What kind of diesel engines where used???

[Scott Smith]

If the murder-weapon was an engine it had to have been a spark-ignition gasoline engine. Simple as that.

All evidence converges on the murder weapon having been an engine, and there's no indication that it was anything else. So it Smith were right with his diesel arguments, this would mean that it was a spark-ignition gasoline engine. Simple as that.

That is what I've said all along. However, that does not analyse the murder-weapon either. It could have been electrocution or the guillotine. If the handfuls of witnesses said that then we would be considering that. Failure to develop the murder-weapon is a serious hole in the historiography.

This exercise is amusing if only to see how the Holo-defenders champion the orthodox positions.

Some may find it amusing to take apart every "Revisionist" herring, however insignificant. As to the "orthodox positions", Smith still has to show us an "orthodox" source that accorded the homicidal engine more than a passing mention let alone made a big deal out of the assumption that it was a diesel engine. Unless he can show us something in this direction, his guru Berg's "myth within a myth" comes across as one of those paper dragons that "Revisionist" dragon slayers make up to impress their gullible followers.

Don't be coy, my good man. The diesel gaschamber was Holocaust staple when Berg first wrote his paper in 1983. Holocaust doyen Hilberg was shown a fool taking the stand in the first Zündel trial (1985) because he had relied so heavily on St. Gerstein. I seriously doubt that Hilberg any longer believes in the diesel gaschamber and has come to the utterly simple conclusion that it must have been gasoline engines instead. Poliakov also relied on the canonical Gerstein. Of course there can be no technical analysis of the murder-weapon when it comes to Orthodoxy. One only has to Believe. He and his buddy Vidal-Naquet and 34 so-called historians have outlined the proper historiography that we are allowed in Holo-matters:

It as not necessary to ask how, technically, such a mass murder was possible. It was possible technically since it took place. That is the necessary point of departure for any historical inquiry on this subject. It is our function simply to recall that truth: There as not, there cannot be, any debate about the existence of the gas chambers. The Nazi Gaschambers are our God.

Le Monde on February 21, 1979, p. 23.

[Scott Smith]

Is anyone a diesel expert. We need some finality or progress in this argument.

What part do you not find convincing?

[Scott Smith]

The diesel has to be as deadly if not deadlier in its own way as it spews out more irrantants/toxins than Gasolene, maybe not as much CO2 but again this is heavy duty displacement. If the engine has to move a tank of at least 20 tons than im pretty sure there would be a lot of exhaust output.

THe point is how long those particulates would take to kill a bunch of people. They would, but it would take too long. If the diesels were used to kill people, it was by a fuel additive specifically meant to kill people, or the engine were put under a load, or something of that nature. When you read about people dieing in garages with the car running, it's always gasoline engines, not diesel engines.

If there was an additive. Could it be this "ROPA" that a survivor mentioned ?

No, "ROPA" ("a kind of oil, a crude oil", according to Eliahu Rosenberg's deposition at the Eichmann Trial) seems to be a Polish term for crude petrol or diesel oil. There are reports from the Polish resistance that mention a toxic additive to the fuel, however. There is also one report mentioning gasoline engines, IIRC. Whatever is was, hundreds of thousands died from it, and no one taken to that place, except for a handful of excapees, ever left it alive.

I agree wholeheartedly

We can save ourselves some time and just say it was "phlogiston oil" or "eye of newt." Without details it is just fantasy. Why do we need engines to dispense this unknown poison?

Even if it was deadly Tabun nerve agent, putting it into the diesel fuel would be disasterous for the users as well. If it were something less volatile like nitrogen mustard or lewisite the heat of combustion might break it down, though I'm sure a partial incineration would still leave it deadly. We also don't know how it would affect the wear of the engine. It is absurd that the Nazis would need an engine to pump the gas when standard war gases could easily be disbursed with some simple compressed air.

