the clearest example of hoax writing.

That was enough.

Not enough to explain your views. To borrow another poster’s analogy, you’ve built up an anthill of objections and are focusing obsessively on it while ignoring the mountain of Holocaust documentation that towers over you.

Something has to explain why you are so predisposed to believe as you do. I’m reminded of the youthful Adolf Hitler in Vienna, who claimed to have seen Jews there for the first time and in order to clarify their nature, immersed himself in anti-Semitic literature. Why did he pick only those sources for his “education”?*

@Allan

Why is it important? The holocaust was the justification for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, and the blackmail of the UN to approve the establishment of the state of Israel.

This is the sort of justification I might expect to hear from Iran’s Ahmadinejad and some other Middle Eastern Holocaust deniers. Some of our domestic deniers have latched onto the sympathy-for-the-Palestinians gambit, but it’s far more likely that the overwhelming majority of them are less interested in a two-state solution than in a Final Solution.

*I think a reasonable reading of Godwin’s law would permit such an analogy in this particular case.

[ivylass]

@Captain_Amazing

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10007387

http://www.ushmm.org/outreach/exterm.htm

You accessed USHMM! You’re in for it now!

[Frank]

@BrainGlutton

[hijack]

“Holocaust,” BTW, is an ancient Greek work for a religious sacrifice in which the entire animal is burned. In an ordinary sacrifice, the priests would offer the gods only some sinews and bones wrapped in fat; the meat would be cooked and the priests, the worshipper offering sacrifice, and anyone passing by would get to eat it. Meat was very expensive in ancient times, and you would only celebrate a holocaust if you were very rich and either thanking or petitioning the gods for something really, really important. I recall a story that one Greek mathematician offered a holocaust of 100 bulls after devising a proof that the square root of two is not a rational number.

[/hijack]

Huh. I swear, there is no otherwise valueless thread in GD which one cannot find some tidbit of interest.

[Odesio]

@Allan_Gurfinkle

A short proof that the holocaust , that is, that millions were killed in gas chambers, is a hoax, follows.

Who claims that 6,000,000 were killed is gas chambers? Gas wasn’t the only methods used to kill Jews, gypsies, and homosexuals they were also forced to live in filth and forced to starve so many of them died from malnutrition, exposure to the elements, disease, and of course being worked to death.

If I force a bunch of people into a camp, starve them, force them to work, and they die of malnutrition and disease then I’ve murdered them just as well as I could have with a gun or a gas chamber.
Odesio

[BrainGlutton]

@Frank

Huh. I swear, there is no otherwise valueless thread in GD which one cannot find some tidbit of interest.

Thing is, as you’ll read here, the Jews had a similar ritual in the days when the Jerusalem Temple stood and animal sacrifice was offered there. The Hebrew word olah for such a sacrifice is sometimes translated as “burnt offering” and sometimes as the Greek-derived “holocaust.” I’ve actually seen Holocaust deniers cite that fact as proof that the Holocaust – a Jewish word and ritual – was a hoax.

[pravnik]

@Captain_Amazing

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10007387

In Auschwitz II, planners of the “Final Solution,” aiming at greater efficiency, used the pesticide Zyklon B (prussic acid) to kill prisoners by means of gas.

http://www.ushmm.org/outreach/exterm.htm

In others, camp guards threw “Zyklon B” pellets down an air shaft. Zyklon B was a highly poisonous insecticide also used to kill rats and insects.

Yes, but that wasn’t there before. They read his post and went and added it there really quickly just to make hm look foolish.

[Mr.Excellent]

Here’s a thought: we know the OP is still reading this thread, because he keeps “driving by” to post links and talk about windows. What if we all just started posting “Where did the Jews go?”, over and over again? If we gave him absolutely nothing else to latch on to, might he then offer an answer to that question?

(I’m not saying it would be a good answer, but it would be entertaining.)

Let’s try it:

Allan, where did Europe’s millions of Jews go, if they didn’t die?

[Sampiro]

Where them Jews went?

[Max_Torque]

@BrainGlutton

Yes, Zyklon B was invented as an insecticide. But it kills people too. The pellets, when exposed to air, release hydrogen cyanide gas. It’s the kind of insecticide you would use to fumigate a termit-infested house – with a big tent and “DANGER KEEP OUT!” signs all around; not the kind of insecticide the exterminator would spray in the corners while everybody in the office continues working. It was used to delouse clothes, not people’s skin.

