New Work on Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka Online

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michael mills
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Re: New Work on Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka Online

#31

Post by michael mills » 04 Jan 2012, 21:38

Your apparent desired interpretation, that steam related to disinfection facilities in a transit camp, is a denialist interpretation as far as we are concerned.
The denialist interpretation is that the three camps Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka were transit camps with disinfestation facilties using steam, which were misinterpreted as homicidal devices.

My interpretation is not that at all.

It is that descriptions of genuine transit camps with steam disinfestation facilities became confused with descriptions of the extermination camps at a very early stage, when the both the Polish and Jewish Underground began to try to collect information about the mysterious new camps to which Jews were being shipped and disappearing.

Such a confusion is easy to understand, since the newly built camps outwardly resembled standard transit camps, which were divided into a clean side and a dirty side, with the disinfestation facility situated on the divide. The new camps followed the same pattern; for example, Yankel Wiernik describes Treblinka as being divided into two halves separated by a fence, with the first gas chamber situated on that fence, with the entry on one side and the exit for the bodies on the other.

The homicidal gas chambers also resembled disinfestation chambers, with an entry on one side (for infested clothing or for living victims) and the exit on the other side (for disinfested clothing or bodies of victims).

The resemblance of the new camps into which Jews were disappearing, and presumably being killed, was not coincidental, but most probably due to the fact that the German constructors of the extermination camps modelled them directly on standard transit camps (because they had nothing else to model this entirely new installation on).

The most likely reaction of observers was that if these new camps looked like transit camps, with which the observers were already familiar, but Jews were going into them but not coming out, then the Germans must have found a way of using the steam disinfestation facilities to kill people.

It was obviously a mystery to Polish and Jewish observers how steam could be used homicidally; one theory that was developed to explain it is that the steam entering the chamber forced out the air, so that the victims suffocated.

In summary, the denialist view is : the camps at Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka resembled standard transit camps, therefore they were ordinary transit camps, using steam disinfestation facilities, and not killing centres of any sort.

My view is that the camps at Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka resembled standard transit camps simply because in their design and layout they were modelled on such camps, with the standard facilities adapted for a homicidal purpose. Observers also noticed the resemblance, and jumped to the conclusion that the adaptation of the camp design to a homicidal purpose also included the adaptation of the disinfestation agent, steam, to that homicidal purpose.

The mysterious delayed action gas, which according to an early report of the Polish Underground was used at Treblinka II, is most likely to be explained by confusion between the new camp near Treblinka I, at which transports of Jews from Warsaw were observed to be terminating and the Jews disappearing, and a normal transit camp somewhere else. Possibly an agent of the Polish Underground, sent to look for the new camp near Treblinka I, found his way to at transit camp somewhere where he observed people getting off a train, going into a building like a bathhouse and coming out the other side, and then disappearing into another part of the camp. In the mistaken belief that he had seen the new Treblinka camp, he reported back to the Polish Underground what he had observed. Since the Polish Underground had correctly concluded, on the basis of what had already been observed at Belzec and Sobibor, that the transports of Jews arriving at the new Treblinka camp were being killed there, it interpreted this new item of information as indicating the use of some sort of delayed-action gas, which did not take effect until after the still-living and conscious victims had walked out of the gas chamber on their own feet.
Last edited by michael mills on 05 Jan 2012, 05:03, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: New Work on Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka Online

#32

Post by Terry Duncan » 05 Jan 2012, 01:46

It is that descriptions of genuine transit camps with steam disinfestation facilities became confused with descriptions of the extermination camps at a very early stage, when the both the Polish and Jewish Underground began to try to collect information about the mysterious new camps to which Jews were being shipped and disappearing.
Why would the Polish or Jewish Underground become confused about the sites? The sites were not small, and not particularly numerous. How many camps the size of the Treblinka camp were in the area that could have been confused with it? If there were only two camps and the underground reported two camps, there can be little confusion.