In short, Rosenberg saw (or claimed to have seen) them adding diesel fuel (Ropa oil) to a diesel engine, probably one used to generate camp power.

It is also possible (though far less likely) that he saw them adding two-cycle oil to a two-cycle spark-ignition gasoline engine used as the gassing motor. An air-cooled, two-cycle, two-cylinder Trabant engine (i.e., the engine's wartime equivalent) would have worked to generate carbon monoxide--though the smoky Trabant would still not be any better than a four-cycle six or eight-cylinder gasoline truck engine or even an air-cooled, four-stroke, four-cylinder Volkswagen engine.

But a diesel engine is the least likely scenario of all (other than flying-saucers and Nazi nerve gases).


Trabant engine.

[Scott Smith]

In other words, the statement which says "all" T-34 tanks had W-2 diesels was incorrect.

I didn't say that "all T-34s had W-2 diesels." What I said was: The Soviet heavy tanks like the KV-1, T-34, and IS-2 all had a standard 500 brake-horsepower W-2 diesel powerplant

Which is incorrect, since not all T-34's had diesel powerplants. In other words, what you said is exactly what I pointed out.

No, all those tanks had diesel engines. I didn't say they only had diesel engines. In fact, I have shown the rarity of the exceptions. Pathetic Chuckoo.

It must gall you that you are reduced to describing an obviously false statement as "essentially correct" with some exceptions, when those exceptions constituted a significant percentage of the units produced in 1941.

Not quite. I posted figures. Furthermore, I argued previously that diesels were NOT the majority of prewar tanks. And I never said the engine had to have come from a T-34.

Not in that post you didn't. In that post you claimed all T-34's were diesels. What you posted elsewhere is irrelevant to the false claim you made in that post. I suspect you have made it elsewhere as well. Where the engine came from is also irrelevant to our discussion, as is what you said about other tanks.

Well, if there is any confusion, Chuckoo, I had cleared it up. Idiocy "galls" me--but that is an entirely reasonable attitude.

You are just trying to create a strawman to knock down.

Your false statement is not a strawman. Your refusal to admit it is false tells us lots about you.

Your inability to understand my arguments and statements (which is hardly surprising) hardly speaks to my skill as a communicator. It does, however, demonstrate your pathetic sophistry.

But I'm sure we'll not see you making such a categorical statement about the T-34 tank again soon.

You don't know what you are talking about.

It would seem the person who claimed all T-34's had a diesel powerplant has little claim to expertise.

That is not what I claimed. Indeed, in previous discussions with Roberto I said it was more likely to find Soviet tanks with gasoline engines--and I have never said that the "gassing engine" had to have come from a T-34. I have said it was just as likely if not more so to have come from a KV-1 if it was a diesel, or some other tank if it was gasoline. The least likely explanation is a T-34 which was very new in 1941, and I posted the numbers. No Holo-source that I'm aware of specifically says a T-34 tank, and I have corrected Fritz Berg who had confused the T-34 with the IS-2 Stalin tank, which wasn't used until about 1943. Berg told me that his point was not the type of tank but that the W-2/V-2 engine was a "shock" to the Germans when they encountered it in 1941 because they had not thought the Russians capable of this technology. (The T-34 itself was a shock to the Germans as well for tactical reasons but that is a different issue. The T-34 was medium-weight take that was as good as a heavy like the KV-1, either of which could hold up entire German Panzer units at will.)

If Chuckoo really wants to know more about the W-2/V-2 diesel engine he should request from Inter-Library Loan the wartime British technical report on the engine and the wartime German MTZ technical report that I have cited previously. Berg has thoroughly analysed them both and we have talked about the motor--which probably wouldn't interest someone who has obviously never gotten grease underneath his fingernails.

An air filter so poor it won't permit sufficient air, even at idle!

Yes, I've read that report and more.

