THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS!

Discussions on the Holocaust and 20th Century War Crimes. Note that Holocaust denial is not allowed. Hosted by David Thompson.
User avatar
Scott Smith
Member
Posts: 5602
Joined: 10 Mar 2002, 22:17
Location: Arizona
Contact:

POINTLESS...

#16

Post by Scott Smith » 09 May 2002, 07:58

Xanthro wrote:Scott,

This is a bit pointless.
It may very well be pointless but it interests me.

Here we have a monumental accusation made against Gentiles in general and Germany in particular, that harms the German people--except of course their leaders, and perhaps also the plastic-spoon generation of neo-Germans--and it harms all of the Palestinian people.

Yet what evidence is there for the murder-weapon?

The question begs for an answer.
Xanthro wrote:It's like arguing over the color of a knife used to kill someone, when you have a confession by the murderer, several witness to the crime, and the physical evidence points to the use of a knife.
If they really SAW a "knife" then they should be able to tell us what it looked like. Anything else is hearsay or rumor--widely propagated!

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image
Xanthro wrote:While knowing the color of the knife might be interesting, it has no bearing on WHETHER the person was murdered or not.
No, we don't have a murder here; we have a MYSTERY. We assume there was a murder based on disappearances and other inferences that are not relevant here to the study of the murder-weapon. Nor do we really care who is responsible. What we want to know is what really happened. In particular, it has been claimed that a novel murder-weapon was employed for mass-murder. We would like to know what evidence exists for that claim, i.e., for that incomparable mechanism of murder.
Xanthro wrote:That is key. Just because we don't know every detail of something, doesn't mean something didn't happen. If we knew every detail, there'd be nothing left for future historians.
I didn't say the lack of detail proved that something didn't happen. However, if we want to know what DID happen it is reasonable to examine the bases for this knowledge from an epistemological standpoint.
Xanthro wrote:It's argument likes this that make you fall into the Deniers camp. The exact details as to what engine was used will never be known. Most of the witnesses are dead, nearly 60 years have passed, and it was a minor detail to begin with.
Maybe. Maybe not. We know that if there was a murder there must have been a murder-weapon, unless they died of disease or were worked to death or shot--or simply corpses unloaded from the trains that were dead-on-arrival.

Ideally, to find out more we should employ some comprehensive forensic archaeology, with full disclosure by a broad-spectrum of international interests--not sham superficial digs like at Belzec and Sobibor, which will likely never be fully published.

Of course, to question that there is anything wrong with the story is criminalized in key countries--a situation hardly conducive to historical veracity. For example, French politician Le Pen was fined tens of thousands of dollars by his government merely for saying that the gaschambers were a "detail" of history out of the whole World War; and when he tried to clarify what he meant for the hostile press he was fined again.

Le Pen's Notorious 'Detail' Remark About World War II, by Mark Weber.

Of course, the gaschambers were the nexus of the universe, and they remain the glue of the space-time continuum. To doubt that publicly is to Deny.

So, enveloped by the First Amendment, I want to know what evidence exists for the Treblinka gaschambers. Commandant Stangl claimed to have seen the gaschambers but provided no details in what the "Devil" actually looked like; the Devil just exists, he affirmed, a commendably penitent judicial attitude, especially for political trials. And Eichmann even rode in a Gas-Van, but he never looked. Why would he? It was just a "detail."

You must not ask why; you must Believe. It was technically possible because it happened. And it happened because the Devil wears a coat of many skins.
:wink:

User avatar
Hans
Member
Posts: 651
Joined: 10 Mar 2002, 16:48
Location: Germany

#17

Post by Hans » 09 May 2002, 10:40

Scott, Höss' 1 April interrogation is transcribed here:
http://www.mazal.org/archive/H%D6SS/TEXT/HOS1-001.htm
But your quotation is curious. In his Nuremberg testimony above, Höß uses the word GAS two times, apparently in a different sense in American English.

I would like to know if you have a quotation of the above in the ORIGINAL German, not a translation of the above.

If the citation was an English translation from the IMT can you give the citation or link so that I can look it up in the Red or Blue books. I still would like to know what German words Höß actually used but "gas" in American English might be gasoline. Nevertheless, I can scarcely see that Höß would have used that word to mean gasoline or petrol. If he had said Benzin or whatever generically for fuel, Americans might have translated it as "gas" but probably gasoline or petrol. Gas chambers powered by gas. Curious.
Interesting observation, Scott! But as you and my dictionary say

Benzin n mot. petrol, Am. gas(oline);

and vice versa

gas ...6. mot. F a) Am. Ben'zin n, 'Sprit' m

and of course what they did in Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, Majdanek, Chelmno, Auschwitz and elsewhere with mobile gas vans:

gas...10. vergasen, mit Gas töten od. vernichten
:?