I agree there can be confusion in what was witnessed, that your thoughts on mistaken reports originating from people observing one process and reporting it as another, but is that the only possible explanation?
It was obviously a mystery to Polish and Jewish observers how steam could be used homicidally; one theory that was developed to explain it is that the steam entering the chamber forced out the air, so that the victims suffocated.
Stand in front of a pipe leaking super-heated steam and you will find it far from impossible to kill with steam. Even ignoring the direct application of steam, would it not be possible to apply steam to a crowded room and increase the temperature to a point people died from heat exhaustion?


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Re: New Work on Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka Online

#33

Post by michael mills » 05 Jan 2012, 04:54

Why would the Polish or Jewish Underground become confused about the sites?
That fact is that there were clear cases of such confusion.

For example, the account of the deportations from Warsaw published in the Jewish press in early 1943, written by the two Jewish members of the National Council of the Polish Government-in-Exile, Szwarcbart and Zygielbojm, and stated to have been based on the report of a "Polish officer" who had recently left Poland, claimed that the Jews deported from Warsaw were taken to a "sorting camp", from which they transferred to the Belzec camp and killed there by electricity or gas.

That was a clear case of confusion between Belzec and Treblinka, and it is not hard to see why such confusion might have arisen. Szwarcbart and Zygielbojm obviously knew about the existence of a killing centre at Belzec, and that Jews had been taken there since early in 1942. Apparently they did not yet know of the existence of Treblinka, and perhaps not of Sobibor either, and that is why when they received reports of Jews being deported from Warsaw, they assumed that those Jews were being taken to Belzec, the extermination camp they already knew about.

It is often assumed that the "Polish officer" who was claimed by Szwarcbart and Zygielbojm as the source of their account was Karski, and the report referred to was the one given to him by the two Jewish leaders he met in Warsaw, before he left for London. However, both the Polish and Jewish Underground in Warsaw were well aware that the Jews deported from there were not moving in the direction of Belzec at all, but were moving out along the Warsaw-Bialystok railway line to Malkinia, and ending up at a camp near the established labour camp at Treblinka, so it is unlikely that the misidentification would have been made by the two Jewish leaders who met Karski.

There is another good reason why there could have been confusion between the operation of the new mysterious camps that had been appeared at Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka, and that of existing familiar transit camps.

In the period before the commencement of the deportations of the Jews of the Generalgouvernement to the three extermination camps under Globocnik's command, it was quite common for groups of Jews to be taken from place to place for forced labour, eg to be taken from ghettos to labour camps and then returned to the ghettos. As part of that movement, it was common for the Jews being transported to go through transit camps where they and their clothing were put through a disinfestation process, which would have then become common knowledge among the Jewish population.

(There is a German document from 1940 published in the 1943 book "The Black Book of Polish Jewry", that refers to Jews returning from a labour camp going through disinfestation at a transit camp).

Given that at the beginning of the deportation of Jews unfit for labour to extermination camps in March 1942, the German Government policy was to retain the fittest 40% of the Jewish population of the Generalgouvernement for forced labour, so it is possible that at the same time as large numbers of Jews began to be sent continuously and regularly to Belzec, then Sobibor, and finally Treblinka, to be killed there, smaller numbers of Jews selected for labour continued to be moved from place to place and to go through transit camps and disinfestation in the process.

Thus there could have been a period in the early and middle months of 1942 when (large) groups of unfit Jews were being taken to the extermination camps and disappearing there, and (smaller) groups of fit Jews were moving through transit camps, with the result that observers at first confused the two separate movements.

Thus, it could quite easily have occurred that an agent of the Polish Underground, sent to observe transports of Jews travelling from Warsaw to the new camp at Treblinka that had suddenly appeared out of nowhere, actually followed a transport of fit Jews being taken for forced labour, and observed it going through disinfestation in a bathhouse in a transit camp, which he mistakenly thought was the new camp about which rumours were flying, and which was already correctly assumed to be a place of mass killing like the Belzec camp that had been known about for several months.