You mean this report?

http://www.battlefield.ru/library/archi ... stat7.html

Engine

The diesel is good and light. The idea of using diesel engines on tanks is shared in full by American specialists and military personnel. Unfortunately, diesel engines produced in U.S. factories are used by the Navy and, therefore, the Army is deprived of the possibility of installing diesels in its tanks.

The deficiency of our diesels is the criminally poor air cleaners on the T-34. The Americans consider that only a sabateur could have constructed such a device. They also don't understand why in our manuals it is called oil -bath. Their tests in a laboratory showed that:

*the air cleaner doesn't clean at all the air which is drawn into the motor;

*its capacity does not allow for the flow of the necessary quantity of air, even when the motor is idling. As a result, the motor does not achieve its full capacity. Dirt getting into the cylinders leads them to quickly wear out, compression drops, and the engine loses even more power. In addition, the filter was manufactured, from a mechanical point of view, extremely primitively: in places the spot -welding of the electric welding has burned through the metal, leading to leakage of oil, etc. (that claim was accepted, and later T-34 variants received the new, better, "Cyclon" filter - Valera). On the KV the filter is better manufactured, but it does not secure the flow in sufficient quantity or normal cleaned air. On both motors the starters are poor, being weak and of unreliable construction.

===========

So you've read it before. Have you ever brought it up in your discussions with Roberto and others?

Yes, I've read it. What would be the pointin mentioning it? You, yourself say it is irrelevant to carbon monoxide.

I have previously mentioned sources for answering the question as to why the U.S. Army did not go to diesel engines in their tanks. The answer is that it wasn't worth a change in production priorities because, although diesel fuel is less volatile, the ammunition was the main hazard in the case of battle damage. And although diesel fuel/engines provide better fuel mileage, the U.S. Army did not want to bother logistically with two types of fuels for its vehicles.

For the Germans it was a different story since they had a shortage of all liquid fuels but could produce diesel fuel easier and had a significant quantity of diesel trucks. Why did they not copy the Soviet W-2/V-2 bolt-by-bolt for their tanks? It just wasn't powerful enough for their heavier tanks and they didn't want to change existing production priorities for lighter equipment like self-propelled guns and Stugs. They might have just as easily said that the Kreigsmarine was "already building diesel engines" too, although this doesn't mean that production lines couldn't have been changed to produce the W-2/V-2 instead of MAN gasoline engines for tanks.

We'll have to keep that in mind when we discuss fuel/air ratios as a contributing factor to the lethality of diesel engines, now won't we.

No, it doesn't work that way. If the air is restricted the engine begins to miss because it cannot get enough air to compress to detonate the fuel and it therefore blows unburned fuel out the exhaust. It doesn't miss because it is out of oxygen but because it cannot compress enough air to generate heat for ignition. This limits the amount of carbon monoxide that can be produced by choking because the engine will quit. When Pattle and Stretch tried this in the 1957 test on live they were able to only slightly raise the CO despite choking it as much as possible. All animals were still alive after an hour and a half. Humans would have done better.

Sorry, Chuck. No banana.

Sorry Smith, but there was no report of the T-34 tanks quitting because of this. And you, and Berg, and his other parrots, are always forced to resort to this unsupported claim.

What, because of the cheesy air filter that came with it? Of course not. I have unpacked new diesel engines from foreign countries and the first thing you do is replace the filters with good American ones. That is why I found the American test with the crappy stock filters to be somewhat rigged. Maybe the Soviets sent it that way on purpose or maybe American manufacturers didn't like the idea of Soviet equipment outperforming American motors, who knows? Who cares? My suspicions on the testing or not, it is irrelevant.

The fact is if you choke any diesel engine it will quit. That is the easiest way to immediately kill (stop) the simple ones in fact.

Less oxygen to the engine means less complete combustion means higher levels of CO.

It would in an ordinary case of combustion. A diesel engine is not a standard heat engine, however. I have explained the principle of operation of a compression-ignition engine often enough; if one does not understand it by now he never will. I don't think you've even read the Pattle (1957) text so you can't say that it is an unsupported claim.

