Just to put our esteemed colleague Medorjurgen out of his misery, I will provide some selections from a German translation of Reder's Polish testimony in ZStL: 208 AR-Z 252/59 Bd. 6, Bl. 117-1120.
This translation can be found in Document 164 (c) “Vernehmungen ueber das Vernichtungslager Belzec: Rudolf Reder, Ueberlebender des Lagers, 29.12.1945”, in Longerich’s book “Die Ermordung der Europaeischen Juden” (pp. 362-7).
On the killing process itself, Reder stated:
“"Worin der chemische beziehungsweise der mechanische Vorgang des Mordens von Menschen in den Kammern von Belzec bestand, bin ich nicht imstande anzugeben. Ich weiss nur eines, naemlich, dass aus dem Maschinenraum in jede der Gas-Kammern ein Rohr mit einem Durchmesser von etwa 1 Zoll fuehrte. Die Enden dieser Rohre muendeten in den einzelnen Kammern. Ich kann nicht sagen, ob man durch diese Rohre ein Gas in die Kammern leitete, oder ob man die Luft in den Kammern kondensierte oder die Luft aus den Kammern herauspumpte".
The above passage shows that Reder had no idea how poisoning with CO occurred. He goes on to say something even more significant:
"Ich war wiederholt im Moment der Oeffnung der Tuere auf der Rampe, doch habe ich nie irgendeinen Geruch gespuert und nie hat sich das Betreten der Kammer direkt nach ihrem Oeffnen irgendwie an meiner Gesundheit ausgewirkt. Die Leichen, die in der Kammer lagen, zeigten keine unnatuerliche Faerbung. Alle Leichen sahen wie lebende Menschen aus, zum groessten Teil waren die Augen offen. Nur in wenigen Faellen kam es vor, dass die Leichen mit Kot besudelt waren. Die Luft in den Kammern war nach ihrer Oeffnung rein, durchsichtig und geruchlos. Insbesondere spuerte man darin keinen Rauch und keine Verbrennungsgase des Motors".
This description contradicts the description by Dr August Becker of the use of gas vans on the Russian Front, which refers to the headaches suffered by the men after unloading (a genuine symptom of slight CO poisoning). Further, it conflicts with the fact that persons killed by CO poisoning show a typical cherry-red discolouring; Reder obviously did not notice this.
On the basis of this part of Reder’s testimony, I would conclude that it is unlikely that he ever witnessed a gassing with CO, and his account of the gassing is derived from other sources. One wonders why the Polish interrogators of Reder did not "massage" his testimony to make it more credible. It is possible that they did not have any idea of the physiological effects of CO poisoning (Poland was after all at that time a fairly under-developed country with little experience of motor transport), and they found nothing unusual about Reder's description.
In a later part of his testimony, Reder explained how he came to escape from Belzec, a crucial item, since there was no mass-escape from that camp as there were at Treblinka and Sobibor. This is how he describes it:
“Ende November des Jahres 1942 fuhr ich mit einer SS-Eskorte im Auto nach Lemberg, um Blech einzukaufen. Nach Lemberg kamen wir am Abend, die Nacht verbrachte ich im Gestapo-Gefaengnis. Am naechsten Tag habe ich, immer von den SS-leuten begleitet, die Angelegenheit des Einkaufs von Blech erledigt, und gegen Mittag wurde ich unter der Bewachung eines SS-Mannes, naemlich von Trottwein, in ein Auto gesetzt. Nach einer Weile merkte ich, dass Trottwein seinen Karabiner auf die Seite stellte und einschlief. Ich nuetzte das aus, oeffnete die Tuer und fluechtete”.
This account does not appear credible; it would out of character for an SS-man to doze off and let his prisoner just run away. It appears that Reder, who was one of only two Jews who claimed to have been sent to Belzec and lived to tell the tale, needed to explain the puzzling fact that he was still alive, since he had said in his statement that all Jews sent there were murdered. This comical escape story seems to be the best he could do.
On the basis of the above, I would conclude that Reder was either never a prisoner at Belzec, or else he was there for a period of time, and then transferred to some other place, from where he returned to Poland after the war. The second of these alternatives seems the more likely, given his knowledge of the camp.
But either way, his credibility as a witness to gassing with CO carried out in the Belzec camp is open to question.
One interesting feature of Reder's testimony is that he described the motor situated next to the gas-chambers as a gasoline engine. The whole section of his testimony describing these chambers and the engine-room is significant. Reder says:
"Der Kammer-Bau war aus Beton und hatte ein Flachdach aus Pappe. Dieser Bau war auf einer Erhoehung errichtet, so dass man ihn von dem kleinen Hof her durch Stufen betrat; an seinen laengeren Waenden hatte der Bau eine Art erhoehte Laderampen. Ueber die Stufen vom kleinen Hof her ging man in die Tuere hinein, ueber der eine Tafel mit der Aufschrift “Bade- und Inhalationsraeume” hing sowie eine grosse Blumenschale, so dass diese Dekoration des Eingangs tatsaechlich den Eingang zu einer Kurbadeanstalt vortaeuschte. Von der Eingangstuer lief durch die ganze Laenge des Baus ein Korridor, der auf jeder Seite je drei einfluegelige, massive und an den Fugen dicht schliessende Tueren hatte. Diese Tueren fuehrten zu den fensterlosen Kammern, die auf der gegenueberliegenden Seite, das heisst auf der Seite der von mir vorher beschriebenen erhoehten Laderampen, aus zwei Fluegeln bestehende und seitwaerts auf Schienen laufende Tueren besassen. Auf der gegenueberliegenden Seite des Baus, das heisst hinter der Wand, vor der der Korridor endete, befand sich ein kleines Zimmer, in dem die Maschinen standen. Ich habe persoenlich gesehen, dass in diesem kleinen Zimmer ein Motor mit Benzinantrieb stand, der sehr kompliziert aussah. Ich erinnere mich, dass dieser Motor ein Schwungrad besass, sonst habe ich keine anderen Konstruktions- oder technischen Einzelheiten verstanden. Dieser Motor wurde immer von zwei Maschinisten bedient, und zwar von den Russen aus der bewaffneten Lagerbesatzung. Ich weiss nur, dass der Motor taeglich 4 Kanister Benzin verbrauchte, da naemlich jeden Tag so viel Benzin ins Lager gebracht wurde. Eben bei der Anlieferung von Benzin in den Maschinenraum hatte ich die Gelegenheit gehabt, in seinen Innenraum einen Blick zu werfen."
Reder’s description of the engine as powered by gasoline conflicts with the better-known account by Gerstein, who several times describes it as a diesel.
Was Reder mistaken about the engine? It seems unlikely, as he describes himself as a mechanic and fitter (“Maschinist-Monteur”), who was selected for labour for that reason. He describes how he was given a job by the Lagerleiter, SS-Stabsscharfuehrer Irrmann:
“Mir als Maschinisten trug er auf, den Benzinmotor eines Baggers, mit dem in der unmittelbaren Naehe des Lagers riesige Gruben ausgehoben wurden, zu bedienen. In diesem Charakter arbeitete ich 2 Monate lang. Weitere 2 Monate, das heisst bis Ende November, arbeitete ich als Maurer beim Ausbau der Lagerkueche”.
The above account raises the possibility that the gasoline engine he describes was in fact that of the excavator, not an engine to supply gas to the chambers, and that the gasoline brought into the camp was to supply the excavator. The bottom line is that he does not know what the function of the engine was, since he does not know what the method of killing was.
A further objection to Reder’s account is that if a gassing procedure using a gasoline engine had indeed been implemented at Belzec, the victims would certainly have died of CO poisoning, as a gasoline engine easily produces enough CO to be fatal. However, in that case the victims would have shown all the signs of CO poisoning, such as the cherry-red discolouration, which Reder signally failed to see, and the persons unloading the corpses would have felt the effects of mild poisoning from the remaining CO, which Reder did not experience.
On the other hand, Reder’s description of the inscription “Bade- und Inhalationsraeume” and the flower-pot at the entrance to the building containing the chambers do accord with Gerstein’s account. However, as Gerstein had written his account in April 1945, and died in July, there would have been time for his account to have been transmitted to the Polish authorities by the time Reder gave his testimony in December of that year.
Reder's function as a mechanic servicing the motor of an excavator that was digging trenches "in the immediate vicinity of the camp " (he does NOT say in the camp itself) may provide a clue to Reder's actual connection with Belzec. Belzec camp was situated immediately adjacent to an anti-tank trench that had been dug between 1939 and 1941, when Belzec lay on the demarcation line between the German and Russian zones of occupation. Reder may have been employed on the construction of that ditch, and serviced the excavator at that time;that would be consistent with his statement that the ditches were dug near the camp, not iinside it.
The description of the loading-ramps along the outside of the building containing the chambers is consistent with the plan shown in Tregenza’s article on Belzec published in the Wiener Library Bulletin XXX of 1977. However, the existence of such ramps would have made the removal of corpses difficult, as they would have had to be lowered to ground level so as to be dragged to the mass-graves. In fact, it is quite unclear why a building containing gas-chambers would have had to be built on an “Erhoehung”, requiring the ascent of steps to gain access.
The existence of loading ramps on the side of the building, with large sliding doors opening on to them, suggests that whatever was taken out of the chambers was loaded onto vehicles level with the ramps. The whole description is consistent with a fumigation facility for clothing and other belongings confiscated from the Jews arriving at the camp. After the fumigation procedure, these articles would have been loaded onto vehicles, hence the loading ramps.
(It is noteworthy that Gerstein describes the purpose of his visit to Belzec as the fumigation with Zyklon-B of the clothing stored there, as well as converting the gassing methodology from CO to HCN. Perhaps the building described by Reder was a storehouse for clothing.)
My own conclusion is that Reder did not himself witness the operation of a gas-chamber in which the victims were killed with CO.
Belzec
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michael mills
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<<Just to put our esteemed colleague Medorjurgen out of his misery I will provide some selections from a German translation of Reder's Polish testimony in ZStL: 208 AR-Z 252/59 Bd. 6, Bl. 117-1120.>>
Medorjurgen is actually feeling great – quite to the contrary of Michael Mills, as it seems.