Such a misidentification of a transit camp with the extermination camp at Treblinka would have been assisted by the fact that at the very time that transports of Jews began to move from Warsaw to Treblinka, there were also transports of Jews being sent in the same direction for forced labour. For example, at least one transport of Jews from Warsaw arrived in Minsk in July 1942, to work for the Luftwaffe; we know about it because Kube was extremely angered by the fact that Jews were being sent into his domain against his will, and he complained about it in writing. That transport must have in the first part of its journey followed exactly the same route as the transports going to Treblinka, along the Warsaw-Bialystok railway line, then along the line from Bialystok to Wolkowysk, Slonim, Baranowicze, Koidanov and finally Minsk.

There is a further reason why the Polish Underground remained confused for some time about the actual killing methodology used at the Globocnik camps, even after it had received early reports, most probably originating with the Ukrainian auxiliaries who mixed freely with the local Polish population, that the buildings like bathhouses in which the Jews died were connected to engines taken from vehicles. That reason is also referred to in the critique, namely that due to the low level of motorisation in Poland there was not widespread knowledge of how vehicle motors worked, and in particular that the exhaust of such motors was pontentially lethal due to its carbon monoxide content.

That lack of knowledge is shown in one of the early Polish reports on Treblinka, which states correctly that the Jews were killed in a chamber with a poison pumped into it by an engine taken from a motor vehicle, but surmises that the poison was added to the engine fuel. Obviously the observers on whose information the report was based simply did not know that the engine exhaust in itself could be lethal.

Given that lack of knowledge about how engine exhaust could be used homicidally, it is no surprise that for some time the Polish Underground clung to the technology it was familiar with, the use of steam for disinfestation (they had been familiar with it at least since the First World War, when the German occupiers used it on a large scale), which they assumed the Germans must somehow have adapted to a homicidal use in a way that they, the Polish Underground, could only guess at.

The above must be differentiated from the denialist thesis, which is that the three camps Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka were actually transit camps, no different from already existing transit camps at which disinfestation with steam was regularly practised, that the movement of Jews to them was no different from the existing movement of Jews through transit camps for labour deployment, albeit on a much greater scale, and that the descriptions of mass-killing by steam at those camps was simply a misinterpretation of disinfestation by steam.

That thesis is simplistic and contrary to demonstrable historical facts. My own thesis is more complex, is not in disagreement with any known historical facts, and is based on the sort of normal human error which is entirely to be expected in the confused situation in the first months of 1942.

Such human error was still in evidence at the end of the war, when the reality of the mass extermination of Jews was well known. When US forces captured the Dachau Concentration Camp, they filmed the small disinfestation chambers that used Zyklon-B, which they mistakenly believed were THE homicidal gas chambers thatthey had heard about, and presented them to the world as such, a total misidentification.

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Re: New Work on Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka Online

#34

Post by little grey rabbit » 05 Jan 2012, 06:32

It seems to me that Mr Mills might be onto something here.

After all, if these disinfection chambers were equipped with hot air dryers that doubtless had temporary generators that produced the electricity to power these hot air blowers.

All then was needed to convert these disinfection chambers into weapons of mass destruction was to unplug the hot air outlet and plug in the diesel generator exhaust outlet (perhaps first restricting air supply to the motor to push up the carbon monoxide concentration).

The only question that then remains for historical research - and I welcome input from the HC team - is what was the precise date for switch from pumping in hot air to dry deportees to pumping in lethal gas. Since it appears the technology involved in a death camp and a delousing camp was the same, only varying by switching which outlet pipe went where.

There must have be some sort of speech or public signal given that could help us date this switch precisely - sort of a "I have a steam" speech.

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Re: New Work on Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka Online

#35

Post by michael mills » 05 Jan 2012, 07:10

I do not think there were ever disinfestation devices installed at any of the three camps under Globocnik.

The camp adjacent to the Belzec railway station had in fact been a sort of primitive transit camp in late 1939 for Jewish refugees crossing into the Soviet Zone of Occupation, but I do not think any disinfestation process was ever carried out there.