[David Thompson]

Please leave insulting personal references out of this argument.

[Roberto]

Roberto, your stupidity does not become my "dishonesty."

Now isn't it funny to see Smith lose his temper and throw insults around in a vain attempt to disguise the fact that he was lying rather lamely when, after reading my conclusions derived from Miller’s thesis more than once, he tried to make believe that I considered 2.7 % CO2 to be lethal?

Anyone who read my exposition should have understood that I consider a CO2 level above 7 % to be lethal and that, according to my calculations, that level would be reached in the situation under discussion after 30 minutes when the CO2 coming in with the exhaust added to the CO2 produced by the victims themselves. In my post of Mon Apr 28, 2003 2:13 pm on the thread

Gassing Vans Revisited
http://www.thirdreichforum.com/viewtopi ... c&start=30

I even showed my calculations, as follows: [...]

Oh, excuse me.

A little silliness is part of Smith's nature, right?

You are saying that at test B-13 on the chart (no-load on the engine at 2.7% CO2 and 17.14% oxygen) the gas composition magically accumulates to test B-15 or B-16 which is a CO2 level of around 7% and not quite enough oxygen to safely breathe (about 10.5%), and also over a 50% loading on the motor.

No, that's not what I'm saying, as Smith well knows. I'm saying that part of the CO2 in the chamber (the larger part) would be produced by the victims themselves through exhalation and another part (the smaller part) would come in with the exhaust from the unloaded engine as in experiment B13. Smith continues to deliberately misrepresent my statements and thus keeps displaying his dishonesty.

[Sorry, but as explaned previously, the engine is forcing in so much exhaust that oncee there has been a circulation or two in a few minutes, the gas composition of the chamber will be the same as the exhaust going in, even though the subjects inside are consuming oxygen and exhaling CO2. They cannot compete with the air pumped by the engine, which has a breatheable quantity of oxygen in the exhaust (unless substantially loaded, as shown).

As he continues to repeat his unsubstantiated theory that the incoming exhaust would completely displace the existing atmosphere in the gas chamber, even though it seems more likely and compatible with the laws of physics that the heavier components of the incoming exhaust, like carbon dioxide, would displace the lighter components of the existing atmosphere, like oxygen, while the heavier ones remained behind and combined with the carbon dioxide of the incoming exhaust to an atmosphere containing an excessive concentration of this toxic substance.

Oh, Roberto! I know you pull out the "dishonesty" bit when you get flustered

Unlike poor Smith, I never get "flustered". I’ve long grown used to the stench coming out of the "Revisionist" sewer. But that doesn’t keep my from calling a lie a lie and a liar a liar.

--but cool off some.

If I were furious fuming Smith, I’d keep my mouth shut.

I know what you are saying but I disagree with it.

Then say so but don’t misrepresent my statements.

CO2 accumulates in the bottom of a grain silo because it is generated slowly from decomposition. It therefore settles to the bottom. We see a similar effect with bottles of Italian salad dressing that have been sitting in the refrigerator. The oil and vinegar/water separate.

Now in a postulated diesel gaschamber that wouldn't be the case because (with an unloaded engine) you are CONTINUOUSLY pumping 17% oxygen in along with 2.7% CO2. There is also oxygen consumed by the victims and CO2 exhaled. Which will be the greater factor?

Who said anything about CO2 cumulating at the bottom, and who said it had to cumulate at the bottom so as not to be displaced by the incoming exhaust?