<<This translation can be found in Document 164 (c) “Vernehmungen ueber das Vernichtungslager Belzec: Rudolf Reder, Ueberlebender des Lagers, 29.12.1945”, in Longerich’s book “Die Ermordung der Europaeischen Juden” (pp. 362-7).
On the killing process itself, Reder stated:
“"Worin der chemische beziehungsweise der mechanische Vorgang des Mordens von Menschen in den Kammern von Belzec bestand, bin ich nicht imstande anzugeben. Ich weiss nur eines, naemlich, dass aus dem Maschinenraum in jede der Gas-Kammern ein Rohr mit einem Durchmesser von etwa 1 Zoll fuehrte. Die Enden dieser Rohre muendeten in den einzelnen Kammern. Ich kann nicht sagen, ob man durch diese Rohre ein Gas in die Kammern leitete, oder ob man die Luft in den Kammern kondensierte oder die Luft aus den Kammern herauspumpte".
The above passage shows that Reder had no idea how poisoning with CO occurred.>>
Assuming that death occurred by CO poisoning at all and not by suffocation, why should Reder have had an idea of how that occurred? He was neither a chemist nor a physician, for all I know.
<<He goes on to say something even more significant:
"Ich war wiederholt im Moment der Oeffnung der Tuere auf der Rampe, doch habe ich nie irgendeinen Geruch gespuert und nie hat sich das Betreten der Kammer direkt nach ihrem Oeffnen irgendwie an meiner Gesundheit ausgewirkt. Die Leichen, die in der Kammer lagen, zeigten keine unnatuerliche Faerbung. Alle Leichen sahen wie lebende Menschen aus, zum groessten Teil waren die Augen offen. Nur in wenigen Faellen kam es vor, dass die Leichen mit Kot besudelt waren. Die Luft in den Kammern war nach ihrer Oeffnung rein, durchsichtig und geruchlos. Insbesondere spuerte man darin keinen Rauch und keine Verbrennungsgase des Motors".
This description contradicts the description by Dr August Becker of the use of gas vans on the Russian Front, which refers to the headaches suffered by the men after unloading (a genuine symptom of slight CO poisoning).>>
Which may be related to the fact that a gas chamber was more easily and quickly ventilated than a truck.
<<Further, it conflicts with the fact that persons killed by CO poisoning show a typical cherry-red discolouring; Reder obviously did not notice this.>>
Which may be related to the fact that the victims did not die of carbon monoxide poisoning but, as the testimonies of Dr. Pfannenstiel and Schluch suggest, by suffocation.
<<On the basis of this part of Reder’s testimony, I would conclude that it is unlikely that he ever witnessed a gassing with CO, and his account of the gassing is derived from other sources.>>
A sweeping conclusion that rushes to meet a pre-conceived notion, I would say. After all, Reder’s description largely coincides with that of Karl Alfred Schluch, former member of the SS staff of Belzec,
quoted in Kogon/Langbein/Rückerl et al, Nationalsozialistische Massentötungen durch Giftgas, pages 167/168, after StA München I, AZ: 22 Js 64-83/61 (AZ. ZSL: 208 AR-Z 252/59, Bd. VI, Bl. 1179):
<<One wonders why the Polish interrogators of Reder did not "massage" his testimony to make it more credible. It is possible that they did not have any idea of the physiological effects of CO poisoning (Poland was after all at that time a fairly under-developed country with little experience of motor transport), and they found nothing unusual about Reder's description.>>
The obvious reason is that, contrary to Michael Mills’ hateful contentions, the under-developed Poles didn’t “massage” Reder’s testimonial at all but let it stand just like it was. The reason why Reder said nothing about the pink coloring that goes with carbon monoxide poisoning is obviously that, as the depositions of Pfannenstiel and Schluch suggest, the victims had died not of carbon monoxide poisoning but of suffocation.
<<In a later part of his testimony, Reder explained how he came to escape from Belzec, a crucial item, since there was no mass-escape from that camp as there were at Treblinka and Sobibor. This is how he describes it:
“Ende November des Jahres 1942 fuhr ich mit einer SS-Eskorte im Auto nach Lemberg, um Blech einzukaufen. Nach Lemberg kamen wir am Abend, die Nacht verbrachte ich im Gestapo-Gefaengnis. Am naechsten Tag habe ich, immer von den SS-leuten begleitet, die Angelegenheit des Einkaufs von Blech erledigt, und gegen Mittag wurde ich unter der Bewachung eines SS-Mannes, naemlich von Trottwein, in ein Auto gesetzt. Nach einer Weile merkte ich, dass Trottwein seinen Karabiner auf die Seite stellte und einschlief. Ich nuetzte das aus, oeffnete die Tuer und fluechtete”.
This account does not appear credible; it would out of character for an SS-man to doze off and let his prisoner just run away. It appears that Reder, who was one of only two Jews who claimed to have been sent to Belzec and lived to tell the tale, needed to explain the puzzling fact that he was still alive, since he had said in his statement that all Jews sent there were murdered. This comical escape story seems to be the best he could do.>>
If I had wanted to make up an escape story, I would have made up a more dramatic and heroic one. Reder’s “comic” account actually rings true because of its very banality. Despite Michael Mills’ faith in the character of the SS, the fact is that the staff of Belzec was under enormous stress, some of them approaching nervous breakdowns, as is testified by witnesses from nearby villages who came into contact with them. Under these circumstances, it seems altogether probable that, when once relieved for a while from that stress, an SS man should just have dozed off. Having often struggled with sleep on the highway between Oporto and Lisbon after a night and day of continuous work, I guess I know better than many how easily that happens. The best way to test the veracity of Reder’s account would be to verify whether there was a von Trottwein among the Belzec staff, since Reder could hardly have been accompanying a Belzec guard if he had not been there. I wonder why the dissident historian and expert from Australia hasn’t done that yet.
<<On the basis of the above, I would conclude that Reder was either never a prisoner at Belzec, or else he was there for a period of time, and then transferred to some other place, from where he returned to Poland after the war. The second of these alternatives seems the more likely, given his knowledge of the camp.>>
As demonstrated, there is little if anything in the above that would support Michael Mills’ sweeping conclusions.
<<But either way, his credibility as a witness to gassing with CO carried out in the Belzec camp is open to question.
One interesting feature of Reder's testimony is that he described the motor situated next to the gas-chambers as a gasoline engine. The whole section of his testimony describing these chambers and the engine-room is significant. Reder says:
"Der Kammer-Bau war aus Beton und hatte ein Flachdach aus Pappe. Dieser Bau war auf einer Erhoehung errichtet, so dass man ihn von dem kleinen Hof her durch Stufen betrat; an seinen laengeren Waenden hatte der Bau eine Art erhoehte Laderampen. Ueber die Stufen vom kleinen Hof her ging man in die Tuere hinein, ueber der eine Tafel mit der Aufschrift “Bade- und Inhalationsraeume” hing sowie eine grosse Blumenschale, so dass diese Dekoration des Eingangs tatsaechlich den Eingang zu einer Kurbadeanstalt vortaeuschte. Von der Eingangstuer lief durch die ganze Laenge des Baus ein Korridor, der auf jeder Seite je drei einfluegelige, massive und an den Fugen dicht schliessende Tueren hatte. Diese Tueren fuehrten zu den fensterlosen Kammern, die auf der gegenueberliegenden Seite, das heisst auf der Seite der von mir vorher beschriebenen erhoehten Laderampen, aus zwei Fluegeln bestehende und seitwaerts auf Schienen laufende Tueren besassen. Auf der gegenueberliegenden Seite des Baus, das heisst hinter der Wand, vor der der Korridor endete, befand sich ein kleines Zimmer, in dem die Maschinen standen. Ich habe persoenlich gesehen, dass in diesem kleinen Zimmer ein Motor mit Benzinantrieb stand, der sehr kompliziert aussah. Ich erinnere mich, dass dieser Motor ein Schwungrad besass, sonst habe ich keine anderen Konstruktions- oder technischen Einzelheiten verstanden. Dieser Motor wurde immer von zwei Maschinisten bedient, und zwar von den Russen aus der bewaffneten Lagerbesatzung. Ich weiss nur, dass der Motor taeglich 4 Kanister Benzin verbrauchte, da naemlich jeden Tag so viel Benzin ins Lager gebracht wurde. Eben bei der Anlieferung von Benzin in den Maschinenraum hatte ich die Gelegenheit gehabt, in seinen Innenraum einen Blick zu werfen."
Reder’s description of the engine as powered by gasoline conflicts with the better-known account by Gerstein, who several times describes it as a diesel.>>
Gerstein is not exactly the most credible of witnesses, and unlike Reder he never seems to have seen the engine that was used for gassing himself.
<<Was Reder mistaken about the engine? It seems unlikely, as he describes himself as a mechanic and fitter (“Maschinist-Monteur”), who was selected for labour for that reason. He describes how he was given a job by the Lagerleiter, SS-Stabsscharfuehrer Irrmann:
“Mir als Maschinisten trug er auf, den Benzinmotor eines Baggers, mit dem in der unmittelbaren Naehe des Lagers riesige Gruben ausgehoben wurden, zu bedienen. In diesem Charakter arbeitete ich 2 Monate lang. Weitere 2 Monate, das heisst bis Ende November, arbeitete ich als Maurer beim Ausbau der Lagerkueche”.
The above account raises the possibility that the gasoline engine he describes was in fact that of the excavator, not an engine to supply gas to the chambers, and that the gasoline brought into the camp was to supply the excavator. The bottom line is that he does not know what the function of the engine was, since he does not know what the method of killing was.>>
A possibility, for sure. But why, then, would the engine have been in the engine room and not inside the excavator? It seems that there is more in Reder’s account than Michael Mills would like to show us:
http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/documents/Browning3.htm
While Reder may not have known whether the engine was used to pump gas into the chamber or air out of it, he seems to have been well aware that there was an engine involved in the process and that it was the engine for which he delivered gasoline to the engine room.