I’m not much of a Holocaust scholar, but I feel I should insert some additional information here, based on my limited reading on the subject: Zyklon-B is indeed an insecticide. However, it is much more efficient at killing people than at killing lice. Killing lice requires up to 72 hours in a closed environment containing a Zyklon-B concentration of up to 16,000 parts per million in the air. By contrast, a concentration of 300 ppm will kill a human being in 15 minutes. cite.

In poking around for information about the original poster’s claims, I’ve uncovered something else that doesn’t appear to be satisfactorily answered in the claims of Holocaust deniers: why did the Germans install crematory ovens in such numbers in the camps that they had a capacity sufficient to incinerate the entire population of the camp in a month or less? From here, citation hotlinks removed and bolding added:

A report from the Bauleitung in June 1943, after all of the new ovens became operational for at least some period, placed the cremation capacity of all 52 ovens at 4756 per day. [20] Deniers have not totally agreed among themselves on this issue, but Butz and Mattogno place the cremation capacity at about 1000 per day, or 30,000 per month. [21] Mattogno claimed the maximum cremation capacity of the six original ovens was 120 per day, [22] even though he was familiar with evidence from another concentration camp that showed a Topf double muffle oven could burn 52 per day or 26 per muffle. [23]

In August 1942, during the worst period of the typhus epidemic, the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp had 21,451 male prisoners. [24] The information on the female population is missing. However, it is known that the female population was about 8200 in December 1942. [25] This means, according to denier calculations, that the camp authorities were building enough crematorium capacity in the summer of 1942 to incinerate the entire population of the camp in a month. According to the Bauleitung, this was enough capacity to cremate the camp’s population in about a week. Even if it is assumed that the Bauleitung’s number of 4756 per day was too high, the question arises as to why the camp authorities thought it necessary to have such a high cremation capacity.

If the plan was to keep people alive, why would such a massive means of body disposal be necessary?

[Captain_Amazing]

@Mr.Excellent

Here’s a thought: we know the OP is still reading this thread, because he keeps “driving by” to post links and talk about windows. What if we all just started posting “Where did the Jews go?”, over and over again? If we gave him absolutely nothing else to latch on to, might he then offer an answer to that question?

He already said, he doesn’t do demographic arguments.

[Enola_Gay]

@Mr.Excellent

Here’s a thought: we know the OP is still reading this thread, because he keeps “driving by” to post links and talk about windows. What if we all just started posting “Where did the Jews go?”, over and over again? If we gave him absolutely nothing else to latch on to, might he then offer an answer to that question?

(I’m not saying it would be a good answer, but it would be entertaining.)

Let’s try it:

Allan, where did Europe’s millions of Jews go, if they didn’t die?

I think the OP believes that the Nazi’s intent was to merely deport the Jews and that’s why they rounded them up and put them in camps. Tragically and unexpectedly, many of the Nazi’s guests at these camps contracted diseases and died, which was not the intent of their hosts.

The OP acknowleges that Jews died of typhus and other “natural” causes, but insists none were intentionally murdered. This is proven beyond a reasonable doubt by the windows in the gas chambers. :rolleyes:

I asked him for clarification in a prior post, which went unanswered, but I’ll try again: Even if there were no gas chambers, wouldn’t locking innocent people up under such deplorable conditions that they starved to death or died of communicable diseases also be a horrific form of genocide?

[Baker]

I once met and spoke with a friend of my grandfather. Both men are now gone. But grandpa’s friend was a photographer that took pictures with the Army, after entering a camp.And to be honest I forget which one, camp that is.

The guy took pictures and spoke with survivors, and they told him about the gas chambers. Afterwards he said he went and threw up, and couldn’t eat properly for days.

Sure, what I’m saying here is second hand! A classic “friend of a friend” bit of testimony. But would the OP have the balls(or female equivalent thereof) to say this gentleman was a liar? That I’m a liar? That all the other photographers, soldiers, and such who came back and spoke of this, are they all liars?

[MovieMogul]

Not “Lying”. Just Confused.

[Baldwin]

Allan – I want you to understand something.

We know we’re not going to change your mind. You’ve devoted, I would guess, years of your life to this delusion; I would surmise that it gives you some kind of emotional boost, and that that’s more important to you than truth, or logic, or decency.

Essentially, we’re just arguing with you for practice. The fact that we can do this civilly, while showing you the kind of intellectual honesty you lack, is a credit to this board, but doesn’t mean we respect you.

At the beginning of the thread, I felt a twinge of something – pity, I think. That’s gone now; I don’t have enough regard for you to even pity you.

ETA: You don’t, by any chance, post elsewhere as “Erik D. Schmid”, do you?