Well, I don't know the combined lung capacity of the victims since it is not entirely clear how many there are even to draw an average figure. However, I do know the size of the diesel engine (assuming it is a W-2, which is a safe assumption if it was captured from Soviet equipment). The twelve-lung W-2 has a total displacement of 38 liters. If it were running at a standard 1500 rpm, then the four-stroke engine would displace 28.5 cubic meters per minute. If the gas chamber were 200 cubic meters then it would displace all the air inside in seven minutes. Of course it might take several displacements to force all the initial air out as the new air (exhaust) will mix with the old. But with such rapid exchange I would liken this to shaking the bottle of salad dressing rather vigorously. After fifteen minutes (let alone thirty) the times of a standard gassing according to most Holo-sources (some as short as ten minutes), I don't see how anyone could "reasonably" (I won't say honestly) say that the gas composition of the chamber was not in fact nearly identical to the gas composition of the raw diesel exhaust--which contains 17% oxygen and is in fact breatheable for some period of time measured in HOURS.

Interesting considerations on how fast the exhaust would displace the existing atmosphere, if only because I darkly remember Smith having argued against the wholesale displacement of the existing atmosphere he now contends when the discussion circled around the oxygen-poor exhaust of a "loaded" engine replacing the air inside the gas chamber with itself and leading the victims to die of suffocation.

But I’m afraid that this argumentative inconsistency doesn't get Smith anywhere nearer disproving the notion that the heavier particles of the incoming exhaust (namely CO2) would displace the lighter particles of the existing atmosphere (namely oxygen) while the heavier particles of that atmosphere remained behind and combined with the heavier particles of the incoming exhaust to create a less breathable atmosphere.

(Feel free to check my figures as you have found mistakes in the past--unintentional of course.)

Considering my above comments, I think I can leave that for another occasion.

But the fact is, it is your theory of the rapid separation of gases (leading to CO2 buildup) that is unproved.

So is Smith's, mine having the advantage of being more plausible. The demonstration that diesel gassing would not work and eyewitnesses who spoke of diesel engines must thus have been mistaken about this detail – which is what all this discussion can reasonably amount to – is Smith’s baby, anyway.

Now, if you want your diesel gaschamber to work.

I couldn’t care less if the gas chamber worked with diesel or gasoline exhaust. If it couldn’t have been one of the two, it would have been the other, big deal. Sceptical as I am, however, I like to question every "Revisionist" herring, however insignificant.

Simply load the motor to an equivalent shown on the graph of B-16 to B-12. For a 500 bhp diesel like a W-2 that would be about 338-463 mechanical horsepower. And that is one hell of a load! If we convert it into real world electrical values with a dynamo, it is 169-231 kilowatts (approximately), or the power needed to light 1,690 to 2,310 lightbulbs of 100 watts each!

However, I'm certain that this arrangement would leave anyone inside braindead through displacing O2 with CO2 in fifteen minutes or less. If we continue the procedure for thirty minutes we are certain to have reached a LD100 relationship (100% dead), IMHO.

Since this arrangement would require a massive dummy-load, which would be completely superfluous if a gasoline engine were used, and since it would be incompatible with the practical generation of camp power (contrary to what lay "eyewitnesses" might have thought), I conclude for technical reasons that the diesel gaschamber idea is absurd.

There we go with the "load" baloney again. Poor Smith. He knows well that as long as he cannot convincingly demonstrate that and why the load effect couldn’t also been achieved by increasing the fuel supply and/or restricting the air intake, as empirical observation of various experiments and elementary logic suggests, his "load" crap is a fallacy within a fallacy, regardless of whether or not his mechanical horsepower and electrical power calculations are accurate.

Therefore it didn't happen.

If "it" meant "gassing by diesel exhaust" and Smith’s statement had simply been "they must have used gasoline engines and some witnesses must have confused the two types", I would never have taken issue with Smith’s stance.

That’s not the true believer’s contention, of course.

Smith is trying to sell the utterly imbecile idea that, notwithstanding the conclusive documentary, eyewitness and physical evidence to large-scale mass murder, an inaccuracy in the description of the murder weapon would mean that no mass-murder occured.