<<A further objection to Reder’s account is that if a gassing procedure using a gasoline engine had indeed been implemented at Belzec, the victims would certainly have died of CO poisoning, as a gasoline engine easily produces enough CO to be fatal. However, in that case the victims would have shown all the signs of CO poisoning, such as the cherry-red discolouration, which Reder signally failed to see, and the persons unloading the corpses would have felt the effects of mild poisoning from the remaining CO, which Reder did not experience.>>
While gasoline fumes quickly lead to carbon monoxide poisoning, suffocation is likely to come about even faster when a closed room is filled with the oxygen-poor exhaust of a huge engine. Such seems to have happened in the gas vans, as is suggested by the following passage of Becker’s letter to Rauff of 16 May 1942:
http://www.ns-archiv.de/einsatzgruppen/ ... auff.shtml
My translation:
Yeah, sure, the old “could have been” – nonsense, with not a shred of evidence to support it. As Browning tells us, Reder made his first deposition in December 1945. Any evidence that the Gerstein account was i) at the disposal of Polish authorities at this time and that ii) they confronted Reder with it or made it available to the general public in such a way that Reder could have informed himself about it? And what about Schluch’s account describing some of the bodies with their eyes closed and other with their eyes rolled, and some of them covered with excrements? Did Reder also have an opportunity to read that one before making his deposition?
<<Reder's function as a mechanic servicing the motor of an excavator that was digging trenches "in the immediate vicinity of the camp " (he does NOT say in the camp itself) may provide a clue to Reder's actual connection with Belzec. Belzec camp was situated immediately adjacent to an anti-tank trench that had been dug between 1939 and 1941, when Belzec lay on the demarcation line between the German and Russian zones of occupation. Reder may have been employed on the construction of that ditch, and serviced the excavator at that time;that would be consistent with his statement that the ditches were dug near the camp, not iinside it.>>
Reder’s task was essentially to operate the excavator, but he also seems to have delivered gasoline to the engine room and to have been aware of there being a connection between the motor he witnessed and the gassing, as becomes apparent from the above quote from Browning’s opinion.
<<The description of the loading-ramps along the outside of the building containing the chambers is consistent with the plan shown in Tregenza’s article on Belzec published in the Wiener Library Bulletin XXX of 1977. However, the existence of such ramps would have made the removal of corpses difficult, as they would have had to be lowered to ground level so as to be dragged to the mass-graves.>>
Strange thinking. The ramps would also greatly facilitate the dragging out of the corpses.
<<In fact, it is quite unclear why a building containing gas-chambers would have had to be built on an “Erhoehung”, requiring the ascent of steps to gain access.>>
More bizarre logic. It would certainly be easier to drag the bodies downhill than to drag them at ground level or even uphill, wouldn’t it?
<<The existence of loading ramps on the side of the building, with large sliding doors opening on to them, suggests that whatever was taken out of the chambers was loaded onto vehicles level with the ramps.>>
Which would mean that the ramps could either be lifted in order to load the clothes unto vehicles or lowered in order to drag the bodies over them manually.
<<The whole description is consistent with a fumigation facility for clothing and other belongings confiscated from the Jews arriving at the camp. After the fumigation procedure, these articles would have been loaded onto vehicles, hence the loading ramps.>>
The whole description is just as consistent with a facility for homicidal gassing, as demonstrated.
<<(It is noteworthy that Gerstein describes the purpose of his visit to Belzec as the fumigation with Zyklon-B of the clothing stored there, as well as converting the gassing methodology from CO to HCN. Perhaps the building described by Reder was a storehouse for clothing.)>>
Hardly so. Reder described a building adjacent to the engine room, which could only have been the one used for gassing. And he not only described the building, he also described the gassing procedure itself, and that in a manner consistent with the depositions of Dr. Pfannenstiel and Schluch.
<<My own conclusion is that Reder did not himself witness the operation of a gas-chamber in which the victims were killed with CO.>>
Der Wunsch war bei Herrn Mills wieder einmal Vater des Gedankens.
The only conclusion that is warranted by Reder’s account, if set against that of other witnesses, is that what Reder and the other witnesses saw after the gassings was the result not of carbon monoxide poisoning, but of death by suffocation.
Medorjurgen is actually feeling great – quite to the contrary of Michael Mills, as it seems.
<<This translation can be found in Document 164 (c) “Vernehmungen ueber das Vernichtungslager Belzec: Rudolf Reder, Ueberlebender des Lagers, 29.12.1945”, in Longerich’s book “Die Ermordung der Europaeischen Juden” (pp. 362-7).
On the killing process itself, Reder stated:
“"Worin der chemische beziehungsweise der mechanische Vorgang des Mordens von Menschen in den Kammern von Belzec bestand, bin ich nicht imstande anzugeben. Ich weiss nur eines, naemlich, dass aus dem Maschinenraum in jede der Gas-Kammern ein Rohr mit einem Durchmesser von etwa 1 Zoll fuehrte. Die Enden dieser Rohre muendeten in den einzelnen Kammern. Ich kann nicht sagen, ob man durch diese Rohre ein Gas in die Kammern leitete, oder ob man die Luft in den Kammern kondensierte oder die Luft aus den Kammern herauspumpte".
The above passage shows that Reder had no idea how poisoning with CO occurred.>>
Assuming that death occurred by CO poisoning at all and not by suffocation, why should Reder have had an idea of how that occurred? He was neither a chemist nor a physician, for all I know.
<<He goes on to say something even more significant:
"Ich war wiederholt im Moment der Oeffnung der Tuere auf der Rampe, doch habe ich nie irgendeinen Geruch gespuert und nie hat sich das Betreten der Kammer direkt nach ihrem Oeffnen irgendwie an meiner Gesundheit ausgewirkt. Die Leichen, die in der Kammer lagen, zeigten keine unnatuerliche Faerbung. Alle Leichen sahen wie lebende Menschen aus, zum groessten Teil waren die Augen offen. Nur in wenigen Faellen kam es vor, dass die Leichen mit Kot besudelt waren. Die Luft in den Kammern war nach ihrer Oeffnung rein, durchsichtig und geruchlos. Insbesondere spuerte man darin keinen Rauch und keine Verbrennungsgase des Motors".
This description contradicts the description by Dr August Becker of the use of gas vans on the Russian Front, which refers to the headaches suffered by the men after unloading (a genuine symptom of slight CO poisoning).>>
Which may be related to the fact that a gas chamber was more easily and quickly ventilated than a truck.
<<Further, it conflicts with the fact that persons killed by CO poisoning show a typical cherry-red discolouring; Reder obviously did not notice this.>>
Which may be related to the fact that the victims did not die of carbon monoxide poisoning but, as the testimonies of Dr. Pfannenstiel and Schluch suggest, by suffocation.
<<On the basis of this part of Reder’s testimony, I would conclude that it is unlikely that he ever witnessed a gassing with CO, and his account of the gassing is derived from other sources.>>
A sweeping conclusion that rushes to meet a pre-conceived notion, I would say. After all, Reder’s description largely coincides with that of Karl Alfred Schluch, former member of the SS staff of Belzec,
quoted in Kogon/Langbein/Rückerl et al, Nationalsozialistische Massentötungen durch Giftgas, pages 167/168, after StA München I, AZ: 22 Js 64-83/61 (AZ. ZSL: 208 AR-Z 252/59, Bd. VI, Bl. 1179):
My translation:Nachdem die Gaskammer gelüftet worden war, kam ein jüdisches Arbeitskommando unter Leitung eines Capos und holte die Leichen aus den Kammern heraus. Auch an dieser Stelle habe ich gelegentlich Aufsichtsdienst gehabt. Die Vorgänge kann ich also genau schildern, weil ich alles selbst gesehen und miterlebt habe. Die Juden waren in die Gaskammer sehr eng eingepfercht worden. Aus diesem Grunde lagen die Leichen nicht am Boden, sondern sie hingen kreuz und quer durcheinander, die eine zurück- , die andere vorgebeugt, eine zur Seite liegend, die andere kniend, je nachdem, wie der Platz war. Die Leichen waren wenigstens teilweise mit Kot und Urin, andere zum Teil mit Speichel besudelt. Bei den Leichen konnte ich z.T. sehen, daß die Lippen und auch Nasenspitzen bläulich verfärbt waren. Bei einigen waren die Augen geschlossen, bei anderen waren die Augen verdreht. Die Leichen wurden aus den Kammern herausgezogen und von einem Zahnarzt sogleich untersucht. Der Zahnarzt entfernte Fingerring und zog etwa vorhandene Goldzähne heraus. Die auf diese Weise anfallenden Wertgegenstände wurden von ihm in einen bereitstehenden Karton geworfen. Nach dieser Prozedur wurden die Leichen in die vorhandenen großen Gräber geworfen.
Schluch’s testimonial makes clear why Reder didn’t get any headaches inside the chamber: because it was aired before the Jewish detachment went in. The rest of his deposition coincides with that of Reder, except that Schluch, obviously a man with more attention to detail than Reder, noticed on the lips and noses of some of the victims the blue coloring that is characteristic of death by suffocation.After the gas chamber had been aired, a Jewish work detachment under the command of a capo came and took the corpses out of the chambers. Also at this place I occasionally was on supervision duty. I can thus describe the events exactly because I saw and experienced it all myself. The Jews had been very tightly crammed into the gas chamber. For this reason the corpses did not lie on the floor, but hung about in disorder all across the room, one leaning back, the other leaning forward, the other lying on the side, the other kneeling, according to what room there was. At least some of the corpses were soiled with excrements and urine, others with spittle. On some of the corpses I could see that the lips and the points of the noses had a blue coloring. Some had their eyes closed, others had them rolled. The corpses were drawn out of the chambers and immediately examined by a dentist. The dentist took away rings from the fingers and pulled out eventually existing gold teeth. The valuables thus accruing were thrown by him into a carton. After this procedure the corpses were thrown into the existing huge graves.
<<One wonders why the Polish interrogators of Reder did not "massage" his testimony to make it more credible. It is possible that they did not have any idea of the physiological effects of CO poisoning (Poland was after all at that time a fairly under-developed country with little experience of motor transport), and they found nothing unusual about Reder's description.>>
The obvious reason is that, contrary to Michael Mills’ hateful contentions, the under-developed Poles didn’t “massage” Reder’s testimonial at all but let it stand just like it was. The reason why Reder said nothing about the pink coloring that goes with carbon monoxide poisoning is obviously that, as the depositions of Pfannenstiel and Schluch suggest, the victims had died not of carbon monoxide poisoning but of suffocation.