User avatar
Hans
Member
Posts: 651
Joined: 10 Mar 2002, 16:48
Location: Germany

#18

Post by Hans » 09 May 2002, 11:06

Michael,

Eichmann simply forgot Wirth's name:

"Ich blieb dort über Nacht und am nächsten Morgen fuhr ich - einer seiner SS-Führer begleitete mich in seinem Auftrage, da ich allein den Weg schwerlich, selbst nach Karte, gefunden hätte. Es war ein SS-Sturmbannführer (Anm.: SS-Hauptsturmführer Hermann) Höfle (?). Ich habe in Erinnerung, daß die Fahrt etwa 2 Stunden gedauert haben könnte, da stand an der rechten Straßenseite eine Art Holz- oder Holzblockhaus, indem ein Hauptmann der Ordnungspolizei (Anm.: Christian Wirth - erster Kommandant von Belzec), dessen Name ich heute nicht mehr weiß, in Hemdsärmeln sich betätigte."

Source: http://www.welt.de/daten/1999/08/27/0827de126935.htx

He was apparently reminded of the name when he studied the literature for his trial.

Hans

User avatar
Roberto
Member
Posts: 4505
Joined: 11 Mar 2002, 16:35
Location: Lisbon, Portugal

#19

Post by Roberto » 09 May 2002, 11:35

A false-belief does not require any conspiracy-theory, nor does it whether interest groups find that situation advantageous or not. the insane conspiracy-theory must be that of the anti-Deniers.
Blah, blah, blah. How do you get thousands of forged documents and manipulated eyewitness testimonials, which is what True Believers would need for their theses to hold true, without some sort of well-organized and efficiently executed conspiracy?
The question is: What evidence exists for homicidal engines at Treblinka?
Yawn. Coincident depositions of perpetrators and defendants at various trials, some of which have been shown here. Most of them seem to have spoken of a Soviet tank engine.
Did anyone see one?
All or most of those who described it, most probably.
What did IT look like?
Yawn. What does an engine look like? Even I know. Go figure.
Xanthro wrote:
Scott,

This is a bit pointless.

It may very well be pointless but it interests me.
Ever thought that it may interest no one else and that you may be boring the hell out of people with your nonsense?
Here we have a monumental accusation made against Gentiles in general and Germany in particular, that harms the German people--except of course their leaders, and perhaps also the plastic-spoon generation of neo-Germans--and it harms all of the Palestinian people.
The “accusation” has long been translated into hundreds of final verdicts, in case you haven’t noticed. And the only ones it harms are right-wing extremists whose stance is harmed by the damning evidence of the crimes of National Socialism. But thanks a lot for the above articles of faith, Reverend. They will go right into my list of your quotes as a showpiece of poor Gentile Smith’s paranoia about those bloody Jews trying to do him wrong.
Yet what evidence is there for the murder-weapon?
See above. As much as is required for the purposes of criminal justice and historiography. Details about a murder weapon are a footnote to the latter, and to the former they matter only to the extent that they provide clues about the identity of the criminal. The purpose of a criminal trial is to establish whether a crime was committed and the extent thereof, as well as the identity and guilt of the criminal. Tell us, Reverend, in what way would details about the murder weapon at Treblinka – namely the type of engine that was used – have contributed to these essential findings of fact?
The question begs for an answer.
No, Mister. The question is a purely academic one, to put it so as not to offend.
Xanthro wrote:
It's like arguing over the color of a knife used to kill someone, when you have a confession by the murderer, several witness to the crime, and the physical evidence points to the use of a knife.

If they really SAW a "knife" then they should be able to tell us what it looked like. Anything else is hearsay or rumor--widely propagated!
No, my dear boy. Those who got to see the engine themselves and testified about it were not technicians, and they very probably and understandably were concerned with other things than establishing what exactly the bloody engine looked like. What is more, none of their interrogators probably asked them about such details because they were irrelevant to the essential findings of fact. All perpetrators and survivors who made depositions on this subject spoke about a huge engine in an engine room, the fumes of which were led into the gas chambers. That was enough in this case for the purposes of criminal investigation, which do not include satisfying the morbid curiosity of moronic crackpots.
Xanthro wrote:
While knowing the color of the knife might be interesting, it has no bearing on WHETHER the person was murdered or not.