And that’s a stance which, apart from being completely idiotic, shows that poor Smith lives in a dream world of pathetic obsessions about the evils of "Zionism" and the virtues of National Socialism, far removed from reality.

Not even by the Nazis. And not even to our favorite Victims.

Smith’s dreary rhetorical bullshit, of course, does nothing other than underline the sorry figure he keeps cutting whenever he attempts to sell his articles of faith.

[Roberto]

If the murder-weapon was an engine it had to have been a spark-ignition gasoline engine. Simple as that.

All evidence converges on the murder weapon having been an engine, and there's no indication that it was anything else. So it Smith were right with his diesel arguments, this would mean that it was a spark-ignition gasoline engine. Simple as that.

That is what I've said all along.

No, it was not. See my last post.

However, that does not analyse the murder-weapon either.

And why on earth would it be important to analyse the murder-weapon under the circumstances of this case, Mr. Smith?

A question I have often asked but never seen answered.

It could have been electrocution or the guillotine. If the handfuls of witnesses said that then we would be considering that.

And there would be nothing wrong with it. Even if the nature of the killing device remained a complete mystery because no witness got close enough to it to describe it or those who did were of dubious reliability in what concerns this detail, the documentary, eyewitness and physical evidence that people were killed on an enormous scale would still be conclusive enough to allow for no reasonable conclusion other than mass murder and make these unknown details an issue of minor if any relevance.

Failure to develop the murder-weapon is a serious hole in the historiography.

Bullshit. The details of a murder weapon are the least historians are concerned with in regard to any historical event. I strongly doubt that Smith can show us a serious historian on an event other than the Nazi genocide who spent a lot of time researching by what means exactly people were done to death, or a treatise on historiography that would pronounce such research to be mandatory for a historian.

This exercise is amusing if only to see how the Holo-defenders champion the orthodox positions.

Some may find it amusing to take apart every "Revisionist" herring, however insignificant. As to the "orthodox positions", Smith still has to show us an "orthodox" source that accorded the homicidal engine more than a passing mention let alone made a big deal out of the assumption that it was a diesel engine. Unless he can show us something in this direction, his guru Berg's "myth within a myth" comes across as one of those paper dragons that "Revisionist" dragon slayers make up to impress their gullible followers.

Don't be coy, my good man.

Cut out the crap, Smith.

The diesel gaschamber was Holocaust staple when Berg first wrote his paper in 1983.

Was it? Show me who exactly thought this detail worth more than a passing mention or even made an issue out of it. Exact quotes, please. From what I’ve read of Holocaust historiography, my impression is that no historian gave a damn about whether or not the engine was really a diesel engine before Berg produced his junk, and no historian gives a damn about it to this day.

Holocaust doyen Hilberg was shown a fool taking the stand in the first Zündel trial (1985) because he had relied so heavily on St. Gerstein.

If that was so, I’m sure Smith can show us the pertinent transcripts from the trial records. I would like to see just how much we find in there about a diesel engine and what relevance is given to this detail other than as an indication against the reliability of Gerstein as a witness, if at all.

I seriously doubt that Hilberg any longer believes in the diesel gaschamber and has come to the utterly simple conclusion that it must have been gasoline engines instead.

I seriously doubt that Hilberg or anyone ever gave the question whether it was a diesel or a gasoline engine much of a thought.

Poliakov also relied on the canonical Gerstein.

In regard to the diesel engine, you mean? How frightfully shocking, considering that all evidence from witnesses more reliable than Gerstein points to an engine and the question whether it was really a diesel rather than a gasoline engine – the latter being how Reder and Fuchs described it, while most other witnesses didn’t mention the type of engine at all – is one that only worries the small minds of "Revisionist" fuss-makers, but none that historians or criminal justice authorities need to concern themselves with under the circumstances of the case.

Of course there can be no technical analysis of the murder-weapon when it comes to Orthodoxy. One only has to Believe.