<<In a later part of his testimony, Reder explained how he came to escape from Belzec, a crucial item, since there was no mass-escape from that camp as there were at Treblinka and Sobibor. This is how he describes it:
“Ende November des Jahres 1942 fuhr ich mit einer SS-Eskorte im Auto nach Lemberg, um Blech einzukaufen. Nach Lemberg kamen wir am Abend, die Nacht verbrachte ich im Gestapo-Gefaengnis. Am naechsten Tag habe ich, immer von den SS-leuten begleitet, die Angelegenheit des Einkaufs von Blech erledigt, und gegen Mittag wurde ich unter der Bewachung eines SS-Mannes, naemlich von Trottwein, in ein Auto gesetzt. Nach einer Weile merkte ich, dass Trottwein seinen Karabiner auf die Seite stellte und einschlief. Ich nuetzte das aus, oeffnete die Tuer und fluechtete”.
This account does not appear credible; it would out of character for an SS-man to doze off and let his prisoner just run away. It appears that Reder, who was one of only two Jews who claimed to have been sent to Belzec and lived to tell the tale, needed to explain the puzzling fact that he was still alive, since he had said in his statement that all Jews sent there were murdered. This comical escape story seems to be the best he could do.>>
If I had wanted to make up an escape story, I would have made up a more dramatic and heroic one. Reder’s “comic” account actually rings true because of its very banality. Despite Michael Mills’ faith in the character of the SS, the fact is that the staff of Belzec was under enormous stress, some of them approaching nervous breakdowns, as is testified by witnesses from nearby villages who came into contact with them. Under these circumstances, it seems altogether probable that, when once relieved for a while from that stress, an SS man should just have dozed off. Having often struggled with sleep on the highway between Oporto and Lisbon after a night and day of continuous work, I guess I know better than many how easily that happens. The best way to test the veracity of Reder’s account would be to verify whether there was a von Trottwein among the Belzec staff, since Reder could hardly have been accompanying a Belzec guard if he had not been there. I wonder why the dissident historian and expert from Australia hasn’t done that yet.
<<On the basis of the above, I would conclude that Reder was either never a prisoner at Belzec, or else he was there for a period of time, and then transferred to some other place, from where he returned to Poland after the war. The second of these alternatives seems the more likely, given his knowledge of the camp.>>
As demonstrated, there is little if anything in the above that would support Michael Mills’ sweeping conclusions.
<<But either way, his credibility as a witness to gassing with CO carried out in the Belzec camp is open to question.
One interesting feature of Reder's testimony is that he described the motor situated next to the gas-chambers as a gasoline engine. The whole section of his testimony describing these chambers and the engine-room is significant. Reder says:
"Der Kammer-Bau war aus Beton und hatte ein Flachdach aus Pappe. Dieser Bau war auf einer Erhoehung errichtet, so dass man ihn von dem kleinen Hof her durch Stufen betrat; an seinen laengeren Waenden hatte der Bau eine Art erhoehte Laderampen. Ueber die Stufen vom kleinen Hof her ging man in die Tuere hinein, ueber der eine Tafel mit der Aufschrift “Bade- und Inhalationsraeume” hing sowie eine grosse Blumenschale, so dass diese Dekoration des Eingangs tatsaechlich den Eingang zu einer Kurbadeanstalt vortaeuschte. Von der Eingangstuer lief durch die ganze Laenge des Baus ein Korridor, der auf jeder Seite je drei einfluegelige, massive und an den Fugen dicht schliessende Tueren hatte. Diese Tueren fuehrten zu den fensterlosen Kammern, die auf der gegenueberliegenden Seite, das heisst auf der Seite der von mir vorher beschriebenen erhoehten Laderampen, aus zwei Fluegeln bestehende und seitwaerts auf Schienen laufende Tueren besassen. Auf der gegenueberliegenden Seite des Baus, das heisst hinter der Wand, vor der der Korridor endete, befand sich ein kleines Zimmer, in dem die Maschinen standen. Ich habe persoenlich gesehen, dass in diesem kleinen Zimmer ein Motor mit Benzinantrieb stand, der sehr kompliziert aussah. Ich erinnere mich, dass dieser Motor ein Schwungrad besass, sonst habe ich keine anderen Konstruktions- oder technischen Einzelheiten verstanden. Dieser Motor wurde immer von zwei Maschinisten bedient, und zwar von den Russen aus der bewaffneten Lagerbesatzung. Ich weiss nur, dass der Motor taeglich 4 Kanister Benzin verbrauchte, da naemlich jeden Tag so viel Benzin ins Lager gebracht wurde. Eben bei der Anlieferung von Benzin in den Maschinenraum hatte ich die Gelegenheit gehabt, in seinen Innenraum einen Blick zu werfen."
Reder’s description of the engine as powered by gasoline conflicts with the better-known account by Gerstein, who several times describes it as a diesel.>>
Gerstein is not exactly the most credible of witnesses, and unlike Reder he never seems to have seen the engine that was used for gassing himself.
<<Was Reder mistaken about the engine? It seems unlikely, as he describes himself as a mechanic and fitter (“Maschinist-Monteur”), who was selected for labour for that reason. He describes how he was given a job by the Lagerleiter, SS-Stabsscharfuehrer Irrmann:
“Mir als Maschinisten trug er auf, den Benzinmotor eines Baggers, mit dem in der unmittelbaren Naehe des Lagers riesige Gruben ausgehoben wurden, zu bedienen. In diesem Charakter arbeitete ich 2 Monate lang. Weitere 2 Monate, das heisst bis Ende November, arbeitete ich als Maurer beim Ausbau der Lagerkueche”.
The above account raises the possibility that the gasoline engine he describes was in fact that of the excavator, not an engine to supply gas to the chambers, and that the gasoline brought into the camp was to supply the excavator. The bottom line is that he does not know what the function of the engine was, since he does not know what the method of killing was.>>
A possibility, for sure. But why, then, would the engine have been in the engine room and not inside the excavator? It seems that there is more in Reder’s account than Michael Mills would like to show us:
From Prof. Browning’s expert opinion at the Irving-Lipstadt trial, transcribed underThe situation regarding Belzec is much different. Perhaps as many as six prisoners escaped individually from Belzec, but only one, Rudolf Reder, has given extensive post-war testimony. In his very early testimony of December 1945, Reder recounted how he had been deported from Lwow to Belzec on August 17, 1942, in a train of 50 cars, each crammed with 100 Jews. He was only one of eight prisoners selected as skilled workers to join the Jewish labor force in the camp that day. Working in the camp as a mechanic, for several months he operated the excavator that dug graves behind the gas chamber. He could see the gas chambers even more closely when he delivered gasoline (Benzin) to the engine room at the end of the corridor that ran between the three gas chambers on each side. He gave the following description:
In these chambers the people were packed so tightly together, that even after death they were found in standing position. As soon as all chambers were crammed full, all the doors were tightly shut; ....then the motor was started. The work of the motor was watched over by the prisoner Moniek, a cabman from Cracow. The motor was always run exactly for 20 minutes, after which Moniek gave one of the machinists the signal to turn it off. After the motor had been turned off, on the order of Moniek the prisoners opened all the doors wide and pulled the dead in pairs out of the chambers with the help of straps placed around the hands of the corpses; the corpses were then pulled to the mass graves already dug out beforehand by machine. On the way between the ramp of the chamber and the grave, dentists pulled gold teeth from the corpses.
http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/documents/Browning3.htm
While Reder may not have known whether the engine was used to pump gas into the chamber or air out of it, he seems to have been well aware that there was an engine involved in the process and that it was the engine for which he delivered gasoline to the engine room.
<<A further objection to Reder’s account is that if a gassing procedure using a gasoline engine had indeed been implemented at Belzec, the victims would certainly have died of CO poisoning, as a gasoline engine easily produces enough CO to be fatal. However, in that case the victims would have shown all the signs of CO poisoning, such as the cherry-red discolouration, which Reder signally failed to see, and the persons unloading the corpses would have felt the effects of mild poisoning from the remaining CO, which Reder did not experience.>>
While gasoline fumes quickly lead to carbon monoxide poisoning, suffocation is likely to come about even faster when a closed room is filled with the oxygen-poor exhaust of a huge engine. Such seems to have happened in the gas vans, as is suggested by the following passage of Becker’s letter to Rauff of 16 May 1942:
Source of quote:Die Vergasung wird durchweg nicht richtig vorgenommen. Um die Aktion möglichst schnell zu beenden, geben die Fahrer durchweg Vollgas. Durch diese Maßnahme erleiden die zu Exekutierenden den Erstickungstod und nicht wie vorgesehen, den Einschläferungstod.
http://www.ns-archiv.de/einsatzgruppen/ ... auff.shtml
My translation:
<<On the other hand, Reder’s description of the inscription “Bade- und Inhalationsraeume” and the flower-pot at the entrance to the building containing the chambers do accord with Gerstein’s account. However, as Gerstein had written his account in April 1945, and died in July, there would have been time for his account to have been transmitted to the Polish authorities by the time Reder gave his testimony in December of that year.>>The gassing is generally not carried out correctly. In order to conclude the action as soon as possible, the drivers generally open full throttle. Due to this measure those to be executed die of suffocation instead of, as intended, dozing away.
Yeah, sure, the old “could have been” – nonsense, with not a shred of evidence to support it. As Browning tells us, Reder made his first deposition in December 1945. Any evidence that the Gerstein account was i) at the disposal of Polish authorities at this time and that ii) they confronted Reder with it or made it available to the general public in such a way that Reder could have informed himself about it? And what about Schluch’s account describing some of the bodies with their eyes closed and other with their eyes rolled, and some of them covered with excrements? Did Reder also have an opportunity to read that one before making his deposition?
<<Reder's function as a mechanic servicing the motor of an excavator that was digging trenches "in the immediate vicinity of the camp " (he does NOT say in the camp itself) may provide a clue to Reder's actual connection with Belzec. Belzec camp was situated immediately adjacent to an anti-tank trench that had been dug between 1939 and 1941, when Belzec lay on the demarcation line between the German and Russian zones of occupation. Reder may have been employed on the construction of that ditch, and serviced the excavator at that time;that would be consistent with his statement that the ditches were dug near the camp, not iinside it.>>
Reder’s task was essentially to operate the excavator, but he also seems to have delivered gasoline to the engine room and to have been aware of there being a connection between the motor he witnessed and the gassing, as becomes apparent from the above quote from Browning’s opinion.