That camp was left more or less abandoned until about October 1941, when SS men reappeared at the site and began the construction of new buildings. In my own opinion, it has not been proved definitively one way or the other whether that construction work was already designed to be part of a mass-killing facility, or whether at the time of its commencement it was designed to support the plan for a mass deportation of Jews into conquered Soviet territory, which was the plan that Heydrich's personnel had been working on since early that year (1941), and was converted to a homicidal purpose subsequent to decisions made at an indeterminate time in early 1942, before the camp actually started operation.

The jerry-built nature of the first homicidal gas-chamber at Belzec is consistent with such an interpretation. If that interpretation is correct, then it is possible that the Sobibor camp was also originally conceived of as a way station in the planned deportation program. However, Treblinka II must always have been designed as an extermination camp, from the time the decision to construct it was made, since by that time Belzec had already started operation as a killing centre (or was about to), and Sobibor was being constructed as such.

What I do suggest is that the homicidal gas chambers constructed at Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka were designed on the model of disinfestation chambers, the only major change needed being to substitute a connection bringing a poisonous gas into the chamber for the connection for introducing steam.

Standard transit camps were divided into a "dirty side" where people arrived, and a "clean side", which they entered after undergoing disinfestation, and from which they departed the transit camp. The two sides were sealed off from each other by a fence, to prevent newly arriving people or their belongings from getting into the "ckean side" before undergoing disinfestation.

The disinfestation facilities were situated on the dividing fence, with the entry on the "dirty side" and the exit on the "clean side". It is easy to see how that standard layout and design could be adapted to a homicidal purpose; the dividing fence would prevent new arrivals held in the arrival area from seeing into the departure area where the bodies of those killed were being disposed of, the separate entrance and exit doors of the gas chambers would allow the bodies to be taken out without being seen by the new arrivals.

All that needed to be done in the design of the gas chambers was to replace the steam producing and introduction devices with poison gas production and introduction devices. That replacement was most probably done at the design stage rather than at the construction phase.

Basing the design and layout of the extermination camps and gas chambers on standard transit camps with bathing and disinfestation facilities also well served the purpose of camouflage, helping to deceive new arrivals that they actually were at a transit camp.

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Re: New Work on Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka Online

#36

Post by Hecht » 05 Jan 2012, 12:53

nickterry wrote:
Hecht wrote:
nickterry wrote:
However, there are selections available from the scanned research files of Jules Schelvis which can be downloaded from NIOD via archieven.nl. There are 52 PDFs of 200-300 pages, a substantial collection of material.

NIOD collection 804 – Jules Schelvis papers on Sobibor (52 PDFs)
http://www.archieven.nl/nl/db?miview=in ... micode=804
Thanks for the reply, but seems like I can't find the download link to those PDF on the page provided.
ah you need to browse around the page a bit. The links are buried under 'inventaris', and then you open up the concertina menus. And then should see images of cover pages - click on those to download

Well, I've tried but I cannot see the images of the cover pages.
Do I need to be logged in maybe? any registration required?

Many thanks again

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Re: New Work on Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka Online

#37

Post by little grey rabbit » 05 Jan 2012, 13:11

Hecht.

1. Open Dr Terry's link
2. Click on the menu item "inventaris" on the left hand side. This should open another menu with 5 items Openbarheit ....Inventaris
3. In this "inner menu" click on the "x" next to inventaris. This should open a further menu with 9 items.
4 In this "innermost menu" click on "x" next to the item that interests you eg "SS's van Aktion Reinhardt" or "Processen"
This should open some images of cover pages - which can be clicked and opened directly, but note there may be further trees to negotiate down still.

I would pay particularly attention to the testimony of Erich Bauer and how he stresses firmly that from late 1942 the gas chambers were rebuilt and a diesel, specifically diesel motor was installed.

Although I am sure the HC team have dealt with this aspect of Bauer's testimony comprehensively!

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Re: New Work on Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka Online

#38

Post by Hecht » 05 Jan 2012, 13:16

little grey rabbit wrote:Hecht.