Blah, blah, blah. I’m still waiting for Smith’s explanation as to what a "technical analysis of the murder-weapon", to the extent that it was possible at all with the evidence at hand, could possibly have contributed to the findings that criminal justice and historiography are supposed to be concerned with. So far, no show.

He and his buddy Vidal-Naquet and 34 so-called historians have outlined the proper historiography that we are allowed in Holo-matters:

It as not necessary to ask how, technically, such a mass murder was possible. It was possible technically since it took place. That is the necessary point of departure for any historical inquiry on this subject. It is our function simply to recall that truth: There as not, there cannot be, any debate about the existence of the gas chambers. The Nazi Gaschambers are our God.

Le Monde on February 21, 1979, p. 23.

A very reasonable approach given the pitiful inability of "Revisionist" fuss-makers to provide convincing, evidence-backed answers to questions like those below. Their usual reaction to such inconvenient questions is to howl "SPAM". Go figure.

1. Court experts and historians who have assessed the documentary evidence concluded that all pertinent documents – correspondence among officials as well as train schedules, timetables and other transportation documents – clearly point to Belzec, Sobibor or Treblinka as the final destinations. There is not a single document, however detailed, that even hints at the Jews taken to these camps going any further. Why would this be so if the deportees "sifted through" these camps were being taken "to the Russian East", as was stated in the Korherr Report ?

2. The rail line leading to Treblinka was a side-track of the line going from Warsaw to Bialystok in Northeast Poland. Bialystok was the closest point to the Soviet Union, anyone from Treblinka being resettled in the Soviet occupied territory had to pass through there. Yet a German railroad table for Bialystok shows Jews being taken from there to Treblinka, with the empty cars returning to Bialystok. In other words, they were being moved away from the Soviet territories by being sent to Treblinka. Why was this so?

3. The resettlement of ca. 1.5 million people (the number of victims of the "Aktion Reinhard(t)" camps according to the Düsseldorf County Court’s judgement at the first Treblinka trial, 1965) in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union would have been a complex operation, requiring hundreds if not thousands of German officials to carry it out and at least as many people involved in building projects. Yet no one has ever come forward to testify about such a resettlement, even though this would have made an ideal defence at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial and subsequent trials. Former high-ranking transportation specialists in Germany during the war did not offer Soviet resettlement as a defence in post-war trials, even though they denied having known the real purpose of the train transport. No war crimes defendant actually offered resettlement as a defence, even those who denied knowledge of the genocide. Why was this so?

4. As becomes apparent from a number of documents regarding the "economic aspects" of "Operation Reinhard" (alternatively spelled "Reinhardt" or "Reinhart", I’ll use the "Reinhard" spelling for convenience in the following), the Jews taken to Belzec, Sobibor or Treblinka were stripped of all their belongings there, including their clothing. Why would that have been done if they were going to be resettled – unless "resettlement" was to be to a place where they would need no clothing anymore?

5. Why would the Nazis, concerned as they were about preserving their own resources and robbing the Jews of everything they had, have invested large sums of money – far more than the costs of the killing operation, which are exactly known from Globocnik’s correspondence with Himmler – into a resettlement project?

6. Why were there so many dead bodies at Treblinka in October of 1942 that they could not be sufficiently buried, thus creating a stench that befouled the air as far as Ostrow, 20 kilometers away, which led the local Wehrmacht commander to raise an official complaint about that stench?

7. How many whole bodies, and how many bodies reduced to ashes and other partial remains, fit into pits 7.5 meters deep (judging by the depth to which ashes, bone fragments and other partial human remains were detected) in the burial area more than 20,000 square meters long and wide that was found after the war by the Central Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland? Was there room enough for, say, the 713,555 Jews from the General Government taken to Treblinka until 31.12.1942, according to the Höfle's report to Heim of 11 January 1943, or was there not?

[David Thompson]

I have locked this thread because of the persistent unwillingness of the posters to avoid insulting personal references in discussing this matter.