No, we don't have a murder here; we have a MYSTERY.
Only in the mind of a True Believer.
We assume there was a murder based on disappearances and other inferences that are not relevant here to the study of the murder-weapon.
Tell us, something, Reverend:

If

i) hundreds of thousands of people are taken to a small place that the relevant transportation papers and other documentary evidence show to have been their final destination;

ii) dozens of people from the ranks of their killers, the few who managed to survive or outside observers describe their killing and burial or burning in great and coincident detail;

iii) there are so many bodies at a given time that they cannot be sufficiently buried and thus stink to high heaven for miles around, prompting a Wehrmacht commander 20 kilometers away to raise an official complaint;

iv) huge amounts of ashes and other partial remains are found at that place after the war, all over an area of more than 20,000 square meters, buried to a depth of 7.5 meters;

v) there is no evidence whatsoever that the people taken to that place were ever taken anywhere else from there, nor that any but a handful of escapees ever left it alive;

is there still any room for reasonable doubt that all these people were murdered? If you think they were not, what do you think happened to them, and how do you explain all the evidence to large-scale mass murder?

Those are the questions you should be able to answer, Reverend. Haggling about as irrelevant an issue as the specifics of the murder weapon will only make you look like a sorry jerk.
Nor do we really care who is responsible.
See, Reverend, the details of the murder weapon would have been relevant if they could have provided clues about the identity of the killers that could not with the same level of reliability have been obtained otherwise. Only then.
What we want to know is what really happened.
Who is “we”, Reverend? We, the reasonable people who follow the evidence where it leads, know what happened – large-scale mass murder. We, the howling “Revisionist” crackpots, do not want to know. As simple as that.
In particular, it has been claimed that a novel murder-weapon was employed for mass-murder.
The murder weapon has not been “claimed”, Reverend. Defendants and witnesses at various trials have provided coincident descriptions of it. And believe it or not, historiography doesn’t care much about innovations in murder weapons. Nor does criminal justice – except to the extent that the details of the murder weapon help to lead us to the murderer, which was not the case here.
We would like to know what evidence exists for that claim, i.e., for that incomparable mechanism of murder.
A rather banal mechanism, as a matter of fact, no more efficient and/or cruel than a number of others. And once again, who is “we”? We criminal justice authorities, historians and other reasonable people who care about the event of mass murder itself don’t care much for that “incomparable mechanism of murder”. Only we “Revisionist” crackpots make a big bloody fuss about it because we have no better arguments to offer.
Xanthro wrote:
That is key. Just because we don't know every detail of something, doesn't mean something didn't happen. If we knew every detail, there'd be nothing left for future historians.

I didn't say the lack of detail proved that something didn't happen.
No, you said we needed the detail in order to establish what happened. Which in the face of the existing documentary, eyewitness and physical evidence to what happened goes against the most elementary common sense.
However, if we want to know what DID happen it is reasonable to examine the bases for this knowledge from an epistemological standpoint.
Which has been done in regard to all details that form the bases for knowledge of the large-scale mass murder that happened at Treblinka. Details which, whether you like it or not, do not include the specifics of the murder weapon. Those specifics were not required to establish beyond reasonable doubt that a crime of mass murder was committed, the extent thereof and the identity and guilt of the murderers. They are mere window dressing.
Xanthro wrote:
It's argument likes this that make you fall into the Deniers camp. The exact details as to what engine was used will never be known. Most of the witnesses are dead, nearly 60 years have passed, and it was a minor detail to begin with.

Maybe. Maybe not. We know that if there was a murder there must have been a murder-weapon, unless they died of disease or were worked to death or shot--or simply corpses unloaded from the trains that were dead-on-arrival.
If hundreds of thousands of people are taken to a place which they never leave alive, it’s murder regardless of whether the agent of death is starvation and disease, overwork, shooting, gassing or a combination of all. The murder method in question I consider to have been no worse than shooting and certainly preferable to slow starvation. As to the murder weapon, there was one, of course – a huge engine, as described by defendants and witnesses at various trials. How much or how little we know about a given device does not affect the fact of its existence, does it?
Ideally, to find out more we should employ some comprehensive forensic archaeology, with full disclosure by a broad-spectrum of international interests--not sham superficial digs like at Belzec and Sobibor, which will likely never be fully published.
Well, the “sham superficial digs” at Belzec allow for establishing the exact dimensions of the mass graves and calculating how many people were buried in them before they went over to incinerating the corpses. The pertinent excerpts from the report on the 1997/98 archaeological excavations can be read online under the following links:

http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/camps/ftp ... escription

http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/camps/ftp ... escription

http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/camps/ftp ... enza_II.98

http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/camps/ftp ... enza_VI.98

So do the comparatively sparse data provided by the Central Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland about the results of their excavations at the Treblinka site after the war:
There are also other traces. For example, in the north-eastern part, over a surface covering about 2 ha. (5 acres),
there are large quantities of ashes mixed with sand, among which are numerous human bones, often with the remains of decomposing tissues.