<<The description of the loading-ramps along the outside of the building containing the chambers is consistent with the plan shown in Tregenza’s article on Belzec published in the Wiener Library Bulletin XXX of 1977. However, the existence of such ramps would have made the removal of corpses difficult, as they would have had to be lowered to ground level so as to be dragged to the mass-graves.>>
Strange thinking. The ramps would also greatly facilitate the dragging out of the corpses.
<<In fact, it is quite unclear why a building containing gas-chambers would have had to be built on an “Erhoehung”, requiring the ascent of steps to gain access.>>
More bizarre logic. It would certainly be easier to drag the bodies downhill than to drag them at ground level or even uphill, wouldn’t it?
<<The existence of loading ramps on the side of the building, with large sliding doors opening on to them, suggests that whatever was taken out of the chambers was loaded onto vehicles level with the ramps.>>
Which would mean that the ramps could either be lifted in order to load the clothes unto vehicles or lowered in order to drag the bodies over them manually.
<<The whole description is consistent with a fumigation facility for clothing and other belongings confiscated from the Jews arriving at the camp. After the fumigation procedure, these articles would have been loaded onto vehicles, hence the loading ramps.>>
The whole description is just as consistent with a facility for homicidal gassing, as demonstrated.
<<(It is noteworthy that Gerstein describes the purpose of his visit to Belzec as the fumigation with Zyklon-B of the clothing stored there, as well as converting the gassing methodology from CO to HCN. Perhaps the building described by Reder was a storehouse for clothing.)>>
Hardly so. Reder described a building adjacent to the engine room, which could only have been the one used for gassing. And he not only described the building, he also described the gassing procedure itself, and that in a manner consistent with the depositions of Dr. Pfannenstiel and Schluch.
<<My own conclusion is that Reder did not himself witness the operation of a gas-chamber in which the victims were killed with CO.>>
Der Wunsch war bei Herrn Mills wieder einmal Vater des Gedankens.
The only conclusion that is warranted by Reder’s account, if set against that of other witnesses, is that what Reder and the other witnesses saw after the gassings was the result not of carbon monoxide poisoning, but of death by suffocation.
The existence of mass graves at Belzec/Poland (refer to the 1997/98 investigation at the former camp location), combined with reliable transport documents (e.g. Hoefle u.a.) and eye-witness evidence brings us an irrefutable proof of the real nature of Belzec. I wonder how someone could deny that ? In contrast, Revisionism taken by its real nature is nothing more then wishful thinking, but not the truth.
Observe the world and think
And Ladies and Gentlemen, please let us return to serious discussion about the extermination camp Belzec. The purpose of this thread was to be a collection of documents and other evidence material about Belzec, not for advertising Revisionism. Please do that in another special thread or forum (a special greet to CODOH), but not here !
Observe the world and think
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Scott Smith
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No debate?
Sorry chief. Thorwald started the thread and it said ALL INFORMATION, not just Nizkor information. Are you Thorwald? You seem to have the same profile. In any case, I'll move my response to another thread.Wiking wrote:And Ladies and Gentlemen, please let us return to serious discussion about the extermination camp Belzec. The purpose of this thread was to be a collection of documents and other evidence material about Belzec, not for advertising Revisionism. Please do that in another special thread or forum (a special greet to CODOH), but not here !
Re: No debate?
The operative word is “Information” . Nizkor, THHP and other sites as well as the offline sources quoted provide Information. “Revisionism”, on the other hand, is just propaganda, the monotonous gospel of True Believers such as Reverend Smith. Big difference.Scott Smith wrote:Sorry chief. Thorwald started the thread and it said ALL INFORMATION, not just Nizkor information. Are you Thorwald? You seem to have the same profile. In any case, I'll move my response to another thread.Wiking wrote:And Ladies and Gentlemen, please let us return to serious discussion about the extermination camp Belzec. The purpose of this thread was to be a collection of documents and other evidence material about Belzec, not for advertising Revisionism. Please do that in another special thread or forum (a special greet to CODOH), but not here !
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Scott Smith
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Don't confuse me with INFORMATION...
Medo wrote:
NOW, here is that thread for all people who DO want to discuss Belzec:
Belzec UNBOUND
Ah, all "information" must be approved as genuine by Roberto before it can be considered operative. I gotcha.The operative word is "Information"
NOW, here is that thread for all people who DO want to discuss Belzec:
Belzec UNBOUND
Re: Don't confuse me with INFORMATION...
Information must be supported by documentary and/or physical and/or eyewitness evidence to be worth the designation. The ideologically motivated wishful thinking of True Believers like Smith is not information. As easy as that.Scott Smith wrote:Medo wrote:
Ah, all "information" must be approved as genuine by Roberto before it can be considered operative. I gotcha.The operative word is "Information"
NOW, here is that thread for all people who DO want to discuss Belzec:
Belzec UNBOUND
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michael mills
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Purpose and meaning of Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka
Wiking asked:
1. Purpose
Between the Spring of 1942 and the early part of 1943, the purpose of the three “Sonderlager der Waffen-SS” Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka II was to provide a location for the physical destruction of the Jews of the Generalgouvernement assessed as unusable for forced labour and hence “useless eaters” in the mind of the German authorities.
The camp at Belzec had existed since December 1939, when it served as a transit camp for Jews moving from the German occupation zone into the Soviet. After a certain period it fell into disuse, but renovation commenced in the Autumn of 1941 when it was taken over by the SS. Apparently it was to function again as a transit camp, but at some point, probably March 1942, it was hurriedly pressed into service as a killing centre. Its location immediately adjacent to the Lublin-Lwow mainline is ideally suited to a function as a transit camp, but far less so as a killing centre, since it is in full view of the thousands of passengers passing by every day. Perhaps for that reason it was closed down and dismantled at the end of 1942.
The camps at Sobibor and Treblinka appear to have been designed from the outset as extermination centres, as shown by their location in isolated areas, Sobibor in a wooded area on a branch line between Wlodawa and Chelm, Treblinka II on a dead-end spur line leading from the Malkinia-Siedlce branchline to a quarry with an attached labour camp (Treblinka I). However, their exterminatory function seems to have faded away after early 1943, and they were converted into ordinary labour camps, Sobibor in particular becoming a centre for the reprocessing of captured Soviet ammunition. In the opinion of the historian Reitlinger, by the summer of 1943, Treblinka had become a distribution centre for Jews being despatched westward from the Bialystok District to various slave-labour centres.
2. Meaning
The background to the three camps is best shown by the Goebbels’ diary entry of 27 March 1942, in which he reveals a plan to deport the Jews of the Generalgouvernement to the “East”, ie into the Occupied Eastern Territories, beginning with those of the Lublin District. Goebbels states that only 40% of the Jews are estimated to be usable for forced labour; the remaining 60%, being unusable for forced labour and hence a burden on the German administration, will have to be “liquidated” (Goebbels is here employing a euphemism made famous in Soviet usage).
The camps at Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka, situated on or close to the eastern border of the Generalgouvernement, on the deportation routes leading into the Occupied Eastern Territories, were where the “liquidation” of the 60% took place. It made sense to situate the places of liquidation at intermediate points not far from the places of origin of the deportees rather than at the destinations in the East, since the distances to travel were thereby minimised, and the call on scarce transport resources reduced.
Thus there were two streams of eastward movement of Polish Jews during 1942, one of the employable Jews to various destinations in the Occupied Eastern Territories, the other of the greater group of unemployables to their “liquidation” in the camps at Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka. Contemporary observers were well aware of those two deportation streams. A publication called “The Black Book of Polish Jewry”, which appeared in New York in 1943 under aegis of Eleanor Roosevelt, contains the following passage on the eastward deportation (p. 174):
“A few words must be said about the mass deportations which started first from the Warsaw Ghetto and then also from other parts of the Government-General in the middle of 1942. Nobody knows the exact number of Polish Jews deported in that manner, but it certainly must be counted in the hundreds of thousands. Almost the entire population of the Warsaw Ghetto – more than 450,000 – and additional hundreds of thousands from other places were deported. This mass deportation took two directions – one to certain places in Poland itself, especially to the famous camp in Treblinka, where people were brought to be killed and where in all probability hundreds of thousands were destroyed, the second to the occupied territories of Russia.
No reports about the fate of the hundreds of thousands of deported Jews are so far available and nobody knows whether they ever will be available. The fact is that no one who was deported was ever heard from again, either because they are not allowed to write, the conditions of their life being such as to make it impossible for them to write, or because they are no longer alive. By the justified analogy with the fate of the Jews deported from other countries, it can be assumed that all deportees were condemned to forced labor, mostly in connection with the creation of fortifications. The conditions under which this labor is performed, without sufficient food and clothing and without adequate housing, with no regard to health and human dignity, with men being driven worse than beasts of burden, must necessarily result in a tremendous death rate, even greater than during the transportation. There are also numerous cases where the workers were shot after having completed their work, either in order to prevent them from revealing military secrets or because they were too weak to be further exploited. It will therefore be scarcely an exaggeration to assume that very few, if any, of the deportees will survive the ordeal of their present existence. They are virtually all doomed to perish”.
This passage is very close to what Goebbels wrote in his diary, with two destinations for the deportees, one the liquidation centres for the unemployables, and the other sites of forced labour in the east. Again there is a close correspondence between these contemporary accounts by observers and what Goebbels entrusted to his diary.
The historian Reitlinger was also aware that employable Jews deported from the Generalgouvernement ended up in Ukraine where they were used for labour. On page 236 of his “Final Solution” (1953 edition) he writes:
“On the march from Krivoi Rog to Dniepropetrowsk Einsatzgruppe C passed through a large Jewish agricultural colony, established in imperial times but now collectivised. These Jews, with the exception of the headmen, were actually spared. It was explained in the official report that the Jews were of low intelligence and therefore not dangerous. Their numbers may even have been increased in 1942 by Jews picked from the Warsaw and Lublin ‘resettlements’ in order to bring in the harvest, but thereafter they disappeared”.