1. Open Dr Terry's link
2. Click on the menu item "inventaris" on the left hand side. This should open another menu with 5 items Openbarheit ....Inventaris
3. In this "inner menu" click on the "x" next to inventaris. This should open a further menu with 9 items.
4 In this "innermost menu" click on "x" next to the item that interests you eg "SS's van Aktion Reinhardt" or "Processen"
This should open some images of cover pages - which can be clicked and opened directly, but note there may be further trees to negotiate down still.

I would pay particularly attention to the testimony of Erich Bauer and how he stresses firmly that from late 1942 the gas chambers were rebuilt and a diesel, specifically diesel motor was installed.

Although I am sure the HC team have dealt with this aspect of Bauer's testimony comprehensively!
Many thanks Rabbit, I should have some sort of brain impedment lately.

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Re: New Work on Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka Online

#39

Post by Terry Duncan » 05 Jan 2012, 15:27

Michael,

I think you have misunderstood my point. What I meant was that although some reports may have not identified the actual killing method, it does not mean that because of this they cannot have identified the correct camp or its purpose. It is perfectly possible to have identified Treblinka's extermination camp but thought the method used was steam. By the same token, presumably a transit camp would have been possible to identify as it would have both incoming and outgoing consignments of people rather than just incoming. Confusion over method does not mean confusion over purpose.

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Re: New Work on Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka Online

#40

Post by michael mills » 05 Jan 2012, 23:54

Yes, the Polish Underground correctly deduced from the outset that the new camp on the spur line from Treblinka station was a place where the trainloads of Jews being sent from Warsaw were being killed en masse and their bodies disposed of by burial.

They already had before them the example of Belzec, which they had known about for several months, and which they knew was a place where trainloads of Jews disappeared into thin air, obviously being killed and their bodies disposed of. What they were not certain of was the killing method; there were suggestions of poison gas in chambers, of steam in chambers, of poison gas in the closed waggons of the trains.

My suggestion is that the theory about steam being used as the killing agent arose from the knowledge of steam being used for disinfestation; since the buildings into which Jews arriving at the camp at Belzec were observed being taken and then disappearing closely resembled the buildings used for disinfestation at transit camps, the Polish Underground concluded that those buildings contained steaming devices that the German operators had somehow adapted to a homicidal use.

My suggestion of misidentification of a transit camp as the new killing centre at Treblinka relates only to the early (August 1942) Polish Underground report about a delayed-action gas being used as the killing methodology at Treblinka.

It was precisely because the Polish Underground had deduced from the outset the homicidal purpose of the new camp at Treblinka that they interpreted a description of what an observer had seen at a transit camp, misidentified by that observer as the new Treblinka camp, as being the killing methodology.

The sequence of events could have gone like this:

1. The Polish Underground receives reports from observers in the field that the trainloads of Jews being deported from Warsaw arrive at a camp on the spur line from Treblinka station, where they disappear.

2. It receives further reports from local people who have talked to off-duty Ukrainian guards stationed at that camp that the Jews are taken into a building where they are killed, and their bodies then buried in large graves.

3. It sends an agent to follow a convoy of Jews from Warsaw to observe what happens.

4. The agent follows a convoy to a camp, where he sees the Jews taken off the train, going into a building, coming out the other side, and going to another part of the camp where he cannot see them.

5. The agent reports back to the Underground in Warsaw that he followed a convoy to a camp he believes to be the new Treblinka camp, and describes what he saw.

6. The agents of the Underground conclude that what the observer saw must be the killing methodology being used at the Treblinka camp. Since they had already received reports that the Jews arriving at the Treblinka camp were taken into a building where they were killed, they explain the fact that the observer had seen Jews coming alive out of the building into which he had seen them being taken as meaning that the killing agent must have a delayed action.

The description of the supposed delayed-action gas occurs in only one early report, so the Polish Underground presumably realised very quickly that what their observer had seen must have happened at some camp other than Treblinka, and was not the actual killing methodology used there.

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Re: New Work on Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka Online

#41

Post by wm » 06 Jan 2012, 00:31

Did any of the camps in that area have a steam disinfection and delousing facility?