As a result of an examination made by an expert it was found that ashes were the remains of burnt human bones. The examination of numerous human skulls found in the camp has shown that they bear no traces of external injuries. Within a radius of several hundred yards from the camp site an unpleasant smell of burnt ash and decay is noticeable, growing stronger as one approaches.
From the report by the Central Commission for Investigation of German Crimes in Poland. Warsaw, 1946

http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/gcpoltreb1.htm
In the area where the gas chambers were supposed to have been located, the commission's team of 30 excavation workers reportedly found human remains, partially in the process of decay, and an unspecified amount of ash. Untouched sandy soil was reached at 7.5 meters, at which point the digging was halted. An accompanying photograph of an excavated pit reveals some large bones. (note 63)

Poland's Central Commission for Investigation of German Crimes
reported that large quantities of ashes mixed with sand, among which are numerous human bones, often with the remains of decomposing tissues, were found in the five acre (two hectare) burial area during an examination of the site shortly after the end of the war. (note 64)
The investigations by the Central Commission as referred to in an article by "Revionists" Mark Weber and Andrew Allen.

Source:
http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/camps/ftp ... linka.9605

What was the volume of the mass graves found at Belzec, Reverend? What is the volume of the burial pits at Treblinka likely to have been, based on the Central Commission’s data? How many people fit into these graves i) as whole bodies and ii) as ashes and other partial remains, Reverend? Where are your calculations that I have so often asked you to provide?
Of course, to question that there is anything wrong with the story is criminalized in key countries--a situation hardly conducive to historical veracity.
A situation that should not be but has nothing to do with historical veracity, because the issue is not “to question that there is anything wrong with the story”, but to challenge proven historical facts on the basis of propaganda nonsense and in support of an ideological agenda. Impartial and substantiated questioning is not criminalized anywhere.
For example, French politician Le Pen was fined tens of thousands of dollars by his government merely for saying that the gaschambers were a "detail" of history out of the whole World War; and when he tried to clarify what he meant for the hostile press he was fined again.

Le Pen's Notorious 'Detail' Remark About World War II, by Mark Weber.
Not the way I would handle the likes of Le Pen and Weber, but that doesn’t change the fact that each of them is a Nazi piece of shit.
Of course, the gaschambers were the nexus of the universe, and they remain the glue of the space-time continuum. To doubt that publicly is to Deny.
No, buddy. Denial consists in publicly raising unsubstantiated and/or nonsensical doubt about historical facts, such as the existence of the Nazi extermination camps, in support of an ideological agenda.
So, enveloped by the First Amendment, I want to know what evidence exists for the Treblinka gaschambers.
If so, how about looking at the evidence instead of boring the audience of this forum with those ever-recurring academic tea-cup tempests of yours? You know where to find it.
Commandant Stangl claimed to have seen the gaschambers but provided no details in what the "Devil" actually looked like; the Devil just exists, he affirmed,
Stangl was a notable absent commander who left the dirty business to subordinates of his such as Kurt Hubert Franz, and his interrogators were less interested in what the gassing engine looked like than in how many people had been “processed” at Treblinka under Stangl’s command, how the “processing” went about from the arrival of the trains to the body disposal and what Stangl’s role and responsibility in the whole procedure was. Understandably so, because those are the facts that matter within the scope of a criminal investigation. What the gassing engine looked like was mere window-dressing in this case, an irrelevant minor detail that neither the prosecution, nor the defense, not the court cared about or had to care about.
a commendably penitent judicial attitude, especially for political trials.

Wow, Smith’s “political trials” again. Long time, no see. Could it be that the Reverend is now finally able to explain what is supposed to have been so “political” about trials before West German courts that were not popular in Germany and that the public barely took notice of? Let’s hear, quack.
And Eichmann even rode in a Gas-Van, but he never looked. Why would he? It was just a "detail."
One that would have made him sick, which is what he took care to avoid. The desktop butcher seems to have had a sensitive stomach.
You must not ask why; you must Believe.
Exactly, Reverend. You must not ask why 713,555 people disappeared behind the gates of Treblinka until 31.12.1942 and were never again seen alive, you must believe that they were not killed there, whatever the evidence that they were.
It was technically possible because it happened.
Any doubt that it happened, Reverend? If so, on what grounds, other than the utterly irrelevant contention that not as much is known about the specifics of the murder weapon as you profess to want to know? The overwhelming evidence that it happened means that if there are uncertainties about the functioning of the murder weapon (which I haven’t yet seen you convincingly demonstrate), such uncertainties don’t matter a damn thing because they would only mean that the murder weapon must have been another or functioned in a different way than has been assumed. Big deal.
And it happened because the Devil wears a coat of many skins.
No, my dear preacher. It happened because the evidence leaves no room for reasonable doubt that it did. How about having a look at it?