The distinction between the treatment of the usable and the unusable Jews is best demonstrated in the case of Belzec, where we have a contemporary German record of the number that arrived there (upwards of 430,000) and an estimate of the numbers killed and buried there, based on the archeological examination of the mass graves (about 250,000). The numbers buried come to 58% of the total arrivals, almost exactly the proportion mentioned by Goebbels in his diary entry of 27 March 1942. The results of the archeological survey strongly suggest that the remaining 40% were the employable Jews who continued their journey eastward to places of labour deployment.
The origin of the eastward deportation needs to be seen in the context of the efforts of the Generalgouverneur of the Occupied Polish Territories, Hans Frank, to rid his territory of the huge number of largely unemployable Jews vegetating in the Polish ghettoes where, despite the most stringent isolation measures, they were consuming scarce resources. Since October 1941, he had been trying to get the Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, Alfred Rosenberg, to agree to the deportation of the Polish Jews into those territories, but without success.
In early December 1941, Frank was in Berlin, and apparently again tried to get the deportation going, probably on the model of the deportation of Reich Jews to Minsk and Riga that was already underway. However, he was given the brush-off by the officials of the Ostministerium (or perhaps even by the Reichskommissare Koch and Lohse themselves, who were in Berlin at the time), with the brusque words “We cannot use them in Ostland or the Reichskommissariat [Ukraine] either, liquidate them yourselves!”.
Nevertheless, the German Security Police in the Generalgouvernement seem to have begun preparing for a deportation in Autumn 1941, at the time when Frank was pursuing the matter. The obvious sign of those preparations was the recommissioning of the transit camp at Belzec.
The deportation itself did not commence until March 1942; the 4-5 month delay probably reflects the opposition of the German authorities in the Occupied Eastern Territories to having Polish Jews dumped on them. The subsequent course of events suggests that what allowed the deportation to start after a long delay was a compromise between the German authorities in the Generalgouvernement and those in the Occupied Eastern Territories, under which the latter agreed to accept the minority of Jews who were usable for forced labour, but not the majority who were unusable; they would have to be killed within the borders of the Generalgouvernement. Hence the hasty conversion of Belzec into a killing centre, and the decision to build extermination camps at Sobibor and Treblinka.
Two German historians, Dieter Pohl and Peter Longerich, have concluded on the basis of the available evidence that when the deportation of Polish Jews commenced in March 1942, with the concomitant killings at Belzec, it was not part of a total extermination plan decreed by Hitler, but rather a local initiative similar to that started by Greiser in the Warthegau, aimed at removing the Polish Jews and thereby creating space for Jews being deported into the Generalgouvernement from the Reich and Slovakia. They believe that that local initiative later became subsumed into a total extermination program, from about May 1942 onward. However, it is possible that, having begun as a local initiative, it remained so, being driven by the pressure from Frank’s administration to remove the Jews and thereby make food available for export to the Reich.
[/quote]
Here is my opinion, as requested.@Michael Mills : i'm wondering what do you think about the purpose and meaning of Belzec, Chelmno, Sobibor and Treblinka ? Perhaps you may want to provide me with your opinion.
1. Purpose
Between the Spring of 1942 and the early part of 1943, the purpose of the three “Sonderlager der Waffen-SS” Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka II was to provide a location for the physical destruction of the Jews of the Generalgouvernement assessed as unusable for forced labour and hence “useless eaters” in the mind of the German authorities.
The camp at Belzec had existed since December 1939, when it served as a transit camp for Jews moving from the German occupation zone into the Soviet. After a certain period it fell into disuse, but renovation commenced in the Autumn of 1941 when it was taken over by the SS. Apparently it was to function again as a transit camp, but at some point, probably March 1942, it was hurriedly pressed into service as a killing centre. Its location immediately adjacent to the Lublin-Lwow mainline is ideally suited to a function as a transit camp, but far less so as a killing centre, since it is in full view of the thousands of passengers passing by every day. Perhaps for that reason it was closed down and dismantled at the end of 1942.
The camps at Sobibor and Treblinka appear to have been designed from the outset as extermination centres, as shown by their location in isolated areas, Sobibor in a wooded area on a branch line between Wlodawa and Chelm, Treblinka II on a dead-end spur line leading from the Malkinia-Siedlce branchline to a quarry with an attached labour camp (Treblinka I). However, their exterminatory function seems to have faded away after early 1943, and they were converted into ordinary labour camps, Sobibor in particular becoming a centre for the reprocessing of captured Soviet ammunition. In the opinion of the historian Reitlinger, by the summer of 1943, Treblinka had become a distribution centre for Jews being despatched westward from the Bialystok District to various slave-labour centres.
2. Meaning
The background to the three camps is best shown by the Goebbels’ diary entry of 27 March 1942, in which he reveals a plan to deport the Jews of the Generalgouvernement to the “East”, ie into the Occupied Eastern Territories, beginning with those of the Lublin District. Goebbels states that only 40% of the Jews are estimated to be usable for forced labour; the remaining 60%, being unusable for forced labour and hence a burden on the German administration, will have to be “liquidated” (Goebbels is here employing a euphemism made famous in Soviet usage).
The camps at Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka, situated on or close to the eastern border of the Generalgouvernement, on the deportation routes leading into the Occupied Eastern Territories, were where the “liquidation” of the 60% took place. It made sense to situate the places of liquidation at intermediate points not far from the places of origin of the deportees rather than at the destinations in the East, since the distances to travel were thereby minimised, and the call on scarce transport resources reduced.
Thus there were two streams of eastward movement of Polish Jews during 1942, one of the employable Jews to various destinations in the Occupied Eastern Territories, the other of the greater group of unemployables to their “liquidation” in the camps at Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka. Contemporary observers were well aware of those two deportation streams. A publication called “The Black Book of Polish Jewry”, which appeared in New York in 1943 under aegis of Eleanor Roosevelt, contains the following passage on the eastward deportation (p. 174):
“A few words must be said about the mass deportations which started first from the Warsaw Ghetto and then also from other parts of the Government-General in the middle of 1942. Nobody knows the exact number of Polish Jews deported in that manner, but it certainly must be counted in the hundreds of thousands. Almost the entire population of the Warsaw Ghetto – more than 450,000 – and additional hundreds of thousands from other places were deported. This mass deportation took two directions – one to certain places in Poland itself, especially to the famous camp in Treblinka, where people were brought to be killed and where in all probability hundreds of thousands were destroyed, the second to the occupied territories of Russia.
No reports about the fate of the hundreds of thousands of deported Jews are so far available and nobody knows whether they ever will be available. The fact is that no one who was deported was ever heard from again, either because they are not allowed to write, the conditions of their life being such as to make it impossible for them to write, or because they are no longer alive. By the justified analogy with the fate of the Jews deported from other countries, it can be assumed that all deportees were condemned to forced labor, mostly in connection with the creation of fortifications. The conditions under which this labor is performed, without sufficient food and clothing and without adequate housing, with no regard to health and human dignity, with men being driven worse than beasts of burden, must necessarily result in a tremendous death rate, even greater than during the transportation. There are also numerous cases where the workers were shot after having completed their work, either in order to prevent them from revealing military secrets or because they were too weak to be further exploited. It will therefore be scarcely an exaggeration to assume that very few, if any, of the deportees will survive the ordeal of their present existence. They are virtually all doomed to perish”.
This passage is very close to what Goebbels wrote in his diary, with two destinations for the deportees, one the liquidation centres for the unemployables, and the other sites of forced labour in the east. Again there is a close correspondence between these contemporary accounts by observers and what Goebbels entrusted to his diary.
The historian Reitlinger was also aware that employable Jews deported from the Generalgouvernement ended up in Ukraine where they were used for labour. On page 236 of his “Final Solution” (1953 edition) he writes:
“On the march from Krivoi Rog to Dniepropetrowsk Einsatzgruppe C passed through a large Jewish agricultural colony, established in imperial times but now collectivised. These Jews, with the exception of the headmen, were actually spared. It was explained in the official report that the Jews were of low intelligence and therefore not dangerous. Their numbers may even have been increased in 1942 by Jews picked from the Warsaw and Lublin ‘resettlements’ in order to bring in the harvest, but thereafter they disappeared”.
The distinction between the treatment of the usable and the unusable Jews is best demonstrated in the case of Belzec, where we have a contemporary German record of the number that arrived there (upwards of 430,000) and an estimate of the numbers killed and buried there, based on the archeological examination of the mass graves (about 250,000). The numbers buried come to 58% of the total arrivals, almost exactly the proportion mentioned by Goebbels in his diary entry of 27 March 1942. The results of the archeological survey strongly suggest that the remaining 40% were the employable Jews who continued their journey eastward to places of labour deployment.
The origin of the eastward deportation needs to be seen in the context of the efforts of the Generalgouverneur of the Occupied Polish Territories, Hans Frank, to rid his territory of the huge number of largely unemployable Jews vegetating in the Polish ghettoes where, despite the most stringent isolation measures, they were consuming scarce resources. Since October 1941, he had been trying to get the Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, Alfred Rosenberg, to agree to the deportation of the Polish Jews into those territories, but without success.
In early December 1941, Frank was in Berlin, and apparently again tried to get the deportation going, probably on the model of the deportation of Reich Jews to Minsk and Riga that was already underway. However, he was given the brush-off by the officials of the Ostministerium (or perhaps even by the Reichskommissare Koch and Lohse themselves, who were in Berlin at the time), with the brusque words “We cannot use them in Ostland or the Reichskommissariat [Ukraine] either, liquidate them yourselves!”.
Nevertheless, the German Security Police in the Generalgouvernement seem to have begun preparing for a deportation in Autumn 1941, at the time when Frank was pursuing the matter. The obvious sign of those preparations was the recommissioning of the transit camp at Belzec.
The deportation itself did not commence until March 1942; the 4-5 month delay probably reflects the opposition of the German authorities in the Occupied Eastern Territories to having Polish Jews dumped on them. The subsequent course of events suggests that what allowed the deportation to start after a long delay was a compromise between the German authorities in the Generalgouvernement and those in the Occupied Eastern Territories, under which the latter agreed to accept the minority of Jews who were usable for forced labour, but not the majority who were unusable; they would have to be killed within the borders of the Generalgouvernement. Hence the hasty conversion of Belzec into a killing centre, and the decision to build extermination camps at Sobibor and Treblinka.