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Re: New Work on Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka Online

#42

Post by michael mills » 06 Jan 2012, 04:23

Just a nit-picking comment on translation.

On page 101 we find this sentence:
...Bechtolsheim’s order that Jews had to “vanish from the flat land and the Gypsies too have to be exterminated”....
The words "flat land" are apparently a word-for-word translation of the German "das flache Land", which actually means "the open countryside" or "rural areas", as opposed to urban areas.

In the expression "das flache Land", the word "Land" is used in the same sense as the phrase "auf dem Lande", which means "in the countryside", ie not in a town. In English we use "country" in exactly the same way, as in such expressions as "I live in the country" = not in the city.

A better translation of the above sentence, more accurately conveying its actual meaning, would be:

"Jews had to vanish from rural areas".

Hope that helps.

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Re: New Work on Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka Online

#43

Post by little grey rabbit » 06 Jan 2012, 06:52

michael mills wrote:Just a nit-picking comment on translation.

On page 101 we find this sentence:
...Bechtolsheim’s order that Jews had to “vanish from the flat land and the Gypsies too have to be exterminated”....
The words "flat land" are apparently a word-for-word translation of the German "das flache Land", which actually means "the open countryside" or "rural areas", as opposed to urban areas.

In the expression "das flache Land", the word "Land" is used in the same sense as the phrase "auf dem Lande", which means "in the countryside", ie not in a town. In English we use "country" in exactly the same way, as in such expressions as "I live in the country" = not in the city.

A better translation of the above sentence, more accurately conveying its actual meaning, would be:

"Jews had to vanish from rural areas".

Hope that helps.
It is, as I have suggested before, in my view a major weakness is that the HC team appear not to have consulted the documents they quote neither in their entirety, nor in their file context, nor in their original language. They appear to have simply lifted this reference from Christopher Browning's The Origin of the Final Solution page 289 (where the identical mistranslation appears) and picked up the file reference from his footnotes to awe the rubes.

At least Christopher Browning does later provide some context that helps us understand this quote, on page 290
Where smaller or larger groups of Jews are encountered on the flat land," Bechtolsheim added, "we can dispose of them either on our own or concentrate them into designated ghettos in larger places where they will be handed over to the civil administration or the SD."
Petra Rentop on page 380 of Arbeitserziehungslager, Durchgandslager, Ghettos, Vol.9 adds more
In den Gebieten um Slonim, Baranowicze und Nowogrodek toeteten die 707 Infanterie Division under Generalmajor Gustav von Bechtolsheim und die ihr unterstellten Einheiten im Herbst 1941 mehrere Tausend Landjuden oder wiesen sie in die Ghettos der Gebietshaupstaedte ein. Der Gebietskommissar von Slonim, Gerhard Erren, bemerkte zu diesen Razzien: "Das flache Land wurde eine Zeitlang sorgfaeltig von der Wehrmacht gesaeubert; leider nur in Orten under 1000 Einwohnern."

Finally, wikipedia brings us the following
„Wo kleinere oder größere Judengruppen auf dem Lande angetroffen werden, können sie entweder selbst erledigt oder aber in Ghettos an einzelnen größeren Orten […] zusammengebracht werden.“

– Befehl Mauchenheims vom 24. November 1941[3]

Im Februar 1943 gab er sein Kommando ab, kam in die Führerreserve und wurde von Anfang April 1943 bis Kriegsende als Inspekteur der Wehrersatz-Inspektion in Heidelberg und danach in Regensburg verwendet. Seine Versuche erneut eine Kommandatur in einem Besatzungsgebiet zu erhalten blieben aufgrund mangelnder Eignung erfolglos.[4]