User avatar
Scott Smith
Member
Posts: 5602
Joined: 10 Mar 2002, 22:17
Location: Arizona
Contact:

IF IN DOUBT, OBFUSCATE...

#20

Post by Scott Smith » 09 May 2002, 13:21

Hi Roberto,

In case you haven't noticed, the purpose of THIS thread is to discuss aspects of the murder-weapon, not your smokescreens of irrelevant SPAM.

If you want to do that on another thread be my guest. Nobody is stopping you.
:roll:

Image

User avatar
Roberto
Member
Posts: 4505
Joined: 11 Mar 2002, 16:35
Location: Lisbon, Portugal

Re: IF IN DOUBT, OBFUSCATE...

#21

Post by Roberto » 09 May 2002, 13:52

Scott Smith wrote:Hi Roberto,
In case you haven't noticed, the purpose of THIS thread is to discuss aspects of the murder-weapon, not your smokescreens of irrelevant SPAM.
In case you haven’t noticed, Reverend, your pointless discussion about “aspects of the murder-weapon” doesn’t interest anyone around here. My “smokescreens of irrelevant SPAM”, apart from being everything other than that, seem to draw a lot more attention.

Could it be that people have grown tired of your endlessly repeated bullshit, Reverend?

User avatar
Scott Smith
Member
Posts: 5602
Joined: 10 Mar 2002, 22:17
Location: Arizona
Contact:

Re: IF IN DOUBT, OBFUSCATE...

#22

Post by Scott Smith » 09 May 2002, 14:08

Roberto wrote:In case you haven’t noticed, Reverend, your pointless discussion about “aspects of the murder-weapon” doesn’t interest anyone around here.
Is that so? You seem to be in a tizzy.
:wink:
Roberto wrote:Could it be that people have grown tired of your endlessly repeated bullshit, Reverend?
People are surprisingly-interested in legitimate discussion. Is-Too/Is-Not doesn't inspire anyone and doesn't encourage discussion.

But then, NO debate on the Big-H is a victory for the anti-Denier persuasion, isn't it?
:mrgreen:

I need to get some sleep now, Roberto.
See ya later, Believer!

~Scott
:aliengray
Last edited by Scott Smith on 13 May 2002, 12:03, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
Roberto
Member
Posts: 4505
Joined: 11 Mar 2002, 16:35
Location: Lisbon, Portugal

Re: IF IN DOUBT, OBFUSCATE...

#23

Post by Roberto » 09 May 2002, 14:27

Scott Smith wrote:
Roberto wrote:In case you haven’t noticed, Reverend, your pointless discussion about “aspects of the murder-weapon” doesn’t interest anyone around here.
Is that so? You seem to be in a tizzy.
The only posts I have seen so far on this thread (aside from those of Michael Mills and the Reverend) go like "Come on, Smith, not again". Or did I miss someone who manifested enthusiasm in discussing the murder weapon?
Roberto wrote:Could it be that people have grown tired of your endlessly repeated bullshit, Reverend?

People are surprisingly interested in legitimate discussion.
On interesting and relevant subjects, sure. Discussions about the sex of the angels are likely to bore the hell out of people after a while, however.
Is-Too/Is-Not doesn't inspire anyone and doesn't encourage discussion.
It's great for dissecting Smithsonian nonsense. Which is why Smith doesn't like it.
But then, NO debate on the Big-H is a victory for the anti-Denier persuasion, isn't it?
From what I've seen on this forum, debate is a lot more effective in showing denier nonsense for what it is. How much do they pay you at the ADL for helping expose the ridiculousness of "Revisionism", Reverend? :lol:
I need to get some sleep now, Roberto.
See ya later, Believer!
Truth is Propaganda. The Believers call themselves "skeptics" and their critical opponents "believers". Sometimes, when they believe themselves to be a talking to a closed circle of the Faithful, they apply the terminology correctly, however:
Keep the Faith fellow revisionists. The Nazis and the SS were the good guys--but the anti-Nazis and the anti-revisionists dare not admit it for fear of losing their fabulous, ill gotten gains from the war.
“Hoaxbuster” Friedrich Paul Berg on the Codoh discussion forum.
http://www.codoh.org/dcforum/DCForumID9/143.html#10

Post Reply

Return to “Holocaust & 20th Century War Crimes”