Two German historians, Dieter Pohl and Peter Longerich, have concluded on the basis of the available evidence that when the deportation of Polish Jews commenced in March 1942, with the concomitant killings at Belzec, it was not part of a total extermination plan decreed by Hitler, but rather a local initiative similar to that started by Greiser in the Warthegau, aimed at removing the Polish Jews and thereby creating space for Jews being deported into the Generalgouvernement from the Reich and Slovakia. They believe that that local initiative later became subsumed into a total extermination program, from about May 1942 onward. However, it is possible that, having begun as a local initiative, it remained so, being driven by the pressure from Frank’s administration to remove the Jews and thereby make food available for export to the Reich.
[/quote]
<<The distinction between the treatment of the usable and the unusable Jews is best demonstrated in the case of Belzec, where we have a contemporary German record of the number that arrived there (upwards of 430,000) and an estimate of the numbers killed and buried there, based on the archeological examination of the mass graves (about 250,000). The numbers buried come to 58% of the total arrivals, almost exactly the proportion mentioned by Goebbels in his diary entry of 27 March 1942. The results of the archeological survey strongly suggest that the remaining 40% were the employable Jews who continued their journey eastward to places of labour deployment.>>
Michael Mills is conveniently speculating on the basis of my own assessment of the results of the archaeological investigation at Belzec, which can be read in my post of Mar 18, 2002 12:58 pm on this thread. Of the various possible explanations for the discrepancy between the number of Jews who arrived at Belzec according to the documentary evidence and the calculated contents of the mass graves found in 1997/98 he of course only picks the one that fits his pre-conceived notions and ignores the others. Apart from not being able to show any documentary or eyewitness evidence for any Jews who arrived at Belzec ever having been taken anywhere else from there, he cannot explain why such Jews would have been taken to Belzec in the first place and why they were reported as “Zugang” at Belzec in the Höfle memorandum:
http://www.fpp.co.uk/Auschwitz/docs/Hofle
Their translation, according to Peter Witte and Stephen Tyas in the Winter 2001 issue of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, is the following:
Neither can Michael Mills explain why the 434,508 Jews who arrived at Belzec were included in a figure that Himmler’s statistician Richard Korherr referred to Jews from the “eastern provinces” submitted to “Sonderbehandlung”, i.e. “special treatment”, a term that at Himmler’s behest he later changed to the following:
<<Nevertheless, the German Security Police in the Generalgouvernement seem to have begun preparing for a deportation in Autumn 1941, at the time when Frank was pursuing the matter. The obvious sign of those preparations was the recommissioning of the transit camp at Belzec.>>
What evidence is there to the “recommissioning” of Belzec as a transit camp?
<<The deportation itself did not commence until March 1942; the 4-5 month delay probably reflects the opposition of the German authorities in the Occupied Eastern Territories to having Polish Jews dumped on them. The subsequent course of events suggests that what allowed the deportation to start after a long delay was a compromise between the German authorities in the Generalgouvernement and those in the Occupied Eastern Territories, under which the latter agreed to accept the minority of Jews who were usable for forced labour, but not the majority who were unusable; they would have to be killed within the borders of the Generalgouvernement. Hence the hasty conversion of Belzec into a killing centre, and the decision to build extermination camps at Sobibor and Treblinka.>>
What evidence is there to the “hasty conversion of Belzec into a killing centre”? The testimonials of a Polish worker by the name of Stanislaw Kozak and of SS-Scharführer Erich Fuchs, transcribed on pages 152-154 of Kogon/Langbein/Rückerl’s Nationalsozialistische Massentötungen durch Giftgas, point to the construction of Belzec as a killing centre having commenced as early as November 1941. According to Reitlinger’s Endlösung, as quoted on page 182 of Christian Gerlach’s Krieg, Ernährung, Völkermord, Himmler had declared during a visit in Cracow on 13 March 1942 that he wanted to see half the Jews of the General Government done away with until the end of the year. As Gerlach points out, extermination activities at first targeted only the Jews not suitable for work, the “useless eaters”. Food supply policies then led to this policy being extended to all but a small minority of the Jews of the General Government, pursuant to Himmler’s order of 19 Juli 1942 transcribed on page 206 of Gerlach’s a.m. book:
My translation:
Michael Mills is conveniently speculating on the basis of my own assessment of the results of the archaeological investigation at Belzec, which can be read in my post of Mar 18, 2002 12:58 pm on this thread. Of the various possible explanations for the discrepancy between the number of Jews who arrived at Belzec according to the documentary evidence and the calculated contents of the mass graves found in 1997/98 he of course only picks the one that fits his pre-conceived notions and ignores the others. Apart from not being able to show any documentary or eyewitness evidence for any Jews who arrived at Belzec ever having been taken anywhere else from there, he cannot explain why such Jews would have been taken to Belzec in the first place and why they were reported as “Zugang” at Belzec in the Höfle memorandum:
The above is the original text of the message intercepted by British code-breakers at Bletchley Park, featured on David Irving’s web site under13/15. OLQ de OMQ 1005 83 234 250
Geheime Reichssache! An den Befehlshaber der Sicherheitspol., zu Händen SS Obersturmbannführer HEIM, KRAKAU. Betr. 14-tägige Meldung Einsatz REINHART. Bezug: dort. Fs. Zugang bis 31.12.42, L 12761,B 0, S 515, T 10335 zusammen 23611. Stand ... 31.12.42, L 24733, B 434508, S 101370, T 71355, zusammen 1274166.
SS und Pol.führer LUBLIN, HOEFLE, Sturmbannführer.
http://www.fpp.co.uk/Auschwitz/docs/Hofle
Their translation, according to Peter Witte and Stephen Tyas in the Winter 2001 issue of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, is the following:
13/15. OLQ de OMQ 1005 83 234 250
State Secret!
To the Senior Commander of the Security Police [and the Security Service], for the attention of SS Obersturmbannfuhrer HEIM, CRACOW.
Subject: fortnightly report Einsatz REINHART.
Reference: radio telegram therefrom.
recorded arrivals until December 31, 42,
L [Lublin] 12,761,
B [Belzec] 0,
S [Sobibor] 515,
T [Treblinka] 10 335 [,]
together 23 611
sum total…[as per] December 31, 42,
L 24 733,
B 434 508,
S 101 370,
T 71 355, read: 713 555]
together 1 274 166
SS and Police Leader Lublin, HOFLE, Sturmbannfuhrer
========================
Neither can Michael Mills explain why the 434,508 Jews who arrived at Belzec were included in a figure that Himmler’s statistician Richard Korherr referred to Jews from the “eastern provinces” submitted to “Sonderbehandlung”, i.e. “special treatment”, a term that at Himmler’s behest he later changed to the following:
My translation:4. Transportierung von Juden aus den
Ostprovinzen nach dem russischen
Osten: ............................1 449 692 "
Es wurden durchgeschleust
durch die Lager im General-
gouvernement..................... 1 274 166 Juden
durch die Lager im Warthegau..... 145 301 Juden
4. Transportation of Jews from the
eastern provinces to the Russian
East: ............................ 1 449 692 "
The following numbers were sifted
through the camps in the General
government ............. ........ 1 274 166 Jews
through the camps in the Warthegau..... 145 301 Jews
<<Nevertheless, the German Security Police in the Generalgouvernement seem to have begun preparing for a deportation in Autumn 1941, at the time when Frank was pursuing the matter. The obvious sign of those preparations was the recommissioning of the transit camp at Belzec.>>
What evidence is there to the “recommissioning” of Belzec as a transit camp?
<<The deportation itself did not commence until March 1942; the 4-5 month delay probably reflects the opposition of the German authorities in the Occupied Eastern Territories to having Polish Jews dumped on them. The subsequent course of events suggests that what allowed the deportation to start after a long delay was a compromise between the German authorities in the Generalgouvernement and those in the Occupied Eastern Territories, under which the latter agreed to accept the minority of Jews who were usable for forced labour, but not the majority who were unusable; they would have to be killed within the borders of the Generalgouvernement. Hence the hasty conversion of Belzec into a killing centre, and the decision to build extermination camps at Sobibor and Treblinka.>>
What evidence is there to the “hasty conversion of Belzec into a killing centre”? The testimonials of a Polish worker by the name of Stanislaw Kozak and of SS-Scharführer Erich Fuchs, transcribed on pages 152-154 of Kogon/Langbein/Rückerl’s Nationalsozialistische Massentötungen durch Giftgas, point to the construction of Belzec as a killing centre having commenced as early as November 1941. According to Reitlinger’s Endlösung, as quoted on page 182 of Christian Gerlach’s Krieg, Ernährung, Völkermord, Himmler had declared during a visit in Cracow on 13 March 1942 that he wanted to see half the Jews of the General Government done away with until the end of the year. As Gerlach points out, extermination activities at first targeted only the Jews not suitable for work, the “useless eaters”. Food supply policies then led to this policy being extended to all but a small minority of the Jews of the General Government, pursuant to Himmler’s order of 19 Juli 1942 transcribed on page 206 of Gerlach’s a.m. book:
My translation:Ich ordne an, dass die Umsiedlung der gesamten jüdischen Bevölkerung des Generalgouvernements bis 31. Dezember 1942 durchgeführt und beendet ist. Mit dem 31. Dezember 1942 dürfen sich keinerlei Personen jüdischer Herkunft mehr im Generalgouvernement aufhalten. Es sei den, dass sie sich in den Sammellagern Warschau, Krakau, Tschenstochau. Radom, Lublin aufhalten
and to Frank’s decision in August 1942 to no longer feed all but 300,000 of the 1,500,000 Jews left in the General Government at that time who were working as tradesmen or otherwise in the German interest. In his speech on 24 August 1942 quoted on page 220 of Gerlach’s book, Frank stated the following:I hereby order that the resettlement of the entire Jewish population of the General Government be carried out and concluded until 31 December 1942. As of 31 December 1942 no persons of Jewish origin may any longer be in the General Government, except if they are located in the collective camps Warsaw, Cracow, Tschenstochau. Radom, Lublin
Translation (my own):Daß wir 1,2 Millionen Juden zum Hungertod verurteilen, sei nur am Rande festgestellt. Es ist selbstverständlich, daß ein Nichtverhungern der Juden hoffentlich eine Beschleunigung der antijüdischen Maßnahmen zur Folge haben wird
Gerlach’s comment:Let it be noted as a mere aside that we herewith condemn 1.2 million Jews to death by starvation. It is understood that a non-starvation of the Jews will hopefully lead to an acceleration of the anti-Jewish measures.