Nach Kriegsende wurde 1961 aufgrund der Aussage eines ehemaligen Polizeikommandeurs, der Bechtolsheim beschuldigte Judenmorde befohlen zu haben, gegen Bechtolsheim ermittelt. Bechtoldsheim stritt die Anschuldigungen mit dem Argument seine Division hätte weder an Judenmorden teilgenommen noch diese an Polizeieinheiten delegiert ab. Der Untersuchungsrichter sowie die Staatsanwaltschaft meinten, dass nach allgemeiner Erfahrung die Wehrmacht nicht an Judenaktionen beteiligt gewesen wäre und so wurde das Ermittlungsverfahren gegen Bechtolsheim im März 1962 eingestellt.[5]

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Re: New Work on Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka Online

#44

Post by nickterry » 06 Jan 2012, 14:28

little grey rabbit wrote: It is, as I have suggested before, in my view a major weakness is that the HC team appear not to have consulted the documents they quote neither in their entirety, nor in their file context, nor in their original language.
The document cited is this one:
Juden und Zigeuner (siehe Befehl nr 9 vom 28.9.41 ziff 6, Nr 11 vom 4.10.41 ziff 2b, Nr 13 vom 10.10.41 ziff 18). Wie in vorstehenden befehlen angeordnet, müssen die Juden vom flachen Lande verschwinden und auch die Zigeuner vernichtet werden. Die Durchführung grösserer Judenaktionen ist nicht Aufgabe der Einheiten der Division. Sie werden durch die zivil- oder Polizeibehörde durchgeführt, gegebenenfalls durch den Kommandanten in Weissruthenien angeordnet, wenn ihm dazu besondere Einheiten zur Verfügung stehen, oder aber aus Sicherheitsgründen und bei Kollektivmassnahmen. Wo kleinere oder grössere Judengruppen auf dem Lande angetroffen werden, können sie entweder selbst erledigt, oder aber in Ghettos an einzelnen grösseren Orten, die hierzu bestimmt werden, zusammengebracht werden, wo sie dann der Zivilverwaltung bezw. dem S.-D. zu übergeben sind. Bei grösseren Aktionen dieser Art ist vorher die zivile Verwaltung in Kenntnis zu setzen.
Kdt in Weissruthenien Ia, Befehl Nr. 24, 24.11.41, NARB 378-1-698, p.32 (USHMM RG53.002M/2)
Browning actually cites it from a published collection (p.507 note 243: Order No. 24 by Kommandant in Weissruthenien (von Bechtolsheim), November 24, 1941, printed in Benz et al., Einsatz im ‘‘Reichskommissariat Ostland,’’ p. 78.)

Where we have cited documents from another author, we have written e.g.

Jürgen Förster, ‘The Wehrmacht and the War of Extermination against the Soviet Union,’ Yad Vashem Studies 14, 1981, pp.7-33, citing Kommandant in Weissruthenien, Situation Report of February 1-15, 1942, BA-MA WK VII/527 RH 53 – 7/v. 206 RH 26-707/v. 1

Where we have seen the documents ourselves, but it is already known in the literature, we have written

Kommandant in Weissruthenien Ia, Befehl Nr. 24, 24.11.41, gez. v. Bechtolsheim, NARB 378-1-698, p.32; cf. Browning, Origins, p.289.

There are a very few places where this presentation has become garbled; one example is the Erren report cited on the same page (and this will be corrected in version 2).


The critique is a collective work, and thus everyone contributed to everyone else's chapters. The primary chapter drafters made use of whatever materials they had to hand, which was invariably a lot, since the Eichmann Trial documents and Schelvis collection contain a lot of documents online (in the original German). Other material was added in from the research of other group members, some being passed around in scan form, some in typed out excerpt form, some by being edited in. Precisely because the critique is a collective work, we have not affixed author names to individual chapters.

Therefore little grey rabbit's attempted jibe fails, since where we have cited archival documents, they were seen in their original context. Where we have cited Nuremberg or Eichmann Trial documents, then they were seen in those collections, which obviously removed them from the original file context, but we have been able to show where quite a few such documents can be found in their archival files or on NARA microfilms.

michael mills
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Re: New Work on Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka Online

#45

Post by michael mills » 06 Jan 2012, 17:30

I suggest just fixing up the translation.

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