Er forderte also ein höheres Vernichtungstempo, um zu verhindern, daß sich die Juden über den schwarzen Markt etwa noch versorgen und so die Ernährungsbilanz sozusagen beeinträchtigen könnten. Solche “Folgerungen”, so Frank an anderer Stelle der Rede, müßten “eiskalt und ohne Mitleid” gezogen werden. Niemend widersprach. 1,2 Millionen Menschen sollten so schnell wie möglich sterben.
My translation:
He [Frank] was calling for a higher speed of extermination in order to keep the Jews from supplying themselves on the black market and thus, so to say, affecting the food balance. Such “conclusions”, stated Frank elsewhere in the speech, must be “drawn coldly and without mercy”. No one protested. 1.2 million people were to die as soon as possible.
-
Charles Bunch
- Member
- Posts: 846
- Joined: 12 Mar 2002, 21:03
- Location: USA
Re: Belzec trial
>>Why, do I need something to keep me occupied for a considerable time while waiting for you to support your claim that Oberhouser testified to killing and burning 600,000? Or will this just prove to be another empty Mills claim?]
>Charles Bunch is indulging in his normal habit of twisting my words.
A lie. I'm once again pointing out that Mills makes statements which are untrue, and unsupported by evidence, as he demonstrates below.
>What I wrote was that at the trial of Oberhauser and others, some of the former camp staff testified that 600,000 bodies had been exhumed and burnt. I did not say that Oberhauser himself gave that testimony.
Well, your original sentence structure did not make it clear. But let's now see who you claim testified to 600,000 bodies.
>The dishonesty of Charles Bunch's words is demonstrated by the fact that his ideological accomplice, Medorjurgen, had already posted precisely the testimony that I had referred to.
As will be apparent, Mills is wrong as usual.
>It was Heinrich Gley, and his words, as posted by Medorjurgen, were:
Mr. Mills can now return and show us his evidence for Gley testifying at this trial.
>"As I remember the gassing was stopped at the end of 1942, when there was snow already on the ground. Then the general exhumation and cremation of the corpses began; it MIGHT have lasted from November 1942 until March 1943. The cremation was carried out day and night without a break, and indeed at first at one and then later at two fire sites. It was possible to cremate some 2 [sic! 2,000?] corpses at one fire site within 24 hours. About 4 weeks after the beginning of the cremation operation the second fire site was constructed. On average, therefore, some 300,000 corpses were cremated at the first site over 5 months, at the second site some 240,000 over 4 months. Naturally this is a matter of estimates based on averages. To figure the total number of corpses at 500,000 COULD be correct"
>I have highlighted two words in the text of Gley's testimony that indicate that he is not speaking with absolute certitude with his own memory. It is obvious that he is giving partial agreement to something that has been suggested to him.
LOL!
First let's note that Gley uses the number of 500,000, not the 600,000 Mills has been claiming.
And let's remember his point.
Mills:
"Interesting. So the total was not 600,000 but a lower figure, 434,508. But at the Belzec trial (Oberhauser and others), some of the former camp-staff testified that the total number of bodies exhumed and burnet came to 600,000. Not only was that figure greatly in excess of the number now documented, but also failed to take into account that a very large number of the bodies was not exhumed and burnt, according to the results of the archeological investigation Medorjurgen quotes."
Of course Mills source says 500,000-540,000, not 600,000, a number not that far removed from 434,508at it's lower limit, considering the witness was estimating the total. So Mills was merely attempting to cast doubt on eyewitness testimony, as shown by his next sentence.
Mills:
"So why would the former camp-staff on trial testify to a greatly inflated figure? To please the court by concurring what was then received wisdom, perhaps?"
The figure is not greatly larger; a larger figure doesn't indicate it was inflated, just incorrect; and Mills speculation about pleasing the court is just another empty assertion. Mills likes long posts of mostly extraneous detail sprinkled with these unsupported conclusions which always err on the side of mitigating the magnitude of the Holocaust or questioning the credibility of evidence. Strange how his revisions always tend in that direction, eh!
>What was the origin of the suggestion to Gley that the number of victims was at least 500,000. Charles Bunch himself has given us the answer in his earlier post; it was the Polish commission of enquiry immediately after the war, which made the claim that the total number of victims of Belzec was 600,000. It is obvious that the West German court trying Oberhauser and other former camp staff members took the Polish claim at face value, and encouraged the men on trial to agree with it and provide support for it in their own testimonies.
Oomph!
The number with which the witness seems to be agreeing is 500,000. Only Mr. Mills would suggest a witness agreeing with a 500,000 figure shows the court "encouraged the men on trial to agree with it (600,000)... After all, based on his comments above, a 100,000 difference would be "greatly larger" and perhaps even indicating an "inflated" number.
Sometimes Mr. Mills sounds like the rabble at CODOH.
>Charles Bunch is indulging in his normal habit of twisting my words.
A lie. I'm once again pointing out that Mills makes statements which are untrue, and unsupported by evidence, as he demonstrates below.
>What I wrote was that at the trial of Oberhauser and others, some of the former camp staff testified that 600,000 bodies had been exhumed and burnt. I did not say that Oberhauser himself gave that testimony.
Well, your original sentence structure did not make it clear. But let's now see who you claim testified to 600,000 bodies.
>The dishonesty of Charles Bunch's words is demonstrated by the fact that his ideological accomplice, Medorjurgen, had already posted precisely the testimony that I had referred to.
As will be apparent, Mills is wrong as usual.
>It was Heinrich Gley, and his words, as posted by Medorjurgen, were:
Mr. Mills can now return and show us his evidence for Gley testifying at this trial.
>"As I remember the gassing was stopped at the end of 1942, when there was snow already on the ground. Then the general exhumation and cremation of the corpses began; it MIGHT have lasted from November 1942 until March 1943. The cremation was carried out day and night without a break, and indeed at first at one and then later at two fire sites. It was possible to cremate some 2 [sic! 2,000?] corpses at one fire site within 24 hours. About 4 weeks after the beginning of the cremation operation the second fire site was constructed. On average, therefore, some 300,000 corpses were cremated at the first site over 5 months, at the second site some 240,000 over 4 months. Naturally this is a matter of estimates based on averages. To figure the total number of corpses at 500,000 COULD be correct"
>I have highlighted two words in the text of Gley's testimony that indicate that he is not speaking with absolute certitude with his own memory. It is obvious that he is giving partial agreement to something that has been suggested to him.
LOL!
First let's note that Gley uses the number of 500,000, not the 600,000 Mills has been claiming.
And let's remember his point.
Mills:
"Interesting. So the total was not 600,000 but a lower figure, 434,508. But at the Belzec trial (Oberhauser and others), some of the former camp-staff testified that the total number of bodies exhumed and burnet came to 600,000. Not only was that figure greatly in excess of the number now documented, but also failed to take into account that a very large number of the bodies was not exhumed and burnt, according to the results of the archeological investigation Medorjurgen quotes."
Of course Mills source says 500,000-540,000, not 600,000, a number not that far removed from 434,508at it's lower limit, considering the witness was estimating the total. So Mills was merely attempting to cast doubt on eyewitness testimony, as shown by his next sentence.
Mills:
"So why would the former camp-staff on trial testify to a greatly inflated figure? To please the court by concurring what was then received wisdom, perhaps?"
The figure is not greatly larger; a larger figure doesn't indicate it was inflated, just incorrect; and Mills speculation about pleasing the court is just another empty assertion. Mills likes long posts of mostly extraneous detail sprinkled with these unsupported conclusions which always err on the side of mitigating the magnitude of the Holocaust or questioning the credibility of evidence. Strange how his revisions always tend in that direction, eh!
>What was the origin of the suggestion to Gley that the number of victims was at least 500,000. Charles Bunch himself has given us the answer in his earlier post; it was the Polish commission of enquiry immediately after the war, which made the claim that the total number of victims of Belzec was 600,000. It is obvious that the West German court trying Oberhauser and other former camp staff members took the Polish claim at face value, and encouraged the men on trial to agree with it and provide support for it in their own testimonies.
Oomph!
The number with which the witness seems to be agreeing is 500,000. Only Mr. Mills would suggest a witness agreeing with a 500,000 figure shows the court "encouraged the men on trial to agree with it (600,000)... After all, based on his comments above, a 100,000 difference would be "greatly larger" and perhaps even indicating an "inflated" number.
Sometimes Mr. Mills sounds like the rabble at CODOH.
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Charles Bunch
- Member
- Posts: 846
- Joined: 12 Mar 2002, 21:03
- Location: USA
Re: Charlie
>>>Charlie,help me out; explain again to me how antiSemitism only applies to Jews and not to Arabs.
>>Because the word antisemitism means hatred of Jews and has nothing to do with Arabs. Is this simple enough for you?"
>Well, I'll admit that it's simple, perhaps why it appeals to you. A "60 minutes" program (popular American news program) once had a special about American prejudice against Arab Americans, and they called it "antisemitism".
Your claim about what 60 minutes said is worthless, and irrelevant.
>You see, Arabs and Jew both come from Noah's son Shem, and they speak languages which are called "Semitic".[/quote]
The word has nothing to do with semites. It was coined by a Jew hater to mean hatred of Jews. That's its meaning, whether you like or not.
>>Because the word antisemitism means hatred of Jews and has nothing to do with Arabs. Is this simple enough for you?"
>Well, I'll admit that it's simple, perhaps why it appeals to you. A "60 minutes" program (popular American news program) once had a special about American prejudice against Arab Americans, and they called it "antisemitism".
Your claim about what 60 minutes said is worthless, and irrelevant.
>You see, Arabs and Jew both come from Noah's son Shem, and they speak languages which are called "Semitic".[/quote]
The word has nothing to do with semites. It was coined by a Jew hater to mean hatred of Jews. That's its meaning, whether you like or not.
Re: Charlie
Your claim about what 60 minutes said is worthless, and irrelevant.
So I have to chose between Bob Wallace and Charles Bunch. Wallace being one of the most famous journalists in the world, and the other a smartass know-it-all.